Miriam Allred (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. Today I'm sitting across from a fan favorite, Becky Reel Becky, welcome back to the show.
Becky Reel (00:10)
Thanks for having me.
Miriam Allred (00:12)
I already told you this, but this morning I went to look and see when the last time I interviewed you. And it was back in October, so it's almost been a year. That was episode number thirty three. And now here we are due for another round. Now doing episode number seventy two. So excited to revisit the conversation and hear what we've learned and the things that you're thinking about. So excited for this conversation.
Becky Reel (00:32)
It's always so fun with you. Happy to be here.
Miriam Allred (00:34)
I hope everyone listening to this knows you, but there might be a few that don't. So for those that don't, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself briefly.
Becky Reel (00:41)
Sure. So hi everyone. Becky Real of Real Home Care Consulting. I am a recovering home care agency owner. I took over my family's agency in the Chicagoland area. And we grew at about 300% year over year. And we were named the number one home care agency in North America by Activated Insights in 2022, before we sold a private equity in 23. And so now we
We really take a holistic view of agencies and my partner Krysten and I are working with startups and agencies that are stuck at plateaus and helping them get out of their own way. My big push with agencies is that you should be running the agency and the agency should not be running you. So we work on building an agency that fits your lifestyle more than anything.
Miriam Allred (01:30)
I love it. And you focus on startups. I think that's one of the things that's most unique about you. I think a lot of consultants kind of want to like get out of the startup world, but you love the startups. You love that like early stage, the struggle, the learning, like all of it. What is it about that stage that you love maybe the most? I know that's a hard question, but what do you love the most?
Becky Reel (01:49)
I mean, I do love existing existing agencies too, but I think the thing about startups that gets me so excited is the stories that come from it. So usually it's someone's second, third career. You know, they worked in corporate for X amount of time and now they're ready to do something for themselves to give back. So it's usually they had a positive experience or a negative experience with an aging loved one or home care. And they think they can either do it better because they saw a gap in the system or they
they they wanna replicate something amazing that happened in their life. And so I love hearing those stories and I love helping people figure out what they're gonna do with this next step in their in their life. And it's just really rewarding for us.
Miriam Allred (02:32)
Yeah. I've been to some of your events and dinners over the years and I think that's one of the things that I love most. I don't know why. I mean, this is across the board in home care, but at your events I've specifically talked to people who are in their third career. Home care is literally like their third career. And I love those people. Like I just admire them. I think like, they could be retired, they could be traveling, they could be off doing, you know, whatever they want, but they have had a personal experience often with home care and they feel like they have a lot left to give and all of their previous experiences led them to like this moment to start a home care company. And I am just probably like you so inspired by those people.
Becky Reel (03:02)
It's just, I mean, my mom started the agency, right? When at her th probably her third, fourth career, and I don't I just resonate so deeply with it. And I feel like those agency owners are usually the most successful because they have nothing to lose. They're they're they're truly doing this because they have that passion and that mission in their life and it shows and I just love being a part of it.
Miriam Allred (03:25)
I love your dinner series. some people listening to this may not have even heard of what those are. Just give kind of a quick teaser of some of these events that you put on and who's invited and what kind of like the purpose of them is.
Becky Reel (03:36)
Yeah, so they are carefully curated dinners, 20 ish max amount of agency owners. and it's really built on what I wish I had when I had the agency. Running an agency is very lonely. It's lonely at the top. You're taking care of your clients, your caregivers, their families, everyone, right? Your own ever everyone in between. And I often would ask myself, Well, who's taking care of me? And the answer was nobody.
And so the dinners are really meant to be a support group for agency owners to come together. It's not a networking event. It's it's a it's a facilitated conversation to really get to root causes of why we're burnt out or how do we get from X to Z and but we do it in a collaborative way. there's no selling, there's no pitching. It's really meant to be an intimate conversation, a facilitated conversation, and a way to keep people connected to others in this space because we
whether they're a competitor of yours or they're not, we need to be connected and support each other. And so it's the overall mission is to bridge the gap of isolation in our industry.
Miriam Allred (04:38)
And they're hosted in most of the larger cities around the country. And so people can kind of like look at your website and see where the dinners are gonna be
Becky Reel (04:44)
Yeah, yeah.
Miriam Allred (04:45)
so that they can attend likely one kind of in their area. But if not, you're always welcome to fly into different events. But I just love the concept and I agree that most owners I talk
Becky Reel (04:50)
Yep. Thank you. I love that.
Miriam Allred (04:53)
to, they're isolated out in their market and siloed. And you and I both are trying to like bridge that gap of like no one should be isolated, no one should be building these companies
Becky Reel (04:59)
Yeah.
Miriam Allred (05:00)
alone anymore. But there are still a lot of owners that just feel like lonely and isolated and they need that sounding board, that network. And so again,
Part of both of our objectives is to like bridge those gaps and introduce people and connect people.
Becky Reel (05:12)
Yeah. It's I l I love them. It's probably one of my most favorite parts of what we get to do.
Miriam Allred (05:17)
So let's let's get into the topic. We're gonna cover a variety of things. But one of the things that you and I have talked about is part of the mindset that you built your agency around. And it's still kind of the core of how you coach and consult these home care agencies today, which is around this like waitlist mindset. You yourself have said you said no often in your business to clients, to caregivers, to families, and that actually drove demand and set you apart in the Chicago market. And so I wanna understand that like.
waitlist mindset, you know, how you said no, what those intake calls look like. You know, we're gonna talk about a lot of the a lot of the differentiators that you built your agency around and how a lot of that is still relevant to how agencies position themselves today because a lot has changed since you were running your business, but also the thing that hasn't changed is competition. It is as competitive a market out there as it's ever been. And so people need to be building differentiated businesses. So anyway, the super relevant. Let's start with just kind of high level
The waitlist mindset concept that might sound kind of strange to people. So just kind of define what that meant for you.
Becky Reel (06:23)
Yeah. I think for us, and it took us a long time. I don't wanna pretend like day one I came in with this. It took us a while to figure out who we were in our industry, right? And who we were in the community to make us unique. and I think owners treat demand like it's a volume problem in our industry, and more than anything, I feel like it's a positioning problem.
More eyeballs on your agency isn't necessarily going to bring you the right clients. So it's more about building clarity about who you are, who you want to serve, and what your agency is really about. Because at the end of the day, I always say this is home care is home care is home care. We all at the end of the day do the same thing. It doesn't matter if you're a franchise or an independent. We're all keeping people home.
As an alternative to a facility, right? We're keeping people home in the comfort of their own homes. But what is truly your differentiator? And that word just gets thrown around so much, right? You know, everyone's compassionate, they're caring. It's the same thing over and over again. And I I I hope you are. At the bare minimum, you should be, right? Otherwise, you shouldn't be in this industry. But I think it's about really understanding who you are as an agency and who you want to serve, and then being able to say no.
Because if you're wasting a lot of time serving the wrong clients, it's taking you away from the right clients. And so that's what I mean about building a waitlist.
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