Miriam Allred (00:01)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. A couple of quick words from me, your host, before we get started. I just want to say first, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening and tuning into the show. Week after week, it means the world to me. And this really is a dream I absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place that I'm at today. So I just want to say thank you to all of you. And if you enjoy what you're getting here in the lab, please hit
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Today in the lab, I am joined by Becky Reel, the founder at Reel Home Care Consulting and also the former CEO of For Papa's Sake Home Care. Becky's claim to fame was building up her own family business Fore Papa's Sake and being recognized as North America's number one home care agency by Activated Insights and achieving 300 % year over year growth.
She later sold the business and now has shifted her focus to helping owners and operators grow their business with her core philosophy being that you build a business that supports your life, not the other way around. Becky, it's my pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for being here.
Becky Reel (01:32)
I'm so honored to be here with you. Thank you.
Miriam Allred (01:35)
You have had a big year and fortunately you're super active on social media so I and others can keep tabs on your life and on your business, which I love. But tell everyone listening a little bit more about yourself and maybe give us kind of some highlights of this past year for you.
Becky Reel (01:50)
Yeah, well, thank you. You did a great job discussing my previous home care experience. But prior to that, I was actually in tech sales and marketing, so knew very little about home care. But I think that's OK. You don't need to know a lot about home care. You just need to have a really big heart and know how to take care of people. And that's what I've learned over the past few years of doing this that's really important with home care agencies. This past year, I brought on a team member, which has been a huge
huge just change for all of us. So Kristen joined our team earlier this year, and she actually was my very first office team member at For Papa's Sakes. So she helped me grow the business and now we're doing it again here. But together, we've really taken our consulting and coaching practice really to the next level and really defining who we are as a consulting firm and a coach.
We've been busy with our clients. primarily work, I would say, with startup home care agencies and agencies that are stuck and plateauing at a few million and kind of can't get out of their own way. But also we've really launched our dinner series, which has been my greatest accomplishment, I would say, of what I've been able to do and probably my most favorite part of my job. So our dinner series, we go across the country. They're very intimate.
gatherings of just home care agency decision makers and people running agencies. And it's really a chance for us to support each other. You know, as a home care agency owner, you're taking care of your clients, your caregivers, your own families, everybody. And you're often stuck thinking, who's taking care of me? And so that's our opportunity to really support each other, talk about the things that no one else will really understand in a very intimate setting, 20-ish people. And we laugh, we cry.
but we walk away reminded why we love doing what we're doing. So that's been my biggest accomplishment this year. We have a lot of fun stuff planned for next year, but really just loving getting to know our agencies and still being able to make a difference in this industry.
Miriam Allred (03:50)
I love it. And you are really becoming like the startup guru in home care, the one that goes really deep with owners in this startup phase who gets, you know, gets their hands dirty right alongside of these owners amidst the craziness. And you have the chops and the skillset and the desire to help agencies at that stage of business. I'm just curious, what is it about that stage that you love so much? Like what is it that drives you to work with that stage?
Becky Reel (04:13)
yeah, so much. I think what I love is, you know, typically you don't just wake up one day and think, I'm gonna start a home care agency because that sounds like a lot of fun. Because let's be honest, it's not, it's not fun. That first year is hard. And I think what I love about startups is there's a reason. Like we all get into this for some reason, whether it was that we had a bad experience with home care or we had a great experience and we think we can do this better or we think,
I want to make a change. want to impact people's lives in a similar way that someone did for me. So I love those stories. I love hearing the stories. And usually, it's people that have worked in corporate for 20, 30 years, and they're done making other people a lot of money. And now they think, this is my time. And I love being a part of that. I love being a part of that very early phase of the idea and then holding their hand throughout the entire process post-launch and really
walking them through the every stage, and then finally getting to the place where I can say, you can do this now on your own. We purposely don't want this to be a solution that people are gonna need long term, right? Because I want you to be able to invest into other things that are gonna help grow your business, the community, your caregivers, all of the things that you need. So I don't want necessarily our clients to stay with us post-year. I want them to be able to be self-sufficient and be able to run the agency on their own. So I love being able to say, are free. And we're still a part of their journey. We still keep in touch. But it's just so rewarding to be on the other side and to be able to watch them grow. But we do work with agencies that are a few years in and still struggling. But I find such gratification in both.
Miriam Allred (05:54)
What is it? I've met a couple of your clients and one of the things that stood out to me, what you said a couple of minutes ago was you don't have to know home care or healthcare to get into this. And most often these people that you especially work with don't have a background in healthcare or home care. And a lot of them are also like, I think of it as like their second or third career. Like you have some clients where it's like home care is yeah, their second or even their third career. And I just love that concept of people wanting to make a difference in their community, want to give back, want to do something really fulfilling.
They land on home care and then here they are at a later stage in life starting this business and really making an impact on their community.
Becky Reel (06:37)
I think I love that too so much because that's my mom's story, right? My mom started the agency after a tragic end of life. My grandpa had it at the nursing home and I called my grandpa Papa. So that was how the name really resonated, right? And I, you my mom was in her, gosh, late 50s, early 60s when she started. And it's just though, it's her story. It's all the stories that I get to hear that makes you realize that you can do this. It's never too late, right?
So no, I agree, I love the second and third career and watching the reward on their faces too and the stories I hear of my clients of I'm doing exactly what I should be doing is just so meaningful for me.
Miriam Allred (07:18)
Yes. I think everyone can relate to that. feel, everyone kind of feels like they're right where they're supposed to be. Like, yes, it's hard. And we're going to talk about that today. Like there are a lot of challenges. No two days are the same. It's exhausting, but it's, it's really so fulfilling. And a lot of us feel like we're right where we're supposed to be. So today I've asked you to prepare five or six unique, but not uncommon scenarios that you have worked through personally, and have helped other owners, operators work through as well.
And we're gonna be talking about them kind of in context of like startups, but you and I were talking before this episode, there's a lot of basics, there's a lot of principles, there's a lot of plateaus at every stage, no matter how long you've been doing this, how much you're doing in revenue, like these things that we're gonna talk about are kind of universal. And so I'm gonna have you kind of share the scenarios or the problems, what are the root causes of these problems, and then how you help operators work through these things.
So I've kind of pushed you to come with these scenarios and I'm really excited to talk through them. Let's dive into the first one and maybe no surprise, we're going to start with what we're calling the caregiver exodus. Every business has been through this where they have a group, a chunk, a bulk of caregivers leave at once and it really puts you in a pinch. And so I thought this was a natural one to start with. So can you explain kind of in the context that you thought there's through this scenario, like what have you seen happen to a business that we can work through?
