Hurdles for Hope
The day you decided to start your own home care agency, the entrepreneurial spirit likely had you filled with hope for several things all at once: freedom, success, impact, outcomes… to name a few. Whether a home care owner came up in the industry from caregiver to an owner or found home care while seeking growing industries to invest in, there comes a point for many when they’re surprised by and overwhelmed by the myriad challenges faced.
There’s no question of the compassion and passion a new owner has when starting to build a new home care agency. Capacity, however, is something owners of any business become challenged with depending on where the are in the process of building a team-managed agency. Some might become frustrated when they realize it’s not always the obviously bad things in business that happen that can become overwhelming, but also outcomes that most would assume are good. Here are some of the areas of business we’ve seen home care owners become overwhelmed:
- Getting clients – After you get the business officially started, finding clients is essential to both stability and growth
- Referral Sources – Word-of-mouth brings in roughly 27% of revenue-generating leads to home care* agencies, meaning current/past clients and referral partnerships are critical to growth
- Client Turnover/Retention/Loss – Client turnover – due to dissatisfaction, death, returning to health, declining to advanced health needs, etc. – in home care is a reality agency owners must be prepared for
- Caregiver Recruiting – Wages, experience, interest in care, your own internal messaging – all create challenges to attracting the right caregivers
- Caregiver Attendance/Turnover/Retention – Between callouts, noshows, quitting, and terminations, the employees you count on to help your agency succeed can – without successful operations in place – interfere with your business succeeding (Having too many caregivers on record can also be overwhelming when you’re trying to keep them committed to your agency)
- Scheduling – Having a proper balance between clients and caregivers to ensure clients are cared for and caregivers are available and scheduled
- Lead Generation – A never ending process of pursuing right-fit contacts for prospective clients, caregivers, key management roles, and referral sources
- New Client Onboarding – When lead generation, marketing, and sales efforts are successful, it’s critical to have the processes in place to successfully onboard clients and meet expectations
Entrepreneur Owner or Employed Owner?
When you opened the doors of your home care agency, did you start a business that you own and can run as an entrepreneur? Or did you end up simply owning a new job? Another way to look at this is: Do you run your business, or does your business run you?
During a recent summit we held with our Action Leader Experience home care owners, I made the following observation of the difference noticed among each of them from the time they enrolled into the ALE coaching program to the event.
“It’s incredible to see how far they’ve progressed once they went from chasing opportunity as home care owners to shaping opportunity.”
If you’ve attended one of our past Masterclasses, 3-Day Challenges, or a Home Care Event for Home Care Owners, Jessica Nobles has dived deep into the importance of a Core Compass for home care owners. Among the areas covered in this Core Compass, the two I feel do the most to help home care owners shift their mindset from owning their job to being an entrepreneur are: “Non-Negotiables” and “Right-Fit Client”.
Critical to setting yourself up for success as an entrepreneurial is setting your own boundaries with the “Non-Negotiables.” This helps you quickly identify the types of roles you’ll want to build team members around so you can be more freed up to influence the business strategy and energy. From a business decision perspective, non-negotiables aid in preventing potentially damaging desperate decisions that only add to the overwhelm home care owners feel. Right-Fit Clients help you and your team remain focused on which clients you’ll work best with. Defining you can/can’t or will/won’t pursue based on types of payment sources or needs will keep you and your team focused in on opportunities to serve that won’t stretch you and your team beyond capacity.
Every time you permit the “job” to dictate the decisions you make and the clients you take on, instead of strategy, it leads to greater risks of client dissatisfaction, drops in quality of care, or frustrations that inevitably create unnecessary overwhelm for management and owners.
Overcoming the overwhelm
Overwhelm occurs when someone finds themselves operating either at the max or beyond their capacity. Rather than resisting growth beyond individual capacity, strategic home care owners push their business to stretch them. While it can become frustrating in the moment, the sense of being overwhelmed can be a positive indication of growth. Some refer to this as “growing pains.” Remaining overwhelmed, however, is not positive for you or your home care agency.
To succeed in home care, it’s critical for owners to position themselves where they have a team-managed agency to run the daily operations and majority of the tasks associated with growth. This allows them to focus more on influence and impact, strategy and goals for the business.
Moving beyond the overwhelm requires a team, a support group, and mentorship. Aligning yourself with others willing to share their experiences – both the wins and the difficult lessons learned – provides increased confidence in decisions you make as an owner as you pursue a path to freedom and achieving your definitions of success in business.
While the opportunity to become an Action Leader, as Kevin refers to, comes just twice per year, you are certainly welcome to join our Home Care Owners Community on Facebook to find and align with other successful home care owners to help improve your approach to scaling your agency and reducing overwhelm. And, watch for announcements of 3-Day Challenges and The Home Care Event for Home Care Owners to take the opportunity to look into and join the Action Leader Experience.
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