A Framework for Landing High Value VIP Private Pay Clients (Justin Currie Pt. 1)

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Masters of Home Care—home care MBA program for new and established businesses trying to grow their private pay revenue

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Miriam Allred:

Alright! Welcome, everyone just checking to make sure we got that waiting room open, and it looks like it is welcome. Everyone live. This is home care you a podcast by care switch. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with you week after week. Just telling today's guests. How awesome the engagement, the listenership, just the network that this podcast is building and it's really shout out kudos to all of you. I love doing this. I love having these conversations. There's so many leaders, experts, incredible people in this industry. So it's my pleasure to interview them and to bring all this rich education to you. This episode is gonna be nothing short of incredible. Just like the last view we've had. I have got Justin Currie, the owner at WellSprings Home Care in Pennsylvania with me. He's also the Founder of Masters of Home Care. Justin and I got acquainted just a handful of months ago.

But have become, I would say, fast friends, a lot of mutual interests, home care being one of those I'm really excited to bring Justin on the show today we are going to be talking about high value, vip private pay clients. So just throwing out the disclaimer right here at the start, if you're heavy, Medicaid, heavy. Va, know that this is really focused on private pay. So you know, hit, pause. Come back to us next week. Today we're going to talk. Well that's not not true, not true. If you're getting into private pay or considering private pay. This is also a really important episode to you. So scratch that this is a gonna be valuable to just about everybody. But we're gonna be talking about yeah, how to land these high value vip private pay clients. Justin has done this in his own business, and now he's helping other business owners do this. So that's going to be the focus for today's conversation before we jump into it. Justin, I want to give you just a couple of minutes to tell our listenership about your background. How did you get into home care started an agency, branching off, doing some consulting. Tell us, tell us about yourself, kind of personally and professionally.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, well, thanks, Miriam, and obviously excited to be here, as as you know, I'm a pretty big fan of care. Switch, Miriam and I are kind of working on implementing that in my agency right now. So super excited about that. But but a little bit about myself, so kind of an interesting story. I grew up in a very small town, northern Saskatchewan. There was only about people there. It was a farming community oil and gas, so really had nothing to do with healthcare. So it was a. It was a long journey to get here.

So what I did. I worked in the oil and gas for about years. I moved out to Calgary, Alberta, still up in Canada, and I started a consulting agency there where I consulted. I did inspections in the oil and gas, and that's kind of where I got my my feet wet. I guess you could say with running, running my 1st company, and it was just myself, so I didn't have any employees or anything like that. But what had happened was I? I offered a very specialized service. So the person I was working for he was a really smart businessman, and he he owned a very large company.

so he asked me if I wanted to partner in this in this company. So we started an inspection agency up in Calgary, and that was my 1st kind of full scale company that that we ran we were partners in that. He was just an incredible mentor. You know I was young. I didn't know a lot at the time about business. So I kind of got like A on the fly Mba from him. And you know just learning through through podcast courses, conferences, things like that.

And that's kind of kind of where my journey started. So I was in calgary for about years. And what happened after that there was there was kind of multiple factors that brought me down to the Us. And the 1st one is actually my my grandmother. I know we we all have a story like this. I haven't met an owner yet that doesn't have a you know, a family story about a background, you know, watching a family member decline, or, you know, going through a really really hard time. So

I was living remotely at that time, but I was still very involved with, you know, finding care for my grandma trying to trying to to learn a little bit about the healthcare system, and that was up in Canada, so we lived very rural as well. So it was really hard to get. You know, caregivers out there. The closest caregiving company was, I believe it was and a half hours away. So that wasn't wasn't really an option for us in the really really rural area.

So we eventually we we kept her at home for quite a while, and then we moved her into the skilled nursing facility. And she stayed there a couple of years. She was happy. It's a it's a small town, nursing facility. So she was, with all her friends and everything aging in place.

So so that was kinda the trajectory of me learning about the industry. And then there was a couple more factors that came into play at the same time, was I I met my fiance down in a in a pool in Cancun. Actually and she she lives in Pennsylvania here. She's from here originally. So that's ultimately why I moved to this location.

But the the last factor was actually kind of the economy in Canada. When when all this was going on, I was learning more about healthcare. I had met my fiance at the time.

And the political economics of of Canada just weren't very conducive to our inspection agency. There was a lot of ups and downs and a lot of negativity towards the industry, and I could just see where where that trajectory was going. So ultimately, I decided to really start reach researching into home care. And I researched long and hard for a couple of years before I before I ever made the leap and actually got into it. So I I

I did learn a lot about it. It wasn't kind of jump in and hope for the best and ultimately it was. It was a great decision, because it it combines. I have a great love for business, so it combines that with being able to help people out as well, so was really, really excited to get into that. It's it's a lot, you know. It's a lot more personally rewarding than than my last business was. So I'm I'm happy to be here.

Miriam Allred:

Awesome. Let's talk about the early days as we kind of make our way into like the framework for high value. Vip private pay clients. Let's talk about like, take you back to your early days. I'm assuming in all of that research you looked into different payer sources, different business strategy structures all of that. What what was it, you know that led you to private pay, and to kind of the high high value clients like just walk us through kind of like your thinking as that teases up for the conversation today.

Justin Currie:

Yeah. So interestingly enough, when I was doing the research. So I obviously, I mentioned that I did research for a couple of years. And then I started the agency, and I did. I started with with Medicaid, with with Va with private pay. Basically, anyone that that came in the door that fit our criteria and and as I learned a little bit more from what I learned in my research, and from what I learned in my 1st year of my agency, I just realized that the industry's changed a lot. You you can't really be everything to everyone anymore.

And there's a ton of competitors. There's obviously the the demands always increasing. It's going to be increasing for a long time. But the the tough part is is that so? Are the competitors. There's there's obviously thousands and thousands of competitors. Even in my area, there's hundreds of competitors within a, you know, a very small small area. So what I looked at doing was I? I looked at finding a gap, you know where you know, where there there was really nobody being served.

And what had happened was, I really noticed, a really large gap between a home care, a non medical home care agency, and then a home health agency, which is obviously on the medical side. I know in some states it's the term terminology is a little different.

But there was a massive gap there between somebody who's qualified as an Rn. Coming out to do do visits sometimes they're doing private duty nursing, and then you're coming over here where you know, somebody maybe have has been put, you know, put through just a direct worker certification, or, you know, just just general caregiving certifications.

Obviously quite a quite a wide range there between, you know, the experience level and the education level. And so what I thought is, okay, well, we need to to drive our value up in our agency, and we need to start hiring people that were a lot more closer to nurses than they were to just somebody who's just looking for a random job, right? So we're looking for very highly qualified people.

And that's kind of how it evolved over time is that with with the higher level of competition agencies. It's tough for them to be everything to everyone now.

So what you have to do is really niche down. So I chose that niche, because, for one thing, I had a lot of issues with regulatory challenges and things like that in my business. When I was in Canada

I saw that in the 1st year of business, when I was working with Medicaid just because I wasn't familiar with the billing and things like that. I believe.

I believe I ended up having to forfeit about grand and unpaid invoices, and and it was my fault for sure. But I realized that I didn't want to spend my time doing that. I I don't want to deal with billing errors, you know. Hire and pay a company a lot of money just to just because of billing complexities. So what I did was I got into just specifically private pay, and we we still have one medicaid client that was from about like years ago. So we're she's definitely not going anywhere. We want to take good care of her.

But that's that's ultimately how we how we got into the private pay model is because we really wanted to find that niche. And there was a major Gap there. And it's really where where my experience slide as well. So that's that's kind of yeah. The trajectory of where we went.
 

Miriam Allred:

Awesome. I love the honesty sprinkled in there, too, of like some of the hard truths that you went through. You know the mistakes you made in the 1st year. I think everyone goes through that, you know, trying to be everyone to everything, taking on any client that's coming your way. But, like you said, you've got to kind of niche down. Figure out what you, as the owner, want, what your market needs, and then kind of build a build, a framework around that. So let's let's talk about these clients. I'm glad you brought up like the caregiver side. and we'll talk about that later on in the conversation. But let's talk about who these clients are.
You know I the the term like persona or avatar, comes to mind of figuring out, you know, who are these clients? So people can kind of look deeply at their own market like, is there a need for these types of clients based off who they are. So can you break down? Kind of that specific persona? Who are these high value? You know, vip clients, what do they look like, and who are they and what are their priorities are.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, sure. So yeah, so that is, you're you're absolutely right. That's thing that we really dialed in on is you know, who's who's our specific avatar? And who are we going after? So we we looked at a lot of industry data as well. We didn't pull all of this data, you know. But we were basically looking at people who were 60% were professional females. They're typically the eldest daughter of the client in need. So typically they were looking for care for mom or dad. They were typically to range. And I know most people listening have have heard all this before. But I'll dive into a little bit of more detailed specifics of who we looked for. They were over k. Per year in Rev. And Rep, or sorry in salaries. They were educated. Typically, they had, like a university degree, typically married with children.

So; those are kind of some of the the standard statistics with home care. And I I don't want anybody listening to really overlook the fact that of how simple this is. If you're looking in your area, you're looking for those pockets of more affluent people. So you can go online easily. You can find medium. Ho, median household incomes.

So it's it's a lot simpler than people think. So you're basically looking at, you know, an affluent area. And if there's a lower income area, not that far away, and there's skilled nursing facilities in both. I mean, it's it's generally pretty obvious on which which facility they're going to be going to or assisted living, you know, or anything like that. So basically, the the geographical aspect was probably the biggest game changer for us.

So; we really looked into median incomes. We. We made a map, and we made a spreadsheet of all our territories and all the different locations. There's little pockets of affluent affluent areas pretty much everywhere you go. We're we're just outside of Philadelphia. So we're a little luckier. It gets a little. It gets a little harder as you go more rural. But basically, that's what we did. And we'd spend. I told the marketers to spend about 80% of their time marketing in those specific areas. So they were spending about 20% spreading it around, you know, just kind of doing community liaison stuff in different areas.

But the vast majority, 80% plus, was in those more affluent areas where those clients tend to tend to exist. And then, when once you have, you know, a good solid roster of those clients. They tend to start referring their friends. They're all they're all in the same groups. And so yeah, it was. It's a lot simpler than you think. It's just really targeting those specific areas.

Miriam Allred:

Let's talk about the that marketing element. You've referenced a couple of things, you referenced these like skilled nursing facilities. You just talked about your marketers doing a lot of like community work. What? What has been successful for you all in marketing to this demographic? Are you doing a lot online a lot of digital? Is it heavily in the community? And then who are like those referral partners that can refer you? This business.

Yeah, so reputation is a huge thing. So before you kind of start up your vip, private pay program there's a few things that that you need to have. And that's having your your rates in the top percentile. So it's really tough to go from, you know, just specifically a Medicaid provider, because you have a different type of caregiver with that, and then just jumping straight into vip rates.

Justin Currie:

So, there the foundations would be being in the top percentile of rates having a really good reputation, and then also your service quality.

What I did with my team is I. I took the quality of our service as a major major marketing aspect. I don't know if you've seen, like the new, the new benchmarking study, but if there's a kind of the overwhelming majority of the the higher end. Referrals come from client referrals. So we we dedicated a lot of time. I actually had my marketers doing client visits instead of the care managers just to really promote our services. Because obviously, they're very good at building relationships. We want to build those relationships with our clients.
 

And ultimately I kind of had all hands on deck. I had all of my team basically contributing to the quality. And that is probably 50% of the marketing that we did is ensuring that we were actually, you know, if we're going to charge these higher rates, we have to add the value. Right? So that was one thing that we we really really focused on.
 

And aside from that we did a a few different things like offer creation.

We did some pretty advanced methods of that. So basically, I, I have a kind of a quote that I always tell my team when we're creating the offers, but it's everybody, I'm sure has heard of it by now, but, by Warren Buffett, it's not about how hard you row. It's about the boat you're in. And essentially, there's a lot of other agencies out there, and they're offering, you know, the the standard hourly services. There's not a lot to differentiate each other. So what we've done is with our offer creation.

We basically created different packages that that they can purchase. And instead of having, you know, like a a morning. Wake up package and a good evening tuck in package or anything like that. It's actually packages that are a different level of value. So it's not just your hourly care. So we have a basic package that's still a little bit higher rate than even the highest competitor that we have, because that's how we kind of differentiate ourselves.

But then there's multiple other packages where they can increase the value. So we have different things that we've added on things like prioritized coverage. We have a care concierge. We have increased level of care management. So we've really kind of came in, I guess, and given given clients another option. Right? So typically they're, you know.

We have another one of our sales representatives. She came in from a franchise company. I won't say who it is or anything, and they were doing about million. They had been around for a very long time in the industry, I think, like decades or something like that.
 

So very, very established company. And when I asked her I said, You know how how many visits are your care managers doing. And she said, Maybe you know, there's usually one care manager to about clients, and the only time they'll go out is in case of an emergency.

And I said, Well, well, that's definitely not, you know. That's that's not going to do it right? So that's that's something that we've really dialed in. So in our packages, even in our base package we have a high level of care management. So they're there for the start of care. They're calling. After the 1st visit they do another 1st week visit, and then we have depending on the package. They're either weekly, biweekly or monthly visits that the care managers are doing so. So we've kind of differentiated ourselves in that aspect as well.

Miriam Allred:

Okay, I'm taking notes. You're seeing me looking down. I'm like, Okay, so much here. And I wanna go back a little bit and then come back to service creation. This is awesome.

I want to talk a little bit about reputation. First.st Reputation is tricky, you know, especially as a young new business owner. You can't just like stand up like this. Stalwart reputation really quickly, easily. So. What would you say? Has been the key to your success developing a reputation? The community, you know, does does that look like it's online or testimonials, or just like, how? How would you say you've, you know, built like a reputable company pretty quickly.

Justin Currie:

Yeah. So I would say, there's there's kind of aspects to that. There is obviously an online portion to that, because I believe, like 90% of people that are referred. They're gonna check you out online, and and with the reputation, it's really personal relationships. I mean, I was out there hustling. I was making relationships. And when you have a really strong relationship with somebody, you'd be amazed that you know how forgiving they they can be right because I mean you. You've just started your agency. You're honest with them, but they they like you. You have a good relationship. You're going out for coffee with them. You're meeting with them on a regular basis. They're gonna refer you. And if you're just just upfront like brutally honest with them, and you let them know if you had a service failure which you you are, you know, when you start your agency, you're not going to go without service failures. And even if you're a large agency, you're not going to.

So if you're just open and honest about them, and you're really proactive with your communication, they really appreciate that. So that that's of the things I noticed when I came in. The industry is, the communication was really really lacking, you know, if a caregiver didn't show up, or they were going to show up late, there was no communication with with the clients or with the referral sources. So we really have, like a

I guess, kind of a structure in place to make sure that communication happens so personal relationships. And then, obviously, yes, you do need a little bit of exposure online. You you need some testimonials, and I know off the very start. Those are very, very tough to get. So you do, I mean at the start, you you just have to hustle and trust on those personal relationships.

Miriam Allred:

I love the honesty, you know, being honest about service failures, you know, like things are going to happen. It's going to be a little bit of a bumpy road, but people will trust you, respect you. Come back to you if you're honest and transparent throughout the process. I think I think that's great. The second thing I want to talk about.

Justin Currie:

Oh, sorry I was just gonna say one more thing, Miriam, is what I what I teach my team that if the client or the referral source has to get in touch with us about our problem. Then that's an error like we, we fail. So we that's what I always teach them is to try and make sure that they're proactive on that. And that makes a real big difference in the community. It doesn't always happen. Obviously it's not as easy as I. I make it sound. We we have our issues, too. But in general, yeah, trying to be really proactive with that is is very helpful.

Miriam Allred:

Yeah, getting out in front of them, getting ahead. Being proactive like you said not always possible. Things happen in real time.

Doing your best to be on like the offensive when it comes to these relationships and managing them. I think it's really interesting and awesome that you're sending the sales reps out to visit clients. I think that might be a semi like more novel concept. It's natural to send out like you, said the care managers. To kind of do those follow up visits and to be talking to the client regularly. But I think what we're what you're getting to here is with these high value clients. There's benefit to sending your sales reps out to them to be getting referrals. So is there? Is there a like a structure to those visits? I don't know if you've like trained your sales reps up on what that visit is supposed to look like any insight you can share there on, just like how that conversation goes. Because you can't, just, you know, walk in and ask for a referral, even though that's what a sales Rep may want to do. But what are those visits actually like? Entail? What do they look like?

Justin Currie:

Yeah. So we actually kind of I guess you could say gamify it a little bit. So I call them like client marketing visits and so when they go out there, we've we've trained them to do a few different things, and they don't do the exact same structure every time. So we've given them multiple different things to try and try and work on when they're there. And obviously client feedback is one right? Like there is a. There is an aspect of care management there as well. We wanna make sure that the clients taken care of. So that's 1st and foremost.

But then we also have, we have additional pay actually for if they can get us a Google review, they get an increase. If they can get a video testimonial, they can get an increase. And then also, there's incentive. If there's a client referral from that specific client. So they're gonna be out there. They're gonna obviously do the care management portion. But then they're gonna be promoting our client referral program. They're gonna be working.

Trying to get video testimonials with our with our clients that are very happy with the services. So it's really they. They were excited about that when I when I kind of brought that up. And it's been a fun game. We actually just got a Google review today again. So that was so I guess I'll be paying up for that one, but it was. But no, it's really good, because it's really hard to get that feedback from clients. So to have somebody out there promoting that is is really helpful.

Miriam Allred:

That’s fantastic. Even the video reviews, you know, everyone's got a smartphone, you know. Give them a little tripod. Get set up like there's so much value to those interactions in the home, and really good learning and insights for the sales reps. But, like you're saying, gamify it, you know, get them out there, compensate them, and it's a touch point with the client, you know. I think like you mentioned, like the one care manager to the clients only going out for emergencies like any touch point, especially in the home with the client from the office, from the sales reps. It's just like another opportunity to have, like a strong, meaningful connection with them. So I I think this is awesome. I, to be honest, I haven't heard of a whole lot of companies doing this where they send the sales reps out regularly. But again, I think it makes a lot of sense, especially in this case, and we all know the numbers like.

You know, getting an online lead versus getting a referral from a client like you said is not only like a higher conversion rate, but all a much higher retention rate. Which is where the value. The long term value from these clients comes in is not just getting them, but also retaining them. If they've got a friend or kind of a meaningful connection with the agency. So I'm sure you've seen that like longer retention with client referrals rather than maybe online leads or something of that nature.

Justin Currie:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean it. It all goes as well to client satisfaction, I mean, so somebody referred them originally right? So when we do a good job, and we have somebody in there really supporting them and working hard at that. And they're getting a lot of face to face. Time as well that that information is making it back to that referral source as well. So it's not. It's not just. We want them to refer clients. We want them to basically promote us to to their referral sources and everything as well. So it's kinda yeah, there's there's a few different aspects to it.

Miriam Allred:

Let's talk about the the service creation, the offer creation. So you were talking about how this is kind of like a big part of the puzzle is like structuring your services and your offers to the needs of these clients I think you mentioned like different tiers. Let let's go into that a little bit more, if you don't mind kind of like each tier and what that looks like you mentioned, you've been using the term like care management. So there is this like higher kind of concierge type care. That's a part of that. Any other kind of nuances or specifics in any of the tiers that are, you know, kind of moving the needle for you, or helping you get more of these clients.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, definitely, caregiver experience. So we we have a minimum for our lowest package. We have a minimum of year experience requirement for our caregivers. We we have a very extensive screening process, and I think I I told you, Miriam, that we're just rebuilding our our whole onboarding retention system right now.

So we're we're looking to improve that. We just had all our caregivers come in to for another an extra orientation on top of the one they had when they were hired. So we're constantly working on training them, and so being able to tell a client that you know somebody coming, whoever's coming in to help you. We don't know who it is going to be yet, but we know they meet these minimum requirements. And so we also talk about the criteria that we're using when we're hiring. So we're talking, not just about experience level. We're talking about character as well, right like, how did they present themselves when they came in into the interview.

And one other thing we do that I I don't think a lot. Maybe a lot of agencies do this, but I don't think a lot of them promote it is we we do social media checks when we're hiring. We've we've had a few clients that have check checked their social media when they're out in the field. And they say, You know what we can't have this person out here. You know it's nothing illegal or anything like that. But just they. They didn't like the the look of their character.

We do check into that and make sure there's nothing could scare a client away, you know. We always look at it in the in the way of, you know. Would we like this person caring for for our grandparent, and that's always a good criteria to go by. So we we talk about the caregiver experience and screening. That's a huge huge kind of kind of buzzword. I guess you could say we we did a little bit of an analysis with what clients and referral sources were most receptive to, and both of them the number one was was the background of the caregivers and the screening process, and exactly who they are, and you know it might. It might sound simple. But there's a lot of people that don't go, you know, super into detail when when explaining that.

So that was that was one of the big things, was caregiver experience. Another way we differentiate is we have a care responder program. And that's a, you know, kind of a whole episode in itself, probably, but we we kind of found a way to structure it. So we have on call caregivers. We did an analysis. We looked at exactly when the most call offs happen, how many we're averaging per week per weekend.

And so we put a care responder in place for all of those times, and essentially we found a way to pay a daily rate, and then we also pay them additionally per visit.

And sorry I'm going on a little bit about this care responder program. But but no, with that, most of their most of it is paid for right because they're getting called out to clients homes. So you're obviously charging the clients the rates for that. So the majority of the care responders wage is paid for. But what I was getting at is what that allows us to do is charge a little bit extra for prioritized coverage.

So that's where the priority coverage comes in is okay. We are paying these caregivers, you know, X amount of dollars to to be on call. So if coverage is extremely important to you, then you know, this is probably the best package to go with, so we're we're giving them the option. It's not mandatory, by any means.

So those are a couple of things, and then the other one is just increased care management, you know, being a lot of face to face time, we especially during the 1st week. We have a care manager in there. Multiple times throughout the week. Start of care, follow up calls. We have another visit the 1st week, and just just increasing that face to face time, because that that doesn't always happen in this industry.

Miriam Allred:

I want to talk about a couple of things there. Did I hear right that your lowest package is minimum? years caregiving experience. Did I hear that right.

Justin Currie:

Yes, correct. You have.

Miriam Allred:

Does that mean you're hiring anyone that's lower than that experience or no.

Justin Currie: No, we don't have anyone on staff that's lower than years.

Miriam Allred:

Okay, so that's a that's a huge differentiator here as well. You know, finding high quality, highly trained caregivers. I think a key factor here is like rates like you said, you're charging, you know, premium rates. And so you're also, I'm assuming, like paying premium rates. So you can find people and attract people that are looking for higher pay. Is that all accurate.

Justin Currie:

Exactly. And it's a it's a process, right? It's not like, Hey, let's just implement all of this at once. And you know everything's fixed. It's it's evolved over time. Because obviously we were doing Medicaid before we were doing a Va. When their rate was a little bit lower. So we had a, you know, a lot of caregivers that only had, you know, months experience or a year's experience. So it took a while to kind of work through the system and get to where we are today.

So it is a process. You have to kind of. Look at your agency and see exactly where you're at. And then you decide, kind of in a in a phase, step by step, system of exactly how you're going to implement this program. So.

Miriam Allred:

Right.

Justin Currie:

Try to.

Miriam Allred:

Makes a lot of a lot of sense and retention. Can I ask, like retention numbers? You know, this model is pretty unique. Have you been able to retain caregivers longer than maybe, like industry averages.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, we do pretty good with that, because we're we're paying them more and and to be honest with you with this model, we're we're operating on a lower volume, but a higher margin, right? So it takes a lot less clients to get the revenue where where we need to be so. It's it's also a way of controlling growth.

Historically, I mean, there's a ton of home care agencies out there that probably have a ton of shifts on the schedule that they can't staff right? So that's that's obviously not providing a lot of value to the client. But also there's just I mean it's it's a flywheel of trying to get caregivers in right. You're constantly trying to get caregivers in, and we're we're really never rushing to do that. We always keep a bench of to caregivers. If it gets down to 5, we we hire a few more. And that basically, you know, obviously, from time to time we have to let a caregiver go and then, when new cases come on board, we want to make sure that we have people there to to staff those.

So we really haven't had any trouble with that, because we are paying those higher rates. So it's it's it's been really helpful to increase the quality. And I I again, I want to be transparent. I don't want anybody thinking like we have absolutely everything figured out, and we never have a problem with a caregiver. That's not true. But we we have a lot less than we used to, and a lot less, I think, than a lot of other agencies that are struggling with that. So.

Miriam Allred:

Yeah, like you mentioned to me. And here publicly is like you're, even like overhauling, some processes right now and that's just business that's just life. You know. Things work and work for a time and a season, and you bring in new people. You bring in new minds. New variables, like things are. Things are evolving, and you are. No, you're not exempt to that. You figured a lot of this out over the years. The other thing that stood out to me. I know you mentioned like not going totally into the care responder program, but I think that's a probably a big factor here is that that priority coverage that may be top priority or high priority for these clients. And so you've kind of built a model that supports that. Can you talk a little bit more about how that priority coverage works? So you have these on call caregivers. If someone calls out like, you basically have a backup, or just a little bit more of like the specific specifics of how that works.

Justin Currie:

Yeah. And for 1st of all, maybe just get into why we did that. And the the main reason we did that is because we really like created a robust hiring system. We're paying our caregivers more. And what we were finding is just inherently. When you have, you know, a large number of caregivers out there inherently. There's gonna be like legitimate reasons for call offs. Right? So we found out that we corrected the bad behavior. And you know, we remove the people that that shouldn't be there. And then we found out, okay, well, we're still having, you know, X amount of call offs. So when we looked at that, we really dove into okay, what's the reason for these? Every single one was providing proof of call off. And they were all totally legitimate reasons. So I'm like, okay, this is something that you know, we looked at what we can control and what we can't control.

And with caregivers, no matter how much you train them. When you have a hundred, caregivers out there, no matter how much training you do, you are absolutely gonna have caregivers calling off. So that's something that if you know, it's gonna happen and you can't control it, then you have to put a control measure in place. That is gonna help that out. So that's basically why we built out that program. So when we did when we did the analysis of the call offs. We were finding out that pretty much all of them, I mean the the vast lion's share. The vast majority were from am. To pm. So that made it actually pretty easy for us, right? Because we just needed to find a care responder for that timeframe. We were. We're not super heavy on the overnights. We have a lot of daytime stuff.

So we don't actually have right now a care responder overnight. So we have multiple during the week. And so that's Monday to Friday, am. To pm. And then we have a care responder on the weekend Saturday and Sunday. Same thing from Am. To Pm. And we do have requirements. I mean, when we call they they have to go, or else they obviously don't get their their rate because we we are paying them to be on standby.

But what we're doing is we're paying a specific rate for the weekdays, and then a different rate, a little bit higher rate on the weekends.

And so that's a day rate that's measurable to what their what their actual rate is so obviously, you know, everybody's at a little bit different rate. But even just from being on call, they can almost make as much as caregiving because it wasn't enticing enough when we, you know, we made it $10 an hour, or something like that to to be on. Call it just didn't register that that was just kind of money they got for for waiting there. So what we did was we increase that, and then we also pay per visit. So if they see clients in a day, they get an extra per day for that. So an extra per day. So there is opportunity there for them to to make a lot of money with the care responder program. And the good thing for us is that we cover shifts, we get that client satisfaction. And then we have, you know, clients promoting us. Right? So that's that's the ultimate goal is to to take control of that uncontrollable aspect.

Miriam Allred:

I love that you shared that. Why? Because so often in home care, it's how do we solve the call out issue? But there's a lot of legitimacy to call outs, and I'm not saying every call out is legitimate, but there's a portion of them, and maybe a large portion of them that are valid reasons, and rather than maybe reprimanding the caregiver, you want to understand them, support them. And then also, you know, have that backup plan in place for those legitimate calls and for the illegitimate ones. But also, you know, the uncontrollables like you're saying.

I wanted to ask about. Oh, here's what I wanted to ask. These caregivers are they? Are they kind of like their own tier of caregivers, meaning all of your care. Responders are only care responders? Or are they caregiving some weeks, some days, and then care responders some days, or are they kind of like their own? Their own kind of bucket, of caregivers, their own bench.

Justin Currie:

No. So they are still a caregiver. So we typically just take some of our higher level caregivers that are interested in the program. We'll put them in place, and you know a lot of them, a lot of the caregivers. They love hours, you know. They're always wanting more and more hours. So it works out good. I mean, if we have a call off overnight or something, sometimes they'll jump in and help out. So they're they're open. They're they're welcome to take other shifts. If it's outside of that. to pm. Then we're paying them extra for those hours. We're paying them just like a regular caregiver.

So there's a lot of incentives there. And we we tried that program a few different ways.

And we just weren't getting the interest. I don't think a lot of caregivers saw the value in. You know that guaranteed wage every every weeks. They they just wanted to be work and wanted hours, and so we just had to increase the rates. And and yes, it does come at a little bit of a cost, but also a lot of that is subsidized by the client call outs that they're going to. So you are gonna end up paying a little bit with the program. But I mean, it's your agency. You can. You can look lower the cost a little bit, lower the lower the price to have them there and then, potentially, you know, break even, or even make a little bit off of them as well. So you can always control those variables. But the the main goal is to make sure that the clients are are taken care of in in an economical way, so.

Miriam Allred:

Next week, we're gonna talk more about like margins. And cash flow and like kind of the financial elements of this, but I guess the question I want to ask. Maybe right now, while we're talking about is like overtime. Are you? You mentioned a lot of your schedule is during the day, and you've kind of mapped that, and that's working for you. Do you encounter a lot of overtime, and do you try and stay away from it? Or is it very kind of client by client, visit by visit, basis.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, it's visit by visit. So we have. We definitely have caregivers that are doing overtime. It's not the end of the world. We try and avoid overtime when we can, but there is a little bit of I guess room there like in in the margins to to account for that. So we know, you know, anywhere from, I think we're running like to 6% overtime. I'm sure some agencies are way lower, and some are probably a lot higher than that. We're about to 6%. So we know roughly what that overage is. So when we built out our packages and everything we we built built them, knowing that right? So that we we knew that there was inherently going to be some overtime. If there's a client that request the specific caregiver more than h. We will charge them overtime, but that that doesn't happen very often, especially at at our higher rates. So.

Miriam Allred:

Okay, that's great. Let's talk about the question I want to ask is about like rebuttals, you know. Like you mentioned, you're in a pretty competitive market. And so, as you're talking to these clients, they may be talking to several other agencies, and you may be, you know, shooting out a price that's significantly or somewhat higher than others. Are you getting a lot of that? And you know, what does that kind of like price handling conversation look like. And what have you all learned through, you know being able to refute? You know the qualms with high price.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, definitely. That's a. That's a good question. Because we we get that. We get that question a lot. And to be honest with you. We don't get it a lot more than we did before we increased our rates. So that that's really surprising.

But I should say but before I tell you, kind of how we how we handle those like rebuttals is that we we charge higher rates. But one of the other things I don't think I've mentioned yet is we also charge a a pretty hefty startup fee. So anywhere from to $3,000, depending on the package that they choose.

We charge that for a startup fee, and then we pay it out through a loyalty program. So it's paid out at 10% per week, and then if they stop services before that, if it's if it's a passing, then obviously we give leniency and stuff for for that but we do pay it back over time, but if they stop services before that, then they forfeit the rest of that that startup fee. So there's a few different things that we're doing there. So I wanted to mention that as well, because that's that's usually a question that we get as well that we have to handle. But.

Miriam Allred:

Kind of like a deposit, a deposit, but then you pay it back to them, and like subsidize the service that.

Justin Currie:

It's kind of. I don't like to call it a deposit, because we're we're not essentially giving it back. It's it's a loyalty they will. If they stay with us for at least weeks they will get it back, but they will forfeit if, you know, we've had people sign up for for a week of services. And obviously it takes a lot of resources to to set that up right at the start. And they had no problem, you know, paying $2,000 Startup fee just to get that that week of services. And then it actually made it worthwhile for us. Right? Because I'm sure every agency owner knows you need X amount of hours to break even on a client. Right? Because you're you're spending time and money to get a client case started. You're spending time marketing for them. And so when you bring a client on, you know, it's whether it's or h or anything like that, you you have to protect yourself from that. So that's that's kind of why we had that startup fee is because we're we're spending a lot of time, and we're spending a lot more time and resources than the average home care agency to get them started. And that's what we help explain to them. So we talk about the resources that it takes. We talk about our screening process and how we're proactive with it. We do it ahead of time, because a lot of times they're coming to us in an emergency situation, right? So we have to have people ready for them. So we we talk about how we were doing that extensive screening process, but proactively so.

Miriam Allred:

No, I love this, and I'm asking. I'm not questioning you. I'm asking. I had a CPA on just a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about deposit specifically. But I love your loyalty element, which is, you know, what you need to break even on a client. And sometimes, you know they they back away after a week or weeks, and you lose money. So I I love the concept. But I actually I was asking her if people pay it back or subsidize the service. And she said, she doesn't see that a lot. But I love that you've worked in the loyalty element to where it covers you, you as the provider, but then it also is like beneficial to them, and it's kind of like a mutual guarantee for both parties. So I love that.

Justin Currie:

Yeah. And I I think I I got off track a little bit there. But with with that startup fee there's a lot of things that we've prevented with that as well, and we found out that that the people that are really complaining about it are generally people that aren't serious about getting care. So it's it's really acted as a pre-qualifier for us.

So it's acted as a pre-qualifier for our clients. And it's also protect, protected us financially in the short term. So it's there's multiple aspects to that.

Miriam Allred: Yeah, yeah, that's great. Glad we kind of like went went down that path.

Justin Currie: Perfect. Yeah.

Miriam Allred:

I think that's yeah. It's really really smart. And you may again get kind of the the sticker shock of people thinking like, Oh, I have to, you know, give you $2,000 before we even start service. But, like you said, it's a qualifier. You're looking for a certain avatar persona of people, and if they're not willing to kind of make that commitment, or make that investment, you know they might not be a right fit for you so. I love that. It's also a qualifier for your right fit client.

Justin Currie:

Definitely, definitely. No, it's that's been really helpful. And you know, other thing I'll mention on that is, we we retain about 37% of that. So it's actually, you know, we're we're actually getting paid for all the services that we're doing up front, you know, having our care managers go out. So it's it's it's worked out really well for that.

Miriam Allred:

So the question before the the rabbit hole there was handling like rebuttals, you know, when people talk about price, I'm sure you've trained your sales, rep to know how to sell your services, sell your price, any kind of insights or things you'd share there about just managing those conversations.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, definitely. So we we kind of went through all the things you know. We talked about the offer creation and what was different in the offers. And so it's it's very similar, if not identical, to what I had went over there with talking about our caregiver experience.

You gotta remember that these are things that they're not hearing from other home care agencies. You know how many are saying that they have a minimum experience requirement, and they're actually abiding by that we also talk about. We talk about our screening process, but we also talk about something called a caregiver acceptance rate. Which we actually do in the agency, we're only hiring less than 5% of applicants. Actually. And then after a month we turn over another 10% just because they're not up to our our quality standards. So they really love to hear that of exactly what our acceptance rate is, and how how detailed and extensive our screening process I and and I'm sure you can tell by now that we we hit really hard on the caregiver experience and the caregiver education and who we're bringing in the agency, because that seems to be a really big restriction for for bringing on new clients. So we talk about that we talk about, as I had mentioned before, the higher level of care management, and usually I guess it. It might sound simple to some agency owners, but you'd be amazed at how many people just kind of breeze over this, you know, they say, Okay, you know, we we offer care management. Yeah, they'll be out, you know, if there's an emergency or anything, they'll come out where we're we're we're specifically telling them we're really intentional about what we're telling them. We're saying that our care manager will be out depending on the package will be out there monthly.

They're gonna do a monthly reassessment of your needs, and they're gonna adjust the care plan in case any needs change and all that information is going to be relayed to you. We're going to do a follow up call with you. So that sounds a lot more, you know, just organized and professional than yeah, no, we do have a care manager. I'm not sure who it's going to be. But we'll send somebody out, you know, and a lot of agencies are doing that. So being being intentional about what you're saying, and being a little more specific about exactly what you're going to be doing. It goes a really long ways.

Miriam Allred:

And I imagine the result of this is spelling it out in an agreement i'd imagine you have pretty extensive agreements that outline all of this, because, like you said, it's it's thing for an agency to kind of like, blow a little bit of smoke, and say they do all these things, it's another to hold yourself accountable to it, to include it in an agreement. Have you refined your agreements over the years? Anything you've learned, as far as like, how how these agreements work or any mistakes maybe, that you've made when it comes to the agreements, and like mapping all this out, to hold yourselves accountable.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, we've definitely adjusted the agreement over time, and that that usually happens when we're caring for a family that has a has a lawyer for a family member. Cause they they like to bring that to our attention. We've never had any major issues with it. We did have one client that came to us, and and he was absolutely correct. Our our team. They kind of dropped the ball. We we didn't do our visit when we were supposed to do it.

He was absolutely right. He wrote me a letter, so I I refunded his invoice. I didn't make him pay anything for that invoice because we didn't follow through on it. But in the few years we've been doing this program, I think the little, maybe and a half years now, and since we started doing that is, that was the only client that has had an issue with that. So we've been. We've been doing a good job. But, like I said, you know, we we drop the ball sometimes as well, but it's it's best to. It's best to keep your promises for sure.

Miriam Allred:

Absolutely, well, indirectly, throughout this conversation, I know, we're already almost at time isn't that crazy, how fast this.
 

We've been talking about like messaging and positioning throughout this conversation. That was kind of the area that I wanted to end on of just like structuring your messaging to sell to these Vip rates? Is there any other messaging channels, or like methods that you utilize to clients, or even to caregivers, to just really position yourself as this kind of like premium provider that you found success with, whether it's online or in the office, or just any other kind of channels of, or types of communication. That position you all, as this premium provider.

Justin Currie:

Yeah. So on the front end. For sure, we we try and be kind of the experts in our industry. You know, I hire people that are very well trained. You know that this they know a lot of stuff that I don't know. We have one that's, you know, a dementia practitioner. She's very, very intelligent. So she goes and she does events and speaks, speaks, or does like dementia trainings and things like that for other communities. So we try and be be the leader as far as expertise but also on the front end. It's it's confidence as well right. It's you know, knowing your value. It's it's not like you're going in there arrogantly. Right confidence is when you you know the value, and you can relay that, and you can confidently speak to it.

And that's a learned, learned skill as well, because the the same gal that I was just talking about. She's our sales director now, and she came in, and she came from a franchise, and the 1st thing she said was, there is no way that I can sell a $2,000 startup fee, and you know, X and X rate. And I said, But but we're actually you know, we're we're adding more value like. It's a different service than what you've been pitching before.

Right? And she went out there, and that was that same day, and she came back, and she says, I can't believe it. I you know I got the $2,000 startup fee, and we signed the client for this rate. And I'm like, okay, great. Now, now the real work starts, you know. So so I think breaking that breaking that mindset and breaking that barrier on what people think is possibleis is definitely, you know, the majority of it on the front end, but on the back end it's following through on everything you're saying.

Like I mentioned. We're not. We're not charging higher rates and offering the same value. We're offering more value. So you have to make sure a hundred percent that that your team is on it, and that you are actually following through on that value. Or else it's it's gonna fall apart pretty quickly. So there's a little bit of a front end and back end to that.

Miriam Allred:

Hmm! I love that, believing in what you're selling, and then delivering on what you're selling, you know. That's kind of like a rule of thumb of just, you know, not over promising under delivering, but holding your value, believing in your values, you know, to be able to sell it effectively and then delivering. And you've talked about that throughout this conversation of how much time and energy you put into the caregiver experience, because almost ultimately, at the end of the day, at the end of the day, it's up to the caregivers to deliver this rich experience to these clients that you're, you know, promising on the front end. So you have to do so much for your employees. And you've talked about training. We could just talk as we wrap up here. Training sounds like a pretty big part of your business. You mentioned. These caregivers come in with a lot of experience already.

Which is probably varied. You probably you know, they may have years experience, but that probably looks different from different ages.
 

How? How do you all approach training? Does it look maybe different than other agencies? Or what's kind of your approach when it comes to caregiver training.

Justin Currie:

Yeah, so ours is quite a hybrid so we do, obviously, orientation in in office. So we have a pretty extensive interview process, and we even do like writing samples and things like that for them, for for care notes, because that that can really explain a lot. But what we do is we? We do the extensive interview, and then we take them through our orientation process. And that's basically everything about how what our expectations are in a little about the company and our communication channels and everything that's super helpful. So they're they're very well prepared. And then what we do is we we don't do any online training yet. But I think we're we're actually going to start doing that.

But what we do is we do a lot of in the field training and basically assessment. Right? So we have a care manager out there for the start of care for every client. So they're going through the care plan. They're watching our caregiver do a transfer. So we get to see kind of 1st hand. Exactly. You know what's going on out in the field. So it's really kind of there. There's multiple variables to it.

It seems to be working really well for us, because a lot of a lot of the really skilled caregivers. You know, they don't want to sit through a, you know, a min Youtube video on fall prevention, or whatever right? But they know what they're doing, and so we test them in house. And then we're actually looking at them in the field and assessing them in the field.

Miriam Allred:

Yeah, I think that just speaks to the the premium value here, you know, not to not to speak badly about the online training. There's value there, and there's caregivers that prefer that. But I think you know, the hands on approach out in the field in the home is really valuable. If you have the time and resources to be able to do that. What? One other thing that stood out to me a minute ago you mentioned maybe about 10% of the caregivers turn over in that 1st month. It sounded like you almost like, turn them over. You know, it's almost not like the caregivers opting themselves out or leaving like happens in the 1st 30, 60, days. But you all identify people that aren't a right fit. Is that ring true that you all actually decide, you know who's not a right fit, and you maybe let them go. Or is there some sort of structure there, you know, they're on kind of like a trial period for those 1st days. Or what does that look like?

Justin Currie:

Yeah, so basically with that, it's a little bit of both. So we do turn people over because of termination. Obviously. So there is a percentage of that. But then there is also just people that aren't up to our standards. So what my team does I? I'm not involved in that meeting, but they'll actually meet on a regular basis. I believe it's bi weekly now. They will meet bi-weekly, and they'll go through all of the caregivers, and we do the raise review at the same time.

So we're looking at the Raise review. But we're also looking at, you know. Are they up to standard. We have our specific criteria that we're looking for. Obviously like character and attitude communication play, big big roles in that. And so that's what that's what they're looking at, and if they find that people can't be trained, we'll always give somebody the chance. But if we've already spoken to them, and you know we're still getting this this feedback.

Then that's somebody that we're gonna you know, probably opt out and just make sure that they're not moving forward with us.

And some do slip through the cracks as as always. But we we do have a pretty good screening process.

Miriam Allred:

And it all comes back to that being proactive, you know, if you want to deliver the highest quality service you need to have, you know the highest quality caregivers. And so there's this trade off that we talked about. Justin. This has been so awesome. I told you to put on your owner, Cap, and you've done phenomenal. I know you are living and breathing all of this, and so it's so fun to hear you just kind of talk through your learnings in real time. At the start I mentioned. You are the founder.

And I love you wearing the shirt masters of home care. You have learned so much over the years running your business that you're actually helping and providing these resources and these frameworks to other businesses? Can you talk a little bit about kind of your service, offering through masters of home care.

Justin Currie:

Absolutely. So just like you, said Miriam, is basically what we're doing is we're through mentorship, through courses, through community. We're helping other owners implement exactly the the strategies and the systems and everything that I'm using in my agency. And we're basically just moving it over to their agency and helping them implement that along the way. So there's there's different programs. There's the kickstart that's for typically for under 500,000 in revenue. And that's really designed to to get some traction right? Get you off your butt, get you moving. And then the next program is for those over K in revenue. And that's gonna be that's gonna be the same thing. It's gonna give you all the foundational elements. But it's also gonna teach you the profitable client pipeline. So the grow program is where we're gonna teach you how to how to go after those Vip private papers clients. And the 3rd program is the partnership program. And we only take people on per year in this program because it is a lot higher value. But there is an equity stake as well, that's a full. That's a full partnership, and that looks different with with each agency. But there is a there is a yearly amount, and then there's a there's a equity stake as well. So that's that's kind of the different programs that we offer. You're in the course for for a year. And the reason we do that is because people have questions right? We don't want to give you the course and say, Hey, you know, you guys can hope for the best. We want to mentor you all the way there. And it's really important that you know. We make sure that the people that are trying to implement this program are successful.

Miriam Allred:

Amazing. One part of the package I've been referring to it as like a resource hub. One part of the package is a platform. What? What do you call the platform that has all of these resources.

Justin Currie: Yeah, the platform. So it's it's on circle. So circle is basically, yeah, it's just a, it's just a platform where you can host courses and things like that. So we just call it the Circle community. But it's it's actually the masters of home care community. But but it's all hosted on circle.

Miriam Allred:

Awesome. Yeah. So I guess sorry I didn't need like the the name of the platform. But more this concept. So Justin has built this community where all of these resources are hosted. And I'm I want to speak to this because he let me get access to it. And the 1st thing I said was, I want all of this because Justin has mapped out and his team have mapped out all of these like very specific pipelines, frameworks, resources like I was blown away. I've seen a lot of resources in home care in my day, but the library of resources that he has built is phenomenal. And so, as part of working with him, you get access to this library of everything you can think of and need as a business owner, it's there. And so I just wanted to mention that that's part of this offering of working with you is getting access to that that community and that resource library, and again, it's of the best that I've seen. I'm a little bit envious of it. But that's why we're here working together.

Justin. Thank you so much. This has been fantastic, like I mentioned. Next week we'll be back same day, same time with Justin. We're going to go like one step further and talk about the finances, the financial elements of managing private pay, high value clients. Because the margins like we've talked about today are different. Some of the structure. Some of the strategy, when it comes to the finances are different. So we're going to talk about all of that same day same time next week, Justin. Thank you again, and we'll look forward to seeing you again next week.

Justin Currie:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Miriam Allred:

Awesome thanks. Everyone for joining us live. This has been another great session of home care, you? And we'll look forward to seeing you back again next week. Goodbye, for now.