Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Hard Work and Heart: Mark Savoie's Vision for Healthcare Staffing | Staffing Series

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Hard Work and Heart: Mark Savoie's Vision for Healthcare Staffing | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their
0:21
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:24
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:26
My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Mark Savois,
0:30
founder and co-owner of Nurses Direct, a family owned business
0:34
that provides nursing facilities services directly to healthcare
0:37
facilities in the state of Louisiana.
0:39
In fact, they were one of the first nurse staffing agencies in
0:42
Louisiana. They staff hospitals at home,
0:45
private duty locations and other healthcare facilities with
0:48
nurses who provide a high quality of patient care.
0:52
Their mission is to provide staffing services in a way that
0:54
is tailored to the needs of each client and to do so in a manner
0:58
that is personal, courteous and professional.
1:00
You can find their website at Nurses Direct dot US now.
1:04
Mark himself worked in radio for 18 years with his own on air
1:08
show and in 1979 became a Licensed Practical Nurse and a
1:13
Respiratory Therapist. We will hear about how hardship
1:17
and necessity led him to start his first nursing agency in the
1:20
80s and get to hear about what that has grown into today.
1:25
Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
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1:53
Now back to our guest today, the founder and co-owner of Nurses
1:57
Direct, Mark Savois. I appreciate you making the time
2:00
to Share your story today. Oh, look, thank you and I
2:02
appreciate you inviting me. So before we get into the origin
2:07
story of Nurses Direct, tell us, in your own words, what does
2:10
Nurses Direct do? Like you said in the intro, I
2:15
mean, we staff hospitals. We, I first started off just
2:19
doing in home nursing care. That one, you know, when I first
2:24
started the business, I wasn't staffing hospitals or anything
2:27
like that because the in home, what we call private duty
2:31
nursing care, you get a group of nurses that just stay in there.
2:35
The business is more consistent because you know you're going to
2:38
need that nurse again tomorrow. So we did it for people who
2:42
otherwise we'd be in a hospital or a nursing home.
2:45
We would put those, we'd turn the house into a hospital or a
2:49
nursing home. And, you know, it's very
2:51
expensive, but some people had insurance to cover it.
2:55
If you don't have insurance, you know, to cover something like
2:57
that, most people won't do it. I mean, it's just, it's not the
3:02
cost of so much from my business, but it's just the cost
3:06
what the nurses cost, you know, to do that type of care and
3:09
everything. But you know, a lot of people
3:12
towards the end of their life, you know, they if you're going
3:15
to die, most people die at home. And I mean, I hate to say it and
3:19
be Mormon about it like that, but that's reality.
3:23
And when you first started, it was that type of in home care
3:26
unusual? Not really.
3:30
It wasn't like it is today. I mean, you see advertising
3:34
today from, you know, several companies, you know, to care for
3:39
mom at home or, you know, help him get dressed in the morning,
3:42
whatever. It was there, but it wasn't as
3:46
much as it is today. Got.
3:48
You a lot of. People didn't even know they had
3:50
that that benefit in their insurance package.
3:54
Right. Yeah, Less common back then.
3:56
Yeah, less well known. And So what sets nurses direct
4:00
apart from others in the space? Well.
4:05
Number one, I've been doing it for 40 something years and it's
4:11
not just about the money to me, you know, it's, it's about
4:14
providing a good service to the facilities that we staff and the
4:17
patients that we care for. And I can tell everybody, look,
4:22
there's a lot of ways to make money fast and there are
4:26
companies out there. And I'm not like there are
4:28
companies just as good as mine are better.
4:30
I'm not going to, you know, say my company is the best by any
4:34
means, but there's a lot of ways to make a quick dollar.
4:39
And I don't want the quick dollar.
4:40
I like to take my business, grow it slow, do it right.
4:44
I'm going to make mistakes in life.
4:46
We all do. I can fix an honest mistake.
4:49
I can't fix a lie so that I think that, you know, I'm just
4:53
I'm not going to cross the line to do something illegal,
4:58
unethical, or, you know, I'm just not going to do it.
5:01
My staff knows that. My business partner knows that.
5:04
Not that he would either, you know, but I I wouldn't have
5:08
crossed the line for a dollar. You're not in it for a quick
5:11
buck, you're in it for the relationship and to do things
5:13
the right way. Yeah.
5:15
Yeah. OK.
5:16
So let's go back prior to the origin of Nurses Direct.
5:21
Tell me a little bit about your 18 year radio career.
5:25
How did that all come about? When I was when I got in the
5:28
radio, I just, that was kind of, I was woke up one night, I don't
5:34
know, I was probably 17 years old and our local radio station
5:38
was signing off the air And for some reason I said, man, that
5:41
sounds like a good job. I want to get in the radio.
5:43
So the next day I went and applied at the radio station and
5:48
my, the manager and the owner of the radio station said, look,
5:51
you need to practice reading because your reading is not the
5:55
best. So he says practice, you know,
5:58
just read anything, read the newspaper, he said, but put a
6:01
pencil in your mouth, bite on it and talk.
6:05
And he says it's going to make you enunciate your words more
6:08
clearly. And so I did that for two weeks
6:11
religiously. And I went back and did another
6:15
John, get another reading. And I was hard.
6:18
And from there, I just fell in love with radio.
6:22
The only reason I got out of it was the money is just it's not
6:26
going to support a family of five kids that I have now, you
6:31
know, And you know, again, it's not for the money, but a lot of
6:36
people think these radio announcers make a lot of money.
6:38
If you got a syndicated program, absolutely you going to make
6:41
good money. But trust me, my program was
6:44
syndicated in about a 30 mile radius.
6:47
You know what happened? That's about it.
6:49
And what kind of a program was it we had playing music?
6:53
Was it a talk show? We had a mixed format.
6:56
We had talk show, we had, we played a variety of music.
7:01
We played country, we played French because South of
7:04
Louisiana has what we call Cajun music.
7:08
So on certain nights there would be Cajun music.
7:11
I tried to stay off of those nights because I can't speak
7:15
French. But every once in a while, you
7:17
know, I was stuck doing a French program and not talk in English,
7:22
you know, and play the French music and, you know, So certain
7:25
times of the day, we'd play country.
7:27
Then, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon, we'd go to American
7:30
Top 40. And then at night we'd go to
7:33
country, you know, So that was a mixed format, and it really
7:36
wasn't that bad. And then eventually the radio
7:38
station went all country. All country.
7:42
So if I were to listen to radio stations in South Louisiana
7:45
today, am I finding any that are focusing on French broadcasting
7:49
in French? You can find some, yeah, not
7:51
many, but you will find a few. And if, if if they're not, I
7:54
won't think you find one speak done all the broadcasting in
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French, but they'll have some segments in there for the French
8:01
speaking people. The Cajun language is dying
8:04
another generation that'll be gone.
8:06
You know, it's not the the same French as, you know, from
8:10
France, something like that. And my mom tried to teach me
8:15
French when I was about 30 years old.
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And I said, mom, it's a little late.
8:18
And our parents spoke French and didn't want to teach their
8:22
children because they didn't want us to know what they were
8:24
talking about. So they never taught us French,
8:28
you know, and then they realized the era of their ways.
8:31
And so, I mean, I tried to start taking French for my mom and I
8:34
was thinking I had five years of Spanish.
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So what was end up happening? I was speaking half the half the
8:40
sentence in French and half in Spanish.
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I just couldn't master it, you know.
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So I told mom, you know, let's give up on the French teaching.
8:47
So that that was it, you know. I can relate to that.
8:50
My father was born in southern Italy, and the same kind of
8:54
thing like him and his parents, that was sort of like their
8:57
secret language. They could talk about how rotten
8:59
the kids were being without us understanding it.
9:02
Yeah. That was it, you know, and then
9:03
they realized, I mean, there's very few people today around
9:06
here that speak Cajun French. And they tried to and they still
9:11
have some programs, what they call the French immersion, my
9:14
daughter and went through it for six years where in school, half
9:19
the day, half the classes were taught in French and the other
9:22
half was taught in English. And you could go all the way up
9:25
through the 12th grade doing it and she did.
9:29
But when you take it in school and you're not using it every
9:32
day in the public, you just, you know, you lose it.
9:36
You're not going to. It's not going to be fluent.
9:39
So, Mark, let's shift gears a little bit.
9:41
Let's talk about the financial hardship that led you to 1st
9:45
starting a nursing agency. That was fun.
9:49
I'd opened up a children's clothing store called Bare
9:52
Necessities. Just I wanted to, you know, do
9:55
something on my own. I was working at the radio
9:58
station and I was working at the hospital and then I opened.
10:02
By this point, you had become an LPN and a respiratory therapist.
10:05
OK. And what happened, the
10:08
children's clothing store didn't make it, you know, so when I
10:11
shut down, I still owed the bank 100, I think 60 something,
10:14
$1000. And everybody said, you know, go
10:17
ahead and declare bankruptcy, yadda, yadda, yadda.
10:19
I said, look, I'm not declaring bankruptcy.
10:21
I said I borrowed the money, I owe it.
10:23
So I went to the bank. You know, I paid off all my shut
10:25
it down, had enough money to pay off all my small creditors, but
10:29
I had that big note looming at the bank.
10:31
So I told the bank, I said, look, just turn it into a house
10:34
now, you know, so they turned it into a 30 year house note 558,
10:38
fifty a month. I remember that number so well.
10:41
And after about three years I said, man, I got to do this for
10:45
27 more years. This is not going to be fun.
10:48
So one night I was working ICU and there was a nurse from the
10:51
Philippines and she was actually an agency nurse and saying how
10:56
much money she made. She had opened up her own
10:58
agency. And I said, man, I just need to
11:00
make 160,000 to pay off that debt.
11:04
So when she finally realized that I was trying to, I guess,
11:09
try more information about her business, she just clammed up.
11:12
So anyway, I opened up a nursing agency and, you know, praying it
11:16
was going to work. And a year later, you know,
11:19
after about the first year, didn't make any money.
11:22
It was just getting started. I didn't have any business.
11:25
It was promoting the business and and one of the nurses I
11:29
worked with at the hospital called me and said, Mark, you
11:32
still have your nursing agency. I said, yeah, she goes, well, I
11:34
have two patients that need Ryan, the clock nursing care.
11:37
She goes, are you interested? Because the insurance company
11:41
don't want the family to handle it anymore.
11:44
They want an agency to take over.
11:46
So we got those first two cases and they were retired school
11:50
teachers. So just on those two cases, I
11:53
would say a year later I went to the bank and wrote them a check
11:56
for $160,000. Wow.
11:59
And I paid off the debt. So let's back up a little bit
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because I'm going to go to the bankruptcy part of this, first
12:05
of all, to talk about the stress that this puts you through,
12:08
right? You're married at this point.
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Do you have kids? Yes, I had two kids at that
12:12
time. Two kids at that point.
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So you're working two jobs, you're at the radio station,
12:16
you're at the hospitals and LPN and a respiratory therapist and
12:21
you try to start this business. It was unsuccessful.
12:24
Now you've got this huge debt looming over your head.
12:27
The easy button in that case is to declare bankruptcy just.
12:31
One that would tell on you. Pretty quickly wipe that debt
12:35
out. Right.
12:36
I think it says a lot about your character that you were like,
12:39
Nope, I, I owe that money. I, I made a commitment to pay
12:44
that back. I'm not going to hide under the
12:46
protection of the bankruptcy and I, I'm going to do whatever I
12:50
can to pay it back. And what was that thought
12:52
process? It wouldn't bother me more if I
12:55
would have declared bankruptcy and and and walked away from
12:58
that debt, even though, you know, they say you have to wait
13:01
seven years and then you write gets clean again.
13:04
I think just the fact knowing I took advantage of somebody
13:08
because, you know, the money I borrowed from that bank, that
13:11
was somebody's money. You know, wasn't the bank's
13:13
money. It was somebody's money.
13:15
And I mean, you know, the bank had a business, but I just
13:19
couldn't bear that I was going to do that to somebody because I
13:25
owed it. I mean, we all take on
13:27
responsibilities and, you know, just like I teach my kids, live
13:31
up to them. You know, we all make mistakes.
13:34
Fix them and you'll be OK. And then thank God, you know,
13:38
because if had I not had that debt, I wouldn't be talking to
13:42
you today about a nursing agency because I really, I wanted to go
13:46
to school to be an attorney. And so I was in college at the
13:50
same time that I had three jobs, basically the, the radio
13:56
station, the clothing store opened up and the hospital.
14:01
And I was going to college and my, my initial goal was to pay
14:07
off the debt and then go on to law school.
14:10
And the business did so well. I said, why do I want to be a
14:16
lawyer? You know, And just, I mean, I
14:19
stuck with it and hearing him today.
14:24
So you got some information from this one nurse that was also
14:29
working at the hospital that had her own agency, right?
14:32
So give you a little bit of idea maybe how the industry work,
14:37
maybe that there was an opportunity there.
14:39
But at some point she clams up, you decide you're going to start
14:42
this business. I mean, I have to imagine you
14:45
don't really know what you're doing when you first get
14:47
started, do you? No, I went in business with an
14:50
attorney. You kept a mistake in my life,
14:53
but one of the biggest because I knew there was going to be a lot
14:57
of contracts and and things to do.
15:00
And not to mention, I knew that I just financing, paying the
15:06
nurses was a a big issue. And I mean, he didn't put up the
15:09
money. We both went to the bank, we
15:11
signed a note, but we never had to borrow any money.
15:15
You know, I mean, despite what I say about the attorney, he was
15:19
an excellent business person. He did manage money well.
15:22
And you know, to this day, very few times I had to borrow money
15:27
from the bank to finance my business.
15:32
Today is a little different. We found a lot of our nurses
15:35
daily. So if people won't realize the
15:38
cost, you haven't want people to market.
15:40
I can open open up my emergency agency.
15:43
Go ahead. I mean, I'm not stopping you in
15:45
more than area. You know when you paying, you
15:50
know, registered nurse $3540.00 an hour, they working 12 hours,
15:54
you got 10 nurses working. Imagine you payroll the next day
15:58
and that's and that's just every day and you don't get paid for
16:02
30, sixty, 90 days down the road.
16:05
So you got a lot to float and payroll, not to mention your
16:08
office staff and everything else.
16:09
So, you know, I always said I could never work on Commission
16:13
and I realized I've been working on Commission for 40 something
16:16
years because I own the business If I'm the last one paid, you
16:20
know, me and Mike are and so, but it's it's, it's worked out
16:25
well. We manage our money good and we
16:29
grow in I think 7 states right now.
16:33
I really couldn't tell you. Every state we're in, I know
16:35
we're in, you know, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi dollars
16:40
recent win 7 during COVID, I think we win 15.
16:44
COVID shot us up like, Oh my God, it was scary how many
16:49
nurses they need and what they were willing to pay and that
16:53
that helped get this business going a lot faster.
16:59
Now, of course, a lot of that business backed off from when
17:02
COVID went away, but we did maintain some relationships and
17:05
we're still staffing some of those facilities in other states
17:08
today, you know, so. You mentioned that going into
17:13
business with that attorney was a huge mistake.
17:16
There were some good things that he did.
17:17
He was a good businessman. He helped with the contracts,
17:20
maybe helped with the bank. Yeah, the, the bad thing, one
17:23
day he came after, you know, we were, we were successful.
17:26
And I mean, I wasn't, we wasn't making, you know, a whole lot of
17:29
money. But I was living pretty good.
17:32
And he came to my house one night and probably sat on my
17:35
couch and propped his foot up on another chair.
17:38
And he goes, you know, Mark, I'm an attorney and you're just a
17:41
nurse. And I think I should make more
17:43
money than you laughed. I thought he was joking, you
17:47
know, and I said, and then when I realized he was a joke, and
17:50
then I said, this is a nursing agency.
17:52
I'm a nurse. You're not, You're an attorney,
17:55
You know. But he was real arrogant in that
17:57
sense that because he had the law degree, he should make more
18:02
money than me. And that got us into a big
18:04
tussle and we ended up splitting up.
18:09
So did you end up having to take a loan from the bank to get
18:12
started or not? No.
18:14
No, OK. And I mean we just pulling money
18:17
from your own pockets. To your pockets.
18:19
Because when I first started, I wasn't, I didn't have, you know,
18:22
we just had two patients and back then I was paying them
18:25
weekly. So I still work at the hospital
18:29
and the nursing and, and the radio station and that check
18:34
would go to help finance my nursing business because my
18:38
wife's the registered nurse. So, you know, we lived off our
18:41
check. We didn't have any house note or
18:43
anything like that. I was very fortunate my wife's
18:46
family gave us a house. So I never had a house note or
18:49
anything like that. So I could use my check to help
18:52
finance the payroll. And as the business started
18:55
slowly growing, I just wouldn't take out the money.
18:58
I'd leave it in the business to be able to float the business,
19:01
you know, and you know, a lot of people, you know what people
19:05
don't realize, most people don't fail.
19:08
People who fail in business, they usually fail within the
19:11
first five years and they don't fail because they don't have any
19:13
business. They fail because they have too
19:15
much business and don't know how to handle it.
19:18
And I think that's why I went into business with the attorney
19:22
in the beginning because I didn't have that knowledge, you
19:24
know, and if I would have had the opportunity, you know, to
19:28
bring home 1/4 of $1,000,000 a year, I'd spend it back then
19:33
instead of leaving it in the business.
19:35
Hey, I'm working hard. I want the money, you know, and
19:37
he, he didn't allow that. And I, and I'm grateful today
19:40
for that. You know, I really AM.
19:42
You kind of learned some discipline early on that has
19:44
helped you down the road. Yeah.
19:46
And so at what point did, and I should mention that your your
19:50
partner, like Darby, we had on the podcast here a few weeks
19:55
back. And so once folks are done
19:57
listening to this interview with Mark, I highly recommend that
20:00
they go back and listen get just a different perspective, you
20:03
know, different kind of personality.
20:04
But how was it that the two of you first met?
20:08
That's where my stepfather was a Barber and he was cutting Mike
20:13
Darby's grandfather's hair, you know, on a regular basis.
20:17
And they would talk and Mike's grandfather said he had a, his
20:22
grandson was a nurse. And my stepdad said, well, my
20:25
son's a nurse, you know, he said they need to get together.
20:28
And that went on for a few months.
20:30
And finally Mike and I met, I went and meet him and I asked
20:32
Mike, I said, you know, how would you like to come into
20:35
business in a nursing agency? And Mike said, no, I really
20:39
don't. You know, I worked agents
20:42
before. I said, no, I don't want you to
20:43
work as a nurse. I want you to come into business
20:46
and help manage it. It's a different, you know,
20:50
physician and, you know, I said, look, he goes, well, I had my
20:54
lawn care business as a side business, you know, so Mike was
20:57
working full time as a nurse and had a lawn care business and
21:00
said, well, the big difference is you have to be there to go
21:03
cut all those people's grass. I said, you can't cut grass in
21:07
Peoria, IL You know, I said you're just not going to do it.
21:10
So I said where the nursing agency, a lot of artwork is
21:14
done, you know, as far as the recruiting of the nurses and
21:17
everything, it's done online. So they very seldom walk into
21:22
your door. You know, half the nurses, more
21:24
than half, I probably never meet.
21:26
And so I said, I told Mike, I said you'll come on as a
21:29
regional director and you'll be paid a straight Commission.
21:33
And, you know, I told them all the numbers and everything and
21:35
he said, yeah, I'll try it. I said, look, you have nothing
21:38
to lose. I'm not asking you for any
21:39
money. I put up all the money.
21:41
If it don't work, you lose nothing but your time.
21:44
And Mike, you know, took the position and that's history.
21:50
I mean, we, you know, he started getting some business and I
21:53
helped him. I gave him some business in the
21:54
beginning that would otherwise have been the companies, but I
21:57
wanted Mike to get some business to entice him and.
22:02
Give him a little momentum. Yeah, once he tasted the success
22:05
of it, he he stuck with it. And here we are today.
22:09
And Mike was not an owner then, but eventually, you know, we
22:13
bought him in as an owner and we split up with other companies.
22:17
And now it's just me and Mike. And we said, you know, we don't
22:21
need any more partners, Mike and I.
22:24
And look, we have our up and downs.
22:25
Mike, you know, has differences and but I know exactly how Mike
22:30
is going to do something in a certain situation and he knows
22:34
what I'm going to do. So we know each other well and
22:37
that's because we we think a lot of like as far as the business
22:40
goes, you know, So we, you know, sometimes I'll say do something
22:46
to Mike, don't want to do it in the ended up being right and
22:48
vice versa, you know, so we work well together.
22:51
We don't if we have a problem, we talk it out.
22:54
Sometimes it's yelling, you know, but hey, we eventually
22:57
work it out. That's why we're still here
23:00
today. Well, and if both of you kind of
23:03
have the same or similar, you know, North Star, you know that
23:07
you're trying to get to the same place and that's the the same
23:10
value system. Sometimes in some relationships,
23:13
a little bit of that friction is helpful because it's like I've
23:16
got an idea. No, I've got an idea and OK,
23:19
let's rub together and let's let's figure out where the the
23:22
best idea is. Absolutely.
23:24
Yeah. And So what was behind the
23:26
initial decision to invite Mike in as a partner?
23:30
Obviously he's he's in a drive. He's doing well his drive.
23:34
He would. Mike was very hungry in the
23:38
sense of he went out, got the business, found new business and
23:42
he hustled and he knew it was this business is 24 hours a day,
23:46
seven days a week. And Mike never complained about
23:49
it, you know, because when we first started off, you know, we
23:52
didn't have all the technology we have today.
23:54
We had pages on the side. We didn't have cell phones, you
23:59
know, So if you got, if you page, it went off.
24:01
You had to stop somewhere. If you want the road and get it,
24:03
find a pay phone somewhere, make a call, you know, and might
24:07
never complain. He just did the work.
24:09
And I think that was a big part that what I saw in him, you
24:14
know, I said, no, He, he, he needs to be an owner.
24:18
Good on you to have that vision because I mean, it's, it's very
24:20
natural for us to sort of want to hold on to and protect what's
24:23
ours. We started, you know, this was
24:25
mine. But to be able to have, I'm
24:29
going to use the word generosity.
24:30
I think that's part of it. But I mean, obviously it's not
24:33
just you doing it for charity. You saw it's a strategic thing.
24:36
He can be a great partner. We're aligned.
24:38
I can incentivize him even more and the business is going to
24:41
grow more as a result of bringing him in.
24:45
Yeah, and it, it takes some of the work off my back.
24:47
You know, I didn't have to be the only one bringing in
24:50
business now. So with Mike there and Mike
24:52
would bring in distance, he would handle it, the company
24:55
would grow, I'd benefit from it. I knew that and Mike would
24:58
benefit. So I didn't have to do all the
24:59
work. You know, when I was business
25:01
with the attorney at night, we had to take call, you know,
25:06
after 5:00. Like I said, if a nurse called
25:08
in, they they had somebody, you know, they call the nurse, the
25:12
answering service. And if one of our nurses didn't
25:15
show up, we had to find another nurse and the attorney just, you
25:19
know, just say, oh, I can't find one.
25:22
He made me do it. You'll find a nurse Mark.
25:25
And so I told him a lesson one day is I remember it was a
25:28
Friday and he was on call and he goes, well, I'm going out and
25:31
eat with, with my wife. You know, we go on, we have a
25:35
dinner reservation and, and right then the phone rang and
25:38
the nurse was calling in. I said, well, you and call
25:40
handle. He said no, you handle it.
25:43
I said, well, you're on call. So, you know, we got an argument
25:45
to stay right there. So I called a nurse, another
25:49
nurse that would take the the call in position.
25:51
I said, I'll tell you what, I'll pay you $100.00 an hour if you
25:54
go in. She goes, I'll do it.
25:55
Hung up the phone. The attorney went ballistic.
25:58
I said, hey, you wanted me to take the call.
26:00
I wasn't going to waste my time. You know, yeah, we losing some
26:03
money. But hey, I got the shift
26:04
covered. And yeah, so he, he learned real
26:06
fast. Don't don't push it on me again.
26:10
And I wasn't doing it just to be ugly.
26:12
I mean, I needed a nurse and I knew $100.00 an hour for an LPN
26:16
would guarantee that nurse would go to work.
26:18
Yeah, right. Well, two birds, one stone, it
26:20
sounds like. And so when when Mike first
26:24
joined. What year is this?
26:29
As a regional director, it's sometimes I get the early 90s or
26:35
so, somewheres around, maybe late 90s somewheres around
26:37
there. OK, because you made the point
26:39
that, oh, hey, you can't cut lawns in Peoria, IL, right?
26:44
So that says to me that even in the early 90s, you had moved
26:48
outside of just Louisiana for where you were doing staffing.
26:52
Is that right? It's still mostly Louisiana, but
26:54
it could have been New Orleans and, you know, north Louisiana.
26:57
I mean, it was just all over the state where a lot of nursing
27:01
agencies or home health agencies are usually tied with the
27:04
government to a 50 mile radius. They can't handle business
27:08
outside 50 miles. But since we don't deal with
27:11
Medicare and Medicaid, we're not under those guidelines.
27:14
So we could go out further than that 50 mile radius and so that,
27:19
you know, helped grow our business where if you were a
27:21
licensed home health agency and did a lot of Medicare or
27:25
Medicaid and got paid by the government, you were contained
27:29
to that 50 mile radius. Why is that?
27:31
Why is there that kind of limitation in?
27:33
Policy. I think they just want to make
27:34
sure that you're close enough to be able to handle the work, you
27:39
know, because it's hard, like, you know, like New Orleans,
27:42
where we are right now, is 150 miles from us.
27:46
So sometimes it's hard to find a nurse when you don't have a
27:49
local office there, you know. And I think the government just
27:52
wants to make sure that the home health agencies don't try to
27:58
take on more than, you know, eat more than they can choose those.
28:02
So how do you go about if your base is in southern Louisiana,
28:07
how do you go about finding nurses in right now 7 different
28:12
states? At one point during COVID it was
28:13
15. Years we just, we just
28:15
advertised and you know, we, we have the Internet site.
28:20
We'll also try and find key nurses from, let's say, you
28:25
know, give you like Biloxi Ms. I may bring in that nurse and pay
28:29
that nurse a little bit more, But that nurse works with other
28:32
nurses so they can find nurses for us.
28:35
So it's, it's kind of a network thing we do.
28:37
I'll pay them a little bit more than they'll help me recruit the
28:39
nurses. And this, this is the strategy
28:42
that you've used to to grow into all these different locations.
28:46
Was this something you sort of strategy you stumbled upon?
28:49
Did you try different things that didn't work?
28:52
I just knew I couldn't do it all in the beginning.
28:54
It was always me, you know, Even if I hired, you know, hired
28:58
somebody in the office, like a staffing director, if they had a
29:01
problem, they call me, you know, and many times I've gotten calls
29:05
on, you know, 2 or 3:00 in the morning or Christmas Day or
29:08
whatever. And I said no, I just can't keep
29:11
doing this all by myself. So that's when I came up with
29:13
the idea of regional director. I said, look, I'll bring them
29:16
on, give them a percentage of the business, not ownership, but
29:19
pay them a percentage of the profits.
29:21
And they'll work a lot harder. And then they know they have to
29:27
staff either the hospital or take care of the private duty
29:29
nurse or because if they don't make money, they're not getting
29:32
paid because I wasn't paying them a salary.
29:35
You know, they work strictly on commissions.
29:36
So they tend to work a little bit harder.
29:39
So each of these new geographies you go into, one of the first
29:42
things that you have to do is make sure you've got a good
29:44
regional director. There it helps.
29:46
Yeah, that that is the first thing.
29:47
Because if you don't, I'm fighting every other agency and,
29:51
you know, we're all battling for the same nurse.
29:53
There's, you know, like all the nurses that work for our
29:56
company, for Nurses Direct. Well, they may be signed on to
29:59
four or five other nursing agencies at the same time.
30:02
So we're all what happens is at a hospital Palm and say have a,
30:08
an ER shift tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM and need an ER nurse
30:12
where they're not just going to call me, they're going to call
30:15
all 5 nursing agencies. You know, my other mini they
30:18
have and then the first agency to call back that Staffs it gets
30:23
the shift. Now there are a few hospitals
30:25
that we do have what we call Priorities Shift staffing where
30:29
they'll give me 24 hours advance notice over the other agencies
30:33
because I've treated them well over the years.
30:35
I said I'm good nurses and I'm taking care of my business so
30:39
they'll call me first and give me 24 hours advance notice and
30:43
if I can't staff it then they'll blast it out to the other
30:45
nursing agencies. OK, so you've got a hospital
30:49
who's contacting 5 different nurse staffing agencies with the
30:54
same opening, right. And those five nurse staffing
30:57
agencies may have some of the same nurses that they're
31:00
contacting. Yeah.
31:02
And so what's the secret to Nurses Direct getting that nurse
31:08
to agree to your placement to that location rather than one of
31:12
your competitors? Sometimes they'll make less
31:14
money because it's funny you ask that.
31:17
A lot of times they'll have two phones and you hear, you know,
31:20
'cause we'll call at the same time, you know, for the ones
31:23
that we don't have that community shift staffing and
31:26
they'll say, well, nurses direct how much you paying for this
31:28
shift? Hold on, Advantage, how much you
31:31
paying for this shift? OK.
31:35
And I, you know, so I'll ask you what advantage offered you, you
31:37
know, and they offered me this an hour.
31:39
OK, I'll give you a dollar an hour and more.
31:40
OK, done. Yeah, it's it's crazy.
31:44
But you know, and like I tell the hospitals that said, you
31:47
know, if you have 5 car dealerships and they're all
31:50
selling Mercedes-Benz, what's going to happen?
31:53
I mean, if they all give good service, you're going to go buy
31:56
that Mercedes-Benz or Toyota, whatever it is, whoever's going
32:00
to give you the best price, OK. With nursing agencies, it's
32:04
completely opposite. The more agencies you allow when
32:07
the higher that cost goes. Because now, like I said, you
32:10
got nurses knowing that, you know, they work for several
32:15
agencies and they can drive up the cost just by saying, hey,
32:20
advantage of paying me this, how much you pay?
32:22
And I'm like, I'll lose that shift, you know, So sometimes
32:25
I'll pay and exactly what we're billing and I'll lose money but
32:30
I get that shift staff. So I just build a better report
32:33
that Oh well nurses rec y'all much faster than ABC agency and
32:37
get the shift staff. So then they'll call us first.
32:40
You know, sometimes they can give me a 5 minute head start
32:43
and that's enough. So on the nurses side, why do
32:49
they choose to work with an agency like yours or multiple
32:53
agencies like yours rather than establishing like a full time
32:57
job with one of these hospitals? The biggest advantage, they can
33:00
work where they want to work. They work when they want to
33:02
work. They do get paid more money.
33:06
They're not in the politics of, of, of working and being an
33:10
employee of that hospital where they have to work, you know, a
33:14
set schedule or something like that.
33:16
This way they can work at, you know, 567 different hospitals.
33:21
And when they don't want to work, they'll slip back and say,
33:23
now I'm not interested, I'm taking a few weeks off or
33:25
something. And so they'll that that's the
33:28
biggest reason. And as far as the hospital side,
33:32
you know, the hospitals use us because their census fluctuates
33:36
during the winter time or, you know, during COVID, like, you
33:40
know, instances like that, their census shoots up high.
33:43
Well, they need the nurses. But when their census goes back
33:47
down, if these nurses were their actual employees, they still
33:50
have that payroll. So then they have to start what
33:53
we call flexing the nurse. And so, you know, you stay home
33:56
today. Well, they don't get paid.
33:58
You flex them enough, then they say, OK, I'm out of you.
34:00
I'm going, you know, I need to make money.
34:02
So I'm going to work where I get paid and and I got a guaranteed
34:06
income. So that that's the biggest thing
34:08
for hospitals. It's, it's not a fixed cost of
34:12
their payroll. You know, when they don't, it's
34:14
a love hate relationship with us.
34:16
You know, they love us when they need us, but when they don't,
34:19
they hate us. And they think it's us that's
34:21
driving up the cost. And it's not really us.
34:24
It's the nurse. You know, we treat our nurses as
34:26
employees. Some agencies treat them as
34:28
independent contractors, which there are some issues about
34:32
that, that the IRS and the Department of Labor says that a
34:36
nurse cannot be an independent contractor because they're
34:39
guided, they're told what to do. And you know, if you read all
34:41
the guidelines what an employee and an independent contractor
34:45
is, it's just they're just not part of their payroll.
34:55
And it helps them financially, even though they may use this
34:58
for 10 years, you know, because they all want to get rid of
35:01
nursing agencies. So a lot of hospitals will build
35:03
up what they call their float pool.
35:05
So they'll pay them the same thing we're paying them as a
35:09
float nurse. In other words, we'll call you
35:11
only when we need you. But that's only one hospital.
35:15
So what happens? That nurse may only work one or
35:18
two times a month there, whereas if they work for an agency, we
35:21
have several different hospitals we can send them to work so they
35:24
can still pay their bills. So you don't really see it as a
35:27
threat to your business model at all.
35:30
When your nurses go into, you know, different hospitals, is
35:34
there any sort of a culture clash?
35:36
Are they seen as outsiders? Or they more in the beginning
35:40
they are because the hospital nurses, employees know they're
35:45
making more money. So a lot of times they'll give
35:47
them the worst patients, the hardest patients, more patients
35:51
than the other nurses had that are employees at the hospital.
35:55
But once they get to know the nurse, they, they kind of back
35:59
off and, and, and they treat them as one of their own because
36:03
I mean, some of our nurses will work at a hospital that's been
36:06
there four or five years as an agency nurse and they just, they
36:11
become one of theirs. You know, you don't even know
36:13
they are an agency nurse. And so you made the point that
36:18
you know you'd really treat your nurses as employees, whereas you
36:21
know some of the others are are treating them as independent
36:24
contractors. And So what benefits does that
36:26
afford the employee? How does that show up
36:29
differently for them? Well, for the nursing agency and
36:32
hospital, they get to charge less and pay the nurse more
36:36
because I have all their FICA. I have, you know, I have to
36:38
match the Social Security, all the taxes I have to take out and
36:41
pay. So what an independent
36:44
contractor agency, they can charge the hospital less money
36:48
because they don't have all those, you know, tax
36:51
consequences and liabilities we have and pay the nurse a little
36:54
bit more than we're paying them. Again, because they don't have
36:57
all those liabilities that they were, you know, 12 hours and
37:01
they making $50.00 an hour. It's easier to calculate their
37:04
payroll and you just write them a check.
37:05
And then what ends up happening is at the end of the year, these
37:09
nurses, a majority of them didn't save for taxes and they
37:13
get popped. You know you're making some good
37:15
money now as an agency nurse and you didn't put away money for
37:20
your taxes. Because you're not having the
37:22
the payroll withholdings, you know, taken out to to help you
37:25
sort of budget that you're responsible for doing that on
37:27
your own and those employees aren't accustomed to that.
37:29
Yeah. And they're not.
37:30
So they get a big, you know, they'll get a $30,000 or $20,000
37:33
tax bill at the end of the year and they go, I can't pay that.
37:36
I said, well, if you work for us, we would pay that for you.
37:40
You know, they lose, you know, roughly about 8% by working as
37:44
an independent contractor, even though they pay him more and you
37:48
know, they don't pay him that much more.
37:49
They only may pay a dollar an hour more than what we pay him
37:52
as the independent contractors. But they're losing that
37:56
matching. They have to pay all of their
37:57
own Social Security, all their, you know, everything themselves.
38:01
So actually they're not getting paid more.
38:03
And I mean, I've showed many nurses on paper, look, this is
38:07
what they're paying you and this is what we're paying you, even
38:09
though it looks like we're paying you less, we're not
38:13
because look at the percent you got to add on at the end of the
38:16
year to pay your taxes. And they have to go through a
38:18
full year to, to realize it because they just think I'm
38:22
misleading in them or, you know, whatever.
38:24
But at the end of the year, they realize I'm not working as an
38:27
independent contractor again. And not, you know, some of them
38:30
do save and they'll learn the budget and and put money aside
38:34
to pay their taxes. Now you made the point with your
38:38
clients, with the hospital facilities that you work with
38:41
that with some of those you have a preferred agreement with them,
38:46
you've taken good care of them. So they come to you first.
38:49
They give you, you know, 24 hour window to fill that position.
38:52
Tell me what it looks like for you to take care of a customer.
38:57
Like what are you doing better that the other companies didn't
39:01
do to make them want to give you this preferred status?
39:05
Probably 1 of the biggest thing is, was two things #1 sending
39:09
them a good qualified nurse and #2 I make sure that we stab them
39:14
as fast as we can because, you know, usually it's a floor
39:20
manager or unit supervisor that's calling us, you know, for
39:24
the need that they have. And a lot of times, if the
39:29
nursing agency doesn't feel that need, that unit manager may have
39:33
to work that shift. And they're usually salaried so
39:37
they don't get paid any extra money.
39:38
My wife was in that position. She was the head of Labor and
39:41
delivery. And a lot of times back then it
39:45
was really hard to find nursing agency nurses that work the
39:48
labor and delivery. My wife was the unit manager and
39:51
working 7080 hours a week as a baby.
39:53
You're making half of what the, the nurses working underneath
39:58
you are, you know, and I taught her real fast.
40:00
I showed her real fast. So when she resigned, there's a
40:04
check went up, you know, because number one, I mean, she, she was
40:07
making at one point like 3-4 dollars an hour.
40:10
So this is ridiculous. So you can call yourself the
40:12
boss. It's not worth it.
40:15
Right, So what do growth plans look like for Nurses Direct?
40:20
It's looking good. We're getting some contracts
40:22
with some major hospital facilities that are nationwide
40:29
and it's harder to get into these big facilities just
40:34
because they are real stringent. I mean, you know, we don't just
40:37
send any nurse to hospital and okay, you know, I, this hospital
40:42
called go to work once a nurse is once we staff, before we
40:46
staff a hospital, that nurse goes through a screening process
40:50
from that hospital, you know, to see all their credentials, make
40:54
sure everything's legit, their nursing license valid, they CPR
40:57
certified and all the credentials that they say they
41:00
have, they actually have. They'll interview that nurse,
41:04
then they'll go through orientation to learn that
41:07
facility, you know, how they do business, so to speak, how they
41:10
care for the patient, their charting system and everything.
41:13
So that could be anywheres, you know, from three to five days of
41:18
orientation that that nurse has to go before she's able to work
41:22
RE at that hospital. So it's not a matter of just
41:26
picking up the phone and sending in any nurse.
41:28
It's I wish it was that easy. You know, in the earlier days it
41:32
kind of was, you know, but now with all the, you know, rules
41:36
and regulations and everything out there in Louisiana now you,
41:41
you used to not have to be licensed by Louisiana to be a
41:45
temp staffing agency. Now you, you have to go through
41:49
some, you don't go through the, through the state meet that
41:53
requirements. And now we're licensed by the
41:55
state of Louisiana. So you mentioned some of these
41:59
bigger National Hospital systems being more stringent, more
42:03
difficult to get into. What does that process look like
42:05
for you? This is very hard because they
42:08
have a lot of nursing agencies already staffing them, you know,
42:11
and you know, why would they pick us?
42:13
Because the other facilities aren't meeting their needs.
42:15
That's that's the only reason that's.
42:17
What it comes down to? Yes, and you know, so we strap,
42:21
we really strive on, you know, once a nurse is able to work in
42:28
that facility and we get a call and we have a need, we make sure
42:32
that we stab that shift as fast as we can and then we'll talk to
42:36
the hospital. You know, after that nurses
42:37
worked a couple of shifts for them.
42:39
They'll say, oh, look, we really like that nurse.
42:41
Well, instead of you calling me every day, why don't you put
42:44
them on like a 13 week contract? You know, so we'll put them on
42:48
the contract and that way they don't have to call us every day.
42:51
And it's, it's, it's good for all of us.
42:53
It's good for the nurse, it's good for us and it's good for
42:55
the facility because now they, they're guaranteed, you know, 36
42:59
hours a week or whatever that contract says.
43:02
And they were just like their own employee.
43:04
They are on a schedule. And again, the nurse are working
43:07
because they only tied that facility for, you know, 6813
43:12
weeks at the most. Yeah, Mark, one of the questions
43:15
I like to ask business owners is running a business, right?
43:19
You got to keep your eye on the bottom line, profit and loss.
43:22
You're not running a charity, right?
43:23
You got it. You got to make sure that you're
43:25
turning a profit. And as business owners, we've
43:27
got sort of two giant levers. I'll just put them into sort of
43:30
these two buckets. You know, 1 is how do I increase
43:33
sales? The other one is how do I
43:34
decrease expenses? As you think about your career,
43:38
are there any creative things that you've done to pull either
43:42
one of those levers in a certain direction?
43:44
I'm. Sure I have, I just can't think
43:48
of any write off. No, I don't put you on the spot.
43:50
I mean, I had to. Because it's just, we're all the
43:55
same again, I think it just goes back to, you know, having a good
44:01
staff in house that can get our nurses and, and, and not because
44:08
we spent a lot of money. When we look at a nurse to come
44:13
to work for us, we have to have a background check.
44:15
We have to do drug screens, we have to check all their
44:18
credentials and all of that is not free.
44:21
So we've learned over the years. So I guess what to do first,
44:25
because if a nurse comes back, if we call a nurse for her, OK,
44:30
we setting up a drug screen for you for her Wednesday, you know?
44:34
Oh, I can't make it then. OK, Well then let me look.
44:36
OK, I got one for you the next Monday.
44:38
Oh, I can't make it. Or they'll they'll make it.
44:41
They'll say they'll take it. And then that day or the day
44:44
before the drug screen, they'll call in.
44:46
There's a reason they're calling in and not going to that drug
44:48
screen because they're taking so.
44:51
You make the drug screening at the front end of the process so
44:54
you can weed them out more. Quickly, if you're not going to
44:56
the drug screen, I don't need you then you know you're not
44:59
going to do it because the first thing that's going to happen if,
45:02
if, if hospital is missing narcotics or any type of
45:07
medication, any nurse that day working on that floor, they will
45:11
be drug screened immediately. You know and, and look, I'm not
45:15
saying every nurse is taking drugs, OK, but if you keep
45:21
refusing to take a drug screen there, there there's a reason.
45:24
So I just say look pass on that nurse.
45:25
Let's move on to someone who's going to.
45:29
What are some other red flags that you see that you looked?
45:31
Out for so you know, we've learned over the years to to
45:34
look at little things like that. You come back with a bad
45:36
background check. Well, what's a bad background
45:39
check? OK, she has four speeding
45:41
tickets or whatever. You know, look, we all make
45:45
mistakes. Some people just like to drive
45:47
with a heavy foot. But if you have elder abuse,
45:51
child abuse or something like that, now that's all, you're not
45:54
working for us. Because a lot of times we'll
45:56
send nurses in nursing homes too, you know, and if you have a
45:59
charge for elder abuse, I'll send you into a nursing home.
46:02
And then all of a sudden something happens to that
46:04
patient, even though it's not our nurse that did it.
46:07
We're going to be looked at very, very closely, you know, So
46:11
we we won't even take that risk. No, Mark, what's a particular
46:17
challenge, personal professional that you've gone through,
46:20
overcome, lessons learned coming through the other side?
46:25
Getting married at a very young age.
46:27
What do you mean by very young? My wife was 15, I was 18.
46:31
Yes. It was one of those things, you
46:34
know, she got pregnant and we did get married and we gone on
46:39
48 years next July and we're still married.
46:43
We have five children, 3 grandchildren.
46:46
You know, she went to college, I went to college, we both went to
46:49
school. It, it was hard, you know, doing
46:54
that because in the beginning she wasn't a nurse.
46:58
She was going to nursing school. I was working at the, I was a
47:01
nurse waiting, you know, a few years before her.
47:04
So I was working as a nurse and working at the radio station.
47:08
So I had to constantly work two jobs and it's not fun.
47:13
I'm not the only one in the world that does that, you know.
47:16
And so I made sure that while she went to nursing school that,
47:21
you know, I pulled all the overtime I could because I knew
47:24
in the three years that it took her to finish that nursing
47:27
degree to make a lot more money, you know, and it would change
47:32
our financial situation. She actually wanted to be a
47:34
veterinarian. And for some reason that didn't
47:38
work out. So she told the nursing
47:41
instructor. She said, well, if I can't take
47:43
care of the four legged animals, I guess I'll take care of the
47:45
two legged animals. And she became a nurse and my
47:49
wife is a very good nurse and she's actually working in the
47:52
company now. My wife and Mike's wife, we
47:55
brought them in the company because if something happens to
47:57
Mike or myself that they own, you know, their, their owners as
48:02
well. So I wanted them to know the
48:04
business. So in the event when something
48:08
happens to us, you know they, they can just keep on and going
48:12
with the business. So they're.
48:13
Involved in the corporate side. Yeah, they are.
48:15
They make a decision because I think with.
48:17
Your wife, early on, she, she was a nurse that you were using
48:20
to to staff at client locations, right?
48:22
Is that right? Yeah.
48:23
Yeah. But now both, both your wife and
48:25
Mike's wife, they're involved in the corporate side of things.
48:27
Yeah. And Mike's wife is a teacher,
48:28
and she's very good at what she does.
48:30
You know, she comes in, she's doing them the, the, the
48:33
business side. And so as a teacher, she, she
48:36
was very structured. So I think she gave, she helped
48:39
structure us a lot more, you know, just in house and, and
48:44
done a great job. And, and then my wife being a
48:48
nurse, you know, she, we can tell because I'm a nurse.
48:51
Mike's a nurse, my wife's a nurse, my directors are nurses
48:54
like common Ord and stuff. So when we tell a nurse, you
48:58
know, look, go to this hospital, it's not that bad.
49:00
We know because we are nurses. We've been there.
49:03
We, we, we know exactly what they have to do.
49:05
If you never worked as a nurse, it's kind of hard to tell
49:08
somebody how, how it's going to be at that facility when you
49:12
never worked it, you know, or you never had.
49:15
You don't know what nurses about.
49:18
So, you know, I think that gives us a little benefit over the,
49:21
you know, the others. So, so kind of going back to
49:25
this challenge, your wife and you get married very young, your
49:30
parents as teenagers, right? You're working slash going to
49:36
school slash working two jobs. I mean you've got a lot going on
49:39
at a very young age, makes she either like fall apart or grow
49:44
it quickly. Well, when you're young, you can
49:47
do it. I can do it today.
49:49
You know, I'm 65 years old today.
49:51
When you're young, you have that drive and you have that ambition
49:54
and you have the energy. You know, today the, the, the
49:59
drive is there. I just don't have the energy
50:02
anymore. So, you know, there's a lot of
50:04
people. We have a big staff here and you
50:07
know, I can do any job this staff does in in house.
50:11
May take me a little bit longer, but you know, Mike and I created
50:15
the, the payroll system we have and stuff like that one on my
50:19
nephew who went to law school and he's really our, he helps us
50:27
not so much on the legal side, but he's great with it and he
50:31
looks at our contracts. He does a lot.
50:33
And Matt is just you. You met Matt, you know?
50:37
Matt was a big help in getting our our interview set up.
50:40
Here, yes, and Matt, I could not as a whip, it'd be, you know,
50:44
they say everybody's replaceable.
50:47
Yes, that's true. But it'd be hard to replace
50:49
Matt. It'd be really hard.
50:51
He's just versatile in so many things.
50:53
He really is. And I like to reward the people
50:56
that like Delane, you met. Delane is just an asset that
51:02
this company took on. She's the one that got us on
51:06
with one of the biggest hospital systems in the United States.
51:10
And she said, oh, I can get us in there.
51:12
I said, really, you know, everybody talks, let's see you
51:14
do it. And she did it.
51:15
So she is just, she's excellent. She, she, she, she's a
51:20
workhorse. I don't know if I can keep up
51:21
with her. That's terrific.
51:23
I'm glad we had the opportunity to give a shout out to a couple
51:26
of your valued team members there.
51:28
We don't always take the time to do that on the show.
51:30
It's a reminder to me to to to open that door.
51:34
Yeah, our, our staff, it took us a while to to get what we have.
51:38
I mean, it's not just them, our entire staff right now.
51:40
I think we found what we needed. You know, when we, when Mike and
51:45
I left, one of the attorneys that we're in business with,
51:49
with this company, he was hiring everybody.
51:53
The business was in his law office.
51:54
So he had everybody devoted to him, the employees, and they
51:57
wouldn't listen to anything Mike and I said.
52:00
And it caused a lot of problems. So, you know, we got them out
52:05
the company and now it's just me and Mike.
52:08
So the staff listens to us. And it just took us a while.
52:12
We had to, you know, we fired people that worked 2 days and we
52:15
said now you're not going to make it, you know.
52:17
And so, but now you know, our, our staffing directors, our
52:23
staffers, they're just, they're all excellent in my opinion.
52:27
I couldn't have a better staff right now.
52:29
And I think that's going to help us reach that next level.
52:32
You know, going, going from, you know, 30 employees to 100
52:36
employees is not that not that, that hard.
52:39
You know, we're roughly at 1000 employees right now and they're
52:42
not all full time. But you know, to go from 1000 to
52:46
10,000, it gets a lot harder. And my CPA told me he says Mark
52:52
right now is going to be the hardest time in your business
52:55
career. And I said why?
52:57
He says you're like a teenager. You're not a lot of operation
53:02
anymore, but you're not one of the big boys, you know, so
53:05
you're stuck in the middle. Like when we try to get on with
53:08
some software companies to say, well, we really like to have
53:13
5000 employees, you know, and we don't have 5000.
53:17
Well, we're not interested in doing business with you.
53:19
So we call another company. All you got 1000, all that's too
53:22
much. We can't handle that.
53:23
So you always fight and trying to find that balance.
53:26
So you know what he said you like a teenager growing up and
53:30
it now understand what he meant. So aside from finding the right
53:34
software partner fits, as you think through sort of, I don't
53:38
know, structurally, like what kind of changes do you think
53:41
need to be thought about as you go through this next phase of
53:45
growth? Cause clearly as you think about
53:48
when you first started the business decades ago, right?
53:51
And you're doing everything, you're putting your hands on
53:52
everything. You're, you're involved in every
53:54
part of the business. It's much different now.
53:56
You've had to remove yourself, you've had to put, you know,
53:59
layers in place, you've had to hire people.
54:01
What do you think that evolution of that process looks like as
54:05
you head into this next stage of growth?
54:08
Like I said, I think, I think it looks good because of the simple
54:10
fact that the staff that we have understand what we're trying to
54:13
do and they, they know the goals that we're trying to obtain and
54:18
reach. They, they know how to do it and
54:23
they will not slack on their job.
54:26
And I think that's going to be, you know, that's why I gave, I
54:28
put so much emphasis on promoting and, and giving credit
54:32
to my staff because that they're the ones that's going to get us
54:36
there. It's not me, it's not Mike, it's
54:38
all of us as a team and we work well as a team together.
54:43
Mark, any books or mentors you want to call out that have been
54:48
helpful to you? Oh, I'm really, you know, can't
54:53
say I have. I don't read surprisingly that
54:56
much or anything. You know, I get on the Internet
55:00
and you get on the Internet and you say all the, you know, you
55:02
can decipher these crazy people real fast.
55:06
But you know, to say, oh, look, I admire, you know, Bill Gates,
55:11
you know, which I do. Don't get me wrong, because Bill
55:13
Gates started Microsoft at the same time I got into the nursing
55:17
business. And yeah, look where Bill Gates
55:19
is at. Look where I'm at.
55:20
You know, of course it's different business and
55:23
everything. But you know, I, I just look, I
55:27
lived in the housing projects when I was young.
55:30
When I went to school, I went to a private school and I paid my
55:36
own tuition. My parents couldn't afford it.
55:40
I knew that I needed to work harder to, to, to, to achieve
55:47
the goals that I wanted. And, you know, living in the
55:51
housing projects, that was just, you know, it's just one of those
55:54
things. My parents didn't make that much
55:55
money and I want it out. You know, you went to school and
56:00
if you raise your hand, because she lived in the housing
56:03
project, she got free lunch, you know, And so at the beginning of
56:06
the year and they'd say, well, you know, you know, low income
56:10
family or something, never raised my hand.
56:13
I'll pay for my lunch. I'm I'm not getting it free.
56:15
I was too embarrassed, you know, and and that was just me.
56:19
I'm not saying you have to be embarrassed because you lived in
56:22
the housing projects or something like that.
56:23
Look, everybody has it rough at at one point their life, you
56:27
know, even the the wealthiest people, they weren't born that
56:30
way, you know, most of them weren't.
56:32
And you know, my kids are going to, you know, inherit everything
56:37
I have. But I promise you one thing,
56:39
they still going to work because I'm not just giving them
56:42
something for nothing. If, if, if, if they're going to
56:46
inherit, you know what I have and they think they're going to
56:49
sit back and drink or, and none of my kids are doing all that,
56:52
you know, I'm going to have some rules and stipulations on, on
56:56
that inheritance. I think that's so important.
56:59
I just want them to be successful and be proud of what
57:01
they do, you know, let it work for them, but I'm not going to
57:05
have them just sit back and do nothing.
57:07
You know, they've got to find something that drives
57:09
themselves, right? And you had that growing up in
57:12
the projects. I don't want to be here.
57:14
I want a different life for myself.
57:16
You, you, you had that, that push, that drive somebody who
57:19
got a chance to grow up in a, you know, a different, more
57:21
comfortable environment, right? It's, it's, it's a little more
57:24
difficult for the parent to kind of instill that same sense of
57:27
drive. Any, any suggestions you would
57:29
have for parents in that similar situation?
57:31
You were listening. How do you instill that sense of
57:34
drive, that sense of go get it? Like get up and and make
57:38
something of yourself. I think your children see it in
57:41
you. You know, they saw me getting up
57:43
at 3:00 in the morning. You know, they heard me leaving
57:45
the house to go to the office and they seen during Christmas
57:49
Day I had to leave and go do stuff for staff a ship, you
57:52
know, So it's not so much me telling them.
57:56
I think they saw everything I did and how hard I work to get
58:01
where I'm at today. So I really didn't have to tell
58:04
them. They saw it, you know, and and
58:05
and and and they come to me and, you know, none of my children
58:09
are in business with me. I can't say I would let them.
58:16
You know, my daughters, my youngest daughter, she got her
58:19
biology degree, graduated. Now she's going back to be a
58:22
nurse. She goes, oh, you know, if they
58:24
call me Pop, she goes, Pop, you want to work for your company.
58:26
And, you know, the other day she says, I don't know if I want to
58:28
work for your company. I said, well, that's a good
58:30
idea, You know, get out and make it on your own.
58:32
And when you're ready, you can come into the company.
58:35
But, you know, I certainly wasn't going to just hand over a
58:40
multi $1,000,000 business not shared to one of my kids just
58:43
because they became a nurse. You know, that that just wasn't
58:46
going to happen. And and my other children, who
58:48
wants a a police officer, my daughter-in-law, the police,
58:52
Sheriff's Department, K9 unit, my other son works in fraud
58:56
prevention, another son in ITI mean, they're, they're all doing
59:00
well for themselves. And you know, they're none of
59:02
them are hurting. They all have their own houses,
59:04
they're living well. And you know, they, they,
59:08
they're making it. And I think, like I said, it's
59:10
nothing that I had to tell them directly.
59:14
You lived by. Example from what you're from
59:16
what I'm hearing you say you yeah, yeah, they watched your
59:19
life example. Yeah, and it wasn't fun
59:21
sometimes, You know, I mean, they, they knew when I missed
59:25
one of their, you know, we used to coach my, my wife coached a
59:28
lot of ice hockey in South Louisiana, believe it or not.
59:32
And you know, sometimes I wasn't at all the games, but they
59:35
understood why. Was it because I was, you know,
59:38
playing golf or fishing or hunting or something like that?
59:40
It's because I was working. Yeah.
59:44
Mark, I just have one more question for you before I do it.
59:46
I want to do 2 things. First of all, for those
59:49
listening today, if you like today's content, please hit the
59:51
like, share or Subscribe button in your favorite podcast app.
59:54
Mark, I also want to let people know the best way to get in
59:56
touch with you. What would that be?
59:59
And somebody needed to actually get in touch with me.
1:00:01
I mean, they can call my cell phone direct.
1:00:04
I'm not afraid to give it out, you know, It's you.
1:00:06
Sure. Yeah, I'm sure, you know, like
1:00:09
if it's a bad number, I'll block it.
1:00:11
I don't have a problem with that.
1:00:12
It's 337-351-4888. And yeah, I mean, look, crazy
1:00:20
people are going to call me. I'm, I'll, I'll figure them out
1:00:23
real fast. What if I can help somebody?
1:00:26
You know, I'm, I'm glad to help somebody.
1:00:28
It's not, it's not a matter of, you know, somebody has to call
1:00:31
me just that's going to benefit me as well.
1:00:36
You know, if I can help somebody become a better person, more
1:00:40
than willing to do that. Where does that come from?
1:00:44
That sense of wanting to help others?
1:00:46
I. Thank my father who was never
1:00:48
around. Said one father.
1:00:52
You know, he died and I still never shed a tear for him.
1:00:57
My dog died. I cried for three months and I
1:01:00
didn't want to be like my father.
1:01:01
My stepfather was wonderful, you know, I mean, and, and if, if I
1:01:07
got it from anybody, it would have been my stepfather.
1:01:09
OK. You know he lived the.
1:01:12
Same way he had the same kind of heart.
1:01:14
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And my real father was just, you
1:01:17
know, he just didn't care about us.
1:01:20
He had his own, like, he disinhaired in US everything.
1:01:24
And, you know, I didn't need this money, but I would never do
1:01:29
that to my kids. And, you know, and so, and I
1:01:33
want to help people because people are sometimes they don't
1:01:38
know how to get out of a bad situation they're in.
1:01:41
And they just need somebody who's looking at it from a
1:01:44
different perspective, you know, And if I can help him, I help
1:01:48
him. Not saying I'm giving them all
1:01:50
kind of money or anything like that.
1:01:51
You know that that that's not how you help people by giving
1:01:53
them. Sometimes advice is worth a lot
1:01:55
more than. That absolutely.
1:01:57
And so, yeah. But if somebody needs to talk to
1:01:59
me, you know, like I said, I have five children, 3
1:02:02
grandchildren. My wife and I, we certainly had
1:02:05
our battles and, and growing up and everything.
1:02:08
But I love my wife more each day, every day, you know, and a
1:02:14
lot of people say, wow, that's weird.
1:02:16
What's weird about it? You know, we've been married.
1:02:20
Yeah. I'm 48 years.
1:02:22
And, you know, I asked my wife, I said, why are you still with
1:02:25
me? Because my wife probably looks
1:02:28
in her 40s and she's 63 years old, if not late 30s, OK.
1:02:32
You know, look at me, you know, I feel blessed to be married to
1:02:35
her. And I said why you stayed
1:02:37
married to me, you know, and she goes, well, I'm waiting for you
1:02:41
to become rich and I'm very patient.
1:02:43
You know how much money you need, baby, Tell me because I
1:02:48
think we're doing pretty good. You know, we don't have any dad
1:02:51
doing, you know, both of us could retire today with no
1:02:54
problems. And she goes, well, I married
1:02:57
you for your last name. I love your last name, you know,
1:03:00
and and that I truly believe she loves my last name.
1:03:03
I don't know why. Which is hers now, you know, and
1:03:07
that that's just, you know. Yeah, we we stuck it out though.
1:03:10
And then that's the main thing. Last question for you, Mark.
1:03:14
Sure. How do you see your industry
1:03:16
evolving in the next couple of years?
1:03:17
What do you think the big changes are that are coming?
1:03:22
I don't see radical changes because this has been going on
1:03:26
for so long. I think you're going to, they're
1:03:29
going to start wedding out the smaller companies and it's going
1:03:33
to be definitely more software driven.
1:03:37
I mean, we are software driven now with schedules and you know,
1:03:40
we put out a schedule and the nurse sees what shifts are open
1:03:43
and you know, they can pick it and stuff.
1:03:45
I don't see any drastic changes, but I do see the industry
1:03:49
tightening up a little bit to weed out some of the mom and
1:03:52
pops that just can't meet the the standards that are out there
1:03:56
today. And it's just to for the
1:03:58
protection of the patient. Well, it sounds like that'll be
1:04:02
good for Nurses Direct. It will.
1:04:04
It definitely will. And and for the patience as
1:04:06
well. Look, I certainly appreciate you
1:04:08
invite, you know, Mike and myself on to your your, your
1:04:11
show and that means a lot. I miss radio.
1:04:17
I'd go back in a New York SEC if somebody.
1:04:21
Yeah. Any any plans?
1:04:23
Any thoughts on how to do that? Well, I almost bought the radio
1:04:26
station I work for and three years and you know, I signed all
1:04:30
the non disclosures and I could actually afford it back.
1:04:33
You know, when I was going to buy it and they had two main
1:04:35
accounts that was supporting that station.
1:04:39
I said, man, if these two accounts go away, I'm stuck with
1:04:41
this debt, you know, and I didn't.
1:04:43
So I think I'm going to do something online.
1:04:46
I have a dual residency. I have a resident my my domicile
1:04:49
where I claim my residence is Gulf Breeze, FL.
1:04:54
So I have a house there, my driver's license, everything I
1:04:57
vote in Florida, everything. So I work, I'm working with the
1:05:00
city to set up an online television back slash radio
1:05:06
station, but online. And so I think I'm going to just
1:05:09
have to get into it that way. And the city was really
1:05:12
receptive because for some reason the city doesn't have
1:05:16
those website. And I said, look, let me do
1:05:18
something and we can do interviews.
1:05:21
And then when y'all need to get out something, they'll know
1:05:23
where to go, you know, so they'll have a a certain spot on
1:05:27
the Internet and to find out the information that y'all want to
1:05:30
get to the citizens of, you know, of the town.
1:05:34
Well, we're going to have to keep in touch and when that
1:05:37
happens, not if, but when that happens, you'll have to let me
1:05:40
know and we'll have you back on the show or we'll do some sort
1:05:43
of a cross joint interview. I I think that would be a lot of
1:05:46
fun. I certainly will let you know.
1:05:48
All right. Well, hey, Mark said.
1:05:50
Well, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your
1:05:52
time and your story with us today.
1:05:53
I really appreciate it. Look, I enjoyed giving it and
1:05:56
hopefully somebody can learn from it.
1:05:57
And again, I wish you all the success and thank you for
1:06:01
inviting me. Absolutely, folks.
1:06:03
That's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:06:06
Thanks for learning with us today.