Some Big Mistakes He Made—And What He’d Do Differently (Kunu Kaushal Pt. 1)

[ 00:00:03 ] Welcome, everyone, to Home Care U, a podcast by Careswitch. I'm Miriam Allred, your host, Head of Partnerships here at Careswitch. It's great to be back with everyone. Happy Wednesday. A couple housekeeping items before we get started today. In recent weeks, I've had more and more listeners actually reach out to me about more information regarding Careswitch. And so, I just want to quickly mention that we are an AI-powered agency management system, and we've got a webinar coming up that will actually be showcasing some of the AI-powered workflows in our software in real-time, in kind of a live environment. So, that's coming up on April 9th. If you want to learn more or attend that session, you can find the registration actually on our company LinkedIn page.

[ 00:00:47 ] So, just search Careswitch on LinkedIn and you'll find the registration page there. And we'll look forward to giving all of you more insight into Careswitch and what we've been working on. So, without further ado, today I am honored to be joined by one of my favorite guests – I don't know if I should say that as a host, but I've got Kunu Kaushal, Founder and CEO of Senior Solutions joining me. He's also the founder of the Independent Home Care Alliance. So, it's my pleasure to be joined by Kunu. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Kunu’s been someone I've looked up to for years. You know, I've just been in home care for a handful of years, and Kunu one that I've had an eye on, that I've actually had the honor of sitting on a panel with.

[ 00:01:29 ] I remember feeling really nervous and anxious and inadequate, but Kunu’s one of those people that's got maybe an intimidating resume, but when you get to know him, he's really down-to-earth and humble and apt to share his vast knowledge and experience. And so, I think that's what I admire most about you, Kunu. So, I'm excited to pick your brain today and let you kind of do some storytelling with our audience. So, before we get into today's topic, I want to give you a few minutes to introduce yourself, share more about the personal background, your personal why, share more about the business and the businesses that you run, and just let you tell people more about yourself. Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And your introduction is far too kind.

[ 00:02:14 ] I will tell you, the resume being intimidating, I liken that to the fact of – I think in my just ethos as a person, so this will kind of give you a little bit of 'the why', I'm a, you know, I was born in India. I moved to the United States when I was seven years old, and pretty early on, you kind of get this knack for - you just, you can't be scared, right? So, you have to just go after it. And part of the problem is that if you've got an entrepreneurial spirit, your mind just says yes. So, when somebody says, 'Do you want this opportunity to go?' Yeah, absolutely. And I'm going to try to crush it and do a great job with it.

[ 00:02:52 ] I think, you know, maybe that's a good place to start is kind of the background of what makes a person who they are. In my scenario, it would be my father is a physician, and my mother is a nurse. And when we moved to the States, we were pretty disconnected, obviously from family for the most part. And one of the interesting things for my dad is physician. My mom is a nurse. They really came in and said, well, we want to do healthcare, obviously, but how does the healthcare system in the United States really work and differ in a lot of ways? Pretty early days, what they found out, my mother is working. I'm working in a critical care nursing unit. And then my father in hospital management really became a big focus of his.

[ 00:03:37 ] They centered in around the idea of elderly and geriatric care as being such a focus area that in India, you know, you have such a nuclear family. So, you end up with the elderly ending up living with family. So, this idea of people being independent and somewhat dependent, really alone by themselves in their homes became a real issue. My father went down the home health route. So, in his experience, he ended up with Medicare-based home health and hospice. And my mother went down the road of assisted living. And so, she founded an assisted living center and really from her side felt that the facility type was a good, you know, branch from when she sees people in critical care in the hospital and kind of doing it in a step-down way.

[ 00:04:26 ] They both agreed nursing homes. We're obviously a place to avoid. And although nursing homes get a bad rap, I will say, I think the main challenge for the healthcare system today is that nursing homes are a place that tend to be a default and people are there far too long. It's not how they were meant to be perceived. So, you know, you take my father's background in home health, my mother's now background in assisted living, and I'm coming up through college, and kind of the decision is made: what am I going to do? I got into home health sales pretty quickly, really, because the dinner table talk was about geriatrics. I felt really comfortable there. And in doing home health sales, there was one thing that became very obvious: everyone loves the idea of getting care in the home.

[ 00:05:18 ] It's where everyone wants to be. The one kind of challenge I found in home health specifically was that we weren't there long enough, right? Right. Right. Right. A skilled nurse does a visit, physical therapist – whoever might do a visit. And so, although I bounced around, I found my way to private duty nursing. And this was really an interesting time for me being an administrator in private duty nursing, where all of a sudden, we were dealing with pediatric patients who had ventilators and trachs all the way to geriatric. We did a lot of skilled nursing in the way that it was also longer term. So, we had clients for months on months, and very acute patients. And we had clients for really long time. them and really help them with their care needs.

[ 00:05:59 ] I say that all to tell you, I kind of beat around the bush about personal care, home care before I ever landed there and saw for the most part, every other kind of healthcare that surrounded it. And I have to tell you, private duty nursing is a really tough business emotionally - so on your heart. And I was about to become a young father. And I think the challenge of seeing some of these young kids and the situations that they're in, I was a little bit scared. There were, and really caught up in the insurance and Medicaid world, making really tough decisions. I think the one that changed my view on things was a four-year-old little boy who had never seen the outside of the hospital and was getting to a point where when the nurse would take blood or do anything, stick them with needles, he wouldn't cry anymore.

[ 00:06:50 ] I mean, he'd just gotten desensitized to the pain. And I think that is amazing work that's being done. I think for my side, it was pseudo, like I didn't feel like we were making a difference in the way that I guess I wanted to. And so, I found the opportunity really by watching. So, as I'm the private duty nursing administrator, I've got my grandparents. And my grandparents, who just imagine their son and care professionals have the ability to service them either in-home health or in a facility. And my grandparents are like, 'We don't want either one of those.' Right? And what they want is home care and personal care – home care. So, they were actually using a competitor.

[ 00:07:36 ] And as kind of all of us as a health care professional at the time, my mother, father, myself, we're all looking at this personal care company and seeing how - number one, how mismanaged, how mismanaged, how mismanaged, how mismanaged, how mismanaged, how mismanaged - their quality was. And then the other side is that they had turned it into essentially a staffing company, which I think we all can agree. It's not how maybe high-quality and successful home care businesses build their business. And we got to a point where I think I thought, 'Hey, this is a great opportunity for me to go and try this and do it well.' And in my eyes, it was going to be really simple. You know, we dealt with insurance; we dealt with skilled nurses, and you know, these things were challenging.

[ 00:08:22 ] We couldn't find any skilled nurses at the time. And so, as many of you can already predict, right, how wrong I was, but I really thought personal care, home care was so simple, until I got into it. And oddly enough, my worst and most difficult clients I ever had were my grandparents. And, you know, it’s kind of like makes you realize that personal care, home care, it really is a standard in which the client drives exactly what they want. So, I've heard the word concierge care before; I mean, I definitely sympathize with a lot of those words, because that's exactly what it is - they are in control. So, as I was kind of going through that, and we were building the business, it is a blessing that my grandparents were the ones; they were the most difficult clients.

[ 00:09:13 ] I got them early on, because I really got a sense of how difficult this business was going to be. And I think that's one of the things that I've learned over the years is that it's hard for a reason. People are opinionated for a reason; you're in their home. So, you don't have the control of the facility; you don't have the ability to say we'll be there a couple times a week. You're really trying to bring your services to a family in that way. So that was 14 years ago. And we have been blessed with the opportunity to serve so many people along the way. And, you know, I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here. I'm really looking forward to sharing a lot of my story. And in a couple of stories that, you know, I hope you all will find entertaining.

[ 00:09:57 ] But as far as an introduction goes, one thing I will just tell you as a caveat, and I think this is where Miriam gets the humble part from. I am one of the few people, I think, that will tell you that number one, I still have felt like I'm in startup mode, right? Our mentality is we are reengineering our business every single day. And the second is, is the true definition of experience is that I can share with you about 1,000 ways not to do it. And it's still, you know, up in the air; there's a handful of ways that you can successfully do it. So, if you hear anything from me today, and in the following episodes, just know that's my experience that I'm sharing it with you, good or bad, and happy to share either way.

[ 00:10:41 ] I love the honest disclaimers. I think those are perfect as we transition into these mistakes. Before we jump into the stories. I want you to share kind of a quick snapshot of our business today, just to give people a taste of like what the state of the business is today. Yeah, absolutely. So, the start of the business 14 years ago was a laptop, cell phone, two caregivers. And over time, so now as we progress forward, we now cover all 95 counties in Tennessee. We have a little over 1,200 clients on service on any given day, under different payer programs, and you know, can speak to that. So, we see everything from Medicaid, VA to private pay, obviously. And then we're doing a lot of pilot programs as well.

[ 00:11:28 ] Throughout the journey, we also found kind of our mission, our ethos is to say: 'we want to find solutions.' Senior Solutions being the name. And we didn't want to just provide personal care, hands-on care. So the ways that we think we can be beneficial – doing things like a transportation company, a home-delivered meals organization, and then obviously technology where it makes sense to implement it into clients' homes, we've done that. And then in the first year of COVID, we were able to find a great, I would say, complimentary organization that was in Atlanta, Georgia. And they were kind of, you know, their leadership was wanting to sunset their years and finding COVID to be almost unbearable. And I think they felt good about us. So, I hate calling it an acquisition.

[ 00:12:18 ] But I would say it's a great organization. And I think they felt good about us. So, I don't like calling it an acquisition. But I would say it's a great organization. And I think they felt good about us. So, I don't like calling it a really good partnership. It was a good baton pass for us. So now we also serve the metro Atlanta area. And, oddly enough, full circle, we're doing some skilled nursing again. And, you know, we do it kind of in a different way, very much focused on the geriatric population. One thing that we found, and this is maybe just as a side note here, a few years ago, and this is pre-COVID. One of the things that I found happening a lot, you know, before, Miriam, and you know, all this great education was online. I mean, you know, there was so much there was a gap there.

[ 00:12:54 ] And in the home care industry, we saw each other, either at conferences, or we were in a total vacuum, right? And you almost didn't want to talk to anyone, because they were the competition, that type of thing. And the world has gotten a lot smaller, I would say, in the way of the industry, in a very good way - we're all sharing best practices as much as possible. One of the things we found was that the independent home care agencies were really, even with conferences, and those types of things, the independents were still kind of off on their own. The franchises, you know, and by the way, hats off to them, there are many good things that they do. So, we're not anti-franchise.

[ 00:13:34 ] But the franchises, you know, their, their way that their structure is set up, they get their own little ecosystem of companies to be able to share best practices with. And independent is truly independent. So, they're just, they're out there trying to make sure that they're able to make the best of every day. I have obviously a bias, we're an independent agency, we're not part of any venture cap or private equity or anything else. And one thing that I will tell you pretty quickly is I'm a home care nerd. I mean, I am the person who goes to conferences and still to this day, and so curious about the agency that has 15 clients, to the company that has 15,000 clients, it doesn't matter, because we're all solving essentially the same problems.

[ 00:14:18 ] And really, creative ways, some ways, you know, I certainly can't even think of yet. And the kind of motivation was that we should create some sense of connectivity for the independent agencies where we can. So, we founded an informal group at the time called the Independent Home Care Alliance. And with IHCA, it's really just a meeting ground and hopefully a way to build standards or best practices for agencies that might need it. And our thought process is that there are some really good mid-to-large-sized companies out there, who occasionally also need help. And then there are some folks that have been in business for all of five minutes, right? And they don't know what to do yet. But they know they want to be an independent; they've chosen not to go the franchise route.

[ 00:15:07 ] So we try to serve them as well. So, I hope what you hear is, you know, at least from my state, what I knew very early on is that I wanted to be of service, and make sure that we were able to serve them. And so, I think that's a really good way to help people. I think early days, when you write that down on a piece of paper, it feels very mechanical. And you say, 'I want to serve elderly people.' Right. And what you find out pretty quickly, and I think I found that about myself is that it's, and right becomes just a really good word to use. So, elderly people, and great employees, or, you know, caregivers who are willing to serve those people and those families and the healthcare system.

[ 00:15:48 ] And, I've been lucky enough to have, I think, enough home care owners and operators and even industry folks like you, Miriam, who have given me the opportunity to just feel like my thoughts are valuable. And I'm so thankful for that. And for me, it's just a way of giving back, right? I think we have such a long road to go that still to this day, we can all think that in our own vacuum that we're highly successful, we're doing a great job, which is good. You still hear the stories of people. I can't go to one barbecue or social event without hearing someone saying, 'I wish we knew about your services when, you know, we were having this issue with mom or so on.' And that honestly energizes me more than anything else.

[ 00:16:31 ] You go, oh my gosh, it's not just opportunity. There are so many people out there that do not know, one, that we exist, but two, we could truly be helping them through a really stressful and unnerving time in their lives. Yeah. What an incredible introduction, Kunu, just from your personal story to kind of the state of Senior Solutions today to your why of starting the Alliance. I think it's just a testament of, you know, who you are, how service-oriented you really are. And even you just talking about giving back, you give so freely, you know, of your time and of your resources and of your experience. And so, I just really appreciate that. And I think the whole industry does. The industry has benefited from your wisdom.

[ 00:17:12 ] And so, you know, just appreciate how gracious you are with your time. I want to give a little bit of context before we get into these stories. A few weeks ago, I was thinking about, you know, just common mistakes. There are a lot of mistakes that owners make along the way and whether you recognize them in the moment or recognize them years later, you know, everyone's making mistakes. And I was thinking about, you know, how do we, how do we do an episode with maybe, you know, a large name like yourself and talk about some of the, some of the bumpier times in your business. You know, it's great when we talk about best practices, things that are going well, but how do we also look back and learn to accelerate, innovate, improve for the future.

[ 00:17:58 ] And so today I want to let your kind of just divulge some stories of some mistakes you made. And I'm sure you've already mentioned it - like you've made a lot of mistakes. We all make a lot of mistakes, but what were, you know, some impactful mistakes, some hard lessons learned, and how can those be, you know, pitfalls that other owners can avoid in the future. So today we're going to talk about, you know, kind of a mistake you made maybe in your early years, then one in kind of like a mid-transitional period. And then we're going to talk about one that's, you know, more current, that's more top of mind. So, I want you to start by taking us back to those early years of the business and talk about one of the mistakes that, you know, left an impact on you and on the business.

[ 00:18:39 ] Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm going to ask for forgiveness because I feel like I'm actually going to get more out of this than any of you. This feels like a potential therapy session for free and a bit cathartic, but yeah, so you know, early days, I'll tell you, so the short version is just to tell you, I think accepting help and realizing that you can't do it all is something that has to really smack you in the face. And that was the case for me. I think, remember I had the lens that this business is simple, and you know, I'm a spreadsheet person, like I said, a bit of a nerd. So, in my mind, I was going, oh, all we have to do is have 30 clients.

[ 00:19:19 ] And if we have 30 clients, they're getting at least 40 hours a week, you know, and I did all the math through and it just made sense to me, there'd be just a bunch of money left over. And this is going to be a great living. And this is a great investment of my time and energy, that type of thing. Well, truth be told, it's never worked that way. As soon as you get 30 clients, you're like, 'Oh, we need 60 clients to make all this stuff work,' and so on. So, not this is not the mistake, but a challenge in there is being very careful about just doing everything because it mathematically makes sense for you, right?

[ 00:19:52 ] So, like, if you just say, 'Hey, if we can get to a thousand hours of service a week, then all our problems are solved.' It doesn't quite work out that way. The first maybe we're talking now about the second year in business. So, forget about the year one, and then the typical stuff, right? That you have challenges with. So, imagine from my side, I've got this maybe overconfidence where I think that I understand healthcare. Oh, I did the hard stuff with private duty nursing. I already know home health and we can build relationships. No big deal. Getting referrals certainly wasn't the challenge. I think going out of marketing, I felt comfortable with that. It was the back end of our business.

[ 00:20:32 ] And I think from my side, I needed the numbers to work so badly that I delayed having any additional person in the business administratively with me. And I think that's a big challenge. And I think that's a big challenge. And I think that's a big challenge. And I think that's a big challenge. Until it was too late, and it hurt. So, the story I'll tell you is that I was, you know, I was a new father. So, our business was founded in May of 2010. My daughter was also born in May of 2010. So, during my wife's pregnancy, right, it was like this better work and we're going to launch. And the reason that I can say it was founded in the same month is we got our brochures delivered the day my wife was having our daughter at the hospital. And I think that's a big challenge. I got the FedEx alert.

[ 00:21:15 ] And just, you know, pro tip, don't ever tell your wife who is delivering a baby, any sense of excitement that you just got a FedEx alert, and your brochures were delivered. That is not the time or the energy to give. So, a couple of years in my, you know, daughter is two years old at this time. We're at the zoo and it's on a Saturday. The weather's really nice. My phone rings. And there's only one reason during that period of time that my phone would ring on the weekend: it is because someone's calling out of their shift or there is somebody who hasn't shown up to their shift or there's just some staffing issue. And I think this on a personal level, here I was ready to enjoy a day with family.

[ 00:21:59 ] My wife was like, 'Hey, we need to spend family time together.' My phone is now ringing, and she can just see my shoulder shrug. And I just kind of let out a sigh because I can see that it's, you know, one of the caregivers that's calling. So, she grabbed the phone. My wife did and says basically like, 'Hello, you know, and this person's trying to call out of their shift' and my wife let them have it. And I'm not saying that's the way you do it, but I think my wife understood from my side, I'm always just understanding and try to be flexible. And I think my wife at that time just was like, 'Hey, you need to go to your shift.' You do this every weekend.

[ 00:22:35 ] You know, some of the conversations that tough love, I think that we've all learned to have with our staff. She was able to deliver it. And kind of hung up the phone. And as she hung up the phone, she told me, she goes, you have to get somebody else in to support. Now, why is that such a major mistake? I'll tell you; the problem was that once you accept help in that way and say, yes, I should hire someone, the mistake was really not understanding what this person's going to do. So that, whether it's your first hire, third hire, it doesn't really matter. I would say the mistake is not building out a clear maybe workflow or what people are going to be assigned as their core responsibilities.

[ 00:23:20 ] And I get it in teamwork, right? We all work together. One of my challenges at that time was that I just kind of did like, I would assume many of you have done too. If you say, 'what does everyone do here in the office?' Everybody goes, 'we all just kind of do it all.' Who answers the phone? Well, we all do. Who takes intake? We all do. Who does schedule? We all do. I think that now as time has progressed, we're all doing it. And I think that's the way we're further. I've gotten to be much more conscious. I remember back then, had I leaned into my strength and then tried to bring someone on to support, that was actually my weakness. Someone who I will say is detail-oriented, enjoys compliance.

[ 00:24:02 ] Folks, I'll tell on myself, you should have seen our personnel records back then. It was like a scan of a driver's license and avoided check, right? And it was like put in with a, you know, a, you know, a, you know, a floppy application in a manila folder and it was not in order somewhere on my desk. And those are things you just kind of do it. I mean, some, someone will tell you, well, you just bootstrap it, right? You just kind of make it happen. I think with some sense of organization early on, and then also understanding today, like, as you have a discussion with other owners, or I'm sure there's been many episodes here that we could find as well that talk about, well, what are some key roles and responsibilities in the business?

[ 00:24:44 ] When you're having to discover it, like I'll tell you from my side, I didn't know exactly what a scheduler do beyond just answering the phone and messing with the schedule. When the reality is, in a small business, at least back then, they were a great good cop, bad cop type scenario, right? Like it was really good to be able to have two different voices to kind of go back and forth on. They were a really good retention person, because they took the time. They weren't too busy to actually build a relationship with those caregivers. In a lot of ways, they were magical when it comes to relationships with some family members; like, they're a good person can deescalate a family who's very upset about what's happening.

[ 00:25:27 ] And so I think from my side, I was so busy thinking, you know, the mechanics of it is just going to work out, I really needed to spend some time. And that was the experience early on; that the mistake was number one, not accepting that additional person early on. But two was probably not letting them into the business and having enough autonomy to handle the things that they needed to do. The combination of those two just made those early days, that second year really rocky. And some of you like, you know, I hate to leave cliffhangers, how did it work out? I think how it worked out is that I personally grew as a leader, to go, okay, how will I work with another person in this business?

[ 00:26:13 ] What does real trust and accountability feel like? And then ultimately, we found a really good workflow. You know, we taught each other as far as, you know, what makes each other successful, what our strengths were. And we got to a point where it was really good teamwork. Now, you could say, you know, who is responsible for exactly what things, we had some stuff that was core. And then we did have a pool of activity that we kind of shared. And then we had some stuff that was core. And then we did have a pool of activity that we kind of shared. And then we did have a pool of activity that we had some stuff that was core. And then we did have a pool of activity that we kind of shared. I think that rocky road with that first initial person made the second, third and fourth so much easier. And I think I personally, from a leadership side, you know, had I known more, and I would tell you, I was also really young at the time.

[ 00:26:56 ] I was naive; I was kind of like, you know, trying to figure out how it all worked. I was also coming from corporate mentalities, and trying to apply that to small business that doesn't always, you know, is a good fit. I think each and every one of you, if I had to give you maybe some advice with that kind of thing, is have a lot of self-reflection. It doesn't matter where you are in the stage of your business. It's one of the things that I do, personally, as much as possible, every self-help book or business book, or when I see people with challenges, it always starts with you. You know, you got to like, stop, and say, 'Okay, am I the problem? Right?' Not to quote Taylor Swift here. But am I the problem?

[ 00:27:38 ] Am I like, is there something I need to be doing differently? Is there a resource that maybe isn't available? And so, in this whole scenario, kind of give you the hook here at the zoo, the problem was obviously me, and my acceptance of having somebody else around. It wasn't the caregiver. I mean, you know, those are dynamics. Guess what, we still have people call on Saturday who try to call out, right? So, you can't force the caregivers or what home care is to change. This will continue to be the challenge that home care. Yeah, what, what a great story that I think absolutely everyone can relate to. I have just a couple of questions, I think, mainly out of curiosity.

[ 00:28:19 ] One is, you know, you're talking about year two is when you brought someone on, you know, we're talking 12 to 18, you know, 24 months, where you were going in alone, I guess, I'm just curious, how capable were you on your own? Meaning, you know, how many? How many clients did you grow to, how much? How much were you capable of doing on your own? Because I think that's, you know, we talked about like magic pill or silver bullet, like if you get to, you know, 1000 hours, then I need to bring someone on. But I'm just curious for context, like, how much were you capable of? And was there kind of like this threshold that you could tie it back to?

[ 00:28:55 ] Yeah, we were at the time when I brought somebody in, we were close to 1000 hours, which is a lot. Now, we also happen to have three, maybe four, 24/7 clients, which I would say, so a lot of those hours were in that cluster. And then we had a lot of short-shift folks. The 24/7 clients, I think, for us, my value proposition early on, was me, right. So, like, when you're trying to go out and get business, and you know, you're competing against, like, home instead, and XYZ home care, and you know, whoever else is also and people are kicking tires. So, 2010 was an era in which you could get as many caregivers as you wanted. And that caused a lot of, you know, a lot of competition, I could either discount our services to be less expensive, because I had less overhead.

[ 00:29:44 ] Or second, I could really pour on the concierge part and, and do the dreaded thing of like, call me 24 seven, like you ever have any problems like this is all I do, you have all my focus. Well, I ended up doing both, right. So, I squeezed my margins down. And, and then the second is I also made it concierge. So, caregivers, families, everyone felt very comfortable. I was doing in-home visits; I was going from one end of town to the other. And with 24/7 clients, that's just a lot more that can go wrong at the same house. You're there so often, you know, that type of thing. Sustainability, I would say, you know, if I had to do it over again, and tell you a marker, I think it's more like once you cross 20 to 30 caregivers that are, you know, at least 20 hours a week, like really working, not just on the clock.

[ 00:30:38 ] I actually think they dictate that your bandwidth much more than maybe the hours, the number of clients, that type of thing, because it's the relationships with that staff. One person I think can reasonably 20 to 30 caregivers, but if you're planning to grow beyond that, and service more clients, you really need another person just so that you can one answer the phone. I mean, we know all the typical challenges in home care: you guys don't answer the phone; you didn't communicate with me; you know, the schedules, nobody's meeting with me out in the home. You know, like, I feel like my supervisor's not listening to me; nobody calls me for positive reinforcement; it's always, you know, some kind of negativity. So, I think the bandwidth is actually how many relationships you can manage as a person.

[ 00:31:26 ] Now, for me, type A, outgoing, was in sales before, also a workaholic. And to me, I'm like, 'I don't care that I'm doing payroll at 11 o'clock at night.' I think it's where you are. And also, you know, what you define work - some people really need a lot of balance in life. And I think we've been a lot more cognizant of that recently. But, you know, if you're the kind of person, I'm the kind of person, I can do anything for a little while. So also, for those people who think like, 'oh, I'm good running a marathon every day', like, well, let's check in after a couple of months, how about a couple of years of this? It can be grueling. So, I really think it's a good thing.

[ 00:32:08 ] It's dependent on the person. And you have to know yourself well enough, because I will tell you, if it wasn't for the fact that my wife and I were suffering in our own ways, right, like she was taking care of the baby, and I was doing this with the business. And we both knew that the other had very important jobs that we were doing at the time. Had my daughters been older now, like they're older now. And so, my level of input or time with them, you know, it's really tough. I mean, we just had something happen last week. I had to cut spring break short for my work schedule. And, you know, luckily, we spend more time during the summers and that type of thing. And I try to be a bit more flexible.

[ 00:32:50 ] A few years ago, that kind of thing put me in the doghouse, you know, so I think it's also your support system, your lifestyle, a lot of things have to go into it. Yeah, great. I love how you're talking in terms of like that rate relationship ratio, you know, like me to how many caregivers me to how many relationships can I successfully manage? We talk a lot about hours and about client numbers. But I, I love that kind of like perspective shift, of like, how many relationships can you successfully productively execute? And that's really like the underlying, you know, number to be focused on. I want to go down before we move on; I want to go down this path of this first hire.

[ 00:33:30 ] You mentioned your strengths, you know, your pride, you know, what you were really good at, and what you brought to this business. And then, you know, how important it is to hire to your weaknesses. And obviously, that's difficult, and you don't know what you don't know. And you have to bring on kind of this, you know, this perfect person probably early on. So, talking about some of the decision making and who I brought in early, I mean, was it someone cold that I didn't know? What is it? Was it someone that I did know? Was it someone that came from a home care background? Talking about kind of that first hire and, and maybe even kind of twisting it on like having a number one, you know, having someone that you can really depend on, you know, early stages, even up until today, just the value of having a really trustworthy number one, per se.

[ 00:34:17 ] Yeah, I would say, so in at during that time, my strengths were, you know, I was a technology type person. So, like, I felt good with systems and being able to use the scheduling software. I felt good about my business acumen when it came to accounting and processing payroll, and so on. So, I think a lot of like the business office manager type of function, I felt good with. Obviously, I had a background in sales, so I felt good with community-type involvement. At the time, the things I had prioritized basically on a list, and this is an exercise, by the way, anybody can do, is wherever you are in your journey. But let's say you don't yet have a number two, or three, or four, or whatever - is write out a list of the things that, that you actually do, and that take your time.

[ 00:35:10 ] And it's kind of like a time audit in from yourself and go, 'okay, how much time does this take?' Because it can be really important, but it takes five minutes. And those aren't necessarily the things that are going to give you the biggest relief. And during that time, my list consisted of well, everything, but what really came down to is like answering the phone and being available, because I could be doing a lot of things: relationships with the caregivers, interviewing and onboarding caregivers, doing in-field training with caregivers. So, what immediately came up is that the skill set I was looking for was someone who was highly relational with caregivers. And who I ended up finding was someone who was a very experienced CNA, that was working in home health, who basically worked with nurses and physical therapists throughout the week but was doing things like bed baths and ADLs and that type of thing.

[ 00:36:03 ] And she was looking for a change. And for me, I was like, 'okay', can you be good on the phone? Can you build a relationship with caregivers? Can you train people in the field? Can you go open a case? You know, I can do a lot of things. I will tell you; I can do a bed bath. Nobody wants one from me, right? Like that's not, that is not one of my, you know, resume items that we need to put out there.'
 But sometimes that happens. You have a family in crisis, and they say, 'I really need care this weekend. Can you start on Saturday morning?' You know, who could be that person that once again, my weakness could come in and do that.

[ 00:36:37 ] So that's who I kind of identified, and kind of a, what could they do? Keep in mind, I had experience in home health and hospice. I had experience in private duty nursing. I was thinking through skillsets. So, I was already thinking of how a home health office and private duty nursing office works. CNAs were a really big deal for us. They were certified; they knew what they were doing. Also, I didn't want somebody that was a new graduate, relationship-wise. I think I knew somebody who would have more of a, from an age side, be respected was going to be a big deal because some of our caregivers are going to see someone like, oh, you've been where I've been. You've walked in my shoes, that type of thing.

[ 00:37:22 ] Almost like a mentor style person. So, she was the first hire, and she did a great job. I mean, an incredible job for what we needed at the time. That summer, however, we started trying to, you know, we started trying to find this like, oh, we can teach anybody to do home care. Right. So, there's maybe another lesson in there. So, we got some, you know, young folks that were graduating high school and they wanted to be nurses. And we're like, oh, you know, come try this out. And I think we very quickly realized we were not built to run a daycare, right? Like people very early in their careers that need a lot of structure, a lot of time. And that was exactly an example of, well, it doesn't quite work. Just warm body.

[ 00:38:07 ] And we were coming to the realization that how you're perceived by everyone, clients, caregivers, referral sources, that need for professionalism, compassion, also some life experience where you can really understand when somebody says, 'You know, my mom fell and broke her hip.' You can say, 'Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.' Versus like, 'Oh no, like, you know, what happened? Where is she?' There's a natural kind of style that comes with that. And you have to pick that out of people. Um, so yeah, those are kind of our focus areas. I wish we had five hours to just let you just keep talking through, you know, year two to then, you know, we're going to get to kind of the mid-middle stages of your business just to hear, you know, like the why and the how of each of these hires.

[ 00:38:53 ] I think, you know, one of maybe my favorite topics is like org charts and just who you bring on and when and how and why, because every business is different. I actually love like you talking about this, just the dynamic, like you came with this business acumen, it's also, you know, the healthcare piece, home health piece as well. Your first hire, like a really experienced home health CNA, that's pretty different than a lot of businesses. And, and I think that's just speaks to, you know, your strengths hiring to your weaknesses. And that looks different for every single owner that comes into this business. But, like you said, that time audit, you know, finding like the high-yield, low-yield tasks, the best use of your time, and then hiring to, you know, fill, fill the gaps of those low-yield efforts, you know, so that you can maximize all the high-yields.

[ 00:39:38 ] So I think just really interesting and some good takeaways there. I do want to transition into this kind of second mistake. I think that one was so rich and interesting. So, I'm excited to get to the second one, which you've said is kind of more mid-stage. So, kind of, you know, maybe like a little recap, you know, summary to getting leading up to the second point. Yeah, so, you know, early days are gone. And let's kind of go into like year five and six, some something into that mode. And, we are, you know, we're, we're got a good business; we've certainly added a lot more people administratively. We've got lots of caregivers, we've opened up some satellite offices. And at this phase in our business, we probably have three regional offices.

[ 00:40:23 ] So we've expanded to the east and west side of the state. And administratively, we're probably around four schedulers, which would put us in the range of $4-5 million mark in revenue annually. And that's Tennessee revenue, by the way. So, for all the California folks, the New York, I know you, that seems like peanuts, maybe. But, you know, we were kind of a; we were doing a good job. And we came to this fork in the road. And I think some of you are either have done it yourselves, or you will. And you have to decide, like, do we keep going on this organic growth trail? Or do we try to do something which I call like real businesses do, which is they try the acquisition and try to acquire companies or, you know, do a do a deal, right?

[ 00:41:10 ] And it seems so sexy and interesting. And, you know, maybe we'll get SBA involved, maybe there'll be some deal structure there. And I have to tell you, if you are an entrepreneur, by its definition, and you love risk, acquisitions seem like such an interesting thing, right? Because it's complicated, and you've got to get audits done, and there's due diligence. And I was wrapped up in it. We were at the fork in the road of doing this organic growth, where I'm like, 'oh, you know, that's boring.' By the way, boring is safe. And boring is also tried and true. So, there's a reason that's a mistake. The acquisition side just seemed like fun. And that's sadistic in some way; it seemed like fun - it was going to be painful and complex.

[ 00:41:59 ] So we did our first acquisition, at least, walked down the road. And when I tell you, I was learning on the fly, we had, you know, multiple accountants - the buyer side, the seller side, we had multiple due diligence folks. There were things I didn't even understand in tax law. I mean, somebody is telling me like, 'Would you be okay with blah, blah, blah, deferment of this tax and that?' And I'm like, 'Yeah, we'd be okay with it.' And I'm going home and like Googling, what are they talking about? And I think from my side, like just being open to being in that period of time saying, 'I don't know what that means.' Like, there's a reason you have experts around you.

[ 00:42:36 ] And this is certainly not something you do deal-making on the back of an envelope, because it's very significant. The first few times I had to go Google things, I was like, oh, hold on, this, this is going to get serious. And we're talking about, to me at that time, somebody who had self-funded and didn't really have a lot of money, this is going to be serious and risky. And so, we got a lot of experts around us. And we started asking them to be involved and you know, give their thoughts and the way to do it. And I think what I want to tell you is that deal-making when it comes to acquisitions, there's so many different ways. The best deals are ones in which both sides are unhappy.

[ 00:43:17 ] And what I mean by that is that no one feels like they got the upper hand on it. And that's really a tough thing to accept, by the way, when you're wanting this acquisition, it's like buying a home; you want it to just feel like such a great event. And then you go, 'oh, closing costs.' Oh, we're on the hook for something else. What do you mean a warranty? And what do you mean, there's some additional point. So, the mysticism and romanticism of over the whole thing, I would say was a mistake on my side. And I hadn't even dealt with the actual hard part. The actual hard part is the company, and the business, and the culture. This is going to loop back around to that relationship’s thing.

[ 00:44:02 ] So imagine here we are senior solution, early days and onward, we know relationships are big. We have - I've figured out my strengths, and our team's strengths and weaknesses and vice versa. We know how we work together. We've developed policies. There's a culture, our culture is how we do things here. And so, we have a way that we're doing that, and this acquisition happened to be a tuck-in meaning what they were overlapping in our service area, they were really big in their area, and we were small. And this felt like, you know, we would just bring them in. Obviously, we were the acquiring body, so we would rebrand them. By the way, you know I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you, but if your local sports team all of a sudden says, 'Hey, we're changing our logo, our name, and how we like recruit and do certain things,' it's a different business, right?

[ 00:44:55 ] It's a different sport team. And I call it culture warfare. Um, there is very much a dominating team that's doing it. When you're buying the company, there's the nice stuff falls away after a few months because you just go, 'Okay, guys, like we can't sugarcoat this anymore. Like we are not going to debate it; this isn't a right or wrong situation. This is a vanilla or chocolate, and we have chosen.' Vanilla, right or whatever the situation is. So, I think the mistake isn't doing the acquisition; it was going into the acquisition in the mindset that I was in, which was one: 'I'm going to love the experience of due diligence and legal and all that.' And second: 'Everyone will love the brand of Senior Solutions and our culture,' and both were not true.

[ 00:45:47 ] Um, and by the way, there's no bad people in this whole mix; it's just the reality of how things go. You know, to tell you from uh... like what was the most challenging or what would we have done differently to make it not such a big mistake? Well, we did that six months later, so you know glutton for punishment. I tell you a true entrepreneurial spirit, which is: 'Hey, I know I just went through a ton of pain here. Six months later, but we learned a lot and now we're going to do it again.' The biggest differences between the first and the second were: first, we obviously didn't know we were playing with; we were just trying to like to make everybody be okay, um, and you know really worried about emotional emotions.

[ 00:46:31 ] We were just trying to like to make everybody be okay, um, and you know, emotions along the way. In the second one, the difference was we were just very, very honest up front, but as we were going into it, so that no one was surprised. About the process, and we basically shared: 'Here's what we learned six months ago.' For the best effect for the whole organization, it's better to rip that band-aid off and say, 'We'd rather just tell you how we do things and how it's going to work.' In the second scenario, we were just very honest. We also did things like us; we didn't hide the fact that this was happening from the staff. So, in the first one, it was like a Monday, and somebody walked in and goes, 'Here's a letter telling you about basically what we've been doing in the back office for the last two months.' Option B, we actually kind of interviewed and we met with...' Everyone, we were very open and discussed the potential.

[ 00:47:24 ] The owner of the second one was talking about you know why were they even doing this? Making sure everybody knew that they weren't in trouble; they didn't do anything wrong, and so on. And the second one, we literally transitioned and put them into the system and kept their people for many years. By the way, um, in less than 30 days, it was a testament to how strong our systems were – same thing: strengths and weaknesses where our strengths were where their weaknesses were, that type of thing. And I would tell you just if you are going down that road: so, if somebody were to say, 'Hey, I've got this company that's on the other side of my state or city, and I think we can work out a deal.

[ 00:48:04 ] And they seem like they're going to do everything which sounds pro you like seller financing; they're not, they don't care to get paid right away; they just want a position, and you know they don't want a high-paying one; they can lay it out on a silver platter. What I'm telling you is: you need to be very, very cautious about this and does your team have the backbone to say, 'This isn't going to be a soft and easy experience.' And you may actually have to be someone you're not which means you have to be a little cutthroat. In this moment, you know um the moments in which you love to have a big table and we as a team make decisions together in acquisitions like it just doesn't work that way because you'll have a hundred different opinions and you've just got to pick a lane and decide you're going to do it.

[ 00:48:54 ] I've seen them work acquisitions work; we've seen them work. I can tell you from our side, that we've seen them work; we've seen them work; we've seen them work. Um, we did two in 2015, 2016, where when the two happened, we didn't do another one until 2020, and even then, the one in Atlanta had to be such a sense of caution because there was a Deeper reason there, the family was, you know, aligned with us culturally, um, they wanted to keep it independent. It was not a tuck-in. So, we were actually in the last couple of years learning as we were going to have to go learn about Atlanta and Georgia and so on. And candidly, it's been a much better way to do it. Um, if you're going to is gone into an area that you don't know, wow.

[ 00:49:45 ] If we had more time, I've got a lot of thoughts and questions. I guess my just maybe quick synopsis for time's sake is oftentimes acquisitions are romanticized. You said that I think that's such an interesting term. You know, as you scale your business. Known as, as you scale your business, you know, as, as you scale your business, you know, you get to this point and you know, there's, there's a few different paths to go down, and acquisitions is one of those that just kind of naturally comes about. And you talked about it from this lens of as an entrepreneur: you know, I need, I need some risks; I need to shake it up; I need, you know, maybe FOMO; you know, I need to go down this path to at least try it once. But I think there's just a lot of nuggets in here for owners to understand that it isn't the only path.

[ 00:50:26 ] You know, there's a lot of due diligence. I love what you just ended there with. You know, there might be kind of years of recovery of you know after the implementation, after the execution. You know, it could be years before you know, there's a really smooth transition that you feel good about. And so, I think just, yeah, lessons learned - don't romanticize acquisition. Make sure you know what you're getting into and make sure you're going about it for the right reasons. And, uh, know what you're getting into. So, I think that was fantastic, really interesting. A lot of takeaways for owners across the board at different stages, and I think that's a lot of things that we've talked. About and I think that's a lot of things that we've talked about, and I think that's a lot of things that we've talked about in our last few minutes here.

[ 00:51:03 ] Let's get to the third there's you know one more that you want to talk about that's more current, you know into the pandemic, post-pandemic. I'm sure we all made a lot of mistakes in that stage. Talk to me about how that was for you all. Yeah, I, you know, the third one's interesting because it's more the mistake is the fact that um it took us so long, we were being stubborn and the thing that we were being stubborn about is that we viewed 2019, I don't even say early 2020 as we were on an Absolute clip of um, maximizing our operations. I mean, we were bigger than ever. Our hours were rolling in, even though recruiting was still kind of hard. We had it dialed in and at that time.

[ 00:51:47 ] So, a snapshot into early 2020, we had 26 physical locations throughout Tennessee and Georgia. Lots of brick and mortar. Um, we felt at that time: if you physically exist in the market, that's how you have home care in this area. Um, we had lots of rent, we had lots of utility payments, and furniture, and all the good things that come with that. Then, we felt like we had to have staff that was in those offices, even if it was one person, and so we were just very heavy, and I think the mistake here is that sometimes your first of all home care is not a brick-and-mortar business and we know that now more than ever.

[ 00:52:31 ] but you know you got to go back to 2020 2019 there were different strategies people were like oh I’m going to open up a satellite here and a satellite there and what does that look like and feel like we are a business that in a lot of ways our business and our operations are in the homes of our clients hiring and recruiting certainly is a thing but where your manager sits has evolved so much the mistake we made is that we were stubborn based on the logistics and the print And kind of the architecture of the physical embodiment of our business, and I think for us, we looked back and said, 'Gosh, it took us so long to build up to all these offices and get furniture in them and get the utilities figured out right, and all the things.' And I just mean, we renewed leases.

[ 00:53:21 ] Folks, I was smart enough from a business acumen standpoint that we don't sign anything for more than a year lease because we know well, anything could happen. What we couldn't get rid of is that we were really stuck on the idea of saying, 'It will come back right.' Like, I think we all live this: hey, in six months things will be totally back to how They were after this new vaccine comes out, right? Like things will be back to how they were after these entitlements end or these checks stop, or you know something happens at the government or in your state once the emergency order gets lifted. Whatever it'll all go back the mistake which we just recently maybe eight to nine months ago really like kind of took the heart is like it's not going back to how it was in 2019 or early 2020, and that's not a bad thing.

[ 00:54:11 ] We actually find that in an era in which wages are increasing, which by the way caregivers deserve every dollar that you give them, affordability matters to clients so you Can't just keep increasing your costs, right? You do have to run a more efficient business, which by the way is very possible now technology is you know our friends and you know partners and HRIS folks all these technologies are trying to make things more efficient. The connection with staff is trying to be better; relationships are easier to be had. Also, expectations like clients: no longer go 'Where's your office?' I haven't heard anyone ask anybody where their office is and forever right? We used to be so proud we were in some of these our flag was flying in certain areas and now we just go; you know, we're talking to people on the other side of the state, and that used to matter.

[ 00:55:05 ] We literally used to do training where we'd say don't say where how the weather is where you are,' because that's you're talking to somebody on the other side of the state, and now no one cares; they're all very used to it. Um, I think you never know, and there's some risk in that. Gosh, I could be giving you a totally different story had things gone back to exactly how they were, and we were somehow the smart ones that held on. I think oftentimes mistakes have a measured risk, and for us, we were changing our organization, having some flexibility with remote work, moving our recruitment activities To like a workforce development center, libraries that type of thing, to be even closer to where we need people, and we started in like you know some of our offices that were really rural, we started to close them, and they were going to be more of an evergreen.

[ 00:56:01 ] Then, as that felt good, everybody understood that we closed a few more. We realized we needed to buy more company cars because our managers were going to have to be in the field more if we're really going to commit to this. In the net where we sit today, is that our entire business, same size, is now operating out of six regional offices, so down from 22, 23. We have you know 25 or 30 vehicles that are company cars that our managers and supervisors use to get out in the field. Our recruiting has not slowed down because our remote recruiting events are still on, and guess what? Our staff is now actually going into the field, and they're seeing clients more; they're seeing caregivers more, and you know.

[ 00:56:48 ] The mistake I think from my side was um, one – you always have regrets, and you go, oh, we could have made that change like in three months or the first time that lease renewal happened. I think the one thing I've learned out of the whole thing is to be more open-minded to you know the winds of change, and as the winds are Changing, you just go, it's going to be okay because now, sitting where I am today, I realize, well, gosh. Knowing what we know, we could go open offices; I could open 20 offices because I know exactly how much furniture to put out; I know how to build that budget. You know, we're saving money like... what were we saving on, exactly?

[ 00:57:25 ] Um, so I think some of the things that I've learned from this is making sure as we've all... I think many people have earned their Covid stripe, you know, like that level of experience; you know, went through that war. Um, I hope we all don't forget a lot of the good things that came out of that; like it worries me to no end those. Companies that are still, like, in their minds somewhere, they're like, 'We're going to have a return to office thing soon.' I'm like, 'Gosh, you gotta just lean into this flexibility thing because I gotta tell you, there's a lot more productivity that's happening right now and I'm going to have to work on that right now if you give people the right tools, good expectations, and good sense of teamwork. Um, things are on the up and up, you know.

[ 00:58:07 ] Even though we made that big change to my size, I'm okay with that. You mentioned the word stubbornness – we're all humans, you know? It's so easy to get so stuck in our ways, and change is really difficult. I’m curious how you mentioned you referenced like eight or nine months ago you know coming out of this as a team as a company how do you how do you how did you do that with your people how did you get people out of this mindset how did you get people to you know like embrace the change and accept it and did you lose people you know in in this transition as well that's a really good question and I’ll keep it brief for you I was the stubborn one it wasn't the team I think the some of this is also trusting your team right like I would ask them I mean they were on this trend

[ 00:58:59 ] let's call it two years ago they're like oh you don't need the offices Like, new, you know, like, and the leases would come up for renewal, and I, you know, I'm the one that signs the leases, and they'd say, 'Do you really want to renew this lease?' And I'd go, 'Yeah, let's do it for one more year.' Right? To me, it was a psychological thing. I don't want it to be perceived we're leaving that market because then it's like, the physical embodiment of, 'We don't cover this area anymore.' The truth is, I mean, we're not Taco Bell - so, it doesn't matter physical offices there or not. We still show up on Google; we still go see our clients, right?

[ 00:59:33 ] And still have um some relationships...I don't know how much business we got because people drove by our offices, I'm sure it helped to some degree. So, I think you put all those things together the change management with the team was in this scenario, they were already ahead of it. Um, and in supportive of the idea because actually, they found it kind of a pain logistically. You know, caregivers were just showing up to an office that didn't have somebody there that day, and then we're dealing with complaints and the perception of us not being in the market was actually because our office was closed and we had a sign out by the road, but nobody was actually there because we're busy in the field. I, in general, though.

[ 01:00:16 ] The one area that's helped us always with big changes like that, I think it's been, it starts with how the solution is presented. I think the one danger some of us make is that we do a poor job explaining what done looks like. So, I would say instead of our organization in this story, instead of me saying 'hey, here's an action list all right, just we need to terminate these leases; you hear somebody's responsible for getting rid of the utilities and somebody else needs to you know do these things.' We really went with a discussion around strategy. So, the conversation with our leadership was: 'Hey, in 2024, let me just kind of give...' you.

[ 01:01:01 ] a snapshot of what it might look like if we were down to six offices we had more cars we had partnerships and recruiting locations and by telling kind of that vision and being really clear and then also them candidly being welcome to shoot holes in it and saying hey guys I need to hear your concerns now not six months later and go I knew this wouldn't work right like that's not helpful so go ahead and try to tell me where the challenges might be we talked through a lot of that stuff um and consensus was built candidly like a lot of times there's fear that people typically have but logic always tends to overcome

[ 01:01:43 ] and the more logical you and the team can be when you make decisions especially big ones like that and play them out in your head a little bit early and the other is also dip your toe in the water right we didn't go gung-ho it was like okay the next lease that comes up guys I’m saying no so just go gung-ho let's all be prepared for it and then that snowball really picked up um and other leaders were like hey I can talk to the landlord and we've been here for six years maybe we can get out six months early do you want me to try I was like sure you know let's make it happen yeah well here we are in 2024 I think there's a lot of applications of what you know, we're years out here, I think it was just what maybe this past week, four years, and we've still got a ways to go.

[ 01:02:25 ] You know, I think a lot of people are still adapting except for the fact that they're not accepting. You know, you talked about setting expectations, communicating expectations, defining what done looks like. I think those principles resonate and go such a long way, you know, at any stage of businesses but especially right now as we continue to adapt to, to what is the present reality. So, Kunu this was fantastic, you are so dynamic and so interesting, I'm already just like so many mental notes. Of things that I want to follow up on, um, but thank you for being here. Next week, for everyone, we're going to dive in again with Kunu on some of the pivotal decisions that he's made along the way, which have had an outsized impact - small decisions, big decisions that have just really shaped the business and what it has become today. So, I'll keep you on the edge of your seats for round two with Kunu. I'm really looking forward to it, and we'll see everyone back same day, same time next week. So, Kunu, thanks again for being here, and we'll see you next week. Thank you so much. Alright, take care, and we'll see you.