Miriam Allred (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host Miriam Allred. Today I am sitting across from Conant Schoenly the president of Charter Oak Home Care in Connecticut. Conant, welcome to the show.

Conant Schoenly (00:15)
Thank you so much for having me, Miriam.

Miriam Allred (00:17)
You and I have been rubbing shoulders for a lot of years, a lot of years, and this is the first time I'm interviewing you formally. So apologies, but also better late than never. And I've been looking forward to this. So thank you.

Conant Schoenly (00:31)
I'm so happy to be here with you after all of these years. Happy to be on the pod.

Miriam Allred (00:37)
Yeah, well, let's get right into your story. You have kind of an interesting journey landing in the family business in Connecticut. So talk a little bit about your personal background first, and then we'll kind of share your parents' story and the business story. But talk a little bit about yourself first.

Conant Schoenly (00:54)
Yeah, so I actually grew up working in Charter Oak Home Care, which was our family business. It was started by my dad back in 1985. So it's the oldest home care agency in the state of Connecticut. And as a high schooler,

I worked as a CNA for the company. So I learned from a very young age about what the company does. I had to take care of many clients over the summers. And then I would also come home and I would hear my dad at the dinner table. He'd be talking about the business. So in some ways I really feel like I was raised in home care. And that was a huge blessing to me.

I then went off to college ⁓ and in college like everyone else I was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do. Wasn't really a hundred percent certain that I wanted to go down any set career path.

I went into finance when I graduated, spent several years there, was in the private equity space, and then went to graduate school and started working for Georgetown University while I was going to business school there.

And then when it came closer to graduation, I was thinking about what do I really want to do when I graduate?

And I remembered back to ⁓ some of the early days for me and having to work 100 hour weeks and just feeling like, this is not fulfilling what I'd love to be doing with my life. And ⁓ there was some health challenges for my father at that time. And I was thinking, man, I would love to

to do something that really has a tangible impact on others and that I can call my own. So I asked my dad if he would be open to me coming back to the business and in 2018 I went back to the business.

Miriam Allred (03:17)
And what was his response? Was he jumping for joy? Was he hesitant? What was his reaction?

Conant Schoenly (03:22)
Great question. ⁓ He asked me, are you sure you really want to do this? He said, it's going to be harder than you think. And man, I was very naive getting into it. ⁓

coming out of a totally different setting and heading into home care full time, ⁓ it was certainly culture shock. But I also think that he was really happy and he was proud that I wanted to continue the legacy that he had started to build ⁓ over 30 some years at that time. So I think that he was really happy.

Miriam Allred (04:06)
Do you have siblings and were they involved ever?

Conant Schoenly (04:11)
I do. I have a younger brother ⁓ and at that point he ⁓ was in process of going to graduate school so he was not at a point where he was in a position to join the business or really had interest in that. ⁓ He does help us out now. ⁓ He does some of our Google ads and our

digital marketing and ⁓ it's really special for me now to be able to work with him every so often on the side.

Miriam Allred (04:44)
I said to you before the conversation, there's a lot of parents that are running these home care companies and they have kids and it sounds like maybe your parents didn't put pressure on you to take over the business. They let you come to it, but I wonder, did you ever early on or as you were kind of like entertaining coming back, did you ever feel a sense of pressure from your parents, good or bad?

Conant Schoenly (05:06)
No, my parents are absolutely wonderful. They never even brought up my coming back to the business. It was never something they mentioned. They were always very supportive of whatever I wanted.

to do in whatever career that I had. And they have always been some of my biggest supporters. I highly respect my dad. He's one of the guys that I respect the most on this earth. And so for me, it was really an opportunity to get to work closely with him. And I consider that a huge privilege. ⁓

And over time, that relationship that he and I have has only grown stronger as we've been able to work together. And he's now older, and so I can go to him and ask him questions because he understands the business and he cares deeply for it. And that's a real gift to me.

Miriam Allred (06:09)
That's amazing. today we're going to talk a lot about you coming in and leveling up the business and scaling it and overhauling processes and people and service quality and all of that good stuff. But I want to talk a little bit more about Charter Oak for a couple of minutes because it's interesting. You've already cited the oldest home care company in Connecticut and Connecticut's a really interesting market. think everyone could say that about their own market, I actually think Connecticut's pretty interesting and that it's a small state.

With a reasonable population, I was looking up kind of stats, three, three and a half million people. ⁓ It's one of the older states. So there's a lot of older adults in Connecticut, but it's an interesting demographic in that a lot of the children move away. It's one of the states where more often than not, children kind of fly the coop and move away. Again, that happens everywhere, but it's more so in Connecticut. ⁓ But explain, you're saying Charter Oak is the oldest home care company.

in Connecticut, 1985, talk about your dad and his experience and why home care and the experiences that he went through with his mom and his grandmother.

Conant Schoenly (07:15)
Yes, I will say that Connecticut definitely has an aging population. And there's a lot of other home care agencies that have popped up in the state. I think we now have close to 1200 home care agencies in a state that is quite small.

geographically. Now, not all of those home care agencies are of any size. They could just be one person, but ⁓ there has been an increasingly crowded market ⁓ in Connecticut. But when my father was young and he was in high school,

He lived in a multi-generational household. So he was with his grandparents and his parents in the Boston area. And my or his grandmother ended up getting cancer. And so he ended up as the primary caregiver for her.

at a very young age. And then as time progressed and he went off to college, he heard that his mom had the very same type of cancer. And so he actually quit college at that point and came back up to the Boston area to take care of her.

Now fast forward several years and he's a pretty entrepreneurial person, has a lot of ideas and he came to Connecticut and my parents got married and he said, know what, it would be so great if this state

had an option other than going to the hospital or going to a SNF or other long-term care facility because both his mom and his grandmother really wanted to remain at home and it put a lot of stress on his brothers and his family.

doing their best to keep them at home. And it almost totally broke his family. So he really understood that there was this need. And then he started Charter Oak Home Care really well before his time, before home care was a thing.

Miriam Allred (09:37)
Yeah, very much a pioneer in the space up in Connecticut and really in the Northeast. And something that you've told me, part of his initial mission was, A, obviously keeping people home, but also there is a less affluent, kind of underserved population in Connecticut as well. And he saw the need there and also wanted to help those people talk a little bit about that.

Conant Schoenly (10:01)
Yeah, so just from his own family experience and his upbringing, he understood firsthand just the financial.

challenges that can come with having a loved one at home and trying your best to keep them at home ⁓ and that it can be very expensive. And so when he started Charter Oak Home Care, he said, I want to start an agency which lets family members, regardless of their socioeconomic status, to be able to stay at home. And that was really, really

important to him and it's something that's really important to me as well. And so he got into the Medicaid space at that time. And actually the company has been primarily in the Medicaid space for almost all of our history up until the last several years. And it's been a real honor to serve those folks. It comes with its own unique challenges as you can.

imagine but it's been absolutely great to be able to help those folks.

Miriam Allred (11:13)
Yeah, incredible. So we're going to talk a little bit about that, which is as you've stepped in and kind of hit the gas on scale, rethinking payers and margins and demographics as to what makes sense. We're going to talk about that as we kind of transition into that. want to ask you about your dad said, you know, are you sure this is a really tough business? And I'm curious when you came back, think back to those first six months, that first year.

What was the hardest part? What did take you by surprise and what was most challenging for you?

Conant Schoenly (11:51)
think the hardest part was just understanding that our team at that point was coming from a totally different place than I was coming from, having been in the corporate world beforehand. And I'll just tell you a quick story, but I came into the office the first week of coming back to the company and I was so excited to just learn and see

and all of the things that I could do. And I walk into the office and I had my little desk that I was sitting at and I saw all of these whiteboards, like these dry, erase whiteboards. And I saw all of the schedules for all of our clients were in Sharpie written up on the whiteboard.

And I asked, how do we do scheduling? And our schedulers said, well, we basically stand up from our desks. We go over to the whiteboard. If we have something to change, we just wipe it out and then start writing over again. And I said, oh, interesting. And I had come from the background of using email and other scheduling platforms. And, um,

And I asked, well, how many emails does the company have? And they said, well, the company has a ⁓ single Gmail and there's two people in the office that know how to use this Gmail. And this is 2018.

Miriam Allred (13:24)
And this is what year? This is what year?

This is 2018. This is not that long ago.

Conant Schoenly (13:31)
Yes.

Yes. And then I just remember a caregiver coming into the office and talking with one of our schedulers and her shoulder happened to rub up against the whiteboard and it actually whited out some of those schedules. And I was looking at the other schedulers faces and they go white, you know, and they rush up to the board to try to recreate from memory.

Miriam Allred (13:45)
Yeah

Conant Schoenly (14:01)
what was on there. And ⁓ I would say that was probably the biggest shock to me was just going in and seeing how things were being done and had been done ⁓ and how they could be done.

Miriam Allred (14:18)
It's like mind boggling. 2018, you know, I think that could have been back in the eighties, like when your dad started that we were on whiteboards, but this is 2018. That is literally eight years ago. And so you're coming from Georgetown private equity grad school and you're like, oh my gosh. So that being said though, you know, as well as anyone change management coming in hot and fast and ready to like overhaul.

Conant Schoenly (14:30)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (14:45)
how quickly did you start to implement changes? Like, did you start to make changes right away? Did you kind of warm the team up over six months or a year or what was kind of your initial like, we're gonna have to change some things.

Conant Schoenly (14:59)
Well, I think I had come into it saying, I don't want to make any changes within the first six months. So I just want to observe what is being done and ask questions during those first six months. And I really tried to do that and to ask questions. I interviewed everyone in the office team. actually went out.

with the caregivers to learn how they were interacting with our clients. I asked our clients what they thought the company was doing really well, what they think the company could be doing better, and had a lot of these personal conversations. ⁓ But as far as the time it actually took for me to implement change, ⁓ there was just some really low-hanging fruit that I was able to get to within the first three months.

like updating our email address, for instance.

Miriam Allred (15:55)
Okay, I was

gonna say such as, such as what was the low hanging fruit? What were a couple of those things that you could come in and change easily without rocking the boat?

Conant Schoenly (16:03)
I think it was a lot, well, I think it was a lot of processes.

in utilizing technology. And what I found in this process is I was quite naive in thinking that, ⁓ you know, people would want to change more than sometimes we actually do. And change is a really hard thing. And so the biggest challenge for me was to convince the team that having a scheduling platform was actually going to make their lives easier.

and why. And so really my job became getting them on board with why we were making these changes and how it would help to make their lives easier in the long term. And I underestimated how challenging that would be for sure.

Miriam Allred (17:01)
And that is still relevant today. Every team is implementing new technologies, new processes, talk about AI. There's just a lot of resistance to change and a lot of tech hesitation in this industry. can you be even a little more specific? How do you soften that blow? Because to you and me, it's like, we're making your lives easier, we're making your jobs better, we're making you more efficient. We can say all of the right things, but that's not going to change their mind. ⁓

How do you actually soften the blow and get them to warm up to change? How do you do that other than saying all of the right things?

Conant Schoenly (17:42)
Yeah, and I will be the first to say that I probably could have done that better at that point. ⁓ But I took each of our team out.

Miriam Allred (17:48)
you

Conant Schoenly (17:53)
to lunch and I just had an honest conversation with them and asked them, hey, what are your pain points here? What are some of the hangups that you have with a scheduling software? I just want to hear where you're coming from. And I think just being open to listen to what they had to say was helpful. ⁓ I've been told and it's a cliche saying, but it's so true. You have two ears and one mouth and you should act. ⁓

accordingly and I think that's true. So for me it was just making sure that they felt heard and then on the implementation being very detailed of the steps that needed to be taken and actually writing out standard operating procedures that they could go back to and that they could follow. Things that

I might take for granted like how to open up your email, things like that, just being very cognizant of, okay, it isn't that they don't necessarily.

not want to do this, it's that they don't necessarily know how. And so coming in and helping them learn and providing them the resources to go to when they have that question. And then myself, just having extra patience, I would say, during that period.

Miriam Allred (19:19)
And what stands out to me and what you just said taking them out to lunch letting them Vocalize and articulate their pain points like their issues There's a lot of like pent-up frustration and then there's a lot of we've been we've been doing this it's working We're gonna keep doing the things the way things have always been done But what you're saying is give them space to articulate their pain points Define them because again, there's all of this frustration and we're just kind of like

powering through the frustration and the broken processes and systems, but letting them have like the time and the space to really break down their pain points. And then you being able to say, there are solutions to those and let's kind of tackle it one by one together and go, go slow to go fast, but there are solutions to your problems because oftentimes they just don't know. They don't know there's another way. They don't know there's another solution. And so once they vocalize the problems, you kind of come in like with the solution.

Thanks

Conant Schoenly (20:17)
Mm hmm. Yes.

Miriam Allred (20:20)
What about letting people go if they aren't able to change? This is something that's really difficult and owners go through when you come in, and this could have happened at any stage, know, maybe not even in the first six months or first year, maybe, but throughout the last few years, sometimes there are people that aren't on board with change and that are too stubborn and can't kind of get out of their own way. Have you dealt with that at the beginning or?

in recent years.

Conant Schoenly (20:52)
I would say that was one of the greatest challenges early on was we've had people that have been with our company and we still do right now for 38 years, right? And they knew me before I was born. And so having respect for those people and seeing what their skill set is and being sure they're in a place where they can thrive. And if it isn't in a certain position within the company, offering them other

positions within the company. And that has been key to actually retaining some of our longer term staff that perhaps weren't as receptive to technology, but that really liked caregiving and really liked overseeing caregivers and could talk that same language and being sure that they knew that they also had a place in the company, even if it perhaps wasn't, ⁓ you know, being our head care coordinator. ⁓ So I think that

was big I think it's I think what's really

important is just that you're open and honest with people and that they understand that I and we as a team are on their team. We want to make this work. And then being very clear as to what the expectations are, spelling that out very clearly and being sure that they also buy in. And once they have that buy in and once we have that buy in as a team,

It really just becomes.

tracking that and saying did these certain KPIs get hit if they didn't get hit how can we help you to meet those or you know perhaps this isn't the best spot for you and how do we set you up to really thrive because this is obviously causing you some pain as well. I will say right now we have an absolutely excellent team and the growth of our company to this point would not be possible without some

of the absolutely outstanding office staff and caregivers that we have. And so I have been able to make some tweaks to the business, but I couldn't have grown the business to where it is now if it were not for our teams and particularly our office team. And I just want to say a huge thank you to them. And I'm not going to call out specific people because there's too many to count, but that have been really supportive.

Miriam Allred (23:20)
Thank

Conant Schoenly (23:25)
of the business and really bought into what we're trying to accomplish here.

Miriam Allred (23:31)
A couple things that stood out to me what you just said is it's the people like you're talking about but also the expectations and the clarity around job descriptions and responsibilities because oftentimes when there's that lack of clarity around expectations that's where the dissatisfaction creeps in that's where the chaos starts to happen is who owns what and that's the challenge of home care there's clients and caregivers and then there's operations and it's like how do you scale that

amongst different teams, departments, different brains tackling different issues, know, and tackling the same issues. It's like, that's a really complicated puzzle to fix. But what you said is they're amazing people and they're doing good work. But you as the leadership have also helped clarify the expectations and the job roles and functions so that people know what they're supposed to do. And I think sometimes when you're in that like high growth mode, that can be one of the things that falls through the cracks.

which can then turn into gaps pretty quickly.

Conant Schoenly (24:32)
Yes, for sure.

Miriam Allred (24:34)
⁓ So when you joined, let's kind of go through a little bit of history here, just like on the growth trajectory. When you joined, you were doing what? About 700 hours a week. About how many people were in the office? How many people are we talking?

Conant Schoenly (24:47)
Yeah, so we were doing about 700 hours per week. We had about five people in the office and we were doing 98 % was Medicaid. So 98 % of our clients were Medicaid clients at that point.

Miriam Allred (25:06)
Okay. And so we've already talked about some of the things that you came in and did initially. Like there was some, there was kind of like the initial overhaul. ⁓ How would you describe, I guess, the last eight years? Does it feel like you're constantly evolving and overhauling or is it kind of like you have a big growth year and then kind of like a maintain year and then another big growth year? Like kind of just high level the last eight years, how would you describe just like the flow of growth to get to where you are today, which is

what we'll talk about.

Conant Schoenly (25:37)
my gosh, it has been a wild ride. think that at every stage in our company's growth, the company has had to change and grow. And that has meant a bunch of different things. But I think

at the end of the day, everyone has to be learning constantly. And if you're not constantly learning, ⁓ you know, that's not a good productive way to be. And so for our company, the number one thing that's really helped us to grow is getting the right people into our office team. And I've just realized that, you know, our company isn't anything without the people that are in it and being sure that each one of those

staff members knows how they contribute to the success of the overall business.

And then that we say as the company grows, you will grow with it. You will have more opportunities, more job opportunities, more financial opportunities. And so being sure that they see, okay, the company is growing, I'm growing too. That has been huge.

⁓ I think something else that's really helped us with our growth has been, ⁓ as you had touched on, just coming up with standard operating procedures and processes for every area of a business, whether that be our scheduling, whether that be our billing, ⁓ whether that be our client care consultation and onboarding process. Being sure that everyone within Charter Oak

Home Care understands these processes and is clear on it. That has really helped us scale to several locations now.

And then the other thing that I think has been really helpful to our growth is just talking to other home care leaders who have done this before. One of the things that I did when I came back to the business was talk to other home care leaders and I would ask them, hey, do you mind if I come out to see your company and just ask you questions? And I ended up

seeing several companies in other geographies and

What I found was that home care owners are just wonderful people and really willing to share their highly collaborative people. And so ⁓ just being able to learn from them and really take things that they were doing well at their companies and then bringing that into our own has really been helpful to us as we've grown.

Miriam Allred (28:23)
Okay, I want to talk about all three of these things. That was a perfect summary of what is top of mind for you and what has been important and impactful in your growth. So I want to talk about all three of these. The first one being office staff. And this is all top of mind for me. I spent a lot of time with operators over the last week asking about like these specific things. In the office, oftentimes there are mediocre employees that have come about

⁓ It's hard to hire. It's really hard to hire unicorns. You want unicorns in your office that can talk the talk and walk the walk and are reliable and great fit. Like it's hard to find those unicorns and so you have to sift through oftentimes mediocre people. I'm curious when you say your team is so strong right now, do you feel like...

over the last eight years, you've gotten it to the point where you have a team of unicorns and you've had to sift out a lot of mediocre people? Like, is that how you would describe your experience? I know I'm being blunt here, but this is very real for operators.

Conant Schoenly (29:32)
Yeah, so it is something that we've definitely made plenty of mistakes in and through these mistakes I've always said if I'm making the same mistake twice, that's a problem. You can make it once, but then twice you really want to stop. I think one of the biggest things has been refining our hiring process. And so,

literally in great depth for office team members looking at a specific role and what are the qualifications of that role and then how do we sift out whether this interviewee has those criteria. And it's really hard, I mean you have an hour interview and you're just getting a snapshot of someone when they show up on their first day to work.

a totally different person could walk in the door. So for us, how do we get those as closely aligned as possible? ⁓

Miriam Allred (30:36)
So how do you do that?

That's the million dollar question is there are people that are really good at interviewing and that can kind of put up this front and then the first day on the job they walk in and they're a totally different person. any specific questions or things that you can do in the interview process to try and suss that out because you've lived through that, right? You've literally been through that the hard way. How, if anything, can you prevent that from happening again?

Conant Schoenly (30:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, and this is something that I've talked to other home care company owners at some length about. What I would say is there's two things. Asking questions where the answer to the question is actually the question behind the question. So, ⁓

it isn't an obvious answer, right? What you're asking for, you're basically trying to get a sense of the person's character, what the person values, things like that. But then also doing more of a case study interview. So I'll just use one of the roles that we hired for the most recently, which is one of our...

business development roles. And for that role, we had a bunch of different candidates. We had all of our questions spelled out and we had the responses that we were looking for. And then we ended the set questions that we had and we said, okay.

We're gonna actually have you pick up your cell phone now and we're gonna have someone call in and this was one of our office team members and pretend like they are a new client looking for services and just see how you answer that call. We understand that you don't know our particular ⁓ way of talking to folks and all of our language but just do the best you can.

And we were so surprised to see how people would actually react when it's in a stressful moment like that. have several people looking at you. I'd be stressed out of my mind and you're having to perform in a real world situation and actually act it out. And that process for us was so helpful because we got to see people that we thought were, you know, excellent on the behavioral side of the interview.

you

but when it came to actually answering the phone and having a conversation.

with that particular lead, that potential client, it was a totally different side that was coming out. So actually giving them some of the work to do and seeing how they would ⁓ interact with that work. And similar with a care coordinator actually, you know, pulling up our scheduling platform, I don't understand and saying to them, I know that you don't understand our specific procedures for how we do things.

but just try to figure it out. And you see so much about how someone thinks based upon the questions that they asked. So those are some things that I think are really helpful and have really helped us. The other thing is good people know other good people. And so when we're hiring folks, we make sure to give a referral bonus.

to folks that are referring other office staff, but also caregivers to that, ⁓ just because they happen to know other good folks. So those are some things that we've done.

Miriam Allred (34:10)
I

love all of it. Great, great specifics. And I love this concept of like replicating the pressure in the interview. in an interview, it's kind of like, you know, a little bit like relaxed, low key, you know, obviously interviews are stressful, but it's like, no, let's try and replicate like the pressure of a day to day task that you're going to be placed with when it's not all cool, and collected. It's like, let's try and replicate that pressure so that they can feel the heat and kind of respond in real time and get a sense of that. ⁓

And what you were just saying, good people know good people and so tap into your team. This is a loaded question and everyone feels a little bit differently about this. I'm curious, do you hire more for heart or for skill or how do you balance those two things? Because the unicorns of the office oftentimes have both. But I'm curious when you're interviewing and when you're looking to hire, do you place a higher merit on heart or on skill?

or both.

Conant Schoenly (35:11)
Yeah, so for us in an ideal world, they would have both. And there's a general level of core competency that they need to have. But we really are looking for people that are hungry, humble, and smart. And if they have those things, they can be taught the specifics of the job. So we're hiring for the personality of that person, what that person...

truly values is that person humble? You know, can they work with an office team? ⁓ How do they interact with others? Because one of the quickest ways to blow up an office team is if you have someone that does not fit well with the rest of that team, even if they're phenomenal at their job.

they're going to bring down the whole team because no one wants to work with them. So being sure that that person is really humble and that they're smart and if they're smart they're going to be able to pick up how we do business. ⁓ And hungry just being willing to grow. Having that

desire to learn and to get better and also having that heart, right? We're looking for people that have a story as to why they got into home care. And on our office team, we have several team members that have actually been caregivers with us and we've given them a path to get into our office team and then to continue to grow with that. And that's something that we always post every position that we have as

an office first to our caregivers and then we post it outside the company.

Miriam Allred (36:58)
That's amazing. I wanted to ask about that promoting from within. It sounds like you have a mix probably of people that you've promoted with from within also friends that have referred friends. And so you have kind of this like well rounded team of a variety of backgrounds and experiences.

Conant Schoenly (37:13)
Yes. Yes.

Miriam Allred (37:14)
Yeah,

that's awesome. Let's, I want to talk about the SOPs and the processes because this is where my head has been at a lot lately is processes. And what I am finding fascinating right now across the industry is it doesn't matter what size company I talk to, small, medium, large enterprise, everybody's reinventing processes, overhauling processes like

And it just makes me think like a lot of the fundamentals of how the office operates, how people think, what families are demanding, the caregiver demographic, like all of these factors are creating a lot of like change in home care right now. For example, this morning, a really well known owner reached out to me was like, do you know someone that has their caregiver onboarding process like extremely dialed in? And I was surprised because I was like, wait, you

are really successful and I would think you have this dialed in but is asking for additional owners and operators that have specific processes dialed in. I guess I just share that in that everyone's working on processes. You yourself have had to reinvent Charter Oak and create new processes and systems. And so I want to ask what that has looked like for you. You come into the business, it sounds like it was probably pretty loose. Things were on whiteboards.

There was a way of doing things, but that wouldn't be described as like an SOP per se. So how do you come in and approach building? We'll talk about building the initial SOPs and then we'll talk about rebuilding and restructuring current SOPs. But first talk about like what building an SOP actually look like.

Conant Schoenly (38:59)
Yeah, so for us, the first step was just to understand what the current process was. Even if there isn't a process, just understand, okay, there is no process for this. ⁓ Or if there is a process, just asking the questions and being really eager to learn and being really curious ⁓ and then writing down that process.

⁓ and I would literally take a pad and paper and a, you know, pad and pen and I would just write down what the processes were or, you know, type it up and then think through does this really make sense? And then I would talk to the team and I would say here's what I'm hearing the process is. Is this correct? And then once they would say yes or, you know, no.

perhaps you should change these things. This is actually how it's done. That would give me a sense of, where are we starting from and where do we wanna go? And then just in talking to others outside the company and just what I had learned saying, okay, how can we make this particular process better, right? And also talking to clients and talking to caregivers. So for us, just talking to the office team,

it's not always going to get us a great process. We really need to know, what are our clients looking for? What are the kids of our clients looking for? And so I'll give you a recent example of something that we've worked through, which is our client care consultation process. For the longest time, we said, we have to send someone out to your home to interview

⁓ the client and the client's loved one to get a sense of what do they actually need to be have done.

Over time in talking to our clients and our partners, what they said was, you know, we love that you're doing this and we love that your team's doing this, but we don't really care as much that you're coming out to us as that you're able to start up one of our clients quickly. And the kids were saying, we need, you know, someone that's here at the house tomorrow within 24 hours to help dad who's coming out of

of a SNF. ⁓ And because of your current process, you're having to schedule someone to go out to the house and then go out to the house and then do up the care plan and then come back to the office and then transcribe that care plan. And so our team said, okay, this doesn't really make sense. Can we have ⁓ close to, if not the same level of

know, quality care through a phone conversation? And then can we send out a supervisor to the client to check on that care within the first, say, three days to one week to be sure that everything's going well?

And that's something that we've tried doing and it's worked really, really well. And our partners ⁓ and our clients and potential clients have been really pleased by it because they cared about how quickly we were able to start them up. So that is an SOP that's had to change over time. And that changed over the past like two months.

Miriam Allred (42:31)
That's a perfect example because what I think is interesting there is in the office, the team came up with a way of doing things, but then you go out to the client and the family and they're like, that's the way you're doing it. Here's how we think you should do it. And you're like, oh great, here we go. We have to like overhaul the process. that's, I guess my question is, is it so hard to like nail down SOPs and home care because

A, things are changing, but B, like no two people are the same. And so it's really hard to create a client consultation process that you think is rock solid and is the right way to do things. But every client and family has different needs and wants, wants things done quickly. is that the root of the complexity with SOPs and home care is that there's just...

It's people that want different things and have different preferences. Therefore, you can't really refine an SOP. Is that how you would describe it?

Conant Schoenly (43:27)
Well, I wouldn't claim to know all of home care and speak for all of home care, but ⁓ for us, what it's come down to is knowing what our ideal client looks like and knowing that we're not able to serve every single.

potential client out there, even though we would love to, but our company isn't set up for that. So for instance, if they're out of our geography or if they want say an hour of care per week, things like that, we're not going to be the best agency to help them. And we have an SOP to help us be able to say, yes,

we can definitely help these clients and we're gonna provide exceptional service to these clients. And here's some clients that could be better served elsewhere. And so I think holding SOPs with an open hand and saying, here's the processes that I have.

But I'm open to changing it based upon what I hear from the caregivers, the clients in my office. I think that's absolutely critical. And I think the same SOP that works, 10 years ago, you know, probably doesn't work now. Things are changing in home care so fast. I mean, we have AI, we have brand new technologies, and we need to be growing. We need to be learning. We need to be...

adapting with the times. ⁓ So I would say to hold them with an open hand and not everything has to be done according to the SOP. You're going to try to stick to that, but if you have to occasionally go outside of those guardrails to serve a client better, that has to be done.

Miriam Allred (45:24)
Yeah. Okay. So a few tangible questions. How many SOPs would you say your business has? And I know that, I don't know, do you know that offhand? Like, is it one per function, one per department, one per role? Like how many SOPs would you say you have?

Conant Schoenly (45:39)
Oh my gosh, well, so I don't know the specific number. I do know that for the company as a whole, what we've compiled is an operating guide. And that operating guide has a table of contents. And that operating guide is maybe 85, 90 pages long.

And it has all of our processes right there. And so, and it's hyperlinked to like sub processes that we have. And so each team has access to their own specific processes because the outreach and a sales team doesn't need to know how do you bill, right? So giving the right people the right S OPs and then being able to change that. The other thing when it comes to.

SOPs and sort of creating that list. It's in one place but giving people something to see. So actually recording the process over Loom or something like that if you can is incredibly helpful and then linking it back to that master process document. So to answer the question, all of our processes are in one document and I don't know off the top of my head how many we have but it's a lot.

Miriam Allred (46:58)
Okay, and it's digital. That was gonna be my next question. It sounds like it's digital and it's likely stored in like a shared drive. And I love what you're saying too about like hyperlinks. It's like, there's a lot of nuances to a scheduling process, a billing process, a payroll process. And so having that person record a video of them walking through the process, like, yes, it's written out probably step by step, but then it's also in a video format. I'm curious.

how your team then utilizes this. And I know this question is difficult because obviously you people that have been doing it for a long time and they don't like need the SOP. It's very important and relevant when you bring people on board. But how often are you and the team talking about like SOPs? It's like, is it weekly? Is it monthly? Is it when something breaks, you're talking about it? how active are SOPs like in your conversations?

Conant Schoenly (47:49)
So SOPs are particularly relevant whenever we're hiring someone new into the business or when a process is changing.

So those are really the two times that we talk about SOPs. ⁓ And people can go back to those guides whenever they need to. Say they're doing billing or payroll and they don't remember something, they can go back to that. Or scheduling, they can go back to that. But I'd say when someone's being hired and then when the processes change, that's really when we need it.

We've actually gone through this with one of our brand new hires that we have. ⁓ And she came in, she went through our SOPs that we have, and we actually figured out, my gosh, she's asking some really good questions that we didn't think of.

So now we need to add this to the SOP that we have. And so it's something that's constantly changing. It's constantly being updated. And so I would say when someone comes in to the business and then when the process changes.

Miriam Allred (48:53)
Okay, and then two more specific questions. So like those micro changes, would you say you and the team are making micro SOP changes? How often? Daily, weekly, monthly?

Conant Schoenly (49:03)
I would say those changes are being made maybe once per month, depending upon what's going on ⁓ and what kind of technology we're bringing into the business. But I would say those are being updated at least once per month.

Miriam Allred (49:11)
Okay.

Okay. And then macro changes, for example, the client consultation that you referenced before, I guess I would call that kind of like more of a macro like process overhaul. You don't want to do that often unless you have to. I guess I would anticipate it's a few macro overhauls a quarter or a year. How would you describe how many macro changes have you done in the last six months, for example?

Conant Schoenly (49:47)
Well, you're precisely right that you don't want to be making too many macro changes at the same time, or everyone is going to be very resentful of all of the change. And so for us, it's doing change management. It's understanding how much change can we as a company sustain. We try to make about two big macro changes per year. And if we're making more than that, ⁓ we found that stresses

the team out even more. And it's hard for people to keep up if you're making too many changes. But we're constantly looking for ways to innovate and serve our caregivers and clients better.

Miriam Allred (50:32)
And I'd imagine you at the top, this is top of mind for you because like you said a minute ago, home care is changing so fast. It is changing so fast and you have to balance the stability and the infrastructure that you've built while also trying to keep up with the times and then not giving your team whiplash. Like how do you balance that? The industry is moving fast. You want to innovate and you want to make change, but you can only do it so fast. You don't rock the boat. is that kind of like the constant

ebb and flow in your mind right now?

Conant Schoenly (51:06)
There's a constant tension between that.

There's a push pull. ⁓ And I think that every successful company needs to have someone that's steady and that isn't constantly wanting to change things. ⁓ And I'm really blessed in our business and in our office teams. We have some people that are absolutely excellent at doing those things that I'm absolutely terrible at and that really like it. And I think that that has been a real strength to our business of having people that will

say to me, hey, I think we're going too fast when it comes to this change. And then me being able to really do some soul searching and say, you know what, I actually think we are. Well, let's take a step or two back. ⁓ You know, that's been something that's been critical for me. I think getting someone else to champion the change at the company is absolutely critical. So it isn't all just coming from the top. It isn't all the president or

the CEO saying these are the changes that we should make, it's the care coordinator saying actually I think we should make this change and then giving them ownership over that change and letting them know that, you know.

The president or the CEO doesn't have a monopoly on all of the good ideas sometimes the best ideas in our company come from a caregiver or client or one of our care coordination team and it's being willing and being humble to accept those thoughts and those new ideas coming into the business that really help us grow and and creating a culture that really values that where someone can just walk

into my office and say, hey, Conant, I was thinking about this, can we implement it? ⁓ Versus having a culture where you're gonna shut down that thought and that people don't feel comfortable coming into your office. And I would like to think that people feel comfortable coming in and actually talking to us.

Miriam Allred (53:13)
Yeah, that's fantastic because it feels different when it's top down change versus kind of like peer to peer change. There's just like a different atmosphere in the office around that. And you're right. Everybody's got like great ideas. so it's like, especially you want to hear the good ideas and then, like you said, kind of build up those champions and help them advocate and create the change. Whereas you don't want it all coming from you because then it feels kind of like that top down approach. ⁓

Conant, this has been awesome. I know this might seem kind of like dry, mundane, but I think every operator right now is dealing with what we're talking about right now, which is how do we balance keeping our current SOPs rock solid, utilizing them, focusing on them, while also making the micro and macro changes that make sense, while also keeping up with the times, but not moving too fast. Like that is the pulse on home care right now for every operation.

SOPs, they seem mundane, but every business is thinking about them right now. How can we do this one thing a little bit better? How can we do these big things a little bit better to make everyone a little happier, things flow a little smoother, improve efficiency and profitability? That is the mindset right now. Thanks for bearing with me on some of these questions. The last thing that you mentioned that has attributed to your growth that I think you are a fantastic example of,

is seeking out other owners and operators in your market and in other markets. And so you talked a little bit about that, but who do you seek out? How do you find these people and then how do know that they're right fit to go to push you in the ways that you need to? I know that might seem like a weird question, but a lot of operators are kind of like stuck in siloed. How do they find these people and then how do they know if they're a good fit for them?

Conant Schoenly (55:10)
Yeah, I think one of the hardest things can be getting out of the business to work on the business. And I remember coming back to the business and seeing all that had to be done and saying, my gosh, I can't spare time. I can't spare one day to go and talk to this other home care owner because I just don't have the time. And what I've learned for myself is that I need to make the time for that.

Those are some of the most valuable conversations that I have and that helps our business. And so it's changing the mindset ⁓ around those conversations to seeing them as being extremely helpful. As far as how I found some of those people, ⁓ it's been all different ways. There was a podcast that I heard and I heard this one person talking on it. said, man, I would love to get to know that person.

So out of the blue, I sent him a LinkedIn message and said, hey, can I grab just 20 minutes of your time and just ask you some questions? And he was really gracious. And he responded to me ⁓ not knowing who I was from Adam. And it's been a great relationship since then. Also going to different conferences, HCAOA has a number of really great conferences. And you can get to talk to folks.

there and get to meet them and interact with them. And I believe that I can learn something from everyone, right? So whether that's someone that I have a single conversation with and I don't ever see ⁓ again, or whether it's someone that I have an ongoing relationship with. ⁓

Oftentimes the way I saw it when I was just starting to do this was, my gosh, I'm being a huge burden to these folks. They aren't going to want to talk to me. They have so much else going on. And what I found was they actually seem to really want to talk with me about the companies that they had built. And for some reason, people were not asking them these questions. So they were highly receptive to it. The other thing that

I found was that, you know, coming in as sort of an external pair of eyes that wasn't in the company was actually helpful to these other owners because I could ask questions or perhaps have an insight on an area of their business that they hadn't thought of before. So it really worked both ways. So I've just been really grateful for all of the home care leaders out there that have

helped me over the years.

Miriam Allred (57:59)
You're speaking my language. I love visiting offices and talking to office teams and hearing them explain their day to day and then asking them questions that is mutually beneficial. I'm curious and they also don't second guess themselves, but they think like, wow, I've never thought of it that way. And so, you know, me, like I just love this stuff and I love asking questions and I love like getting into things. And so.

I love that it's mutually beneficial. You're seeking out answers, but then also you're there as a third party asking questions and helping them think differently about some of the things that they're doing. You said, especially early on, it's a challenge to pull away from the business to make time to go and do this. How often would you say you're doing this? A couple times a year, once a quarter? How often do you try and prioritize this?

Conant Schoenly (58:45)
It's changed over time. When I first came back to the business, I would try and do it about once each month.

⁓ Now it's at the point where it's about once a quarter or so. And the other thing is you don't have to actually go on site, even though that is the ideal, but you could have a zoom call with someone and just set up a recurring ⁓ quarterly zoom call and get to check in and say, Hey, what's new? What are you doing? It's new. What are some of your pain points? And I've done that. So I would say, ⁓ I talked with several

several folks quarterly and that's really helpful for me and that's over Zoom ⁓ for the most part and then I try to go out and actually see someone on site about once every six months.

Miriam Allred (59:40)
Yeah, that's awesome. That's super helpful. I hope everyone listening to this thinks like, wow, I should be doing that too once a month. you know, that surprised me a little bit, but I think that's how often people should be doing this. Connecting for 30 minutes with an operator anywhere in the country. you know, I love like this community and building up this community, but that's my hope of exposing and introducing you all as like a master connector. It's like, there's so many good operators in this space. Everyone is so open and willing to share.

Once a month, seek someone out online and make it a priority to speak to them. Once a quarter, twice a year, go out and visit. I think this should be a higher priority for lot of owners and operators. And I agree, you learn something from everyone. Startups, mid-size, large, private pay, Medicaid, everyone is fighting similar battles and we're all thinking differently and approaching it differently. And there is absolutely something to learn from everyone.

⁓ Last question, Conant, is around where you're headed. Right now, your business is in a great place. You've come a long way the last eight years, but you also, get this vibe that you're hungry and tenacious and there's more out there for you. So I'm curious kind of where your head's at. What will success look like for you in the next kind of one to three years?

Conant Schoenly (1:00:59)
Well, success for us, I think, is several fold. I would say, ⁓ number one, it's creating a place that people love to come work.

where our office team and our caregivers are proud to work, ⁓ which takes excellent care of our clients. ⁓ And then we want to grow to be all over the state of CT. Right now we have two offices in Connecticut and we would love to grow our reach over the whole state. So that is our plan over the next three to five years. ⁓ And we're going to have to add team members

in order to make that happen, but we're all looking forward to that. And I think just making sure that the whole team is on the same page with that. And right now people are pretty fired up to help make that happen and to provide excellent care to folks all over Connecticut.

Miriam Allred (1:02:01)
Yeah, I love it. And I think it's more of the same of what we talked about today. It's doubling down on everything that we talked about, which is the office team and getting the right people in the right seats with the right expectations, building out and reinventing SOPs and then pushing yourself to meet new people and approach things differently. feel like those three things will also carry you into this next wave of growth. Is there anything that you're nervous about or think

anything that we, guess, haven't talked about that you think you will need to consider going into this next wave? Like you don't know what you don't know. You know, when you get to a certain point, it's like on the other side, you don't necessarily know what to expect. Like, can you anticipate any of what you don't know that you're going to have to think about or reconsider?

Conant Schoenly (1:02:47)
⁓ I think there are some things that

we're keeping an eye on. know personally for myself, it's being sure that I'm personally growing because if I'm personally not growing, it's really hard for the team to be growing, right? ⁓ I'm focused on making sure that our culture remains the same as we scale. ⁓ I've seen a lot of companies lose their culture as they scale too quickly. And so being sure that we're scaling in a sustainable manner, that is absolutely critical.

⁓ And then also just being cognizant of the fact that I'm bringing people and we as a team are bringing people on that are way smarter than I am and being humble enough to hear what they have to say and actually learn from them as we're doing right now. And so ⁓ I think just continuing to bring people on to our team that are, that sort of cliched, humble, hungry and smart is going to be critical.

We're also looking to do several acquisitions, one this year and then potentially the year after that. So we're looking at that as well.

Miriam Allred (1:03:58)
Amazing, amazing. As you're talking, it's like, there's so many more questions I could ask and so much more we could go into. But I love what we've covered today. I really do. I know this has been kind of like off script for both of us, but I feel like we've covered what's top of mind for you and some of the strengths and challenges and experiences that you've been through over the years. And a lot of people can listen and learn from what you've shared and hopefully take this to the next level in their own organization. So Conant, thanks for joining me in the lab. This has been awesome.

Conant Schoenly (1:04:26)
Well, thank you so much for having me, Miriam.