Miriam Allred (00:00)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. It's great to be back with all of you this week. Today in the lab, I'm joined by Reggie Mackey, the president of LiveWell Home Care, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. For those of you that don't know Reggie, you are in for a treat. I got acquainted with him just a couple of weeks ago. Shout out to Amber Monroe for the personal introduction.
Um, she told me a couple of stats. I was like, I have to meet this guy and I have to meet this team. And so we're both here in Fort Worth. So I had the opportunity to go and sit with their office and pick their brains and unpack just an unheard of story, I think in home care. And I thought, wow, I'm dying to tell the industry about this guy and about this story. So just, just a couple of quick stats before we get into your story, Reggie, you are just 31 years old and you have built this home care business.
in just two and a half years and you guys are on track to do I think about 25 million in revenue this year, all organic growth, profitable since the beginning and about 98 % VA funded and you're already in 30 states and I'll just say it again, that's basically unheard of and that's why I had to go see for myself what you guys were up to and what secret sauce was brewing in that office because again, this is just phenomenal.
Reggie Mackey (01:00)
Yes, ma'am.
Right.
Miriam Allred (01:21)
Reggie, I am so excited for this conversation. Tell everyone a little bit about your personal background and who you are, and then we'll get into this business and what you're up to today and how things are running.
Reggie Mackey (01:34)
Yes, ma'am. Well, first off, thank you for inviting me. I feel honored and privileged. Definitely. I am I am punching up being on this podcast. Thank you so much for for allowing me to be on. promise everything that we are doing in terms of the growth is all legal. I promise I promise. But no, I grew up in Hobbs, New Mexico, which is a small town there in the eastern portion of New Mexico. Yes. Yeah. Representing us.
Reggie Mackey (02:03)
You're a New Mexico native, you know what mean? There's not a lot of us running around that we run into.
Miriam Allred (02:04)
Shout out to all of the New Mexicans.
Reggie Mackey (02:08)
So anytime I get a chance to shout out the land of enchantment, do. I met my wife early on in life.
⁓ And she's from the western part of state in Deming and we ended up kind of settling there in the Las Cruces area for quite some time and ⁓ started my career in ⁓ kind of home care, home health in a little town north of Las Cruces called T or C and worked in assisted living facility and skilled nursing, home health and hospice and had an opportunity to ⁓ get a call from a really good boss and mentor.
⁓ by the name of Eric and moved out to Midland, Midland Odessa area. And that's kind of where I started my official home care journey. And through a couple of years had an opportunity to promote and they were either smart enough or dumb enough to promote me. I don't know which one it is yet, but it worked out. And ⁓ I had the honor and privilege of eventually getting promoted to becoming a VP. And ⁓ then about three years ago, got the wild hair to say, ⁓
Hey, I think I might want to, you know, take this, this journey out on my own. And, you know, lo and behold, you know, thanks, thanks to God and, and a lot of great people were here today.
Miriam Allred (03:28)
What a great story. Shout out to all the New Mexicans because you're right, there are not enough of us. You and I both being from there is amazing. ⁓ What a great journey. I don't think you shared some of the roles that you were in. Were you primarily on the sales side, business development, or just share your role path through those home health and hospice agencies?
Reggie Mackey (03:31)
Yeah, not a lot of it. We've got to stand up.
Absolutely. Yeah, started out when I went out to middle and started out as a branch manager, branch director. I think that's what we were calling ourselves back then. And, you know, had an opportunity to really, again, with a lot of great people, grow that branch pretty quickly. We quickly, you know, soon thereafter, quickly kind of expanded to San Angelo area. And I think, you know, had a chance to show them enough that I was, grow focused enough and probably to grow focused, but it ended up working out and had an opportunity to promote to become a regional director, moved out to Austin ⁓ at that time. And then that's really real, our expansion kinda started to explode. ⁓ And again, the company I was working for, AccentCare at that time. And we really begin to kinda start our PCS growth and throughout the state. ⁓ once that we got to certain amount of locations, we had a chance to become the area vice president for the state of Texas. And we continue to grow and
Like I said, after a while had that itch and said, all right, maybe it's time.
Miriam Allred (04:55)
Let's talk about that itch because it is one thing to work at a very large, well-established company and be successful with a lot of resources and support. It's a totally other ball game to go out on your own and start from scratch and build something up. What gave you the confidence to say, think I can go out and do this? Was it the success? Was it numbers? What was it that gave you the confidence to do this?
Reggie Mackey (05:21)
Yeah, I think it comes down to two things for me, Miriam. First and foremost, I could have gone the rest of my life knowing I failed, like tried it and failed, or tried multiple times and failed multiple times. Like I can go to the grave saying I'm a failure. I wouldn't have never been able to go to the grave and say I didn't try. And so that urge, that drive, that tenacity to just say, okay, hey, you gotta give it a shot. What's the worst that can happen? ⁓ Was always in the back of my mind. And so that's kind of what pushed and propelled me, you know, to, to, to do it. I think that the second thing was, is that I wanted to do home care different.
I wanted to be able to invest in the people that were doing the home care. I think, and again, not speaking disparagingly about any organization. I think that you get to a size and a scale and ⁓ it starts becoming more about process in the machine as opposed to the people behind the gears turning that machine. And I said, Hey, if I ever get an opportunity to become privileged enough, to own my own organization, I'll never forget about the people behind the gears. And, and that's what allowed us to, to, kind of get things kickstarted.
Miriam Allred (06:30)
I love that. And we're going to unpack that even more because that's a central theme to your success is customer service, both internally to your people and externally to the clients and the caregivers and the families as well. People are a big part of your success early on to go out on your own. You likely needed to build kind of a founding team, you know, that also had the itch that also grew that crazy hair. Like, let's do this together. Talk a little bit about.
Finding and establishing that early team and who and what and kind of why of that team.
Reggie Mackey (07:01)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't do some shout outs. I know, Miriam, this is like a very serious platform, but I got to throw some. You know, maybe that's just the rural New Mexico in me. But, ⁓ you know, ⁓ when I started this out, you know, I knew that, I guess something that I learned early on Miriam is that people aren't loyal to companies, especially in home care. People are loyal to people who happen to work at home care companies. And that was something that
Miriam Allred (07:09)
Shout them out, shout them out.
Reggie Mackey (07:31)
stuck in my brain really early on. so I said, if I had a chance to start this, I'm going to go find those people that fit that community, that fit that market and everything else will figure itself out. And so, you know, I had some people that believed in me early on, Rebecca and Bob, ⁓ in, in, Midland. ⁓ they, they, I mean, ⁓ they, are some of the first people that I started home care with. If you let Bob tell the story, he taught me everything that I knew, ⁓ his head is already big enough. So we try to keep that under wraps, but you
Bob and Rebecca so instrumental in helping this get started and then Deb and El Paso, you talk about just a person who embodies that community, embodies the culture out there. And so those were the foundational pieces. ⁓ then Tom, Lanny and Megan ⁓ helped us kind of just take this thing and absolutely propel it. ⁓ Tom, ⁓ he's the best man I know. He's our executive vice president and he keeps me on.
on track every single day when I want to go out the rails. But this team that we built, mean, they're just absolutely so incredible. those six men and ⁓ believed in me from the very beginning when this wasn't ⁓ as successful as it is now. And ⁓ it just championed me and pushed me on. And that's why every single day I wake up and I'm just so thankful that they believed in me. Not the other way around, but that they believed in me.
