Miriam Allred (00:01.0)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with all of you. Today in the lab, I'm joined by Jeff Stevens, the co-founder and CEO of Village Caregiving in Barboursville, West Virginia. Jeff, welcome to the show.
Jeff (00:18.6)
Thank you for having me. We're all big fans of Village Caregiving, this podcast. Whenever people make trips out there, they listen to it in the car, come back, talk about it. I hear about it all the time. So bravo to your work.
Miriam Allred (00:29.8)
You're too kind. Somebody recommended that I have you on the show from your company. So we're coming full circle and it's time to have you on. And in total transparency, you're one of maybe a handful of people that I've met from West Virginia. So I said to you before, lean into that, share that story. We want to know more. So let's go ahead and start with that. Tell us a little bit about your personal and professional background and what essentially has inspired you to start Village Caregiving.
Jeff (00:36.)
See?
Jeff (00:58.0)
Yeah, well, West Virginia is my home state, Barboursville, where Village Caregiving is headquartered is my hometown. So there's an extra level of pride, as you can guess, that goes into making that the headquarters still. And now that we've scaled up, we'll talk a lot about this, but sometimes I can be watching a show. Like we have an executive director on the North Dakota Today Show.
and they're talking about Village Caregiving, which is headquartered in Barboursville, West Virginia. It almost makes me more proud to hear my hometown said than my company. There's something, that's the surreal part to me sometimes, it's like, wow, they're talking about Barbersville and I like take a clip of it and send it to the mayor and say, look at this, man, how cool is this? So it means a lot and I really mean that genuinely. Yeah, we started the company, there were three of us, Matt Walker, Andrew Moss and...
We all had grandparents that needed the service. So we put it on our radar and the care was pretty good. It was inconsistent. That was the problem. There just was too much of caregivers not showing up. And even when I was a kid in my own home, my grandfather moved in with us temporarily and we had caregivers back then. So you're talking like early eighties type stuff.
Same deal. My mom had would have to leave her job frequently enough that it almost cost her her job because the caregivers just didn't show up as consistently. So Matt and Andrew and I saw an opportunity to start a home care agency, offer more consistency, make it as affordable as we could and just do good work. And, and we'll talk about it again. We'll talk about it, but I didn't think that it was going to become what it's become. That's just being honest. I mean, but it did.
Miriam Allred (02:51.7)
That was going to be my next question. The three of you, when you got started, you just wanted to get out there and provide consistent, reliable, affordable care. Beyond that, what was your initial vision? Let's just grow a single office and see where we can take this thing. Or did you think bigger from day one or not necessarily?
Jeff (03:11.5)
Yeah, I love questions like this because it forces me to go back in time and try to remember exactly what I was thinking, even who I was. It's tough. know, that's everybody listening to this will relate to that. It's tough to put yourself back in time like that. No, we didn't think that we would have a whole bunch of offices. started with, pretty sure with the idea that we would just have the one location. and we had a friend who was finishing law school.
And the three of us had all gone to law school and I'm an attorney. I don't practice much, but, he knew that we were doing something else, some lawyers that were doing something else and he had done an internship with us and he asked, Hey, I would be interested in opening a second office. And that was in Charleston, West Virginia. And we just kind of thought, we're not opposed to it. This was three years after we had already launched the company. So we didn't, we weren't trying to microwave our success and have a
bunch of, you know, scale out. That wasn't the plan. It was really organic. And so we told him, his name is Wade McGlone. we said, okay, well do your homework, come into the office, give us a presentation, research the market. How many agencies are up there? What would your business plan be? How would you run the office? And to his credit, he showed up suit and tie, had a PowerPoint, ran through it. It was good. And we said, okay, let's give it a shot.
then you do the second office. You see that it can be successful too. Now it changes because it's easier to envision the next one, the third one, then the fourth one. And then you did the ball just kind of rolls. But that's the genesis of how we even had a second office.
Miriam Allred (04:55.6)
Okay, we're gonna get into this more. I love that you're already going down this path because I want to, we're gonna kind of break down all of these different chapters in the business. Before we do that though, give us a little preview of the size of village today. How many locations, how many states, how many employees, like give us a broad stroke of the size of the company today.
Jeff (05:15.4)
Yeah. Well, depending on exactly when this will air, we're going to have around 60 offices that are in about 20, 22 States. You know, there's some satellites here and there. So it's, that's why I hesitate on the exact number. It kind of can come and go a hair, but about 60 offices, about 22 States.
Miriam Allred (05:33.9)
Okay, and employees or clients off the top of your head kind of ballpark numbers.
Jeff (05:39.1)
Yeah, we have upwards of 4,000 employees, probably double that number of clients or so, six to 8,000. Sorry, I should have come more prepared with exact numbers for you, but.
Miriam Allred (05:49.7)
Okay. No, that's okay. And if my sources are correct, I think you all are maybe the largest privately owned home care company in the U.S. So we're talking, we're talking large.
Jeff (06:02.4)
Yeah, I think that that is still privately held that, you know, isn't private equity back to that sort of a thing. That's what I've been told. Yeah.
Miriam Allred (06:09.6)
Absolutely. That's what we've both been told, so we'll roll with it. Let's go back to the early days. I like what you said. It's hard for you to almost go back and put yourself back in those shoes, but let's try our best. In those early days, let's talk about that zero to one people in business say, which is just those very early days of you three are with lawyer backgrounds, legal background, starting this home care company. You went through it with your grandparents.
but you are savvy and you know what you want to accomplish. Talk about the early challenges that you face just getting that first office up and running.
Jeff (06:50.1)
Yeah, that sort of gets me launched into the premise of the show, which is the formula for success. I don't know if you're wanting to hold off on getting to that or can I go ahead and start? Okay. Well, so let me disclaim upfront. I am just the kind of person. I'm the kind of guy who just thinks that what works for me might not work for you and what works for you may not for me. I'm not very comfortable telling other people how to
Miriam Allred (06:59.7)
Jump right in, jump right in.
Jeff (07:17.7)
act or what to think or what it's just not who I am. I've been like that since I was a little kid and that's could be politics or business, religion, whatever. just, I'm not that comfortable with it, but I'm a good sport and I've come so, so giving you a formula. That was what I'm saying. It's a little bit tough for me because I just, I'm not sure. Take whatever you hear today. If you're listening to this, like you would read a book, you're not going to digest the entire thing, but if you can walk away with two or three nuggets,
that are jumping off point where you can brainstorm from there and fit something I said into your own style, that's cool. Like that would be my suggestion. But like I say, I'm a good sport. So I've come not only with a formula, but two formulas today.
Miriam Allred (07:58.8)
And I don't know these, so I'm excited. I'm on the edge of my seat. Give them to us. Let's hear it.
Jeff (08:02.2)
Okay. Here's where I'm going with this. So the formula you hit on it, right? Going from, you know, you're you want to scale the topic of the show is how to scale your business. Okay. Let's say you're listening to this right now and you have one office and you were thinking about maybe opening a second one, or maybe you've got two and you want to get to eight, whatever. It's a different formula when you want to go from one office to two or four, or maybe as high as eight.
That's a thing. And I'll talk about that to answer your question, but there is a different formula when you want to go from like eight to up to 60, we're at, it's a whole different thing that you're not even doing the same thing. So it's two different things. I want to talk about both of them if that's okay. Yeah. So the first one here is I'll give you what I wrote out and then get into each element of the formula. So upfront launching that first office or making a second office. I have said it's
scale equals drive plus courage plus competency plus agility. So the drive, that's kind of what you're getting at. What is the purpose behind your work? Do you even want to start your own business? Start there. If you're listening and thinking about it, don't ever let anybody make you feel like you're not good enough or you made a bad decision or didn't have the
courage enough to start your own business because if you have other priorities in your life, your family, your kids, your own personal time and other interests, your mental health on some days, right? If that's a bigger priority to you to spend time with your family, then start your own business. There's nothing wrong with that. Do that. That's a beautiful thing. If you feel very, very called that you want to be an entrepreneur, I want to start my own business, then you should.
And then you think about what is the purpose? And so that's to your question. Is it that I'm a competitive person and I want to succeed? I want to have success in business. That's fine. That's what it is. Is it that you want to see change in the world? You're very socially conscious. You want to do good for as many people as you can. Beautiful too. Even if it comes from a place of like,
I've never felt good enough and people always judge me and I want to have something in my life that's an identity and I want to succeed. Use that energy too. Use it for good. Now, careful there, but like use it for good purposes. But understand, you're gonna have to have a deeper purpose that means something special to you that creates this drive and determination or you're just not gonna get there. At some point it will fizzle out on you. So be intentionally thoughtful about what your purpose is. That's the...drive piece along with keep your focus. Once you know what that purpose is, keep your focus. It's like, um, the hedgehog concept and good. Is it good to great Jim Collins? Was that where he talked about hedgehog? Like, yeah, don't go for every flashy thing that comes by with a shiny ribbon attached. Like know what your strength is, what your purpose is and stick to that focus and don't be a lured away. So there's the drive piece. Do you want to interrupt with a thought?
