The Path to Accelerated Growth for a Home Care Agency

The Path to Accelerated Growth for a Home Care Agency

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Erin Cahill: Welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a home care Podcast. I’m Erin Cahill, an Account executive at Caresmartz. It is vital to build a strong foundation, to achieve exponential growth for your home care agency, and ensure you recruit and retain top-notch caregivers with competitive wages and a positive work environment.

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Erin Cahill: Next establish your agency’s unique value proposition and leverage digital marketing to reach potential clients, also turn satisfied customers into promoters with a referral program and build relationships with local home care providers to expand your reach.

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Erin Cahill: finally embrace technology to streamline operations and consider adding new services to cater to a wider range of needs.

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Erin Cahill: Throughout this growth, prioritize exceptional clients, care to cultivate referrals, and solidify your agency’s reputation for excellence. This combination of strategies will fuel your home care, agency, sustainable and accelerated success. But that’s not all. There’s more to know.

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Erin Cahill: Today we have Aaron Marcum, the chairman of Golden Harmony on the panel, the Homecare Agency focuses on promoting independence, meaningful engagement, and enriching lives for the seniors and their families as they deliver premium, quality care, welcome to the podcast Aaron.

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Aaron Marcum: I’m so grateful to be here. Thank you. Thank you.

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Erin Cahill: So we can jump right into it. How can we optimize an agency’s recruitment process to attract and retain the most qualified and compassionate caregivers?

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Aaron Marcum: Yeah. So part of my background. So I got in the homecare space, started a homecare agency in 2002,

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Aaron Marcum: and then actually founded home care poles later on, where we measured.

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Aaron Marcum: and they still do retention and and measured satisfaction of of caregivers. So some of my response comes from years of measuring the data on that I got involved in Golden Harmony as a partner, as an investor.

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Aaron Marcum: You know, later on in my own care career only fairly recently. But

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Aaron Marcum: but really to optimize, optimize an agency’s recruitment process, I mean, I always say, retention or re-retention starts at higher.

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Aaron Marcum: So who do you hire

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Aaron Marcum: is really key, and we hear the right people write seats and Eos term all of those things. But we don’t apply that, I think, enough to the care professional.

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Aaron Marcum: and realize that the cost of turnover, if that person leaves within the 1st 90 days, which is a real thing like

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Aaron Marcum: that’s a big problem in our industry is that we have a lot of turnover in that early on in those 1st 90 days, often because we’re recruiting the wrong people, and that’s hard because we have a caregiver shortage to deal with as well. So we get in that panic mode, and we hire somebody cause we need to fill a shift, not realizing the real

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Aaron Marcum: heavy costs that creates. And so our recruitment policies, if we can get to the point

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Aaron Marcum: where we are even willing to turn down services and refer them elsewhere to get the right people because that’s.

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Aaron Marcum: you know, getting hiring just to fill a shift. That’s kind of paint playing the short game when it comes to home care.

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Aaron Marcum: but hiring for the long term to say, I want this person to stay for the next 5 years. I want this person to be committed.

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Aaron Marcum: Then it’s a whole different kind of approach. It’s more intentional

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Aaron Marcum: where you’re looking at? Okay? Are their core values aligned with my own? Are there, are they? Do they really? Is there? Why, bigger than a paycheck? Right? Is they really want to make an impact in this industry or in this, in what they’re doing, and even in their own little world there? And so job ads that are very specific as to what you’re looking for when it comes to values. And also job ads that get that that eliminate

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Aaron Marcum: attracting care professionals who aren’t the right fit, you know, you wanna eliminate them before they even apply. Right? So those are kind of the processes. We can go deeper into that

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Aaron Marcum: open houses every week. So you’re constantly keeping the bench full, I think, is a great practice that we’ve you know, we’ve incorporated at Golden Harmony. I incorporated it way back when I started my 1st homecare agency.

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Aaron Marcum: And then.

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Aaron Marcum: you know, just being taking longer on the interviews. I think we shorten these interviews in such a way. We’re really not getting to know how they handle certain situations.

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Aaron Marcum: you know. Are they truly compassionate? Are they going to shove the toothbrush in the mouth, like be, you know, not compassionate. And I use that example because that happens is that they get rushed with a
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Aaron Marcum: with someone who might have dementia, or you could ask questions. You can kind of figure that out with a longer interview. Are they going to take their time? Are they going to be more patient with these people?

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Aaron Marcum: There’s just things, little cues you can pick up in an interview. And so, just taking your time, you go slow to go fast.

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Erin Cahill: Here.

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Aaron Marcum: And so the slow part is, it is not making the hiring process so rushed, either, you know.

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Aaron Marcum: On you know, on the other side of it, too, I mean, the earlier side is attracting the right.

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Aaron Marcum: the right care, professionals being very deliberate as far as where you want to get your ideal caregiver, and it’s different for every

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Aaron Marcum: home care agency and the people you serve and the type of care professional. You want. Some go after nursing schools which might make sense. But maybe some don’t want that

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Aaron Marcum: younger, newer care professional, maybe less experienced because of who they might be catering to. Maybe they’re providing a concierge service or some high-end service where they need more. Someone who’s a little bit more mature, or someone who has more experience. Well, I wouldn’t be going after the nursing schools, most likely I’d be going after other areas. You know, community centres, even grocery stores there that cater to a certain group.

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Aaron Marcum: You know what you’re looking for. Filipinos are great care professionals. They care for their elderly. And so if that’s the group. You wanna really recruit from? Where? Where do they hang out? Where are they? And being very intentional as far as how you’re recruiting.

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Aaron Marcum: So anyway.

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Erin Cahill: Yeah, yeah.

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Erin Cahill: which digital marketing strategies can be implemented to effectively reach the target audience and differentiate an agency from its competitors?

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Aaron Marcum: Yeah, I think with digital marketing you’re only as good as what you put out there. And so first, st the foundation is the content that you’re you’re creating.

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Aaron Marcum: We are very intentional, or have been intentional at Golden Harmony, and the other so I do a lot of coaching in the space as well. Some of the largest you know, most well-known brands in the space. And they really start out with the foundational of what do we wanna put out there to really create that expertise, just throwing things out there on social media or

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Aaron Marcum: other spaces, obviously, or even on your website, if you’re not intentional about it. And what you really wanna educate on is important. So creating professional videos, for example.

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Aaron Marcum: that feeling like we’re different.

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Aaron Marcum: Unfortunately.

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Aaron Marcum: with digital marketing, and with how many competitors there are out there

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Aaron Marcum: is that we created this you know this red, you know, lack of a better term red ocean of competition, where PE the feeding frenzy, and we all look the same.

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Aaron Marcum: Well, if you’re a little more intentional about the way you look

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Aaron Marcum: in digital marketing, and that you set yourself apart. Start there like, what is the content? What are we trying to educate them on? What are we trying to achieve here? And then

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Aaron Marcum: what are the best mediums to go after that would help reach the target we’re trying to reach. And again, whatever that target is if it’s people who are coming out of hospitals or people who are, you know, I just I mean, really I think that secondary to me, the medium on how to get there.

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Aaron Marcum: It’s foundational to that is what is the content and what’s the value that you’re creating with that content

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Aaron Marcum: And then depending on your market. That’s going to vary.

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Aaron Marcum: You know, social media is becoming more popular. Baby boomers are mostly on Facebook, obviously. And so that’s becoming more common. But if you’re not creating great content on those mediums, this is gonna fall flat. It’s not gonna generate what you want, you know. But there’s there’s little hacks there. Of course you can do paid advertising, Ppc, and so forth. That would get you there. Google reviews is a great digital marketing strategy to increase those.

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Aaron Marcum: You know, there’s a lot of mediums out there you could use. It just really depends on the content you’re creating and where you wanna want to share that content and where your target markets gonna be, does that make sense.

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Erin Cahill: Absolutely, you have to be intentional with it. And think through your strategy

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Erin Cahill: considering current client needs and future trends, what additional services can an agency offer to expand its reach and cater to a broader range of clients?
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Aaron Marcum: No, that’s a that’s a big

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Aaron Marcum: question. And I think again

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Aaron Marcum: somewhat geographic, and what you might be able to offer rural agencies may not be able to offer the same thing as an agency in the city.

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Aaron Marcum: I like it. I like private duty nursing

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Aaron Marcum: as a service.

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Aaron Marcum: care management as a service, if you can provide that kind of value right? And that’s becoming more and more common that that aligns well with what you’re already doing. What I don’t like

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Aaron Marcum: is agencies going after things that really don’t necessarily align. Well.

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Aaron Marcum: And I’m you know.

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Aaron Marcum: have to be careful here because there’s many agencies doing, you know, different monitoring systems, and so forth. And I think they can make sense if they’re supported by a larger organization, or that it’s very intentional that way. But you have to be really, really careful, as far as what you try to dive into that could distract you from the bigger picture, also repackaging what you’re already doing.

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Aaron Marcum: you know, maybe not providing it as an hourly service. But you’re packaging packaging as an overall dementia service. And you’re not focused on the hourly. And so I like the trend. There’s some trend going in that direction. And so you know, taking what you’re doing and specializing in that. Of course, dementia.

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Aaron Marcum: Parkinson’s is becoming more common.

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Aaron Marcum: I don’t wanna share too many trade secrets that we’re doing over a golden harmony necessarily that way. But there’s some really unique things you could be doing

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Aaron Marcum: that

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Aaron Marcum: that align with with

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Aaron Marcum: with the current home care, the current care services you’re providing, and I would just make sure they’re aligned like you can chase shiny objects otherwise and get distracted from your core service offering.

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Erin Cahill: Yeah, makes sense.

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Erin Cahill: Are there opportunities to contract with new insurance companies or government programs to keep increasing an agency’s client base and revenue potential.

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Aaron Marcum: You know, outside of the typical long term care insurance. You know that many people are going after. You know, the Veterans Assistance program Medicaid waiver programs. I mean, those are all available.

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Aaron Marcum: One trend that I’m seeing in some States. And it’s really a state, and you have to really check with your stake. But workers, Comp.

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Aaron Marcum: you know, there’s some funding

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Aaron Marcum: that could be available for

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Aaron Marcum: the workers. Comp will pay when someone gets hurt for a Home Care agency. Come in and provide some care. Usually. That’s short term, you know. That’s somewhat out of the box or outside the box, you know, when it comes to some pair sources. Employers. Larger employers are another way to kind of look at some pair sources when it comes to insurance.

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Aaron Marcum: There’s

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Aaron Marcum: I mean, outside of the private Medicaid and Medicare. You know, you could.

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Aaron Marcum: I know there’s conversations around some of the non-traditional self pay type organizations. There’s a trucking company, a very large trucking company in the Northwest who is actually adding home care into their own. They have a self pay insurance

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Aaron Marcum: policy. And so finding even some of those employers are kind of on the cutting edge where they’re no longer taking traditional insurance. But they’re actually created their own insurance ecosystem.

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Erin Cahill: Right.

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Aaron Marcum: You know where they’re actually providing their own insurance, paying for their own insurance. It’s really a unique model.

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Aaron Marcum: and they’re allowing some unique benefits that they wouldn’t otherwise get with a traditional insurance company.

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Aaron Marcum: So it’s, you know, and you just have to find it. You have to go out and find those kind of unique companies who are

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Aaron Marcum: are adding benefits you normally wouldn’t see in a typical

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Aaron Marcum: business.

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Erin Cahill: Sure.

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Aaron Marcum: But larger. Yeah.

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Erin Cahill: Right, and you touch on this a little bit earlier. But how can an agency owner ensure that they maintain their focus on exceptional client care, while strategically pursuing accelerated growth, to achieve a sustainable and successful future.

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Aaron Marcum: You know, focus is, I think, based upon really your one or 2 big goals like, say, where do I? Wanna be 3 years from now, and don’t make this. I mean, I think the wish list is great. But what’s that? One thing that if we were sitting here 3 years from now

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Aaron Marcum: that you would celebrate, that you would be happy about your progress and filter everything out from that. The second thing. And I wrote my book on this. So I wrote a book on Twitter. I have his best selling book, which I’m pretty proud of.

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Aaron Marcum: and I talk about what’s called your guiding truths, and it’s something I have been doing since 2,006, and I filter all my decisions through my guiding truths, and I have a process of getting to your guiding truths. But that’s to me like if you have that compass, and where you wanna be like one of my guiding truths is my, my ventures create freedom. So I’m not gonna start a business or invest in a business unless it creates freedom. If it demands a lot of my time.

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Aaron Marcum: Even if it’s going to make me a lot of money, I’m not going to invest in it.

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Aaron Marcum: And so, having that kind of filter in which you focus. And it also helps me focus on what’s the most important thing right now.

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Aaron Marcum: And so if you again, if you have that one big goal

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Aaron Marcum: and not 20 goals that are really important to you, but the one really, really important goal. And you filter everything by and say, does that support that bigger goal. If not,

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Aaron Marcum: toss it aside right? It’s not not as important.

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Aaron Marcum: So

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Aaron Marcum: Yeah, huh?

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Erin Cahill: Absolutely well. Thank you, Aaron, for sharing these great insights. I’m sure the audience got in depth knowledge about how to achieve accelerated growth for a home Care agency, and to you, my wonderful audience. Thank you for tuning in until the next episode. This is Erin Cahill, signing off.