Amy Sweet (00:00) you Miriam Allred (00:09) Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. Today I am in Austin, Texas, and I am sitting across from Amy Sweet, the founder and CEO of Halcyon Home. Amy, welcome to the show. We're in your stomping grounds in Austin, and you just told me, I'm just gonna start with this out of the gate. The fourth largest woman owned business in Austin, Texas. Amy Sweet (00:24) Thank you so much. I'm excited to be That is true. It oscillates whether Kendra Scott owns her business or whether PE owns it over the last couple of years. So I've been four and five, but yes. Miriam Allred (00:47) my gosh, congratulations. Thank you. I didn't know you until maybe four days ago and I am just blown away and have been wanting to just learn more ever since we first talked. So shout out to Bob Roth for introducing us. Thank you, Bob. Let's just get into you and your agency and your growth and your decision-making. Like I just want to hit it all here in like 30 minutes. So let's start with Halcyon Home. That's kind of a unique name. Every home care company has. a story behind the name, tell us little bit about Halcyon. Amy Sweet (01:18) I was reading a Greek mythology book to my 12 year old stepson and it was a Percy Jackson book and I was learning all about Greek mythology and came across the word Halcyon right around the time I was starting this company was in the brainstorming phases and Halcyon was the time in Greek mythology that was referred to as idyllically peaceful and happy and I wanted to go into everybody's home and when it's in chaos and stress and decision making and crisis and make it idyllically peaceful and happy like the Greek calm waters where the Kingfisher bird could lay its eggs. So the Kingfisher is our little motto of a bird and everybody gets one at their five year anniversary and it's on all our logos. Miriam Allred (02:09) unique. What a tender story. And that was what 15 or 16 years ago that you started this business? Amy Sweet (02:13) started in 2012, so 14 years ago in March. Miriam Allred (02:18) my goodness, congratulations. Before we unpack the founding story and the start, what were you doing before you started this business? Amy Sweet (02:25) I was a physician assistant working in GYN oncology and then GI and moonlighting and a SNF in a skilled nursing facility in geriatrics. So I was having two young kids. I had a one and two year old. So I had taken, I had done GYN oncology ever since I had become a PA. And when I was pregnant, I wanted a more part-time role. And so I started. taking a part-time job as a GI physician assistant and then moonlighting in a skilled nursing facility, which definitely got me into the home care world. Miriam Allred (02:59) That's what I was going to ask. So the skilled nursing specifically got you exposed to home care? Yeah. Amy Sweet (03:04) No, really what got me exposed to home care was my aunt who had lost her legs from a rare blood cancer moving to Austin and me having to care for her and her being a incredibly high maintenance and eccentric and incredible woman who did not like any of the agencies that were available in Austin. and said, where are all the cool people? I want cool people taking care of me like I see at the Alamo draft house. And I don't see any of these people coming to care for me in home health or home care. So I went down and started ⁓ putting out flyers at the Austin Community College campuses to hire caregivers. Miriam Allred (03:51) to hire a caregiver for her or did she ask you explicitly to be her caregiver? Amy Sweet (03:55) No, she wanted me to hire people for her that I knew she would like. They had to love art and hip hop and you know, yeah, she wanted cool young people. She wanted to be around the next generation and she was like, where I want inspiring people around me. 31, 32. Miriam Allred (04:12) And how old were you at the time? And she asks you to go out and find these people. Did you know what kind of traditional home care was or look like? Amy Sweet (04:23) No, no clue. idea. No clue. But I had been a CNA when I was 16 in Massachusetts, taking care of elderly people in their homes. And I had done that so that I could get clinical hours to apply for a PA school back in the late 90s or mid 90s. And so I had fallen in love with seniors at that time and helping others and caring for people. And so I knew what it was to be me at 16 wanting to have a career in healthcare and wanting to figure out how to pay my bills as a student and needing hours, clinical hours. I knew what that was like and I knew how much it shaped who I was as a person. Miriam Allred (05:09) So how do you go from finding hip caregivers for your aunt to starting a home care company? Like fill in that gap. Amy Sweet (05:18) It wasn't a very long time before I realized that there were a lot of other people that wanted caregivers like I was finding for my aunt. So it literally was just conversations like, you found that kind of person for your aunt, can you find that person for me too? So I had a friend that worked at a senior living community and she was like, there are so many people that want someone like your caregivers. And so I got my first. three or four clients because she said, don't you go get a license so you can do this here too at this community? Miriam Allred (05:53) And you were finding the clients first or the employees first? Because you were on the employee hunt for your aunt. So you're sourcing different people than maybe through your personal networking connections, the clients start coming in. Yes. Amy Sweet (06:07) It was through this one friend who was my original co-founder and quickly became an incredible sales and marketing director for me and moved to a founding employee shortly thereafter. And we started it together, just the two of us in her casita of her house. I would go over there and schedule and do the payroll and find the caregivers and she would find the clients. Miriam Allred (06:36) my gosh, so scrappy. Amy Sweet (06:38) It was so scrappy. So scrappy. I wrote all the policies myself, typing them up and way before AI. Now you could just say, write me a manual. Miriam Allred (06:42) AI. my gosh. And I think just that there's this important piece of the story, which is Austin, which is the demographic of people here. You you talk about your aunt saying, I want the hip young next generation. Did that stay, was that kind of the concept early on of the clients and the employees or did that quickly kind of like fade and become something else? Amy Sweet (07:12) quite quickly realized that we weren't a franchise and that my clinical background was really helpful and that we paid our caregivers a little bit more than everybody else and that we had a different type of caregiver at the time. And it definitely became a huge selling point in the beginning, but I think a huge part of it was also my oversight of the care because... What I didn't know is I was really quickly becoming a geriatric care manager really to all of these families. Miriam Allred (07:45) And did you know what geriatric care management was? You know that now, but at the time you just thought they need more support, they need more care, they need more than what I can do just as a home care provider. Amy Sweet (07:58) Exactly, and they need a lot of navigation of the system. They're just confused and I knew the system pretty well working in it both as a PA and having my own family going through it. I knew it and so I just immediately started developing resources sheets and helping do that. Miriam Allred (08:16) So for the first, if I have the story straight, for the first year, you stay the course on home care. You are a home care company, year one. You're learning, you and your co-founder figuring it all out, scrappy, hiring the clients, the caregivers. Quickly you realize they need more than what we can offer as a home care company. And what do you decide to do? Amy Sweet (08:38) I decide to apply for my home health and hospice Medicare license and figure out again, Google was my friend. I just Googled how to do all of it. ⁓ I hired a couple consultants that were helpful and not helpful, ⁓ really bad one and then a really good one, and applied for my Medicare license. Miriam Allred (09:03) And you were exposed to hospice and home care and home health, excuse me, through your home care company. Yes. It's one thing to be exposed to and understand. It's another thing to think, I'm going to go out and do that because there's way more regulations, way more nuances. It's just not to downplay home care. It's a completely different ball game. And were you naive going into what this was going to be or you feel like you knew what you were signing up for at the beginning? Amy Sweet (09:29) I will say I was somewhat naive. I was really frustrated with, again, some of the quality of the care and the lack of care also for the employees in the home health and hospice industries. And so I really felt like I could do it better. But I had no idea how to do it or if I could even do it. I just wanted it to be better. And so I thought I'm doing a good job in home care. I really want to take care of these families. They really need these services and these other hospices are failing them. They're not bringing the meds on time. They're not having someone show up who really knows how to care for this wound or knows how to do this IV. So I need to hire some people that do know those things. Miriam Allred (10:16) So yeah, keep being more specific. So you saw gaps in hospice and home health via partnering with them. Yes. And you thought I could do that better. Yeah. What specifically were the gaps that you were seeing? Amy Sweet (10:30) So I would say specifically, time to admit was really a challenge in this town. There were not people that were admitting like within four hours, within two hours. Sometimes it was the next day or two or three days. ⁓ And I think that the, on the home health side, the protocols were not always being followed consistently. And so I had that complaint a lot from physicians I was working with is like, give these people an order and they don't do it, or they mess it up, or they don't communicate to everyone about how to follow it. And so for me, those things seemed really easy to fix. So I thought, I can take this protocol and make sure every physical therapist does it every time. And I can make sure these meds get delivered on time and we're out there within four hours. I do it in home care every day. Miriam Allred (11:24) ⁓ and back to the kind of like the naivete, you knew what you were signing up for, but you probably didn't know what this business was gonna become. Like you do seem like a visionary to me, just in the interactions that we've had, you do seem like a visionary, but did you know what this was gonna become? Did you have a grand vision or you just, you're almost taking it like one day at a time at the time. Amy Sweet (11:44) I still live very much in the present and I did not have any clue that it would grow into what it was. I really wanted to create a senior living community for my aunt. And so my focus was really like, I just want to care for these people that hopefully will eventually live in my senior living and it's going to be this idyllic, perfect place for them to live and have all the best care. And that's where my mind was. And I had no idea that when you provide really high quality care, people start noticing. And when you also take really good care of people, people want to come work for you. And so we had some incredible luck early on with some teams wanting to come work for me that didn't have good opportunities where they were. They weren't happy with the management or they had been sold multiple times and felt like the culture had been damaged from those. multiple transactions and so I got some incredible people early on. Miriam Allred (12:43) Okay, I wanna circle back to both of these things. I wanna fill in some more gaps, but I wanna circle back around to the senior living community, the long-term vision there, and then these key hires. Before that, I want you to talk a little bit about that licensure process. Here we are in Texas, your business is in Texas, and you're a home care company. You have to go out and get the hospice and home health license. You've shared a couple of interesting things with me about that process. Can you just explain what that application looks like? and what kind of like the process is for the first, I don't know, six months to a year to then become certified. Amy Sweet (13:15) Yes, so where you're not a certificate of needs date, we did not have to purchase a license. We could start one from scratch. And so what you need to do that is you have to take care of a minimum and. Now I'm making sure my things are right, but I think it was a minimum of 10, 20 patients maybe in home health. And you had to have seven on service at the time of the survey. So you had to keep enough on service at all times because people are coming off and people are discharging and then people are admitting. So think you had to have seven. And then on the hospice side, I think we had to have cared for 10. And then you have to have three on service at the time of your survey. And all of this is for free. Miriam Allred (13:55) And yeah, because this pre the license. Amy Sweet (13:56) This is pre them. Right, so they have to come and have enough things to look at to see are you do you know what you're doing? Do you know how to take care of home health patients and they have to be able to do enough site visits. They want to do three visits in home health and in hospice. So you have to have enough on service at all times in order to make that happen. Miriam Allred (14:15) I might sound dumb asking this, but how do you take care of someone on hospice, but not being a hospice provider? Like, I guess that's part of the process. Amy Sweet (14:25) You're just taking care of people for free. And you have to make sure they live long enough so that you at least have three on when they come and they don't tell you when they're coming. And so it's a lot of free work while you're waiting for them to show up for service. Miriam Allred (14:40) On the home health site as well? Yes. You're taking care of them? Yes. Amy Sweet (14:43) you have to take care of 20 total more on home health and have seven on service. Miriam Allred (14:47) Is it challenging to find those clients? Do you tell them that you're not certified? Amy Sweet (14:52) you do have to tell them you have to disclose that regulation. ⁓ Well, it took a lot of people initially on the home health side that their insurance wouldn't cover it or had huge deductibles or things like that. And so that was was easier on the home health side. I also had the luck of having some people that I had met in the industry. so whenever they couldn't take something like their Miriam Allred (14:56) And how do they feel? Impact them? Amy Sweet (15:21) company couldn't accept an insurance, they would send it to me. So on the home health side, it was actually pretty easy to find the patients because home health is not covered by a lot of ⁓ providers at a very good rate. So there's a lot of people that don't get access to home health. Miriam Allred (15:35) And you go to the family and you say, you're not going to pay a dime for this. And we're going to provide great care for you. And we're working on our certificate. Like you kind of probably explain that process to them so that they understand. So what's the time frame here? How long are you taking care of these people? Amy Sweet (15:38) and we're gonna provide great care for you. Well, you have to take care. You can't apply for Medicare to come and survey you until you take care of 20 on home health and 10 on hospice. Miriam Allred (16:01) And how long did that take you guys? We're talking three months, six months, a year. Amy Sweet (16:05) I wish I remembered exactly the amount of time, but I want to say it was around six months to a year. It was in that timeframe. Miriam Allred (16:13) Okay, and it was you and your co-founder before this, did you make a home health or hospice hire to start this process? Amy Sweet (16:21) So you have to have nurses and you have to have ⁓ a director of nursing on the license to start the process. And so I had a director of nursing that I had to hire and pay for while we had no income coming in ⁓ for that whole time. And then you had to pay for someone to do physical therapy visits, aid visits. social work chaplain, had to have the whole team in place. They were all part time and just per visit and very sporadic at this point because we had three to five patients. Miriam Allred (16:56) And those weren't employees. You were saying they're kind of contracts. So you had to of like piecemeal that team. Amy Sweet (17:01) They're all part-time employees because part of the benefit is you also can't contract those things out. They have to be employees. So they were all part-time employees. Miriam Allred (17:10) And did your director of nursing help connect all the dots of these people or did you have a network to be able to pull these people from? Amy Sweet (17:17) I pulled every person myself. my director had some experience in this, but I would say fairly limited ⁓ with going through an initial survey. I remember in those last 30 days right before I knew they were coming, that I've hold like five or six all-nighters and just like figured it out. I don't know. I realized I didn't know what I was doing and they were about to come and had a few friends come that were in the industry and start looking at things, realized I had some real problems that I needed to fix. And I made it. really, feel like those- You're alive to tell the I'm alive to tell the tale and I remember it so well. And when they came, I passed and- I had another agency going through it at that time and they failed that I had known the people. so that also gave me like we passed and failed on the same day. And I was just so glad that I was the one that passed because I thought I was about to go bankrupt every other minute at that point. Miriam Allred (18:24) But that's a good piece of advice as you went out into the industry and you said, Hey, I need a couple of you to come in. Amy Sweet (18:29) Yes, I made friends. I didn't pay them or anything. They were just friends and we'd just like order pizza and they'd look at my charts and be like, yeah, this is wrong. And I'd be like, I don't understand why. Why is this research out of compliance or why is this HR file not right? And I realized I had a lot to learn. That's when I kind of panicked and really sat down and learned it. Miriam Allred (18:49) and you fixed all of it as much as you could before the survey, because there's kind of like that trial that like grace period where you can solve the problems. So sounds like you did a lot of that before that initial survey. And sorry, you think that survey happened about a year into after applying and. Amy Sweet (19:04) It happened July 14th, 2014. I still remember the date. Miriam Allred (19:08) Wow. Okay. And then you, get surveyed and you get the certificate, you pass that you get the certificate and then you're already doing right. What you need to be doing. then Amy Sweet (19:22) can start growing. You can start growing. can bill from that day, which is why I remember that day so clearly. You start billing that day. So then I thought though you would get your money like 10 days later because I was ready. I was ⁓ ready to hire a lot of people that had been doing all this part time care. And I was saying like, we're going to go full time the day we get this license. So I hired them all on that day. Miriam Allred (19:28) Okay, okay, money's coming in. Amy Sweet (19:50) like in those next couple months and got a great team in place and lo and behold, the money doesn't come from Medicare. It takes another year to the day and that was one of the most stressful years of my life. Miriam Allred (19:57) Until when? How long does it take? because you had promised them jobs. Amy Sweet (20:09) And I hired them and I didn't have enough money to pay them. My home care was growing, so I had some revenue from home care. All this time I've taken no money. This is now year three. And I'm living off my husband's salary and our two kids. And I'm also moonlighting as a PA one day a week to bring in a little extra money. So it was really stressful. ⁓ It was an incredible feat. had to call our senators. I had to call all these people at Palmetto, like even the vice president and president of Palmetto. was leaving messages for everyone because somehow there had been some glitch in Medicare connecting my number with the payment processor. Miriam Allred (20:52) meaning that it's not supposed to be one year until you get paid. Okay, that was gonna be my question. Is that the norm? Amy Sweet (20:59) I think there's always a lot of glitches and I've known a lot of people that had similar stories to mine now that I know. But technically it's supposed to be 90 days or less. But I do know, I just went through a revalidation that is supposed to be 30 days or less and it took 18 months. there are always challenges dealing with Medicare and Palmetto and all the little nuances to get things. Miriam Allred (21:25) ⁓ my goodness. You probably still think about those days. What a difficult, a blur, a chaotic blur. But you hired all of those people, put an incredible team in place. And I'm guessing that growth in that first year of being home health and hospice certified, I'm guessing there was a lot of growth. Amy Sweet (21:31) It was a blur. There was a lot of growth. Was that the case? I didn't know why I was so poor all the time. And I remember going to my dad and being like, it's showing I'm making all this money in my books, but I have nothing in my bank account. I really need help. And I had to learn about cash flow and AR and all of those things. And I had to ask my parents for money because I couldn't pay these people because they kept saying I'd call Medicare and they'd be like, it's gonna be fixed next week. So I'd be like, I can make it one more week. And then all of sudden I couldn't. And they really stepped in and helped me for bridge those last few months that just were like so stressful. I find your I'm calling everyone. Miriam Allred (22:27) Calling Medicare. Every day, every minute. And oh my gosh, that's so stressful. You're trying to run a business. You're trying to track down this money. Amy Sweet (22:36) Well, and to be honest, I never thought about calling senators or Palmetto. And it wasn't until I went to a dinner for the software that I was switching to at the time. And when I went to dinner. I sat next to someone who had gone through a similar situation and she told me, call everyone, start calling Palmetto every day, buzz every person who's the president's, the vice president's, like just start being a pain call all your senators, like call every day. And I started doing that. Miriam Allred (23:07) Did that help? that what ultimately moved the needle? Amy Sweet (23:09) the nail. It ultimately someone got me to a person in Dallas that was able to fix whatever one checkbox needed to be fixed to make it happen. Miriam Allred (23:19) And just, I'm curious, today, do you have relationships with these people? Now you are someone and your business is affecting thousands of people. Are you on their radar? Amy Sweet (23:31) Yes and no, not really. mean, Medicare is huge and Palmetto is huge and ⁓ not really. But yes, sometimes there has been a few people, even Medicaid in the state of Texas, I had a huge problem. And it was a personal relationship with someone from my child's school that changed my life in that. And just being able to have access to someone who can just look into what the problem is. But we had The Department of Aging and Disability merged with Health and Human Services. And during that, it was just a real mess in Texas and could not find a person to really help solve the problem for a couple of years. finding the right person made all the difference. So you have to have friends. Miriam Allred (24:14) And then this can turn into a rant session because my goodness just the pitfalls that there are with Medicare Amy Sweet (24:21) But when I even talk through this, having friends that tell you how to help navigate challenges, like even the value of these kinds of conversations, they can change everything. Miriam Allred (24:33) And that's why we have to keep having them. We have to keep advocating at every single level to where home care is known by everyone in legislature. So we'll get there. Okay. I want to ask back to ⁓ that first year, you hire all the people, you go through the financial turmoil. I am curious how the three services, home care, home health, hospice, how they grew in parallel. The home care company had been in business for about a year. You bring on home health and hospice. What is the trajectory for each of them? Does hospice outpace home care? Does home health outpace hospice? How do they all start growing in parallel? Amy Sweet (25:11) Well, it's all about the people all the time. And so the right people will help any one part of your business grow more than any other part. until you have the right people in all the parts and in all the places, you don't really ever have exponential growth until you have that in place. So we had really good home care in place. And we had some serendipitous things happen with a couple of home cares closing during that time and secret shopping me and deciding they wanted to send all their clients and staff to me. So my home care grew exponentially in those first few years, almost through nothing that I did other than care for people. And then I had some really good people in home health. kind of right from that start of that team that I had gotten that I paid for that whole year without being able to bill. And so that also then grew pretty exponentially. And my hospice struggled because I didn't have all the right people in the right seats initially. So that was kind of the trajectory was like outside sources on the home care making it explode and then. ⁓ Miriam Allred (26:28) home health. Amy Sweet (26:28) Strong Home Help team made that grow exponentially really fast. then hospice kind of was the thing that I was almost in the way most passionate about because I cared so much about end of life care and making those last moments matter and making them so special. finding the right team took longer. And so it grew the slowest initially. And it's still my smallest service line to this day. Miriam Allred (26:55) And I'd imagine you say the home care company really took off because of those serendipitous people moments. The brand awareness of the home care company helped grow the hospice and the home health. Like Halcyon name brand is out there and it's like, it's not just home care, it's hospice, home health. as any of the services grew, it helped with brand awareness and brand recognition. And then people learn, they do home health. they do hospice. Does that seem accurate? Amy Sweet (27:21) Yes, and then definitely in hospital systems as you become the number one like quality provider in the city for home health, everyone starts thinking, ⁓ let me think of that. But then they don't always think about the home care or the hospice. And so it's been a challenge to make sure that they're thinking all three service lines. I think that's still something that we're working on scaling because we're in five cities now. And so They haven't all scaled the same way it started in Austin. In other cities, home health is scaled faster or hospice is scaled faster than home care. So it's always all about the people, I think. Miriam Allred (28:03) Do you have multifaceted sales rep that sell all three services? Amy Sweet (28:07) We do, and then we have some that really only want to sell one. And that's one of the things when we started, we had to have people that sold everything because we were so small. But as we grew, we really had to split out these service lines into their own departments and their own teams. and really start specializing. And so sometimes I miss those like scrappy days where one nurse did everything, but you can't scale that way. And so we're still struggling, I think, when you go in and care for someone, I really want that person to be their person and to be that geriatric care manager type of person that helps them navigate the rest of their life's journey, whether they need home care, home health, hospice, palliative care. Miriam Allred (28:32) Everything. Amy Sweet (28:56) But is that scalable everywhere? It's hard to find people that really have the experience of all four service lines. And some people are like, I just want to do hospice, it's my thing. Or I just am a home care person. And so then you got to kind of start scaling differently and having teams that do different things. Miriam Allred (29:15) And we can't, yeah, I don't want to break down your entire like org chart, but I'd imagine the business administration. ⁓ It's a little bit of both. There's departments, there's service lines that are differentiated and distinguish. But then for example, like the sales rep role, they sell across the three services. You mentioned me before, you have two different softwares. You have one for home care, one for home health and hospice. So that in of itself is like you're managing two softwares and who owns what and who is in what. So there's probably distinction, but also overlap. Is that your biggest challenge? Amy Sweet (29:51) I don't think the software per se is the biggest challenge. I definitely think communicating across service lines is harder than I thought it would be. Both. Miriam Allred (29:59) internally or externally or both. Amy Sweet (30:03) And I thought when I started, you know, with that naivete back when I was beginning, I just thought it would be so easy because for me and my brain, it's really easy. You just help the patient with whatever they need at that moment. And it's like, doesn't really make any sense that we wouldn't talk about all three all the time, but not everybody's brains works that way. And a lot of people, a lot of nurses, a lot of... salespeople, lot of ops people, they don't want to do all three service lines. And you really have to respect that that's not everybody's bag. And so you have to start to realize how can we scale with people that don't want to do all three. But our communities, we're in a lot of communities, and I really push hard that those people have to sell all three for sure. Miriam Allred (30:50) Okay. And from the client perspective, is there a lot of overlap? Like your home care patients all become hospice patients at some point? Is that well, you're 15, 14 years in, that has that been the case? Amy Sweet (30:57) That's good. That's been the case most of the time, not 100 % of the time, I would say the majority of them you get to care for from the minute they a drive to the grocery store until their last breath. I hope we're involved. Miriam Allred (31:15) and then home health, where does that fit in? A lot of home health and home care overlap or a lot of home health and hospice overlap? Amy Sweet (31:23) all the time they're overlapping. So home care can be with home health or with hospice. Typically a person needs either home health or home care first. Either they're coming out of the hospital and they're getting home health and then they realize, I need care as well that home health doesn't cover my caregiving needs. So I need a caregiver as well. And then, or they start with home care and then they go, gosh, I just now I'm need a hip replacement or. Now I'm having chronic UTIs, now I'm in the hospital. Now I'm getting discharged with home health. I need strength training, need urology, I have heart disease. I'm getting CHF, I have a new medicine. And so I need nursing, I don't know what to do. What's this new disease I have? What, heart failure? And so home health is in there managing those medications, helping educate these families along the way and these patients. then... Now I've been to the hospital three times, home health isn't working anymore. Now it's time to talk about we're getting towards the end of life and we need hospice care. But hopefully I've still had my caregiver the whole time. Yes, and this person, hopefully this, you know, care transition coordinator who is kind of your sales and marketing, but it's really this person that's navigated your life with you. Miriam Allred (32:27) Yeah, and the same company, the... that's in your corner through your entire journey and has real trust with the client, with the family. It's like they couldn't do this without that person. Amy Sweet (32:49) Most of my team has been with me for a long time and has navigated these families' journeys with them for five, ten years. Miriam Allred (32:58) Can you share where you're at today, size of the business, how many hours you're doing a week across the services? Amy Sweet (33:04) Well, home care is the only one that's really tracked in hours. So we're doing around 10,000 hours a week in home care. We care for around 1,500 visits a day in home health and hospice. And we have about 1,000 patients on home health every day and around 250 in hospice. Somewhere between 800 and 1,000. Miriam Allred (33:25) And about how many employees? ⁓ my gosh. That you are responsible for. say that like it's a huge burden on you, which it is, but also a huge accomplishment. Amy Sweet (33:38) I have the most incredible team of people that we love working together. It's like we're all best friends and really love caring for each other and patients and employees. We just love what we do so much. Miriam Allred (33:51) And it comes through in my conversations with you. I'm just like awestruck. Like, wow, you are helping so many people. I know every single day across the entire state of Texas. We're talking about Austin, but you were in the biggest cities of Texas helping people in all of these metros. And it's it's thousands of people at this point in time, the impact that you're having. It's so special. I hope that sinks in right now as we're having this conversation. I want to just circle back to in closing here. Amy Sweet (34:10) I know, it's pretty special. Miriam Allred (34:19) your broader vision, you said to me and you said it a couple of minutes ago, your vision was a senior living community. I think that's interesting. And knowing what you know now, is that still your vision? Amy Sweet (34:32) I still am trying to finish building the senior living community of my dreams with a Montessori school that's already up and open in San Marcos with a waiting list of two years of kids. It's got about 110 kids every day on site there and my dream still is that we have this intergenerational community where we have seniors and we have college students like me when I was 16 becoming a CNA and really getting to interact with this whole generation who's lived a whole life. I want that interaction every day and then I want the kids coming over and playing and us reading books and playing songs with all the little Montessori kids too. So I do have this dream that we are all in this intergenerational community and that it's fun and vibrant and what my aunt had dreamed of ⁓ when she had lost her legs that there would be this place out there and there isn't that place in Texas. Miriam Allred (35:30) There isn't in Texas anywhere. I don't know if you've ever experienced something like you envision you're going to create it. Amy Sweet (35:36) Yeah, so I really still want to do that. But I have been so fulfilled by getting to care for all these people every day that my cup is full either way. So I'm very, very happy. We're gonna stop. Miriam Allred (35:46) But keep pushing. I'm not going to stop and I'm going to keep following along until you accomplish it and then it can become a model for us. Amy Sweet (35:56) That's my hope. I hope that there's many more of them in the world eventually, but we got to get one built first. Miriam Allred (36:01) We have to start somewhere, but this intergenerational concept, you and I talked a little bit about that. You know, they do that, a form of that model in other countries. And we just all have so much to offer each other. The young people, the Montessori age, the college age, those in kind of family life stage and the seniors, like we all have so much to offer. Amy Sweet (36:20) No, and we don't really design things right now that really encourages interaction. know, design is what really makes things work or not work. You know, if you move two miles away from someone you used to see every day, it's like when they're next door, you see them, and then two miles away, you're like, wow, we don't see them but once or twice a month now. And then if you don't design it where everyone can be together, it's like it doesn't really happen. You know, don't get to go get your nails done with your mom if they're not in the same place. So when you have everything together, the kids, the school, the seniors, it really, I hope it works. Miriam Allred (36:57) I love it. I love that you want more like what you've accomplished, but you're still hungry because there's still more to be had. There's still more impact. There's still a better way. Amy Sweet (37:06) There is so much more impact we can do in home care and home health and hospice. Like there are so many more things to do to improve health care in our country that I definitely stay motivated and excited. Miriam Allred (37:18) And you're going to do it. And that's why we're here having this type of conversation, putting you out on this platform so that other people can learn from you and we can all work toward these bigger, grander visions together. Yes. Amy, thank you so much for joining me in the lab. You have been a treat to talk to. Here we are in Austin, just having the time of our lives. We'll go ahead and wrap here. Thank you so much. Amy Sweet (37:33) Thank you, you too. Thank you so much for having me.