Miriam Allred (00:06)
Hey everyone, welcome to the lab live. It is so great to be with all of you. Typically I'm just in your ear, but today we're face to face. Well, Debbie and I are face to face. I wish I could see all of your faces. I know you're here, but I can't quite see you. but thank you for joining us live. This is such a pleasure. I hadn't really done a lot of live sessions for almost two years, and so Debbie and I had this idea and this content, and I just thought this is too good not to share live and how fun to do it in a live setting. So here we are.

so let's go ahead and get started. Debbie needs no introduction. You've all seen her and heard her on the podcast. She's one of my, you know, peers and friends in the industry, but also she's a fan favorite, and many of you know her and know her story. So this is gonna

Debbie Miller (00:37)
you need to be able that. So you to be able that. that.

Miriam Allred (00:51)
be hot and fast, and we're gonna just gonna get right in. So strap in. So Debbie, welcome and thank you for being here. Let's go ahead and get started.

Debbie Miller (00:59)
Thank you, Miriam, for doing this and always being dedicated to bringing education to the industry. And this has definitely been a work in progress for me. And as many of you know, I'm a home care owner myself. I have a large agency in Nashville, Tennessee. I started from ground zero. We're now up to about 8,700 hours a week. And so what we're going to present today, the infrastructure blueprint,

the workbook, all of the work has come out of my own experience of growing an agency over 19 years and all the ups and downs of that. And Miriam, you and I have talked so many times about how difficult this business is to run. And it's not like you can just go and necessarily take a course and learn how to run this business. That's sort of on the job training.

So we'd love to be able to bring some tools and bring the experience that we've had so that maybe you don't have to make the same mistakes that I made, certainly. But I did want to share with you that, you know, where this has come from. It's really come from my own experience. I've basically packed 20 years into about 90 minutes here. And so, but also my experience in working with agency owners across the country through 52 weeks marketing.

where with that business, we've been really focused on helping them grow their referral sources. What we found though, was that a lot of folks were doing such a great job with that, but ran into some barriers in terms of growth because of their infrastructure or lack of infrastructure. So that's why we actually created Helper Heroes. I was able to use a lot of virtual assistants within my own organization after I did my infrastructure overhaul.

And we nailed it and scaled it across the country. Now we're helping hundreds of agency owners across the country to build their infrastructure using virtual assistants. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. But what was really interesting, and I don't even know if I told you this story, Miriam, but I was doing a discovery call with an agency owner and I was telling him sort of my experience and he said, you know what, do you happen to have a white paper?

that

would help me kind of address this with my team so that I can do some of these things. And I said, well, I don't, but that's actually a really good idea. And so I got a little carried away and here we are with a 60 page workbook, both for build and optimize. so it really came from, he really triggered that thought process for me. I codified the whole system and we're down to nine steps. So let's dig in, all right?

So when a home care agency reaches the growth crossroads, what we've done is created a blueprint for each of these different phases. So I've broken it down into the build phase. This is where the owner is still carrying a lot of the tasks and the company in general. Optimize is for more established agency that already has an existing team

but the team and the work need to be redesigned. All right, and then we've got scale. This is larger again, but with lot more complexities and so that starting to become a barrier. So think about it this way, build the owner, I'm doing too much, the owner becomes the growth constraint. With Optimize, we're all doing too much and the way the work is organized becomes the growth constraint.

And then with scale, it's become so complex, the organization itself has become the growth constraint. when the experience that I went through, consider me at the optimized phase at that time. All so this was after COVID, we had lost a lot of traction. right, we were down about almost $3 million and struggling to get our growth trajectory turned around.

And so we were absolutely at a crossroad here. And that's what we're going to focus on today. I'm going to share kind of my experience. But what we're going to do is look at how we can free our best people to do the highest value work. So I did want to really quickly touch on the build, which is the session that we did last week. And we had lots of folks. And it was really fun to hear the feedback from a couple of those people yesterday, Miriam. But this is where the owner is.

basically the operating system, right? They're doing scheduling, billing. They're just, they have too many of their hands in all of the different pots, right? So the growth barrier sounds like, I'm only one person between me and my small staff, it's feast or famine. I can't afford to hire another person because my revenue isn't consistent enough. And so we hear that a lot. It's, can't hire anybody else, but I can't grow unless I hire other people.

So

that's one of the things that we're definitely going to tackle today as well. And it's a problem because this is what the revenue model tends to look like. It's that real see-saw or saw-tooth model. And so what happens is we get a client, this is exciting, and all the effort goes towards staffing that case, and we lose sight of those growth engine tasks like marketing and recruiting and those kinds of things.

So every peak is exciting, creates, it says, hey, I landed a new client, but every Valley says I don't have the momentum to sustain the group. And that's an issue, all right. Now with the growth or the optimized phase, the organizational chart looks a little more robust, but we've got particularly folks that are kind of taking the lead in certain departments now, which is really good.

But this is what our team looks like. Can anybody relate to this, right? Responsibilities have accumulated over time, roles can tend to overlap and workflows through people because it's how we've always done it, right? And so the organization can look kind of solid when you look at the organizational chart, but structurally it's completely overloaded. So we've got a lot of stressed out people on our team.

These are the symptoms that I hear from pretty established agencies. We're getting great referrals, but there's no room for more clients. I hear, I can, my goodness, when I hear about an agency that couldn't take a 24-7 or had to turn away a new client, it's horrifying, right? Office staff is constantly putting out fires. We've got leaders wearing.

several hats. And when I say leaders, I'm talking about the people that you really count on in your organization, sort of your right hand people like maybe head of scheduling, or you might have a director of operations or director of HR, those folks are what I am referring to when I talk about leaders. But they're wearing a lot of hats, right? Good ideas, never get implemented because they're just too busy. We were just talking about that, Miriam. And then what happens is we're not improving

Proving the processes we know like it's not going well, but there's we just don't have the time to do it. So busy not the same as scalable. That's what that's one of the things that we want to we want to reiterate time and time again here.

So we go from a revenue perspective, this is what it looks like. Startup is really exciting, right? We were building momentum, then momentum becomes growth and then growth becomes busyness. And if the infrastructure is not keeping up, we begin to see that plateau. And that's where I was. The demand is still there, but the organization just cannot absorb the growth efficiently.

And so you just kind of like you're gaining a little bit and then you lose clients because things are falling through the cracks or you're not keeping up with the recruiting engine and you can't bring on that other big case. So this is where I was as I was saying, everybody's hair was on fire. We had like just a lot of chaos in the office. And if you walked in and said, I've got a 24 seven, people wouldn't be excited about that.

All right, and that was a really bad place to be. So, and I've seen offices, I've walked through offices are three to $4 million and it's absolutely chaos. And there are others that, you know, it's just calm because they've got the infrastructure to support the growth and they're focused on growth. And that's the key. When you get to a point where your staff isn't excited about growing, we all have a problem, right? So.

Where when I did the infrastructure overhaul, I now have and of course I've grown significantly since then. But we're now such a well oiled machine that there's happiness in the and and you know we kind of ring a ring a bell when we get another big case to come into staff. So everybody is focused on growing and excited about growth and that's where we want to get to. So so what do I do? So a lot of times when people hit that that plateau,

their instinct is, I guess I need to hire more people. Or, and then they start to look at, well, do I need somebody internally? Do I hire a virtual assistant? What about AI? Everybody is really stressed out about AI and they think that there are all these opportunities and they got to jump on the bandwagon. And so those are some solutions, but before we jump to the solutions, we really need to diagnose the work and where the gaps are in the work.

right? And because I unfortunately have seen so many people sign up for say new technologies, then they think that's going to, you know, create this new revenue stream. Well, if you can't handle the work efficiently now, that's just another layer of complication. And you've got, you know, just more issues that your staff is dealing with. So what I love about the blueprint is it focuses on the work that should determine the solution.

All

right, so the work should determine the solution and that's something that we're gonna really re-emphasize again and again here. So this is where I had to really challenge my thinking and I wanted to, know, instead of throwing more people at this problem or invest in some exciting new program, I really wanted to, and by the way, I actually couldn't afford it.

All right, because my net margin, when I show you my before and after, my net margin was so low, it was making me crazy. And yet I knew I still had a stressed out team and we had to do something about our infrastructure. So what I wanted to do is really understand where capacity was actually being lost in my organization and what work was sitting with the wrong people and what my organization actually needed.

to get us to that next level. what it really analyzed, what did we really need rather than just throwing another person up or some new technology? So I love this slide. This is one of the biggest reasons optimized exists. Okay, so I could tell you right now, your best employees are probably doing some of the wrong work, okay? And these people that you're paying for judgment and relationships and coaching,

recruiting, those growth related tasks, right, that are so important. They are spending a huge amount of their time doing data entry, confirmations, paperwork, routing calls. All right, so based on my experience in working with agencies through Helper Heroes, the average amount of time that your high value employees are spending on these menial tasks

is about 20 % of their day. So imagine if you could tackle that and give them back 20 % of that's a whole day a week. Imagine what they could do with a whole day extra week. You know how we hear everybody say, I literally just said this two days ago, there aren't enough hours in my day. We can actually give them a whole day back. So what I see is agencies all across America

are allowing their $60,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 employees to do $14 an hour work. All right, that's the reality of the situation. Now, this doesn't mean that those tasks are important. They absolutely are. They have to get done. The issue is whether that is the highest and best use for that key person's capacity, right? So as we grow, what happens?

We keep adding tasks to our employees. They just keep, you know, taking on more and more and more and more. And by the way, they're, they don't like it. They're overwhelmed. They feel at the end of the day that they could be doing more for the organization, but they're bogged down in these tasks. And that's what I found in my own organizations. I had people that were completely bogged down. We'll talk more about that in a minute. So

so when we think about it, it's not just a people problem, When we, people is one component of the infrastructure. What else is part of that infrastructure? It's processes, it's systems and technology, it's role clarity, really, really important. That was a big eye opener for us. And then accountability. So if we are weak in any of those areas, we're going to have a

we're

going to struggle, right? And then if we add something in without all of these things being considered, we could just layer on another dimension of issues.

So this became the question behind the growth infrastructure blueprint, okay? So how do I uncover hidden growth inside the team I already have? Let's start there.

before you add any more headcount, right? You want to determine, I redesign the work so that my strongest people have the capacity to lead, to solve, to recruit, to market, all the things that you initially hired them for, all right? And I'm gonna tell you right now, the answer is yes. I had some amazing people on my team, right? Who had more to give the organization, it was really amazing. They knew what needed to be done too.

And just given the opportunity to voice that we were, you know, it was, it was just a very eye opening experience, but they were bogged down and couldn't do their best work. So that's what I want to really help you to uncover within your own organizations. So I'm going to take you through the nine steps that transformed my business. But before we think about getting your team together and making changes and all of those things, you really want to.

make sure that your folks understand what is actually happening, all right? A lot of times people will resist change. It's a human reaction, right? Because they like the way that things are currently being done, or maybe they know that it shouldn't be done this way, but they don't know what that means for them, right? What does a redesign mean? Does it mean that I'm gonna be replaced? Is my job at risk?

management think that I'm failing. People don't necessarily resist support, they resist uncertainty. So you want to remove the uncertainty, clarify what this is all about, and actually make them part of the process. All right, and that's what I'm going to help you and equip you to do today. So language matters, guys. And as you approach this, there is a

kind of a good way and a bad way to do it. Instead of leading with, we're bringing in help.

lead

with we're investing in you. All right, see the difference there. This one is going to psychologically scare them where the other one is, wow, okay, these folks understand I'm totally overwhelmed, but they see my value and want to help me. So what you want to say is our goal is to help every member of the team spend more time doing what they do best. So that changes the emotional climate

to

or from threat to opportunity. All right. And that's a really big part of this process and where you as the leader is really going to have to take the charge here. And and remember when I was telling you about the the agency owner that kind of got me got my wheels turning in developing the nine step process. One of his comments was I would be afraid

to that my team would see this as a threat and then start to drop off and I begin to lose people. So that helped me and I in fact constructed an email that he could send out to people to kind of combat that. So I actually will show that to you here in just a second. So ultimately our goal is sustained growth, right? And then what we need to do is ensure that we've got the infrastructure to support that. So we're gonna organize not

from top down, but, or based on assumptions. What we're gonna do is make the work visible, first of all, understand the strengths of the people and where the bottlenecks are happening, and then let the future structure emerge from the evidence that you're gonna uncover during the experience, okay? So everybody's got a chance to weigh in and turn, help you turn that revenue around from plateau to grow. Okay, so.

Here are the nine steps. This is called the Growth Infrastructure Blueprint. This is the Optimize Edition. Now, it is important that we do the steps in sequence. Order does matter. What you're going to find is we're going to build trust before the tasks, and then strengths before redesign, and work before roles, and roles before staffing solutions. So the workbook is going to take you

and introduce you to some leadership conversations that you'll want to have. It's really just follow the bouncing ball and you'll be able to lead a session with your team. And now we're to go into a lot more detail on each of these steps. I'm assuming people would probably want to see my before and after at this point. And I think this is kind of where we can really

I really want to give you hope that there is a huge opportunity here. You've built a business, you've built a team, and so there's still so much opportunity, right? We're in the best industry. It's still the number one growing industry, my partner was telling me the other day. So there's still lots of opportunities. So let me show you what happened with my organization, okay?

And so, as I said, this was about a year out of COVID and we were really trying to build back, but we were stuck. All right. And you can see I've got a pretty good size org chart there. But here were my issues. So I was generating about 25,600 hours a month. And I had a team of about 23 people.

And I had a lot of issues with retention within my own organization, particularly in the scheduling department. Now here was my issue, was my net profit. It was so frustrating. So I still had these high paid wage, high wage roles, but I still, you we were, we just had a lot of chaos going on. So we still needed to really grow our team to get us to that next level. But I just, I couldn't afford.

to just add another high salary. So what we did is we did this whole exercise that we're gonna be delving into here. And I had to make some, as I worked through and looked at first at our team and the strengths of our team, and some of you may be able to relate to this, you started with some people that may have been with you for a long time. And you've got this gut feeling that maybe they're not the right person to get you to that next level.

Well, I had to address that. So in one of the tasks, we're going to look at the strength of the team and what they bring to the table. But in my redesign, what I learned is that my director of operations was not the person that was going to get us to the next place. So I actually was, I had to let her go. But in my exercise, I uncovered that my director of recruiting is the perfect person. moved her there. So we saved.

quite a bit of money there by moving that high wage person out of the organization. So as I said, we don't go into this exercise with the idea that we're going to replace people, but you will learn and identify areas where there's opportunity. That's what this is all about. All right, now we also uncovered that this person that was managing this facility in another building was going to be the person

perfect person to take over, fill that role. So there's a ton of opportunity to move your really great people into roles that, and that they're going to appreciate that promotional opportunity. So we did that. And then what we were able to do with technology, because we learned that our processes were antiquated, that we could do more with less bringing in technology, we were able to streamline that recruiting process. All by the way,

So we went from the three full-time salary people to two virtual assistants. And by the way, everything that you see on the right-hand side in green are virtual assistants, okay? So we're now doing what we were doing with three full-time employees with better systems, automated technology that helps us do more with less. And so we were able to do that.

Ultimately

though, we bulked up where we needed the people. We needed the support in the scheduling department. We had, and one of the reasons that we were struggling with retaining schedulers is because they hated doing on-call. They hated it. And because of our volume, we have a terrible chaotic on-call. And so what we did is we were able to bring in actual dedicated on-call virtual assistants that took that off their plate.

So when they come in on Monday, they are refreshed and ready to start a week and now. So that was really significant. So all of those extra people and support where we determined we needed it, where we are now, we're now doing 35,200 hours a month. We have more people and I'm making more profit than I've ever made. All right, and because we have such a great infrastructure and a well-oiled machine,

As I add revenue and growth, we're poised for more growth. And it's as simple as adding in another layer of support when it's necessary. And we've identified when we get to this point, we're going to need to add this position. So it allows you to look forward. And so you're not making a decision out of crisis, you're making a planned decision and people know, when I start to feel the pinch, we're gonna have another opportunity to look at.

You know, layering on some more infrastructure. So.

Miriam Allred (25:35)
Let me make a couple of comments

and ask a couple of questions.

Going back to when you hired your very before you hired your very first virtual assistant, I think a lot of people are in that camp of they haven't brought one on just yet. What were the candid comments of your team members? There's fear, there's hesitation, there's all these concerns. What what were some of the actual comments that you heard from your team?

And some of the fears that they express before you brought in the virtual assistants.

Debbie Miller (26:00)
One of the things started with me thinking about doing this job virtually. we, you know, after having gone through COVID, we were very excited to have everybody back into the office. And I actually mandated everybody come back to the office, which was great. And, but then now Debbie, you're saying we're going to do scheduling through virtual technology. And so it's kind of like, it was in mind.

shift for me first, and then the team. And so we kind of had to get over that little piece. and then when I reminded them we were doing it during COVID, and we were, being pretty effective. So so that was the first thing. The second thing was that when again, it's all about the language, right? We knew, and when we did the exercise,

we recognized that and roles kind of jump off the page when you see all the tasks. When you lay this out, we're going to show you kind of an example in a minute. When you sit back and go, my goodness, you are managing a lot. When they started to realize some of those things are going to come off my plate, then they advocated for the for the change. And that and that was the key. that that so it was the first the shift of

what we're going to be doing this virtually. Can we still do that? Can we manage that? Yeah, you have to have certain people in the office that are customer facing and client facing in those particular situations. But in this case, you know, we're doing everything through a computer, so it's definitely possible.

Miriam Allred (27:41)
Mm-hmm. It's not uncommon for me to hear from owners. I run my business from my phone. Like that's just business in 2026. We have smartphones, we have laptops, we have mobile devices. We're on the go. We're able to run these businesses virtually. Let me just ask you a couple more questions that have come in through the chat actually. Emma asked, are are the VAs overseas or any of them onshore like stateside in your experience?

Debbie Miller (28:02)
Yes,

yes. So they are overseas. We're sourcing from the Philippines. Now, before I started Helper Heroes it sort of an accidental business, as I often will say. Dylan and I were running 52 Weeks Marketing. It's a long story. Short story is our virtual assistant in 52 Weeks was so fantastic. We were struggling. I was working with a bunch of different staffing agencies.

And I had lot of a lot of overt turnover, which was kind of frustrating. It was sort of defeating the purpose. And so I said to, sell the, you know, can you, I need five people just like you. said, well, I can help you with that. And she did. And so those people are still with me to this day. And we just created a helper heroes and we do source from the Philippines. A lot of reasons for that. One of them is their English is very, very good and culturally they're very Americanized.

So I operate out of the South, very discriminating clientele from a caregiver perspective and our client perspective. And the accents seem to be a lot more accepting to these folks. So it's worked out really well and we've created a great infrastructure and it's just kind of, you know, here we are today.

Miriam Allred (29:21)
Amazing. And one other question from Greg about your operation, looking at your arg org chart, your operation in Tennessee, is it all in one market or one location, or do you have multiple locations?

Debbie Miller (29:32)
Well,

interestingly enough, we have four offices at one time. This allowed me to streamline my organization. So we operate everything out of one office now. We closed the offices, which again, was really affecting our profitability. And we were able to now centralize into one location. I have, from a franchise perspective, we have four franchises.

franchise territories, but we operate centrally. So for a lot of people that are thinking that can be a huge cost savings, depends on how much geography you're talking. We basically own all of middle Tennessee. So it's about a three hour radius, like driving radius. So we're able

Miriam Allred (30:22)
Okay. Yeah, that's

Debbie Miller (30:22)
to do that.

Miriam Allred (30:23)
that's helpful. And then one more really good question about HIPAA compliance with virtual assistants. I know that's top of mind concern for a lot of people is just like the HIPAA compliance, the training, all of that. Could you address that directly?

Debbie Miller (30:37)
Yes, well, the training is significant. And when people, because we help source of talent for a lot of agencies, I say this to a lot of folks that are bringing on a virtual assistant, you need to invest in this person and train this person the way you would if you were hiring somebody in your office. All right, there's no shortcuts here. Now, in our particular case with helper heroes, we have a virtual academy.

or a home care virtual assistant academy. So we, because we understand best practices, because we're living and breathing home care ourselves, I've created a lot of courses that our virtual assistants actually do prior to starting with our clients. However, there's still, you have your way of doing things, right? You have your way of using WellSky or AccessCare or all of your internal processes, your communication protocols, all those things, only you can train.

But I could tell you this, the more you invest in that person, the more you will get from that person. They love to be an integrated part of your team. And all of our folks, they truly feel like part of our team. We have daily meetings, we have weekly business reviews, all of those things they participate in. Now back to HIPAA, it's a very, very good question. And this is important. Anybody that you're working with needs to provide you with an actual

specific HIPAA compliance certificate, we use an American credentialing body. So our virtual assistants, we're not running something out of the Philippines to get them HIPAA compliant. We actually use an American credentialing body. So they go onto their platform, they do all the courses, they have to pass those and they get a certificate. I think that is really, really important.

that whoever you're working with that you have that. We did that because my franchisor was very stringent about the HIPAA compliance, which is what set us down the path with helper heroes to really put a lot of effort into that. As a matter of fact, we're even going to the next level with that and we're working with Littler. And we're looking at state specific requirements that we're showing how we're

compliant with all of those state regulations.

Miriam Allred (33:02)
Amazing. Yeah, that's super helpful. And it's just a good reminder for everyone who whatever company you go out and and speak with, make sure you're asking these types of questions.

Debbie Miller (33:11)
Yeah, so back to those questions about, do we get people, VAs, all those things. So it's usually a blend of things, which you kind of saw from my own experience. So, and I kind of broke it down because I get this question a lot. So think about it this way. You're in office, people should be doing the work that requires judgment, leadership.

maybe creativity and expertise. Where virtual assistants are really helpful is they can be that dedicated human person that gives you capacity that gets the work done, but frees up your leaders to do the work that they can only do. Okay? And then think about AI or technology or automation that can handle appropriate, repeatable and process-driven work.

All

right, so the goal is not necessarily replacing people with it. It's finding efficiencies and this is really key. Is this going to help my people do more with, you know, and still give them a life? Think about it that way. All right, now, those of us that are very cost conscious and don't have a trillion dollars to just build our infrastructure.

We're looking for ways and tools that we can give our people so that they can do more with and we can do more with less people. All right. So we don't want, we're not, I'm not suggesting that you all go out and build this huge org chart. You want to build the tightest, best, efficient infrastructure that you can so that a lot more of that money ultimately is going into your pocket. All right.

So for me, the success looks like this. It looks like well-defined manageable roles, okay? Consistent lead and referral flow. That's so important. Becoming a well-oiled machine. My people have been hearing me talk about this for years. We, all the different little departments, we all have to be working together and become that well-oiled machine because we want to have predictable weekly results. We don't want that.

that sawtooth revenue model. We also want positive morale. We have never had a better morale than we do now in my office. I mean, people laugh. They're having a, I don't know, hoping you can't hear them out there. They had chicken chick for lunch today. So, but at the end of the day, it's sustainable, steady growth, right? That's what we're all looking for. That's going to, but also it's the experience for your caregivers and for your clients.

And then Ultimately, think about, we're not just after a bigger business, after a better business. What does that mean for you? Does it mean more time with your family? Does it mean that you can, you know, go back to, to, you know, doing some of the things that you enjoyed before you were wearing all of these hats? And I know I've done it all guys. I have done it all. I mean, to this day, Miriam will tell you, I'm still out doing presentations in my own

in my own community to drive my revenue. I've got, you know, I'm doing a lot of things, but I have incredible people. I'm not doing everything anymore. And you have to get to that point. Otherwise, that's going to be an absolute growth barrier for you. Okay. So whatever that means to you for me, this means I can have more time to help other agencies with 52 weeks grow their business, build their infrastructure with helper heroes. And my team is working on

some incredible AI technology to improve processes that we all are doing in the home care arena. So more to come on that, but it's allowed me to do and work on other things. So we're gonna dig in and I'm gonna take you through the exercise, but You're gonna need some things before you get started. And so

You'll need some multi-colored stickies. You're going to need the workbook. You're going to need to bring the team of people. We're going to talk about that in here in just a second. You're going to need lots of wall space. mean, when you see this when it's done, it's the most incredible piece of work that you'll ever do. You want to take pictures. As matter of fact, Miriam, we should start some sort of a forum where people can send pictures.

You know, when they do this, wouldn't that be fun?

Miriam Allred (37:46)
Yeah, and you can share why the in-person experience, like some of you do have virtual, team members and that's okay. There's a reason why this needs to be done in person because it's such a rich team building experience. And so Debbie's very big on getting the white paper out, getting the whiteboards out, getting the stickies, getting getting it color coordinated. Like this is experiential and team building. And so we really encourage that you take the time to do it at this level.

Debbie Miller (38:13)
Yeah, so as we go through the workbook here, today isn't about, you've got to fill it in. This is about helping you lead this session. Okay, so you're, you're going to be equipped to have that leadership discussion initially with the folks lead them to when you meet. And it's not necessarily something that you do in one meeting. All right, you can build on it. And but the key here is to find a place

dedicated place and time where people aren't going to be interrupted. That's really important. you get it, you may have to do it at night, you may even have to do it over the weekend. But you've got people, and this is the problem with our business, Miriam, we're talking about this today. People love these great ideas, but we're so caught in the rut of everyday running a business. And this is one of those where you just have to really step away.

dedicate yourself to doing it and you will not regret it. telling you. Next.

Miriam Allred (39:13)
Mm-hmm. This is

another another place to you hear people say the word like off site, actually take it out of your office. You

Debbie Miller (39:20)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (39:21)
know, rent a space, find a studio, find a location where people can actually be out of the the busyness of the the literal office and be in a different location to kind of like free up their headspace and open their minds to this.

Debbie Miller (39:33)
Absolutely. So the workbook follows this pattern here. So you're going to see the why behind each of the steps. What I've kind of learned, I'll give you some tips. And then the discussion points that you'll lead. So there's a great opportunity to open up the floor and really get your folks talking and sharing, but it gives you the infrastructure to lead that discussion. All right, then there's the team exercise and you'll

be given examples in the workbook. And I'm going to share some examples here on the slides as well. The worksheets are really cool though, guys, because they become your actionable outcomes. All right, so as you can see from this picture, people are going to be able to walk away with some of the things that they're going to need to do. This is where you want to hold people accountable as you're building on your roadmap. And we're working toward that roadmap. So.

there are the discussion points and then there are the worksheets. would, and I've color coded them. So the worksheets I believe are in red. Those are the ones that you want to photocopy for your people so that they'll work through as you're working through the exercises. All right, let's look at step number one, which is positioning growth as an opportunity. What you want to do is create excitement before you begin to do the work of changing the infrastructure. All right, so again, I said,

your

words matter, right? Language matters here. You don't want to create any fear. What you want to create is psychological safety, a sense of safety that this is about me and really looking at how I can do what I do best, even better or do more of that and take some of the things that are bogging me down off my plate. So when they start to hear that kind of language, they're going to be really excited versus

fearful about this. Ultimately, when people understand the why, they become partners in building the future instead of protecting the path. I love that when you think about, because a lot of times people get really defensive, right? And so now each one of these slides is outlining the worksheet pages. So this is going to relate to the workbook pages five to eight, okay?

Next is step two, and this is bringing the right people in. Every process has an expert in your organization. And as you grow as an owner, you start to lose sight of some of the processes. And you may not even realize where there are some huge opportunity and or gaps. So bringing the people who understand the work.

and how it really moves through the organization is important. So your operations folks scheduling, recruiting, you want representation from every area. You know, if you're, if you've got a group of five or six, you could bring you'd bring everybody. In my case, I, had more more than that. So I may have had one schedule, I think I had one scheduler represent scheduling, I had one, one marketer representing marketer, and one care manager reps, and so on.

Here's how you want to look at it. The people who are closest to the work often have the clearest understanding of where time is being lost, okay, where processes are breaking down and where opportunities exist. They, your team literally has the answers that you need. It's creating the forum to allow them to expose that to you, to share it in a safe forum. All right, so.

One of the things you'll notice in the workbook where we talk about and we actually get them to sign that, you know, this is not a, she does this or doesn't do this. That's not the kind of environment we want to share. So really review those sheets and I think I've got the sheets here are page nine through 12. All right. Let's move on to step number three. This is extremely powerful.

Exercise. All right, so this is an opportunity for you to start with your people, not necessarily the jobs that they're doing, the job descriptions. You want to start with them and have them talk about themselves and share what they feel they do exceptionally well, what energizes them, and where do they create the most value for the organization. Wow, you talk about

a team building exercise. It is a very empowering exercise to give them this opportunity and give them the stage basically. All right, now some people might be a little uncomfortable and say, well, you know, they don't really want to toot their own horn. Well, then allow their colleagues to share what they do well from their perspective. And you talk about creating camaraderie when you hear

you know, one of your colleagues talking about your strength. It's pretty spectacular. And so, so we get a chance. And so as a leader in the workshop, and you'll, you'll, you'll have them take turns. Okay, so lead them through

Miriam Allred (44:56)
Yeah.

Debbie Miller (44:56)
page 14 here, and then give them an opportunity to do their own worksheet on this. All right, and then have them share with everybody. On pages 13 through 16, I think it's around page 14.

Page 15 actually, you're going to have them talk about things like what makes you energized, but what also drains your energy. So imagine asking your employees that. Also, this is what I love, if administrative work disappeared or moved, what would you spend more time doing?

So have them work through that and then come back and share that. And that's going to be some interesting food for thought as we continue through the process. Okay. let's go to step number four.

Miriam Allred (45:51)
One comment from me, this came up last week. Someone someone commented last week about this looks very similar to EOS, entrepreneurial operating system. And a lot of you have heard me to maybe talk about that on the podcast. This is basically EOS for home care, which is this exercise is built specifically for home care. You you've maybe heard of the resources like get it, want it, have the capacity to do it, or level 10 meetings. A lot of that infrastructure, Debbie has, you know, basically come up with a an iteration of that specifically.

for home care and again make the time to create this space with your team because it's so, so powerful.

Debbie Miller (46:28)
It is. So when we look at step number four now, we're now getting into the actual tasks, okay, that these people are responsible for. So now, as I said earlier, every growing organization reaches a point where work is piling up on your folks, right? And we may not even always be aware of all of the things that have been added to their plate.

and

it just accumulates, but I call this invisible work. So through this exercise, what we're going to do is make the invisible work visible. All right, so it's like it's a task inventory. We're going to ask them to write down on a sheet of paper on that little sticky the tasks that they're responsible for. All right, and you're going to create it in a format that is on that has daily, weekly, monthly and unexpected responsibilities.

All right, so sometimes you'll be amazed at how many things are on that unexpected. So they've got to really, really think this through and just keep having them go back and have them kind of walk through their day first and then their week and then their month. So get them kind of organized because you don't want them all over the place. So try to keep some order to this so that they don't lose things. So then you'll organize it on your board. And by the way, the colored stickies, what you want to do is have a...

different color for each department. All right, so yellow for scheduling or however you wanna do it, doesn't matter. But this is the point where you decide whether work, this isn't the point where you decide whether it stays or it goes. It's just getting down the top. All right, and then what you're gonna start to see are some things that will begin to become very apparent as you work through this.

So we'll give you an example of what this might look like. So now keep in mind, this is only an example. is not necessarily, these are things that I was like brainstorming and kind of put into Chat GPT and said, show me an example of what this would look like. So it was a lot of work on my part, but it's not perfect. So don't try to copy it.

get your folks doing the task inventory, all right? But this is where you need a lot of wall space, okay? And then it's amazing when you step back and you talk about appreciation for each other and what each other is doing in the organization and certainly for you as an owner, it's incredible what these folks are really caring for us and how important they are to our success.

And

so that is the real message that they get here is, wow, look at what I'm carrying and how important I am to the success of this organization. So it's like, it's a kumbaya moment, let's just say. It's a major kumbaya moment.

Miriam Allred (49:33)
I like the way that you put it a minute ago, making the invisible visible. That is where burnout and turnover happens. Is there

Debbie Miller (49:39)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (49:39)
is just an insane amount of un invisible tasks happening with each of your office staff and this brings all of that to light and it's honestly a huge weight off their shoulders.

Debbie Miller (49:49)
It is. It is. And you're right about that, Miriam. They're not happy about all of this. And as I said, they imagine if you are just killing yourself for the company and at the end of the day, you don't feel great about what you accomplished. And that's, that's really sad. So, we're going to help them with that. And they begin to see there's light at the end of the tunnel and that really energizes them and they're ready to come back for the next meeting. So, so it's,

It's really shining the light on them and it's a powerful opportunity. So now that we have every recurring responsibility that's now visible, it's time to begin to ask ourselves, what are some of the tasks that truly require this person to perform those things? And then, you know, where is their opportunity to delegate or redesign or automate or support differently?

All right, so that's this section and this is page 22 to 26 in your workbook. All right, now, we don't want our employees thinking that we're gonna be dumping all the lower value work, right? Like, it's not that kind of thing. So you'll be coaching them and again, there's a lot of verbiage to lead you through these discussions in the workbook.

But the goal here is to protect their leadership capacity. right. So somebody is going to have to do the work. We're just going to figure out what we want to do is have them focusing on the things that only they can do. Again, here's another example. So we're identifying the bottlenecks where things there, you know, starts to get really fun. We've got we've got the little stickies now.

and we're using red for those things that have to stay with the current person. Yellow are those tasks that we could streamline some way. Maybe it's sometimes it's shared with somebody else or it might be automation, those kinds of things. And then green is an opportunity to actually delegate and potentially create another role. So don't create the solution yet, just...

keep going with diagnosing and then what we ultimately want to get out of this step is on page 26, the top 10 opportunity list. So before we move on, we want to identify what are the top 10 things, but you're going to start to cluster some things here in just a second. But just at the outset at this point, stop and say, okay, what are our 10 top 10 opportunities? People start to have that discussion and we can begin to.

to

be foreshadowing where we're going next. All right, step six, Miriam, we're moving along here. Building the opportunity boards is probably one of my favorite pieces because the conversation now has completely changed from, let's hire another person to, well, what kind of support do we actually need? That's a major, major shift, right? So what you're gonna do is group,

the group clusters of work. meaning like find the work that can fit under sort of one category, and then you're going to begin to see hidden growth become visible. So again, using the coloring system, you'll begin to put the opportunities that are yellow or green and in those clusters.

And then if we go to the next slide, kind of we'll show you sort of what that could potentially look like. So all the greens and yellows you're going to put, and you're going to put them under that particular color scheme. And then start to look for patterns. OK, so you might have 20 scheduling tasks that are really, really bogging somebody down that could actually begin to present as a support role.

All right, so we actually had that happen within our schedule and we now have a whole new role called scheduling coordinator that has completely overhauled the way a scheduler approaches their job. And they love it. They absolutely love it. And it's kind of nice because it creates a path for promotion. So scheduler is a little more responsibility than a scheduling coordinator. So that was an interesting insight that

we got from this particular step. So also take a look and say, well, what are the categories where most of the stickies are? And it begins to see where you've got to bulk up. in our exercise, when I showed you my model, my org chart, we didn't even know that finance needed support. We now actually have a virtual assistant in a role there that's made things so much smoother for our processes.

and

team. All right, let's let's move on to step number seven, designing the roles around the actual work. So how many of us have hired a person and then like kind of figured out what their job was afterward? I'm, I'm embarrassed to admit it, but we've all we've all probably done it. So optimized reverses that and what we are doing here is defining the work, then design the role, and then choose the right person or model that that's

that's going to support that role. Okay. So the work's going to tell you what you need. And it starts to really jump out, jump off the page or jump off the board. So if we go to example number seven, you'd start to design future roles when you look at the clusters. Okay. And so a lot of discussion happens at this point and you get a schedule or so excited about, if I, if, you know, I'm going to be able to

have more frequent conversations with our clients. What does that lead to? Client retention. So you're not losing clients, you're building your base and as you add on more, you start to see your revenue increase. All of those growth related tasks that are so important for them to do, they're now free to do. Recruiting, well-oiled machine. So when you have that 24-7 coming in the door, you're able to take it and again, continue to increase your revenue.

All right, so, and then, if you're able to fill some of these roles with virtual assistants, it will definitely help your profitability because, you know, I'm sure you're all dealing with the same wage creep that I am. You know, when we would lose a scheduler, our scheduler, say we hired a scheduler at $50,000 and they decided to move on, we lost one that moved to Mississippi.

Well, when I went to hire another one, it was like, now it's $55,000, like in a matter of six, seven months. Couldn't find anybody at $50,000 anymore. So those are the kinds of things that you want to be thinking and why having these options is really, really helpful and really understanding, well, can this work be offshore? Can this work be done virtually and so on? So that really helps you to, and these are just some ideas of

some support roles that have emerged with either myself or other folks that we've worked with. All right.

Miriam Allred (57:31)
One one other observation, we're always talking about how owners wear so many hats. We say that all of the time in home care. What I've seen too, any office team smaller than about 10, every one of those roles is wearing too many hats. And so these exercises surface where those people are spending their time. And this isn't a secret. Those people are spending the time where they enjoy spending their time. Most of them are in these hybrid roles where they're

They're really responsible for two, three, maybe even four things, but they're spending more time in the things that they enjoy and that they're good at and neglecting the things that they don't s enjoy doing or aren't good at. But this exercise surfaces all of that. And then what Debbie's saying is you identify these support roles. that is the the opportunity here is there's all of these things that are slipping through the cracks. And that's why you can't get out from under all of this busy work. That's where you hit these plateaus at two, four, six, eight, ten million. I've seen that.

You can't get out from under that until you identify these gaps and you solve them with supporting roles. That is really the only way to get out from under just the never ending fires that happen in home care is identifying these gaps and assigning and building these supportive roles to take that burden off of your existing team, but then make sure it's getting done at the level that it needs to be.

Debbie Miller (58:48)
Well

said, Miriam. Well said. All right, let's move on to step eight. This is now where you circle back and show everybody what's in it for them. Not just the folks that you may have had a representative team, and now it's time to share what's been going on in that team to your broader team. So, and you want to express it in a way that they see what the benefit is for them. All right, so.

That's again, we've got some great suggestions on how to lead that conversation on pages 36 through 39. I love what's on page 39. Okay, so before you move on, you want to ask this question. So stand back with your leadership team and say, okay, so you'll construct what your message is that you're gonna be delivering to the team and you may wanna have an all employee meeting. We did that.

and say this is what it's going to look like. And, you know, always be informing them about all the different steps as you work through and progress through your roadmap, your 90 day roadmap. So what this is what the first 30 days are going to look like guys, this is what the next 30 days are going to look like and so on. And then constantly be meeting and updating them. Again, the more they understand, the more they feel like they're part of it, the less feared they will be. So, but I love what's on page 39.

You ask your team, if I were hearing about this change, the way you've determined that you're going to share it, for the first time, would I leave feeling excited or anxious?

Now, if the answer is anxious, you need to go back to the drawing board. All right? And so that is very, very important. it's good accountability measure for you all. And then you all want to be singing from the same song sheet. That's really, really important. In fact, I would have them commit to this is our messaging as we roll this out. OK.

And you may have determined like I did that there were some major changes that were going to happen. That could spark some fear because people might think, is that going to be me next and so on. So you're going to have to really tackle if you're going to be letting somebody go and promoting, deal with that first, help them explain that this is not a trickle down kind of thing. This was a one off situation. you can explain it depending on what the situation is.

All right, so if we go to step number nine, this is what we're working toward. I love roadmaps. I'm like the roadmap queen. And just shared our guide roadmap yesterday with Miriam's leadership team. And so what I love about it is it draws a line in the sand. This is what we're gonna do by when and who is responsible for that particular task or set series of tasks.

Think

about your 30 day, 90 day, and then your six to 12 months, because you're not, you can't do all of this overnight. Our ours was about a one year process. All right, we're reaping the benefits of all the work that we did this last year, which is where we're at. But this was a process. Okay. And I don't want you to get overwhelmed by you've got to have this all figured out by tomorrow. It's a step by step, right? It's created by it's not

like one big decision, it's hundreds of little decisions over time that help you create infrastructure that's going to help you to continue to grow. And by the way, create a culture through this, and this happened in my organization, create a culture of, we call it in my company, share it and solve it.

If we're getting bogged down, either in a with a process or something is is a miss, you want to share it and solve it. Grab a team, the team that touched that particular process and get figured out. We do it all the time. So this isn't a one and done kind of thing. And I wanted to share that with you.

Just as an example, we had my team actually came in and we said, we've got this issue, can you help us through it? Brought the right people in and start with the problem. What is the problem? Give me the problem statements. There were four or five problem statements. And then what we did is said, okay, let's work through the process. What's the current process? Okay, what could we change about this process that would solve that problem? Whatever it was that we determined was the issue.

And now we've got this brand new workflow and it required maybe a better communication between these. Okay, so now we've got to roll this out. So what are the action steps? It meant a meeting with two other people, bring them in, communicate this change in the workflow. So it's something that you're constantly doing. And if you could create through this a culture of

There's no right or wrong. It's just let's figure this out. Get the right people who are close to the issues and the work and process and proof. All right.

Miriam Allred (1:04:11)
One question,

are you big on SOPs and did you create all new SOPs going through this exercise? And when you this is like multifaceted, but then when you do the share it and solve it, are you kind of constantly making micro changes to your SOPs?

Debbie Miller (1:04:24)
Yes, I would say we do a process improvement at a minimum probably once a week. It's incredible. Especially you might bring in a new person and a little bit of knowledge gets lost. or like there are so many different reasons why and we have several meetings that we have throughout the week. So we have our Monday meeting where we meet with with a cross functional team, our whole business development team, recruiting.

all of operations and all business development. And so sometimes we, and we go through our potential clients, this and that. Do we have consistency? I mean, we're looking at a bunch of all of our KPIs. Well, when we determine, why did that happen? We analyze it. Why did it happen? All right, what can we do better? Now, what do we have a process improvement? So for example, I'll give you a very good example with Guide. All right, Guide was a brand new program, okay?

And we started out with Guide and we had in the beginning, you know, we had, we were building our referrals. We're now at a place where we're managing hundreds of Guide patients. We had to keep evolving our guide process because in my organization, we have so many hands in the, the pot, in the Guide pot, we've got people that manage internal calls. We've got DR assessors, we've got our marketers, all these people. And so we were like, things were falling through the cracks.

we'd have it every Monday we'd kind of go through it. We were literally changing our guide SOP on a weekly basis. So we got to be willing to do that, especially with new kinds of programs like that. So that's a really good example where it's this constant refresh.

Miriam Allred (1:06:11)
Yeah, and I think people just get so intimidated by you know, that they feel like they have to overhaul a lot of their processes. This breaks it down, step by step, department by department. And then the ongoing maintenance is the share it and solve it, the process improvements every single week. We are documenting and improving and updating micro processes and that is how the company grows and evolves. We're slowly improving rather than waiting a year, you know, to then overhaul

Debbie Miller (1:06:37)
Right.

Miriam Allred (1:06:38)
all of the processes. That just isn't

Isn't sustainable.

Debbie Miller (1:06:41)
The key is meeting often enough and reviewing your KPIs and how are you measuring against them? How are you doing? And if you're not meeting your objectives, then you have to determine why that is and what you can do better. That's got to be a weekly, monthly, we meet weekly, we meet monthly, and then we meet quarterly and look at the bigger picture. What I love about our quarterly meetings is because we are such a well-oiled machine focused on growth.

Our meetings are celebrating growth. And, you know, did we meet that next milestone? It's an exciting team building thing because it was a team effort to get there. And so we can all celebrate. Or typically by the time we get to the quarter, if we're meeting weekly and monthly, there should be no surprises at that quarterly meeting. We should be already addressing. sometimes if we maybe missed a mark on certain things,

I'm usually there at the quarterly meeting saying, well, here's what we're doing about it because we've already been working on it.

Miriam Allred (1:07:46)
Yeah, very good. Let's keep going.

Debbie Miller (1:07:48)
now this is a lot of work guys, right? And it is work. So I really encourage you to invest the time that's necessary to do this. And this is what the outcome is going to be. Okay. Not everybody's going to do this. They're going to be like, you know, Miriam and I were saying earlier, like it's, this is great. And we've kind of put it all together.

in a nice package for you. But Monday comes and you know, the world keeps turning. So you got to really take be intentional about stepping away and doing the exercise. So I hope that you will do it for your business sake. You want to continue to grow if you're at that barrier, whatever that you know, wherever you are, it can kind of get you back to growing so.

Miriam Allred (1:08:38)
And Debbie

and I are gonna keep going. If one of you does this and it changes one of your lives and one of your businesses, it's worth it to us. Debbie and I have put all of this work into this and organized it. It's like we are going to keep putting these resources together in hopes that people take advantage of it. But honestly, if it helps just one of you and you come back to us and say this changed your life and changed your business, it's worth it for us.

Debbie Miller (1:08:58)
100 % 100 % we want to hear please send us your feedback. So as I said, it's not one solution, right? It's lots of different things that you're going to be uncovering and putting into place, clear role design, better workflows, technology and automation where it makes sense. Internal promotions, like you saw with my org chart, additional support staff, whether that's an in office person.

or a virtual assistant. So it could be a combination of those things. If you get to the point where you do need and decide that, yeah, virtual support is something that you'd like to explore, we at Helper Heroes can help you do that. So we are the founding owners of Helper Heroes and helping agencies.

just like you guys build these support roles for your team to free up your best people to do what they do best. So I wanted to give you all some org charts. And I was amazed when I started working on this, I had this idea that I wanted to present some organizational charts to folks. And I went to some master franchisors.

and ask them, do you have org charts that you recommend to your franchisees? And nobody had, nobody has them. It was mind blowing. So I actually really put a lot of effort into this and said, okay, well, what should it look like around one to 200 clients? And by the way, I validated this as we grew. So I had my finance partner who validated this.

And by the way, I've highlighted in green roles that could be held by virtual assistants because I wanted to show you if you are trying to improve your profitability, this is a place where that could really happen. And so I want to show you if you are hiring those positions in green locally, that's what it would cost you a month. Fifteen thousand seven hundred eighty dollars a month versus virtual assistants, which is pretty much half of that. All right. So again, this was

where I was going was one of my key objectives was improving my profitability. Here's an infrastructure when you start to grow again, somewhere between two and 300. Again, these are all going to be available. Miriam will be sending out the slides. So the question is not how many people can I avoid hiring. It's what mix of local leadership, remote support, process and technology that gives me the enough capacity to keep growing.

So again, I'm just showing you the difference. But what I love about this is you could put more money into those growth positions like another marketer and like an HR manager who's ensuring that you've got the recruiting, you've got the caregivers to support the growth that you're generating. All right, and then I think I've got one more 300 plus. So you get the idea.

I've got the savings there. I've got not just the clients, but then also recommended structure for those number of hours per month.

Miriam Allred (1:12:13)
I just want to make one comment. You know, these are fantastic that Debbie has put these together. Every decision for each of you, though, it's strategic. You know, this is a framework and this is an example, but this is not the end-all be-all for each of you. Every hire, every virtual assistant, every technology, every process, every local hire, it's it's so strategic. You have to think about your differentiators, you have to think about your business model.

You have to think about your processes. There's all these factors. And so I don't downplay how how helpful this is, but I also want to emphasize just how important and how strategic every hire really is and making sure you're not jeopardizing quality where you should be, or jeopardizing processes or jeopardizing roles. Like you have to be really careful and technical about these hires. And I just want to make that know that it's, you know, it's strategic and intentional every single hire that you're bringing on.

Debbie Miller (1:13:08)
And

by the way, you have to be so careful about who you hire, right? And be part of that decision-making process. So it's not enough to say, well, I'll bring on a VA. I mean, you still have to interview that person and ensure that they're a good fit and they have the skills that are required and all of the things. It's like you said, a huge decision.

whether it's a VA or an internal person.

Miriam Allred (1:13:36)
And you're a testimony of you will make bad hires. You will make bad hires and it hurts. But you learn and you get better with every single step. You get a little bit better every time you bring somebody on.

Debbie Miller (1:13:46)
Exactly. All right. Well, this is the kind of implementation bridge here. So you've identified the work, the bottlenecks, the future roles. This is a process that we take folks through to help them take that opportunity board and create the role, set you up for success in terms of bringing the talent to the table. But at the end of the day, you make the final decision.

And that's something that we pride ourselves and helper heroes. We don't just place a VA in an organization. You are part of that decision making process. So all that being said, we are here to help you. I specifically can help you with taking a look at your opportunity board, your implementation plan. And I do this in what I call an infrastructure review. So if you want to bring that to the table, you can schedule some time with me.

And the purpose here is to just help you validate that this makes sense. I've talked to lot of people out of lot of hiring roles, to be honest with you, Dylan probably wouldn't be happy with me. But it's not, know, sometimes they maybe aren't thinking about the bigger picture, or sometimes you're thinking about it in a completely different way. And I have had so many so many times people say, well, I hadn't thought about that. my gosh, yes, I'm going to do that. So so it's nice to have a sounding board.

that gets this business, that's done it. And, you know, still here to, it's still alive and kicking after 19 years. So feel free to schedule some time with me.

Now, last page We created a landing page. So we're going to have the recording on the landing page as well as a way for you to download the workbook. If you want to tell your friends about it, you can just send them to the landing page and we can get them all squared away.

Miriam Allred (1:15:44)
Yep. Yep. We'll have all of the resources on the website.

Debbie and I have done the work. Now it is time for you all to take this work to the next step and take it on yourself. Our hope is you have the workbook, you have this recording that we just kind of walked you through step by step, but you know, these workbooks are hefty, they're 60 pages.

We recommend that you go and read through it. Again, this isn't maybe light reading or weekend reading, whatever it whatever it is. Go and read through it and then have a conversation with your leadership team and get their buy-in and get their feedback and get their take. And then make a plan to go and implement this. It can be a kind of a, one definitely a one big comprehensive meeting. But like Debbie said, this is a process, but make a plan today to read this and consume this as the owner, as the leader.

Take it to your leadership team and get that buy-in and then take the next step of finding the time and implementing the workbook with the entire team. And and I've said this before and I don't say this lightly. I really do believe this has the ability to change your life as the owner and also the business holistically. This is really the blueprint for you to analyze it, audit your business in such depth so where you can identify those gaps and make those changes and make those process improvements.

And get out of maybe the schlump that you're in or the plateau that you're in, and I think Debbie herself has said, you know, plateau at 10 million, 12 million. There's companies plateauing at 20 million. I just talked to one, they hit these schlumps. And to me, this exercise is how any company of any size with any model can get out of those slumps. It's identifying the strengths and weaknesses.

And making the process improvements to be able to accelerate growth again. So Debbie and I have done the work. You guys take the next step and go and implement this with your organization. And again, if just one of you does it and it's successful, that is music to our ears. That's what keeps us going. But we hope that we can broadcast this out to the broader industry. And really, Debbie and I's mission is a raising tide, lifts all boats. In home care, we want to

broadcast as much free information, as rich education as we can to help this industry continue growing. This has been a fantastic s session. Debbie, thank you as always. You were wonderful.

So we'll wrap here. Thanks everyone. Take care.

Debbie Miller (1:18:02)
Bye!