Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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 (00:01.546)
Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Allred. Today I'm joined by a home care duo, a husband and wife, powerhouse in the Texas market. I've got JM and Michele Simmonds founders of ClearPath Home Care in Texas who recently sold and are now investors, and they are also now partners of Riverside Home Care in Colorado. Hi, you two. Welcome to the show.
JM & Michele (00:27.454)
Hi, I'm Miriam. Thank you for having us. This is exciting.
Miriam Allred (00:31.174)
Likewise, we have recently gotten acquainted, but I feel like I know you because I see you all over LinkedIn and all over the internet, and I've always thought I need to reach out to them. I need to have them on the show. And now here I am in your backyard in Texas, so we're not too far away, but we're still recording digitally and online, which is great. But I have really been looking forward to meeting both of you and having this conversation. So thank you for making the time.
JM & Michele (00:46.048)
Yeah.
JM & Michele (00:57.836)
We've heard you speak multiple times, I think probably at the HCAOA events. It's kind of hard to believe that we haven't met, but I don't think we ever had formally, but it did.
Miriam Allred (01:08.854)
Yes, well better late than never, better late than never. So here we are. Let's go ahead and start with your background. You both have been in home care for a hot minute now and have learned a thing or two. And we're going to talk about your journey in a rural market and how you have built a really successful thriving home care business in more rural Texas. But before we jump into that, would one of you like to jump in and
Talk a little bit about your personal background and what you were doing before home care and why you started Clear Path
JM & Michele (01:41.024)
You go first or me? You go ahead. Okay. I graduated from the University of Houston. I got a master's in an MBA in international business from University of Texas of San Antonio. And then it kind of got my entrepreneurial juices flowing. Everybody in my master's degree program was talking about doing their own thing. And I thought, well, why not me? So I started a restaurant in Austin, Texas. And I can say I learned a lot about
owning a restaurant, I wouldn't say it was overly successful, but I did. I really learned a lot. And actually right at the end of that is, and I already knew Michele, but she was previously married, but.
Miriam Allred (02:15.17)
you
JM & Michele (02:27.052)
At that time she had become single and I was then rolling into starting a new business. I wanted to try again and home care was what I chose and that actually formed Clear Path Home Care in Austin, Texas. And then we started a relationship. Well, I asked what he was doing and I have a nursing background, nursing and psychology from Charleton
And, you know, of course it was very appealing to me to hear what he was doing and why and in what regard, you know, he wanted to grow ClearPath. And so I asked him if he wanted an investor.
He forced him to that down. Who's going to pay no money when you're just starting a business? Yeah, so then it made sense with a nursing background to kind of marry business and
care experience. that's how we became partners in Clearpath. And then later we started dating and became partners in life. she was living in Breckenridge, Texas, which is a very rural city and a very rural county, which is about an hour and a half due west of Fort Worth, if you're looking at the Texas map. And she had two kids that were still in school and
you know, as we kind of started progressing in our relationship personally, you know, we had a little problem to try to solve there. I live in Austin, she lives in Breckenridge, business is in Austin, and then you made an appeal to me. did. I was on one of the trips coming back from Austin.
JM & Michele (04:19.948)
It's very desolate, the whole road, the whole way in 281. And it went right through my hometown of Hamilton.
And I just, which is smaller than Breckenridge. Breckenridge is about five, 6,000 people. But I did start to wonder, like, what do they do out here? It's obvious, you you have these services available in the metro areas. That's easy, but what do they do out here? And I went back to Breckenridge and I started talking to some colleagues and friends in the healthcare continuum of care there in Breckenridge and...
said, know, what does this look like out here? they, you know, every one of them said, well, it's non-existent. And the closest big city was probably Abilene, and they would not come that far out to Breckenridge. It's about a 45, 50 minute drive, but they would not come out. So I started thinking, you know, the need is,
obviously big out here because people are relying on the little ladies from the church or their neighbors to look out for them and take care of them and stand in the gaps and you know there's just that's just not adequate you know and it's not reliable and people get burned out and it's just not sustainable.
So I started talking to him about rural home care and he looked at me like I was crazy. Well, she wants me to move from Austin, which is fun, to Breckenridge, which I'm not downing Breckenridge. I love all my Breckenridge people, but it's not quite as fun as Austin. I just said there's such a need out here and not only for potential clients, but we could really be
Miriam Allred (05:59.019)
Yeah.
Miriam Allred (06:06.67)
I'm
JM & Michele (06:19.72)
we could provide jobs for women in this town where it's an oil and gas and ranching town. And so if you didn't work at the bank or the school, there's just not a lot of opportunity there or for supplemental income, you know. So I looked at him, I said, I think this can really work out here, but it's probably not going to be just the most glamorous experience. he just wasn't convinced. I said, do you want to make a
Do you want to make money or do you want to make a difference? And he said both, of course. And I said, well, I think we're going to have to make a difference before we make money. And that was the mindset that we had going in.
not to at all on the bottom dollar necessarily, but just making it work and setting the bar for rural home care. And I feel like we've really done that in Texas. And now you see a lot more companies even starting up in the rural areas. So that's really cool to see.
Miriam Allred (07:24.314)
my goodness, such a great lead in to what we're going to talk about. And I did not know you were business partners before you were life partners. And I want to talk more about that because there are a lot of couples in home care and your journey is probably even more unique than a lot of other people, but just the dynamic of working together and how that all works. So we'll get to that in a little bit. and you were already kind of prefacing my next question was just kind of like the lay of the land of home care.
JM & Michele (07:33.568)
Yes.
Miriam Allred (07:52.011)
in this area in Texas 10 or 15 years ago, it sounds like there were home care companies, was penetration in the big cities, of course, but rural home care was pretty obsolete just 10 or 15 years ago. So you were early on the scene. How established was the business in Austin? How big, how established before you were ready to jump into rural home care?
JM & Michele (08:17.812)
Well, luckily it wasn't. mean, I think we had only had one client in total before, you know, Michele presented this option and it was a dual option for me. was not only am I moving my business, but I mean, we're concreting our relationship with this move because I'm moving there. And, you know, with the expectation, we both had it that, you know, we're going to get married. And so that was, you know, the whole reason for the move was, was both of those. But no,
It was really just the beginnings of it.
There also wasn't a lot of information out there. We had to wing it for a hot minute because there wasn't a lot of, there's so much mentorship and industry leaders now that are in the spotlight and are available and so much more knowledge. Back then there was nothing, even the state of Texas couldn't be real clear on what we were needing to do. So we had to just limp along and figure it out and I'm glad we did.
created a unique business model for us and we just we made it work. A funny story was when we we needed policies and procedures and I didn't know how to write policies and procedures. You didn't know how to do that. I didn't know anybody else who did. There weren't any consulting companies I was aware of. I literally googled home care policies and procedures off the internet and they were Canadian. That's what we used for about the first three years.
Miriam Allred (09:47.95)
And we're talking...
JM & Michele (09:51.438)
you
They need policies and procedures. mean, it was a needle in a haystack looking for information out there. And, you know, we're so thankful and glad that it's come a long, long way in the last 11, 12 years. I remember Googling just anything, just asking questions of Google on things I didn't know in home care. And the only person I could find on the internet, even close to writing about home care was Stephen Tweed. Back then he was already doing it. And I remember the first
Miriam Allred (10:05.826)
I was.
Miriam Allred (10:18.989)
Mm-hmm.
JM & Michele (10:21.804)
day I met him I was I almost fell to my knees like I had met God because I was like I've been listening I've been reading your stuff for so many years I just I can't believe I'm actually getting to meet you and of course now he's a great friend and and great mentor to both of us and but yeah that's just kind of how it worked back then there wasn't a lot of information
Miriam Allred (10:32.846)
Thank
Miriam Allred (10:43.936)
And the funny thing is we're talking 11 or 12 years ago. You're talking like this was 50 years ago, but look how far home care has come in 12 years. It's like it was...
JM & Michele (10:49.824)
feels like it. It feels like it.
JM & Michele (10:55.02)
It really is amazing. And just through organizations like the Home Care Association of America, we've made huge strides, huge strides. And we were able to charter the Texas chapter for them. And it's so needed because we're such a vast state and the landscape looks so different than most other states here.
Miriam Allred (11:22.604)
And it gives me chills thinking about the next 10 years. It's like, look at the innovation and the progression of 10 years and what a difference that has made and what are we about to accomplish the next 10 years? Like it just gets me excited and fired up. Michele, you had talked about wanting to make a difference. Like that was a big part of your desire to move to rural Texas to get ClearPath going. You mentioned it was an oil and gas town. And so there weren't a lot of job opportunities. And it sounds like you saw a need for
possibly a lot of maybe middle-aged women that could find work. Talk a little bit more about that, that landscape and how you captured and found these women and offered them work.
JM & Michele (12:03.596)
It grew pretty organically. course, I knew everybody, it's a small town, you know everybody. being in healthcare, those are the people in my circle. literally Facebook, we recruited off Facebook and when it caught on, it caught on big. And we were able to be full-time, part-time, supplemental incomes for families. We were very family-centric.
we worked around your kids, we wanted you off for sporting events. I know as a mother, you're not going to give those things up. And so we really were caregiver focused. And that's what gave us just the best quality of care because we took care of them first. And by default, they just took excellent care of our clients.
Miriam Allred (13:00.94)
And it sounds like you might have been pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to find people. You said kind of word of mouth, word caught wind pretty quickly and you found people quickly. Does that sound accurate?
JM & Michele (13:12.668)
It is very accurate and you know in the surrounding areas as well as we probably went a 60 to 90 mile radius from Breckenridge to take clients. Yeah it was
But we paid well too. So that was one of my things is we, know, industry wide caregivers, care professionals, like we like to call them are typically underpaid for what they do. And you do get what you pay for in that regard. You know, the more experienced, the more vetted caregivers. it was, the bottom dollar was not necessarily always the most important thing. Those margins were slim sometimes, but we got really,
quality caregivers by just taking care of them financially too. We actually, think another big part of that was of course Breckenridge she had a pretty good history there I was kind of new but and even the surroundings towns which are 30 to 45 minutes away and all of them are about the same size or even smaller is investing in the community and building trust in the community and we could do that because
You know, in the towns around Breckenridge, everybody knows each other in these little towns, but you have to invest and still build trust in those communities because you're new to them. And whether they know your name or not, I mean, this is one of the most personal things we can ever do is coming into someone's house up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week and living with them. So it's not an easy thing to do for anybody. And now, and it was, you know, a service
that was pretty unknown at the time. People couldn't quite wrap their mind around the concept and having to explain the difference between home care and home health and hospice. We're still doing that in the industry, right? But even back then, was a lot of education too in the communities of exactly what it was we were doing.
Miriam Allred (15:08.462)
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Allred (15:18.976)
What were some early initiatives that were successful? Like you just said, JM, you have to build trust in any market. Doesn't really matter. You have to do that. But especially in a small town where everybody knows everybody and trust goes a really long way. What were some of those early initiatives? Were they at churches, at schools, you two doing presentations? Like what were some of those initiatives that worked well early on?
JM & Michele (15:41.642)
Yeah, I mean in a small town one of the biggest things you're going to run into are the schools. So we got involved with the schools on multiple different levels. We got involved with the Chambers of Commerce to get our name out there. sponsored
Even when we probably really couldn't afford to sponsor, we still, we put our name out there and we showed up to the events and we shook people's hands and introduced ourselves and talked about what we were doing. Anytime we could get in front of people and talk about what we did, then we took advantage of that in all the surrounding communities. And then even from a care perspective, know, one of the things that we based our whole company on with regards to how home care
it should operate is if there is a shift and we have a call out, which happens all the time, I don't care what kind of home care company you own, happens. Someone's going to feel that shift and that for a lot of years, that was me and her. She and I did all that. We woke up at the crack of dawn or spent overnights and did 12 hour shifts. And just so we made sure that that shift was covered and that reputation in and of itself was huge. Cause then I think.
If you talk to people like Stephen Tweed and Jensen Jones and people who do all these kind of metrics, our biggest referrer was our current clients and former clients. It wasn't a home health or a hospital or it was actually people telling other people in the community that we'd done a good job. That was huge.
Miriam Allred (17:19.094)
And so you needed them to have that white glove experience, you know, that just raving reviews so that they would recommend and refer you more new business. A minute ago, one of you mentioned that your service area was maybe 60 to 90 miles from Breckenridge. How did you establish that? You mentioned there's a lot of like help people understand there's a lot of small towns and you were in one, but to
conquer like a large, you know, maybe 90 mile territory of all these small towns. There's just a lot of like logistics involved. So how did you establish that boundary from the beginning? How did you know that that's what you should do?
JM & Michele (18:01.568)
Well, I think when we put in for when I moved from Travis County, which is Austin up to Stevens County, which is Breckenridge, you in Texas, at least you have the ability to choose up to six counties to start with and they have to be contiguous. So they have to be touching each other. And in Stevens County, the five surrounding counties are all just as small as Stevens County is. So we were like, well, what's the difference? mean, when you live there, you're used to driving an hour.
Because to get to the next major city to do any kind of shopping or if you want to night out, you got to drive an hour at least. So that's nothing new for us. That wasn't anything new for the caregivers that we hired. Plus, if we're going into say Graham, Texas, which is a.
kind of a sister city to Breckenridge, which is about 30 to 40 miles away, we can hire there too. They have the same issues. That is an oil and gas ranching town too. So those opportunities to find caregivers and clients existed just as well there as it did in Breckenridge. We just had to follow the same blueprint that made us successful in Breckenridge.
Miriam Allred (19:07.566)
So was it pretty, the word that's coming to mind is like popcorn, like clients and caregivers everywhere in all of those counties. Did you start marketing and advertising kind of across all six counties or did you start in Breckenridge and work your way out?
JM & Michele (19:22.636)
We joined the chambers in the bigger little towns there. And that gave us opportunity to market more and to market specifically. But I'd say. I mean, even like, I would tell you, and this is kind of weird, because Graham is, we know Graham really well, and she knew it well before we even started. It took a year.
for us to get a single client or a single caregiver to sign up and grant because we hadn't proved ourselves yet. They didn't quite, they heard our name, they may have met us, but it's like, I don't need a little more time with that. And it did, it just took time. And I mean, we're talking about years going by where...
steady growth. It's not astronomical growth. I mean, we're not making, we're not making much money at all for about the first three years. Yeah. And then finally, I think when we, we did make some money one year, said, Hey, look, we made this amount of money. And she said, that's awesome. And it's like, want to, I want to expand now. And she went, great. That means I'm going to make money anymore. was like, Nope. But I felt like the two of us felt like we had proven this concept.
And we're in this tiny little rural market, five, six counties.
And I thought we're never going to grow to the revenue levels in the hours levels that I'd like to see here. So let's move to some more populated areas. But what in fact happened is we did over a million dollars in revenue in the Breckenridge office alone. And I never thought that would be possible. Private pay only. We weren't contracted with the VA at that point. So it was a pretty, pretty big feat. We feel like, you know, in rural America to be able to
JM & Michele (21:13.932)
bring that kind of revenue in private pay. Definitely the most proud of that office because it is easily the smallest population center that we ever had of the seven office we wound up having and for it to consistently since we did that million we've never been under a million after that until you know then we sold and but they're still not under a million it's just continued to grow small but I never thought that would have been possible.
Miriam Allred (21:41.007)
And it sounds like the first few years weren't easy. It just takes a lot of time to build that trust, to get your name out there. You think of a metro market and there's just a lot of people and a lot of opportunities and just it's fast and there's a lot of people. And so just, you can grow and scale really quickly, maybe in a year. And we see that happening. But for you all, it was a totally different ball game. was everybody spread out.
There's not a lot of like advertising opportunities in these small towns. There's not a lot of people. And so it just took more time and more effort and took maybe three years to hit that million mark or so because it was just a lot of time and effort. What other, what other unique challenges did you face? You you came into a blind, so you didn't know what to expect, but what other challenges arose those first few years that maybe surprised you about the clients, the caregivers, the area, just what were some of the
the unique challenges that you found.
JM & Michele (22:40.598)
think it was putting the right people in the right place with regards to our business. Because we had to learn that too. mean, she and I were doing everything. And then we also had a still a young family going through school. And so she still had to be mom too. So I had to take on a little more of the burden of Clear Path because she had her time of split.
So obviously, and that's the hardest part for I think any business owner, but you know, being specific to home care is how to scale, when to scale, how do you do that? And you have to bring people in to take jobs and tasks away from you. And what we learned was the best way to do that is to hire to your weaknesses. And Lord knows I have plenty of weaknesses.
But what's taking up the most time that I can offload? we wound up, and we had some amazing people that came in and did just an amazing job for us. At every level. every level. and then you've got caregivers and you've got who's gonna manage the caregivers, because I can't do all this and this and this, and it just goes on forever.
So can you find the right people to delegate to? And it's no little deal. don't ever want to downplay that in any way when people are talking to us about it and trying to make that decision. It's a big deal. It's an extremely high level of trust for operations. And we were blessed that we had, you know, at every level we've had really, really good people to step in those roles.
you've got a vision and you know I just stated that once we made money I wanted to expand further into some more populated areas.
JM & Michele (24:35.122)
I have to be able to communicate or we have to be able to communicate that vision of where we want to go to people who don't have that vision. Can they get to that vision? Can they expand themselves to match the bandwidth that we're now increasing in the business? And that's not always easy either, because there are a lot of times people are just like, I'm happy doing what I'm doing here. Now I don't want to do anything different because that's uncomfortable.
Miriam Allred (24:44.726)
Mm-hmm.
Miriam Allred (25:01.07)
Mm-hmm.
JM & Michele (25:05.427)
Which it's uncomfortable for us too. If you're not uncomfortable in business, then you're taking it too easy. That's right. And that is very difficult because I don't like to be uncomfortable either.
Miriam Allred (25:05.888)
And.
Miriam Allred (25:11.118)
and
And naturally the talent pool is smaller because it's a rural area. Did you all hire friends and family early on?
JM & Michele (25:23.422)
Absolutely.
We did. Absolutely. And we had a business model where the person in the office wore many hats because that's what we had to do out there. And we operate leaner than most companies do. And it really worked out well that we had to start like that. Yeah. mean, all of our offices, even to the day we finished when we sold, each office is made up of one or two care relationship managers.
and they handle caregivers, they handle clients, they handle scheduling, they handle recruiting. I mean, literally anything on the operational side out of their office, they handle. And then you've got, you know, what came later was we started to hire some marketing people, so each office had a marketing person, and that's it. There's no one else in the office. For every office we had, whether it be Dallas or Breckenridge, two vastly different types of offices.
and even Granbury which became our biggest office is where we live now. I mean those two care relationship managers Wendy and Christy were doing over 5,000 hours a piece.
So, and without complaint, in fact, we tried to add resources to them and they told us no. no. Don't do It'll mess up our flow, it'll mess up our system. And we were like, okay. I we tried to offload some of that form and they wanted no part of that. They loved the continuity they had from one thing to the next regarding client care.
Miriam Allred (27:02.71)
Wow. Okay, let's dig into this a little bit more. So there's not, well, let's let me backtrack. How many offices, we know you sold last year, but how many offices were there across the state of Texas when you sold?
JM & Michele (27:16.204)
There were six in Texas and one in Fort Collins, Colorado. And that was the newest one. Well, no, actually the one in East Texas was newest, that one was the second newest one was in Fort Collins. And we did carve that out of the sale. We wanted to, we knew once we sold, we wanted to move to not move to Colorado, but start that business in Colorado. So that was not part of the sale. So it's six in Texas.
Miriam Allred (27:42.061)
Okay. Okay. We'll talk more about that in a few minutes. I want to set that stage of six offices and you're mentioning just one or two people in each of those offices. But if I'm hearing right, even in Granbury, all of those offices don't offload tasks to some kind of corporatized or larger office. Like they are a hundred percent independent, self-sufficient. They don't pass billing or HR or other tasks back. Right?
JM & Michele (28:09.868)
or a third party involved? I mean, now we got to the point where we hired our COO, Philip, and our CFO Sam. And so they were centralized operations and financial, but it was still upon each office to, you know, if you know anything about WellSky and I'm sure some of the others are different or the same, but at the end of the week, you've got to go through the schedule, find out what hours were worked and who clocked in and clocked out
finalize everything and then send it on. So they still had to manage all that. mean, payroll was submitted from one place, all those numbers came from each office independently.
Miriam Allred (28:51.724)
Okay. The reason this is interesting is because early on you hire someone and out of necessity, have, they wear a lot of hats. They have to do a little bit of everything, but part of your all's proven process is you found these people, you gave them control and autonomy and let them manage like end to end clients to caregivers and like the full picture. And they thrived in that and really liked that. And so.
Again, I think that was probably out of necessity early days that you had to just operate like that. But it sounds like you found people where that worked really well. So they were so and you call them client care managers, is that right? Care relationship managers. And so just explain everything that they own, like recruiting to scheduling to assessments, like just dial through everything end to end that they own.
JM & Michele (29:32.31)
their relationship managers.
JM & Michele (29:44.716)
Yeah, I mean, everything, you've got everything to do with the caregiver. And that in and of itself is a ton because, you know, at 5,000 plus hours for each one of them, how many caregivers is that? I don't even know how many. We had 250 something caregivers when we sold. So they're managing a ton of schedules. And that is, and...
The best part of owning a business and the worst part of owning a business is employees because we're people. have stuff happens and every single day it's like some sort of a jigsaw puzzle where they're trying to figure out this person called out or can't make it, so can I move this person over here? And they got so good at it to where they never needed any help from anybody. So they're managing all the caregiver stuff.
Clients change their schedule all the time or need to change their schedule all the time or they have appointments that they have to make They had to reschedule the caregivers around the clients needs They had to When we needed a client we got so good at it that we can have somebody and we did virtual
virtual interviews with new caregivers. That came out of COVID, but it wound up being something we stuck with because our success rate on hiring good caregivers went drastically up. So we could have somebody interviewed, we could have somebody go through the onboarding process, check references and the whole thing and have them to a client within like four hours.
So it got that streamlined for them and they were that good at it. It was amazing. And that goes back to having the correct person in the correct seat on the bus. You know, our COO came in and streamlined every office to run the same. So if we needed somebody from Tyler to go fill in an Abilene all the way across the state, they could do that. Virtually. Virtually. So, you know, he came in and streamlined operations for us and it ran.
JM & Michele (31:50.002)
it's run really, really smoothly. Yeah, Philip was an amazing, or is an amazing process-driven person. He's very good at I am not, I am not a process person. I don't know if you were or not, but.
You need someone that can do things that nobody else can. And it's finding that person. And I mean, I don't know if it was luck or skill, but we wound up with a lot of really great people. And not to say that we didn't hire people that didn't work out. It happens. I mean, I always say I'm probably about in 500 or 50-50 on.
People I've hired that worked out versus people I hired that didn't. And that's not on them. don't, it's not really on us. It just wasn't fit. They didn't, they just didn't gel with what, what we liked and what we've in the direction we wanted to go. So it happens.
Miriam Allred (32:42.09)
Am I under- Yeah. Am I understanding right that this person, this care relationship manager is also responsible for recruiting, for finding new caregivers for their area?
JM & Michele (32:52.234)
Yes. So, and like I said, they can recruit, onboard, check references, do everything that's needed within four hours. If they can find the person.
Miriam Allred (32:59.904)
Okay, wow. I'm just amazed because the recruiting function alone is a big burden to bear. so what, recruiting is always just like top of mind for everyone. And in a rural market, it's different, but I'm curious, like what, you know, even to this day, like what tools and resources or what, or is it word of mouth? Like, how are they with all that they have to do? Like what success are they having recruiting and what's working well for them?
JM & Michele (33:28.136)
It's a little all that, you know. One of the stories I tell is in Stephenville, we had an assisted living reach out to our marketer at the time and say, y'all need to quit taking our caregivers. Like we were poaching and we weren't. It was just word of mouth in that caregiving community that we paid well, you know, and we took care of our people. So there was a lot of organic just in the caregiver network.
there's a whole caregiver network out there privately. So they all talk and they all know what's going on. So that was taking place a lot, but I think we used. Yeah. So it was, we always wanted to be near or at the top of the pay scale. And we, we certainly went out and tried to find that information to make sure that we were. also, one of the, big tool for us was adding what's called a MEC plan. It's, it's,
Not full medical, even though full medical or health insurance was offered. More often than not, our caregivers really couldn't afford that. So we offered an alternative called a MEC plan. And that is basically you get to go to the doctor, I think, three or four times a year. We paid for all of it. It wasn't super expensive, but 250 caregivers, you know, it gets somewhat expensive. We paid for all of that so they could go to the doctor, have wellness checks, they had unlimited Teladoc.
had discounts on prescriptions. So we might have had a caregiver sign up and get the MEC plan and you know they maybe they were getting eight to twelve hours a week or you know some small amount of hours. And then they get a call from a competing home care company ABC saying hey we've got a 40-hour client for you and they're like well great or a 30-hour client or whatever and but they would not quit with us because of that MEC plan.
literally kept people staying with us just for that. So, you know, maybe they're just part of our PRN pool or, you know, we can use them, you hopefully when we need them or add extra hours for them and it really worked out. And I would say the other part of that is the work-life balance that we really tried to instill from day one.
JM & Michele (35:50.516)
We want to take care of people personally and professionally. If your whole life is just working, then life's not worth living. It just isn't. You have to have time with your family and friends and especially in this industry, you have to have downtime. I mean, this is emotionally draining work.
Miriam Allred (36:09.198)
And you have to practice what you preach. How many companies out there say, we have work-life balance, we have time off, we have all these things, but don't actually do it. But it sounds like you all actually delivered on those promises and look at your reputation across those counties as everybody started to know and learn about ClearPath and wanted to be a part of it. And something that you said a couple of minutes ago, Michele, was really interesting that there's like this network of caregivers in these counties. You you kind of like had to get into that network.
JM & Michele (36:15.68)
Yes.
Miriam Allred (36:38.732)
And then they all talk and they all know each other. And I do, I've seen just signs of this. think there's a little bit of that everywhere where there is this kind of like caregiving community and how do businesses tap into that. But it's a double-edged sword because they all know each other and everybody talks. And so it can be advantageous and disadvantageous if things go awry or if, something gets out. So I just kind of wanted to ask about that. Was it ever,
know, to never like strike a nerve or backfire in, you know, maybe that tight-knit community.
JM & Michele (37:16.678)
I don't ever feel like we felt a ripple effect. No. that. know, many of our clients throughout the years would have some private caregivers and ClearPath would be caregiving in there. And, you know, there was always seemingly a pretty good relationship. Communication has to be gold, you know, and then we may have to step in when and feel private shifts that, you know, but
I don't really ever recall a time that we had a ripple effect from anybody being disgruntled. I remember telling myself and I remember telling you, and I think you felt the same way, early on there were these private networks and we kind of knew who the people were in them and we tried to recruit some of them and some of them we get and some of them we couldn't.
Miriam Allred (37:57.774)
Mm-hmm.
JM & Michele (38:13.856)
But what I remember saying is I will never badmouth private caregivers. They have been doing this decades longer than anyone else. Neighbors taking care of neighbors. That's how it used to work. It's not as easy anymore because everybody does work and our world's just different.
Not going to bad mouth someone who just chooses not to work for an agency and wants to do it privately on their own. We need that too. We need all the help we can get to take care of the amount of seniors that we have had and man, it's going to grow quick.
Miriam Allred (38:50.69)
And it's home care, things happen, but it's how you handle when things happen that goes such a long way. So I didn't mean to tee you up to like divulge, know, things gone wrong, but things happen. And it's really just how you handle those like maybe crisis moments that speak volumes to your reputation, to your culture, to your core values. And so again, I'm sure things happened over time.
but you must have handled it really well and then people respect you and trust you regardless of those maybe incidents.
JM & Michele (39:22.156)
I was just going above and beyond and having a lot of grace because life happens and you know that's never going to change. know, so having that grace for the caregivers and different situations that happen, mean we're still dealing with that even to this day. You get the perfect storm and nobody can fill in and it's you know, it's the never-ending story of home care.
But I think just going the extra mile just makes a huge, huge difference. I think one of the most important things that we ever did and continue to do was just to listen. Sometimes people just need to offload. And if you give them a platform, I'm not saying I agree with what they're saying or we can even do anything about it. But if we can, we certainly will try. But it's just listening. It's just what's going on. How can we help make the situation
better for you? Do you need time off? Do you need a more flexible schedule? Do we need to change your days and hours? Is the client just not appropriate for you or you're not for the client? know all kinds of things happen like that. I mean we used to tell people from the get-go, know, we're going to introduce so-and-so as your new caregiver. If you don't...
get along with them, please tell us because it's not a sin, it's not a tragedy. People just sometimes, maybe they talk a lot and you don't like a lot of talking. Well that will drive you nuts, so let's get it right. It's not always going to be a perfect fit. First try.
Miriam Allred (40:57.134)
Again, back to that just like open, honest communication goes such a long way. And it sounds like you all mastered that early on and it really proved successful. I want to talk a little bit about, so we talked about this care relationship manager. You mentioned also in each office or most of the offices, there's this sales rep, this business development professional. That role probably looks different in a rural market. know, what
that person does and who they reach out to and just kind of community involvement. Can you both speak to that about the challenges, the successes of that sales role, who have been your referral partners that have been successful and are there other initiatives or things that you all have done that have been successful for them?
JM & Michele (41:43.628)
Well, I think one of the biggest things we did was bring on Sarah Barker a few years ago to kind of mentor and coach us through her blueprint. And we had to tweak that, of course, from rural to metro areas. It's two different beasts. But that was significant for us. I feel like the structure was needed.
with her and she did some coaching for us along the way too. you know, having that kind of mentorship out there is just invaluable.
Yeah, I remember having a discussion with Sarah early on and Sarah's from rural Maine. So she is very much in tune, even though she lives in San Diego and part-time in Tennessee in the major metro areas, but she knows the rule. And I remember telling her one time, was like, you may drive by a big piece of land out in the middle of nowhere and the house is, you know, you just, your basic one story looks like it's been there a while. And maybe you go up to the front door, the people answer it, maybe, you know, address
and overalls and you know you may think well they they maybe they can't afford this what you don't know is there a half million dollar piece of tract farm equipment in the barn that's what they spend their money on and these people are on these branches for generations and farms
They don't want to go to the big box in the big city. They don't know anybody, their friends aren't there, their family's not there. It's a foreign concept for them to think about living that way and leaving the home that they've...
JM & Michele (43:21.184)
been in for decades. So it was really just finding, you know, there are resources in every little town that these people use. And one of the big ones we used was legal and financial. You know, they have to plan for their futures just like everybody else. And as we all know, home care is not covered.
buy almost anything as far as how you pay for it. It's expensive. Most of it's gonna come out of pocket. So we worked with the financial advisors in all these little towns that had relationships with these people to say, look, we're not here to take every dime they have. We're here to figure out how to get them through the next five to 10 years with the money that they have. So we had a great partnership there. Michele was instrumental in developing that. But Sarah's the one who really brought it to our attention on, you don't just go after the
care community, you need to go after the community as a whole because they have relationships with everybody.
Miriam Allred (44:20.792)
Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that the legal and financial advisors like that feels really specific to kind of a rural town is like who are all of our prospective clients talking to in town? know, like who are those maybe five or 10 people that they are engaging with daily or weekly in that town? And I think that's a really kind of like a gold mine is building those relationships and building that trust so that you are top of mind when those conversations arise. Any other unique
like initiatives that you tried over the years with churches or schools or just anything else that comes to mind that was, you know, successful, that was maybe kind of an out of the hat idea.
JM & Michele (45:04.172)
I don't know. think we probably tried a little bit of everything, especially in the first years because you're just trying to build a base of clients. And honestly, don't think finding clients, least, well, even now, finding clients is not that difficult. Trying to figure out the people who are going to care for them, that's the most difficult part. And it was back then. It's even harder now, post-COVID.
the numbers are small. And I think even then though, I think we were thinking the same way that we're having to think now is how are we going to change someone's mind who maybe works in a bank to come over to the, I won't say dark side, I'll say the bright side of home care. And what is, how meaningful could that be for them?
Miriam Allred (45:53.198)
Thank you.
JM & Michele (46:01.46)
And they may love their bank job or teaching job or whatever, but I think we had to try to talk to people even then about this is what home care is and this is what you can get out of it. And just personally, I had to take care of people. It's not my forte. I don't have the patience for it to sit for 12 hours. But I can tell you one thing, every single time I left one of those clients houses, I never
Miriam Allred (46:23.277)
you
JM & Michele (46:31.374)
felt more full and engaged and proud to do what I did. And we had to pass that message and communication on to other people, this is very meaningful work.
Miriam Allred (46:45.71)
Yeah, really well said, JM Thank you for sharing that. A couple of minutes ago, one of you mentioned that in rural Texas, everyone's used to driving an hour. That's just the reality. You grow up doing that. Everyone's used to that. But these caregivers, they were driving. And again, albeit they were used to it, was driving, paying for travel time a big issue or was that always just like,
the standard, how did you manage just like the driving and the scheduling and the travel time of all of that?
JM & Michele (47:22.5)
We started right from the get-go to tell our caregivers anything over 30 miles that we're paying for. even, I guess, 30 miles actually seems like a lot now. We probably should have had less than that. we always covered their travel time, their mileage, actually paid them even a little more because you've got wear and tear on the car. And then we wound up buying some cars later on down the road. We had one.
early on that it was a VW bug.
And it hit a deer, it ran over a dead deer, and then it hit something else before we finally had to get rid of it. And that was kind of our, you know, the caregiver. If somebody had car issues or it was just kind of a backup that they could take that car. And we had a lot of clients out at Possum Kingdom and a lot of deer out there. So that little car saw a lot of deer action. And we finally had to put it out of commission. There was no Uber. There was no Lyft. There's still
That doesn't exist where we started. That's not available. So we had to try to be clever in the ways that we were able to get them to where they needed to be, including we have ice storms in the winter in Texas. And so I have a four-wheel drive truck. I've got to drive caregivers an hour because they can't get there. And we have to have somebody there for 24-7 quality. So do what you got to do.
Miriam Allred (48:52.606)
Yeah. These are the nuances of rural home care. Again, like, you know, the Volkswagen and the deer, it's like, these are just the little things that you both almost like don't even know any different. Like this is just the reality you were brought up in. But for people in metros, it just looks so different. You see caregivers taking Ubers to and from work because there's just a plethora in the metro and it makes more sense than driving their own car. these are just the nuances that I think are so interesting in rural markets that you all have lived and breathed.
I want to talk about in our last 10, 15 minutes here, your expansion. You started Breckenridge rural Texas, but naturally ClearPath grew to the point where people were probably requesting your services in Fort Worth, in Dallas. Your reputation, your presence just grew. Was it all organic growth, word of mouth took you to new markets or was it more strategized than that?
JM & Michele (49:49.662)
It was strategized. We grew south of Breckenridge into a little bit bigger market, but then our big expansion was into the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. And again there, though, we did not jump right into Dallas or Fort Worth or Arlington. We went to Weatherford, which is...
It's less rule now than it was then, but it's still, don't want to be called Fort Worth and they don't want to be called Dallas. They're Weatherford, just like where we live in Granbury. We're 30 minutes away. We're not DFW. It's different. So our strategy was to kind of continue to hit the outer rim of these bigger markets and continue to grow our name and our reputation.
really just have an understanding of the market. And what we found out pretty quick was if you don't live there like we didn't, you better hire somebody who does and knows the community. So, you know, that was a challenge in and of itself.
Miriam Allred (50:45.358)
So you didn't necessarily grow into DFW. You kind of grew like around them, north and south into the smaller markets around them. Is that what I'm understanding?
JM & Michele (50:55.958)
We did. And then, of course, by default, you do get into those metro areas as, you know, your client base grows. And our home office ended up being in Denton. That's where our COO and our CFO lived. It made more sense. So that's the only office with the exception of having two people in each. Then they office out of that same.
the same office as well. Yeah. And then right about that time, we already had a contract with the Veterans Administration, the VA, but we were really only utilizing out of one smaller VA office out in West Texas. And our COO, who was not our COO at the time, he was just someone that we had asked to come in to be part of this organization and run that Weatherford office because it had struggled. I won't lie. took
well over a year to get the right people in there to make it succeed. And he was absolutely key for that. But he saw, he kind of saw the vision on the VA side that we had this contract and what could he do with it? So he just kept reaching out to them, really marketing the VA and basically saying, look, and he was right in line with our vision. He's like, what do you have outside in the rural parts of Dallas, Fort Worth that nobody will go after?
Give me those clients. Let me prove what we can do. And that's how our VA clients help group to huge numbers.
Miriam Allred (52:25.944)
How long ago was it? Was it all private pay up to this point? And at what point did you introduce this VA contract?
JM & Michele (52:32.715)
The VA contract probably started 16 or 17, 2016 or 17. And we just kind of had a few clients out of a small VA office out in West Texas. And then probably really latter part of 17 and into 18. And then from 18 to 22, I mean, they just inundated us because they were giving us everything that nobody else wanted. And that was a lot.
Miriam Allred (52:59.574)
And that was out in the more rural areas because nobody was servicing out there.
JM & Michele (53:03.284)
I mean, I'm talking maybe 30 to 45 minutes out of the city. They wouldn't go. And we were like, we'll go. But we were going hours, hours and hours and hours. And we would just go to whatever town they needed and we would look for our caregivers there. Because again, that's no different than the way we started. They didn't have opportunities two hours from Dallas.
Miriam Allred (53:25.806)
So that sounds like it was a huge opportunity to get that VA contract and realize nobody's servicing rural Texas with this VA contract and you all can just eat that up. Like what a great opportunity, right?
JM & Michele (53:40.256)
Yeah, it was, it was to the point where we actually had to kind of stop doing any marketing for private pay because we were being inundated so much with the VA referrals that we had to really look at. That's when Philip was put into the COO position and started working on processes and just making sure that our firm foundation was correct. because it was getting hot and heavy.
Miriam Allred (54:06.71)
And I'm just curious when you sold about what portion of the business was private pay versus VA.
JM & Michele (54:14.284)
it wound up being like 85 % VA.
Miriam Allred (54:17.044)
Wow. my goodness. So a totally different business portfolio than when you started.
JM & Michele (54:20.619)
Yeah.
We probably had to take a two, two and a half year break on private pay completely. We kept the clients we had obviously, but we didn't aggressively go out and market new ones until probably about the last two and a half years. Two, two years. We're making some really great strides there towards the end, but you know the VA didn't stop. It just kept going. So revenue-wise, of course, they're a really good amount in Texas.
from boost those numbers even higher.
Miriam Allred (54:53.614)
Wow.
Okay, let's talk a little just briefly about the sale from the rural lens and then we'll talk a little bit about what you're up to before we wrap up. You were probably approached, most successful home care companies are approached for a while. It's obvious that you're succeeding and people are interested and attracted to you. Was the rural market an advantage or a disadvantage? Was the investor particularly interested in?
your rural nature or I'm just curious what factor that played at all.
JM & Michele (55:29.196)
Some were, we met with several. We had nine offers at the end of the day on our company. Some were interested in the rural aspect, some were interested in the VA aspect. So it was a mixture of all those things. We ended up going with someone that we felt we aligned with, could speak our language on the rural side and know that we're passionate about that.
That, you wanna add to that? Yeah, mean, like she said, so we were literally just going in to get a valuation of the company because we were doing estate planning personally. And our M&A firm said, would you like to sell? And we both said no. And then we sat there and thought about it for a few hours. And I think I went into the room and I said, what if, she goes, I'm already there.
Miriam Allred (56:24.078)
Yeah.
JM & Michele (56:24.81)
because we have been getting approached by some people who were interested in us investing in them and we just didn't feel like we could do both at the same time.
So once they came back with the number that we could potentially get, that changed the game a little bit. And we felt like, okay, maybe now is the right time. But again, you still have to go through the process. So we ended up getting well over that evaluation. So, you know, that's difficult to say no to, knowing that you have other things on the horizon that you want to do and keep working on. Yeah.
Miriam Allred (56:58.968)
So sounds like it was a factor for you both personally to find someone that aligned with you, but also maybe valued the rural nature of the business. It was less so like their influence on you, but more so who you were looking to take over that could still support, again, kind of like the grassroots, like rural nature of the business. That was important to you, it sounds like.
JM & Michele (57:19.948)
Yes. think we thought a lot about what is our legacy here and it's very important to us that Clear Path continue on and do a great job in taking care of people and they have and we're very happy about that. Well, you know, we rolled equity with the group that purchased us and that speaks volumes too on how confident we are in the growth and the con...
continuous growth and our COO and CFO stayed on and that played a huge part in us rolling equity because there's complete faith there obviously. Yeah, it's been an amazing experience. I think when people ask me what was it like having never been through it before.
I tell people it felt like an FBI investigation and an IRS audit all at the same time. know, apparently ours was very quickly and it was, it was very smooth because of, you know, we've got an amazing CFO who keeps everything neat and tidy and clean and
Miriam Allred (58:19.67)
Okay.
JM & Michele (58:38.214)
operations are amazing. So it helped that process move along very, quickly.
Miriam Allred (58:45.74)
And a big part of your decision was deciding to keep full ownership over your Colorado office. So you're not done yet. All of the said and done, all of the hard work that you put in, clearly there's still a deeper rooted passion. tell us a little bit about the thinking behind keeping that Colorado office and what your plans are there.
JM & Michele (59:07.34)
I feel like the challenges rule, really there are, are even greater than maybe here, you know, given the types of weather that can happen in Colorado. there's a need really, and everywhere that we go there, you know, there's people are very vocal that there needs to be a shift and we need to, we can, we have just as much to do there as we did in Texas. And our daughter is,
Going to school up there, she's getting her master's in psychology. So she lives in Fort Collins. And the reason we even found Fort Collins is because we had to find her housing her and her fiance. And while we were in Fort Collins, we're like, this feels really home care-y to us because it's not a huge town. I mean, it is a college town. CSU is there. So there's, there's some population there, but when you go outside of that, it's farm and ranch. That's all it is. And that is very Colorado.
in general. Outside of Denver, it's pretty rural, which I don't really know that I knew that until I spent enough time up there. So the more we dove into it and did our research and talked to a lot of people up there that are in healthcare, we thought, I think we can do this. So we decided to...
to form an office there, did have to change the name upon sale of Clear Path. They wanted to keep that name, which I completely understand that. So we named it Riverside and we're still waiting on a license, but we had to basically start the whole process over after the sale and it takes a little time, but we're getting really close. We'll have a license probably by some point this summer.
Miriam Allred (01:00:53.218)
Yeah. Well, the cool thing is sometimes I'll ask us here at the end, if you were to do it all again, what would you do differently? The cool thing is you're about to do it again. And so my question is, what if anything will you do differently? You've learned so much, you've built everything up and here you are about to kind of start from scratch again. What if anything will you do differently?
JM & Michele (01:01:01.802)
Yes.
JM & Michele (01:01:15.404)
Well, I would say that there's been a... just for me personally, and this has nothing really to do with us or her, but I want to do it completely differently from a personal point of view. When you finally do that sale and everything is said and done and 11 years is gone and then you realize and take a breath that you've been white-knuckling it this whole time. The whole time. That is your normal now.
I can't live that way anymore. I, all business owners to some degree are that way. I want this to be much more enjoyable for me so that it's much more enjoyable for the people around me.
Miriam Allred (01:02:00.046)
you
JM & Michele (01:02:02.41)
But yeah, I'm actively looking at things within my own personal life that I can help allow me to grow and still be a great leader, but have some internal peace. And we're never going to stop learning.
the minute you think you're the smartest person in the room, you better change rooms because it's an ever evolving industry. An ever growing industry, and you just can't ever stop learning from others and about yourself and all the things. mean, The technology alone just say the word AI and all in the implications it has for our industry. my gosh, it's scary, but it's also exciting.
Miriam Allred (01:02:42.498)
Yeah.
Miriam Allred (01:02:48.684)
Yeah. this has been so awesome, JM and Michele. It sounds like part one because I'm already envisioning part two a year from now when you're up and running in Colorado. And how did it go? It's not every day that I meet home care owners that start from scratch again. And so I'll be really curious to hear how it goes. And I have complete confidence, complete faith that it's going to go amazingly. But I love what you're saying, JM, about approaching it totally differently.
JM & Michele (01:02:56.447)
you
Miriam Allred (01:03:19.052)
You've lived and breathed and white-knuckled for 10 years and it's like, you don't want to do that again. So how do you do it again? But from a completely different point of view. And I'll be so curious to hear how that goes. this has been an incredible session. It has been so good to spend time with both of you. And I look forward to rubbing shoulders at conferences and events and just continuing to learn from you. So thank you for joining me in the lab and thank you for all of your comments today.
JM & Michele (01:03:43.968)
Thank you, Miriam. We really enjoyed it.