21 Years in Home Care Franchising: What Separates Growth From Stagnation

21 Years in Home Care Franchising: What Separates Growth From Stagnation

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Hello and welcome to CareSmartz360 on Air. I’m Dennis Gill, Senior Sales Consultant at CareSmartz360. So guys, Join us as we welcome Jeff Bevis, CFE, Principal & Founder of Renaissance Growth Advisory. With more than three decades of experience building and scaling franchise brands and advising businesses on growth, Jeff brings his unique perspective on operational excellence, scalability, leadership and building home care businesses that can grow without becoming dependent on their founders

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So, In this episode of the CareSmartz360 podcast, Jeff shares what he has learned from 30 years of helping businesses navigate the challenges that come with growth including how to build systems that support scale when operations are holding a home care agency business back. And create greater consistency across teams and locations. We will also discuss the role of leadership, workforce trends and business data in driving sustainable growth and higher profitability. So welcome to the podcast Jeff. >> Thank you Dennis. I appreciate being

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here. >> Oh thank you uh you we are really glad that you took out the time for all our listeners today and we hope they have a pretty fruitful session today and they learn a lot more about the things that we’re going to discuss today. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Okay. Hey, so without wasting any time, I’ll straight away jump in with my first question for you, Jeff. That uh Jeff, you have spent more than two decades in homecare. So, what have you learned about what it really takes for an agency to

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scale successfully? >> Yes. Well, there are several factors. I think first of all, kind of an adage that I’ve seen play out in these 20 plus years, Dennis, is home care is a pretty simple business. It’s not an easy business. So, we have a lot of moving parts, you know, with caregivers and families and clients and technology and process, but um I think in order for home care companies to really scale effectively now, you’ve got to be able to not only manage all those parts, but

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also try to streamline your processes and make sure that that your team is on board, you’ve got sound processes in place. To me it all revolves around people, purpose and process. >> Okay. So people, process and people. And as agencies grow, what are some of the signs that their existing systems and processes are no longer keeping up? >> Yes, that is a major question that I see a lot of agencies struggling to answer or to overcome. Often times it’s that their processes have not evolved.

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Meaning that they built the business initially on core processes worked well to get them to you know 800,000 2,000 hours per week but now those processes are overwhelmed with the volume trying to get higher than a 2,000 hour per week range. So u I think one agencies don’t evolve their process. They don’t continue to look for ways to improve. Two, they lack the follow-up and additional training that’s needed continually with your entire team. >> Got it? >> You know, just because you hire

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someone and then train them initially, Dennis, is as I’m sure everybody knows, you know, and then just turn them out into the business. That’s just the start. That’s the first step, right? So I think I think a lot of agencies fall short and don’t reinvest in their people with additional training and development focus. And then lastly too now especially with AI I think agencies need to continue to look for new and other ways to leverage technology. Um so those three factors I

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see tend to hold agencies back if they don’t embrace all three. All free. The training being the major part you can say. So up keeping them up with all the trends that are going on or whatever the trainings that are there for the caregivers that could be the main thing. >> Yes. And then especially again just training on their own core processes. So, as staff especially come and go, as much as I’m a huge proponent of the value of retention uh for staff and for >> caregivers, as staff turnover, they’ve

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got to continue to reinvest in training those people in their core processes, so the entire team is consistent uh in their execution. >> Oh, okay. Okay. And Jeff, you’ve also worked with businesses to move beyond uh founder dependent operations. So what does that transition look like for a growing homecare agency? >> Yes, that is uh that is probably the single biggest challenge >> that founders face. And having been a founder myself several times, I can I can attest to having walked in those

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shoes. But I think first of all, Dennis, it starts with and I have another little adage. In order to grow, you must let go. And I think first of all founders have to be committed to letting go um because often times they’re growing successfully but now they’ve become a bottleneck to decision making um and to really staying or becoming even more nimble. >> Okay. >> So they have to step back. they have to identify leaders that are going to take part of their responsibilities or

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eventually all of their responsibilities if they really want to get out of the business completely. Um, so they have to be committed to that and then they have to follow through and that’s sometimes the even tougher part. You know, saying you’re going to do it, committing to it and then doing it >> are really three different levels. But I think the bottleneck of decision-making is a key. Um and then also kind of as I mentioned in the first question just continue looking at

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your business and how it can improve and needs to evolve especially leveraging new and different technologies. >> Okay. Okay. And uh with workforce challenges continuing to affect home care, what operational changes can help agencies build stronger and more sustainable terms? >> Yes. Um I think kind of in a similar vein the agencies need to continue to focus first and foremost on people. >> Okay, >> you know in this age especially with AI and new different technology coming

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at us it’s very easy to kind of jump on the next shiny thing. you know, look for, hey, this is a great new technology. We should be embracing this. But if your core processes, Dennis, to the business, the operational processes are broken or not working well, you can throw all the great technology at that that you want, it’s not going to work. >> Not going to work. Yeah, completely correct. Completely correct. And just continuing with that thing, AI, as we have talked twice about that. So AI is

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becoming a bigger part of homecare now in many things. So where do you see AI creating the most meaningful value for agencies today? >> Yeah, I think I think agencies today it has the most impact on the front end of the process >> with recruiting, screening, filtering uh of caregiver candidates, um the compliance background check components, kind of the data management. I think those steps initially to today and I’m sure it’s going to grow in the future, but those steps today, Dennis, are where

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I see AI having the greatest value. Um, again, with the caveat that they’ve got to have a good solid recruiting process in place, because if they just throw an AI tool there and the process is broken or not proven, they’re not going to get a whole lot of improvement. >> Yeah. And I and I see that I have asked this questions I think to most of the speakers I’ve had a word with for the past one year now and the main thing that I’ve heard from everybody that even if the AI is becoming a major part of

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homecare industry and other businesses too human touch would always be required specifically in this industry. So, the kind of touch part of it yeah >> I cannot agree with that more. I think human touch will never ever go out of this industry. I think there’s a huge need and requirement for it, but that’s what this industry is based on is human touch and human passion. So, where AI can wrap around >> um the still the people side, the human touch side of the business, that to me

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will be the ideal combination. >> Right. Correct. Correct. And uh Jeff, looking ahead, what do you think is the most successful home care agencies will be doing in the next few years? >> Yes. I think um you’ll see the most successful agencies will continue to execute with consistency >> with focus um with that evolution of seeing how AI or new or different technologies can help them grow. Um I do not think that you’re going to see successful agencies that are going

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to as we were just talking that are going to become heavily technology based. I think you will have certainly continue to have a strong technology uh influence but uh the most successful agencies will continue to execute well Dennis with their core processes to focus on people especially training professional development like we mentioned briefly before um and being able to execute their plan and their strategy well um with the right team. Right, right. Wow. So it was uh wonderful talking to

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you Jeff today. I know it was a very small and crisp session uh for us today but we would definitely love to have more sessions with you in future and uh have your valuable inputs on the experience that you have from this industry. Thank you. Thank you for your time. >> I appreciate being here and the opportunity to Dennis. Look forward to talking to you again. Thank you. >> Thank you, once again to all my listeners. So I’m Dennis Gill signing off. I’ll be back with you shortly.