Miriam Allred (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with you today. I am joined by Nate West, the owner of Heritage Home Care based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Nate, welcome to the show.
Nate West (00:13)
Thank you, Miriam. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Miriam Allred (00:16)
Yeah, likewise. I feel like our names have bounced around each other and we're finally overdue for a conversation. So ⁓ thanks for entertaining me.
Nate West (00:23)
Of course, of course. Now I'll start by saying I found I think I found the podcast maybe nine months ago. ⁓
And I I I was excited to find it. I told my wife, I mean, I I really think you have a unique podcast here, because as an owner of an agency, I was looking for resources and looking for people kind of in a similar position to me, and there's just really not a lot out there, which is surprising given how big the industry is and how many players there are in this space, but for you to kind of bring it all together and it's just been incredibly helpful for me over the last few months. And so I I appreciate what you're doing because I've learned a ton from some of your previous guests. So it's kind of full circle to now be here today.
Miriam Allred (00:59)
Yeah, thank you. Well, people are about to learn a lot from you, so I'm excited to bring it full circle here. Let's start with your introduction. Tell people a little bit about your kind of life before home care and then we'll get into you buying Heritage and what that looks like.
Nate West (01:12)
Yeah, yeah. So born and raised here in Phoenix. ⁓ went to Arizona State, got a degree in finance, and then shortly after I graduated, I joined the Marine Corps. ⁓ I commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps and I did that for about five years and ⁓ kind of bounced all over the world. But my wife and I knew that Phoenix was home, and so got out of the Marine Corps in 2018, ⁓ moved home, and I actually joined ⁓ a startup, a a a B2B SaaS startup by the name of Pluma, ⁓ shortly after getting out, and it was a virtual executive coaching platform.
And so kind of the premise there was provide one on one leadership coaching to business leaders and kind of democratize coaching since that was typically a pretty cost prohibitive ⁓ talent development service for f for folks. And so ⁓ was one of the first hires there and was on a sales team and and was really kind of tasked with just growing this thing as big as we can get it, as fast as we can get it. And ⁓
Grew that business pretty significantly. We exited that company in 2021. we sold out to a larger player in the space. And ever since 2021, I've really been focused on small business here. And so after getting out of the SaaS game, I I knew that I wanted to be more hands-on and more something local. And so I've been buying and and kind of fixing up and selling small businesses here in the valley ever since. I've done a couple of different random companies. I owned a FedEx business at one point, so I had 20 trucks on the road.
Every single day dropping packages off all over Phoenix and doing pickups and kind of polished that one up a little bit and sold that, got out difficult business to be in. It's hard to drive a FedEx truck when it's 115 here. ⁓ but after I had kind of bought and sold a couple of companies, my wife and I took a step back and I was like, you know, what do we really want to do? What do we want to do for the long haul here? ⁓ I was kind of getting in and out of companies within 18 months, two years, and I wanted something that I could just really focus long-term growth on and
⁓ started to look around and we really kind of just got pulled into home care. It's something that I would say is personal to me. I watched my my mom and the family become caregivers and taking care of my grandma. And my grandma, you know, I was 16, 17 years old, but she was, I'm not going anywhere. Don't put me anywhere.
Don't even think about it. I don't care what it takes. I'm staying home. And I think even at you know, at the age of 16, 17, I realized like, I don't want to go anywhere either. If I can you know, age in place and stay home, that's something that I want to do. But I also saw how much work goes into keeping people home, right? My mom was there seven days a week. I was helping out drive my grandma to cancer appointments and and trying to take care as much as I could, even though I was in high school. And so between the personal side there of being exposed to home care at young age, ⁓
And then if from a business standpoint, you know, looking at the Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, the Phoenix market.
We are in arguably one of the best markets in the country for home care. And so kind of the those those two things blended together and it was like, let's let's get into it. And so without any home care experience, without any healthcare experience, ⁓ I I bought Heritage Home Care about two years ago this summer and took it over from a gentleman that was getting ready to retire and it's been ⁓ yeah, it it's been our it's been a fun ride since. So we're about two years in, but that's that's my background.
