Miriam Allred (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It is great to be back in the lab with all of you. This week I am joined by Adam and Marlene Bartlett, the owners of Uplift Home Care in California. Adam and Marlene, welcome to the show.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (00:18)
Thank you. Thank you, Mario. Pleasure to be here. Yes. Big fans. Can't believe I'm the one talking instead of the one listening for once. Yes. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (00:26)
Full full circle for both of us. You are almost two years into building this home care

company. And boy, is it time to put you in the hot seat and give you a little bit of the limelight. You guys have been following me so closely for so many years, and I've been following you. Feels like we know each other.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (00:36)
Yeah. Yes.

Miriam Allred (00:43)
but also so much I was just saying, so much has happened for both of us in the last two years. But now it's time to catch up and just record this conversation because there's so much for so many providers to learn from you. So I am just elated to be here with you guys.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (00:57)
I too. Yeah, I feel like you basically helped launch our agency. So I felt like we go way back, even though this is only our first time on the show. So And just so excited to give back. Like we have learned so much from agency owners all over the country. And people in the beginning were just so kind to us to talk on the phone and just, you know, we know how busy they are now and that people would just drop things and just speak with us was so kind and so we just really want to give back as well.

Miriam Allred (01:22)
Yeah. So now here I am sending referrals your way. It's like that's just how this industry works. It's like you meet someone and you

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (01:26)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (01:27)
have this connection and you hit it off. It's like here we are just helping each other and giving back, which I love. let's kind of forego a traditional introduction because we're gonna talk about just some of the most important lessons and live through experiences that you guys have gone through the last two years. I said this a couple of episodes, but a lot of newer providers have reached out to me recently and said, like,

The tenured owners on the show are great, but sometimes we can't relate when they're doing, 10,000 hours, 20,000 hours. They're like, interview

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (01:51)
Yeah,

Miriam Allred (01:55)
some of the little guys that are newer and scrappier. And so you guys came to mind in that like you've had a lot of success in a short period of time, but also it's all just fresh. And so we're just gonna kind of punch through some of the lessons learned. And you guys are gonna share numbers and statistics and stories, and it's gonna be really rich. So I'm excited. So let's kind of start at the beginning, which is one of the biggest decisions you make.

when you're getting into this, which is the independent versus the franchise route. I know you guys asked me about that and a lot of other people in the industry and did a lot of research getting into this. So I wanna just hear your initial take on the independent versus the franchise route and some of the factors that drove that decision for you. So Marlene, why don't you start with that?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (02:34)
Yeah, no, it was it was we were definitely going down the franchise route initially, you know, just the security you have with that, kind of like business in a box, like everything a lot of it is done for you initially, right? So you can launch pretty quickly. but you know, we had been listening to your podcast, I say binge listening to it, and just had learned about all of these different industry experts and learned a lot more about

industry and we were still going down the franchise route and you know kind of at the 11th hour Adam was like you know what I think we could do this ourself and you know I kind of thought like well that seems a little scary but just given our backgrounds you know I have a marketing and brand management background Adam is in from finance and operations and so you know we kind of have that skill set that we can put together and then yeah I mean a big part of it also was initially connecting with Becky Reels

Who we learned about on your podcast, just having a conversation with her. because I thought, okay, if we're gonna kind of go this alone, I wanna learn from the best of the best and work with the best of the best. So yeah, and I think that's where when we were making that decision, franchise versus independent,

we saw the value of the franchise, but at the same time, in doing our due diligence, we talked to other owners, franchise owners, and they kind of said, well, after the first couple of years, you know, it's you know, the franchise is there and they provide some support, but it's really those first 24 months where having like a launch coach and you know having the operations manual and the website ready to go, then you can really, you know, hit the starting line with a lot of momentum. but yeah, when we learned about Becky, talk to her.

We was like, we can have our own private launch coach to tailor the business to exactly the way we want to build it. and Marlene, coming from a kind of sales and marketing background, you know, she looked at some of the franchise websites. And no offense to anyone out there or the franchise, but some of the color palettes and logos she wasn't that excited about. And she's like, I really want to make it ours with a look and feel that, you know, speaks to who we are and also speaks to the target market and the demographics in our area. so we're in the

San Francisco Bay Area, very affluent. and you know, there's a certain kind of expectation there for the service providers in our area. So we just saw that the freedom that independent allowed us, even though it was gonna be more work, was probably gonna be a little bit better fit for us. And I think, you know, finding that industry consultant that could kind of help us lay the groundwork so we weren't just completely, doing it on our own is what then kind of gave us the confidence to to move forward as an independent.

Miriam Allred (05:03)
Yeah.

And I didn't I don't have this in front of me, but and I'll put you guys on the spot with this. But before this decision, it's really like, How did you find out about home care? How much did you know about home care and why were you getting into this? I should have started there, but yeah, one of you can take that of like,

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (05:12)
yeah.

Miriam Allred (05:17)
Why home care? And also transparently, how much did you know about home care before you started this?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (05:22)
Some. So coincidentally, you know, so we both had kind of corporate careers. I was over 20 years in kind of corporate finance and operations roles. And we kind of got to that mid-career point where I was like, do I want to do this for the next 20 years or not? And we both kind of had an entrepreneurial itch that we were looking to scratch, but we didn't really know what that was gonna be. and

Both of our grandmothers had home care in their final years. and like my grandmother in particular, you know, she was 90 something. My dad had freshly retired and he thought he's gonna, you know, sit in the on the couch and just relax. And then, but then his 97-year-old mother at the time was, you know, just having the needs that home care helps with. it was hard for her to prep meals, needed help in the shower, and he ended up being a a caregiver at 70 years old.

And it was taking a toll on him until we figured out, there's this thing called home care and they can come and help with that. And he can go back to being a son and grandma doesn't have to have her son helping her in the shower. It's all good things. and you know, Marlene kind of had a similar experience with her grandma and some live-in caregivers in those final years. And so then just out of the blue one day, a franchise like a recruiter reached out and said, Hey, I've got all these different franchise businesses, you interested in this one, that one.

And home care was one of And then we immediately started thinking like, we know what that is. Huh. We do want to do something. I'm sorry, I just get to do because we we came to him with the home care idea. 'Cause I started googling what franchise art

Are there? What franchises? Because when I think franchise, I usually think food or, a gym. And I'm like, well, what else is there besides food and a gym? And there were all these different things, one of them being home care. And that's when I was like, home care is something that's privately owned. I always thought it was part of like, you know, the medical industrial complex in some way. And so that's when it r you know, sparked our memory of like, our grandmas had this and you know, so we told him, Find us a home care franchise. So sorry, Gibbs.

Miriam Allred (07:21)
Yeah. And that's really that's really helpful

to have seen your parents and grandparents go through it because you just

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (07:28)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (07:28)
you see the dynamic, you see the caregivers in the home, you understand the complexity of it. And so

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (07:32)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (07:34)
that's great that you both had that. Even though it was like prior to you, you know, scratching

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (07:38)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (07:39)
this entrepreneurial itch, it was like you had exposure to that because all of that, even just the subconscious like understanding of what's going on is really helpful getting into this.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (07:48)
Yeah, and it was a very positive experience. I know some owners they start a home care agency because they didn't have such a good experience. But for me, yeah, seeing my grandma, she had her live in caregivers until her final days. And you know, I was in my twenties when she passed, and I just remember seeing her caregivers at her funeral, like sobbing. And I just remember thinking, like, wow, they they weren't even related to her. Look at this, like she became family to them. They just had that bond, and I'll never forget that. And so, yeah, just how precious that was is really stupid.

Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Allred (08:18)
And now you aspire to create that. And how difficult it can be to create that. But it's almost like that's what you're aspiring towards where these caregivers

become in a good way a part of the family because they

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (08:28)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (08:29)
have done such a, you know, beautiful job of integrating in the family. And it's like really

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (08:32)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (08:33)
pressing time. So so you decided on the independent route and you decided that you're in the Bay Area. So a really saturated, competitive, affluent market.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (08:41)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (08:42)
Looking back, no regrets, going the independent route, do you ever think like, wow, some of this would have been easier?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (08:46)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (08:46)
Or do you feel like we made the right decision, we stand by what we did?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (08:50)
Yeah, I think in the midst of designing our own website and logo, we were kind of like, this would have been all done for us if we were a franchise. But then we also knew that a big part of our customer base was just gonna come from us being involved in our community and our church. and we've heard stories from franchise owners who get a lead from their own church, but because it lives that person lives just on the other side of a zip code.

They can't service that client and they have to call up their neighboring franchise and say, here's a lead for you. They go to my church and, you know, here you go. and so to have that knowledge that we were going to be really trying to build community, community awareness. And we didn't want to be kind of limited by kind of arbitrary, you know, zip code barriers. and, you know, just the way we want to go to market and you know, some franchises have minimums for marketing spend and it was like

we may wanna flex that or use those dollars differently. So I think being the finance guy I was like, I want full control of the enterprise and so it felt good to be

independent. Well, yeah, and I will say, obviously it worked out. We're very thankful, no regrets. But definitely in the beginning you do feel like, gosh, you don't have that surrounding like network of other owners that when you walk into some, you know, a like a skilled nursing for the first time, it's like we had to explain who is Uplift It we couldn't say like, and we have a location here and here and here and we opened this branch. So it was building our name, getting our name out there was definitely a lot more legwork.

But we just had to remind ourselves okay, we built this from scratch. So we gotta have that confidence that, perhaps other referral sources can have that confidence enough in us that we did it on our own. So, you know. And I think it was really helpful too that we were able to befriend a couple of other agencies that were

independent and newly launched right around the same time as us. And so every once in a while we would reach out to them. They'd reach out to us. You know, we'd talk about caregiver hiring or scheduling or something like that. And you know, it's nice to talk to them and say, are we crazy? Are you experiencing

Miriam Allred (10:48)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (10:49)
that? And they say, no, yeah, we're experiencing that too. And it's like, good. Yeah. It

Miriam Allred (10:53)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (10:53)
doesn't make it that much easier, but at least you don't feel alone.

Miriam Allred (10:56)
And home care is so unique. You guys have learned this and I hear this all of the time. there's not a lot of brand recognition or brand loyalty in home care on the client side and on the caregiver side. And so whether you're uplift home care or you're visiting angels or you're, you know, it's like they're when you're talking to a family and this is their first encounter with home care, none of that really matters. It's just you and

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (11:16)
Mm-hmm. Yes. Right.

Miriam Allred (11:19)
them and the conversation and the connection and the

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (11:21)
Yep.

Miriam Allred (11:22)
right fit that really matters at the end of the day. And so

It's so interesting that that's the case.

But I think, you know, you all sticking by this decision and going 100% on

your business and knowing that we are the face and the voice and we're gonna get this name and brand out there, you would have had to do that regardless. And I think

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (11:40)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (11:40)
arguably having something that resonates with you personally that you built is maybe even a bit more powerful. So all that being said, let's talk about capital and runway. You know, this is always a little bit of like a taboo to new owners of like if you go the franchise route versus independent, you know, how much capital do you have to have on hand and what can you anticipate the first year?

Adam, maybe you could speak to that about how much did you anticipate needing to launch and then were your projections accurate to what you anticipated?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (12:09)
Yep. Yeah. I mean, I think we thought we'd need probably two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand. And that's now Bay Area. so you know, depending on where you are in the country, it could be, you know, a little bit less. and also kind of depends on how you want to go to market. Like I think we knew going right out of the gate that because we're in such an affluent area, we were wanting to build more of a

boutique agency. And so the look and feel of our agency and even our office, right? Like we could have, I guess, you know, gotten, a shared office space and just kind of been really scrappy at the beginning. But we just knew that the way that we wanted to go to market and the speed that which we wanted to scale, we needed to make a little bit more of an upfront investment. And hey, you know, it's not a huge office, but it's nice. You know, we've got some nice colors and decent furniture and you know, a hospital bed for training, like all things that we had to kind of invest in. So

and that ended up being about right. I would say, the biggest surprise for us really was just you know, we hit double the number of clients that we expected versus our business plan in the first year, but we also had double the like lost clients, like d double the churn. So that was the thing where, you know, we weren't getting traction maybe quite as quickly as we had hoped. but I think at the end of the day,

that that cushion was about right. and it also depends, if you were someone who you know, had a spouse or some other secondary source of income, then maybe don't need as much because you're not looking to pay the bills, you know, right out right out of the gate. but yeah, we basically went, you know, cold turkey, we say burn the ships is was kind of our motto going forward. I quit my corporate job and was 100% all in. So

we were living on savings and you know, the survival of our family depended on us being successful. So that's great motivation. and so yeah, even on those hard times we pushed through. but yeah, so that capital wise that ended up being about what we needed. And it's nice now that we're, you know, scaled to the point where, you know, we can pay ourselves some and got some good some breathing room now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And by the

Miriam Allred (14:08)
Yeah, and you s

yeah, go ahead, Marley.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (14:11)
I was

just gonna say the churn on the clients. I think it was more of like it wasn't like people were leaving us this yeah company sucks. It was they are just this length of stay was so much shorter than we thought. the bigger hours tend to be more temporary, right? It's like post-surgery recovery or potentially hospice. it's the little hours that tend to be a little more sticky because they're just getting started, early dementia care. So that was something that we didn't we could probably talk about that more later, but we didn't quite anticipate just the volatility of the like the length that they're on service.

Miriam Allred (14:41)
And how did you manage that? That's a loaded question, but it's like you had these projections in your mind of this is how many clients we're gonna have. Maybe you had an average length of stay, even in your business plan of like this is

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (14:50)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (14:50)
what we anticipate, but then real time, people are passing away, people are being readmitted. it's all real time that you have to deal with that. How how did you think about that and how did you work through that?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (15:02)
Yeah, well, first off, mm just an acids because of the heartburn of it all. But

Miriam Allred (15:06)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (15:07)
from a real business perspective, I think, you know, we learned and it's not a secret in home care, it's you you always be marketing, you always have to be outselling, and there's just such a tight correlation to between how much you're out there and y it could be visiting SNFs it could just be community awareness work.

But all of it just being out there and being present, keeping the sales funnel active and full is what we learned. I mean, initially we were kind of thinking, you know, it was gonna be the field of dreams. Like if you build it, they will come. And home care, I'm sorry to say it's not the field of dreams. There's there is a lot of need out there, but there's also a lot of other home care agencies out there, and there isn't a lot of brand recognition like we were talking about. So you just have to be known, liked, and trusted in your community.

and be constantly top of mind. And that's how you keep the the funnel full and coming in. So eventually we started to kind of figure out, okay, with all this volatility, like people aren't just coming out of the woodwork. We have to really go out and actively market. And so that's something that's really helped smooth out those dips is once we kind of gotten into a good marketing cadence, that's helped us stabilize and grow, even when we do have those dips.

Miriam Allred (16:22)
And everyone always wonders, chicken or the egg, clients first or caregivers first, and how do you strike that balance? I my assumption is when you guys were coming into this, all you heard the industry talking about was the caregiver shortage, the caregiver shortage, the caregiver shortage. So you're like, it is gonna be so hard to recruit. What what

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (16:33)
Yes. Yes.

Miriam Allred (16:37)
mindset did you go into this with of like it's gonna be harder to find clients or harder to find caregivers? Like what what was your mindset?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (16:43)
Yes. So our mindset was all about the caregiver. twofold. Yes, we had heard so much. I think, a lot of those earlier podcasts we listened to were coming off of the fumes of COVID where it was still so hard to hire. So I had that in mind. And then also just like

I just love caregivers. I have such a huge respect. something just a little bit about my background after corporate life, I ran an licensed in-home child care program for a couple years. So just having cared for other people's loved ones and the tremendous pressure and responsibility that comes with that, that just instilled in me just this mad respect for professional caregivers. So we really wanted to make an agency that honored them and respected them for the incredibly important work they did. And so

Adam talked about our office being nice, but we made it beautiful for them. they come in here for interviews, for orientations. this is their time to be served snacks and drinks. And so we really poured a lot into let's make this the best place to work. we got an absolutely fabulous recruiter.

And yeah, that's where we put a lot of our effort thinking that's gonna be the most challenging area. And I mean, yes, it is challenging to find good caregivers, but they are out there. And really there is a one-stop shop and it's indeed, right? I mean, yes, you can get referrals from other caregivers, that's great. And then eventually you can start building, you know, relationships with nursing schools and whatnot. But in the beginning, it's it's kind of a pay-to-play. Jack up your indeed spend and you're gonna get more applicants, right?

With clients, there is no one-stop shop. They are scattered. They there are many pieces of the client pie that you need to kind of like play in to get that. And that was something that was a big eye-opener to us. and then just the time, the time to build the relationships. It's it's like you can't, it's not I I think I naively thought I went into some networking things, gave my business card to a few hospice people, and I'm like, all right, they'll call me in a couple weeks. Like, nope, never saw.

Miriam Allred (18:33)
And you're like, Why is

nobody calling me? Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (18:37)
Yeah. Yeah. So that

was yeah, that was the biggest eye opener. It like, it's like really hard to get clients when you're brand new and no one knows who you are. So

Miriam Allred (18:46)
And what about

were you able to attract high quality caregivers being a brand new agency? sometimes it's twofold. how important every client is and how important every experience is because your reput reputation is so fragile out of the gate, but you're also a new agency and these caregivers know that. And so they may be hesitant to come and work for you. Was it hard to attract good talent in your own mind out of the gate? Or were you able to?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (19:13)
I think at least at the beginning, because you're not so busy, you can give those job applicants kind of the white glove treatment. you can be very, you know, high touch with them. And I think a big part of our our launch and the first caregivers we we hired was just transparency, like, hey, we're a new agency, but this is what we're about. We really wanna support you and value you as caregivers. You know, we're one of the highest paging aid paying agencies in our area.

we're gonna have your back with clients. We're not gonna put you in, an unsafe working environment or put you with a client that doesn't match your skill set. So at the outset, you have that opportunity, because you're not so busy with all the other things that are home care, to really lean in and support those first few hires. And I will say, as far as the chicken and egg, yes, hire your caregivers first, but just be really transparent with them. Like, hey, we're a new agency, so we may not get you a shift that you know coming right out of orientation.

But we're gonna keep in touch with you, we're gonna be transparent, and we wanna make a really good match f between you and a potential client based on what we know about you. And I think most of our caregivers, like we're they respected that and they know that, you know they're not they're not necessarily looking for the you know instant gratification of you know hours tomorrow. Now some of them are, but some of them they're willing to wait a little bit because they want that long-term one-on-one client that's gonna be a good match for them. So

I think when you're just transparent like that and tell them what's going on. And then even if you can't get them work right away, just check with them a few days later and say, like, hey, how are you doing? I want to let you know we're, you know, we're reaching out. We've got and maybe a new client that could be coming in and you know, you're top of the list. And, you know, so can keep them engaged that way. And the other thing I would just say about hiring is just, man, do not compromise caregiver quality, especially early on. You know, I think we were in that mindset of scare caregivers are scarce.

We really need to hire someone. If we got someone in the office, we have to bring them on board. But so many times when our gut was saying something like, I don't know if they'd be a I don't know if they have the professionalism we're looking for, or there's some other thing we were a little unsure about. And we said, Well, we'll hire them anyway. More often than not, it turned out to be not a good hire. and then we either had to manage them out or they were, you know, chronically late, something like that. And so

And everyone that we've come in and hired where we felt like, wow, this is a great caregiver, pretty much it has been a great caregiver. So, you know, I think there's a Tony Robbins quote I heard that said, like, you know, your best marketing is happy customers. And that's so true. And because you're sending these caregivers out into client homes early on, if you are hiring really great caregivers that you feel great about, you know, as your first few hires, that's just such a great way to build positive.

Momentum when you're new. and that's the one thing that, yes, it it's painful to spend so much money on indeed, especially when you don't have a lot of clients, not a lot of business coming in. But I would say that's a almost a better investment than spending, you know, Google ad dollars or something like that. Spend the money to find that first cohort of really great caregivers that's gonna go out and represent your business and help build a name for you as an agency. Yeah.

And I think if they buy into your mission, th those caregivers, the first handful of caregivers we hired, I was surprised, they did stick with us. They waited for a shift, or they, you know, filled in with others. We all know, you know, they work for multiple agencies. One of the caregivers we actually had him at our ribbon cutting, and it was harder to place him, you know, it can be harder to place males. And so he did end up getting something else, but then like he came back to us and it was like, wow. And now I mean he's been with us consistently, one of our top caregivers. And so I think it's just like

Setting that tone when they walk in and that helps having this beautiful office that they're surprised when they find out. sometimes they'll ask, how long have you guys been around? And we're like, Well, we're in our first year and they're

Miriam Allred (23:02)
Mm-hmm.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (23:03)
like, really? But they

Miriam Allred (23:04)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (23:05)
are they're like surprised, like, you know, fake it till you make it, they say. so yeah, it's worked out. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (23:10)
But you help them feel something, you saw them

and you heard them and you gave them that white glove experience and they don't get that everywhere they go. And so you helped you stood

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (23:17)
Yeah, they've said that.

Miriam Allred (23:19)
out in their mind and they're like, That agency is worth waiting for, that agency is worth circling back to to see if they have a client for me. you're citing Indeed and not going too far down the recruiting rabbit

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (23:28)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (23:28)
hole. It is expensive and you spend a lot of money. Can you kind of even just ballpark today like what you're spending on Indeed?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (23:35)
Yeah, it's around a thousand bucks a month. and I think that ends up our cost per new caregiver hire is like right around ninety bucks when you take all that ad spend divided out by the the number of actual new hires we get in the door.

Miriam Allred (23:49)
Okay. And there's kind of like, you know, Indeed you cast a wide net and then there's all of the qualification and like the filtering to get to the best caregivers. Do you feel like you've been able to put things in place on Indeed to kind of catch to create a better f top top of funnel? Or do you really feel like you just have to cast the wide net to get your name out there to to you know, to just catch people and then y a lot of the filtering and the qualification really happens,

manually via, the processes that you have.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (24:21)
Yeah, I think indeed's gonna love us for saying this, but yeah, really when you do like a premium sponsored ad and you get high visibility for that ad, we notice the caregiver quality is it's just higher. and 'cause those caregivers who do have a lot of skill and are gonna get snapped up by other agencies, you know, they're probably just going down the list and clicking on the first few ads that they see for a caregiver. And if you're

Number 10, well, they may get to you, they may not. and yeah, when they engage with those first few sponsored ads, like

those are the agencies that really want to hire and are gonna go after them aggressively. So, unfortunately, yeah, when we do wanna hire and we've seen the best results from sponsoring those ads at a premium level. Now that doesn't mean you have to leave leave it running like f in perpetuity at that high sponsorship level. You know, sometimes depending on the volume that you're looking to to bring in, you know, even just three to five days of premium sponsorship can get enough in the funnel that you know, you can

You can have some pretty quality candidates. And then I may drop it back down to a much lower level just to kind of keep it up in case someone wants to go back and try to find that ad and reapply, something like that. But yeah, I mean, I think in the next evolution of our agency, you know, more referrals from our existing caregivers and like Marlene mentioned earlier, like relationships like with nursing schools, things like that to help bring in quality caregivers from other channels. But I think when you're building and starting out brand new that

Yep, I think just indeed is gotta yeah, pay to play.

Miriam Allred (25:52)
Gotta play the Indeed game.

Inevitable. That was helpful and really good advice. I was gonna ask, are you tipping the scales on getting caregiver referrals? Like when you're would you build a really boutique agency? I've heard of agencies kind of almost where they they can organically grow clients and caregivers basically by like word of mouth

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (26:10)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (26:11)
referrals. I know that sounds crazy, but have you noticed more of an uptick of caregiver referrals over the last bit?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (26:18)
Definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. I would say in the last three to six months, you know, as we've gr it's it's this very interesting virtuous cycle of as you are growing and as you start bringing in caregivers who then immediately get placed and immediately are happy with the client that they're working with and get the hours that they're looking for to fill their schedule.

Then, wow, this is a great agency. I signed up with them. I got a great client. They've got me the hours I want every week. The schedule works for me. And then they have friends at other agencies or just in the community that are like, hey, you should go apply with Uplift. And so then we are starting to see a lot more referrals from our own caregiver base, which is great because, you know, that's free. And it feels good to us as agency owners because that's, you know, someone who's working for you recommending you to their friends, you know, if it's a

If it's a place they don't like working, they're probably not gonna recommend it. So it's also like the support they get in the field now, too. So

Miriam Allred (27:17)
But it's the best

validation that you can receive. I think that's the premium validation of just wow, we're really doing this right because people are referring people that they care about too to our business. Goo you mentioned like Google a Google reviews and how important those have been. Did you prioritize that from day one or has that been an initiative later on of just capturing those and then understanding and even measuring the impact that they've had?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (27:41)
Yeah, that's something we've been slowly building over time. asking for reviews, getting the reviews, from clients, caregivers, even referral sources. And yeah, it does seem like you get a review and then like days later it seems like you get a a referral. A lead from Google. From Google. yeah, so Yeah, I mean I think of all the marketing that we tried, that has had the biggest ROI. It's also one of the hardest things to action because

You know, everybody knows, like any business you visit, they all want a Google review, but you know, or you get the link in your email, it's like, I probably should, but you just don't take the time to do it. But you know, we tried Google, like paid ads, we tried let's see, what else? Paid ads. Newspaper ads. New newspaper ads, church bulletins. we we advertise in the newspaper of a local like planned retirement community, 55 and up.

I think. We did Place for Mom. We did This was all stuff in the beginning when we were desperate. my gosh, we need clients. Well, surely if you put an ad in the newspaper in a 55 plus community, you don't get more targeted than that. Nothing. Crickets. And so no traditional advertising has worked for us. Even a place for mom. I thought that would be the pay to play. Okay, just as long as you're paying, you'll get your leads. But it just it it really never worked out for us. It's it's more of the personal referrals and then the referral sources, which I'm sure.

And think with a place for mom, what we learned is all referrals are home care referrals, meaning you get calls from people, you know, from Google or wherever, and they don't know what home care is. They don't know home care versus home health. they don't know what service minimums are, they don't know what things cost. And so some of the leads that come through a place for mom, like we did have one of our first and best clients, was from a place for mom.

But those leads are just like a lot of the other leads that come into your business. And I think a lot of home care owners are thinking, because I paid for this specific home care lead, it's gonna convert at this radically higher rate. When it's really just people who are, you know, looking for care for their loved one. They don't know where to turn. And a place for mom is one place that can serve up a lot of information and potential people to talk to. So I think once we figured that out, my blood pressure and you know, this like, okay, I made peace with a place for mom. And we still had those leads on. and

it didn't result in a ton of business, but I don't know that we worked it as hard as maybe some other agencies do. But I will say it was, you know, for better better or worse, it was good practice. It's good good practice to like do those assessments, call those people back, give your pitch, you know, learn kind of the sales, you know, phone inside sales kind of techniques a little bit, hone that. but yeah, at the end of the day, it really like

Google Ads and our Google business page, being active there and building that out has been one of the highest ROI activities. I mean, not easy, but Marlene's also pretty active. Just posting, you know, the things that we post to social media, those using those same photos, some of those same copy, you know, on the Google business page. And that kind of helps, I think, Google think that, this is a like a viable business, like they're active and, you know, this is a place where we can

our legally.

Miriam Allred (30:55)
Yeah, and

and that's what I was gonna say, probably in parallel, you're doing all of these online efforts, but then you're also out in the community building the relationships. And it's like at the beginning you're desperate. You're like, please just let all this online stuff work to like get us by, to get us enough clients while we're building the long term relationships that take six to twelve to eighteen months to start seeing

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (31:03)
Yep, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Miriam Allred (31:14)
leads come in. Is that kind of what you were doing? Of like, we have to hit both. This one should hopefully bring like more instant gratification, and this one we have to play the long game.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (31:20)
Right. Yes.

Right. That's what we thought. It's like you feel like you need to be doing something. And

But yeah, feel like it didn't amount to much for us to not be doing any of that anymore. Any traditional yeah, like advertising. But yeah, the relationships, it just it does take it just takes a long time for you to build that, but also for people to just hear of your name. And now it's like, okay, we're getting referrals from people that, you know, wouldn't really give us much attention like that first year, you know? And I feel like we realized that home care and home care marketing it

the in-person, there's no replacement for the in-person. You have to be out in person in your community. you know, whether that's Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, or in-person at assisted living and SNFs and meeting the social workers and discharge planners, there's there's no replacement for that. There's no camping out in the office and thinking you're gonna, you know, have clients coming in. And it's a network effects business too, because you know, early on we'd get a lead and we'd say,

How did you hear about us? And it would they would say, and it's like, that's someone Marlene knows from church. and now we ask somebody, How did you hear about us? And it they'll say the name and we'll say, Who's that? But it's because it's a friend of a friend of a friend told them

Miriam Allred (32:35)
Compounding.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (32:37)
yes, told them about uplift home care and recognize that their loved one needed help and like, you should call these people uplift home care. So there's d no real easy way to fast forward that.

Aside from I would say new agency owners, if you don't have your a license yet or not opening your doors yet, just telling people about your business even before it opens to start that flywheel could be one way to get a little bit of a head start.

Miriam Allred (33:00)
And you said something interesting, Marlene, that people there are some people that wouldn't really entertain you the first year you were in business. Like I've heard that where

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:07)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (33:09)
they see so much churn and they know sales reps come and go and our dime a dozen,

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:12)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (33:13)
and so they just don't really take you seriously. But it's like, Marlene, she's come by six times. they're in their second year.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:16)
But I'm gonna

Miriam Allred (33:18)
you know, maybe I should hear them out. Like it literally just takes time and the repetition and that familiarity.

That sometimes doesn't come for twelve months or eighteen months before they start

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:28)
Yeah,

Miriam Allred (33:29)
to take you seriously.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:31)
Yes. And that is the thing that it you have gotta swallow your pride and thicken your skin because I I am such a feeler and I am even an extrovert. For me, as an extrovert, it is hard, you know, to go into a room full of senior professionals that all know each other. I remember those first few meetings and just like open court networking, see what conversation you can break into and they're like, you're new, another home care. Gosh,

Miriam Allred (33:56)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (33:57)
it's so saturated.

Yeah, and so it's just you have to keep going and yeah, just you go in there wearing your heart on your sleeve, it's vulnerable, right? Especially as the owner, right? And you know, there are a lot of marketing reps and maybe it feels differently when you're, you know, advocating for someone else's company, but when it's your own, it's like you are so vulnerable.

And you do have everything on the line, right? Like I said, we didn't really have a option to fail. we had to make this work. and yeah, it's just it's the consistency. And then finally people are like, gosh, I see you everywhere, you know, and just people can be rude. They're, you know, or maybe they're not being rude, they're just busy and you're popping in and they're in the middle of their work day. You can't take it personally. That's a huge thing. You can't I had to keep telling myself that because I would definitely have have my feelings hurt. I'm like, they were so mean. This is healthcare.

We all supposed to love each other. so you gotta push through that. But then also you do find your people. Like there are your people that just it doesn't feel like so much work. It actually feels like a friendship, not a you know, business relationship. And so those are where we have had the definitely the most fruit of like.

someone who truly feels like a friend and you would have lunch with them and it just grows and grows. And so it takes a while to find those people too. Just like, you know, you're starting at a new school, you gotta find your besties. That's how this has been very true. Very true. Yes.

Miriam Allred (35:13)
Yeah, but but no one's gonna sell your business like you are. And so you learn that very quickly of like if

if I can't do this, you know, we can't just like really hire somebody else to do this. We have to learn and do this ourselves. And

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (35:22)
Right. Yes. Yes.

Miriam Allred (35:25)
to my understanding, you're both you're still selling, you know, actively. That's still like maybe

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (35:29)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (35:30)
your pr is that one of your primary roles?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (35:32)
Yeah. So when we started, it was really me and I will say very part-time. So I I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. I I quit the corporate world to be a stay-at-home mom and I loved it. And I had no intention of going back to work. when I felt like I could do something, that's when I opened my child care because I was like, I still wanna be with my kids. What can I do with my kids? and so I love that. But then when this once you we started dreaming home care, I couldn't undream the dream. And so I'm like, okay, well, if we're gonna do this, I can't not be involved.

So that first year, you know, I very much had part-time childcare. I still wanted to be the really the primary caregiver for my children. So

And we had a little one, what one years old. So that's as needy as you get. so I did part-time childcare. So the t I had about maybe 14 hours of I call it boots on the ground work where it was like I was out and about. And so when you have such scarce time, you make it work very hard. You gotta use every minute strategically. There's no sitting in the office doing administrative work. It's like, no, I could do that at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m. at home. When I am paying for childcare or having someone watch my kids or they're in school, like I'm gonna make the most of every minute.

So that definitely helped me be efficient. If something wasn't working, you know, I'd give it a good, you know, consistent try, but I

wouldn't dwell on it. You have to know when to move on. and then now I have a little bit more time, but not much. I'm still probably at about 24 hours of boots on the ground work a week. so yeah, it is it still has been us. And so I think getting to where we got in that really I I would say a part-time marketer role, I think is pretty amazing because it is a full-time job. It should be a full-time job. If you could imagine if we could give it 40 hours a week. you know, but not at the same time. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (37:10)
What the what would come of that? How many

can you quantify how many relationships are on your radar? there's we talk about target accounts and then, the broader accounts. can you think of in your part time work, how many relationships

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (37:21)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (37:23)
are you focused on and then maybe how many of those are fruitful?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (37:27)
I feel like there's a dozen that we really have our eye on that are okay, these are very strategic, very important. And more than half of those are definitely producing. some are less than others. some maybe haven't yet, but we see potential.

But most of them have at least, given us something. And so yeah, it's only about a dozen. But it's the net was definitely much larger in the beginning, but we've kind of narrowed it down. So it's really like a dozen regular accounts that I would visit. But then

Miriam Allred (37:53)
Okay.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (37:53)
there's the ho there's this very large network beyond that of people that, you know, whether it's at some of the senior networking events, chamber of commerce, church, school, that you know, the

The very top of the funnel is women's groups like the Marlene's involved in and the top of the funnel is way broader than that. that's the core, you know, kind of traditional referral sources where we're really focused on active marketing. But then there's all these other touch points out in the community and in our life where we're talking about our business, people know what we do, and so that expands the funnel like further. Yeah. Those just take longer. You know. Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. Yes.

Miriam Allred (38:29)
But you can't let your foot off the gas of either of those, which is why it's a full time job and it's never ending. It's like

we have to keep track of the top of funnel and be present and be in these groups and be out in the community because those trickle in. Those do, you know, net referrals over

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (38:42)
Yep, they do.

Miriam Allred (38:43)
time. But then also, yeah, I like that you said like the twelve and the six. It's like you've really lasered in of like these are our highest priority and these are the people we're talking to likely.

Every single week. You've cited

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (38:54)
Is it?

Miriam Allred (38:54)
church a couple of times. I don't think that's foreign to people of getting into this of if you have a built in church community, how important and impactful that can be. How how have you approached that? Because sometimes there's a taboo of like, you know, church business, like, you know, people

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (39:07)
Hmm. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (39:11)
can interpret that in different ways. Have you been just very vocal or I'm just curious, you know, what that's looked like for you guys since you've mentioned it a few times.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (39:18)
Yeah, definitely no our church is very protective in that way. There's no advertising or business group or anything like that. No, it's just it's such a I mean, it's a big church but it's very tight, like it's our church family and people just know us. You go through life together. Like we have our small church group we're actually hosting tonight and just people just know what you do 'cause

They just talk. We you get into life naturally and what you're going through. And this has been an the ultimate leap of faith, like trusting in God like to provide for your family every day and just, you know, people asking how they can be praying and helping. And so just kind of like naturally, organically, like definitely no traditional like

the don't just be handing out business cards. It's just like it comes up. But yeah. And it's even just today I was dropping off my kids and one of the teachers was like, wait, I hear you do something in senior care. Like I have someone, that

Miriam Allred (40:05)
Yeah.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:07)
might need help. And so it's like, wow, so it just word gets around organically. And yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (40:11)
Yeah. And again, you just have to be active on all of those fronts. Like I just I said this I think

on the the the last podcast of like just like you think of your neighbors and you think of your school and you think of your community. Everybody

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:22)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (40:24)
needs to know about senior care and everybody knows someone that's impacted by senior care. And so

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:27)
Yeah, yep.

Miriam Allred (40:28)
you just become this walking billboard and this walking bundle of education. And so it's like, you

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:34)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (40:34)
know who knows about senior care? You know who knows about home care at the Bartlett's, you know, it's like you just become

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:38)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (40:39)
that go to. And so I I just put a little bit of emphasis here because, on the podcast and just in general, we talk a lot about the professional healthcare referral relationship. So we don't

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:46)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (40:47)
maybe talk, I I even I am guilty of not talking a lot about yeah, church and community and school. All of those add up, you know, like

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:54)
Yes, they do.

Miriam Allred (40:55)
some people may think like, you can't build a large business based off that. But arguably, arguably you can. And arguably those are as important over the long run

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (40:58)
Yeah, we can't.

Miriam Allred (41:04)
of your business is building those relationships that will warrant referrals.

Over time.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (41:08)
Right.

Yes. And living in the community that you serve. That was so important to us. when we were originally looking at the franchise, we're like, well, we gotta make sure we can get our territory where we live. And we could have, but now being independent, we could go anywhere, but we choose to keep our territory pretty tight, you know. and so that way we can really know our clients, know our caregivers, being able to pop in and that's definitely been an advantage. And it is kind of nice to saturate this local area because

we are we are now now that we're coming up on just about two years, we're starting we're getting referrals from existing clients now who have been happy with our service. So that's another like great kind of part of the flywheel is you know, we have like actually three families on service with us right now that all know each other. And it's like we started off like over a year ago with, you know, the first client, and then one of their family friends needed home care for their mom.

And they said, should call Uplift And then that same original family, like had another family friend that needed home care and they they said, Call uplift. And so we're starting to see more of that as well. So just being so entrenched in the community, having done a good job for those first early clients, that's also starting to bear fruit then in our business.

Miriam Allred (42:25)
Yes,

similar to you guys getting started as like an independent owner. It's like we need a network of other new owners that can relate. Kind these families kind of need that too. Like that's just like a an analogy I'm drawing

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (42:33)
Yes.

Miriam Allred (42:34)
in my mind. Like the families want that too, of like, well, who's another family that's going through this that can relate? That you create kind of these like micro communities in your larger community, and those people stay. And if those people have a good experience, they become your advocates. They become your champions in the community. So like

you creating those micro communities with these families and these clients and these caregivers, that's really job well done. that's the objective here, I think.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (42:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (42:59)
Let's let's talk about, let's transition a little bit. We've talked about recruiting and sales. let's talk about kind of your office structure and then also technology. You all have built a business in the last two years and you've heard me say on the podcast lately, like it looks different than five years ago or 10 years ago. And you guys, the numbers you're about

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (43:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (43:15)
to share, I think will kind of

Blow people's minds of what a modern day home care agency looks like that started in the last two years. So let's first talk about your office and then we'll kind of work that direction. Who did you hire out of the gate? Like it was you two and you had your kind of primary roles and functions. Who did you bring in first and what has been kind of like the strategic timeline of hires?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (43:37)
Yeah. So I think right out of the gate, because we were so focused on recruiting and are we gonna be able to find caregivers? So we went on and hired a recruiter who was pretty narrowly focused on recruiting and then you know she helped with scheduling as well. and I think then as we got a little bit more experience with hiring, got to know caregivers more, you know, I think that traditional recruiting model and having someone just kind of more narrowly focused just on that piece of the business.

was just kind of a little bit of a strategic error on our part, just being new. And I think in hindsight, you know, hiring someone who would have been a little bit of a jack of all trades, ideally with like a clinical background, like maybe they had been a CNA or even an LVN, but that also had, you know, strong administrative skills who could, you know, do both some HR and hiring, but also could come on an assessment or do some like client care management type work.

it might have been a better way for us to start just because even in large home care agencies, people wear a lot of hats and you're getting pulled in different directions. And there's always there's like a bottleneck somewhere in a given week. And it's great to be able to pull other people from different parts of the organization who have a broad skill set and can help, you know, staff a 24-7. Or, you got a bunch of higher new higher paperwork you need to process. And it's good that everybody kind of has that muscle and can can flex.

So I think that's something we might have done differently. So after the first year, we kind of decided, you know what, we need to really kind of take a look at recruiting. What's really the staffing model that we want? and so we transitioned away from having just that dedicated recruiter. and for a while, we did just a part time recruiter who would do video interviews, send those to us. but even then that kind of was like, well,

It's it's a good model, it works, but there's always this constraint of the caregivers want to interview when they want to interview, and there's only so many available time slots on the calendar. Now you can try to jam them all together, but if that caregiver really wants to interview at 10 a.m. on Wednesday and that slot's already booked, well, hopefully they can interview at 10 30 or 10 15, but they may not want to. And you know, it just became more and more obvious to us that man, speed to interview and responsiveness.

to these to the caregivers, especially when you're paying a lot of money for an Indeed ad, is critical. And so eventually we ended up going to an AI powered recruiting agent through MapleCare and their hiring platform. And so that's where we are today. So that's a circuitous and long way to talk about staffing, but that that's kind of a was a critical piece and of where we are today. And so right now it's myself, Marlene,

We have a full time client care coordinator and she's wonderful. She handles client relationships, coaches the caregivers, and she even supports Marlene with a little bit of marketing help. She's the ultimate Swiss army knife like to do a thing and was a caregiver. We promoted her. She was our caregiver for almost a year. So we had seen her work ethic, just her how every client she ever worked with universally loved her and just we kind of had yeah, w she just was is

Been doing an amazing job in this new role. Yeah. So it's the client care coordinator. And then we have a full time virtual assistant in the Philippines who does all of our scheduling. and then helps with a little bit of other administrative tasks as well. and then we do have a very part time, like an ops coordinator who does a little bit of long term care billing and things like that. But I mean it's a pretty lean team. I mean, it's basically like four people. And only three are full time. Yeah. Yeah. So I would be part time or ops.

admin would be part time. So yeah, three full time.

Miriam Allred (47:21)
When did you bring on the virtual assistant scheduler?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (47:25)
So that was right about a year in. I think we finally got to the the volume where not have we needed someone to exclusively watch the calendar and do the scheduling. because trying to do that and something else at the same time is really hard. And it just felt like the sooner we could break those two functions apart, scheduling from everything else, things were gonna just run that much more smoothly. And it definitely worked out that way.

And our scheduler, she's amazing. she does a great job for us and you know, we're so thankful for everything that she does for our agency. And, you know, she's really like it just it's great. It just brings so much life to our agency and having someone who can really own the schedule and you know, works our hours and does a great job for us, that's been huge to our growth. in in just having someone to be able to focus on that.

Miriam Allred (48:16)
And it sounds like you said you promoted the caregiver to client care coordinator around the year mark as well, is that correct?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (48:22)
N no, let's see, just recently she had been with us

Miriam Allred (48:25)
Okay.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (48:25)
for about a year. We put when we started thinking of this role of like, okay, we want someone who can support caregivers, you know, be able to communicate with clients, and then also in a pinch, if needed, fill in a shift. So that's what made us think, like, could one of our caregivers do this? And so we actually did put the role out. We never even posted it publicly on Indeed or LinkedIn, we just put it out actually to our caregivers.

And there was a lot of interest and it was like bittersweet because it's like, my gosh, we only have one role. We had a fair amount of caregivers interview. And so we interviewed everyone that was interested. and then yeah, we ultimately went with our decision to promote this one particular caregiver who yeah, has just been phenomenal. I mean, she is definitely an exceptional human being. Like in all my career, I have not worked with someone like her. So

yeah, but it's cool to see that we could have a career path 'cause we can, see maybe needing to do this again sooner rather than later. So whenever possible, like we want to pull from our caregiver pool if we can.

Miriam Allred (49:26)
So yeah, if I'm understanding right, it sounds like you guys, you too, with the help of the recruiter, went as long as you could, as far as you could, pretty scr pretty very lean and very scrappy,

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (49:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (49:39)
which is good and bad. I think it's good in that you learn all the roles, you do everything yourself. Then when you hire, you can empathize and you know what you're looking for. But

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (49:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (49:47)
I guess what I've heard from owners in second year or third year, it's like looking back, my gosh, we could have used the care coordinate client care coordinator sooner.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (49:53)
yeah.

Yep.

Miriam Allred (49:54)
We could have

used the scheduler sooner. And hindsight is 2020. But now

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (49:56)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (49:59)
that you have those roles and look at these amazing hires that you have on your team, it's like

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:02)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (50:03)
we couldn't function without them. And it's like, imagine if you had them at month six or month eight, the difference that that could have made. Better late than never. But that's why I just think like you guys went, you know, as far as you could. And now you've

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:14)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (50:15)
brought these people in and you're rounding out the office and you're learning as you go. But now it's like when you find and hire and train and retain really good people.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:22)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (50:23)
That is where you can start to accelerate as a business. And and I say that to you almost as advice of now knowing what you know, you don't want to hesitate

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:31)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (50:32)
to bring on more good people at the right time because they are oftentimes your accelerators to

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:37)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (50:38)
get to the next level of business.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (50:40)
Yeah, and there's no question that, making that move to bring in that caregiver as our client care coordinator has really helped fuel our growth the last several months because you know, not only, care go home care can be a leaky bucket too, right? You know, like we talked about churn at the top. And, you know, she's done a great job of not only, you know, keeping clients on service, keeping them happy, but also, you know, this we talk about this a lot in home care too. You go out, you do a reassessment.

And you say, wow, you may need more support, you need another day, or extend this shift, from six hours to eight hours. And so she's been also able to increase hours that way and really provide better support for those clients that you know their own families may not necessarily realize that, you know, because they're slowing down or have additional needs, you know, a longer shift is gonna give them better quality of care. So she's able to identify that, make the recommendation.

And so then, not only is are we able to bring on more business because of the support she provides, but you know, the the leak in the bottom of the bucket is getting plugged. And so it's just that, you know, more strength to strength type of growth that that additional person enables.

Miriam Allred (51:49)
Yeah, and it's a big investment. Every new hire is an investment, especially when it's, you know, an independently

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (51:52)
Yep. Yes. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (51:54)
run business. Even when you're, profitable and cash flow positive, it's like every role matters.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (51:58)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (51:58)
But I just think oftentimes we talk about these ceilings and these plateaus in home care. And it's like your

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (52:03)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (52:04)
current team, they only they only have so much capacity. And you're gonna push that capacity

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (52:06)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (52:08)
as far as you can. But then you you walk this edge of burnout and turnover, and it's like you don't wanna go too far to lose the good people. So

bring people, bring in your next hire a little sooner maybe than you otherwise would. And I think you learn that just with time and tenure in this industry.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (52:26)
Yep, yeah.

Miriam Allred (52:27)
Let's talk about apart from your office team, you just kind of rounded out kind of like the four employees that you have. You mentioned Maple Care. You mentioned so you have a virtual assistant scheduler that's offshore and then you've got other

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (52:39)
Yep. Yep.

Miriam Allred (52:40)
people onshore. Technology has played a really big part in

Was it since the beginning that you were more tech forward or has it been this past year? What's been the evolution of embedding technology and and and if you can identify well, let's just start with that. embedding technology, is it more of a recent thing or is it since the beginning?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (52:58)
Yeah, I think even in our early investigations of the home care industry, I could see and I could I was hearing there's potentially a lot of, just administrative work that's kind of drudgery, right? And that's in all industries, but particularly in home care, you know, there's there's plenty of that to go around. And I that's just something that me as a person, operational inefficiency drives me nuts. So I knew from the very outset that we were gonna be like a tech forward agency.

I wanted to invest in the best technology, have a tech stack that had as much interoperability as possible. And so that's how we started building from the very foundation. And so I wanted to go out with something that was gonna really, you know, having heard the stories of like, scheduler burnout and just office staff burnout and the administrative workload that there is, I wanted to alleviate as much of that as possible. So people, so we could basically focus on.

relationships and serving our clients and our caregivers and not being bogged down in the office with administrative and paperwork. So yeah, so our we have AxisCare as our scheduling platform, which has been great for us. and then yeah, just more recently though, as we've started to grow and we felt more of those pressures from administrative workload, I've just been very aggressive at trying to automate as much as possible. So for even little things that there's no solution.

I'm a big fan of Claude. I use cowork. I have this whole library of scripts that I use, you know, to do data entry, like when we're onboarding a new caregiver, you know, they give us all their personal information, but there's little things that we collect about them, like what's your favorite $10 gift card? What's your favorite color? Now there's probably some way we could do this, you know, tech-wise and try to get them to fill it out in a web form, but it just seems more personal to talk to them about it when we do orientation.

But we collect that on a paper and then I don't want to have to key it in. So we just scan it and Claude inputs all that data for us, right? So and same thing with onboarding new clients. You know, we're it doesn't do anything with payments yet because we don't want AI having any credit card information. But you know, for little things where we can, we automate with AI. And then the biggest game changer really has been Maple Care in terms of hiring, because it was scary at first to move away from the phone screens are not going to be done by a human.

It's gonna be an AI agent. And really, you're gonna just let AI automate your entire hiring platform. And you know, we talked about we don't have anybody, a recruiter, right now. We have AI, we have Maple Care and their hiring platform. So, you know, it takes the lead right off of Indeed, puts them into the Maple Care system, they fill out their application there, they self-schedule for a phone screening at any time of day or night that they want.

and then we get to listen to that, see what their qualifications are, and then decide from there if we want to bring them in for an in-office interview. And if we like them, then they can self-schedule at any time that they want of the available time blocks to come into the office. but at the same time, we're we don't want to lose the human touch completely. So that's why we do bring them into the office in person, you know, meet them, you know, look at them in the eye, make sure that they're dressed professionally, all that good stuff.

but we try to give them a phone call twenty four hours in advance too, just a personal call. And it's usually about nothing. It's just, hey, I see you're on the calendar for tomorrow. Thank you for applying. Do you have any questions about how to find us or questions about our agency? And just that alone humanizes us. they're a lot of times when I call, it's the agency owner, they're like they're flattered by that, So we're trying to bring both the human touch with some automation, but

That's been a huge game changer for us. And then, even across the rest of our platform. Yeah. I was just saying if there's ever an AI skeptic, technology skeptic, it's me. you're hearing Adam very tech forward. I'm very tech backwards. Like I am very minimal in my own personal tech usage. Like I definitely would have been like, no, this is too much. but actually, in our whole mission to serve the caregiver well, we have seen how

How good it's been for them. they were interviewing on 4th of July on Labor Day because that's what worked for them and they loved it. And I'm always asked them when they come in, how was that initial screening? How did you feel? And they're like, that was pretty cool. And what they want is speed, right? They want to get in as soon as possible. So it ends up being a benefit to them. and then yeah, we'll never lose that in-person interview. I will stand by that forever. We have to see them in person. We have to, you know, see their bedside manner, all of that. And then, of course, our orientation is.

orientation is in person too, but I have definitely been like a convert to like okay, I I see I've come over to the AI side. But

Miriam Allred (57:41)
But what you just

said is really important. Asking everyone that does make it to the interview, in-person interview, how was that phone screen? How was that process? How was your experience?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (57:47)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (57:50)
Because I also am like, I'm tech forward, but I'm also

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (57:53)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (57:53)
like realist of like this workforce is fragile and we cannot turn them away with AI. It needs

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (57:59)
Right.

Miriam Allred (58:00)
to be a force multiplier, it needs to be a value add. And so everybody should be asking that question and just keeping

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (58:06)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (58:07)
that quality bar extremely high.

Even using, you know, AI throughout their process. You, Adam, sent me kind of these numbers that I want to rattle rattle off because they're really impressive. about kind of like the AI versus, you know, human staff split for each area of your operation. You would say today your caregiver hiring process is 90% AI and 10% staff. That is that is wild, but like you just said, it's very intentional as to where the AI touch points are, and then it's very intentional as to when we call them.

We do the in person interview, we do the in person orientation, it can be that split. And then you focus on that ten percent and making that the best possible experience that it can be.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (58:47)
Yeah.

And it gives time to g have a more quality in-person interview. we're definitely spending more time with them in the office. especially our care coordinator, having been a caregiver herself, she goes deep with them. Like she knows the questions to ask, she knows what to look out for. And so, I mean, sometimes she'll like a 45 minute conversation with them because she's not being bogged. We're not putting all that other administrative stuff on her. so yeah, I think overall the quality has improved. Also because skilled caregivers, they get scooped up fast, right? So I feel like we're kind of getting them first because you can't

Can't move any faster than with AI, right? 'Cause it can intervene any time. Yes. Yeah. Right, on their time. Exactly. Right.

Miriam Allred (59:19)
Then real time. It's it's literally real time and on their time and only AI can do that. Humans can't do real time on their time, twenty four seven to

such a high applicant volume. and then also yeah, go ahead.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (59:31)
Yeah. But I mean just I was

gonna say, yeah, just on the the ninety ten thing, we went from, yeah, a full time recruiter in the office to like part time and then now down to no recruiter. Now at some point we'll have to probably bring back someone who's like an HR coordinator to do some paperwork and you know, they'll probably also manage some workers' comp claims, something like that. But I mean, right now

I basically five, ten minutes a day going into the platform looking at who's applied and approving them for, on-site interviews, but the rest of the onboarding process, document collection, everything else is pretty much automated. So that's a huge time-saving back to our our team. Not only that, it lets us scale so much more quickly because if I needed to hire five caregivers in a week, there's no way we can do enough phone screens in a day or two days.

And then schedule follow-up interviews and chase all these people for documents as quickly as you can with an automatic platform like that. So that's been a huge win for us in terms of being able to scale quickly when we do need to hire. Previously, you could do that premium sponsored ad, but you get so many applicants in a single day, it's impossible for a human to sort through all of them, decide who's someone we want to go after, contact them, schedule an interview. and so I think really we're getting

Our our cost per hire has probably even gone down just because AI is able to sift through the candidates so much more quickly and engages them so quickly in in the hiring process.

Miriam Allred (1:01:00)
And then let me share the stat on the sales side, the intake side, and then you can explain what that process looks like. But from the lead intake to the assessment to the care plan creation, that whole flow, you're saying, seventy percent of that is now handled by AI and about thirty percent of that is manual handled by staff. Talk about the automation that's taking place there and the transition.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:01:21)
Yeah. So we're also using the the scribe from Maple Care. So we have Ring Central and it records all the inbound phone calls. so when a lead phone call comes in and I have that initial phone conversation with them about what their care needs are, you know, where they live, all that information. So that's collected then in Ring Central. And that recording though becomes part of then a customer profile in the scribe.

And then when I go out and do an assessment in person, I just pull up the app on my phone. You know, I ask the client, you know, is it okay if I use my note taker to record our conversation? the scribe records the conversation and I get back to the office, I click go, and then based on the conversation, both the details that it captured in the initial phone conversation and what I captured in the assessment, it writes the whole care plan. and it's got a list of our ADLs and access care that we use.

And it takes that whole conversation and buckets it. And the thing I really love about that is previously I was just furiously trying to write notes. And is you know, much as I was trying to get every last little detail, I couldn't do it, you know, and there'd be details that I would miss. And it's also just a little bit awkward. Like I really want to engage with this client during the assessment, understand what they're feeling, what their concerns are, but it's a little bit hard to do that and you know take furious notes at the same time. It's a little bit awkward. So

It's so nice to be freed up to just f purely focus on the conversation. And I still take light notes just in case, the the phone has a hiccup. But to to have it pick up all these little details that then go back and review the care plan and they said, yeah, the dog's name was fluffy. That's right. I forgot to write that down. But it's an it's such a neat detail to capture for the caregiver when they see that care plan for the first time.

To know the dog's name is Fluffy and it's a Pomeranian, right? But I wouldn't have necessarily noted that or put it in the care plan, but it brings that additional richness to the care plan for the caregiver when they're gonna meet. there's Fluffy. That I I've heard about Fluffy, right? so yeah, that whole process used to be me taking notes. Maybe you get the AI summary from Ring Central and trying to paste it into AxisCare. But then somebody had to take that and actually put in notes in in the ADLs. And

access care will allow you can do that on a tablet, you could bring it, but I still felt like, I'm diverting my attention away from the client to a device. And I'm looking at my device and taking notes in the device. And it just wasn't the human connection that I really wanted in that assessment. so having the scribe automate all of that, and now I basically can just get back to the office, click go, it gives me a draft of the care plan. I just approve it, it pushes it into access care, and then I can tell the scheduler.

We're ready to go. Care plans then, in there, here's the schedule, find caregivers. And so the the amount of actual human touch now is is much reduced and better accuracy, more detail. and just it gives me more bandwidth than to divert my attention to something else that's going on in the office rather than sitting there and trying to write out a care plan. So that's been another huge win for us.

Miriam Allred (1:04:29)
Yeah. And then the third leg of the stool is scheduling. And you have a an offshore scheduler. Scheduling is a whole can of worms in and of itself. It is so technical. And there's a reason why so many tech companies are trying to crack that nut and arguably are chipping away at it. But you know, I w is it fully solved and fully autonomous? I would not say we're there quite yet. But I I think it's interesting. You know, you've decided intentionally where to plug these AIs in, where to bring in the offshore team.

And it's ever evolving, you and I both on the edge of our seat just to see how this all

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:05:00)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:05:01)
transitions. I would say though, you're ahead of most with those percentages

90, 10, 70, 30. you're definitely on the leading edge here. But I think, this industry is headed in that direction. I think more, more that will become more common over the coming years of more and more people's office and administrative burden looks like these percentages. and and we talk about

finance, there's all these other even layers, billing, if if you're in billing government payer sources and all that stuff, there's all sorts of automations and and time savings there and we're just yeah, we're just kind of like peeking around the corner of I think what's really gonna be possible, which is interesting.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:05:38)
And I will say just on the scheduling piece that that's something that several months ago, you know, the scheduling products were coming out and it was very intriguing. I think it as it is to every home care owner. and I thought, you know, at at the time we didn't quite have the volume of call-outs and need to, you know, urgently fill shifts last minute. You know, we have an on-call caregiver every day, and that, you know, plus our scheduler in the Philippines who's monitoring everything.

basically got us through. But as we've continued to grow and now we've got more scale, more shifts every day, you could have three late clock-ins at the same time. And it's getting hard for that scheduler to then, okay, which one do I prioritize first? To call or text to figure out, are you on your way or did you forget about your shift? And so we're right now in the process of standing up the shift operations module with Maplecare. And I think what it what I've realized is

Scheduling, we know it's a high burnout area. And yes, I'm saving money by offshoring that to the Philippines. But at the same time, business continuity and making that still an enjoyable job, even for our scheduler in the Philippines, means a lot because I don't want her to burn out. She's a really valuable member of our team. We have her on our weekly meetings every Monday. And I don't want to just offshore grunt work because it's inexpensive.

if there's skill there, sure, we we can offshore it there, we can figure out the best way to fit it with our agency. But I I've I've started to see more ROI and bang for the buck in in scheduling tasks that are kind of like high ROI but low effort, but that can take a lot of time. So one of those is like checking caregiver availability, right? Like to know your caregiver's availability real time every week is huge because if you need to fill that call out, you know, this caregiver's available.

She just said she wanted to work that day, call her, done, right? But for your scheduler to go through every week and text or call your entire roster, at least or caregivers that don't have a consistent client, that's a lot of work. It's a lot of churn. But those are the type of things that I'm seeing now that, like, if we had a scheduling agent that could do a lot of that work on behalf of the scheduler, the scheduler can really focus on the relationship piece. Like, we have this really important client.

We're gonna change the caregiver roster slightly. We really wanna talk to the client. We wanna talk to the caregivers about how they feel about it. Let's let the scheduler handle that really human task and take the the mundane texting 40 caregivers off of her plate. Let AI handle that so she can handle this higher value human touch task.

Miriam Allred (1:08:21)
Adam, really well said. Really well said. You're very passionate. But that was

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:08:22)
He's very passionate. He's very passionate.

Miriam Allred (1:08:26)
really, really helpful for just operators to think to understand how you're thinking about this, because I agree and align with a lot of what you're saying. just one kind of, you know, little thought here. I was just at you know, the Home Care Association of America conference. Something that was talked about that I've you know, kind of like hallway conversations is is

We're we're using AI administratively and that's the best use case of AI right now. But something that we need to start pushing the boundary on is like how it can help the caregiver in the home? How can it help them walk in more accurately, more prepared, walk into a stranger's home with a hoyer lift on a day that they're having, you know, a mental health day? Like how can we how can we start to leverage AI for things that are higher yield to help the caregivers? And so I've been stewing on that. Like again.

There's a lot of AI attacking the administrative side, but hopefully in the coming, months and years we start to see more impactful technology helping the caregivers. how amazing would that be? bite-sized TikTok style training

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:09:25)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (1:09:26)
that helps the caregivers with said ADL or task or bathing. you know, I I hope we're moving kind of in that direction of like more impactful AI because the technology's there and the ability's there. It's just a matter of like time and building it.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:09:39)
Yeah. Yeah, and I think the the companion to what you're talking about too is as agents and bots get better, you know, I could really envision a future where, you know, all the prior care plans and care notes for a client are there in the caregiver app. And if they want to say, When's the last time this client had a bath? Or what's their favorite breakfast? you know, hopefully that's in the care notes because you when you do have a caregiver going in for the first time, covering a call out.

Yeah, they could try to read through all the notes, they can try to read through the whole care plan, but it's it's a lot of information to come in. And sometimes if they just wanted a quick answer, you know, it'd be great to be able to ask ask the phone, just like you ask Siri or something else, but you ask your scheduling app, hey, what's their favorite breakfast? And if it's in there, they can find it out, rather than trying to call the office or whatnot. So yeah, I think there's definitely, you know, AI companies out there, there's plenty of opportunity to to take all this data and make it useful and automated.

Miriam Allred (1:10:35)
Yeah, and that's where I really start to get excited of just how how how this is all gonna look in a few years. people are I was just reading a post on LinkedIn about yeah, robots in the home. And it's like, I don't want that. It's like how can we empower the people to do their best work? that is where I want to see technology leaning into solving problems and helping people do better, not just, creating robots like we're just we're not there yet. So anyway, that that was great out of on on all this technology fees. I just wanna round out the conversation here.

this has been fantastic. You guys, so many great comments, so many great nuggets and statistics and technology like this has been super, super valuable. I just want to kind of close with like expectations versus reality. You know, here you are about to come up on

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:11:16)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:11:16)
your second year. And I just want to ask, you know, has it been easier or harder or different than you anticipated emotionally, mentally, all

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:11:26)
My gosh.

Miriam Allred (1:11:27)
just across the board?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:11:29)
Sure.

Miriam Allred (1:11:30)
Adam, maybe you can start and just share yeah, w has it been easier, harder, different than you anticipated?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:11:36)
I would say, you know, operationally was probably about what I expected. I think the big thing we didn't expect was just the emotional component and how much how hard it is emotionally, especially just those the call out when you're thin staffed with a client who really needs a caregiver, and it's there's no stress like it. It's like, is one of our caregivers gonna bail us out? And you know, is someone gonna be able to fill this shift? And, you know, just wanting to do

right by our clients all day every day and just that pressure, you know, like we kind of joke, it'd be so interest so great if we just decided to do a painting business instead. Cause if the painter doesn't show up, well, you have to call the client and say, sorry, your paint job paint on your house isn't gonna be done today. We'll have to do it tomorrow. But there's not that option in Home Care. Yeah. So that that's a level of pressure that I think, you know, what saved our sanity was yeah, talking to so many people before we opened, like

Researching this industry as much as humanly possible. And I will say, universally, every single hair home care owner told us the first two years are brutal. Like they said, you're gonna look at yourself one day and wonder, like, what did we get ourselves into? Like, can we still do that? my god, we've definitely had those dark days, but

Knowing that, and this is what they all said. This is what they all said.

But yeah, that definitely helped. And then but no, it's so hard, yeah, emotionally. And because it's urgent. There's nothing more important. I mean, this is human life. I mean

the phone rings and we drop everything, like whether it's a client or a caregiver. And, you know, see having our kids see that. Like that's definitely been another hard part. We know we have three children and they see it firsthand, first row seat to all of this. They know what Hoyer lifts are. They know many of our caregivers names and you know a lot of times I just have to remind them I'm like, you know, this it's really important, right? This is someone's life. This is a senior this is a caregiver. They need us right now. Like you understand, right? And they understand, you know.

So yeah, but no, it's been incredibly challenging. But you know, it's you have to focus on the positives and just like, my goodness, when you get that client caregiver match right and the bond that forms is so sweet. And so that's what keeps you going. And and for me, you know, I do have like such like I've said, I have such a heart for the caregiver. These are salt of the earth people and I just want us to be able to support them. I want to scale so that we can pour more into them. Like you know, I have more ideas of ways that we can support them.

then I just wanna get to that next level where we can pour pour onto them more.

Miriam Allred (1:14:08)
And hopefully the light at the end of the tunnel just keeps getting brighter and bigger. it all becomes

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:14:13)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:14:14)
clearer and worth it. And the bonds and the matchmaking and the experiences that you're creating that overshadows, the hardness and the the grind and the, operational headaches. It's like all of those experiences really make it all worth it. And hopefully you're just having more and more of those. And we talked about, your network compounding, the impact is compounding and that's the fuel to keep going.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:14:36)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:14:38)
just I guess one question in closing. Yeah, what what's on the horizon? What are you guys hoping to do? looking ahead to year three, I don't know if you've thought about this or talked a lot about this, but what are you hoping to double down on or do differently or new hires? Where's your head at when it comes to this next chapter of growth, year three?

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:14:54)
Yeah, well I think just building on the success we've had with having this care coordinator role, I think, you know, as we grow, like investing in another care coordinator is like another one that because if they have the right skill set, they can help out a little bit on marketing, they can help with caregivers, they can help with hiring. And we I think I l I really like that kind of like flexible role and that kind of a model.

and I think as we enter our third year it's really gonna be about continuing to to reinvest in the caregivers and really continue, like I said at the outset, you know, that Tony Robbins quote, right? You know

great service and a great product is your best marketing. And I think that we've seen fruit from that. And so I think having a lot of organizational focus on that client experience and the caregivers. And I'll just share one little anecdote. You know, we have a a relatively new client. They were a referral from an existing client. And initially the care was supposed to be just for the husband. But then the wife

she ended up having some heart issues, went to the hospital, came back home. And I we'd initially said, okay, this is gonna be care for just him, but now it's actually care for both, because she's recovering from the hospitalization. And initially when the caregivers took this role, we just paid them like it was, you know, care for the husband. And we got this feedback and the caregivers were said, you know, this is actually like almost twice as much work. This is couples care now that she's there. and we said, you know what, you're right.

Based on our reassessment, based on the opinion of our care coordinator, this really is couples care. And so we went back to the family and said, you know what, we're gonna have to adjust your rate because you know, when we initially talked, this was just for hit you're the husband, and now it's for both. and they were very understanding. And as part of that change in rate, we got the caregivers also a significant change in rate because now they're doing couples care, and that just meant so much to the caregivers to be seen, heard, have us take action.

And then produce that tangible result for them. So, you know, the more that we can do that, be responsive and build our agency that way, that's really kind of the the secret sauce I think we're looking at as in our third year is investing in in that whole client experience and really supporting our caregivers.

Miriam Allred (1:17:08)
I love it. You guys, this has been so good. I have had you in the hot seat for a long time, but you have delivered. This has been so fun and so enjoyable. And I just want to congratulate you on your success. Like it has been from a distance to watch and see and see you on, you know, on social and just kind of keep up. I'm just so proud of you guys and so excited for what's ahead of you. You know, again, we talk about

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:17:29)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:17:29)
hopefully the lows will lessen and the highs will just heighten.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:17:31)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:17:32)
But also we said before we started recording, this is business. you gotta stay on your toes, you gotta stay hungry.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:17:37)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:17:38)
You want the highs and lows to balance each other out because you keep learning and growing. And that's what's gonna make up lift, you know, a market leader as you continue to learn and refine and invest in your people. Like it's all, it's all gonna work out and turn into really the business of your dreams if you're not already there. So Adam, Marlene, thank

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:17:54)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (1:17:54)
you for joining me in the lab. This has been fantastic.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:17:57)
All right. Thanks so much, Miriam. Thank you, Miriam. And I just want to say one more thing or if we're still on the point. I just want

Miriam Allred (1:18:01)
Of course. Yeah, absolutely.

Adam & Marlene Bartlett (1:18:02)
to thank you again for what you do. And Miriam, I think you have more impact on seniors' lives and caregivers' lives than you know or will ever know, just because of what you're putting out there, all of the education, all of these tools, and these introducing us to these experts that help us become a better agency and I know have helped other agencies just provide better care. So thank you. Like keep doing what you're doing because I just feel like you have a massive impact that you can't

Miriam Allred (1:18:28)
That's so kind of you to say thank you, Marlene. The way that I just the only thing that I can say to that is I'm just doing my part. I hope you all are doing your part and I'm doing my part. And, you know, th this is the impact that I can have is just surfacing amazing providers like you doing the work. And so full circle, you know, I'm doing my part. So that's all that's what I can do. So thank you so much for saying that.