Home Care Strategy Lab

#72 Saying yes to every family might increase revenue, but one wrong-fit client can cost your agency caregivers, reputation, and weeks of scheduling headaches. Becky Reel explains the waitlist mindset she used to protect her team, strengthen the client experience, and create demand—and why a true waitlist is fundamentally different from a staffing problem. She shares the hard lines her agency established around shift minimums, geography, caregiver safety, unrealistic expectations, and families who began negotiating from the first conversation. We also break down what a hospitality-driven intake call sounds like and why every office employee should be prepared to handle one. Becky closes with four super powerful mindset shifts that will help your agency become easier to refer, more memorable, and impossible to confuse with the competition.

Sponsors:

Creators and Guests

Host
Miriam Allred
Host @ Home Care Strategy Lab

What is Home Care Strategy Lab?

Is there a single right way to run a home care agency? We sure don’t think so. That’s why we’re interviewing home care leaders across the industry and asking them tough questions about the strategies, operations, and decisions behind their success. Join host Miriam Allred, veteran home care podcaster known for Home Care U and Vision: The Home Care Leaders’ Podcast, as she puts high-growth home care agencies under the microscope to see what works, what doesn’t, and why. Get ready to listen, learn, and build the winning formula for your own success. In the Home Care Strategy Lab, you are the scientist.

Miriam Allred (00:00)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. Today I'm sitting across from a fan favorite, Becky Reel Becky, welcome back to the show.

Becky Reel (00:10)
Thanks for having me.

Miriam Allred (00:12)
I already told you this, but this morning I went to look and see when the last time I interviewed you. And it was back in October, so it's almost been a year. That was episode number thirty three. And now here we are due for another round. Now doing episode number seventy two. So excited to revisit the conversation and hear what we've learned and the things that you're thinking about. So excited for this conversation.

Becky Reel (00:32)
It's always so fun with you. Happy to be here.

Miriam Allred (00:34)
I hope everyone listening to this knows you, but there might be a few that don't. So for those that don't, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself briefly.

Becky Reel (00:41)
Sure. So hi everyone. Becky Real of Real Home Care Consulting. I am a recovering home care agency owner. I took over my family's agency in the Chicagoland area. And we grew at about 300% year over year. And we were named the number one home care agency in North America by Activated Insights in 2022, before we sold a private equity in 23. And so now we

We really take a holistic view of agencies and my partner Krysten and I are working with startups and agencies that are stuck at plateaus and helping them get out of their own way. My big push with agencies is that you should be running the agency and the agency should not be running you. So we work on building an agency that fits your lifestyle more than anything.

Miriam Allred (01:30)
I love it. And you focus on startups. I think that's one of the things that's most unique about you. I think a lot of consultants kind of want to like get out of the startup world, but you love the startups. You love that like early stage, the struggle,

Becky Reel (01:40)
I do. I do.

Miriam Allred (01:42)
the learning, like all of it. What is it about that stage that you love maybe the most? I know that's a hard question, but what do you love the most?

Becky Reel (01:49)
I mean, I do love existing existing agencies too, but I think the thing about startups that gets me so excited is the stories that come from it. So usually it's someone's second, third career. You know, they worked in corporate for X amount of time and now they're ready to do something for themselves to give back. So it's usually they had a positive experience or a negative experience with an aging loved one or home care. And they think they can either do it better because they saw a gap in the system or they

they they wanna replicate something amazing that happened in their life. And so I love hearing those stories and I love helping people figure out what they're gonna do with this next step in their in their life. And it's just really rewarding for us.

Miriam Allred (02:32)
Yeah. I've been to some of your events and dinners over the years and I think that's one of the things that I love most. I don't know why. I mean, this is across the board in home care, but at your events I've specifically talked to people who are in their third career. Home care is literally like their third career. And I love those people. Like I just admire them. I think like, they could be retired, they could be traveling, they could be off doing,

Becky Reel (02:49)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (02:49)
you know, whatever they want, but they have had a personal experience often with home care and they feel like they have a lot left to give and all of their previous

Becky Reel (02:56)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (02:56)
experiences led them to like this moment to start a home care company. And I am just

Becky Reel (02:59)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (03:00)
Probably like you so inspired by those people.

Becky Reel (03:02)
It's just, I mean, my mom started the agency, right? When at her th probably her third, fourth career, and I don't I just resonate so deeply with it. And I feel like those agency owners are usually the most successful because they have nothing to lose. They're they're they're truly doing this because they have that passion and that

Miriam Allred (03:19)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Reel (03:19)
mission in their life and it shows and I just love being a part of it.

Miriam Allred (03:25)
I love your dinner series. some people listening to this may not have even heard of what those are. Just give kind of a quick teaser of some of these events that you put on and who's invited and what kind of like the purpose of them is.

Becky Reel (03:36)
Yeah, so they are carefully curated dinners, 20 ish max amount of agency owners. and it's really built on what I wish I had when I had the agency. Running an agency is very lonely. It's lonely at the top. You're taking care of your clients, your caregivers, their families, everyone, right? Your own ever everyone in between. And I often would ask myself, Well, who's taking care of me? And the answer was nobody.

And so the dinners are really meant to be a support group for agency owners to come together. It's not a networking event. It's it's a it's a facilitated conversation to really get to root causes of why we're burnt out or how do we get from X to Z and but we do it in a collaborative way. there's no selling, there's no pitching. It's really meant to be an intimate conversation, a facilitated conversation, and a way to keep people connected to others in this space because we

whether they're a competitor of yours or they're not, we need to be connected and support each other. And so it's the overall mission is to bridge the gap of isolation in our industry.

Miriam Allred (04:38)
And they're hosted in most of the larger cities around the country. And so people can kind of like look at your website and see where the dinners are gonna be

Becky Reel (04:44)
Yeah, yeah.

Miriam Allred (04:45)
so that they can attend likely one kind of in their area. But if not, you're always welcome to fly into different events. But I just love the concept and I agree that most owners I talk

Becky Reel (04:50)
Yep. Thank you. I love that.

Miriam Allred (04:53)
to, they're isolated out in their market and siloed. And you and I both are trying to like bridge that gap of like no one should be isolated, no one should be building these companies

Becky Reel (04:59)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (05:00)
alone anymore. But there are still a lot of owners that just feel like lonely and isolated and they need that sounding board, that network. And so again,

Part of both of our objectives is to like bridge those gaps and introduce people and connect people.

Becky Reel (05:12)
Yeah. It's I l I love them. It's probably one of my most favorite parts of what we get to do.

Miriam Allred (05:17)
So let's let's get into the topic. We're gonna cover a variety of things. But one of the things that you and I have talked about is part of the mindset that you built your agency around. And it's still kind of the core of how you coach and consult these home care agencies today, which is around this like waitlist mindset. You yourself have said you said no often in your business to clients, to caregivers, to families, and that actually drove demand and set you apart in the Chicago market. And so I wanna understand that like.

waitlist mindset, you know, how you said no, what those intake calls look like. You know, we're gonna talk about a lot of the a lot of the differentiators that you built your agency around and how a lot of that is still relevant to how agencies position themselves today because a lot has changed since you were running your business, but also the thing that hasn't changed is competition. It is as competitive a market out there as it's ever been. And so people need to be building differentiated businesses. So anyway, the super relevant. Let's start with just kind of high level

The waitlist mindset concept that might sound kind of strange to people. So just kind of define what that meant for you.

Becky Reel (06:23)
Yeah. I think for us, and it took us a long time. I don't wanna pretend like day one I came in with this. It took us a while to figure out who we were in our industry, right? And who we were in the community to make us unique. and I think owners treat demand like it's a volume problem in our industry, and more than anything, I feel like it's a positioning problem.

More eyeballs on your agency isn't necessarily going to bring you the right clients. So it's more about building clarity about who you are, who you want to serve, and what your agency is really about. Because at the end of the day, I always say this is home care is home care is home care. We all at the end of the day do the same thing. It doesn't matter if you're a franchise or an independent. We're all keeping people home.

As an alternative to a facility, right? We're keeping people home in the comfort of their own homes. But what is truly your differentiator? And that word just gets thrown around so much, right? You know, everyone's compassionate, they're caring. It's the same thing over and over again. And I I I hope you are. At the bare minimum, you should be, right? Otherwise, you shouldn't be in this industry. But I think it's about really understanding who you are as an agency and who you want to serve, and then being able to say no.

Because if you're wasting a lot of time serving the wrong clients, it's taking you away from the right clients. And so that's what I mean about building a waitlist.

Miriam Allred (07:54)
You said it Okay,

you said it took you a while to like get to this point. Like approximately how long? Like w at what point in the business do you feel like there was this turning point?

Becky Reel (08:04)
Yeah, I think it was I would say a few years. I mean, granted, when I came into the agency, there was a lot of cleanup. There was a lot of things we had to fix and rebuild. We were not in the best position when I stepped in, which is why I stepped in, right? I want to be very clear about that. We were not doing well as a business. but I think I it took me probably about two years, right, to understand the business, how it works, how we can really be different. and I think it was when we started.

You when I came in, we didn't have the the flexibility or the luxury to say no to any clients, which a lot of agencies feel that, right? And I get that. But we're in the suburbs of Chicago. We were taking clients almost almost to Indiana, that border, right? We were taking clients downtown Chicago. We were taking clients two hours away because I didn't feel like we could say no. But what that did is it burnt out my team. It burnt us out. we were losing money left and right.

And so by making a lot of those mistakes over the first few years is how we came to this understanding that we just can't be everything to everybody. And when we started looking at the data of where we're performing well, where we are able to charge more, not just because we want to charge more, but because we were able to provide a higher quality service and pay our caregivers more and invest more into our team, then it just

It actually became easier for us and we realized we no longer have to serve all of these other communities that are difficult for us, that are more problems, more headaches. they just it wasn't safe for our caregivers, right? And the expectations weren't aligned with what we wanted. That's when we started to put some some lines in the sand and say, This is who we are, this is who we serve, this is what we say no to. And then life just got easier.

Miriam Allred (09:58)
So let's more clearly define that. Like you you said you were trying you were trying to be everything to everyone and a lot of agencies

Becky Reel (10:04)
Okay.

Miriam Allred (10:04)
start that way out of necessity, but then start to there's kind of this like transition where you have to go from that to becoming something. I want you to more clearly define like how you establish that. Was it like demographics? Was it,

Becky Reel (10:17)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (10:18)
you know, affluence? Was it getting out of communities? And like what what were all those components that you had to like slowly unravel to then like narrow in on your position?

Becky Reel (10:28)
Think it's a lot of things. I think it was shift minimums and being very clear about but also going back to the why. So shift minimums, not because we didn't want to do short shifts, but because the caliber of our caregivers did not want short shifts. And in order to keep the consistency of our caregivers, we needed to give them more hours. So we would, you know, we would have a very firm minimum of hours. And we would say we can do less.

But it's going to change the price structure, right? There's always that caveat there. minimum hours per week geography was a big one. So we live in Arlington Heights. That's where our office is. The next town over is Buffalo Grove. It's maybe 20 minutes to get to Buffalo Grove. But for some reason, once you cross this main road, Lake Cook Road, to get to Buffalo Grove, it was just more of a challenge for us.

The cli for whatever reason, the clients were more difficult. They were more demanding. And and I'm generalizing, right? I'm just but we stopped making an effort to go to Buffalo Grove because it was not serving us well. Right. care needs. So unrealistic expectations of people that would want two caregivers, right? Or that would want one caregiver, but realistically you needed two caregivers.

anything that was gonna put our caregivers in harm's way. Whereas maybe in in the past we would have said, we need the money, so we're gonna do it. homes that weren't safe for our caregivers if we're dealing with hoarding situations, or there's just other maybe there's somebody in the home that's doesn't sit well with us. Sometimes like a son that lives in the basement, or if there's mental illness that isn't being treated properly, anything that's really going to cause turnover for the caregivers.

in an unsafe environment for the caregivers, we would say no to. This might be a an unpopular opinion, but families that start negotiating right off the bat, right? Typic and I see this from a consulting side, people that right out of the gate want to negotiate.

Typically those can become some of the hardest clients you deal with, right? and you know, being able to put your foot down and say, I'm sorry, this is, this is how we do things. And you can't red line my entire agreement because this is our business, this is how we do things. you know, that negotiation would be a red flag right off the bat. And I would say, anyone who wants us to solve problems that were not specifically home care.

Right, if they're asking us to do stuff outside the scope of what we legally could do under our license. So those were things that we started to define as clients that were not good fits for us.

Miriam Allred (13:19)
Okay, fantastic. I love all of those like very hard lines. Tactically, you know, taking yourself back to this, was it like a transition period where you implemented one hard line at a time? Or was it kind of like we're gonna hard line all of these things at once and we're gonna become a different agency like overnight because that's what we need to do? Or was it more of like

Becky Reel (13:38)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (13:39)
a six month transition where you slowly like implemented these hard lines?

Becky Reel (13:43)
For us it was a it was a transition. It wasn't something and this is the the beauty of when we come and work with agencies is we made all those mistakes already for you. So we can come in and help you clean things up right away. I didn't have that luxury. I had to learn this on the job. But I think no, it was definitely like a year, if not longer, of things that would happen. We you know, the Buffalo Grove example, like we would continually take clients and it would over and over again

something would happen or there'd be a an issue or a headache and eventually it just gets to be too much, right? And eventually you're like enough is enough. but no, it wasn't an overnight thing where we sat down and defined this. It it evolved over time.

Miriam Allred (14:24)
Okay. I ask that because I hear so many owners in this position, which is they want to go from everything to everyone to this defined position differentiated agency. They just don't know how to make that transition. And so I love that you outline the hard lines, but also explain that it's like it's, you know, a six to twelve month transition. But you've got to be working in that direction and limiting the exceptions. You know, agencies just make exception after exception. take that one over in Buffalo Grove. Like,

It's so easy to make these exceptions. And I think the thing that owners struggle with is just like sticking to the hard lines and saying no. So that's where I want to get to of like saying no, like you literally turning families away. Like what does that sound like? How do you, how do you politely and like courteously say no to people?

Becky Reel (15:13)
Yeah, it's never easy. And I think we all in this industry struggle with this because we got into this for the most part because we want to help people. The last thing we want to do is turn anyone away and not be able to help. but you have to look at what it's actually gonna cost you in the end, right? You have to balance that, well, I wanna be able to help, but are they gonna have a great experience or are caregivers going to have a great experience? And if the answer is no, then you're doing yourself a disservice and potentially harming your reputation in the community.

And so sometimes the conversation is simply like, I'm sorry, I just don't think we're gonna be able to, we're we're not gonna be able to assist, but let me help you get some resources that will be a better fit for you. Right. It's I think the most important thing to remember is while you can't always help everybody, you don't want to leave them high and dry. You wanna at least guide them to somebody else. And that's why having referral relationships.

of other agencies in your community are really valuable. They can be referral sources and they're good people for you to pass on if you can't help a family. And so sometimes it's as simple as, I'm sorry, we're at capacity. We can add you to our waitlist. However, it might be X amount of time and you know those when you're dealing with like the unreasonable clients, they're not going to want to wait. or just I'm sorry, I just don't think that we are going to be able to meet your needs, right?

But let me help you find an agency that will, or let me help you find a resource that will be valuable, will be able to help you along. and then make sure you you really close the loop on the communication and make sure that they're being handed off to somebody that will be able to help them.

if you know anything about me, you know that I'm just very transparent, right? And I'm going to always be transparent, whether it's with a client or a caregiver, in terms of why we don't think we're gonna be able to help.

Miriam Allred (16:59)
Mm-hmm. And just like reality check, how many families respected your approach versus many are calling in in crisis and they're emotional and it's intense and it's like, you know, hearing

Becky Reel (17:09)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (17:10)
no is the last thing they want. Like just reality check of like how many people respected that and then how many people were like upset and like offended and like walked away. Like I don't know, fifty, fifty,

Becky Reel (17:18)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (17:19)
eighty, twenty. Like, what's the reality there?

Becky Reel (17:23)
I think when you go back to the unreasonable people and the ones with unreasonable expectations, those are the ones that you're never gonna make happy. It doesn't matter what you say to them. You're always there's always gonna be something, right? So they're always gonna be unhappy and they're always gonna throw, throw a fit, right? But then the more reasonable clients will understand and they will appreciate the fact that if you say

You know, if it is going back to a waitlist, right? We're not gonna be able to serve you right now, but we're happy to add you to our waitlist and talk to you about what that looks like. As opposed to just sending you a body for the sake of sending you a body, people do appreciate that transparency. They appreciate the fact that you're not sending them somebody that is going to be ill-equipped or be a bad fit for their loved one. They do appreciate that and they will wait in those cases. but most people do appreciate that if you don't think you're a good fit, at least they're gonna be handed off to somebody that.

will hopefully be able to help them. I would say it was more

Miriam Allred (18:16)
Mm-hmm. And this in and of it.

Becky Reel (18:18)
of a positive experience than a negative experience passing somebody off.

Miriam Allred (18:22)
And this in and of itself becomes its own filter and like qualifier. You know, you're building the waitlist

Becky Reel (18:26)
Uh-huh.

Miriam Allred (18:27)
quite literally, but also filtering out the people that aren't gonna be a good fit. And then on the waitlist are people that are gonna be a good fit because they are patient and understanding and willing to wait.

Becky Reel (18:36)
Yep. And one bad fit, one bad client can cost you so many good ones and so many good caregivers. And it's just not worth it.

Miriam Allred (18:45)
Yeah. And you've you've already kind of said this, but I want you to articulate a little bit more. When you say no, you're protecting your organization, you're protecting your expertise, you're also protecting your caregivers. That's maybe the most important thing. You lived through bad experiences where you put caregivers in hard situations. Do you feel like maybe one of the drivers of this mindset was to protect your employees?

Becky Reel (19:07)
A hundred percent. I always say that the caregivers were equally as much of a priority as our clients. And I still live and breathe that model. yeah, absolutely. You want to protect them because they are they are our product, right? That's what we're out there selling. It's our caregivers. And if you lose a good one, you're losing so much more than just a caregiver, right? and yeah, you absolutely need to protect them at every cost. And if that means too you have to fire a client.

you fire that client in order to protect your caregiver. They should always

Miriam Allred (19:36)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Reel (19:37)
be your priority.

Miriam Allred (19:38)
And on the flip side, you know, to this conversation, you also said no to caregivers. You know, like the same principles

Becky Reel (19:43)
yeah.

Miriam Allred (19:43)
apply on the employee side and making sure you're protecting your clients and your family and your services and your business and so explain kind of like the mindset similarities or differences on the caregiver side and saying no to them.

Becky Reel (19:56)
mean I think with caregivers it's really, you know, having boundaries and having expectations and being very clear right from the start of what your expectations are for your caregivers. We're there to support them. We're there to be a, you know, obviously an employer for them, but we want to be a support system. So many of our caregivers are dealing with so met so much s so much more than we c we can possibly understand, right? Just with how heavy the world is and

They're caring for their own loved ones and their kids and they're s often working multiple jobs and they're in school. Like our job is to help support them and get them over to whatever their next phase is and their their next goal is in life. A lot of times it's not always their goal is not to be a caregiver for years and years. And that's that's great. Like our goal should be to help them be a stepping stone to get whatever to whatever their next steps are. But that means that we need something from them too.

Right. We need them to be reliable, you know, communicate well. And if you start to see patterns, and that's why the data in your EVV system is so important, because we can start to really look at what's actually happening from a consistency standpoint, from a note, from a you know, documentation standpoint. you know, we need them to be doing their job plus some. We need them to be showing up. We need them to be

embodying what your agency is about. But if you're not clear about that from day one and you don't hold them accountable, they can take advantage of you. They can tarnish the the reputation of the agency. So it's really important that you look at the data. You are on top of that and you do have those conversations with your caregivers early as opposed to waiting for something to happen and looking for those. You got to keep an eye on those red flags.

And a lot of that data is how we recommend you do that. And it sometimes it's a slippery slope. It's five minutes late here, seven minutes here. And then it builds and builds, right? but yeah, you gotta say no to your caregivers too, and you gotta know when to cut the cord.

Miriam Allred (22:01)
Maybe same principles apply to your office team. You know, we talk about this like transition that your business went through. Some of your office staff, you know, probably bought into this and understood this and were on board. And then some probably not. Was that difficult to kind of go through of like making sure your office team also was under the same mindset of how we as a business are becoming something different and unique and we have to like hold to these hard lines?

Becky Reel (22:26)
Yeah. So I I believe that at the end of the day, what we truly are is a hospitality company. You've probably heard me speak about this before. We should be hospitality first, home care second. And we developed this over time, right? As we learned what was important. And one of the ways we were different was we were focused on hospitality. And if my office team was not on board with that.

And buy on board with that was not demonstrating that level of hospitality that I expected. Then yes, they weren't good fits and they weeded themselves out really quickly. But I have a philosophy that every single person at your office, I don't care if it's at your two person office or a 20 person office, every single person should be able to handle a client intake call. Right? Because you don't want to have to take a message and pass them off. You want to make sure you can handle

The logistics of that call when it comes in, you don't want to put them on hold. You don't want to have somebody call them back because you don't want to lose them. And so if my team was not comfortable with that or didn't feel that wasn't showing that they can demonstrate that level of hospitality that I needed to have, they didn't last very long. but I think that's where like KPIs and metrics really play a strong role. because you can catch very early on where people are not comfortable.

Where we can help coach them on areas and how we can improve. Right. And so everyone is responsible for certain KPIs and certain metrics that they need to deliver at the end of the week. And that's how you start to really monitor without micromanaging your office staff of what is going well, what's not going well, where's the area for improvement, things like that. But yeah, I go ahead. Sorry.

Miriam Allred (24:09)
So let's yeah,

let's talk about this intake call and the hospitality mindset. Let's make everyone a little bit uncomfortable and talk about bad intake calls because you and I both we've called home care companies, we've heard, you know, we've heard same old, same old. You know, what in your opinion, and be totally honest, what do does a bad intake call sound like? What does a generic intake call sound like?

Becky Reel (24:32)
it sounds like somebody who's not listening. It sounds like where the person on who's working at the office just goes straight into a spiel, doesn't ask questions. So I believe we should be you know, you said this earlier, someone's calling you because they're having potentially the worst day, right? A loved one got diagnosed with something, they're seeing a decline, their world is upside down.

They're not calling, they're not wanting to call you, right? So when they're calling you, oftentimes they don't know what to expect. They they've never been through this before. They don't know, they don't know anything about home care. And so our job is to help guide them through that process. And so bad intake calls are ones that, and I've I've experienced them where they're they go straight into, you know.

Where where does someone live? They just start asking all the questions. They just dive right into the questions. They don't know anything about the person. Whereas I feel like a good intake call is more, who are you calling about? your mom. What's your mom's name? Betty. Tell me about Betty. Tell me about your mom. And you just let them talk. And they say things like, My mom got diagnosed with dementia. And a bad intake call doesn't address that.

A bad intake call just goes, okay, how old is she? A good intake call is I'm so sorry that you guys are going through that. I completely understand and you know, and and you and you empathize with them. That is your moment to connect, right? Again, home care is home care. They can call the the franchise down the street and get the same service. But why are they gonna move forward with you? Because they feel connected, because they can trust you.

And this is that very first moment where we get to build that trust and we get to build that relationship. And it all it takes is listening

Miriam Allred (26:33)
Mm.

Becky Reel (26:34)
and asking qua human, human questions.

Miriam Allred (26:37)
So I think there's this like misunderstanding and and maybe I'm a part of the problem here of like when you scale, you need processes, and processes sometimes look like scripts. And I've had agencies come to me asking for intake scripts, and it's like, we wanna, we wanna build these perfect processes and we wanna build these perfect scripts. But I think the intake call is a perfect example of like, yes, there's things that you need to extract from that call. We're we're on

Becky Reel (27:01)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (27:01)
the same page there, but how you conduct that call.

should not be scripted and should not sound scripted. But I think a lot of agencies fall into this trap of like, if I'm doing this at scale, we have to have a pro process. You know, we've done thousands of intake calls. Like it should sound and look like this. I think that's a trap to fall into

Becky Reel (27:18)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (27:19)
and that it should always have this hospitality feel. It should always be personal, should never feel scripted. And a lot of office staff, you know, conducting these calls fall into those traps. Would you agree?

Becky Reel (27:31)
H a hundred percent. I think there is an element of there there are some qualifying questions to be asked right off the bat to make sure you even can serve them. Make sure they're even in the right location. Very basic things, right? So there is, and I d I don't call it a script, but we have an intake qualifying form that we give our clients, but it's, you know, tell about what's your mom's first name, right? Where does she live?

How did you hear about us? That's a big one. I want to know right off the bat who referred you because that's how you start to build a relationship too. Right. If they mention so and so their neighbor, it gives you this common ground, right? To start building that relationship. you know, there's a few other, you know, few other qualifying questions, her age. but basically I want to know her name, where she lives, how you found us. and then I simply go right into tell me about your mom.

And that's still a process though, right? It's not a we're not telling you exactly what you need to say at every single step, but it still is a process. So I'd argue that that still is a way to scale through process. It's just a little bit more loose-ended. At the end, right, as you start getting more deep into it, then the process is you explain, well, our next step is we would need to come out and meet with your mom and get to know her a little bit better. And also you

You flip it around a little bit too, and you say this is more of an opportunity for you guys to get to know us better and make sure you feel really comfortable with who we are because we know this is a big commitment. We know this is a financial, personal investment. And we want to make sure that you guys feel really comfortable. And so that's how you kind of take it to the next step of we need to come out and do an actual in-person assessment, which is still built, that's still a process that we built out.

Miriam Allred (29:26)
Do you do any sort of selling on that call or is your style of conversation the differentiator itself?

Becky Reel (29:35)
So I believe we should never be selling anything. And this is in and this is again very unpopular opinion, potentially with some other people in the space. I believe your differentiator is how you sell. And your differentiator is that hospitality piece. Right. So if you go to, you know, use the hotel as example, right? When you go to the four seasons, they're not really selling you on anything. They're selling you on that experience.

Right. And they're selling you on anticipating the needs that you have and the small surprises that show up along the way. Or just when you show up, they know your name. Those are the little differences. That's why you're paying more for that experience. And so I think when you go to the selling, and I'm using air quotes if you're not on video, but like the selling aspect is again your caregivers and why they're better and why they're better trained.

But I don't typically go straight into, well, let me tell you about our agency and why we're better. Right? so I don't think there should be a lot of selling involved. the selling will be the experience that that person is having on the other line.

Miriam Allred (30:42)
Okay. Yeah, the reason I ask that is like it's not uncommon for a family to call maybe three to five agencies in a single day and you do need to stand out, you know?

Becky Reel (30:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (30:50)
But I love what you're saying of the experience that you provide on a phone call should stand out from the three other phone calls that they make. And it's not because you're explaining, you know, XYZ about your agency, it's you help them feel a certain way on a phone call and the other people likely aren't.

Becky Reel (31:05)
Yeah. And and and that, you know, while you're absolutely and while you're having that conversation, organically, it should come out while you're different, right? Our caregivers are trained more than the state minimum and we have specializations for our caregivers. Again, the caregivers are the product. So whatever you're going to be able to invest back into your caregivers, into your team, should be a selling piece, right? or the fact that you have you have an office staff for backup and that the family, I would always say things like,

The reason you're hiring us is so that way you can go back to being the daughter or the son or the spouse. You don't you let us handle everything else. The scheduling, if somebody calls in sick, the logistics, the doctor's appointments, we're there so you can get your life back. Because you have to remember too, the client is your client, but the family is also a big piece of this. They're also your client. And so you need to make sure that you're selling this to not only the client themselves.

But then the family around them and how this is gonna benefit the family as well.

Miriam Allred (32:05)
Do you I'm just getting technical here on the intake call because this is interesting. How do you handle like the price conversation? Do you try to avoid that on the intake call?

Becky Reel (32:13)
I typically don't bring it up unless they do. but I think the best way to handle pricing, and you might want to have it just from a qualifying standpoint to make sure they can even afford you, right? But you do wanna make sure they have if they have long-term care insurance, if they have VA benefits. But those are interesting questions to bring up to open up that that opportunity for them to get other ways to pay for this. but if the pricing does come up, what I always recommend you do is you say,

Our rates start at whatever the amount is. You don't want to lock yourself into anything. You want to give yourself some wiggle room. Again, if this is a a concierge high-end luxury service, there's many variables are gonna play into this, right? It's the pricing is going to depend on the schedule, the level of care, and logistically the where the caregiver is coming from. And there's a lot of other things that play into this. And so this isn't a pair of shoes.

Right. We're not gonna be pricing them the same across the board. This is a human being with very specific needs and we need to build a price that appropriately, but the pricing always goes back to the caregivers. It always goes back to what do I effectively need to pay my caregivers well to take this case? And then you build out from there.

Miriam Allred (33:29)
Okay. A couple things. You mentioned earlier that everyone in the office should be equipped to do a good intake call. I think that

Becky Reel (33:36)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (33:37)
is a great philosophy. Did you did you actually have that as the case that everyone would kind of round rob and take these calls and w why that approach if that's what you did?

Becky Reel (33:50)
Yeah. So everybody at my office needed to be able to at least, at least do the bare minimum, get get through that conversation. at least get the main pieces of information and maybe not get it to an assessment, but at least get somebody comfortable with us. and I I say this, I was doing a secret shop for somebody a while back, and I remember I had the worst experience with somebody. They didn't know any answers to anything.

the answer was I'll have to get back to you, I'll have to get back to you. And I was like, can you just give me like a high end understanding of like your rates? And this person said, I don't know the answer to that. And it was very frustrating being on the other end of that. And then I made a fuss and I felt really bad because the because the person doing the intake was like, I'm sorry, I'm just a virtual assistant. I didn't I don't know. And I felt really bad. But that's a good example that even your virtual assistants should be able to answer the basic questions, right? Pricing, were you service?

Shift minimums. It doesn't look good if you if they can't answer those basic questions. So, yes, everybody in my office was trained to be able to take an intake call, to be able to handle crisis management. did some do it better than others? Absolutely. But everybody was trained to give this high level of hospitality experience to every single that every single person that called in, even our caregivers.

Miriam Allred (35:16)
So how do you train people on this? Cause to me, hospitality and this like this mindset, but also the skill set feels a little bit innate, kinda like you have it or you don't. But

Becky Reel (35:27)
Uh-huh.

Miriam Allred (35:28)
can this be trained? Can you train people on this like hospitality mindset, skill set? What do you think?

Becky Reel (35:35)
Think it's something I looked at when I was hiring people. I cared less about if they had home care experience and I cared more about hospitality experience. I felt like I was it was easier to train people on home care and what we do in home care than it was to train somebody how to care and be empathetic on the phone. So n it's not easy to train somebody from a hospitality standpoint. There's lots of books out there I would give people, which I don't think for those particular people, I don't think that.

made a difference. But I think when you're looking at that from an ear from an early perspective and you're hiring specifically for that and they know that going in, then it's something that they already have an understanding that this is important. And again, I think it's really about just about listening, right? About really listening to what's happening and not being so quick to speak. And

looking at what what what people are actually saying, but what does it actually mean and being able to translate that effectively. So I think there are some things you can train, but one thing you just can't train is being empathetic and caring. And that's something that was very important for me from the early, early days to hire my office staff.

Miriam Allred (36:51)
Yeah, little side note on the technology piece, because you and I both are close with a lot of these, AI technology solutions. That is one of the beauties of what's coming out of all this technology. Is 10 years ago, there wasn't really the ability to have all of your calls recorded, transcribed, noted.

Becky Reel (37:04)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Miriam Allred (37:06)
Now you can listen. You can genuinely be on the phone and be listening because the AI is taking all of the notes and documenting everything. You can be fully present in these phone calls. And I think that is just

Becky Reel (37:15)
Yes, yes.

Miriam Allred (37:16)
one of the prime use cases of technology right now.

The second one that comes to mind, I've heard agencies doing this, is you can obviously record all of those calls, you can pump them into an AI agent and then it can rate and rank and qualify and and provide feedback

Becky Reel (37:29)
Mm-hmm.

Miriam Allred (37:30)
on all of these intake calls. So especially if your full team is taking them, you can, build kind of an agent that analyzes all these intake calls and extracts different insights. And here you could be a little bit more empathetic. try this question instead of that question. Like there's so many great uses of technology to help with this intake process that didn't exist ten years ago.

Becky Reel (37:46)
Yep. I know.

What a wild time to be running a home care agency with all. And we didn't have any of that. and it's it's it's incredible the things that some of the partners out there can do.

Miriam Allred (37:57)
So so speaking of which, like it's 2026. You're helping a lot of agencies right now. I don't know, upwards of like 20 at any given time in different markets, different sizes, you know, different skills, et cetera. If you were creating an agency right now in 2026 in Chicago, how would you think about positioning and differentiation in this market? Like what would you do and how would you position your agency and what would you do out of the gate that you didn't do, you know, the first time around?

Becky Reel (38:24)
Yeah. I wouldn't change I mean, I now I know so much, right? I would go into it with that hospitality, you can't be everything to everyone mindset that we're going to do one thing and do it really, really well mindset. I would I wouldn't change a ton, right? I think that hospitality, that boutique, high end concierge level positioning was is what works.

It's what families are looking for right now. It's it's and I don't think it's ever gonna change. We would to do things differently though, I would be leveraging a lot more technology in our office and our space more than anything. but I wouldn't change a lot. I think I just know more going into it now that I would be able to ramp up a lot quicker.

But I would really define who we are. I would pick a specialization too, whether it was dementia, which obviously seems like the most most relevant one that most families are needing the most support with. But I would really focus and double down on that specialization as well. Yep.

Miriam Allred (39:36)
Can I put you on the spot with a really pointed question? Would you

use virtual assistance in your business? And if so, how?

Becky Reel (39:43)
I would, I would. And I but I would be very specific about how I'm using them. I would use them for more after hour support. I would use them because I th something that we very transparently dealt with was my office team getting burnt out from being on call. Right. And even myself, you know, there's a story in my book about Christmas Eve when we went to go tell my family that we were pregnant with my daughter.

After years of infertility. So this is a big deal, right? We've been waiting years and years for this moment. And we know we were giving them the onesie that said you're gonna be a grandma or grandparents. And and then that's when a live-in called out sick, like moments before we were opening presents, and it ruined everything. And that was my breaking point of I can't do this anymore, right? I can't be the only person.

on call after hours. And so we started building out this rotation with on call with our team after hours. And and even though when we started building boundaries about about, you know, after hours and s and what a true emergency was and when you can and can't reach out or the phone goes on do not disturb. But at the end of the day, people were still always reaching out. Right. So

I would certainly use a VA for after hours support. And the beauty of so many of these VAs is you're I think the misconception is that you're sharing the VA with multiple agencies, right? And so that was always my concern. And now that I've gotten really close with them and and I know how they work, I love the fact that they're totally embedded in your agency and they know your EVV system and they know your caregivers, right? And they just become part of your agency.

So on weekends or after hours, if there's a crisis or caregiver calls in sick, they're part of your team and they can handle it, right? And they're they have complete access to your system. So I would a hundred percent use it for that right now.

Miriam Allred (41:40)
Mm-hmm. And you also vet, hire, and train them in this hospitality piece as as important, if not more so, with them than making any other hire. And so, you know, I add that disclaimer in of like everything that we've talked about is also relevant to VAs. And I just want to ask you that because I'm curious. You know, that's a very hot topic.

Becky Reel (41:56)
Do you use the BA?

Miriam Allred (41:58)
similar to you, I would probably use them for the back end documentation. to be totally honest, I don't know that I would have them external facing, especially not at not at the beginning, but I would hope we we could work towards that. But I would have them in the background.

AI can do a lot of the documentation, but then there's kind of like another layer that like needs that human and the loop. And so I would have like probably this progression of like where they start and what they would work towards. But everything that you've talked about, because we've also you literally cited the example of talking to that home care agency and it was a VA and they didn't know any of the answers. Unfortunately, there's a lot of that that has happened and there's a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths about VAs. This is such a human industry and the crisis that people are calling it, like it's just such a unique.

call that these families are making and so you just wanna make sure you put your best foot forward and make sure that they're equipped to be successful in there.

So so anyway, just wanted your take on that little little tangent.

Becky Reel (42:50)
I would do

that over a call center a million percent though, because the call centers all they do is take messages and funnel it back to the owner or whoever's on call. So it's not really doing it's not really saving you any time. And they're just frustrating, right? so if I had to pick though, I would definitely go VA versus call center a million times

Miriam Allred (43:10)
Yeah.

Becky Reel (43:11)
over.

Miriam Allred (43:11)
Yeah, that's fair. So the question I asked before was around like how you would position your agency in 2026. The the flip side of that is there's so many agencies, hopefully not listening to this. Hopefully everyone is beyond this that's listening to this. But if not, there's a lot of agencies that just fall into this trap of sounding like everybody else. We've been doing it this way for the last 10 years. Like they're just in this like loophole of just sounding like everybody and doing the same thing over and over.

How do you advise or help agencies get out of that? Like how do they start to differentiate and reposition themselves after years and years of maybe doing this a certain way?

Becky Reel (43:49)
It's a good question. yeah, because usually that the big differentiator is that we're, you know, we're compassionate or we train our caregivers and we're always like, great, that's the bare minimum you should be doing. But I think how are you really investing into your team is a big d differentiator for me. that shows me that your product, your caregivers are going to be better, they're going to be more reliable, they're going to show up and work harder.

but it's not just whatever your state mandates for training. And some states don't mandate anything for training, which is wild to me. But even if you're in a state that doesn't mandate training, you should be having your caregivers get trained. And then you should be doing more of it. And then you should be doing more of the training that's not even required by the state. So build out specializations and all of the training software has it, or you know, have pay for them to go be certified as a dementia practitioner, right? Or

Let them, if there's other things that they want to to do and learn, whether it's a CNA course, like help support them, right? After a certain put a tuition plan in place for your caregivers. After a certain amount of time, we will help pay for X, Y, and Z because your growth is important. And guess what? When those caregivers leave to move on to something different or something better, you've built ambassadors that will refer business to you.

Right. We had caregivers that went on and got their nursing license and worked in local facilities. Guess who they referred? Right. Because we respected them and we helped them get to whatever the next step was for them. So some people are gonna be a little short-sighted when they're looking at this and they're gonna think, well, why would I invest in somebody who's gonna leave in a year? Well, because A, that's the right thing to do. B, because you're building ambassadors along the way.

And so I think that's a big differentiator that when you're talking to agencies and especially when the money piece comes out, well, why are you a dollar or two more expensive than other agencies? Well, it's because we invest into our team. It's because we not only pay our caregivers more, but we're constantly investing in their training and education. that's one way that isn't an obvious way to differentiate your agency. And you're saying it, you're you're repositioning who you are.

is something really positive that you're doing for other people, but in turn it's going to benefit the client.

Miriam Allred (46:06)
Yeah, great examples of how to differentiate and why to differentiate. You've worked with some like longer standing owners and I I find that usually it's the owner that's the bottleneck.

What what do you say to those owners? You know, like you and I, you and I work with and talk to a lot of the more like innovative, forward-thinking, you know, agencies that are pushing the boundaries. But for the some that come to you that have been in business for a long time and they're hitting that plateau,

Becky Reel (46:30)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (46:30)
how do you shake them? What do you say to them to get them out of their own?

Becky Reel (46:36)
lot of times it's getting into the data. So I will dig into the data with them. I will have them pull reports for me. We'll look at year over year the referrals and we'll look at how they really haven't grown. and we start to show them that the revenue, if it's been stagnant or the referrals have been pretty complacent, and we start to look at all the different opportunities, that's when I think they get out of their their own way when they realize they didn't there's so much that they don't know.

There's so much out there that they didn't even, this whole world of referral sources, this whole world of of of partnerships and education topics that they could be doing and in embedding themselves into their community. They just it's it's I think they just get stuck in their own way. And like you said, they've been doing this for X amount of time and they just don't they don't know how. They don't even know what's out there. And so we start with the data. We start at looking at, you know.

the numbers and showing them what what it could be, right? And we look at their referral sources and, you know, they might only have two or three, right? And we start building from there. And we have to start small, but I think with existing agencies, a lot of times it's just getting the owners out of their own way.

Miriam Allred (47:45)
Mm.

Becky Reel (47:45)
and a lot of times it's proving out the value. And so it

Miriam Allred (47:47)
Mm.

Becky Reel (47:48)
takes time. It's not, it's not always the easiest thing to do, but we do it with many of our clients and they see the results.

But sometimes it just takes them to be a little bit more open minded.

Miriam Allred (48:01)
I love watching agencies reinvent themselves. I saw we saw quite a bit of this like coming out of the pandemic. You know, a lot of a lot

Becky Reel (48:06)
Yeah.

Miriam Allred (48:07)
of agencies did really well. Some plateaued, some went down, but we saw like a lot of reinvention come out of COVID and then also with technology. And then also with just like the day and age of home care right now. It's like kind of this like new generation home care. I love seeing agencies, tenured agencies

Becky Reel (48:23)
I don't know.

Miriam Allred (48:24)
reinvent themselves, unravel processes, reestablish things.

services, payers, like operations, like I see a lot of that happening right now. And I personally love it because I like seeing agencies reinvent themselves and reposition themselves and become something bigger and better and different than they ever thought. And I like to see like a good bit of that happening in the industry.

Becky Reel (48:47)
I think it's so cool. I I just find this industry so fascinating. All the technology and how the how the technology works together. like I just I just think this is like I think we're in the the coolest industry. So the best. The best.

Miriam Allred (49:01)
with so many great people. That's what keeps us on our toes, is like, you know,

the people you work with, the people I talk to, like there's so many amazing people that are in it for the right reasons.

And we want to help them be the best that they can

Becky Reel (49:09)
Mm. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (49:12)
be. I wanna I wanna wrap up with these mindset shifts that you sent me. I don't even remember these were on I think a deck that you put together

Becky Reel (49:19)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (49:20)
for a conference. Maybe they're on your website. I read through them and I was like, everybody needs to hear these. Do you have them up in front of you? Can we kind of talk through each of these in closing?

Becky Reel (49:27)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Miriam Allred (49:30)
So these are again, I don't know where you just came up with these or what what the like origin of these was, but I just think they're like really powerful and everyone needs to

Becky Reel (49:37)
Well.

Miriam Allred (49:38)
hear these. So let's let's go through each of them. the first one is maybe I'll state what it is, and then you can kind of explain like a couple of thoughts on each of these. So the first mindset shift is I need more referrals, should be I need to be easier to refer. What do you mean by that?

Becky Reel (49:56)
Yeah.

So I mean that most agencies don't really have a volume problem. We have more of a more of a friction problem. So if a care manager has to explain what makes you different, then you're hard to refer. Right? you need to make it easier for people to know a about you. That's the problem too we get in this industry, is people just don't know about the agencies. They don't know what we do. There's still this

misconception between home health and home care and no one even knows what we do and they they think we're a cleaning service, right? So we need to make sure that it's very crystal clear who we are and what we do. you know, I would ask what sentence people use when they send us business and whether we like it or not. Like have those really transparent conversations with your referral sources to make sure they even really understand what we do. but I'm I'm all about mindset.

Shifting because I think that you know it's all started when my grandpa was really sick before we even started the agency. And I remember my mom, and she she was the one that taught me this. It's, you know, she's like, I don't have to, because she she should she was one of three children, right? And she was the only one that was at my grandpa's bedside when he was really sick. And there was obviously a lot of resentment and and things which families deal with all the time, right? And so instead of being resentful,

Instead of saying, I have to be here, my mom reframed it and she says, I get to be here. I get to be the one that experiences this time with with her dad, my grandpa. so I I really believe in it's it's a lot in your your mind and if we shift that mindset, it can open up a whole new way of looking at things.

Miriam Allred (51:40)
I love it. I love it so much. Let's go through these other three because they're all so good. So the second

Becky Reel (51:42)
Okay. Yep. Yep.

Miriam Allred (51:43)
one is I can't afford to turn anyone away to

Becky Reel (51:48)
Mm.

Miriam Allred (51:49)
we can't afford to say yes to the wrong fit.

Becky Reel (51:53)
Yep. The wrong client doesn't just cost you revenue. The wrong client is going to cost you so much more. It's going to cost you your caregivers' reputation. Though, you know, I think you can't afford to say yes to the wrong fit. It's going to cost you caregivers that are going to quit and then you're going spend weeks scheduling that one. So it's really important to look at that right fit. We talked about earlier. Who do you want to serve? Who do you serve well as opposed to cons

consistently hitting your head against against the table, serving the wrong clients and just constantly living in a headache.

Miriam Allred (52:28)
Very good. Okay, number three is we have to get our name out there. to we have to give people a reason to remember it.

Becky Reel (52:39)
So with that one, I would say awareness with nothing attached to it is just a lot of noise. nobody picks an agency because they've heard of the name, right? They typically they typically remember the way you made them feel or a story somebody told them, right? and so I think it's important to it's not just about getting your name out there and sponsoring a bunch of events.

It's about really making human connections with people out in the community. obviously the name's important, but there's deeper rooting under that.

Miriam Allred (53:18)
Yeah. This fourth one is kind of a part two to that, which I love is like one step further. You don't need a bigger marketing budget. The best marketing you will ever do is become impossible to confuse with anybody else.

Becky Reel (53:32)
Yeah. you should always be out there connecting with people. And I think the biggest misconception we get in from a marketing standpoint is we need to be marketing with people that are only in the home care or senior space. But in reality, you should be marketing to your community, right? The realtors, the other just other business owners, boutique owners, restaurant owners, bakery owners. They're still part of the community. They're still voices in the community. And we should always be looking at how do we

embed ourselves deeper into the community. And that's where our marketing budget should be going. Our marketing budget shouldn't be going to just throwing out traditional advertising and golf magazines and and, doing just meta ads. Like we should be investing our money back into our community into people that really want to get to know us and we're going to be able to build outstanding relationships with them.

Miriam Allred (54:27)
I love all of this, Becky. I hope everyone listens to this whole episode and they they extract one thing, you know, multiple things, but like one thing that they can do a little bit better in their agency. I think you are a really good example of just like the sum of all of your parts. Like what you built and what you accomplished was a makeup of everything that we've talked about today and more, but like it's just all of these little experiential type moments and touch points and conversations.

that drove your success. Like I I you know, this is my take on, you know, your your success, but I think it's just it's a sum of all of these micro parts that led you to the success that you've had. And I love that now you're consulting and coaching these agencies to help them identify their own uniqueness, their own positioning, their own differentiators. Like you're not, giving them the blueprint of what your success was. You're helping them define and create their own success. And that's what I love so much. And so I hope everyone's heard this and is

taking this to heart, but really it's almost like inspirational, motivational of like you've given all these tactical things, but really every agency needs to decide for themselves, like how we want to position ourselves and how we want to be unique. And you're just like the model of that in the industry.

Becky Reel (55:37)
Think thank you. I think it was a lot of mistakes, a lot over time, right, that we made that we can now teach people how to avoid those mistakes, right? So we made the mistakes for you. but thank you, that was very sweet.

Miriam Allred (55:50)
Yeah. So just just in closing, obviously we'll have your website and your information in the show notes, but what is the best way for people to get in contact with you or to learn more about your services?

Becky Reel (56:00)
Yeah, you can go like you said, go to our website. you can email us directly, just Becky@realhomcareconsulting.com and it's R E E L, Real, like a fishing reel. there's information on our website about the dinner series and about our different packages. We have some really cool stuff coming out soon too, in the next month or so. So stay tuned for all of that. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, Instagram.

where I share a lot of information there and our email newsletters. So but if you're interested in a dinner series, we have two left for twenty six and then we will be announcing our twenty seven lineup very soon. We have the cities all lined up, so we're ready to go on that one.

Miriam Allred (56:39)
Fantastic. And we kind of mentioned it at the start of who you're best suited to work with. Think of all the people listening to this. Who do you hope reaches out to you? Like who do you want to engage with that you genuinely feel like you want to work with and that you can and that you can help?

Becky Reel (56:54)
So it's funny. if you would have asked me this two years ago, I would have told you it's it's a startup, it's a it's an agency X amount of revenue, but really it's more about the agency owner. I've learned. It's more about I could care less where you are in the process. I wanna work with agencies that are doing this for a reason, right? And the reason is I the reason can't be I just wanna get rich. agency owners that have a mission, a passion, a story.

And that really wanna make a difference in the community. Those tend to be the agencies we work really, really well with. Revenue doesn't matter to me. I love startups, but I also love agencies that are, you know, between two and three million. I would say anything over five, six million is probably not our wheelhouse. And I have some great referrals I'll send you over to, but really it's just agencies that are really looking to make a difference and wanna do this the right way.

Miriam Allred (57:45)
Yeah, I love that. And that want a mentor or a sounding board or honestly like a friend. You know, I've I've literally been with you when you're answering texts and phone calls with your clients and you're just there for them. And that's we talked about this at the beginning. Home care is lonely, especially at the top. And more than almost anything, a lot of owners just need like that sounding board and that friend and that mentor that will be honest. You know, you are very honest and very blunt and I love that about you, but that will also offer solutions and ideas.

And support in the best way.

Becky Reel (58:16)
Thank you.

Miriam Allred (58:17)
Becky, this has been so fun. Thank you so much. Fantastic episode. We'll go ahead and wrap here. But thank you again for joining me in the lab and thank you for everyone for tuning in.

Becky Reel (58:25)
Thank you.