Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Getting Out of Your Own Way: J. Heinlein on Rebuilding a Business for Success and Freedom | Nursing Home Series | Senior Care

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Getting Out of Your Own Way: J. Heinlein on Rebuilding a Business for Success and Freedom | Nursing Home Series | Senior Care · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:03
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:07
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:10
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:13
adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
0:16
and today's guest is Joseph Heinlein, who goes by Jay.
0:20
He has been the President and owner of Synergy Home Care of
0:23
Westchester, NY since 2012. The parent company was founded
0:28
in 1999 and is now recognized as one of the fastest growing home
0:32
care franchisors in the country. Synergy Home Care focuses on
0:37
creating compassionate, customized home care plans to
0:41
help individuals stay safe, healthy and connected at home.
0:45
They have been honored as a Home Care Pulse Best of Home Care
0:49
Endorsed National Provider for 8 consecutive years, reflecting
0:54
their commitment to delivering exceptional services.
0:57
Jay holds an MBA in Finance and International Business from NYU
1:02
Stern School of Business, and he previously served as a director
1:06
at Bank of America in institutional sales.
1:09
He has applied his leadership and strategic expertise to grow
1:12
Synergy Home Care of Westchester and make a positive impact on
1:16
his community. Now before we get into all that
1:19
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1:22
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AD back benefitsagency.com. All right, back to our guest
1:49
today, President and owner of Synergy Home Care Westchester,
1:52
NY, Jay Heinlein. I appreciate you making the time
1:55
to Share your story today. You're.
1:57
Welcome. Thank you, Anthony.
1:58
I appreciate you having me here. Let me clarify one quick thing
2:00
if you don't mind please. You'd mentioned in the in the
2:03
intro of the home Care Pulse award for the national provider
2:09
that is the franchise or award. So not only at the franchise or
2:15
level right getting it for eight years in a row, but we actually
2:20
home Synergy Home Care of Westchester will recognize this
2:23
year as provider home care pulse provider of choice.
2:28
And you may say to yourself, well, OK, what happened to the
2:32
other years that you have been running this agency for now 13
2:37
years? Well, just as a quick nutshell,
2:41
I, we are very involved with our clients, with our families, I
2:45
call them and our caregivers and a lot of communication, a lot of
2:51
interaction with them. I consider us to be partners
2:54
more than us serving them. So we have a lot of feedback
2:59
from our clients already. So I have not felt the need as
3:03
an agency owner, I have not felt the need to participate in that
3:08
Home Care Pulse survey. And that's what Home Care Pulse
3:11
is. It's a third party surveying
3:13
group and they go out and they talk to your clients and they
3:17
survey them on satisfaction. They talk to your employees or
3:21
caregivers about how is it, how are your the clients, how is it
3:24
working for that particular agency Since we do, we were so
3:28
active in doing that. I never felt the need to to
3:31
reach out through a third party as well.
3:36
Couple years ago I changed and we'll get into this, but I
3:40
changed my business model. I brought a COO involved a chief
3:43
operating officer on and he made me realize that there is
3:49
something to recognition from industry respected sources.
3:56
And so last year we decided to work towards that Home Care
4:02
Pulse award recognition and first year going for it the.
4:06
First year going for it, you got it.
4:08
We got it, yes. So I just wanted to make that
4:10
little distinction because one, I'm proud of the franchise or
4:14
that I'm involved with Synergy Home Care, they're fantastic.
4:17
And also I wanted to make sure people understood that we didn't
4:23
participate prior to last year, but the first.
4:26
Year that you took a swing at it you qualified for it and the way
4:30
that it works is they're going out and they're surveying your
4:33
actual customers, your clients, your patients, your families to
4:36
ask unbiased hey how are these guys doing is it good stuff and
4:41
after people came back with thumbs up you passed those
4:43
spades and so. You won the award, right?
4:45
There are all sorts of metrics involved and you've got to
4:47
achieve those metrics and that's the only way that you get the
4:50
award. You mentioned that, well,
4:53
actually before we talk about how Synergy home care that sort
4:57
of the franchise or you had the very positive things to say
5:00
about them. Give us a little background
5:02
about, you know, how you got to Synergy because you were a
5:05
director at Bank of America for 11 years.
5:08
What prompted that change from corporate America?
5:13
Interesting. I I think a very interesting
5:17
journey. I was a Wall Street guy for 26
5:21
years and we went through the O eight financial crisis, which
5:27
everybody was aware of and we they're Wall Street firms,
5:35
banks, right, investment banks, major, major layoffs as
5:39
everybody saw in the headlines. What most people don't realize
5:42
is that from about 2010 on, there were still quieter layoffs
5:48
going on, right? Because in the end, from my
5:52
perspective, in a very basic way, I think the Wall Street
5:57
model had broken from the OA crisis.
6:00
And what I mean by that, and again, I'm, I'm simplifying it
6:03
dramatically, Any real finance majors out there are going to,
6:06
you know, cut this to pieces. But in a simple way, you look at
6:10
equity prices, right? And you can influence equity
6:12
prices by either increasing revenues or decreasing costs.
6:15
So the OA prices, OA crisis brought on a lot of regulation
6:23
for all the big Wall Street firms, right?
6:25
And I worked for one of them. So if you're not influencing the
6:31
equity price by increasing revenues, and you do that in
6:37
some ways by leveraging your capital, well, there were
6:41
capital restrictions. So they weren't going to have
6:43
more capital to use or creating new product derivatives.
6:48
Well, that was what got us into the best to begin with.
6:50
So they weren't going to be able to create new product.
6:53
So if you're not influencing in a dramatic way the revenue side
6:56
of the equation, then you got to go after the the cost side.
6:59
And typically the biggest cost is human capital, people.
7:03
And that's why you saw all those layoffs, right?
7:05
And that's why it continued in my mind.
7:08
That's why it continued. So from 2010 on, we were still
7:12
quietly letting people go. And my concern was, it's not
7:18
going to change. So I've had a really good run.
7:22
I enjoyed my Wall Street career of 26 years.
7:25
I enjoyed the people I work with.
7:27
I enjoyed the kind of alpha side of it, the, you know,
7:32
competitive side of it. But I don't think there was a
7:35
day that went by where I didn't feel empty and wondered, is this
7:39
really who my parents raised me to be?
7:41
So after 26 years and, and this revelation of my own about
7:47
things not being the same as they were, that they were going
7:50
to have to, we're going to have to do the same business with
7:53
less people and probably get paid less, I decided to change
7:59
and I was able to orchestrate my departure.
8:02
I was able to retire from Wall Street financially whole.
8:06
And that gave me time. And that's really important
8:10
because the first couple months of being home, I was able to do
8:16
all the things I expected. I was going to go work out and,
8:19
you know, get back in touch with my family and do all those
8:21
quality of life things. But after a couple months of it,
8:24
I thought, well, I'm bored. I really want to do something
8:27
else because I love working. And So what I did was I then it
8:31
made it my job to go back and revisit all of the jobs and
8:38
careers that I fantasized about for probably the last 10 years
8:43
of my Wall Street career because I knew I was going to keep
8:47
working. I may not continue on Wall
8:49
Street, but I, I enjoy work. So they were things like going
8:55
back and becoming a doctor and opening my own practice, going
8:59
back, becoming an attorney, opening my own practice,
9:02
becoming a school teacher, becoming a psychologist, right?
9:05
All these things. So what I did was I then made it
9:08
my job to go through and each one of those that I had thought
9:13
about researched to the NTH degree.
9:16
It was very therapeutic because what I was able to do is as a 48
9:22
year old with this quality of life right in this family, I was
9:27
able to go back and look at each one of them and say, OK, does
9:32
being a doctor make sense? You got to go back to to medical
9:35
school. You've got to then go to work
9:37
before you can as a doctor, before you open up a practice.
9:40
Does it make sense? Right.
9:41
And I was slowly able to cross each one of those off.
9:45
And honestly, since then and over these past 13 years, I have
9:50
not thought about one of those professions since yet.
9:54
I had spent 10 years before that thinking about them all the
9:57
time. So that's why I'm saying it was
9:59
therapy. You were able to.
10:00
Sort of scratch the itch, so to speak.
10:02
And like, oh, I could do that now.
10:04
I actually could do this. Like I'm going to check this
10:07
out. And you obviously decided that
10:09
each of these different things wasn't for you, right?
10:12
It didn't match where I was in life and and I was able to cross
10:18
it out. And but what was really
10:20
fascinating is that as I researched all of those certain
10:24
themes developed for me. One, I didn't want to do
10:28
anything with Wall Street again. I'd gotten a bunch of calls to
10:31
come back, go work for other institutions, didn't want to do
10:35
it. I knew that that was done.
10:36
That chapter was closed. I wanted to for some reason, run
10:40
my own business, even though I had never run a business before.
10:45
I wanted to run my own business and I wanted a job where every
10:52
day all I did was went out and tried to find somebody to help
10:55
in my local community. And so those major themes came
10:59
along and then I started to look into that further.
11:03
And when I talked to friends and family and other people in about
11:07
that, one person had said to me, you know, Jay, everything you're
11:11
describing there is home care. You should really look into home
11:15
care. And I set up, I'm not a doctor.
11:18
I don't have any medical background.
11:21
Like no, no, no, that's not what this is about.
11:23
That's if you want to be a home health provider, if you want to
11:27
have a medical practice. Home care is much simpler than
11:31
that. It's going out and finding good
11:34
people, caregivers, employees that go into people's homes that
11:38
need help and you help them stay there longer and safer.
11:44
Usually a demographic is an older population, but it doesn't
11:47
have to be. We help, we've helped 20
11:50
something year olds. We help adults that maybe have
11:54
some kind of cognitive or physical impairment and they
11:57
need a little extra help to be able to stay home and relatively
12:01
independent depending on that cognitive or physical
12:04
impairment. And so that's how I started
12:08
looking at home care. And then for me, it was a choice
12:13
of do I go out and look at buying a independent business or
12:22
do I look at a franchise? And not having been a business
12:26
owner for me, at least personally, there was a lot of,
12:31
there were a lot of possible traps in buying my either
12:35
starting my own business or buying somebody else's business.
12:39
I don't know about their books. I don't know what happened.
12:43
You know, is there something going on with their, their
12:47
client base that I don't know about that suddenly is going to
12:51
change the revenue stream? So I felt uncomfortable about
12:54
that. And then I started looking into
12:56
the franchise, and the franchise model just made more sense to
13:01
me. You had somebody who was going
13:03
to be able to kind of show you the ropes from the beginning.
13:05
Bingo. And then I took it a little
13:07
further, probably my Wall Street background, but just due
13:12
diligence. I then started to look at
13:17
various franchises and I understood the franchise model.
13:22
In my mind, what happens is you're going to lease a brand
13:26
name and they're going to give you a symbolic little box and
13:31
that little box is going to tell you everything you need to know
13:34
about how to run that particular business.
13:37
This isn't just about home care. This is in my mind, any
13:40
franchise, right, that you're looking at, they're going to say
13:43
to you, this is how you run a successful business.
13:47
Now the truth is they're not telling you you will be
13:50
successful. You're really starting that
13:53
business from scratch. So believe you know, understand
13:56
that that if anything, you're starting it from below scratch
14:00
because you've got to pay in to the franchise.
14:02
So you've already put capital upfront.
14:05
So you're already a little bit financially behind the curve.
14:08
So you have to still follow those that those guidelines.
14:14
And if you do this, we think that you have a great chance of
14:19
being successful, right. So what I did is I understood
14:23
that part of it, but what I wanted to know was, all right,
14:27
you as a franchise owner, how are you running your business?
14:33
So I'm confident you're 1 going to be around in five years, 10
14:38
years, 15 years, when I still need the support that you're
14:42
supposed to be providing me, right?
14:46
How are how are you running your business and where are you
14:50
making your money? What's the, what's the, what's
14:52
the culture of your business model?
14:55
So I actually went and flew to a couple different franchisors and
15:01
I met with their management to understand.
15:05
Synergy wasn't the only one that you looked at.
15:08
You talked to multiple companies to make sure that you were going
15:11
to be bedfellows with the right right group.
15:14
Their culture, their business model matched my mindset, right?
15:20
And part of it as well is with a franchise model, the way I look
15:24
at it is they're making money in a couple ways.
15:26
There are a lot of ways that they're making money, but
15:28
they're they're making money in a couple ways there.
15:30
There's that upfront franchise fee that you pay to get
15:34
involved, right? For some franchises, it's a
15:38
couple $1000. For some franchises it could be
15:41
$1,000,000, right? Some of the storefronts that you
15:44
see out there, it costs a lot to buy into that territory and
15:50
lease that name and get all of that support because they feel
15:52
like this is already a no brainer.
15:55
You're going to be successful if you do what we tell you, but
15:58
you're going to pay for that. The other way that they make
16:02
money and that's this is the more typical, right?
16:04
This is the big way is weekly royalties and then there's some
16:09
marketing fees. So every week I pay franchise
16:13
people. Typically we pay 5% royalty fees
16:16
on the gross revenues and you pay a marketing fee.
16:20
So for me, that was key. I wanted to find a franchise
16:25
system that focused on that royalty fee because in my mind,
16:34
I don't mind paying that percentage.
16:36
I don't mind paying them a lot of money as a percentage because
16:40
if that's the case, that means that I'm making a lot of money.
16:45
Everybody's. Goals are aligned at that point,
16:47
Absolutely. They make money when you make
16:49
money. Right.
16:50
So to me, they're going, I wanted a system that was going
16:52
to do everything that they could to support me and try to help me
16:58
grow my business. And Synergy is amazing at that.
17:03
So what did you find with them that you didn't find in some of
17:07
the other home care companies that you looked?
17:09
At I, it was pretty much that. And early on, remember at the
17:12
very beginning, I, I was new to all this.
17:15
I didn't know anything about franchising.
17:17
I didn't know anything about running your own business.
17:19
So my thought process and my, my questions were probably very
17:23
simplistic at that time, but their culture matched what I
17:27
believed was the right business model.
17:29
When I was out there, they were focused on me.
17:32
They were focused on the business.
17:33
They were focused on how do we help you set up?
17:37
We're going to be with you. So you go out, you do a week
17:42
intensive training and they take you through the whole nuts and
17:45
bolts of setting up a business from you need 2 staplers and
17:52
this type of computer and this this office layout to the the
17:59
support and software and all of the other stuff.
18:02
And this is how your software works and this is how you
18:05
schedule. What I also found, as you asked
18:09
that question, it's interesting because what just also came into
18:11
my, what I found really impactful was the other Synergy
18:20
owners. And I think that's probably what
18:23
also helped put me over the edge in that I knew that this was the
18:28
franchise I wanted to be part of because it is, you know, you
18:32
hear this, it's cliche, but the Synergy franchise partner
18:36
network is a very, very solid and cooperative network.
18:44
We have, we have chat rooms, we have Facebook pages.
18:47
Tomorrow I'm going to be on a strategic call with, I think
18:52
it's 10 to 15 other franchise partners around the country that
18:57
are in a similar position to me. And we get together once a month
19:01
and it's led by somebody at the franchise support and we get
19:05
together once a month and we just talk and brainstorm about
19:11
any issues, what's working, what's not working.
19:16
And it's open up. And I can't tell you how how
19:20
helpful and valuable that has been.
19:23
So when I was out there, I got to meet a few franchise partners
19:29
that have been in the system and they were not even focused on
19:36
the franchise or the selling me on buying into the system.
19:41
They were focused on me where I had been, my history, why I was
19:46
getting involved, what I expected out of it, where I felt
19:51
my strengths and weaknesses were.
19:53
So they were asking me all the right questions about how does
19:56
this individual coming into a system become successful.
20:01
They're interviewing you just as much as you're interviewing
20:03
them. They want to make sure it's a
20:05
good fit on both sides. Yes, but in a not in a we are
20:09
going to we, we have the ability to stop you from getting on
20:15
board, but more of a all right, we want to understand you.
20:20
We will understand where you're coming from, your mindset so
20:23
that we can try to help you. We can help you with your really
20:30
bring out your strengths, but we can also help you if there are
20:33
weaknesses where you can navigate and build around those
20:38
weaknesses. How do you overcome those
20:39
weaknesses? And that, to me, was more
20:41
impressive. I think it's really great what
20:44
you were just describing there, this call that you've got with
20:47
other franchise owners, I'm assuming they're in other parts
20:50
of the country. All over the.
20:51
Country all over the country, similar maybe size to what you
20:54
are so that you guys can support each other.
20:56
You can talk about what's going on.
20:58
As you think back to maybe the most recent meeting, what was 1
21:01
gold nugget that you pulled out of one of those sessions?
21:05
Because I think this idea of having this, this peer support
21:08
people who are in same or similar positions to you, it's
21:12
just so invaluable and running a small business.
21:15
We were. It wasn't necessarily the most
21:21
valuable for me, but with because we don't right now,
21:27
we're not involved with veterans.
21:30
We'd like to become, we'd like to be able to help veterans and
21:34
be part of the VA program. We're not that haven't been
21:38
accepted yet into that yet. It's a process to get into it.
21:41
But there was discussion from other parts of the country about
21:45
VA and how to help the veterans and there was an exchange
21:51
between one of the franchise partners in Florida and one of
21:54
the franchise partners in Arizona or another, another
22:02
great examples. We've been, we've been much more
22:04
involved with helping families in facilities, right, Our home
22:07
care. So people traditionally think,
22:09
oh, you help people in their home.
22:12
Well, yes, majority of it. But the fact is where we help
22:15
people is in their home environment.
22:17
And that can be different for many, many people.
22:21
Home, home, you know, whether it's an apartment, a house,
22:25
right? That's your typical home
22:27
environment. But a lot of people when they're
22:29
older, have other types of living situations.
22:32
They could live in a community. Maybe it's a assisted living
22:37
community, maybe it's an independent living community, or
22:40
maybe there's more of a medical need and a skilled nursing care
22:45
need. They may live in a nursing home
22:50
or rehabilitation center. Those.
22:52
Are facilities that you'll go in and still provide.
22:55
Support to so we change, we cater to where they are.
23:01
We have somebody that we're just about to start helping with.
23:03
We helped this person, right? And I won't give very, you know,
23:06
specific stuff for HIPAA reasons, but we helped this
23:10
person a long time ago and wonderful woman.
23:13
She got stronger and she didn't need her help anymore, but she
23:16
was at a facility so it was great she was able to.
23:20
She was able to act relatively independently within the
23:26
facility. So awesome.
23:28
She didn't need synergy anymore. I love those scenarios when
23:31
people actually outgrow our care because they're getting back to
23:37
a independent baseline. That's wonderful for me.
23:41
I know that doesn't sound makes sense because it means we're
23:44
losing revenue, but that's OK with me.
23:46
I don't mind that. We're you've done your job
23:47
really well, you've sort of graduated somebody from your.
23:50
That's the way I view it, right? I love it.
23:52
So unfortunately there are a lot of people that need help.
23:56
So it's not as though there won't be somebody we can't help.
23:59
But when people, you know, get stronger and mentally or
24:04
physically and they don't need it anymore, that's wonderful,
24:07
right? So this woman didn't need our
24:10
help. And that was a few years ago.
24:14
So it was great. And she's been, I get a call
24:16
couple days ago, she went into the hospital, she had a set
24:21
back. She's weaker.
24:22
She's going to be back in the facility.
24:24
But the family feels like she really could use some extra
24:27
support, one-on-one support at the facility.
24:31
And they called us up a media and they're like, I don't know
24:33
if you remember us, but you helped my mom.
24:36
And I'm like, of course I remember you.
24:38
And how is your mom? And they told me the story and
24:41
that's great. And they said, we don't think
24:42
it's going to be long. It may just be several weeks,
24:46
but we really would love it if you and your your people would
24:51
go in and be there with my mom to just help her out until she
24:56
gets stronger. Because there's a she's having
25:00
some difficulty, especially some incontinence issues and whatnot.
25:03
And having somebody there that can get her to and from a
25:06
bathroom can mean all the difference in the world.
25:09
So I mean. The fact that you remembered
25:11
this person, Jay, it suggests to me that there's maybe a bit of a
25:15
personal connection, like you're trying to get to know each of
25:19
the families that you're working with.
25:21
Absolutely. It's and it goes.
25:23
It, you know, goes back to when I set up this business, when I
25:29
started the franchise, we had a choice.
25:31
I had a choice. I could be a, what's called a
25:35
contract agency. We're a, we're what's called
25:37
Alexa, a licensed home care service agency, which is a
25:42
licensed agency by the New York Department of Health, right?
25:45
So we're heavily regulated and supervised by the New York
25:49
Department of Health. Not all agencies are, but we are
25:53
a licensed home care agency versus a what's called a CHA, a
26:00
certified home health agency, and typically a CHA is an agency
26:07
that takes Medicare and Medicaid.
26:09
I decided at the very beginning that I wanted a different
26:13
business model. I didn't want to have what I
26:17
call a quantity based model. If I took Medicare and Medicaid,
26:21
I'd have every client I could possibly want, but it would
26:23
change my business model. I would have to, then my team
26:27
would then have to hire every single caregiver we could find.
26:33
And that's just not my business model.
26:35
We're more about being involved with our families partnership, I
26:41
put. It more of a boutique
26:42
experience, well for both your caregivers as well as this, the
26:46
people that you're delivering the care to.
26:48
Yeah. I mean, the nice part is that
26:50
you can still be very successful and there is a large demand.
26:56
So you can help a lot of people, but you don't have to help
27:02
thousands, which means me, the president and owner of the
27:07
agency, I love going out and seeing our families and seeing
27:12
our caregivers, going tomorrow morning to see a new family that
27:17
is going to want 24/7 care. And I'm going because I'm, and
27:23
there's a dementia component to it.
27:27
Woman lives with a, a private agency now.
27:31
And the family is just not happy with that agency because they
27:35
don't feel like this agency really understands dementia from
27:40
an administrative standpoint, but also from a care team
27:46
standpoint. And they had heard about us.
27:48
So I went and I met the woman, I met the family.
27:50
Lovely. But my nurse is going over there
27:54
tomorrow. So I'm going to go tomorrow
27:57
morning and introduce the nurse to the woman and the family.
28:04
I'll be there 10 minutes. But that warm introduction is
28:07
important. And that goes back to the
28:09
partnership part of the way I view this.
28:13
We're partnering with a family. They have a care need.
28:16
We go in, our job is to figure out what those needs are.
28:23
How do we keep that person there safer and longer and make sure
28:29
that we're listening to them. And that's knowing the
28:36
caregivers, that's knowing the families that we help.
28:40
I, I base the culture of my agency on two very, very simple
28:44
things, communication and respect.
28:49
That is it. And that goes between the three
28:54
parts to the partnership that I call it.
28:57
And the three parts of that partnership are the, the direct
29:02
care client, the family are caregivers, right, the care team
29:08
and then the office. And what has to happen in my
29:12
mind is there has to be a free flow of communication and
29:18
respect amongst those three parts of the partnership.
29:23
And if there isn't, there's a problem and we need to figure it
29:27
out and correct it. But if there's that free flow
29:31
and people are talking and 'cause this is an ever changing
29:35
situation, home care is, is always changing.
29:38
It's a work in progress always, so there has to be a lot of
29:43
communication. As I think about your business
29:46
model, it occurs to me that you probably have two sort of client
29:52
bases that you're recruiting or looking for at the same time.
29:56
You're you're looking for the the patients to serve.
30:00
But you know, when you get a patient to serve, you have to
30:02
make sure that you have the caregiver that's able to provide
30:06
the service. So maybe let's talk about each
30:09
of those one at a time. As you think about what you do
30:13
to sort of grow the patient side of things, what are the
30:16
strategies that you use to sort of get out there to find new
30:21
patients, have them find you? OK.
30:24
So First off, I have to comment that that's awesome.
30:27
Very, very perceptive of you. I, when I got into the business
30:33
13 years ago, I thought I was going to be helping the end
30:37
user, the client. And I quickly came to realize
30:41
that really what we do is we impact can impact not only the
30:49
family that we're helping, but our employees.
30:53
They're caregivers. These are great people.
30:56
They typically not all the time, which is why I go back to why I
31:02
said I don't want a quantity based model versus quality based
31:05
model because unfortunately, like in all industries, there
31:08
are employees that aren't fantastic.
31:11
Well, when you're in home care, I don't want the not fantastic
31:17
employees. So I realized that we get to not
31:22
only impact the families that we're helping, but also our
31:25
employees because a lot of them don't come from a situation
31:30
where they have the best role models or they've had advantage
31:34
in life. So if we can provide and they
31:37
don't, they don't, they don't always get respected for what
31:42
they do. And that's a huge issue for me
31:46
because if they're good at it, what they do is incredible.
31:52
So as part of our start of care documentation, one of them talks
32:03
about what a family can expect from us.
32:07
It's called the Client Bill of Rights, and it talks about all
32:10
the things that you would think we're going to treat you with
32:13
dignity and respect and confidentiality and information
32:16
and there'll be communication, right?
32:18
But then we flip it over and then we go through with every
32:24
family what we expect from them. And that is you will treat our
32:30
employees, our caregivers with that same level of dignity and
32:36
respect because what they do is not easy and they're doing it
32:43
the good ones from the heart. And so we, I think focused on
32:49
that early and I think that's why we to kind of flip it on
32:54
you. I know you want to talk client
32:55
first, but just to for the caregiver, I think, and this
32:59
will go for both of them. Actually.
33:02
I think if you ever, if anyone ever wanted to kind of take a
33:06
look at what I'm talking about and really get an underlying
33:09
feel for what I mean, go and take a look at our Google
33:13
reviews, Synergy Home Care of Westchester or Google Reviews.
33:16
Because we not only get reviews from our families, which you
33:20
would expect, right, love the agency.
33:22
We also get reviews from our employees.
33:27
And that's not typical. And it's they care about me,
33:33
they respect what I do. And so when I'm out with a
33:36
family, it's important for all families to understand that and
33:39
acknowledge that to me as we're talking because they know that
33:45
the caregivers, and I say it to them, the caregivers are just as
33:49
important as they are in this relationship.
33:53
And so we set that tone early. Sorry, Jay, I apologize for
33:57
interrupting you, but I did just what you suggested while we were
34:01
talking and I went and I checked out your Google reviews and this
34:05
is noteworthy for folks. They've got 77 reviews, which is
34:10
for folks who aren't familiar. That's a lot of reviews for a
34:13
small business, people taking the time to, you know, to to
34:17
leave a comment to give a rating.
34:20
And traditionally, if if again, if people aren't familiar when
34:23
leaving a review, it's much more common to get people taking that
34:28
time to leave a review who are upset for some reason.
34:32
OK, so a lot of times reviews tend to to skew negative.
34:36
So having said all of that, their average review rating is
34:40
4.9 stars, which from what little I know about the
34:45
healthcare field is almost unheard of, right?
34:48
Healthcare, you're taking care of somebody who's sick, they're
34:51
hurt, they're not in the best mental space, they're, you know,
34:54
they've got other things going on that the likelihood of you
34:58
getting somebody to leave a really good review seems like it
35:02
would be lower in this field. So anyways, I just wanted to
35:05
kind of give you a little pat on the back because 4.9 stars 77
35:09
reviews for a small business in Healthcare is pretty phenomenal.
35:12
And we only started going after Google reviews a couple years
35:15
ago. So, but but that so I think that
35:21
you know on that well, I don't want to keep going on that
35:27
subject. But no, that's OK.
35:28
Yeah. I, I'd be curious to hear sort
35:30
of the the methodology, the strategies that you use both in
35:35
recruiting and retaining your employees, but also how you go
35:38
about finding clients and patients.
35:42
OK. And So what I was going to say
35:45
it was listen, that the 4.9 thank you for acknowledging that
35:49
and seeing that. I appreciate that.
35:50
And that's, I want people to see the content the because that
35:54
tells, I think that tells the story of what we focus on Now.
35:59
What I wanted to say is that doesn't mean that everything's
36:03
always perfect, but what it reflects, I hope is that we're
36:09
in that partnership. And so there are always issues.
36:12
Like I said, it's a work in progress.
36:13
So, but that's where the communication's so important.
36:16
When there are issues, we're there.
36:18
We're working on it with the family, with the caregiver.
36:21
We do what has to be done to see the situation, acknowledge it,
36:29
correct it. And so I think that's where I
36:32
want to emphasize the importance of it is that that's not say
36:36
that every situation is perfect. It's not, but we work so hard at
36:43
being there for a family and going above and beyond for them
36:46
that even when there are problems, they know that we're
36:48
there to communicate and we respect them and it's coming
36:50
from a good place. So I think that's what drives
36:53
those kinds of reviews. How do we get our clients?
36:56
Well, honestly, in the beginning, I, this goes back to
37:02
the, the business model being set up incorrectly, right?
37:06
And we can talk about that later if you want to dive into that.
37:08
But so getting clients was I was the, I was the community
37:12
liaison. I went out, I did the
37:14
networking. I, my view was I want to be out
37:17
in the community and I want to, through word of mouth, I want to
37:23
spread the name of Synergy home gear sit when I before I started
37:27
the franchise, we're in northern, we're in New York
37:33
outside of New York City in the counties of Westchester and
37:37
Bronx. That's where we help families,
37:41
very, very licensed and regulated agencies, as I
37:45
mentioned. So it took us a couple years to
37:48
even get the license from the Department of Health.
37:51
So we were only able to do a very limited amount of care in
37:55
the beginning 20, I call it 20% of what we were able to do once
38:00
licensed companion care. I knew that was going to be a
38:05
challenge for the first few years, but my goal was I want to
38:09
go out into the community, I want to get our name out there.
38:12
I want to start providing care and I want people to see that
38:15
there is a, there is a higher level of agency and care that
38:20
can be provided so that when we finally do get licensed by the
38:26
Department of Health, then our name, our credibility has
38:30
already been built. We have a reputation.
38:32
And then it will just that it'll grow from there because of the
38:38
work we did. And so I did a lot of grassroots
38:41
marketing. I did a lot of community
38:42
networking, you know, anything that your, your local.
38:48
I was AB and I'm AB and I guy. I don't know if you know
38:51
anything about B and I, but I'm AB and I guy, which is a very
38:54
big local resource chapter. It's a networking group of
38:59
professional networking group. And there are about 30 of us in
39:04
my chapter, all of different professions.
39:08
And we meet every week and our our task of being in this group
39:14
is to keep the others in mind. So we act as a resource.
39:18
So I've got a very strong resource book at my disposal.
39:23
So not only am I out there trying to find people that need
39:28
help with home care, but as I talk to people, if there's
39:34
something else that they need help with, I can be a great
39:38
resource for them. So I did a lot of what I call
39:40
grass roots networking and that was building the reputation and
39:44
building our name through religious groups.
39:49
The big way that a lot of people will build a home care clientele
39:56
is through your professional referral sources, your
39:59
facilities, your hospitals, your subject rehabilitation.
40:03
Lot of sense that's the point where folks realize that they
40:06
need that service. Yes.
40:07
So for me the problem was the the licensed part was the
40:11
personal care. That's the touch part.
40:12
The hands on part I wasn't I didn't get that for three years
40:16
so I wasn't able to do that. So in the beginning, I didn't
40:19
focus on that part because I didn't want to go into a
40:21
hospital where somebody had just introduced me and have the
40:25
discharge planner say, OK, Jay, here is a person that you can
40:29
start to help and we have to say, sorry, we can't help them
40:32
now, right? So I was strategic about it.
40:35
I did grassroots community networking.
40:39
About a year and a half ago, I started to expand and our
40:45
facility efforts. We've been involved with
40:49
facilities for a number of years now, but more on that grassroots
40:53
families introducing us. Year and a half ago, I brought
40:56
on a community liaison and she's great.
41:00
Her job is to go to the facilities, build relationships
41:05
with the facilities in our area and build our referrals through
41:10
those facilities. So now we have this dual
41:13
marketing approach, the grass roots, which is your community
41:18
referral based from various community groups and the
41:23
facility groups, the facilities that refer on a more regular
41:29
basis. And that's one of the changes
41:31
that we made over the last couple years to really help us
41:35
move to a higher level and help more people.
41:40
You, you've mentioned that once or twice in our conversation,
41:43
sort of a a shift in business model in the last couple of
41:46
years. Is this, are you kind of
41:48
touching on that now you want to give more voice to that?
41:52
Sure. So what, You know, I was a Wall
41:55
Street guy, so I lived my life, my professional life on bonuses,
42:00
right? That's where a lot of
42:01
compensation was made. I was fortunate in that sense.
42:05
So when I started the agency and I started my own business, my
42:09
philosophy was very similar to the Wall Street model
42:13
philosophy. I am going to have a small group
42:16
of employees, a few people, we're going to wear multiple
42:20
hats, a lot of responsibilities, but they're going to be able to
42:24
participate financially. I don't mind paying people for
42:29
the effort. So if we're able to do this and
42:31
we're successful and we're growing the business, I want
42:34
them to financially participate in that growth.
42:36
And for most of the people in this type of industry, they're
42:41
not used to what happens on Wall Street and that kind of getting
42:45
paid more significant significantly than your peers.
42:48
So I wanted that to be the case and I wanted to afford that to
42:53
my employees. So that's the way we started.
42:55
And for the first number of years I was very hands on.
42:59
I was very involved in all aspects of the business.
43:01
I had a very small little group. There were only a couple of us.
43:06
But what I found several years into the business was that what
43:12
I had really done was created one big key person risk
43:19
scenario. Any time anybody left and people
43:24
do as much as they loved working for me, life changes, move away.
43:33
Something happens in a family, right?
43:36
And they have to or they need to or they want to get another job
43:40
because that is their more of their interest.
43:43
All great, right? But I realized that every single
43:48
time that happens, it's very disruptive for the people that
43:52
remain because they have to pick up all the slack.
43:54
And for me as the owner, I was involved and very actively
44:00
involved in all aspects of the business, right?
44:03
I could be at, from the Wall Street day's being on a trading
44:05
desk, I can hear five different things going on.
44:07
So I could be in my office and if it was quiet, I could hear
44:12
what's happening outside in the office space.
44:16
And I'd always throw in my $0.02.
44:18
So with that key person risk, also in that small team scenario
44:22
also, I was actively involved and controlling what was
44:30
happening and I was in in a sense, not allowing my team to
44:36
grow and own responsibility. Because so much of it had to
44:40
flow through you. You were.
44:41
Just because I was so actively involved, I didn't try to set it
44:46
up that way. I was always a person that
44:48
believed in delegation. But in the end, I really wasn't
44:54
doing a good job of allowing my team to own their
44:59
responsibilities both in a positive and in a negative way.
45:04
And so that's where as we, we were growing, we had grown under
45:11
that model for the 1st, call it five years.
45:18
Then we were plateauing and we plateaued and COVID hit.
45:24
But, you know, in a, in a summary, but I was realizing why
45:29
aren't we able to grow further? And I had changed employee
45:36
numbers of employees in the office staff.
45:38
So it wasn't, you know, sometimes there were more
45:40
people, sometimes there were fewer people.
45:43
So it wasn't a numbers thing. And then I realized I was
45:49
starting. I was so heavily involved.
45:53
I was in the office all the time.
45:55
COVID hit. I was, we lost a couple people.
45:59
I was even more involved and I started to burn out.
46:04
And then I realized, is this what you meant to do when you
46:12
built this business, when you opened up this business, did you
46:15
mean to you wanted to work in it, but did you want it to
46:19
consume you? Right.
46:21
Because I retired from Wall Street.
46:24
And so I always view this as every project, that next, next
46:28
job, next business, I want to learn from it.
46:33
And So what I quickly realized was as much as I had been the
46:39
growth and the strength of the business, I was in fact now the
46:45
weakness and the hurdle. I was the impediment to the
46:49
significant growth that I thought we had been successful,
46:53
but there was so much more given our geograph, you know,
46:57
geographical location. You identified that there was a
46:59
problem. Basically, you're burned out,
47:01
you're plateaued. The growth isn't happening that
47:04
you think could happen. You've tried more employees,
47:07
less employees in the office. That's not fixing the problem.
47:10
How did you come about to try something different?
47:13
How did you find the solution? Who recommended that?
47:17
I realized at the end of COVID I had, I had a right hand person
47:27
and she was fantastic. And she ended up having to move
47:33
her husband. They wanted to relocate to be
47:36
closer to family in another state.
47:40
Fantastic, right move, still in touch, right?
47:44
But I then realized she was somebody that I could rely on on
47:51
certain aspects of the business. So I started to realize I don't
47:55
have to do it all and I read a interesting book well after the
48:06
fact. I had read this book, so it
48:07
confirmed everything that I had done.
48:09
But what I realized was I needed to bring somebody on to run the
48:15
day-to-day operations and allow me to step out of the day-to-day
48:21
operations, out of the being in the office all the time from
48:27
7:00 AM until 7:00 PM, so I could get back to what I enjoyed
48:33
doing. And that was being out in the
48:35
community, meeting families, meeting other referral partners,
48:44
helping to grow the business from that side, working on the
48:48
financial side of the business as well behind the scenes.
48:53
But I needed to be able to get out and do that and focus on
49:00
quality of life because ultimately this is where this
49:05
book comes in, right? Somebody had suggested I read
49:08
this book about two years ago, and it just reinforced this part
49:13
of my journey. It was incredible.
49:17
What's the book? Can I say a book on?
49:19
Yeah, please. It's called Making Money is
49:22
Killing Your Business by Chuck Blakeman.
49:27
It's an amazing book for any entrepreneur because in a shell,
49:30
what it talks about is we all view success.
49:35
Typically we think of success as financial, the monetary side of
49:40
it. How much money are you making?
49:43
But the truth is the the way you really should be viewing success
49:48
is making more money but having more time.
49:55
So making more money in less time so that you have time to
50:02
enjoy whatever you have done. You can make all the money in
50:05
the world, but if you don't have any time to enjoy it, what's the
50:09
point? So it really focuses you on, all
50:14
right, how do I build a business and then how do I construct it
50:20
so that it keeps running and it is growing, but it doesn't take
50:31
me to do it right? And it goes back to a concept
50:36
of, you know, I mentioned keep person risk, but in terms of a
50:42
business and selling a business keep person, right.
50:47
Somebody had approached me a couple years ago to buy my
50:49
agency, but they were undervaluing it dramatically.
50:53
This was. That ran through you.
50:55
Absolutely, yeah. And they said, Jade, the minute
50:58
you walk out the door, the business is gone.
51:01
So that's when I realized, OK, I have built this wrong.
51:06
What I need to do is I need to go back, I need to rebuild it.
51:09
I need to build depth of team and I need to give people
51:17
ownership if I'm going to give them a responsibility, if I'm
51:20
going to delegate responsibility, I need to allow
51:23
them to own that. And there there in itself was
51:26
another interesting journey because what I did was I ended
51:30
up bringing on Acoa, who I had known he was a, he ran another,
51:34
he was a president of another Synergy and was a consultant in
51:38
the industry. And I brought him on because he
51:42
understood the business. Operational wizard.
51:46
It's his strength. Regulatory.
51:50
He loves the regulatory side. It's a great fit for it.
51:53
Yeah, yeah. All the things that just were
51:56
not my strength, even though I was able to do them, I didn't
52:01
enjoy them. And he also had a technology
52:06
been to him. He was very much into how do we
52:11
more efficiently run a business, right?
52:14
So I brought him on a couple years ago and allowed him to
52:19
start running the day-to-day operational side of it and it
52:23
enabled me to step away. Now just as a quick one.
52:26
What happened was it was interesting and going back to
52:29
this control and having to change a mindset of the
52:33
business, the staff, the people in the in the office, even
52:38
though he was a COO and I had given him the responsibility,
52:42
they still looked at me for answers.
52:45
So what I did was I had to, this was another part of the
52:48
difficult, challenging for me. I stepped away from the business
52:55
for two months, took a sabbatical.
52:58
I was still involved behind the scenes, but I was not involved
53:01
with the office staff. I was not involved with the
53:02
clients, the caregivers. I was involved with the COO and
53:08
I was involved with the financial side of the business,
53:11
but I delegated 95% of my responsibilities to them and
53:17
him. Everyone in the office knew I
53:19
was taking a sabbatical and that it gave him the two months to
53:24
build the relationship with the office team.
53:28
And then when I came back after the two months, it was
53:33
understood I was not going to be coming into the office every
53:37
day. I was going to be working from
53:39
home and out in the community. And by doing that, I was able to
53:44
basically change the mindset of the office team.
53:49
So you're refreshed now, What did you see happen to growth we?
53:54
We were up 35% last year. I expect we're targeting another
54:02
30% this year. That's amazing and it's
54:06
incredible. I hear this from a lot of
54:07
business owners who sometimes they just need to get out of
54:11
their own way. They need to figure out where
54:13
their strengths are. And you've got a lot of them,
54:16
right? I mean, NBA Wall Street guy like
54:18
you understand the business side of things really well.
54:21
But when you were able to sort of remove yourself from the
54:24
day-to-day operations, get out and do more what it sounds like
54:27
business development, getting out more in the community and
54:31
have somebody whose real strength is on the operations
54:35
side, empower the people in the office.
54:38
You, you remove sort of that, you know, key person risk and
54:42
you just allow things to, to really open up and for that
54:45
growth to, to kind of happen more naturally.
54:48
The control, right and and that's, you know, for people
54:51
that are getting into any kind of business, you have to early
54:55
on try to understand what kind of person are you?
54:57
Are you going to, like I did, try to control every aspect of
55:01
the business and, and you're just going to bully, you know,
55:06
growth and success and make it happen, Or are you going to
55:13
build a team early on and oversee their right
55:20
responsibilities and what they're doing, their efforts to
55:23
grow? And the way I did it, I had to,
55:27
I had to own that I was now in the way of even more significant
55:33
growth and then figure out how I was going to get myself mentally
55:38
out of the way. And that was, that was probably
55:40
my biggest challenge and most difficult thing that I did as a
55:45
business owner. And in hindsight, it was
55:50
probably the most powerful and best thing I could have done.
55:53
Sounds like it. Jay, I've just got one more
55:56
question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do 2 things.
55:59
Everyone listening today, I know that you love this interview.
56:01
Jay's been an amazing guest. Go ahead and hit the follow or
56:05
share or like button on your favorite podcast app so you can
56:08
share this with other folks who would be interested in it so you
56:10
can continue getting more great content.
56:12
Jay, I also want to let people know the best way to follow your
56:15
story or to get in touch with you.
56:16
What would that be? People wanted to reach out or
56:20
they wanted to find out more about Home Care Services.
56:24
They could go onto our website, synergyhomecare.com and then you
56:29
would, you know, that goes to the national site, but then you
56:31
can go right into our Synergy Home Care of Westchester site.
56:34
Or if they for some reason wanted to contact me directly,
56:38
I'm always open for conversation and peting my e-mail
56:42
jayhenline@synergyhomecare.com. Perfect.
56:47
Last question for you, Jay, as you're looking towards the
56:49
future, what is the thing that the biggest change that's coming
56:53
to your industry that you're excited to see unfold?
56:59
Well, I mean, not to get into the politics of things, but
57:01
there there's a lot that could be changing in the political
57:05
landscape, which I'm not sure is positive.
57:08
It's from a selfish revenue standpoint, it probably is
57:12
positive because it, you know, if some of these care programs
57:17
get cut, they're going to be a lot of people that need care and
57:21
they're going to need, they're still going to need care, which
57:22
means they're going to need to be able to figure out how to pay
57:25
for care themselves. That's not a great thing, but
57:28
we'll be there for anyone that needs the help.
57:30
We can try to brainstorm and help.
57:33
I think there's a lot of technology that's starting to
57:35
come into the home care space that can make it give people
57:44
options and tools that may be cheaper before having to go the
57:51
route of purely bringing in caregivers because it can be
57:56
expensive. I know that.
57:58
But there is some technology that you can use to supplement.
58:05
There's nothing like having somebody in your home with a
58:07
loved one, but there is some technology that can be used to
58:10
supplement it. To sort of let somebody kind of
58:13
observe from afar or kind of could have been on you.
58:16
Yeah, could be, it could be, you know, yes, yes, that kind of
58:20
technology. I think probably the biggest
58:22
change that's going to continue to go on is the baby boomers
58:26
65,000, right? I know, I think it's 10,000
58:30
people a day are turning 65 and that's going to go on for a
58:35
long, long time. So there is a huge demand and
58:38
it's going to continue. So there's still a lot of people
58:44
that need help. Great.
58:48
Yeah, Well, Jay, I want to be the first one to thank you for
58:51
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
58:53
I really appreciate. You welcome.
58:54
I really enjoyed this Anthony. Thank you so much for having me.
58:57
Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
59:00
podcast. Thanks for learning with us
59:02
today.