By Stephen Tweed 
Last month, we shared with you the Big Burning Issues addressed by the 41 companies that are members of our Home Care CEO Forum and our CEO Mastermind Groups. These data were collected from our four monthly video mastermind meetings.
This past week, we had the opportunity to dig more deeply into Big Burning Issues with our Top 5% Mastermind Meeting. We spent a full day where each company had 30 minutes to present their Big Burning Issue, and get insights and solutions from other members of the group. Of the six Big Burning Issues we listed in last month’s newsletter, The Top 5% Group focused on three of them and dug much deeper.
Caregiver Recruiting and Retention
As we went around the room discussing burning issues, the topics that were related to Caregiver Recruiting and Retention included:
- Crafting a Culture of Accountability
- Building your Executive Team
- Increasing Employee Engagement
- Automating your Caregiver Recruiting System
- Elevating the Workforce – how to create a “differentiated workforce”?
- Increasing 90-day Retention.
Marketing in a Post-Covid World
Another group of burning issues related to positioning the company for growth and attracting new clients. The members addressed the following topics:
- Market Penetration to Attract New Payers
- Being Intentional about our Ideal Client
- How to Identify and Exceed Client Expectations
Financial Benchmarking
One of the unique features of our Home Care CEO Mastermind Groups is that no member of a group competes with any other member of the same group. That means we can disclose very confidential information and have in-depth discussions. Again this year, the Top 5% Mastermind Group conducted their own benchmarking study, following the model of the annual Home Care Benchmarking Study from Home Care Pulse. We spent nearly three hours going in-depth into the details of improving financial performance. The issues the members discussed included:
- Annual Revenue Growth
- Clarifying the Direct Cost of Care
- Setting a Goal for Gross Margin
- Costs related to Private Pay versus Medicaid
- The Impact of Acquisitions on Financial Performance
- Overtime
- Cost of Turnover
- The Cost of Client Churn
- Price Increases
- Spending on Recruiting and Retention
- Annual Industry Growth.
Insights from Mastermind C0nversations
While we have Non-disclosure Agreements in place so that we can’t discuss any specifics of what our members disclose in our meetings, we can share some broad lessons that we have learned from these conversations. As the CEO or Owner of a growing home care company, here are some things for you to consider as your agency reaches the Top 10%:
- Pay attention to industry trends, and how they will affect your local market.
- Spend more time working “On the Business” instead of “In the Business.”
- Build a high performance team of key leaders
- Craft a Culture of Attraction and Accountability
- Put systems in place to automate tasks that are frequently repeated
- Use Data to make better decisions about your business.
Grow Your Agency through OPE
One of the biggest lessons that has come out of our work with the 41 companies in our CEO Mastermind Groups is learning from OPE – Other People’s Experience. If you really want to grow your home care business, you need to spend time interacting with other successful owners and CEOs of home care companies your size or larger. There are three ways to do that:
- Participate in the Home Care Pulse Benchmarking Study
- Join a Caregiver Quality Mastermind Group
- Join a Home Care CEO Mastermind Group
Amazing Growth Potential in Home Care
One of the conversations among the Top 5% was about the amazing growth potential we see in the home care industry. Health care leaders, third party payers, and consumers have experienced a growing awareness this past year of what we do in home care. Now is the opportunity to build on that growing awareness and take action to grow your business.
