Miriam Allred (00:01.3)
Hello and welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host Miriam Allred. It's great to be back in the lab today. And today I'm joined by Mike Hoskin, the managing partner of A Better Solution franchise in Boise, Idaho and Reno, Nevada. Mike, thanks for being here today.
Mike Hoskin (00:18.7)
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
Miriam Allred (00:20.853)
Amazing. I am super excited to get into our conversation today. You and I are recently acquainted and I've learned a lot about you and your business and so naturally I wanted to have you on the show. Let's take a couple of minutes to let everyone get to know you a little bit. Talk about your personal background and your journey to buying and starting your home care business.
Mike Hoskin (00:41.3)
Okay, great. Nothing special about me. Just one of a million folks who went to school, studied, got a job, big company, worked a long time, branched out into consulting about 20 years into a career, did that for another 20, ready to retire. And my wife and I talked about post retirement, what it would look like. And let's invest in some businesses or...
a business that we could operate sort of hands off, but that would provide us post retirement income. Hired a broker and that process went over several years. And then life happened. We ended up being the caregivers of all four of our parents. And we're there for the final breath of all four of our parents, which...
is a real blessing. everybody, somebody gets the phone. Some people get the phone call that, hey, bad news, dad passed, mom passed, whatever. And we didn't get that phone call because we were there for all four. And that, that process touched a part of our heart for the elderly and infirm. And we saw people that were strong and who we looked up to become weak and vulnerable. And there's millions of those. And that led us to, boy, we could, we could really do this full time.
And then the second thing is in that process, the available people to you to help you service your family members and loved ones isn't super robust. So we thought there's a place in the market for people who care about the elderly and infirmed. And we approached that with really with full force. That's how we got into the business. Nothing special about us, but life happened and we were very, very fortunate to be teamed up with A Better Solution out of San Diego.
Miriam Allred (02:38.5)
Thank you so much for sharing that. It's maybe safe to say that home care is your third career, 20 years in manufacturing, 20 years in I think, IT consulting, and now here you are launching into your third career. How special though. And like you said, you and your wife got to see all four of your parents age dignified in their home and be a part of that journey, which then attracted you to this industry that is so, so special. And something you shared with me is when you were looking into senior care, you also looked into, you know, senior living facilities and skilled nursing. And so you, you also looked broader than just home care. Tell us a little bit about kind of looking at greater senior care.
Mike Hoskin (03:19.7)
We did, Miriam Our initial thought was, let's open up an assisted living center because one of our four parents actually spent the last few months of their life in a facility a mile from us. And so we were there every day and saw how that place operated and thought, wow, there's a real place in the market for assisted livings. And then our friend group also had parents in similar type facilities and we thought we could really do a good job with that. The roadblock is it's really expensive. It's really, really, really expensive to open a facility to keep it running and so that's what prevented that option.
Miriam Allred (04:08.845)
And you decided to go the franchise route and not the independent route and you were the 11th franchisee with A Better Solution Talk to us a little bit about your thinking of the independent versus the franchise route.
Mike Hoskin (04:20.13)
We did the franchise route, the broker that we worked with, Dave Whalen is super guy and he approached us with numerous business opportunities and systems and structures and setups. We also talked to, I spoke with my friend network and the franchise route, what it does is it accelerates your ramp up because they have vetted systems, they vetted processes, they vetted third party vendors.
that you can access for different types of services. And to do that on your own, you can do it on your own and not pay the franchisor. I made the decision to go that route because the acceleration was so much, the ramp up was so much faster. And I don't know that we could have ever really...
got into the same level of support in terms of people, third party support and certainly applications that we did going with A Better Solution. And then the second choice was size. You can be the 15,000 McDonald's owner or Chick-fil-A owner or Subway owner, or you can be the 10th or the 11th. And based on my background, I wanted to help grow the organization.
their goal, headquarters goal, and Leah, our CEO, is a dynamo in home care. And she wants to provide excellent care to seniors first, in as many places second. So quality is paramount for her, second is growth, and that's the same way we approached it too. So we had a very close melding of the minds, and her staff is very, very good. All of them put clients first, care first.
high quality first and growth second. So I knew it was the right company. it was really, I gotta tell you, I know there's many, many, systems out there and not to diminish or demean any of them, but Leah and her team run a very, very good operation. Yeah.
Miriam Allred (06:34.0)
Amazing, great context. And thank you for sharing all of that. A couple of more contextual questions. We're going to talk about systems and processes and what that looks like for you today. But tell everyone how many years in business you've been and about how many hours of care are you providing?
Mike Hoskin (06:50.4)
We started in 21, so this is our fifth year in business. And I did a pro forma for the business where I thought that we could probably generate one to 200 hours a week and maybe hit break even at 400 hours a week. Hours per week is kind of the barometer that you use to determine the health of the business. And by the end of the first year, we had hoped to be
near breakeven at 400 hours a week. And we barely didn't make that the first year. And then the second year blew through that number, double breakeven, passed the million dollar mark, and then the multi-million dollar mark, and it continued on that stretch.
Miriam Allred (07:49.8)
And this was out of one location in Boise. Your first several years were just out of the Boise location, but recently you're now launching in Reno as of right now, correct?
Mike Hoskin (07:52.426)
Thank you.
That's correct.
Mike Hoskin (07:59.8)
Yeah, it's really exciting. We were able to secure multiple markets within A Better Solution and opening them up a year or two at a time. And ultimately, we'd like to have four to six branches before I think my brain taps out. like I quality of care is first. We have to be...quality of care, the right people, the right processes, know, the systems processes people, when that's running well, then you can branch. And then when you prove you can do two well, then you go for three. And when you can prove you do three, well, then you go to four. So I think slow, sustained growth is smart. And so that's what we're doing.
Miriam Allred (08:46.317)
And when you got into the business, you anticipated being a hands-off owner. so what, to some extent, what did that mean to you when you first signed up for this journey? What did being a hands-off owner mean to you at the time?
Mike Hoskin (08:57.8)
Okay.
All right, to your listeners of your podcast, if you hear anything, listen for the next 30 seconds. There is no such thing as a passive business. In the beginning, when we talked to our broker, Dave, and we met Lee and her staff, and like I said, it was in his infancy. Her desire to take what she did for 25 years, a outstanding home care business, and franchise it out to fuel her growth was...
The headquarters group can support you and you provide the seed capital. And you might have a once a month touch point meeting with headquarters. That has since morphed largely because of us and other folks like us, my wife and I, Anita and I. But they've morphed into, know, as the owner, you need to be more involved in terms of not day to day, you're not actually
providing the caregiving or the hiring and firing of staff and monitoring. But remotely you are. You are remotely involved in the daily operations of the business and you are one step more involved than a board of directors. It's like it's a managing board of directors.
Miriam Allred (10:15.2)
And currently you're not in Boise. Have you ever actually lived in Boise since starting the Boise branch? You haven't, correct? Which is another just like kind of glimpse into what your reality looks like as you're not there locally with this business.
Mike Hoskin (10:18.9)
Never. No, no.
Mike Hoskin (10:28.4)
Right, during the second phase of, you know, I had three careers. The manufacturing supply chain portion, I was tied to warehouses or manufacturing plants. In IT, I traveled the country. So I sold and worked as a consultant to companies all over. So traveling was not a big deal. I was comfortable with multiple time zones, had breakfast, lunch, dinner in three different states multiple times.
So I was comfortable with that. So not living where the business was, fine. I hop on a plane, go there. Not everybody can do that. Not everyone likes to travel, can travel. My wife actually gets, Anita actually gets travel jitters. Not because of the fear, but the logistics are overwhelming. But I don't have that, I've never really had that issue. So not living there is fine as long as, I mean, we'll get into this later with systems and such.
But I do show up on site three to five times a year on site.
