Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Mitch Waks' 39-Year Journey: From Elementary School Entrepreneur to Healthcare Industry Pioneer

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Mitch Waks' 39-Year Journey: From Elementary School Entrepreneur to Healthcare Industry Pioneer · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:11
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
0:17
and today's guest is Mitch Wax, CEO and founder of Cooperative
0:22
Home Care. They are a home health care
0:24
agency that was founded in 1986 to provide personalized medical
0:30
and non medical support for people of all ages, including
0:35
skilled nursing and therapies for older adults and individuals
0:39
with developmental disabilities. Their mission is to help clients
0:43
remain independent and safe at home by delivering compassionate
0:48
care and tailored solutions. Under Mitch's leadership, the
0:52
company has successfully expanded into mental health
0:55
services, staffing, and home monitoring, ensuring families
0:59
receive holistic support for a wide variety of needs.
1:03
Mitch is an expert in home healthcare advocacy, having
1:07
served on boards like the National Private Duty
1:10
Association and the National Association of Home Care.
1:14
He also holds a Certified Senior Advisor certificate and is a
1:19
licensed auctioneer in Missouri. Now before we get into all that
1:23
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AD back benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
1:57
today, founder and CEO of Cooperative Home Care, Mitch
2:00
Wax. Thanks for making the time to
2:02
Share your story today. Oh, my pleasure.
2:04
Thank you for having me on your show.
2:07
So Mitch, before we get into how you came up with the idea to
2:10
start cooperative home care back in 86, I want to go back to your
2:15
childhood and what you're up until the age of 12 your
2:20
lifelong ambition had been. Sure, let's talk about the most
2:25
painful part of my life. My lifelong ambition had been I
2:30
wanted to be an astronaut during the, the many kind of, you know,
2:37
space program early years. It was any time there was
2:41
anything that had to do with a rocket ship or anything, it was
2:45
on TV. My parents were watching
2:47
anything that NASA was televising.
2:50
And I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world.
2:53
And then of course, I grew up with, you know, space shows, you
2:58
know, Star Trek and, and other and other shows like that Lost
3:04
in space. These were cool 60s shows that
3:08
just captivated my attention and I wanted to do that.
3:11
And then I lost all of that when I, when I did a little research
3:17
and found out that because I wore eyeglasses, I could never
3:20
be an astronaut and I was never going to go into space.
3:24
Although now actually come, you know, what is it, 50 years
3:29
later, I'm finding, well, with enough money I can go into space
3:33
I can buy a ticket on on maybe Elon Musk's next trip up there.
3:40
Is that a consideration for you? No, it's a little too much money
3:44
and I don't know that it would be worth it if the price comes
3:49
down. Maybe, you know, I mean, I think
3:52
it's still a few 100,000 to just take a very, you know, 15 second
3:57
ride into space maybe a minute, right.
4:00
I don't know what they're doing, but.
4:02
So how did you recover from that devastation of as a 12 year old
4:06
of realizing that this dream you'd had for years was no
4:10
longer possible? Well, it wasn't easy, but it was
4:15
really at a pretty young age when I started really my path
4:19
toward entrepreneurship. My first, my first attempt at
4:24
being an entrepreneur nearly got me kicked out of elementary
4:29
school. I kids always were looking at
4:33
each other's lunch boxes and seeing what we could trade
4:35
because you didn't like what your mom put in and you were
4:37
hoping somebody else did and you could trade for something good.
4:41
And usually the good stuff was the dessert.
4:44
And so I started buying cheap candy at the at the local drug
4:54
store. And then I was reselling it at
4:59
lunchtime for, you know, a sizeable markup.
5:04
I didn't realize at the time was probably, you know, 200% markup
5:09
I was asking for on the candy. And then somebody got pissed at
5:14
me because they didn't have enough money to buy one of my
5:17
candy bars. They told the principal and
5:20
principal called my dad the next entrepreneurial story, if I can
5:25
go on. I was in 6th grade and all the
5:30
rage were cinnamon toothpicks, cinnamon flavored toothpicks.
5:35
They were all the rage. Never heard of it.
5:37
OK. And and you, you bought them at
5:40
the drugstore. They were like they came in
5:43
packs of five toothpicks and they were pricey enough that,
5:48
you know, it caused your parents a a little moment of like
5:52
thinking before they automatically said, sure, go
5:54
ahead and buy some more. And so I got, I bought a bottle
5:59
of cinnamon oil and I soaked my own toothpicks that I guaranteed
6:05
were three times as strong as anything they could buy.
6:09
And one day the bottle cap leaked in my pants pocket.
6:16
The bottle cap kind of opened and pure cinnamon oil, man, once
6:20
that gets on your skin, it was burning.
6:24
And I would try to muddle through the day as best I could
6:28
and not scream in pain. But eventually I'd go see the
6:31
nurse again. That entrepreneur business was
6:35
shut down quickly. So you were carrying around your
6:39
manufacturing operation in your? Pants pipe pocket.
6:41
Yeah, that was dumb. So, so I almost got kicked out
6:48
of school a second time. And then it was, I think when I
6:54
really hit kind of a bigger market was high school.
7:00
And I was throwing what we call them the Midwest keg parties and
7:07
how it worked with somebody's parents go out of town and they
7:11
let you know. And then I, as the producer of
7:14
these keg parties, would arrange for kegs to be picked up by a
7:21
local bar or distribution site that didn't card you and they
7:30
didn't care about the law. So I was able to buy, you know,
7:33
kegs and the Tapper. And you put a deposit down, you
7:37
bring it back, you arrange for a local high school band to play.
7:40
And they they played for free beer.
7:44
That was always the deal. And then people would come and
7:48
they would pay $5. They would get a cup, and they
7:51
were allowed to drink as much as they wanted to drink, listen to
7:54
the band, hang out with their friends.
7:56
And that was the Midwest keg party.
7:59
And at $5 a head, you know, could make, you know, several
8:03
$100 depending on the size of the party and.
8:08
How long before that one got shut down?
8:10
I'm going to guess this is a little bit more severe than just
8:12
going to the principal's office. No, because I had this brilliant
8:15
idea early on with that, the first party when things started
8:18
to get a little rowdy, I got nervous because, you know, you
8:21
don't want people to trash this guy's house and the parents to
8:25
come home and said what the heck and who's responsible.
8:28
And I didn't want them pointing at me.
8:30
So what I did was I would buy plenty of beer and make sure it
8:35
was fair to all the people that paid their $5.00.
8:39
But if it started to get out of hand, if it started to get rowdy
8:42
and the testosterone was growing, I would sneak off to a
8:47
back bedroom and I would call the local police station and act
8:53
as a neighbor that's concerned and hearing too much noise the
8:56
police. So you call.
8:57
You would call the. Police on yourself.
8:59
Absolutely right. I did, yeah.
9:03
And, and nobody knew this because I, it was always in
9:08
secrecy. And the police would come and I
9:12
would say, Oh my God, the cops are here, everybody out the back
9:15
door. And so the band would shut down
9:18
immediately and all the kids would just scamper like, you
9:21
know, little mice or cockroaches running when the light hits the
9:25
room. And and they loved it.
9:28
They there was something about running from the cops and almost
9:32
getting almost. Getting caught but not.
9:35
Not that was just. And they loved my parties.
9:37
And so it was then they became known as Oh my God, the party
9:41
was so good that the neighbors called the cops.
9:44
Built in marketing. Yeah, for free.
9:47
And pretty soon I was producing some larger size and, you know,
9:50
in the summer there'd be like people that had some farmland
9:54
and I'd do the same thing on a larger scale.
9:57
So how did you avoid somebody actually getting in trouble from
10:00
the police or the police reporting this to the parents?
10:03
Because that's the part of this equation that I'm like, ordered.
10:06
It to the parents. They would just come, they'd
10:08
knock on the door. They'd asked her who lives
10:11
there. Whoever it was went to the door,
10:13
said, hey, I'm just having a few friends over.
10:15
Is something wrong? Yeah.
10:18
And one of the neighbors complaining the the music's too
10:21
loud. He goes, OK, well, we'll, we'll
10:23
shut the music off. And the police would go and
10:25
that'd be it back then. That was it, yeah.
10:28
This is like 3 stages of brilliance, Mitch.
10:31
Yeah. Like you had your own built in
10:33
sort of bouncer in the local police station.
10:35
Oh, yeah. But but you, you gave everybody
10:38
enough of a heads up so that, you know, they could.
10:41
The police don't get there and and find this giant party.
10:44
And then the part that I love the most from for that marketing
10:47
and sales part is that viral built in.
10:50
Oh, the the party was so good. The cops got called, right.
10:53
Everybody wants to talk about that.
10:55
Yeah, and at schools the the next day, that's all.
10:58
That's whatever your mom's talking about.
11:00
Oh, that's hysterical. OK, so let's let's come to 1986.
11:03
I mean, we, we see a pattern here.
11:06
You know, the way your brain works, you know, your audience,
11:10
your audience has been your classmates, you know, all the
11:12
way through elementary school up through high school and what it
11:15
is that they want and how, how can I provide that to them and
11:18
charge a markup for it. So how did the idea in 1986 come
11:22
about to start cooperative home care?
11:25
Well, it started with the Appalachian Trail.
11:28
And are you familiar with the trail?
11:30
I am, but let's assume that our listeners are not.
11:33
The Appalachian Trail is a trail that goes and I let me back up
11:38
and say I was not familiar. I was selling investments for
11:43
Shearson Lehman at the at this time in my life and it was
11:47
boring. I was making good money, but it
11:50
was a boring job. And my mother-in-law had been
11:55
doing tutoring for adults in their home.
12:02
She was a special Ed teacher and she said, hey, and I had a
12:09
degree in education in English. By the way, that was my
12:13
background. That's what I went to college
12:15
for. I was going to teach until I
12:18
lost the passion for that my first semester of teaching and I
12:22
end up at Shearson Lehman. So, and for your viewers, that
12:28
was a a big banking house before the, the crash of the big banks.
12:32
They were the first one. Lehman was the first one that
12:34
was allowed to fail before the others were not allowed to fail
12:38
and they failed. So they're no longer a bank, but
12:41
I digress. So my mother-in-law, I'm married
12:45
just a couple years at this point, comes to me and says,
12:48
Hey, do you mind taking over some of the tutoring of of my
12:53
students? And and like, all good sudden
12:57
laws, you know, what do you say? You say, of course, yeah, of
13:00
course I'm going to do that. And she says I'm I'm going to go
13:04
hike the Appalachian Trail. Now.
13:06
I didn't, I made a classic entrepreneurial mistake.
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I didn't ask follow up questions.
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Entrepreneurs, young people trying to build should listen
13:16
carefully and ask follow up questions.
13:19
I failed to do that right out of the gate.
13:22
And it wasn't until about and she gave me like 6 months
13:25
notice. I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's fine.
13:27
And she said, OK, here's you'll come over right before I leave
13:31
and I'll hand you the files and I'll just tell you a little bit
13:34
about each one. And there was maybe 10 or 12
13:37
students that she had that she was doing tutoring for.
13:42
So the week before she leaves, I go over and there's this massive
13:46
packing production and boxes labeled for all these different
13:50
towns. And I'm like, what is going on?
13:53
And that's where I learned the Appalachian Trail isn't a
13:58
weekend hike or a one week hike. It starts in Maine or in Georgia
14:03
and ends in the other city. You can go from Georgia to Maine
14:08
or Maine to Georgia, but it's like a half a year hike to go
14:14
all the way across the country. It's a big.
14:17
Deal people put months and months of prep work into it yeah
14:20
yes they. Do and I had no idea.
14:23
So I had just signed on for, you know, helping, you know, some
14:26
kids with their, you know, tutoring math or English or
14:29
whatever the heck she was doing for months.
14:32
And I didn't quite realize it till like, right before she went
14:36
out of town. So I start doing the tutoring
14:39
and my frustration point, and this is an interesting thing for
14:43
young entrepreneurs to kind of take note of.
14:47
The system was broken. And that's where opportunity
14:50
happens. I would show up at these
14:54
people's homes and what would happen is they weren't ready for
15:00
me to tutor them, meaning their home care assistant or aid
15:05
hadn't shown up that day. Or they did show up, but they
15:12
didn't do anything. And back in the day in the state
15:15
of Missouri, the state just gave people money to find their own
15:20
home care aids. And often, you know, if you have
15:25
a disability that doesn't work very well.
15:27
So the money was getting stolen really from them, by family
15:32
members, from neighbors, from people who promised to take care
15:37
of them but never did, but always took the check.
15:41
And so I, I went to the state and I said, hey, I, I am, I'm
15:45
doing this. I'm, you know, standing in for
15:48
my mother-in-law. But hey, these guys, they're
15:51
never ready when I get there. And I got to spend more than
15:55
half of my a lot of time just trying to help them get out of
15:59
bed and into their wheelchair and have a little breakfast and
16:02
a little coffee before I can actually start tutoring them.
16:05
About that time, it's almost time to go.
16:08
And they said, yeah, that is that's a problem.
16:12
And I said, hey, what if I was able to find somebody to come in
16:20
and help them before I got there?
16:22
Could you reimburse that person instead of just sending the
16:26
money directly to the, the, the client or the patient?
16:32
And they said, well, that has to get approved at the very highest
16:35
level. So I worked doing a little
16:37
lobbying to get something like that done.
16:40
And then sure enough, the state offered a brand new contract to
16:46
a brand new group of providers. And I was the first one to sign
16:49
on that offered to pay a company, an intermediary, the
16:57
money. So they kind of took my idea,
16:59
but they they changed it and it was instead of paying the money
17:03
directly to the caregiver, they paid it to an independent
17:06
fiduciary. That was the birth of home care
17:11
in Missouri. So do you think that this was
17:14
already in process behind the scenes or was this kicked off by
17:19
your request? Well, I.
17:21
I am sure they had gotten complaints before and I but I
17:25
wasn't Privy to those. But I was pretty persistent.
17:28
I was that a type personality and I was kind of a business
17:33
person before they knew what hit them.
17:36
In other words, these were social worker types and they had
17:39
never really back then, they weren't really being approached
17:43
by business people. They were being approached by
17:45
other social worker types. And I really wasn't even
17:48
interested in trying to make money off of this.
17:51
I just thought if I could just get a caregiver, I could do my
17:54
job, do the tutoring. I go in, they're ready.
17:57
I teach them what I'm supposed to and then I go away back to my
18:02
day job at at Shearson because I was doing this for my
18:05
mother-in-law evenings and weekends because she just had
18:08
that few people to teach. So I think it was probably a
18:14
little of both that they, they'd heard, you know, complaints
18:18
before you weren't the 1st. To complain.
18:20
But maybe you were the loudest and the most persistent, right?
18:23
And so we, we got a contract and we and I signed the contract
18:26
without my mother-in-law being there.
18:30
And when she came back, I said, hey, I've got an idea I want to
18:36
share with you. And I, I told her the story and
18:40
I said, hey, can we make a deal? I think there's something here
18:44
because before she got back pretty quickly, we were getting
18:50
referrals from the state to do more of the same.
18:53
Now, I wasn't looking for that. I was just happy to say, OK, you
18:57
know what? I'll take responsibility.
18:59
I'll pay the caregivers. I'll make sure that my mother in
19:02
law's handful of people that were tutoring are ready to be
19:05
tutored and they're taken care of.
19:07
And that was a good feeling. If that if I had done nothing
19:10
else, I had done a good thing for my mother-in-law and for
19:14
those people. But all of a sudden the state,
19:17
because I went in and talked to a large group of of social
19:21
workers at the state, they started making calls and saying,
19:25
Hey, I got somebody else for you to take care of.
19:27
Can you take it? And I'm like, you know, the
19:30
entrepreneur in me said, oh, OK, one more Keg's going to get how
19:34
many more, how many more cups do I get out of that?
19:38
And so I said, yeah, OK, I, I can ask my caregivers if they
19:43
can take on another client or two.
19:46
And before you know what we started growing doing home
19:51
health care and tutoring became really a, a very secondary
19:56
thing. Now my mother-in-law, you had to
19:58
know, was a She was a Birkenstock, wearing granola,
20:03
making no bra wearing. Feminist from the minute that
20:08
she you know, before there was a term and she didn't like male
20:13
dominated businesses. She just thought that's you
20:16
know, she knew about toxic masculinity before it came a
20:21
thing in this last 10 years, you know and didn't like it, but I
20:26
made her a promise. I said Fran, her name is was
20:29
Fran. I said Fran.
20:32
How about you just do the tutoring of your patients that
20:37
that you are very close to and let me do the home health and
20:42
we'll keep it all in one company and and you never have to worry
20:47
about anything except you just do the tutoring just like you
20:50
have been. Now, the same reason I said, of
20:53
course, when my mother-in-law asked me if I would help her was
20:57
probably the same motivation in reverse when I asked her, would
21:02
you be willing to do this? It's like, OK, her son-in-law is
21:05
asking her to do something and you know, if she wants her
21:09
daughter to be happy. So against her best wishes, she
21:12
said sure. So I made a deal with the devil
21:15
and I kept that promise. By the way, she she never really
21:19
did anything else except the tutoring.
21:21
And I kept all the other business stuff away from her
21:24
until she retired, which wasn't too many years later, but she
21:28
eventually retired. Do you still?
21:30
Offer the tutoring services today.
21:31
We do. Actually, really there, there's
21:33
a handful of clients that we still do some in home tutoring
21:38
for and it's kind of a piece of her legacy and it's something I
21:41
don't want to go away because it's a piece of her.
21:44
It's a there's a little nostalgia there.
21:46
Oh, of course. There is, yeah.
21:48
OK. So how so this is in the year
21:51
sort of 1986. This is when this is all kind of
21:54
actually the. Early 90s she started so on our
21:57
website we go by the year she started tutoring.
22:01
And so let me just clarify, I didn't come on until the summer
22:05
of 90. OK, OK, so this is early 90s
22:08
when this is this, this is reborn and at what?
22:13
Stage. Are you in a position where
22:16
you're like, OK, we've got something, it's working, it's
22:19
profitable, How long did that? It was.
22:22
Before she got back from the trail.
22:24
Oh, it didn't take long to do its math on the back of the
22:28
napkin and figure out that, OK, here's what I have to do to get
22:32
to the margin I need, and here are the expenses.
22:36
And I didn't even know what all the expenses were going to be
22:39
because there just weren't any other models back then.
22:42
When I say that we were one of the first five home care
22:46
companies in the state, we were one of the first five home care
22:49
companies ever. And and so where does it stand
22:53
today? What are sort of the breadth of
22:56
the services that cooperative home care that's a great.
22:59
Question well, we've expanded to like 5 or 6 offices.
23:02
We're in multi states. We've, you know, our, our
23:06
caregivers are in the thousands, no longer 12 and we have
23:12
expanded services to include skilled nursing and therapy,
23:17
including what your wife does is speech therapy.
23:21
We, we accept Medicare, Medicaid, all insurances.
23:26
And so it's really grown. We expanded into pediatric care.
23:35
Again, it's we are just meeting people where they are trying to
23:38
help them either age in place or the case of PEDs and the the
23:42
kids, we're just trying to help them grow in place so they don't
23:45
have to be institutionalized or spend too much time at a local
23:49
Children's Hospital. So as you think back sort of
23:53
those early days in the early 90s and now where you are today
23:56
in 2025, what was maybe like a key inflection point along the
24:01
way that really helped to catapult the growth, maybe steer
24:07
you in a slightly different direction that you look back on
24:09
now and and, you know, really appreciate, yeah.
24:12
I'm going to give that's a great question and it's an easy one
24:15
for me to answer. I joined an organization called
24:19
Yeo at the time Young entrepreneurs organization.
24:22
Are you familiar with it? I am.
24:25
They have a sister organization called YPO for young presidents.
24:30
And the only difference is president, the people in YPO are
24:35
usually presidents of publicly traded companies.
24:38
So they're not really entrepreneurial, but they're
24:41
large. So like locally, the owner of
24:46
back in the day of the Bush family for, you know, Anheuser
24:50
Busch beer, the the president was a member of YPO.
24:56
And then companies that are entrepreneurial, usually
25:00
substantially smaller, they joined Yeo.
25:04
So young entrepreneurs organization and it's a group
25:07
where there's a large, you know, there's about 250 members in
25:11
Saint Louis and in Yeo, but you're broken down into a small
25:16
group that becomes your own board of directors.
25:20
Now think about this small, young entrepreneurial companies
25:23
having a real board like the big boats, like Anheuser Busch did,
25:29
right? So all of a sudden you've got
25:32
other people from all walks of businesses who are now in a
25:37
group of 10 usually, and they become a board that you meet
25:41
with every month and go through kind of a series of of questions
25:47
and problem solving. And we were there for each
25:50
other. And every month we solved
25:51
problems that we each brought up.
25:53
Hey, I've got an HR issue going on and somebody at the table
25:57
would say, you know what, I dealt with that about a year
25:59
ago. Let me tell you what I did and
26:01
how it turned out. And that was the most valuable
26:06
thing I could have done and something I encourage any
26:09
entrepreneur to join that or and there's, you know, several of
26:13
them now that are kind of peer groups or quasi peer boards, not
26:22
just Yeo, which is my favorite, but there are there are a few
26:26
others out there. The alternative board is another
26:29
one. And there's a third large one
26:33
that I'll think. So this was really.
26:35
Instrumental in helping you work through sort of big challenges
26:39
and getting to the proverbial next level.
26:43
Oh. It was huge.
26:44
It was huge. It it turned me into
26:46
professional where before that I really wasn't.
26:52
And I joined that group and just late 90s.
26:57
This is something that I'll echo, you know, for our
26:59
listeners, I've had the opportunity in my business
27:03
career to be a part of different masterminds, you know, peer
27:07
groups at different points. And the that once you find the
27:11
right one, the value is it's hard to put a price tag on
27:15
because the ability to talk through problems with people who
27:19
have gone through are going through the same thing.
27:21
Have them be a sounding board, have them, you know, share
27:24
stories, have them make introductions to people that
27:27
have been helpful to them and working through those things.
27:31
And you know, they always say what what's the saying?
27:33
Like you're if you're the smartest person in the room,
27:36
you're in the wrong room. And so when you find the right
27:38
group, you're in a room of, you know, a lot of other really
27:41
bright people who are helping you not only solve those
27:44
problems, but just to think bigger.
27:47
You're absolutely right, and I thought of the third group, so I
27:52
don't want to just be accused of pushing the group that I love.
27:56
But the third one that I'd recommend is Vistage.
27:59
So there's Vistage, the alternative board and there's my
28:02
favorite Yeo, but it's now the Y has been dropped to just EO
28:07
entrepreneurs organization. They are worldwide great
28:11
opportunities to go not just around the country but around
28:14
the globe and meet other people in the organization with also
28:18
unique challenges and learning how they fixed them.
28:22
So Mitch, as you guys were growing years ago into these
28:25
different services, mental health services, the staffing,
28:28
the the monitoring, which of those areas posed the greatest
28:32
challenge for you and how did you overcome it?
28:34
I. Think the challenges come with
28:36
every one of our lines of business at different points.
28:40
Each one of them has unique challenges.
28:44
They all have something in common, whether it's regulatory
28:48
challenges, whether it's labour challenges, and I think it
28:56
wasn't that there was one line that posed the greatest
28:59
challenge. I think there are challenges
29:03
that come with each of our growing phases.
29:07
One of my greatest challenges was growing and using all the
29:14
money and not having a great cushion.
29:17
So that when we had almost a little perfect storm happening,
29:22
the state of Missouri, who was at that moment paying a large
29:26
part of our, of our revenue, they had a computer glitch and
29:34
announced that, hey, it, it may, we're going to miss a few
29:38
payments to our vendors. And when you spend years getting
29:44
used to being paid every couple of weeks and you're in a growth
29:48
phase, man, any excess money is going into fueling and funding
29:52
the growth. Well, I found myself in a
29:55
situation, I don't know, I think around the early aughts, the
30:01
early 2000s where we were going to run out of cash and we had
30:09
about a half $1,000,000 a week payroll at that time.
30:16
And so the number was going to be big.
30:19
And I figured out a way to get us through us a couple of weeks,
30:26
but I was still going to be about $1,000,000 shy before I
30:30
got my next payment from the state.
30:33
And I got in the revenue started flowing again.
30:37
And at that time, I, I really didn't know about the benefit of
30:44
a banking relationship and how important it is to have one
30:48
before you need money, because I never really needed money.
30:52
We were just depositors. And then we would take the money
30:56
out and use it for growth, you know, maybe open up a new city
30:59
or something. And I was naive.
31:02
And so I would go to the a couple of banks where we had
31:06
deposits and say, Hey, we got a problem and I need to borrow
31:10
some money. They just looked at a young guy
31:13
like me, like I what do you have for collateral?
31:17
Do you have any property like, well, I got my house goes we're
31:19
not going to take your house away.
31:21
Do you have any other property? No, You have anything of value
31:24
that we can have? No.
31:28
Do you have assets in the business?
31:30
I said, no, it's a service business.
31:32
It's all people. There's we don't make any
31:34
widgets And so they'd say, ah, well, you know, come back when
31:37
things change and you have something that you know that
31:40
that we can put on the books as a collateral.
31:44
And so I had nothing and I am, I'm not sleeping right.
31:49
I knew there's a as soon as you don't make a single payroll, me
31:54
and all of your caregivers, I don't care how loving and
31:58
supportive and generous they are.
32:01
They need their paycheck. You can't skip payroll or
32:04
they're going to skip out on your company and go work for
32:07
somebody else. They'll go OK, good.
32:09
Luck getting them back. Oh yeah.
32:11
You ain't getting them back because you've already burned
32:13
them once. So I had to really think outside
32:17
of the box. I I called a friend His name is
32:24
Vern Harnish and and Vern is widely known in in the
32:29
entrepreneurial world. He wrote the Rockefeller habits,
32:36
which became a Seminole book for entrepreneurs back in the day.
32:41
He's written a dozen more books a brilliant young entrepreneur
32:47
and well, young. He's older than me, so I guess
32:52
neither at. One point he was young, always
32:55
brilliant. And he just said, Mitch, you got
32:58
to get up early. You got to take a mega dose of
33:01
vitamin CI, Don't know where that came from.
33:05
And he said you got to talk to everybody, you know, and you
33:10
have to not be afraid of bearing your soul and don't be
33:16
embarrassed. Just tell everybody you know the
33:18
problem and see if anybody has any ideas.
33:22
It's like it was the early it was, it was, it was
33:26
crowdsourcing before there was crowdsourcing, right?
33:29
And so I started, you know, telephone calling because that's
33:34
there was no crowdsourcing back then.
33:37
And one of the calls I made was to one of the bankers I had.
33:44
He was, he was a very low level banker, but he decided to go on
33:48
his own. And he goes, oh, it's
33:50
interesting. You call me Mitch.
33:53
I've I've just started a nouveau bank and we're looking for
34:01
people to be on the board. And I think you'd be good.
34:05
And I said, OK, I'd be happy to be on your board.
34:09
So I got on the board. But in order to get on the
34:14
board, he still needed more capital to help fund the loans
34:18
that a bank, That's how they make money, right?
34:22
So I asked him, what is the lowest amount I can invest and
34:26
become one of the owners. And he goes, well, the lowest
34:30
amount you can invest is $50,000.
34:33
That's the smallest amount. Now, it doesn't sound like much
34:36
today, but back in the day when you're wondering, can you make
34:39
payroll if 50,000 is everything, I mean, come on.
34:44
And so I, I took a leap of faith and I said, hey, I, I want to
34:52
join the bank. I believe in you.
34:54
It's the name is Kirk. And I'm going to give you the
35:00
money and I'm going to join the board.
35:02
But I'd also like to be one of your first customers.
35:05
And he goes, great, we need loans.
35:08
You know, I'm like, well, wonderful.
35:12
I traded $50,000 to be able to get a $1.1 million loan on no
35:19
collateral. I.
35:21
Was now just part owner of this bank.
35:24
I was. Was it like an implied?
35:26
Quid pro quo or was it like no it?
35:29
Was completely up and up I you know, he needed capital, but he
35:33
also wanted to give out loans. That's how exactly how they
35:38
anything starts. They they line up a bunch of
35:40
loans before they open their doors and you know, and he was
35:45
able. To turn this loan around in time
35:46
for you to make payroll. I mean, that's fast.
35:49
Yes, yeah, I, I turned that loan around and it was very fast and
35:58
he understood after I joined and after he got my money that
36:02
hanging like, but they had practically there was very
36:05
little business. Yeah, you know, they didn't even
36:09
have a building yet at the time they were off.
36:12
They were leasing their own. Yeah.
36:15
Yeah, they were. Leasing space and they hadn't
36:18
built their own building yet that was going to come in year
36:21
2. So I was able to get money
36:25
transferred into my account without literally hours to spare
36:31
before we had to transfer to the payroll and and then the state
36:37
fixed their computer glitch and all the back money started
36:42
coming in and I got a three-year loan.
36:47
I paid it back in eight months and developed amazing credit and
36:52
now history not only of loan repayment, which is so important
36:57
for young entrepreneurs. Borrow money even if you don't
37:00
need it is going to be my short advice.
37:04
If it was a longer podcast, I'd tell them why and develop
37:08
relationships with bankers at a very early age when you don't
37:12
need money. Get to know them and let them
37:16
get to know you. And I turned 50,000 into 1.1
37:21
million. That's tremendous.
37:24
You know, we, I mean, you kind of touched on it a little bit
37:26
like, hey, I wasn't sleeping. Like, I was really stressed
37:28
about this. You know, it's for people
37:32
listening. We've never been responsible for
37:34
somebody else's paycheck. Excuse me?
37:38
Like, imagine you maybe being out of work and not sure where
37:42
your next paycheck is going to come from and the stress that
37:45
that involves. How am I going to pay my rent?
37:47
How am I going to pay my utilities and groceries?
37:50
How am I going to take care of my family?
37:52
Have to. Imagine that.
37:53
Do you know how many times I went without paying myself as an
37:56
entrepreneur? That that's just normal and you
37:59
got to hope you've got, if you're married, you got to hope
38:01
you've got a partner that understands that and then you
38:08
have some other resources or savings to fall back on well
38:12
and. Then here's the thing from your
38:13
perspective, you're not just worried about being able to pay
38:15
yourself. Now you're taking that same
38:18
stress of wondering, can I pay everybody else?
38:22
And how are they going to be able to make their bills and
38:25
support their families? And it just becomes this
38:29
crushing pressure of like, I don't know what I'm going to do,
38:34
you know? And, and in, in some cases, it
38:36
paralyzes people. They're paralyzed by the fear.
38:39
You got some really great advice from a close friend, and you
38:45
followed that advice. I don't know if you took the
38:47
vitamin C, that seems irrelevant, but you certainly
38:49
got on the phone and you started calling everybody to, hey, I
38:52
don't know what the solution looks like, but let me talk to
38:55
everybody I can think of and see what we can flesh out here.
38:58
Yeah. And it was purely by accident
39:00
that I went down my contact list and came across a guy who was
39:05
starting his own bank. I mean, I never would have
39:08
called this guy out of the blue because I already knew the
39:11
answer. The bank that he worked for, I'd
39:14
already turned me down for a loan.
39:17
And you're absolutely right. It, it was really about all the
39:20
people because I knew what it's like not to get a paycheck.
39:23
But I also knew that these people didn't have a fall back.
39:26
And many of them, you know, many nurses, you know, they're living
39:30
month to month paycheck to paycheck.
39:33
Even though nursing pays well and we paid well, it's still
39:36
it's a lot of Americans don't have a lot of cushion and you
39:41
can't, you can't mess with their money so.
39:44
Mitch, was it some of these lessons that you're working into
39:48
this new book that's in process? Yeah.
39:52
Lessons like this and every other lesson that I can think of
39:55
that I learned over the course of a fledgling entrepreneurship
40:02
into a successful entrepreneurship venture.
40:07
And it is. I don't want to steal.
40:11
And I'm not going to steal the idea of Entrepreneurship for
40:14
Dummies because that's a a very well known franchise that is
40:17
very well copyrighted. But basically it's for brand new
40:22
and even not brand new entrepreneurs that maybe have
40:26
not joined a peer group and are struggling or people in in
40:32
today's day and age. What I come across a lot are
40:35
kind of that middle-aged guy who kind of either got displaced at
40:40
his company after years and took his four O 1K and decided I'm
40:45
going to start a business, right.
40:47
But they don't know anything about starting a business.
40:50
I, I mean, they were, they were a corporate man or a corporate
40:53
woman for their whole life. And they just see, oh, OK, you
40:57
know what? I'm not going to work for
40:58
anybody else anymore. Damn it.
41:03
You know, to hell with a boss. I'm going to be my own boss.
41:07
That way I can never get fired. Well, of course you can get
41:09
fired. You get fired when your business
41:11
shuts it down and the, and you know, your, your environment,
41:16
you're, you're the group of people you're that you're
41:18
selling into. They can fire you every day of
41:22
the week. You know, they don't like your
41:24
product, they stop buying it, you're fired.
41:26
They don't like your service, they stop using it, you're
41:29
fired. I mean, the beautiful thing
41:31
about a capital market is that it's clean in that it works.
41:38
The supply and demand of your product or service has to be in
41:42
that equilibrium. And when you screw up and you're
41:45
not providing a product or service that, that, that your
41:48
community wants or needs, you're fired.
41:52
So that's the mistake they make. They, they think they're, they
41:57
won't get fired if they start their own business, but they,
41:59
they can and they do. As we talked before we started
42:03
the podcast, how many, how many young businesses start and then
42:07
close in the first year? The numbers.
42:10
Crazy, crazy number. Right, which is even more
42:15
impressive to talk about how long you've been around 39 years
42:20
and counting 39. Years.
42:21
We're going to have to throw a good party at 40 because I don't
42:24
know that I'll be around for 50I certainly.
42:27
Hope so. I mean, are you going to, are
42:29
you going to pull your own kegs for this party?
42:32
You know, I've gotten to the point where I probably don't
42:36
need to charge $5 for a Solo cup for all my employees.
42:40
We'll we'll just supply, we'll supply the libations.
42:45
I love it. So when?
42:46
Can we expect this book to be available and where?
42:48
Where can folks find it? Well, they.
42:50
Can't find it yet, so I wish I was Hawking something, but
42:53
there's really nothing to hawk yet.
42:55
But I'd be happy to come back for a follow up visit.
42:58
And I'd be happy to let your viewers know there's not even a
43:02
name. I don't have a title yet.
43:03
The book is written. It's completely written.
43:06
I wrote it in I, I, I, I stole an idea from Stephen King.
43:13
I went away to a small cabin in the woods for 30 days and I
43:17
wrote a book. This was in the middle of COVID,
43:20
actually got in a car. I drove to Vail, Co at an Airbnb
43:25
that I rented for 30 days. And I got into a very regimented
43:30
routine. I would get up early in the
43:32
morning, do a little yoga, have a little breakfast and coffee,
43:38
and then start writing. I'd write until dinner time.
43:41
I'd go take a break and go to the villages in Vail and have
43:46
dinner there. I'd come back and then do
43:50
another bit of writing till around midnight.
43:53
I'd go to sleep, wake up early and do it all over again.
43:56
And it was close, but on day 29 that night before I was ready to
44:03
check out and I actually asked the owner, Hey, can I extend
44:06
this another week? She said, no, it's already
44:09
booked. So I'm like, OK, so I just I
44:12
focused and I just cranked it out.
44:15
Day the evening of the 29th day, I had sent to Kinko's and and
44:20
with copies of, you know, please put, you know, five of these
44:24
together for me. I'm going to pick them up
44:26
tomorrow. The next day she said
44:29
congratulations, let's I'm going to take you to my favorite pizza
44:32
parlor. I spent the day with my landlord
44:37
driving around Colorado mountains.
44:40
And then that afternoon I went and picked up my books at
44:46
Kinko's and put them in the trunk of my car and drove home.
44:50
Fascinating. Well, we'll definitely have you
44:52
back in X number of months when the book is ready.
44:57
I'd be happy to. Are they?
44:58
I want to come back to your interests.
45:00
Your your your listeners might be interested in.
45:03
Oh, for sure, I know that they will be.
45:05
No, I'm. Just asking right now, is there
45:07
anything? That you think they'd be.
45:10
Interested in knowing about OH is.
45:12
This Oh, well, hard for me to speak for all of them.
45:14
But you know, I think anytime that you can share specific
45:20
stories, specific examples, kind of like you did about, you know,
45:25
the issue with making payroll. If you had just said you need to
45:28
develop a relationship with banks, you know, early on before
45:32
you need the money, it's like, OK, like I'll file that away,
45:37
whatever. But when you can give like this
45:39
very specific story with the emotion and all the trials and
45:44
tribulations that you went through attached to it, that's
45:47
something that people hold on to more.
45:49
They're they're more likely to to remember that at their core.
45:52
So I guess that's sort of a little bit broad, but anytime
45:57
you can add those little case studies, if you will.
46:01
Yeah, I will tell you the other nerve wracking piece, not so.
46:04
There were so many nerve racking.
46:07
Oh my God, are we going to make it another few hours stories.
46:11
But in that one, it wasn't just am I going to make payroll or
46:14
lose the whole company? When I went to this office of
46:18
this brand new bank and signed my name underneath a document
46:23
that said $1.1 million, my hand was shaking.
46:26
I swear to God it was shaking. And if you, I, I kept that
46:31
document or my copy of it because you can see my, my, my
46:36
penmanship was like, it was all squiggly because I was freaking
46:41
out that I was signing off on. You know, it's one thing to
46:47
think, OK, I'm going to close my doors.
46:50
But it's another thing to think, OK, I, if I close my doors now
46:54
after signing this, I got to find a way to pay these people
46:58
back 1.1 million. And if I can't, I'm going to
47:02
lose my house, my cars, my marriage.
47:05
I mean everything was off the line.
47:09
And so it wasn't like when that loan came through and you signed
47:12
that document that I can totally breathe now.
47:15
It was like I had a good. Window of breath, but I knew I
47:18
had to pay it back and now I've got a new worry.
47:21
Can I pay it back right so the. When they fix their glitch at
47:26
the state and they they finally, you know, issued their payment
47:30
to you, that wasn't enough. That wasn't enough because we
47:33
had made an internal mistakes in terms of our billing department
47:40
for one of our divisions, our skilled nursing division and the
47:45
person in charge of, I don't want to bore you with details,
47:48
but we had we had an internal problem that cost us hundreds of
47:52
thousands of dollars that we were not going to get back.
47:56
And we were counting on that money also to help make payroll.
48:00
That's why I call the kind of a a perfect storm of bad things
48:03
happening all at the same time. It wasn't.
48:05
Just the state's glitch. You guys had an internal error
48:07
to the compounded prior. In the billing division, they
48:12
were making mistakes and they were covering up the mistakes.
48:15
And all of a sudden. We're looking at, hey, why
48:16
aren't we getting revenue in on that division lately?
48:19
It's down so much and it took some digging before we figured
48:23
it out. And so I had to crawl back out
48:26
of that hole that we cost not just the state.
48:30
So it was, you know, a double whammy that and then there was a
48:34
third piece where right at that time, me and another partner had
48:42
had taken out kind of a a chunk of money that we were using to
48:46
invest in other things and we couldn't get that capital back.
48:50
So now, yeah, it was a perfect storm all happening at the same
48:54
time. So I had to sign that document
48:59
wondering and, and I'm going to tell you the truth that I didn't
49:03
tell my spouse at the time, I, I wasn't upfront about the fact
49:09
that I put everything we owned into that document to say, if I
49:14
can't pay it back, they own everything I own.
49:17
I didn't tell her that part, that the house would be theirs,
49:20
our cars would be theirs, everything we have would be
49:23
theirs. I couldn't bring myself to tell
49:27
her because I was afraid of her answer.
49:28
And I think her answer would have been no way, do not sign
49:31
that document. Let the company go and, and she
49:36
was a very conservative woman, still a very conservative woman
49:41
and she never would have agreed to that.
49:44
So I didn't tell her the whole truth.
49:49
And that's not something I'm proud of and that's not
49:51
something I would recommend to anybody.
49:53
You have to have if you are, if you have a partner in life,
49:57
you're going to find times when you need to rely on to them for
50:01
emotional support and because when you're at the top, it's a
50:07
lonely place to be. Sometimes when you're president
50:11
or an entrepreneur of a company, it can be lonely and you need
50:16
that spouse and don't don't do what I did.
50:20
So don't make and my whole book is about don't do the same
50:23
mistakes I made do as I. Say don't do as I do.
50:27
When did you eventually tell her, Mitch?
50:30
When I did the loan off, I came clean and said, hey, by the way,
50:33
I'm really relieved. She goes, why are you relieved?
50:35
Well, there were some codicils in that document that made me
50:40
nervous that, you know, we had to put up our own collateral.
50:45
What was her? Reaction.
50:47
It was better than it should have been.
50:50
It was. Wow.
50:51
OK, so we dodged a bullet. And I said yeah.
50:54
And she goes, OK, don't do that again.
50:56
Let me. I'm in this with you.
50:57
And she was in this with me, you know.
51:00
Sounds like a good woman. So how was it that you were able
51:02
to then I think you said eight months, turn around and pay this
51:05
off. How did you pull that out?
51:09
Strategic planning and cost cutting.
51:13
We cut cost to the bone and we looked at some outsourcing.
51:22
We tightened our belts. I lowered my salary drastically,
51:30
almost to nothing because I had, you know, some savings and my
51:33
wife had a job so we could get by.
51:36
She she's the smarter one of the two of us.
51:38
She's an attorney for the federal government, 8th Circuit
51:43
Court of Appeals. So smart, smart woman.
51:47
And so she had a job. I could rely on that.
51:50
And so, you know, through all of these things, we were able to
51:54
pay the loan back and then, well, and then, you know, all of
51:58
a sudden there's a lot of money freed up when we don't have that
52:01
that loan payment anymore. But we got great turns on that.
52:05
So it was good. As you look back at that time,
52:09
what kind of changes did you make internally that are still
52:12
paying off for you today? Yeah.
52:14
So here's what I learned from there.
52:16
I'm there's so many lessons out of that one story, but one of
52:19
them is cash is king. And you hear that all the time.
52:23
You cannot run out of cash and that means you need to be
52:31
diligent when you when things are going well.
52:34
I see a lot of entrepreneurs who overspend personally.
52:38
In other words, they're taking money out of the company and
52:42
they're using it as a new down payment on a house or they want
52:45
a new car, they want better clothes and they start spending
52:50
the money thinking it's always going to come.
52:54
And my, my experience share to them is it's not always going to
52:57
come. And so you better have great
53:01
cash reserves. You you need to pay attention to
53:05
the balance sheet, which is I believe, more important than the
53:09
income statement because it really shows the overall big
53:14
picture health of your company, whereas the income statement
53:17
shows the immediate health of your company.
53:19
And sometimes when you're running and gunning as a young
53:22
entrepreneur, you don't see that.
53:24
You don't see the long term health.
53:26
You just see, OK, what were my numbers last month?
53:28
How do we do? OK, we made a profit.
53:31
Yeah, let's keep going. The balance sheet tells a truer
53:36
story of what your company looks like.
53:39
And I think too many young entrepreneurs ignore that that
53:41
part of it, of the financial statements until it's too late.
53:45
So. So keep an eye on retained
53:47
earnings, keep an eye on the value of your company, keep cash
53:51
close and spend as little as you can to provide the kind of
53:56
quality of goods or services that you want to provide,
53:58
especially early on. But that that advice really
54:01
doesn't change. I mean, be lean, you know,
54:04
always spend less in your company.
54:08
Always make it look healthier. One of the lessons I learned was
54:13
when thinking about an exit strategy, and young
54:17
entrepreneurs should be thinking about it before they open up
54:20
their first shop, their first, whatever it is they do, their
54:25
first sandwich shop, you know, their first, you know, keg
54:30
party. Whatever it is.
54:31
Whatever. It is know your exit strategy
54:35
and when when you realize that your company may trade on a
54:40
multiple of four to five times your EBITDA, then you realize
54:45
that every dollar you save is actually worth $5 when it's exit
54:50
time. That's huge.
54:52
I mean, where else can you get that kind of leverage?
54:56
The answer is nowhere. So I cut up, you know $1000 of
55:02
costs somewhere that is just excess at exit time.
55:07
That's worth $5000 to me. Are you kidding me?
55:11
I mean, think about that every time you spend anything and make
55:15
sure you're going lean, lean, lean.
55:18
Really powerful advice. I'm glad you gave voice to that
55:20
because I do think especially for folks who.
55:23
Think. That's too far off in the future
55:25
or they're not really set up for that sort of, you know, exit
55:28
strategy. That's something that, you know,
55:30
once they get closer to that finish line, they're wishing
55:33
that they had really been thinking about, oh, I probably
55:36
wouldn't have expensed this to the company.
55:40
I probably would have not taken that trip in that way or you
55:45
know, so maybe how about some advice on growth levers that
55:52
have been particularly helpful to you?
55:53
Yeah, OK. So growth lovers, I think one of
55:57
the best ways, and you've already alluded to it, is make
56:01
sure you are not the smartest person in your network, right?
56:06
Your network has to always be changing and I think part of
56:10
being a great entrepreneur that's looking for growth is
56:15
being a great networking person and always looking to help
56:19
others network. That always helps you when
56:22
you're helping connect other people be learn how to be a
56:25
really great connector for others.
56:28
And you'll be surprised how that comes back to help you and keep
56:34
growing your network with more and more successful people.
56:38
And through them, you're going to learn about growth in ways
56:42
that you just weren't thinking about.
56:44
Or join a good peer group and ask them, you know, what do you
56:50
guys see from the outside that I'm not seeing?
56:55
I so I want to say networking is key to growth.
56:59
I want to say your peer group is key to growth.
57:02
If you've got your own board that you've put together, the
57:05
next. Another key to growth is looking
57:09
for chaos. A good entrepreneur doesn't
57:14
panic when the market goes crazy.
57:19
They get a smile on their face without saying anything and they
57:23
say, OK, I got to find the opportunity.
57:26
In this chaos, other people are going to scream, the sky is
57:30
falling. That's an opportunity, and
57:35
that's what good entrepreneurs know.
57:38
Don't give us a specific. Example there, Mitch, because I
57:41
think you're on to something here, yeah.
57:42
OK, I'll give you an example. Personally, there was a moment
57:47
in time in when the unions were really threatening and starting
57:54
to make some inroads into our population, specifically the SIS
58:03
i.e. U Service Employees
58:05
International Union, that was the union that was coming into
58:09
healthcare. They had unionized a lot of
58:13
hospitals, but they needed more growth and they were now going
58:16
after mom and pop operations. And once you got unionized, man,
58:23
you lose a lot of control over your small business.
58:29
And I'm not bashing unions by any stretch.
58:32
It just changes all the dynamics of your company.
58:36
Well, a lot of people were panicking.
58:40
And so there was chaos in our community, and the powers that
58:46
were causing the chaos were large.
58:48
I mean, you know, the pocketbook of the Service Employee
58:53
International Union is huge. I mean, you know, it's like the
58:57
Teamsters of healthcare. And these are big, powerful
59:01
people with big money. And they don't play fair.
59:04
None of them play fair. They, they play to kill and win.
59:09
And they do. And they know how to do it.
59:11
And we're a bunch of small entrepreneurs just struggling to
59:15
kind of do our own thing. And in this case, it was, you
59:17
know, healthcare. And I smiled.
59:23
I smirked. Maybe and I got an attorneys
59:29
that specialized in unions and I let them do what they needed to
59:36
protect the company. In the meantime, I crafted a
59:39
letter and the letter was Dear fellow owner, times are tough
59:46
right now and it looks like with new increased regulations from
59:52
the government, because there were new regulations coming down
59:57
with the shortage of caregivers and now the last straw being the
1:00:04
the incoming of unions to really tear us apart.
1:00:10
Are you thinking about getting out?
1:00:12
Is the stress too much? I understand.
1:00:14
I'm trying to put together a group of people who are like
1:00:21
minded who want to look for solutions.
1:00:24
And or if you're just tired and it's time for you to exit, I
1:00:28
want to talk to you about exiting.
1:00:31
That letter produced so many phone calls and I started buying
1:00:36
small companies for pennies on the dollar.
1:00:40
And the value was not just in the clientele they had, but it
1:00:44
was in their sales people, It was in their caregivers.
1:00:48
Because there was a shortage, I was able to come and, and the
1:00:51
biggest probably value they had was caregivers.
1:00:55
And that began kind of an annual letter writing campaign that
1:01:02
kind of hit on the worst chaos that was happening at the time.
1:01:06
And I would send out letters to every home care company in my
1:01:10
state and, and wait for the phone to ring.
1:01:14
And whenever there was chaos, I'd send out another letter and
1:01:18
I'd pick up another handful of small companies that's.
1:01:22
Fascinating. So, so what's a chaos for you
1:01:24
was the changes that were taking place, specifically the one that
1:01:28
you mentioned with the unions trying to come in and everybody
1:01:32
being afraid about that. You use that as an opportunity
1:01:35
to reach out to people that maybe knew your name.
1:01:37
A lot of them probably didn't and say, hey, what do you think
1:01:40
about this? Are you tired?
1:01:42
Are you looking, you know, to maybe step aside and you were
1:01:46
able to get these folks that you know, they just probably didn't
1:01:49
have to implant the seed. The seed was already there, but
1:01:52
now you were their their way out, right?
1:01:55
And there was two major groups that would call me back.
1:02:00
Entrepreneurs were a lot older and just tired and ready to walk
1:02:03
out. And the other group were people
1:02:05
who had no idea what they were doing and all, and they were
1:02:08
scared and, and they just wanted to go back to work for somebody
1:02:14
else. And so, yeah, I was able to
1:02:21
reach out. I formed coalitions and and many
1:02:24
of the people I had conversations with never turned
1:02:27
into a a purchase opportunity. They turned though into a
1:02:30
sounding board, a person that I was off there to help and say,
1:02:34
hey, we're in this together. What should we do and, and what
1:02:37
can we do? And sometimes years later, I got
1:02:43
a phone call. Mitch, Remember Me?
1:02:44
We had lunch, you know, back and whatever, 2005.
1:02:48
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, of course.
1:02:50
How are you? Well, I'm getting ready to
1:02:52
retire. And I, I thought of you first.
1:02:54
So I want to give you an opportunity if you're interested
1:02:57
in purchasing my company. Or they'd call and just say,
1:03:01
look, I'm just ready to transfer the company to you.
1:03:03
You were so kind to me. You did so much, and that's yet
1:03:07
another lesson that comes out of this is help all your
1:03:09
competitors. Be there for them.
1:03:13
Don't. They're not your enemy.
1:03:14
They're your friends. They're your future source of
1:03:17
business potential. I can't tell you how many people
1:03:20
I have openly and and warmly offered to help them when they
1:03:25
were struggling. And I did it in earnest and I
1:03:28
asked for nothing in return. But I built a community and I
1:03:32
built a reputation and years later people would call and and
1:03:38
a couple instances they just handed me the keys to their
1:03:40
company and said, you know what? It's really not worth much, but
1:03:43
take it. I want you to have it.
1:03:45
You helped me. I'm ready to step down.
1:03:47
My kids want nothing to do with it, but I care about my
1:03:51
employees. Will you take good care of them?
1:03:53
And I'm like, of course we'll take good care of them.
1:03:55
They said I knew you would. You know there's.
1:03:57
Been some. There have been.
1:03:58
Some fun threads throughout this interview, but I think one of
1:04:02
the biggest ones that I've really enjoyed is sort of the
1:04:05
emphasis on your peer group and the value of networking and, and
1:04:10
not just networking in the way of like, what can I get from
1:04:13
this person? It's like how can I add value?
1:04:16
Right. You have to go in there with it
1:04:18
and with that attitude, you have to try to help others before
1:04:24
they're ever going to trust you. And so you and you have to give
1:04:27
away that help wherever you can. In other words, this is not, oh,
1:04:32
I'm going to go into consulting. It's a new business line for me.
1:04:35
I'm going to help people who don't know what they're doing.
1:04:37
No, just go and help them. If they're in your industry,
1:04:40
don't worry about, oh, am I going to give away trade secrets
1:04:44
and they're going to, you know, take away my business.
1:04:46
Now, if you're a good entrepreneur, you're a good
1:04:49
business owner. If you have good culture and
1:04:52
your employees are sticking with you, help others, teach them
1:04:56
what you've learned and it's going to come back.
1:04:58
It always comes back to help me. I've never charged a dime for
1:05:02
helping others and it always comes back to help me.
1:05:06
Mitch, I've just got one more question for you here today.
1:05:08
But before I ask you, I want to do 2 things.
1:05:10
First, for all the listeners today, pause for just a moment.
1:05:13
Go to your podcast app that you're using right now.
1:05:16
Hit the follow button. I want you to continue to get
1:05:18
more great interviews like we've had today with Mitch Walks From
1:05:22
Cooperative Home Care And Mitch, I also want to let people know
1:05:24
the best way either to get in touch with you directly or to
1:05:28
follow your story or that of Cooperative Home Care, what is.
1:05:31
That well, I'll tell you, they can reach out to me and I would
1:05:35
offer to help young entrepreneurs or or seasoned
1:05:38
entrepreneurs with a particular problem if they want to reach
1:05:42
out. I don't charge anything.
1:05:43
I'm not putting myself out there as a consultant, but I'm happy
1:05:47
to reach out to a fellow entrepreneur and offer some
1:05:51
experience sharing. And I use that term because we
1:05:55
don't talk about advice in in EO.
1:05:58
In Yeo, we talked about experience sharing.
1:06:01
As a matter of fact, advice is forbidden.
1:06:04
You learn that in your training. If you have no experience to
1:06:08
share, you don't Give your opinion.
1:06:10
You just say I'll pass when it's your turn at the round table in
1:06:13
problem solving. So I will offer my experience
1:06:16
sharing to anybody that wants to reach out to me.
1:06:19
My e-mail is Mitch at and then my really long, ugly company
1:06:25
name. Sorry about that, folks.
1:06:27
I wish I had bought, you know, nurses.com or something back in
1:06:31
the day, but it's cooperative home care.
1:06:34
All one word squishedtogether.com
1:06:39
mitch@cooperativehomecare.com and we'll.
1:06:42
Include link to that in the show notes for folks that's it's very
1:06:44
generous of you to offer your time like that.
1:06:47
So last question for you, I'll send.
1:06:49
Them a free copy if they reach out to me.
1:06:50
Oh. There you go.
1:06:52
Even more reason to connect with Mitch about that.
1:06:55
The last question here for you, Mitch, you and I reconnect a
1:06:58
year from now and you're really excited.
1:07:00
You're celebrating something big.
1:07:02
What's that big thing that you hope to be celebrating a year
1:07:05
from now? You know, it used to be my next
1:07:09
financial milestone of the company.
1:07:12
We, you know, I remember the first time I got to $1 million
1:07:17
in sales and Mike, I had, I got in the when I saw the papers I
1:07:22
got in the car, I rolled the window down.
1:07:24
It was a beautiful day. I cranked the music on.
1:07:27
I remember specifically I was listening to More Than a Feeling
1:07:32
by Boston. It's a it's an old, old song
1:07:36
that most of your great tunes are too young to know.
1:07:38
Great. Tune.
1:07:40
But it was that, Oh my God, I'm just jamming and I'm so happy
1:07:44
now I've reached a bunch of other milestones, you know,
1:07:47
greater than that along the way. And now where, where I see what
1:07:52
are we, what's going to be exciting about year 40 when we
1:07:56
hit that milestone? Lately my, my staff has been
1:08:01
doing these great kind of giving back projects.
1:08:07
And it started with, I want to say our 30th anniversary.
1:08:12
We were brainstorming how do we celebrate?
1:08:15
And we, and at first was we're going to throw a party.
1:08:18
We'll invite all our clients, we'll invite all our referring
1:08:21
physicians, we'll invite. And it was all about let's just
1:08:24
throw a party. And eventually we kept going
1:08:29
around and somebody said, what if we did like a a really great
1:08:32
service project to go with that party and that idea.
1:08:37
The group, the people in the room at the time, as Lin Manuel
1:08:41
says, you got to be in the room where it happens.
1:08:44
And the people in the room at that moment were like, yeah, you
1:08:48
know what a service project. And then all of a sudden it's
1:08:51
like, well, what if we did for 30 years, we did three big
1:08:55
service projects, OK, that's and then someone said, well, could
1:09:03
we expand that? Could we make it 10:00 We we
1:09:06
have a whole year. What if we did 10 great service
1:09:09
projects to help the community where all of our employees and
1:09:13
caregivers and nurses did something for some other
1:09:16
not-for-profit organization. And well, before you know it, a
1:09:22
few meet meetings later, the party was scrapped all together.
1:09:25
I mean, that just a waste. And that's an ego thing.
1:09:27
And we put egos aside and we ended up that year, closing out
1:09:32
that year, doing 3132 service projects.
1:09:37
So we quickly realized we could get to 30 if we tried.
1:09:42
And we asked our field workers, our nurses, our caregivers, our
1:09:45
bathers, our nutritionists, everybody.
1:09:50
Is there something that's important in your neighborhood,
1:09:53
in your community that we could help with?
1:09:56
Yeah. We pull our resources and come
1:09:58
together. And before you know what people
1:10:01
started saying, hey, yeah, you know what?
1:10:04
Our church, you know, needs new pews or whatever because
1:10:08
they're, I don't know what. And so we ended up, you know,
1:10:13
hitting a 30 for 30 milestone. The end result is we had no
1:10:19
party. We didn't pat ourselves on the
1:10:21
back, but we were giving back. And my goodness, I can't tell
1:10:25
you how good that feels. So next year, a year from now,
1:10:29
what I'd like to be maybe talking about is, you know,
1:10:34
maybe we do 5040 for 40 or, or, or 50 for 40, I don't know.
1:10:40
But something we find a way to give back again.
1:10:43
And we, we continue from that 30th year to have a culture of
1:10:48
doing service projects throughout the year.
1:10:51
But it was that specific campaign that was so memorable.
1:10:54
We actually won a few awards that we didn't even apply for.
1:10:58
But we're just got out what we were doing and all of a sudden
1:11:00
we're getting all this attention that we didn't even ask for.
1:11:03
We didn't hire a publicist. We didn't hire, you know,
1:11:06
anybody out there to, to sell us.
1:11:10
We, we threw out the idea of a party and said, let's not, you
1:11:13
know, toot our own horn. Let's give back.
1:11:17
From kick parties to 30 giving back projects in a year Mitch
1:11:22
Wax from Cooperative Home care. I want to be the first to thank
1:11:25
you for sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:11:28
I really appreciate it. Oh, it was my.
1:11:29
Pleasure. Thank you for having me.
1:11:32
Thank you for letting me talk. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:11:35
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:11:37
Thanks for learning with us today.