Miriam Allred (00:11)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. I hope everyone's having an awesome week. It's great to be back with you. Today in the lab, I am joined by Justin Curry, the founder and CEO of FEMA Home Care. Justin, welcome to the lab.

Justin Currie (00:25)
Yes, thanks Miriam. I'm happy to be back. I'm surprised you had me back, but I'm grateful for it because I'm excited to be here.

Miriam Allred (00:31)
Surprised I had you back. Yeah,

right. I have been looking forward to having you on this show. You have been on previous podcasts and it's you're long overdue to be on the show. You know, I'm coming up on eight or nine months at this point and so better late than never. You and I were just talking about it's great to reconnect. You have had a really interesting couple of years actually and that's what I want to unpack today. So some people listening to this may not know you or may not know your story. So backtrack to kind of pre-home care, starting your business, give us a little

highlight reel of your last few years.

Justin Currie (01:03)
Sure, absolutely. So basically how I kind of started out, so I owned an inspection business up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and that's where I'm from originally, is Saskatchewan, Canada. And so owning that business, actually, I'll give you kind of the brief overview of how I got down here in the first place, but owning that business, I actually met my now fiance, who is from just outside of Philadelphia, and we were long distance for a couple years, but I started learning more and more about the home care industry during that time.

period because my grandmother actually became ill. And with her being ill, I was kind of in and out. I wasn't local to where she was at, but I would travel back and forth. But I was also very involved in helping find care for her. And, you know, being in a really, really small town, that was really challenging. We only have about 500 people in my town. So that, that, you know, brought up a whole nother slew of problems and obstacles to kind of get around. But ultimately we were able to find her care and she eventually went

and moved into the nursing home and eventually passed from there. But that time period was about probably about four to five years from all that happening. So I really learned a lot about it. And as I met my fiance down here, I started looking at different opportunities and different growth industries down outside of Philadelphia. And obviously this is national, international. ⁓ But learning more about the industry, I realized that I could put kind of my business knowledge and skills to work in an industry where I could also

help people. know, in my inspection business in Canada, you know, I help people but I wasn't changing anyone's life, So it was a really good opportunity for me to obviously, we decided I was going to move down just outside of Philadelphia with my fiance and so with that I decided to start a home care agency and that's because I can combine my love of business with helping others as well. So it was just kind of a win-win situation and that's how I found myself here and when I started the agency, I believe

that was in 2018 now. I started the agency and I was actually immigrating at the same time. I'm on a visa and I always kind of joke with everybody that actually starting the agency was much easier than the immigration process. ⁓ that's kind of what brought me down here and it's been yeah it's been a really exciting I guess seven, I'm going on eight years now.

Miriam Allred (03:16)
You

Amazing. I was just going to ask what year this was because this was pre-pandemic, correct?

Justin Currie (03:29)
It was, yeah, we kind of just started, we just got some traction going and then we hit the pandemic immediately, so.

Miriam Allred (03:36)
I know and you're like, wow, what a time to be in home care and in the US all at once. ⁓ So seven or eight years, just briefly kind of overview like growth and like evolution of the business from then to now, just like numbers roster, just some of the high points, like payer sources, just give us kind of like landscape of the business the last few years.

Justin Currie (03:39)
you

Sure, sure. So starting out, know, we were like a lot of agencies, right? We were everything to everyone, right? We were Medicaid, we were VA, we were private pay. we didn't want to kind of niche down on any opportunities. And I'm glad we did it that way to start out, but it wasn't any way we could really scale. So over the years, we saw a lot of problems with Medicaid, especially in PA with reimbursement rates. I know reimbursement rates for Medicaid, they're pretty decent in some other states. In PA, they're really not. It makes it, you

next to impossible to work with, unfortunately. And so we ended up kind of pivoting and moving away from that model. And what we did was we, you if anyone's heard my previous podcast or anything like that is we really specialize in private pay. We went all in on higher end private pay. So we were charging a lot more than other agencies. We still do charge a lot more than other agencies, but we increased our level of quality. So the level, the quality of care went way, way up, but also it helped us

kind of control our growth. So when your rates are a little bit higher like that, you can control the volume that's coming in. And with a staffing crisis, that's pretty imperative because we never really had any issues with finding new staff just because we can control the volume of clients coming in. So we operate a little bit lower volume, a higher margin ⁓ type of model, and it's served us really, really well. you know, kind of fast forward to

to COVID, we ran into some challenges. We actually still grew a little bit through COVID. It was the year after that was the only year where we went down a little bit in revenue. And that was, ⁓ I call it like the unemployment crisis. They were paying everybody to stay at home on unemployment insurance. So it made it really challenging to bring people in. And that was in and ever since then, it's kind of the trajectory has been, just up, up, up. And it's been a really exciting time. And kind of fast forward to today is we do

a lot of private pay, we do a lot of VA and a lot of long-term care insurance and it's a relatively split mix amongst those three things but that's where our focus and our target is right now.

Miriam Allred (06:07)
Okay, so

you really have just cut out Medicaid. I was going to ask when you first started a lot of startup early stage businesses, listen to this, was it just purely client demand and that's why you started across payer sources or had you heard things from other operators? Why did you start in all payer sources?

Justin Currie (06:24)
It was really challenging. The Medicaid model and I think other things, I know we have a local area on aging that's local that actually provides some hours of care for seniors. Those entities are really, really difficult to work with. With Medicaid, there's a ton of billing complexities that come with it. There's compliance issues. The first year that we worked with Medicaid, we had to pay back about $30,000 in claims just because our paperwork wasn't

I was spending my time, I was out in the field marketing, working on other things and I kind of had the choice at that point of whether I wanted to jump back in and really learn about Medicaid and figure out all the billing complexities or else kind of eliminate it completely and move forward with this higher margin home care. And so ultimately that's what I decided to do but any advice that I would give to new owners is just to know your numbers. I have a lot of agency owners that come to me and

and they want to sign up for Medicaid, they want to sign up for VA, they want to do all these things. And whenever I ask them what the reimbursement rate of those payers is, they don't know. I don't think I've ever had one that's been able to tell me what the reimbursement rate is. So whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter what state, what payer sources you're using, just know your numbers. If the numbers make sense, then that's a possible payer source for you. If they don't, then you need to focus on the ones that do provide that margin.

Miriam Allred (07:54)
When you said finding staff hasn't been a challenge for you, I find that surprising because that's not often the case. You said it's all driven by clients. You can kind of like turn the dial on clients and so you're able to always staff that. What do you think is your secret behind that? Why has staffing not been a challenge for you guys?

Justin Currie (08:14)
Just because we don't need the level of volume that a lot of agencies need. So the staffing crisis, it all comes back to the model you're running with, right? I mean, if you're Medicaid and you're operating on high volume, you need a ton of caregivers coming in, right? You have no problem getting clients, but it's getting caregivers. When you flip the script on that and you increase your rates, you're doing private pay, may only, only 5 % of the population may be able to kind of afford your services. And there's a ton of other agencies

that can deliver services to the rest of the population. So that's why we wanted to create a different model with that. But with that, you can offer things to your caregivers that other agencies can't, right? So if you have the higher rates, you have the higher margin, you can invest more not only in their wages, but in kind of the culture of the company, right? The programs, if you wanted to do a profit sharing model, if you wanted to do regular bonuses, there's a lot more that you can play with and work with.

start building that and I'll be honest, it took a little while to to kind of build and get traction with with that because we bring people in and we pay them higher rates, but they still had the mentality that they were getting paid, $12 an hour and you know, they could show up to work when they felt like it. And so to kind of change that mindset, that that probably took the longest, I would say. But now that we have such a solid base of caregivers that we run with that model, now it starts to kind of snowball, right? Is there referring their friends because

they know it's a really great place to work, they're paid well. So now the culture is spreading a little bit, but it did take a little bit to get going. But I would say that's probably one of the biggest reasons we don't need to hire at Volume is just because we kind of control our growth. We pick and choose which clients we're going to be working with.

Miriam Allred (10:02)
And because

you're servicing like high acuity private pay clients, I'm curious, are you hiring caregivers with experience? Do you have like an experience minimum for the caregivers that you're bringing in today?

Justin Currie (10:12)
We do, so we have a couple different levels of packages and our first level is three years minimum experience. And then our next level's up, our five year minimum experience. And we do additional screening and checks and things like that beyond that. do, ⁓ oddly enough, one of our, I would say our most valuable checks is free. It's a social media and a Google search and check. And you wouldn't believe the stuff we've found by doing that. I mean, we're people that are,

you they were involved in a murder, but they weren't convicted of something. You know, a lot of, you find a lot of stuff online about, employees that come in and apply to your company. So that's been one of our most valuable screening tools is just doing a search on them and learning a little bit about them online because a lot of people have a lot of information online. so that's what we're looking out for.

Miriam Allred (11:00)
Is that a specific

screening tool that you're using or that's just someone, something kind of a manual process that you all literally just like Google search, social search and find them out or is there a tool that does that?

Justin Currie (11:10)
No, so we have the, there could be coming out, I don't know, I'm not totally up to date on that. But yeah, we actually are, right now we do that manually.

Miriam Allred (11:19)
Okay. Yeah. I was just curious because I agree. It's amazing how much information is online and how much personal stuff people post online. And so it's a manual process, but you can find a lot of information that will be indicative of the type of employee that they'll be. The other question I wanted to ask is around hours. You're talking about like volume and just the nature of these private pay clients. Do you have a minimum for hours? Do you do a lot of 12 hour, 24 hour live in? Like what is kind of the hour minimum or breakdown that you have?

Justin Currie (11:49)
We do. So when you're controlling the growth like that, it doesn't get quite as chaotic. When we used to run just off of volume, when we were bringing four hour shifts on, it was really difficult to staff, right? Because we were just trying to find literally warm bodies to put in there because we had so many four hour shifts coming in. When you control that a little bit, you're not going to capture all of those four hour shifts, right? So those are typically the ones that are harder to staff as the shorter hour ones. And we do have a four hour minimum shift requirement. But when you control that, we might eliminate

50 % that might not be able to afford our services and they might move on to the next agency. So we're only having 50%. So you're able to control that a lot easier than when you're just operating off of volume and taking anything you can in. But we do have four hour shift minimum and then we do a 20 hour per week minimum.

Miriam Allred (12:36)
Okay,

awesome. ⁓ Can I ask a like revenue recap? How long did it take you to hit your first million? And then about where you at about year five, because we're going to talk a lot about the last two years, but I want to kind of like catch up to your first million and then where you were at around year five when you were ready to like step out of the business.

Justin Currie (12:57)
Yeah, so the first million was, it was in the second year where we actually had the revenue. We had built the hours up in the first year to basically be over a million dollars, but we didn't actually accrue the million dollars until the second year.

in kind of fast forwarding to, you know, years later, we were about five years in and we were about five and a half years in when I decided to kind of step out of daily operations a little bit. And what had happened there was we were about roughly about 30 clients. And that doesn't sound like a lot, you know, to a Medicaid agency or anything like that. But because of our, value of our clients, we operate on that lower volume model. And so we were around 30 clients. We had about,

Only about four office staff. That's another benefit is you don't want a big office staff You want people who perform at a high level, but also you don't want those overhead operational expenses So we kind of build that into our model is to try and limit office staff as much as possible and so when we were at that stage we were at a place where I Thought at the time that it was a comfortable place for me to step outside when the agency could keep growing and I can start looking at

things like acquisitions. I wasn't, laying on the beach or anything like that, but I was really concentrating on how we were going to move this company forward when the main part of my company started struggling a little bit. And that's when I started to really have to look at things. and I know we're going to talk about that a little bit more as well, but the identifiers for me stepping out of operations were really that we did have that consistent growth going. I had a team that worked extremely

Miriam Allred (14:13)
Yeah.

Justin Currie (14:39)
I found out afterwards that there were some inefficiencies there. so I really was, ⁓ you know, my mindset was that we had a really solid foundation to work from. And unfortunately, after I stepped out, I found some challenges that weren't, they were masked a little bit. I didn't really see them until I stepped out of daily operations.

Miriam Allred (15:01)
Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about like the operation was like humming, like things were going well. And so you felt this like level of confidence to be able to step out of daily operations. You talked about like consistent growth. Was that like 12 months of consistent growth or six months of consistent growth? Like, I want you to get specific of like, what was the look back to then feel like, okay, like we're at a really good place. We're going to be able to keep growing because looking back the last six months were great. Like we should be fine. Like what, was the look back and what were like the indicators from?

from that growth standpoint.

Justin Currie (15:32)
Yeah, so.

basically after like 2021 when you we had the unemployment crisis and we had a little bit of a dip. So we actually had steady growth ever since then, but I wouldn't say it was, predictable revenue or consistent growth. I would say it was a little bit volatile and that was because of some of the challenges that we were having internally. And that's where it was masked a little bit is, know, everybody was working hard, but we were still going up year over year. I mean, we were still creating more and more revenue, which was great, but

that when you look at it on like a weekly or monthly, there was a lot of volatility. There was a lot of ups and downs and extremes. And so that was kind of part of, that timeframe that we were growing. I wouldn't say it was like comfortable growth. I would say we were on a little bit of a shaky foundation.

Miriam Allred (16:20)
Okay, because

this is interesting. And this is the nature of home care, like year over year growth. I think we talk a lot about that, but it's it's not linear. It's like up and down and up and down and big down and big up. You know, I just like see this like curve that is not linear and that is home care. But it's easy. I think I don't know if you're like admitting to this, like as a leader, it's like, ⁓ year over year, like long term, things are going well.

doesn't mean you overlook the short term, but it's almost easy to mask the short term, assuming that things work out in the long term. Like, is that how you would describe it?

Justin Currie (16:56)
Yeah, absolutely. you look at, mean, obviously there's a lot of different variables to it, but it's really hard in home care because it's a lot of the time agencies operate reactively. You know, there's a lot going on and we're reacting to clients coming in and leads coming in and you're always just in kind of react reactivity mode. So it's really hard to tell, how much your office staff is improving or, you know, when, when you might be able to step out or also just if you can trust certain people or not, right? You know, are they getting the job done?

They're out in the field. They're talking to a client They're you know going to a facility and then they're coming back to the office It's really kind of hard to manage when people are really remote and in the field and in the office so I would say Just kind of getting your finger on the pulse of everything is really difficult because there's so many different variables that come into play For an owner that you know is looking to step out of operation So I would say a lot of what masks that was just the general daily I I don't want to call it

chaos, but sometimes it can be a little bit chaotic, you know, operationally in a home care agency. So I would say that kind of masked a little bit of what was going on.

Miriam Allred (18:05)
Okay.

And you said at the time when you were ready to kind of like step out of daily operations, there was four people in place. Can you share what those four roles were?

Justin Currie (18:15)
Yeah, so we had the administrator who was gonna kinda assume my role after I left. We had a scheduler, this was a few years ago now actually, but we've added a few to the team so I was trying to think of exactly who was there. ⁓ We had a sales representative and then we had a care manager as well. So those were kinda the key roles. We did have some remote administrative scheduling help as well, but those were kinda the in-office key roles.

Miriam Allred (18:41)
Okay. And so you

mentioned like an administrator that would be like kind of like director level with the, I'm just going to get into the weeds here because I think this is really important. Like those other three, would they report up to that kind of like GM director level role at that point? Or would anyone still be reporting to you per se?

Justin Currie (18:58)
So when I stepped out, so I was still doing, I was still the direct report for everybody just because we operated a smaller office staff model. So I was the direct report for everybody once I stepped out of that and I shadowed with the administrator for a long time. Once I stepped out of that role, then everybody reported to the administrator and the administrator reported to me.

Miriam Allred (19:18)
Okay.

And how long had that administrator been with the company?

Justin Currie (19:23)
So that was part of the masking of some of the problems that were going on is she was with me since I believe 2019, early 2019. She was my first office staff hire and she actually came on. She was a caregiver slash scheduler slash care manager. was early on in the agency you wear a lot of different hats, but she kind of came up and worked her way through the agency and she did a really, really good job at certain specific jobs and she,

to this day I still say she's one of the nicest people I know and we still keep in touch and everything. ⁓ yeah, that's kind how she kind of progressed through the agency is just kind of worked her way up to a certain point.

Miriam Allred (20:06)
Okay.

And had been with you for a good amount of years. so you had, yeah, like a level of trust and a relationship established. And now I'm curious when, again, when you were ready to like step away, was that like a formal conversation with her and the other office staff? Was it, was it like a big deal? Like, did you make a big deal out of it? Like this is a big change or did you like downplay like?

I'm stepping back to have more of a strategic role like this isn't a big change. Like, which was it? Was it a big change or wasn't it a big change? And what did the communication look like with those four team members?

Justin Currie (20:42)
Yeah, so actually being

I always offer, or I always kind of operate off of like radical transparency as I kind of tell my team everything. So they were aware of even what we were positioning ourselves to do. It wasn't that they were blindsided or anything by this. And so it was very casual. wasn't, you know, any big announcement or anything. We had talked about it beforehand. When we got to that point, I let the rest of the team know that, they'd be reporting to the administrator moving forward. And then myself, I was still going to be very involved. I'm still going to be in

in

the office the majority of the time. If they have any questions or concerns, they can still always come into the office, call me anytime. So it wasn't a total like stepping away. I was still involved, but I'm stepping out of operations.

Miriam Allred (21:27)
Okay.

I think these are important distinctions because where we're going with this is like it didn't go as planned. And so that's why I'm just trying to get as much context going into this of like how you did this, how it was communicated. Like were there any things and maybe you could answer this, like what would you have done differently? Like knowing what you know now, is there anything in that stage, like when you were communicating the step back, like anything that you would have done differently or anything that you feel like are mistakes at this point?

Justin Currie (21:55)
Yeah, 100%. It ⁓ was definitely a mistake. had the wrong people in the wrong seats.

And that was my mistake and everything comes, I always think like everything comes back to leadership and you know, I take the full brunt of that. put those people in those positions. And so ultimately it's my responsibility as the owner. And so the mistake I made was definitely just the people I had in place. And I would say their skill set and I wouldn't even say everybody. would say there was two individuals specifically, but unfortunately the one was obviously in the administrator role. ⁓

and that's gonna all flow downhill, that's gonna present the most challenges, everything in the agency's flowing through the administrator to me, so that gets a little bit muddy as well. So if that role's not operating at a high level, that's gonna cause a lot of problems in a lot of other areas, and that's what was happening. it's, it was, my mistake was just really not recognizing it quickly enough, and I would say some of the reasons that kind of masked me being able to recognize that

was

obviously we had a trust built up. I still trust her, everything, you know, we have a good relationship and everything now. She no longer works here, but we still stay in touch. But also she was a highly motivated individual. She worked extremely hard. And what I kind of found out was just that it wasn't, she was working very hard, but it wasn't very efficient. She was having a lot of time management issues. So it was just a matter, it wasn't attitude, it wasn't the person or anything like that. It was just a matter of the skillset,

not matching that position. There was just a lot of disorganization that was going on and it just took me too long to notice that. So that was my mistake on my end. I was starting to see into the future and I was starting to get excited about growing and acquisitions and things like that. And unfortunately, I stepped out just a little bit too early.

Miriam Allred (23:50)
And you use the word like skills. Do you also think it was expectation setting? The nature of her role did change, but also didn't change, but it was almost, to me, it sounds like the expectations of what the role was like morphing into. Is that accurate?

Justin Currie (24:09)
I think so, think, you know, in her mind...

She wanted to always be like an administrator. That was always her goal. And unfortunately her skillset kind of stayed like she has a really strong skillset and I call it like the ground game, right? She's great going out, talking to clients, making connections, things like that, care management. but when it gets to like operating, managing an organization and managing other people, that's where it became really, really challenging for her. So I wanted to see her in that position. I wanted to see her excel to that position.

and I wanted to see, she wanted to become an administrator, that was always her goal. So we both wanted these things to happen. So I think that played into it a little bit, is like we were both excited about it happening, even though deep down I should have known that, you know, it just wasn't, ⁓ it wasn't the right time, or maybe it just was never the position for her.

Miriam Allred (25:05)
appreciate you sharing this because I think oftentimes it boils down to like trust and communication. But in this case, I actually think it's sometimes the person outgrows the role or the role outgrows the person. And I think that is what happened here. Like you just said, we were both excited. It's what both of you wanted.

but there was just this like misalignment that just happens when the business grows organically. The role changes, the person changes, and sometimes there's just no longer alignment. And it's unfortunate, but it happens. But it wasn't a trust or a communication issue. It was just the nature of the growth and that position.

Justin Currie (25:45)
Absolutely, absolutely. like I said, ⁓ it all comes back to me at the end of the day and I take full responsibility for that and I wish I could have spent more time developing her into that role and she maybe would have had more success. I feel like I did spend some time doing it so maybe it just wasn't a fit to begin with but there's no one ⁓ that would have liked to see that happen more than me is to come in and for her to become successful and move on to bigger and better things.

but that obviously just wasn't the case.

Miriam Allred (26:18)
And this is

really good to hear. know you're being vulnerable and open and I really appreciate this, but in home care and in any business, you have like your number two. And in some cases people are partners and it's like you and your partner are kind of your one and two. then in a lot of cases it's a single owner of these home care companies like you and they hire kind of a number two or a number that's their number one. But it's really difficult to find a person that you trust through and through that also has the skillset that also has the personality like

It's so hard to find like this perfect fit. And even in your case, like she was a really good fit for a long time. But again, the nature of the role changed and it wasn't anything that went wrong. It was just really like the nature of the role and the growth that changed. And so I think this is just super interesting and a lot of people will be able to relate to this. So I wanna talk about how long did this last where you were like,

a little bit distanced from the daily operations. Like how long did it take for you to realize like, okay, things aren't working out. I need to step back in and sort this out. What was like the time lapse?

Justin Currie (27:28)
I would say it was about three months that I was kind of totally out of it and I would say from months three to six was when I started to kind of take note of what was going on and start to get more and more involved. And by six months I was pretty much totally back in it making changes and making moves in the agency.

Miriam Allred (27:45)
So let's

talk about that. You stepping back in, this isn't easy. This isn't something you want to do. You can sense what's happening, but talk about stepping back in. What were the immediate conversations you had? Did you come in and just shadow to really get a sense of what was going on? What did that look like of you stepping back in to assess what was happening?

Justin Currie (28:07)
Yeah, so basically when I came back in, obviously everybody knew we were having challenges and problems. So think they were happy to see me come in. It's another body in there helping. And so basically what I did, I just took my role back.

I knew at that time that I didn't have the right person doing it. So I knew it was either me or the next person I hired that would have to take that over. So I immediately stepped in and started doing that on my own. And in that three to six month time frame that I was talking about where I started getting more more involved, I saw the writing on the wall. And I actually went out and talked to somebody that I knew. She was an executive director at one of the assisted living communities that we used to do some work for.

and

I had known her over the years and really strong candidate and I had basically made a list of about 10 people that I knew were really strong candidates in the area and she was actually the first one that I had had reached out to. So I was actually meeting with her prior to me being totally involved back in operations and then once I did that I continued to speak with her and that was about probably another six months. It didn't happen like right away or anything. I wanted to fix

things and repair some things first. And so we got the foundation to a better spot and then eventually ended up bringing her on board and the administrator was still on board at that time as well.

Miriam Allred (29:30)
Okay. And you said you also wanted to come in and fine tune some processes and operations. What other processes were slipping or what other things did you notice that needed attention and or repair?

Justin Currie (29:43)
Yeah, so that's kind of the interesting part is we had really good systems and processes in place, but due to the people problem, they were not being executed. They weren't being improved. They weren't being optimized. They weren't being executed. And that was probably one of our biggest problems. So there wasn't a lot of, issues with changing other things aside from people, right? It was, it was a lot of when we brought new people on board, was a lot of training and a lot of changing the cultural mindset.

because people learn to operate a certain way with like, know, that problems are okay and they're normal and they're gonna consistently happen and they are to a certain level, but not to the level that they were. And so to kind of get their mindset shifted was all part of that as well.

Miriam Allred (30:30)
And so there was a scheduler, a care coordinator and a sales rep. I didn't ask, but how long had each of them been with the organization at this point?

Justin Currie (30:39)
the sales rep was quite new at that time as well. She was about six months. And I apologize, we did have one more sales representative at a little bit later on as well. So she had been about six months. The scheduler had been there quite a while, probably two years. ⁓ And the care coordinator was there, I believe about three years at that time.

Miriam Allred (31:03)
Okay.

And the reason I ask is you talk about the processes were good, but they just weren't being executed on. And so my mind goes to how long had these people been in place? Because there's just this level of complacency. Like they know what to do. They know how to do it, but they're also like comfortable. Like they know when they can let things slip. They know when they can kind of like cut corners because they've been doing it long enough, but you let that go on too long and then it becomes an issue. Is that what you would chalk that up to or not necessarily?

Justin Currie (31:31)
Yeah, well that's a good note as well, is that I was looking very closely at the care coordinator and the scheduler and the sales representative, right? I was looking really closely at them and not quite closely enough at the administrator. And so when things weren't being followed, I'd dig in and I'd investigate. And I did, mean, the red flag came up quite frequent that it kind of traced back to the administrator. But to be honest with you, and I'm usually pretty good at spotting that stuff.

But she usually had like a pretty good reason, you know, of why everything was going on the way it was. ⁓ So that was a little bit challenging. As somebody you trust, and at that time, I had a lot of trust in her. And, know, if she's explaining something like that to me, I'm going to believe her, right? And so I investigated the best I could and kind of found out where the issues were arising. But I was, I was looking too closely at the field staff and not closely enough at, you know, the leadership. And that's when I kind of, when I dove in, I learned more and more about that.

and throughout the whole process of, changing her out for a new executive director and through all that process was a huge learning experience for me. You know, I really learned, how we should be operating and how things are a lot smoother with the right person in the right place. So yeah, total learning. We're always learning as owners and that was a big learning experience for me.

Miriam Allred (32:51)
What was happening

to hours in revenue because were those indicators of what was happening or those weren't even indicators?

Justin Currie (32:59)
So they actually, we slowed down a little bit. We were still growing. We've always continued to grow a little bit, but growth slowed down and we even like flatlined a little bit. I wouldn't say flatlined, but it was a very gradual, very small line, but we kind of flatlined for a little bit and that was a big indicator. But also just because I'm still involved, like I still am involved in the team's chats and everything like that, even when I stepped out operations. So I can see when there's fire.

and people are having challenges or we lose a client or anything, I still have a pretty good pulse on that stuff even though I technically I was you know away. I was still keeping a pretty close eye on that stuff so it wasn't really hard to identify you know what was happening.

Miriam Allred (33:43)
Okay.

⁓ I feel like I want to keep digging though. Like how did you find out what was happening? Like, wasn't it an accountability thing? Was it a communication thing? Was it a training thing? Like if you really like dig into like what were the root causes, what would you say they were?

Justin Currie (33:59)
Yeah, so basically not following through, like not executing on the policies and procedures. And what I'll give you like an example, this is a really good story to why what was happening was happening, is we have a full caregiver control procedure where, you know, we're talking about, lates and warnings and things like that. We have basically everything implemented for that. And we still use that exact same system today and it works fantastic. But unfortunately, it just wasn't being executed before.

So, towards the end of ⁓ the administrator's time here, we were having challenges and we were having constant challenges with caregivers, not showing up and we've never really had that problem before, before like that kind of like that six month span or whatever. And so, we were in a meeting, we were in an all team meeting and I was chatting about it I'm like, okay, why have we had this huge spike in call-offs and lates and things like that? And I said, okay, what's our status on like our caregiver control process, you know?

how

many warnings have went out, how many people have gotten terminated, know, basically all the metrics that go along with that. And looked at me dead in the eye and just said, we haven't been doing that.

And that was when I was like, okay, I know we're making a lot of changes, right? And so that's what I mean by like not, not following through on processes. even though they're, simple systems and processes, they just weren't being followed. And, I know they're usually there's a lot of different variables that come into situations like these, like, you know, the system wasn't working and the wrong person or whatever. can be a variety of different reasons in this one. Unfortunately, it was just, even though they're really good people.

Miriam Allred (35:11)
You're like, there it is.

Justin Currie (35:38)
they were in definitely in the wrong seats.

Miriam Allred (35:42)
Okay, this is great. So they say we're not doing that. What is your response? What do you say? Do you say why aren't you doing like literally how did you respond in that moment?

Justin Currie (35:53)
Well, I did, I held my anger back for one thing. ⁓ I said, but no, I literally just said, I just said straight faced and I just said, so the most important, the most important process in the company we're not doing. And I just said, why, why is that? And there was no answer for it. And at that time I already knew we're making changes, we're moving on. So I didn't dig into it too much further. I just said, okay, well start doing it moving forward. And I knew in the background that I was, I was making changes.

Miriam Allred (35:55)
Okay.

Okay, okay,

because that, okay, so you ask why there's no good response. Like they can't even justify the behavior. And it sounds like your mind immediately goes to, I need to make changes. I was curious though, yeah, does that lead to one-on-one conversations with the one or two people that are responsible for this to give them some sort of like action plan? Like, okay, let's implement this for a month. Like, you know what I mean? Like was there...

Was there like a trial period to get them back on track or your mind immediately went to, we've got to make changes.

Justin Currie (36:56)
We, my mind went exactly to that, but also we did put like performance improvement plans in place that weren't really, they didn't really work for the specific individual, but my sales representative actually, I have a really high level of trust with her as well. And she's a really, ⁓ she rolls up the sleeves and gets things done, even if it's not sales related. So her and I actually worked pretty closely together and we covered a lot of the critical stuff. And we just said, okay, this is just a,

This is just a season where we're gonna have to dig back in. We're the only ones that can reliably do this job right now. So let's do this and in the background, I'm working on hiring the right person that can come in and help us with this.

Miriam Allred (37:38)
I think this is so fascinating. It wasn't the processes, it was the people not executing on the processes. So I'll ask the same question, knowing what you know now, you've brought in new staff, have you approached training differently? Have you approached expectation setting differently to hopefully mitigate this from happening down the road?

Justin Currie (37:57)
Yeah, so we have ⁓ a lot more accountability in place, I would say. We have a lot more KPIs and metrics tied to the specific individuals. ⁓ And also we have in leadership, the executive director I have is outstanding. I mean, she's literally turned this agency around and improved operations and I trust, you know, she talks to the rest of the team, the rest of the team respects her ⁓ and she just does a fantastic job. So having that in place,

has helped a great deal. We obviously, have KPIs, we have our metrics, but she's also managing the day to day and letting me know if there's any issues arising, any culture problems, and that's been instrumental. So I would say adding that accountability with the different metrics and tracking, and then having the right person at the helm.

Miriam Allred (38:48)
And that's a great note right there of you had metrics in place and knowing what I know about you like you probably had good metrics in place that you thought were good enough, but then this people process issue happens and it's like ⁓ There's another set of metrics that we didn't have in place that we need in place so that this doesn't happen again

Justin Currie (39:06)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, you find I've implemented that a few times before where you can implement metrics and sometimes there's changes in your team, right? Sometimes there's changes in your agency, maybe you make a pair source changes or whatever, and maybe, you you switch out a couple of team members, metrics tend to like change a little bit as well. And they're maybe not as ⁓ applicable to a specific individual. And so with that, that's kind of always evolving and changing. So I keep a very close eye on

that, but also getting a little more in depth with metrics like month to date metrics rather than just like, hey, what's our current? It's like looking at month to date, year to date, those types of things. so digging in a little bit deeper has definitely been helpful too. And also ⁓ tying a lot of like incentives and things like that to the different metrics has helped out as well.

Miriam Allred (40:00)
And I've experienced

this firsthand. Sometimes metrics get stale and there's a level of complacency that can happen. Like what sounds like happened was there were metrics in place, but people get complacent and the number is just the number and you want to avoid that from happening. I guess my question to you is even how often you're analyzing metrics all the time.

But how often as makes sense to like refresh the metrics so that they don't get stale so that you can mitigate that complacency.

Justin Currie (40:30)
So metrics, we're checking them. It's pretty easy to find out because when you're in the meeting, right, I have each of my team members, they have their own specific KPIs that they report in the meeting. So it's pretty easy to tell if something isn't applicable or if they're not aligned with something or a metric's off and we need to have improvement. So those meetings kind of tell me in real time what those are. So there's not really a need for me to go in and say, hey, we're gonna change this, change this. I'd say the only

pivotal point, would be like when we bring on a new team member and we have to kind of disperse metrics differently.

Miriam Allred (41:05)
Okay,

because it's tough to like forecast like people and processes and changes, but I think yeah, the best that we can do is having a pulse on metrics weekly. But my mind almost goes to, okay, you have a metric in place for three to six months, and it's great. It's the numbers are going up, they're doing what they're supposed to. You you can just keep that metric in place indefinitely.

But sometimes that becomes an issue itself. we've been looking at the same set of numbers for six months and they're telling us exactly what we want to see. How do you get ahead of that in the short term? know, do you change those metrics? Do you add a secondary metric? Do you change the metric completely? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like sometimes metrics are telling us what we want to see for a long period of time. And that becomes an issue.

Justin Currie (41:53)
Yeah, well, I'd say... ⁓

getting hungry with goals, Is like metrics are all tied to goals and outcomes. So I mean, if we're flatlined, we have more room for growth, right? Like where else can we grow and what can we change these metrics to, right? So we're always looking to optimize and grow. We're not looking to just kind of stay, stay linear and just keep moving business as usual. If we're consistently hitting something, we're gonna try and do a little bit better. And maybe we tie an increased incentive to that, depending on the

and what it is, you can make those little adjustments, but you should really always be improving. And I know what you're saying because some will flatline, right? I mean, we're never gonna have a case where we have zero caregivers ever show up late, right? That's just not reality. But if we can keep that at a certain stage for a long period of time, that's one that we want to kind of stay linear, right? So there's some that can't really be changed, but you still have to track them. But then there's some that kind of evolve over time with new goals, with new people coming on board.

maybe you change processes, maybe you change strategies, that's when you can look at kind of switching them around a little bit.

Miriam Allred (43:01)
Yeah, my last thought on this too is oftentimes the metrics that we're focused on become the operational strengths. And another way to refresh the metrics is think of operational weaknesses. Nobody wants to vocalize that and nobody wants to track that because those are the inherent weaknesses. But another way to think about it is identifying the weaknesses of each individual role or each department or each function and attaching metrics to the weaknesses. Again, that doesn't happen.

Naturally, because nobody wants to point out the weaknesses, let alone be responsible for solving those or be held accountable to that metric. But that's a good way to turn weaknesses into strengths rather than just reporting on all the strengths as they are.

Justin Currie (43:41)
Absolutely. And to your point as well, so we have like an executive level dashboard that myself and the fund look at and that's basically just high level, right? I mean, we go through all the top line revenue, conversion rates, things like that, right? And we also have a dashboard within the team and that's not their reporting dashboard, but that's for them to basically track everything. We have very extensive KPIs and so they're in there tracking all of those. So if we need to dig deeper on something, to your point, if you're seeing a weakness or a problem, that's when we're

going to go from the executive dashboard and we're going to start looking at the other dashboard and start digging deeper into that, into kind of the micro-kpis and you know just kind of learning more about that and that's going to be kind of our first step to investigating that and you're absolutely right yeah we will tie metrics obviously to you know any weaknesses that we have and we've kind of we've kind of pre-done that by having like our executive dashboard and everything we have all our critical stuff but if there is something that we need to go deeper on then absolutely

we'll make those little adjustments kind of more behind the scenes.

Miriam Allred (44:44)
So you're

very process-focused and also very numbers-driven. How do you help your team be balanced, being people-driven and being process-driven? In home care, both are extremely important. Like this is people's lives, families that we're taking care of, but also the business needs to grow, especially now that you have a partner brought on board. How do you help your team balance being focused and committed to both?

Justin Currie (45:11)
Yeah, so that's a really good topic to talk about because that's one of the sales reps I had on board. She was an incredible person. She was really good at her job. We couldn't really get her aligned. We have a unique model, right, where we have...

bit higher rates than other agencies, but we offered more value. She couldn't really see that value proposition, right? She was thinking maybe our rates were a little bit too high, so she wasn't really in alignment with our model and our culture. And so ultimately she didn't end up working out and still great relationship with her and everything. It was just that she was really uncomfortable having those conversations. And we find that a lot in healthcare actually, is there's a lot of people that, you know, they're in it for the right reasons. They're very compassionate.

but they're maybe not as in tune with the financial side of it. And maybe not in tune with the fact that you have to have a healthy, profitable business in order to deliver a high quality, a high level of quality, right? And I think that point's missed with a lot of people in healthcare because they get into it for the compassion reason, but it's also a business to run. so yeah, there's been people on the team that haven't been in alignment with that, but that's something we also look for when we're hiring is people that are gonna

to come in, they're gonna be aligned with our model. We talk a lot about that during recruiting, during onboarding, just so there's no surprises or anything like that. We tell them what all their responsibilities are gonna be, what the expectations are, and you know, we have that conversation with them ahead of time because not everybody's a fit and it's not just in my agency or in Home Care, that's any company, right, is they have to be aligned with your service model.

Miriam Allred (46:49)
So you

tell me, do you hire for heart or for skill or both?

Justin Currie (46:54)
I would say a little bit of both. ⁓ Again, there's a lot of variables when it comes to different positions and different people. ⁓ To be honest with you, everybody I have on staff right now, I've either went after myself and recruited myself because I knew them from my networking days when I was out marketing. they're recruited by me. The other ones that are on board were actually referred by my existing staff members as well. So there's been nobody that's been like, hey, we're gonna

on Indeed or something like that. It's like, hey, here's the position, here's the responsibilities, who do we know? And that's worked out really well for us is just kind of recruiting specifically for that position. Not people we don't know, but people we know.

Miriam Allred (47:39)
And we're, think we're both talking about like office staff and caregivers is kind of a little bit different, but, that why I'm curious is in home care, we talk a lot about hiring for heart, especially with caregivers. We hire for heart. We can teach skill with office staff. That's kind of what I was asking. Do you hire for heart or do you hire for skill? Obviously we want to find both, but because you are so process driven and given what you've just been through the last two years, you know how important it is to follow processes and what things, what happens when

processes aren't followed. And so I think it's interesting to hear you talk about office staff. Like do you hire for heart or skill or a mixture of both and or can you teach one or the other? Like, can you teach heart? know, if someone's really a great scheduler or a great care coordinator because they're really process and numbers driven, like they can develop a heart for home care. We all have parents and grandparents. Like some people say you can't teach heart, but I'd almost like disagree. I think you can teach skill and you can also like teach compassion.

What's your take on that?

Justin Currie (48:38)
Yeah, well, I think like people we bring on board, you're absolutely right. mean, it's the...

a lot of people have that combination, but not everybody does. So I think you're looking at the balance too, right? ⁓ You know, somebody might have a little bit more skill and they're not as good, you know, client facing. So maybe we keep them kind of on the back end, or maybe there's somebody who's super compassionate that we need to teach some skills to, right? So I think it's more of like a balance than one or the other kind of thing. It's like, okay, does this balance match this position that we're recruiting for, right? So we look at that, but we also look at

A lot of skill, one thing that, I'd say the one thing that I look at for my office staff especially is lack of ego, right? Is we've had a lot of people on board where they can't take any constructive criticism, they don't take feedback, everybody on the team offends them, know, they're just kind of, everything's a problem, right? Whereas all the team that we have on now, we're really good at giving each other feedback and if there's a problem, we're all gonna talk about it and it's gonna be,

going to be improved on or rectified or whatever but I think it's just that that's one of like the main things that I look for is just not having that ego.

Miriam Allred (49:52)
And that's great. That's something you can try and uncover in the interview process is, you know, tell me a time of when you receive constructive criticism and how did that go? Like that's something that you can't be perfect at. Like you can't ask someone like, do you have an ego or not? You know, that doesn't go over well, but asking about previous experiences, receiving feedback and how that went for them. Because I think you're right. It's, you know, I was talking about like compassion, heart and skill, but then there's also this, yeah, like ego part of it that is hard.

to suss out in an interview process and finding the perfect balance, like the perfect fit that's good at all of these things. Like that's kind of a, I don't know, a golden egg at this point, but that's what you're trying to find.

Justin Currie (50:31)
Yeah, well, and it's kind of funny too. mean, I would say my recruiting process for office staff is similar to your interview process. It's not so much the questions I'm asking that is important to an extent. I just ask a ton of questions and I dig deeper and deeper and through a 30 minute or an hour conversation, you can learn a lot about a person and you can learn a lot about their personality and their character. I think, you know, it's, mean, people know more than they think. They want to ask the perfect questions and, you know, things like that. Just talk.

to the person, ask them a ton of questions and you're going to learn a lot about them.

Miriam Allred (51:04)
Yeah,

yeah. And it's all it's all malleable. It's all subject to change like you've experienced, you know, people outgrow the roles, people change, operations change, circumstances change and being flexible as a leader as well. And knowing that things change, operations change, people change and being OK with that at every stage of the process. Just in our last few minutes, let's talk about where you're at today. It's been a pretty wild few months for you bringing on said partner. Talk a little bit about what's happened. I don't know when you first got in contact with them, but

Just kind of tell the story of how you met these people and some of the decisions that have been made the last few months.

Justin Currie (51:40)
Sure, sure. Yeah, no, so it's been a really exciting time for us. And, ⁓ you know, just to kind of pre-frame that is I never actually wanted to take on investment. I never had any plan to bring on investment. And to be honest with you, my company just wasn't at a stage where I was ready to sell any part of it. So I wanted to continue to grow it. So I wasn't really, I wasn't in the market at all for a partnership. So what had happened was it was very casual. It was a cold outreach on LinkedIn. And it was from one of their team members.

one of the funds team members. And ⁓ oddly enough, I sat down with some really, some guys that are really big in the acquisition space, not in home care, but just in acquisitions in general. They're really well known and I sat down and had a steak with them in Las Vegas when I was there and it was just totally by chance. And so when I was looking at this little promo video that they had sent me, one of the guys that I had had a steak with was in that video. So there was like familiarity there and I also knew, I knew he was

⁓

a very reputable individual. And so if he's talking about this fund and you know, has specific things to say about it, I knew that they were for real. And so that's why, that's the only reason I decided to kind of jump on with them. So I jumped on a call with them that was earlier this year, jumped on with the president, Mikyle Jessen is his name, but ⁓ he was great. He's been really, really helpful. And before we even formed a partnership, I mean, he was helping out where he could. ⁓

He's kind of like roll up your sleeves and get it done type of guy, which is very similar to kind of how I operate. So we worked together for around four months, I believe it was on just an advisory role. So I basically, you know, essentially brought them on as advisors, their whole board, and they would work with the company and we try and move it forward. And we just had really, really good alignment. I just, I get along with these guys great. So ultimately we came to the point where it's like, hey, let's move this to the next level.

let's form a partnership. They talked about a fund that they had going on, which is called ⁓ the American Health at Home Fund. Joseph Land is the chairman of that. He's pretty well known in the industry as well. But ⁓ we started talking a little bit more about that and I thought it sounded like a really exciting opportunity what they were doing. They're trying to build a fund with like home care agencies, healthcare and hospice. And basically kind of consolidate care but also just

serve as many people as they can, and that's, that was what was different for me is like, they weren't really just talking about, you know, financials and things like that. It was more like, how can we deliver a high level of care to as many seniors as possible? So I really loved the mission that they were going with. And so essentially, yeah, their, investment team, they flew up to my agency here and we spent a week together. ⁓ It was, it was great. I mean, we had a really fantastic week. sat in the boardroom and ⁓

It was fantastic because I've always been on my own and I've always, you know, ran the agency on my own. to have, you know, six, seven other high level people sitting around in my boardroom talking about my company and how we can improve it and scale it and, get care out to more seniors was just, it was, it was such an incredible experience. And during that visit, it was planned that we were going to, sign off on the agreement and everything and they would purchase a portion of the company.

and now I'm involved in the portfolio as well in the American Health at Home Fund and I'm actually advisor in the fund as well. So that's kind of where we're at today. We're very, very excited about it and I don't have any regrets. I never thought I would sell like a portion of my company but I'm excited. It's really fun to work with such a great group of guys.

Miriam Allred (55:20)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, first of all, congratulations.

This is huge. And I love what you said. Like you never would have predicted this future for yourself. And like I just said before, like things change, know, mindsets change. You come across people that you want to work with that will push you to do better. And it sounds like that's what this opportunity will bring for you and your company is just like a new wind under your wings and people that are going to push you and challenge you.

You were kind of just answering this, but what if anything will change for you? Will you continue to be involved in day-to-day operations? Will you be more involved in the fund? Like what will your role look like kind of this coming year for both opportunities?

Justin Currie (56:04)
Yeah, so with my new executive director, I was pretty much out of operations already anyway before I started communicating with the fund. She does a great job, so she's going to kind of be at the helm. So basically, I'm just working on growth and scaling right now. But also, I'm very involved in the fund too. So we're looking at, we're analyzing other agencies that we might...

pull into the fund, we're looking into different opportunities, and so I'm involved a lot on the advisory end of that as well. So it'll be a little bit of both. So we're gonna work on growing kind of the portfolio, but also work on growing my agency at the same time. So it's gonna be, for me, was really good timing because I had scaled my agency to a point where I didn't have a lot of experience scaling past that point. And so to bring on other people that have done that before, it's gonna be a lot of help.

but also I really was interested in that M &A space, getting into mergers acquisitions, learning more about that, but also how to kind of scale a company, not the hard way. It's never easy to scale a business, but if I would have done it myself, just like when I started up, I would have had a lot more bumps and bruises than if I would have enlisted the help of really experienced people that have done it before. So yeah, was just a great opportunity and the right timing for me.

and we're really excited about it.

Miriam Allred (57:25)
Amazing. And we've talked a lot about your office staff today and the transitions that they've been through. So my question is around this new wave of change for the business, I'm guessing you've been transparent with your team. Does this affect them? Will this affect them and their day to day or their roles will all stay about the same, just growing Thema?

Justin Currie (57:45)
So that was part of the intrigue for me, I guess, when I first started talking to these guys. We talked a lot about the office staff and my team and the company overall. And it's a really good model because it's kind of funny, we're talking about this right now, literally just last week, I rolled out the incentive plans. We have new incentive plans for all employees since we formed the partnership. And it's incredible. mean, for everybody in the office, even right down to scheduling up to the executive director,

They all have really, really strong incentive plans based on the growth of the company. And they were, couldn't be more excited about it. They were, you know, the lower level staff that doesn't get big bonuses like that, they were looking at it almost in disbelief. They're like, I can make this next year, you know? And it was, ⁓ so it was incredible to kind of see the looks on their face, but they deserve it too. They work hard and ⁓ it's an opportunity for all of them to, create a lot more

financial stability for their families, but also as we grow it's going to open up a lot more opportunities for them to move to different positions and things like that as well, as well as learning. know, always, people leave that out sometimes, but when you're a part of something like that you learn a lot along the way. So they are extremely excited about it and they're on board and you know we've made them, and we've made them feel like owners, but in essence you know they almost are our owners. That's who's going to take us there.

Miriam Allred (59:12)
That's amazing. They're the founding team of this wave of Thema. You know, this is like an overhaul in a good way of the business, a new opportunity, and it brings a lot of learning and a lot of growth and a lot of opportunity for everyone in the office. So I'm excited to see what happens for you and the team and this fund. ⁓ I think you're well connected in the industry, but my call to action here is reach out to Justin. You have just such a wealth of knowledge and you're so open and honest. Today I've just like grilled you with questions.

And you have delivered and that's why I love talking to you is like you don't shy away from kind of the hard in the weeds, tough questions that a lot of owners shy away from or don't want to answer, don't want to talk about. So I really respect and appreciate that from you. ⁓ if anyone does want to get in contact with you to maybe learn more about your business or about the fund, what would be the best way for people to reach out to you?

Justin Currie (1:00:00)
Yeah, so actually ⁓ we're all involved. see everything come through if you go to AmericanHealthAtHome.com.

There's just a, you can read a little bit about the fund we're on there as well. There's information on us, but also there's a little join us section on there as well. There's a tab up at the top so you can fill in your agency information. And you know, if, if we're deemed that, you know, you're the right size and the right company that we want to talk to, and we're really open to talking to people as well, right? We're not like, we, don't use, it's always good to have a conversation, right? We don't just kind of shoot people under the rug. It's like, let's have a chat and see kind of where you're at and if it might be a good fit. So.

If anybody's interested in learning more about that, would advise them, go to americanealthathome.com and then just click the Join tab and fill out the information. ⁓

Miriam Allred (1:00:48)
Awesome. Justin,

thank you so much for joining me in the lab. This has been a great session. Again, I've had you in the hot seat for a long time, so thanks for bearing with me. But thank you for just sharing everything so openly today.

Justin Currie (1:00:57)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. look forward to continuing to listen to I haven't even though I went offline for a little bit. I haven't stopped listening to the podcast.

Miriam Allred (1:01:05)
loyal fan.

Thank you so much.

Justin Currie (1:01:07)
Good, thanks Miriam.