The Referral Rescue: Empowering Teams to Serve More with Less

The Referral Rescue: Empowering Teams to Serve More with Less

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Hello, listeners. Welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a Home Care Podcast. My name is Carolina Gonzaga, Sales Executive at Caresmartz. Today, we’re joined by a ray of sunshine, Melanie Stover. You know her, you love her if you’re in the industry. She’s the owner and founder of Home Care Sales, and a fierce believer that no one should suffer alone at home. Melanie’s proven methods to help agencies boost referrals serve more clients without raising the overhead. So together,

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you’ll discover how to empower both sales and caregiver teams to make a real difference without breaking the bank. How do you change your sales and marketing culture for better results? Start with us right here. Let’s talk. Let’s jump in. Welcoming Melanie Stove from Homeare Sales. How are you today? Hey, great. Thanks for having me. It’s exciting to be here. We’re excited to see you. Usually seeing you in person and now we’re going backwards. Now we’re virtual, but I’ll

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be seeing you soon in Dallas. Anyways, so that’s exciting. Always conference season, so hopefully we’ll get to see folks. You look bright and well rested considering you’ve been on the road since I think it’s Labor Day. It has. It’s been a busy season as always, but I really enjoy getting out to the conferences, seeing folks in person, and listening to all the amazing things that other owners and other homeare agencies are doing out in the world. For sure. And as the owner of Homeare

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Sales, I know that you do a lot of speaking engagements. There’s lots of opportunities to chat and get to know you at the conferences. But I hope that for anyone joining that is not familiar with you that you that you uh really uh take the opportunity to listen today and then hopefully maybe connect with Melanie in another way. So I know that you are making a big impact when it comes to home care agencies and their goals and you know being able to scale and grow their agencies and be being able to help more people. But I really

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was curious because from my perspective the role of quote sales unquote in our space has evolved and changed and I’m wondering as somebody with so much experience where this all began for you where this kind of path led you where can we start? Thanks for asking that. And like most of us in this industry, as someone who’s seen the impact of home care in my own family, my story begins with my grandfather, Frank. Frank became a quadripollegic from polio and lived in my grandmother’s dining room

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essentially. they set turned her dining room into a bedroom for 19 years surrounded by love and private duty nurses. Of course, it was the the demands and care really fell onto my grandmother and my mom and her brothers, but it was private duty nurses. And back then, it didn’t look like home care does today because this was in the 50s. There wasn’t Medicare, no Medicaid, no ADA. So, this was really about family and it was those private duty nurses that made it possible for my grandmother to learn

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how to care for him. And really, that story is the foundation of my life’s work. first as an occupational therapist as you mentioned and now as someone who helps agencies across the country grow so that families can experience that same gift of care at home as mine did. My OT background of course uh really propelled me to find to uh be a founder here at home care sales 24 years ago and since then we’ve coached thousands of home care uh home health and hospice organizations to win referrals keep

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staff engaged and increase revenue. So my mission is helping teams shift from being seen as a vendor to be a valued care partner. I think that’s the term that I really want to put forward. Valuebased care is here, right? Is moving from that vendor, which kind of makes my skin crawl to right partner. And we call I call this a status elevation. So much of inhome care, non-medical, hasn’t been really at that post-accute care table fully. And so, right, our intention is if we can rescue referrals,

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right? If we can serve more patients to become our clients, serve more families um so that you can serve more deeply, impact more lives while also increasing your own income. Yeah, my question first is what comes to mind is a lot of the training and the kind of advising and coaching that you do is probably about really being able to make the most out of referrals, but then also once you get that connection into the family, how do you make the most of that? So, do you see that as kind of two separate parts of the quote

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unquote sales process? not only building those referral relationships with, but then what do you do in those conversations with the people that you’re really kind of trying to be a part of circle of care and trying to find your way into that spot? Yeah. And I love love love this conversation because this also bleeds us into care management, right? uh and we recognize the holistic value of home care. Not only as it relates to referral partners, which is where I the majority of my life is spent is focusing on the

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care network. So, how do we get referral partners to refer to us so that we can care for these families? I also recognize that home care is a two-part cell. It’s not just the referral that comes from our medical referral sources or other trusted advisors, but it also then has us go to the families because oftentimes they are our payer source. We got to get them to say yes in order to be able to provide the care. I do see that as two separate things. Some agencies have that have two separate

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roles for that and others of them have the salesperson or liaison marketer whatever they call them also fulfill that role. Yeah. When we were talking earlier um you were talking about kind of the type of trends that you see and how you try to challenge the folks that you coach to go beyond those kind of typical approaches for referral. Can you talk a little bit about maybe an experience or an example of how you’re trying to change the mind shift of folks trying to make those referral relationships?

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For sure. I will share with you that in the past I’ve I’ve been criticized as being too medical in non-medical. So I’ve had franchiseors share with me like, “Oh, Mel, tone down the medical side of your coaching because we are non-medical.” And I challenge that deeply. Of course, we’re going to stay within our scope and we are going to do the right things according to our guidelines, our state guidelines. I would also submit to you at our core, we are supporting the medical treatment plan in a non-medical

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way. 70% of what we do in the home as non-medical care providers is support that medical treatment plan, support that chronic care disease. And so, you know, early in my career, 20ome years ago, when I was in the hospital, in the clinic, I would hear people say regarding non-medical, oh, the sitters, like just get some sitters and they’ll be okay. m makes my skin crawl, right? No one loves that term. And I I personally do not love that term. I also appreciate some of the older folks still have that mentality of that. And I and I

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would also submit the research studies say that 70% of health is social determines health, which is exactly what home care supports. So, I really challenge that, which means that it goes back to I just said it a few um minutes ago, but I talk about this all the time in our coaching programs is that we are elevating our status. If people used to think medical was here and and non-medical was here, we didn’t get a seat at the table. And one of the things that I’m most proud of is our frameworks

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to get folks up to the level of their medical referral sources so that they can get a seat at that post-accute care table because I believe deeply that you belong there. I believe that there’s only so much Medicare certified home health can do. And what happens to the other 160 hours a week that Medicare certified isn’t there? for example. So, there’s a lot there’s a lot it’s a big mind shift for some folks. I’ll be honest, not going to lie. For some of them, it’s a little tough. Um, and we

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did see this in the past. You would go in to referral partners and you would see like the cookies and the cakes and the stuff from non-medical home care providers. And I lovingly say to everyone we work with, listen, I didn’t go to school for seven years to be a caterer. Like that is not what I’m doing here. So how can we bring value? And right now valuebased is hot. Everyone’s talking about valuebased, but are you as a non-medical care provider, are you talking about valuebased? Because if

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you’re not, you’re missing the boat. Yeah, for sure. So talking about that big shift in mentality and trying to encourage the language to be elevated to that level of not necessarily medical but a part of the team. Let’s talk about the shift from vendor than to care partner. Would you say that that’s exactly what you’re talking about when you talk about that distinction and is there more to that mind shift to or even like I know that you’ve coached a lot of of organizations into that mind shift.

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What do you think when you think vendor versus care partner? I think it’s a great question. I don’t love the word vendor either. I appreciate it. I understand the definition of it. Um yesterday I was on a franchiseor uh webinar I was doing for them a coaching and what I said was guys vendors sell tasks like the bathing dressing grooming tasks where care partners solve problems. So the first change really is in the conversation instead of handing out the brochure and being like we do. I hate

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the weed dos, right? It’s the laundry list. We do bathing, dressing, meal prep, grooming, transportation, and clean up the cat litter. I don’t know. But here’s what I know is that nobody cares about that. Everyone thinks they already know that. All of our referral partners think they know it and so they don’t want to see one other homeare rep. When you change the conversation, now you differentiate. So something like, you know, tell me about the patients who are most difficult to keep at home or

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what’s an initiative you’re working on. It practically when you’re looking at this, you just want to change the conversation and that means listening a little bit differently to how you’re speaking out in the world. So when you position your agency as a problem solver, you know, even smaller agencies become indispensable. And that’s where we want to get with, right? Because vendors wait in lobbies. I I go out in the field all the time. If you are seen as a vendor, you’re getting

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stopped at the gatekeeper. You’re getting in the lobby. They’re in a meeting. They’re too busy to see you. Care partners get a seat at the table. And that’s where we all want to be. Yeah. For sure. I you know in all other industries you see um you you know the threat of an individual like a salesperson, a referral partner manager uh you know losing their role in today’s day and age with online marketing. And I just feel like this is the type of role this is the type of industry where it’s

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so important the people that are actually doing the job and having those conversations. It really is still truly a people business. So I can see the importance of this shift um because really families and patients need to make the connection with the right type of support. Um even in our industry of caresmarts being you know a technology even the word vendor is something that even if our customers see us as a vendor like we know that it’s not going to be as successful or flourishing of a relationship. So I just think that that

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change is so important across across the board. One of the things that I thought of uh when I was prepping for this podcast is I actually have a background in sales for like assisted living type scenarios. Similar but different. When I think of our our business, I wonder how complex it is for, you know, a salesperson or an agency owner having a conversation over with a referral because there’s so many paths that the conversation can take. Do they need home care, home health, hospice, paliative?

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So, how do you recommend that an agency begin to make the connections to all the services that they offer while meeting that patient or family where they are? Yeah, what a great question because what it what it shares to your listeners is that you understand that the continuum, right? Uh uh we’re the only sales trainers that I know of that cover the continuum. We work with home health, hospice and inhome care daily. We have agencies that we coach. We have agencies that we manage. We have agencies that we simply

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consult with across the continuum. And I think the benefit of doing that for anyone who works with us is that we see the continuum in detail. So when we work with home care and right now I have um a few home cares that we’re consulting with in the Midwest and the thing that they they’re a standalone home care. They don’t have the continuum under their own umbrella, right? But that is okay. All of our home care sales reps go through um home health 101 and hospice 101. We have courses on that

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because we believe deeply you don’t need to know everything about home health and hospice. What you need to know is enough so that you can be the guide. Patients and referral partners don’t want um these functional silos and honestly most of the time they don’t know where to put the patient either. They don’t know exactly who’s eligible for what. And I think that’s where you can come in as the guide for that. We have uh we coined a phrase and have a model called the total patient care

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delivery model. And the reason that we did that is we believe that home health, home care and hospice shouldn’t feel like separate silos. And I know you don’t either. That really we should work seamlessly together. Patients don’t see these as different industries. Right? When a family is calling for a potential client, they just want to they just want care and they want help. Yeah. To feel connected, not like, well, we don’t do that. Go call Joe Schmo. Like, that’s not helpful, right? Um,

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And they and I would also submit to you that referral partners don’t want to hear disjointed pitches. Um, they want to know like, how do you keep this patient from falling through the cracks? And if you’re the one that connects the dots, if you’re the one who knows like, hey, this patient might qualify for home health even though you’re home care, you’re the bridge, you’re the one becoming the guide, and that makes their job easier and positions you as the one who understands, as the post-accute care

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expert. So, we teach that as part of our uh referral engine growth system because we want your reps to be or you to be the guide for your referral sources, you know, because patients don’t live in silos. So, our sales messages can’t either. And I appreciate, you know, when you’re seen like that, just like your platform, your platform, um, at Cares Smart is seen as someone who’s got their act together, someone who can help put the pieces of the puzzle together. That really gives agencies clean data and

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builds trust so that then they can build trust back to their referral partners throughout the continuum of care. And I know you guys work really hard at that. So thank you for all that you do. No, thank you. Thank you for seeing it. When you are coming from the sales background and again in a different industry but similar uh and this might be a touchy question, Melanie, sometimes sales people are seen as kind of working against the people that are doing the work. So when you hear about when we go

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to a conference, we’re hearing how do you build your you know your census at the same time. How do you how do you deal with retention recruitment? How can you speak to how marketers can at the same time as growing census support staffing initiatives? It feels like also getting away from our silo and thinking more holistically within the within the agency 100%. So what I know is that when I do my job right, I put a lot of pressure on the ops team. Right. Exactly. And I would submit to you in all the agencies we work for or

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work with I should say um the thing that limits my growth more than anything is staffing. Yeah. Right. Workforce. And I know this is not a new subject. I appreciate we’ve been talking about this clear back before COVID and then CO ruled us in and now I start to see staff coming back more readily which I’m extremely grateful for. However, wherever I was at in that timeline, the thing that I know to be true is that I am limited by staffing in every agency. So, especially during COVID, you know, if you would have heard

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me before COVID, I was I was very um very oriented being like referrals are our responsibility. Go get referrals. You can do this for referral referral referral referral. And then COVID happened and I recognized very quickly that we could no longer be the lone wolf out there getting referrals. We had to become part of the team because I could only sell as much as I have stuff, right? Staff is my product. So recognizing that, we really went into kind of hyperfocus mode. We call it an R cubed rep. a rep

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that focuses on referrals, of course, first and foremost, always referrals. That’s how we’re judged. Retention and recruiting. And I say retention because number one, I know I’m probably going to ask a caregiver to do something miraculous any given day, right? Can you start a shift in two hours? Something wild, right? I recognize that if I don’t have a good relationship with some of my caregivers or my caregiving staff, right, my schedulers, I’m going to be in really big trouble.

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I’m going to ask them to do that and they’re going to be like, “That Melanie, all she does is look good. She goes out and wears her cute clothes and goes to lunch with people and I’m over here slaving away trying to find the right fit.” Yes. Right. So, my um we’ve always said this like inquiry is your internal customer. Your scheduler is your internal customer. We’ve always said it, but now we like really make it part of our sales training. Is that guys, we’ve got to be able to have great

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relationships with our internal sales team. Even though they don’t love that word, like they don’t want to be called salespeople, but really that’s what they are. internal sales team. Most industries have an inside sales rep, right? Uh we we don’t think of our folks that way, but that is really what they are. And then secondly, recruiting, I mean, I’m sorry, retention is easier than recruiting. Quite frankly, if you can just love on your caregivers a little bit so that they want to stay and want

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to say yes to you, that’s easier than me going out and finding brand new caregivers to come in. Now, that being said, we’re always recruiting, too. When we’re out in the field, we’re not looking to poach anybody from any of our medical referral sources. But what we’re saying is just like me, I was working at the sniff with rehab and did visits for home health on the way home. I was PRN visits first. And I think about our caregivers the same way. I like to bring in caregivers

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sort of PRN just because then you can figure out how do they work? Do you like them? Is this something that you know you want to continue this relationship? Then your ops team can kind of just try them out. But your marketer or liaison salesperson has such a big impact and a role to play in in all three of those. They’re not separate. They’re sort of this, you know, different sides of the same coin is you got to have all three of them in order to make your agency grow. Yeah, for sure. So, and I just love the

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way that you said, “Oh, the sales girl is always going out and her cute I was that person, right?” And it’s like, “I’m working so hard, but it does have to be I mean, the job doesn’t stop when they’ve signed the contract, obviously.” So, it’s also an acknowledgement of like, well, we’ve won a new client and now we’re all going to be a part of making it making it a success. So, I don’t Oh, can I add one more thing? Yeah. Yeah, in your messaging, you

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brought this to my top of mind, but um and an easy way to do this because some people will be like, “Mel, I can’t I’m not sure how to do this. I got this. I got the referral part. Like, let’s go in and ask about these type of patients or clients um or residents. I got that part, but how do I kind of drop in? We need caregivers, too.” And one of the ways that I like to do that is by highlighting a caregiver. They can simply tell a quick story like, “Hey, um, I wanted to tell you about Mary.

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Mary is an amazing caregiver who actually helped reduce and stopped an ER visit last night because she was able to identify that our client was starting to have a little bit of weight gain. When she jumped on the scale at dinnertime, her weight was up by three pounds. And so Mary encouraged her to call the home health nurse and the home health nurse said, “Go ahead and take one of your pure ant diuretics.” And I think we stopped an ER visit. Yeah. Does a couple things, right? Number one,

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it gives context to what we do because if you just say we do home care, not everybody gets that, right? Number two, it shows that Mary, our caregiver, helps in a way that is not just sitter service. It shows that Mary is a competent professional care pro. And three, it also kind of it also speaks to outcomes, talks about, hey, I think we just prevented a hospital readmission or an ER visit or whatever it is. It allows them and finally it also gives you a a little bit of context to our culture like we celebrate

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our caregivers not just like oh that’s part of their job good job right and and teamwork too calling the right person to advise and then being trusted to to take that plan of action and it goes right back to where you started too is elevating the team beyond sitter to a part of that that care team basically. Yes. And this is this is all within our role. It’s a it’s much more holistic than just go get me some hours. Yeah. It requires your marketer or salesperson to be integrated into your ops team to

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know that even happened that Mary did a good job out in the field. One thing I thought of is when a salesperson or whatever their role is called has to say kind of a no to to a referral that’s come in or even no to a family at this time. Do you have a couple maybe two, you know, pieces of advice on how you can be transparent while at the same time keeping that relationship warm? The reason I ask is, as you know, with somebody needing support, that changes from day to day, hour to hour, and from

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situation to situation. Like, somebody might be a no because they’re not at baseline right now, but then you may be able to. So, I always used to say to like to my sales people is like, don’t just think about what’s shiny and new now. You also want to nurture those relationships. So, when you’re having to say no to somebody right now, you can’t really put them on your schedule now. What is a way that the that the that the salesperson can keep and nurture that relationship while

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being honest and not misleading? Yes, that’s a big one. So, this this this happens every day. Every day. Uh last week I was out in the field again with one of my favorite clients and one of the offices, they have eight offices. One of the offices doesn’t have stuff. I mean, they have stuff in a very narrow window. They’re reorging and they’re moving some stuff around. And it’s not no forever, but it is going to be no for the next six weeks while they reorg this place. And we’ve

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all had this situation. Maybe it wasn’t a reorg. Maybe we couldn’t find somebody. And so there there is some challenges there. And the rep specifically why I went out with her is because the owner said to me, “She needs help because we don’t have staff. We can’t take these referrals, but we don’t want to lose them.” how frustrating for that person as well. And of course, it impacts her pocketbook. I mean, there’s lots there’s is way this is a this this particular

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one could have us a whole conversation for the day, right? But what share with you is a couple things that I said to her and I’ll say to you and your listeners is number one, a quick no is better than a long maybe. If the answer is no, tell them truthfully, the answer is no right now. And then tell them your next steps. but we’re aggressively recruiting or we’re in the middle of a reorg and it’s going to take us about whatever it is, right? Tell the truth. And yeah, they I find that a quick no is better

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than a long maybe. We’ve followed up with case managers after the fact because this is not a new problem and they’ve all said, “We really respect the fact that you said to us, you know, that you can’t or in this geographic area.” I would also say the second thing is be a connector. If it isn’t you, then who? We all good competitors in our areas, people who care deeply, people who have similar values to us, and they are f they’re a fine connector, meaning you give them, you know, you make that

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connection now, they’ll probably make that connection back to you later when they don’t have staff. So, be a connector if that’s uh possible. And then the second thing is be educational. We believe deeply in educationalbased sales. All of our sales messages of the week are around education. Every time we go out in the field, we are educating our referral sources on something. Now, we don’t say that to them. We’re not like, “Hey, Carolina, here we are coming to educate you.” No. But

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yeah, tention the message is around education. And so, uh, even though we can’t see them right now, just like with, um, Laura, the the lady that I spoke of that I went out in the field with last week, what I said to her is we have to be there. We have to continue to deepen the relationship and keep it on simmer because if you tomorrow, right, get five new caregivers, you need to put them to work and you’re going to have to turn on. So, how do we do that? How do we do it fast? Well, we don’t do it by hiding and being

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like, no, avoidant, you know, because I can’t take anything. use that time wisely to educate and deepen the relationship so that when you do have staff, bam, you can turn that um knob up, turn it on to high, get them boiling, and get them going, right? Uh I would say to you, a no today with honesty often buys you a yes tomorrow with trust. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And being able to refer if need be. um really reminds me again of when we talked about all of the different uh you know types of care that

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can be provided that maybe you don’t even offer that but being able to say who is such a builder of trust and then that relationship of somebody that they might refer you to a friend knowing you know what I actually came with them ready to sign and they weren’t the right agency for us and then they found that person um so it all come leads me to think about just the overall shift in sales and marketing approach at an organization. So, I applaud the agency owner or the franchise manager that

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said, “Come out here, Melanie. We need your help because we can’t serve all these people that we’re getting referrals for, but let’s empower that salesperson.” Because then it doesn’t end up being just their problem and now they feel supported and they feel like they have an action plan even though they can’t necessarily close that referral today. So, how does one come to that shift that you just described to me, a real system in place of how it can all work even when things can’t be

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perfect? So, if there’s an agency listening that you know wants to change their approach to sound more like one you’re describing, where would you say they should begin or or mistakes to avoid or what would you tell them if you could if you could give them like a quick word of advice? Yeah. So, most agencies we we work with in the beginning lead with tasks. I hear this all the time. We’re non-medical care, bathing, dressing, grooming, they lead with these tasks and not outcomes, you

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know, uh and and we hear this and when they lead with we provide bathing, meal prep, uh transportation, that’s that vendor list. you’re already m going on to the vend vendor bucket, right? Instead, lead with impact. We reduce our ER visits. We help families sleep through the night. Um, we help keep patients hospital. Right? So, change your words from the tasks to the outcomes. That would be the number one thing that I see most agencies lead with tasks and not outcomes. If you could change that one thing, it would

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change the trajectory of your agency. And here’s the deal. Positioning costs you nothing. You’re simply changing the words and you’re changing your value story. The real differentiator is outcomes. Yeah. And I think that’s where, you know, that patient safety, family peace of mind, all those things that we have, we know to be true, we don’t often lead with those. And I think that’s where your your you know why our programs work because we have those reps really think deeply about how they’re positioning

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themselves in front of the referral partners. And I think if when you shift from that task talk to outcome talk, you serve more people. Um, and it doesn’t increase your DNA just to sit transform the way that you talk about it. So, and I also know have have living in the medical community as I do, it’s all about value based care and that’s what they want to talk about. So, how are you matching their words? How are you matching what’s top of mind for them right now in order to get those

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referrals? Yeah. Uh, for my last question and and this will probably pull from your years of experience and all of the times where your leadership and your support has been, you know, successful and maybe times when when, you know, you’ve realized that, oh, this is somebody that may not be suited for this role. I’d like to ask you what are the types of kind of characteristics that that you feel are key to being successful in a referral for source manager or a salesperson in our industry.

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Oh, I love this question. Thank you for asking. Okay, so here here’s a quick version. I think many owners look for a people person. You’ll hear this often. You’ll hear owners go, “Well, I chose her because she’s great with people or he is is a people person.” And while that’s one type of rep, it isn’t the only type of rep. And I would submit to you that, you know, sales, and you know this because you’re in it, right? Sales is a whole lot science and some art.

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The thing that I am most proud of at homeare sales is we have framework after framework after framework. Just like when I was an OT, the clinical protocol kept me in between the ditches. I was able to treat that patient and follow the, you know, hit the milestones so that I’d have good outcomes, but I still got to be me. It didn’t tell me exactly what to say or do, but it allowed me to be me. And so, we’ve applied that same concept to our sales training. We have a we have frameworks that help you hit all

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the milestones but allow you to infuse your own personality into it. So what what are the characteristics? Well, think about your favorite salesperson. Do you have a favorite salesperson in my in mind like that you I do some of the characteristics of them? I think uh being able to adjust um not is a people person but also can pull it back. It’s that flexibility. It’s that being able to make decisions on a fly and also adjust their themselves to who they’re talking to, who they’re selling

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to, who they’re working with. For sure. And so I’d ask the owners listening to think about the same thing. Who is the sales rep you love? We have tons of of sales people who come and call on us as a as a small business. They come knocking on my door and some of those folks I will get up out of my chair and go to that door and go say hi to and some I’m like, “Oh Lord, sister, let’s Here we go. Let that door be shut. I’m not going to go out there.” So I would ask you to

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apply some of those same things and consistently what we see is folks who are able to build rapport quickly. You can put them in a room. That’s that people pe people people uh part where someone will be, “Oh yeah, she’s a people person.” What they’re probably really saying is she can develop rapport pretty quickly. And that’s key because you and I both know we’re up against gatekeepers that give us less than three seconds to to can to connect. We actually on staff have an NLP

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practitioner, a medical hypnotist, and a nurse um allin one. She’s she’s her own little uh phenomenon. We use her a lot in our trainings because so much of what we do is body language and subconscious and mindset to persuade the other person in just even letting us at the door. So we talk about connection dropping into rapid rapport is what we call it. Uh and then the second thing is are they coachable? Because you’re going if it isn’t me you’re going to find someone else, right? And it may be you. It may be you

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as the owner who are going to be the coach in that situation or it may be us. And the thing that we know to be true, there’s been times when we have had to call owners back and be like, “This person isn’t coachable. I don’t want to waste your money.” Like here, here, you know, if you want to choose to continue with this person, please do, but not with us, right? So, I recognize coachability is a big deal. And then finally, you know, give them the tools and frameworks. Again, we try to give ev these

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frameworks that we know are going to work. You just got to work them. Yeah. And they still get to put their own spin on it. We don’t make them be like a robot and be like, “Go out and see all your referral sources.” What we ask them to do is follow the framework and then put their own little twist on it so that it can be authentically theirs. And I think those, you know, it’s it is not an easy role to find. They’re quite independent. They are quite out there. It’s a little

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bit like hurting cats sometimes. I also appreciate what we ask them to do most people wouldn’t want to do. Yes. Go out and knock on doors and have that level of rejection. So, I recognize that it is a good fit for some and it’s our job to find them and bring them into the agency and then be able to get them to bring in those patients or clients or residents so that we can impact their families and their lives. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Melanie. I look forward

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to seeing you in Dallas in I guess it’s a couple of weeks, a week or so. Um, I’m thinking of you. I know this is a busy time, but your advice, your coaching is so much needed in our industry, and I appreciate you so much. Thanks again. Well, thank you. We appreciate you, and I can’t wait to see all your listeners.