Why Small Home Care Agencies Need a Simple Business Operating System

Why Small Home Care Agencies Need a Simple Business Operating System

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Dennis Gill: Okay. So guys welcome to CareSmartz360 On Air, a home care podcast. I’m Dennis Gill, a senior sales consultant at Caresmartz.

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Dennis Gill: So running a home care agency. That’s not an easy feat. So between managing staff clients and finances, it can feel like you are constantly putting out fires.

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Dennis Gill: But what if there is a system to help you streamline your operations and focus on what truly matters?

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Dennis Gill: So today, we are excited to welcome Tom Bouwer to the podcast

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Dennis Gill: with decades of experience, building and scaling businesses. Tom has a deep understanding of the challenges faced specifically by the small business owners.

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Dennis Gill: so as a seasoned coach and author, he’s helped countless firms achieve their goals.

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Dennis Gill: He will share valuable insights on why a simple business operating system is crucial for home care agencies.

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Dennis Gill: So get ready to learn

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Dennis Gill: how to increase efficiency, boost profitability and create a happier and a more engaged team.

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Dennis Gill: So stay tuned for this informative and inspiring episode. Let’s dive in

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Dennis Gill: so welcome to the podcast Tom.

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Tom Bouwer: Great. Thank you for having me today.

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Dennis Gill: I don’t know. We are really glad that you could take out the time today to help our listeners. The new aspirants that are going to open up the new home care agencies, or even that have their current businesses. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks a lot for that from our team.

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Tom Bouwer: My my pleasure, you know, in

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Tom Bouwer: I’ve spent probably 20,000 hours now coaching executives and executive teams

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Tom Bouwer: from really all around the world. I spent 8 years overseas and started 3 of my own companies there, and everything that I’ll talk about today I use and have used to run my own company. So I’ve started run and sold 6 companies now and now my own little 3 person or 5 person company. I use all of these same tools. And it just works. Cause it’s it’s simple and easy.

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Tom Bouwer: And I think that

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Tom Bouwer: you know a lot of the challenges that your agencies or people looking to start an agency, you know. Face are. There’s it’s so overwhelming, you know. I talked to the one small business owner from your your group

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Tom Bouwer: the other day, and she said, You know, I just I feel like I’ve got a hundred hours of work to do every day, and I still have a family, and I still have all these other things that I’ve got to do. Help, have you, you know, heard that from people? Have you felt that way, Dennis?

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, definitely, definitely, we do that. See? Because I’ve been into the sales. I’ve been with this cash 3 60 for the past 5 years now and presenting our software to them and having conversation with them daily on with 4 to 5 agencies minimal. I have that.

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Dennis Gill: So yes, I do get these questions a lot. But yeah, you are a more dedicated person on that part. So.

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Tom Bouwer: Well.

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Dennis Gill: Bad things on dude.

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Tom Bouwer: You know. What a business operating system is is, and all we’ve done. And I’ve written 2 books. Now. The 1st one is called, enjoy the enjoy, the climb which is about the pinnacle business operating system, and the other book is called What the Heck is Eos, which is about the Eos or the entrepreneurial operating system.

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Dennis Gill: Okay.

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Tom Bouwer: And what both of those systems have done is they’ve taken the

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Tom Bouwer: 105,000 page books and all the research on business that’s been done going back, you know, to the forties, fifties, sixties with W. Edwards Deming and Peter Drucker, and then some newer stuff from Lencione and Jim Collins, etc. Simon Sinek.

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Tom Bouwer: You know all these great thought leaders, and have taken all of their concepts and boiled them down into simple.

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Tom Bouwer: easy to use practical tools.

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Tom Bouwer: And they typically focus on just a couple of things. The 1st component or element
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Tom Bouwer: is typically people.

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Tom Bouwer: right? So because honestly, without having the right people in the right seats, as Jim Collins would say, nothing else is gonna happen.

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Tom Bouwer: And so one of the the things that I’ve done now with several of the smaller agencies in the, you know, home care and hospice space has been to really help them define what their structure should look like

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Tom Bouwer: You know, looking 6 months or 3 months, or 9 months down the road, and then from that then evaluating, do we have the right people for the business.

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Tom Bouwer: And it’s just a simple tool that we use called the accountability chart. And then we use another tool from Eos called the people analyzer. And that sounds really scary, but it’s really not. And it’s very simple. Every I’m a very simple person. Everything. My books are written at like a 6th grade level.

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Tom Bouwer: Just so you know how simple I am. They’re easy reads, but they’re very simple tools, and yet they have a very profound impact.

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Tom Bouwer: And what I found in all of those organizations was, we had 3 or 4 people doing sales. We had 3 or 4 people doing billing. We had 3 or 4 people looking at staffing. No one was in charge of recruiting.

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Tom Bouwer: and so when you have

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Tom Bouwer: everyone doing everything, and yet no one doing anything, then you have chaos. So it was all about, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t work together as a team

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Tom Bouwer: right? It’s just that we need one set of eyeballs that we can look into
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Tom Bouwer: to hold someone accountable for recruiting, for billing, for staffing, you know, for any of those things, for compliance.

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Tom Bouwer: Let’s say you know, for referrals for admits or discharge, or you know, whichever word you want to use, someone has to own those things doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t help everyone else does.

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Tom Bouwer: But it’s just like on any sports team. Everyone has a position.

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Tom Bouwer: and yet they still play together as a team.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, got it?

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Tom Bouwer: So

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Tom Bouwer: I found that to be of huge impact for my clients. Just

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Tom Bouwer: simple organization

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Tom Bouwer: another, did you have a question cause? I’m just rolling so.

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Dennis Gill: Okay, it’s okay. I just want that our listeners should learn from you. In this small session that we have today, they should be able to understand more and more things that could be there. Yeah, please please go on. Go on.

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Tom Bouwer: Okay. So the second big thing that most business operating systems focus on is your vision

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Tom Bouwer: and try to boil that down to a 1 to 2 page document that we get everyone, 100% aligned on

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Tom Bouwer: focused on the same things.

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Tom Bouwer: And a lot of the tools that I use are to help create focus in the organization.

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Tom Bouwer: Usually. And I worked with a company the other day where there was 2 family members and 2 outside non family members on the kind of leadership team, if you want to call it that. And, by the way, some companies, when I start working with them. They don’t really know who the leadership team is, so we have to define that

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Dennis Gill: Yeah, that’s strange.

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Tom Bouwer: Yeah, but it’s true. It happens all the time, I mean,

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Tom Bouwer: and so. But of those 4 people we had 5 different ideas of where the organization was going to go. So we had to get everybody agreeing on the same long term goal.

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Tom Bouwer: Then the same 3 year, picture the same one year goals, and then we break that down further into 90 day chunks that we call rocks.

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Tom Bouwer: I’ll get back to rocks in a second.

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Tom Bouwer: But are we aligned on our core values? Do we know our overall marketing strategy?

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Tom Bouwer: and then you know, how do we go from our 3 year picture to our one year picture down to our 90 day chunks.

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Tom Bouwer: And

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Tom Bouwer: I like to tell the story. It’s a personal story. But

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Tom Bouwer: Wendy, my wife and I.

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Tom Bouwer: When I 1st met her and I was using and starting to teach some of these tools, I said, Hey, this is my 3 year picture. She’s like there’s no way you’ll ever get any of that done. That’s way. Too much stuff.

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Dennis Gill: And I said.

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Tom Bouwer: Said, Wait, let’s break it down into a 1 year goal.

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Tom Bouwer: And then from that one year goal, let’s break it down into 90 day chunks, and she said, Oh, wait. So we have 1290 day chunks to reach that 3 year picture. And I said, Yeah, she goes. Oh, well, that’s easy. We should add more.

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Tom Bouwer: and I find the same thing with businesses where our 3 year picture may look really really unattainable. But as we start to break it down, and we get, you know, traction a cadence, a rhythm, a heartbeat in the organization where each week we’re just taking little bites of the elephant.

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Tom Bouwer: You know, we start to gain that momentum and we just start all of a sudden that elephant’s done, and we go on to the next elephant, and then the next one.

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Tom Bouwer: And so by having an aligned vision, we get really crystal, clear focus along with everyone knowing their role in the organization, having all of the right people. And truly amazing things happen. And

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Tom Bouwer: I mean, I know it sounds a little bit odd, but business actually becomes easy.

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Dennis Gill: New Zealand.

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Tom Bouwer: It just becomes.

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Dennis Gill: So with the short-term book, that is much more easier.

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Tom Bouwer: Right, and that brings me to the 3rd area that most business operating systems will focus on and in pinnacle we’ll call that the perform performance

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Tom Bouwer: element or component and Eos they call it the traction component. But that’s how do we have that actual weekly meeting cadence?

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Tom Bouwer: How do. We have a good scorecard

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Tom Bouwer: so that we can see trends.

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Tom Bouwer: Most of the small companies I work with don’t have good weekly meetings if they have weekly meetings at all.

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Tom Bouwer: or even daily stand up meetings. And they have awful scorecards. And it’s not that they don’t have data. They have lots of data, but they haven’t taken that down to the

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Tom Bouwer: 5 or 8, or 10 or 12 numbers that as a leader they need to see every week to know. Are we going up, or are we going down? And where do I need to dig in more deeply.

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Dennis Gill: Okay.

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Tom Bouwer: So

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Tom Bouwer: I worked with

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Tom Bouwer: Well, I’ve worked with a number of different organizations. But the biggest thing that prevents people from starting a simple scorecard

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Tom Bouwer: is that they actually have too much data, or they don’t think that it’s perfect.

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Tom Bouwer: And so they’re trying to create the perfect scorecard instead of just starting.

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Tom Bouwer: and you know, folks, I’ve got news for you. Your scorecard will never be perfect.

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Tom Bouwer: They may not even be correct. But you’re looking for trends. Are we getting better, or are we getting worse? And here’s the other thing is that the people you want working in your organization? They like accountability. They like a challenge, and accountable people like numbers because it takes the subjective, the anecdotal out of the decision-making process out of issue-solving.

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Tom Bouwer: and boils it down to just really good facts. Hey, our productivity productivity number for our staff right now is 53%

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Tom Bouwer: productivity utilization. People use different words. But that’s.

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Dennis Gill: And yeah.

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Tom Bouwer: Of the time. Right? That people have. How productive are they being

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Tom Bouwer: okay? Well, 53%’s not very good.

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Tom Bouwer: And so he says, Oh, well, I really like Sally, and she does a really this and so and so, and then we get into all this anecdotal, and with numbers, you can bring it right back and say, guys.

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Tom Bouwer: it’s 53%.

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Tom Bouwer: So what’s the real issue?

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Tom Bouwer: Is it how we’re managing, is it? How we’re setting to appointments. Is it how we’re staffing? Is it our sales? Is it our referral process, you know. Is it our billing? There’s something there that’s not right when we’re at 53

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Tom Bouwer: definitely.

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Tom Bouwer: So that’s kind of the 3rd And then the 4th area that we typically look at will be overall profit

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Tom Bouwer: right? Just how are we performing?

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Tom Bouwer: And what I’ve seen with my clients is that typically

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Tom Bouwer: we’ll see revenue and profit grow by about 18 to 20% a year.

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Tom Bouwer: And probably just as important.

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Tom Bouwer: The owners or the leaders of the company feel like it’s just easier like they have their life back like they actually know what’s going on. They’re not waking up at 3 in the morning, grabbing a piece of paper and writing something down because they’re thinking about it, and then they go on the next morning, and they run around and talk to everybody about that one thing, but the next day it repeats itself, and it’s something else.

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Tom Bouwer: Well, when you’re doing that, your organization is getting pulled left, right, sideways, up, down.

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Tom Bouwer: And instead.

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Tom Bouwer: what we want to do is just simplify things so that they’re easy to manage so that you feel like you really have a handle or grip on your business and know what you need to do, not saying you don’t make decisions. And all of a sudden you do all this, and voila! You’ve got a gazillion dollars in your bank account doesn’t happen that way. You still have to put in the effort.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah. But yes.

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Tom Bouwer: Right, but it just becomes a lot easier and frankly, a lot more fun.

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Dennis Gill: It’s good to hear that these pointers will definitely help our listeners. That! What changes they can make, and what mistakes they have been committing. So yeah, definitely, it must help.

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Dennis Gill: So, yeah, please be.

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Tom Bouwer: Yeah, go ahead. If I were going to.

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Tom Bouwer: you know.

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Tom Bouwer: give, you know, people who are looking to start up a company, or who have a small company right now, or even a large one, for that matter, I’d say I’d say, ask yourself a couple of questions, you know. Do you have the ideal structure where roles and responsibilities are identified and crystal clear, not an org chart

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Tom Bouwer: where people have titles.

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Tom Bouwer: I’m talking about where you say this person is responsible for these 3, 4, or 5 key things that describe 80% of what they need to deliver on every day.

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Tom Bouwer: I’d ask, do you have good weekly meetings?

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Tom Bouwer: Do they tend to go on and on and on? Are you talking about the same problem that you were talking about a month ago, or 3 months ago, or 6 months ago.

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Tom Bouwer: you know, if you don’t have a good structure set up with clear

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Tom Bouwer: Accountabilities and roles. If your meetings are going on and on, and the issues, the problems keep coming back.

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Tom Bouwer: If you don’t have that rhythm or cadence, or if you just don’t feel like you really have a grip

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Tom Bouwer: on your organization. Then you need to look at a business operating system, whether it be pinnacle or eos, because it will simplify your life.

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Tom Bouwer: and it will boil things down to the critical decisions you need to make.

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Tom Bouwer: The 3rd thing I’d look at

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Tom Bouwer: would be, does the leadership team or do your executives? Do you all have 90 day goals or objectives? And I mentioned that earlier we call them rocks.

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Tom Bouwer: And so

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Tom Bouwer: how does everyone have something? And is it specific and measurable? Do we know what done looks like

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Tom Bouwer: in 90 days?

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Tom Bouwer: Is it something like

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Tom Bouwer: sign up? 5 more referral partners.

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Tom Bouwer: Okay, that’s specific. I know what done looks like that’s a good 90 day rock.

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Tom Bouwer: is it? Help improve productivity?

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Tom Bouwer: Well, that’s an awful rock cause. What does help mean? Right? I mean, you know, you see, people well, this quarter, I’m really gonna work on productivity, or I’m gonna work on billing, or I’m gonna work on this.

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Tom Bouwer: Well, hey, that’s that’s nice. I’m glad you’re working on it. But what are you actually going to get done

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Tom Bouwer: like, what does done look like.
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Tom Bouwer: And when you start to really focus the organization on those 90 day objectives, you will get a lot more done again. We go from 3 year. Picture one year, goals, 90 day rocks, and then the weekly meeting cadence to check in and to say, Are you on track or off track

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Tom Bouwer: with your 90 day objective, and when you’re off track great, what help do you need?

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Tom Bouwer: Right?

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Tom Bouwer: So

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Tom Bouwer: that’s kind of what I would suggest. People take a look at.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah. So, guys, as you are listening to Tom 90 Day, you can just make a note of that 90 day taking out small targets creating for your teams. So what Tom is suggesting that would really help in starting a new business, or even if you have a business at this time, and just expanding it to more newer heights.

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Dennis Gill: Right.

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Tom Bouwer: That’s exactly right. And what I found is that

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Tom Bouwer: I’ve worked with. I worked with a 14 person Pilates studio that had no leadership team. And I’ve worked with a 3 billion dollar bank.

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Tom Bouwer: Oh, man.

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Tom Bouwer: you know, and everyone in between.

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Tom Bouwer: And they all need these tools.

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Tom Bouwer: And these are people that you know, have Phds from Harvard and Yale, and wherever that are running these really large companies. But they still need to be brought back to the basics, and here’s the thing. If any of you have ever played a sport.

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Tom Bouwer: all teams have a coach.

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Dennis Gill: There are.

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Tom Bouwer: Business is exactly the same.

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Tom Bouwer: You need a coach to be able to see the playing field from the outside to simplify you. I mean. Take Lebron, James.

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Tom Bouwer: He has a coat

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Tom Bouwer: right, or you can take Messi. He has a coat.

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Dennis Gill: He has a good.

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Tom Bouwer: Right. And what do those coaches do? They bring them back to the basics.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Tom Bouwer: Bring them back to the basics all the time.

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Tom Bouwer: and I think one of the questions that you wanted me to cover

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Tom Bouwer: was you know, how long does this take?

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Tom Bouwer: So you know, I’ll typically start with a company.

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Tom Bouwer: and we’ll do 3 days over the 1st 3 months.

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Tom Bouwer: and that’s to build the foundation and the muscle memory. And then after that, we’ll work every 90 days.

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Tom Bouwer: And there’s a science behind 90 days. So for those of you who are more scientifically, scientifically, you know, angled. After about 89 days, something happens in your brain and you just start going. Oh, wow! A unicorn! Oh, there’s a rabbit! Oh, a squirrel! Wow! I’m gonna chase that squirrel.

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Dennis Gill: Yeah.

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Tom Bouwer: We completely lose focus.

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Tom Bouwer: And so that’s why we have this 90 day thing. But after the foundational tools, that’s just the beginning.

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Tom Bouwer: Okay? And then we start every 90 days to get together.

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Tom Bouwer: You know, within a year, clients are gonna have a really good foundation. So within 12 months, so basically 5 or 6 meetings with me over the course of 12 months.

00:20:48.939 –> 00:20:50.919
Tom Bouwer: We’ll get a really good start.

00:20:51.070 –> 00:21:03.019
Tom Bouwer: Most of my clients are with me for anywhere from 2 to 5 years. But that’s because we keep growing and adding more things in. But to get started.

00:21:03.270 –> 00:21:11.900
Tom Bouwer: yeah, you know, probably 6 meetings over a 12 month timeframe. It’s like most things. It’s a time based learning approach.

00:21:11.920 –> 00:21:13.969
Tom Bouwer: I could do it all in a week.

00:21:13.990 –> 00:21:16.770
Tom Bouwer: And you’d remember maybe 3% of it.

00:21:16.950 –> 00:21:27.710
Tom Bouwer: So it’s better to keep coming back and building on the foundation and going forward. And also, frankly, all of you have businesses to run.

00:21:27.710 –> 00:21:28.060
Dennis Gill: No.

00:21:28.060 –> 00:21:30.409
Tom Bouwer: Spending a whole week learning this.

00:21:30.530 –> 00:21:41.129
Tom Bouwer: you know. Here’s the other thing I’d say, if you’re thinking to yourself right now. Wow! I don’t have time to take 6 h and spend it with Tom or someone like him.

00:21:41.430 –> 00:21:44.590
Tom Bouwer: That’s the exact reason you need this.

00:21:44.750 –> 00:21:48.809
Tom Bouwer: If you can’t take 6 h to work on your business.

00:21:48.870 –> 00:21:54.890
Tom Bouwer: That means you’re too in your business in the weeds all the time. You can’t take a deep breath.

00:21:55.750 –> 00:22:04.940
Tom Bouwer: step back and work on your business, and that’s what we’re doing in these sessions. Otherwise you’re just you’re in it all the time, going crazy.

00:22:05.430 –> 00:22:06.220
Tom Bouwer: So.

00:22:06.460 –> 00:22:07.130
Dennis Gill: Got it that.

00:22:07.130 –> 00:22:09.770
Tom Bouwer: Would be my thoughts on that.

00:22:10.830 –> 00:22:37.449
Dennis Gill: Perfect perfect, and I think we did cover all most of the topics that we were to cover on the questions that we were about to share. So I hope this does help our listeners a lot, and they could take the pointers out of that, and obviously they can decide accordingly, and then they can consult the concerned person, or consult with you and proceed further accordingly. Yeah.

00:22:37.740 –> 00:22:51.029
Dennis Gill: So just one thing before we wrap up. So how does this Pbo’s growth of the Home Care Agency? How does it support the growth of the home Care agency? So can it help with the expansion into new markets. Also.

00:22:51.440 –> 00:23:11.780
Tom Bouwer: Yes, absolutely. I’ve seen several agencies already expand into other markets, or, as sometimes add additional services, so as in in, you know right now, healthcare in general is changing so much, and it’s already complex and regulated enough

00:23:11.880 –> 00:23:23.030
Tom Bouwer: that, having a real crystal, clear focus helps with, where do we expand. What offices, what services? How do we recruit?

00:23:23.100 –> 00:23:30.959
Tom Bouwer: You know that’s been a really big thing with a lot of my agencies is, how do we recruit the best people.

00:23:31.777 –> 00:23:33.090
Tom Bouwer: and retain them.

00:23:33.100 –> 00:23:42.109
Tom Bouwer: So a lot of our time has been spent on. What’s our recruiting process? Who are we looking for? What are they looking for? How do we keep them?

00:23:42.829 –> 00:23:53.959
Tom Bouwer: As opposed to? Just yeah, we found a body. Yeah, okay. Now we have another body. It’s, how do we create a culture that’s sticky that people want to work for?

00:23:54.010 –> 00:23:59.051
Tom Bouwer: And so, you know, absolutely, it’s all of those things.

00:23:59.560 –> 00:24:02.069
Tom Bouwer: and you know, I think that

00:24:02.530 –> 00:24:04.899
Tom Bouwer: the there’s 2 industries

00:24:05.619 –> 00:24:14.729
Tom Bouwer: I haven’t worked with. One is nuclear. So I’ve never worked with a nuclear company and I’ve never worked with a lobbying firm.

00:24:14.820 –> 00:24:16.799
Tom Bouwer: But outside of that.

00:24:16.860 –> 00:24:24.950
Tom Bouwer: pretty much I’ve worked with every organization, and I can tell you that it comes back to these basic things, no matter what industry. And you’re in

00:24:25.270 –> 00:24:26.899
Tom Bouwer: across the board.

00:24:27.010 –> 00:24:30.059
Tom Bouwer: And and I would like, if you’re interested

00:24:30.180 –> 00:24:38.809
Tom Bouwer: and learning more, you can either go to my website, which is the Bauer group.com, and that’s BOU.

00:24:38.930 –> 00:24:40.930
Tom Bouwer: WER. Group.
00:24:41.150 –> 00:24:45.499
Tom Bouwer: My last name is a mix of Dutch and German, and a few other things.

00:24:46.295 –> 00:24:51.830
Tom Bouwer: You can also email me, Tom, at Tombouwercom.

00:24:52.400 –> 00:24:57.550
Tom Bouwer: So tom@tombouwer.com

00:24:58.206 –> 00:25:08.279
Tom Bouwer: or you know, if you want just text me, (616) 635-9900. That’s my cell phone. Please do not abuse that and put it out on lists.

00:25:08.709 –> 00:25:15.709
Tom Bouwer: But you know, introduce yourself and say, Hey, I’m so and so heard your podcast would love to chat, or

00:25:15.730 –> 00:25:18.929
Tom Bouwer: you know I give away a lot of my stuff for free.

00:25:19.340 –> 00:25:34.569
Tom Bouwer: because I believe that we need to help 1st before asking for anything in return. In fact, when I work with clients. My guarantee is this, I’ll show up. I’ll do my work with you, and if you don’t think I added, value don’t pay me

00:25:34.770 –> 00:25:35.920
Tom Bouwer: very simple.

00:25:36.200 –> 00:25:39.506
Tom Bouwer: right? So there’s not a lot of downside

00:25:40.010 –> 00:25:45.479
Tom Bouwer: I haven’t had anyone not pay me yet, so I think I deliver on that promise.

00:25:45.480 –> 00:25:48.170
Dennis Gill: I hope it remains the same. Yeah, it will.

00:25:49.110 –> 00:25:49.570
Tom Bouwer: So.

00:25:49.570 –> 00:25:50.000
Dennis Gill: Well, yeah.

00:25:50.000 –> 00:25:59.559
Tom Bouwer: You know, but it’s if you need help, with something. You read one of the books that I’ve written, and you want a question. You have a question about something, shoot me an email

00:25:59.918 –> 00:26:08.570
Tom Bouwer: and say, Hey, I’d like to get 15 min of your time. I’m more than happy to do that. So to your listeners. Please take me up on that.

00:26:09.810 –> 00:26:33.799
Dennis Gill: Okay. So I hope everybody has taken down the details that was shared by Tom. And obviously, this podcast would be shared on our Linkedin pages Tom’s Linkedin pages. We will be sharing it, and you can again just comment on that. Also. If anything is required, any help is required. We’ll be happy to assist you in having a conversation with Tom, too, if anybody is interested at that.

00:26:34.960 –> 00:26:46.559
Dennis Gill: So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Tom, for sharing your expertise today and to our lovely audience. Thank you for tuning in until next time. I’m Dennis Gill, signing off. Thank you. Everybody.

00:26:46.560 –> 00:26:47.420
Tom Bouwer: Thank you very much.