Miriam Allred (00:1.22)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host Miriam Allred. In the lab today I'm joined by the one and only Laura Coyle, the CEO of Home Well Care Services of New Jersey. Laura, welcome to the show.
Laura Coyle (00:16.7)
Thank you, Miriam. Pleasure to be here.
Miriam Allred (00:19.294)
You are an avid listener and you and I have spent a lot of time together over the past year, but this is our first formal interview and I have been looking forward to it. So thank you so much for making the time in your busy schedule.
Laura Coyle (00:32.0)
You're welcome. I've been looking forward to this too. And I've been missing your podcast. I am an avid listener. So I'm super excited to tune in again. I'll be listening to every episode except for this one because I don't like listening to myself.
Miriam Allred (00:47.5)
You are going to listen to it because you're going to get so much feedback. You're going to want to hear it back for yourself. As I was preparing for this, I was thinking you turned me down last year, but getting some no's occasionally I think is good for me, but that left me wanting more, which is why I reached out to you and had to have you on early. So I am just so excited. I have learned so much from you and think the world of you and your journey.
Laura Coyle (00:51.5)
We'll see.
Miriam Allred (01:13.9)
is so interesting. I've interviewed maybe a couple of nurses to CEOs, but your journey is unlike any other. And you stepped into the role of CEO just over a year ago. And so I wanted to just pick your brain on how everything's going and what you're up to. So let's start with a couple of things. I want you to share a little bit more about the origin story of Homewell in New Jersey. Again, you're the CEO, not necessarily the owner, but you have been involved for a long time. And so let's start with that and then we'll talk a little bit about the business model and then we'll get right into your background and what you're up to. So could you start with the origin story?
Laura Coyle (01:51.1)
Sure, sounds good. So Lou Romano, our owner, he was young, like 24 years old, and he was out there working in the corporate world and pharmaceutical marketing, and he just identified he did not enjoy working for anyone else, wanted to do his own business. around that time, I think he had a grandmother that...
was not doing well, had some health issues. So he was looking for some home care for her. So I think he was the one, if I remember correctly, he was making phone calls to home care agencies to shop around and find out how do we set this up. And he was shocked by the lack of customer service and just people weren't calling him back. And when they did, he was like, I don't know about this.
place. So he quickly identified there was a need for, you know, a business like this. And his family was supportive of him, you know, joining like a franchise system. He liked having the support. And so he joined Homewell in 2005. When he joined, he was the seventh franchisee in the system. And I joined Homewell in 2012.
So I've been here almost 13 years now.
Miriam Allred (03:20.5)
Amazing. was just going to ask that. So when did you join and talk a little bit about your early days? well, let's talk about your background. Let's start. Give us a little precursor of your background pre-Homewell and then yeah, what drew you there and kind of your early days in the business.
Laura Coyle (03:36.2)
So my background, I've been a nurse for 31 years now. And early on, one of my first jobs actually was in home care. When I graduated and was licensed, it was during a time, at least in my area in New Jersey, where it was very competitive and it was difficult to get a job in a hospital. You either had to know someone or...
have graduated from a very prestigious school, neither of which I did. So I did a home care job initially, one-on-one private duty care with a patient who had cancer, taking care of them in their home. So that was a brave undertaking for a brand new nurse. And luckily, she was a very sweet woman. And she taught me. She taught me things that I needed to know about nursing and home care.
After that, then I did work in a hospital for a few years and then ultimately moved to Hackensack University Medical Center. It's now Hackensack Meridian. And that was my, the job I loved. I was there for 13, 14 years. I worked in oncology, stem cell transplant unit. So it was a very intense, you know, unit to work on. Difficult.
You know, obviously working with oncology patients, have to really, your heart has to be in it. And it's a privilege to be involved in those people's lives. That's such a fragile population. And it's something I loved doing for many years. While I was working there full-time, and then I started having my children 25, 26 years ago, I went from full-time to part-time down to per diem.
Then when my kids were getting a little older and they were getting into school, I had some days during the week free. So I decided to sign up with a few home care agencies and do more home care, like skilled nursing visits. And I enjoyed that for a while. I can appreciate the caregiver grind of working for two or three agencies at the same time, going with who gives you the shift you're looking for, the most money.
Laura Coyle (05:59.9)
you know, what works for you. And so I did like maybe a year at each agency and jumped around a little bit. so that kind of gave me a taste for home care while I was still working at the hospital. I think I, I think I thought that was going to be my, my ultimate career. That's what I was working towards and going for my master's degree in nursing education while I was working and you know, life, life throws, throws you some curve balls sometimes. So
My dad ended up getting cancer. He ended up passing away from cancer while I was working at the hospital. So he was treated by my oncologist there. He was, you know, given chemo by nurses I worked with and had trained. So it was difficult after he passed. It was very difficult for me to have that same passion. And the job I once loved just changed.
changed for me. So I stayed, I stayed about four years afterward because I'm super stubborn. And I thought I'll get through this, it'll get better and you know, time, time heals everything and it didn't. So I ended up leaving there mostly because I didn't like the nurse I turned into. I think I was, I was guarding myself more and more and I, I was not
you know, meshing with my patients' families and bonding with them like I once did and supporting them. I just wasn't the same nurse and I didn't respect it in myself. I didn't like it or respect it. So I figured I need to remove myself from this. So I left there, took some time, a little bit of time off, trying to reevaluate. I don't want to go work in a hospital again. Do I want to work in an office?
just wasn't sure where I wanted to land. And there's something exciting about that to have options and not know what direction you're going in yet. So then I ended up seeing an ad in Craigslist for Homewell. And I thought, seems like an easy job because that's what I was looking for. At the time, I was looking for something easier and I liked home care.
