What It Means to Be an Expert at Human Capital in Home Care

Most home care agencies struggle with the same two things: keeping good caregivers and building a leadership team that holds together.

In this episode, Paul and Joan sit down with Les DeFelice, CEO and Chairman of the DeFelice Group and a multi-state owner of Visiting Angels. In 2015, he decided that the only way to grow was to become an expert in human capital. What he built from that conviction is unlike anything else in the industry.

If you want to see what treating people as your greatest business asset looks like in practice, this episode is worth your time.

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Your next big win starts here. Serve with heart, lead with faith, and remember… compassion is your calling, and wealth is your reward.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Home Care Millionaire Podcast, the show where compassion meets prosperity. I am Paul Timband. Alongside my beautiful wife Joan here, we're honored to be your host. Together, John and I have built a home care agency from a little over a $12,000 credit card loan. Okay, some people call it a gambler at that time. We've built into a we've built it into a an eight-figure business serving thousands of families over the years. And now we're here to share the lessons, strategies, and the strategies and the mindset shifts that help us get there so that you can too.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

We launched this podcast because the home care industry is often misunderstood. Too many people don't see the sacrifices owners and their caregivers make every single day, or the powerful impact agencies have on seniors and their communities. And truthfully, we looked around and realized there were not many podcasts out there shining a light on this industry. So we felt called to create the Home Care Millionaire Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:09

This podcast is designed for the purpose-driven provider. For those of you who feel called to care, but also want to build a thriving, sustainable business. Each week we're going to share with you real life stories, current strategies, and powerful mindset shifts that will help you move from just surviving to thriving.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Absolutely, our tagline says it best. Compassion is your calling, wealth is your reward. And here on the Home Care Millionaire Podcast, we're going to show you how to embrace both.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

So get ready for inspiration, practical insights, and encouragement you need to impact lives, build wealth, and create a legacy through your agency. So hit subscribe, folks. Join us on this journey to transform your business, your mindset, and your future. Welcome, folks, to the Home Care Millionaire Podcast. Today we have a heavy heater among in our midst, someone who has several home care agencies across several states and has grown his business astonishingly well. A thinker, a strategist, a visionary, a brilliant business executive, Mr. Les Defiles. He is the chairman, okay, and CEO. He's the CEO and chairman of the DeFilles Group Incorporated DBF Visiting Angels. Les is someone that John and I have known over the years and just grown to love and respect. He's a fellow home care agency owner like us. And we've learned so much from each other. Today we're looking forward to Les sharing with us how he's been able to grow such a big organization and a successful one of that in such a short period of time. Les is a visionary and a person that Jonah and I respect and love. So you wanna you wanna Yeah, so welcome Les.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

We're so excited to hear your story, your journey, and all the nuggets of wisdom that you're gonna share with our audience today. So without much further ado, let's welcome Les Defiles to the Home Care Millionaire Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Welcome, Les.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Thank you, Jonah Paul. I'm really looking forward to this. Looking forward to working with you. I do love you both also. We've known each other a long time. And and um everything you give, you get back in spade. So thanks for all the work you're doing during this podcast. Thanks for thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

So, Les, how did you get into the home care industry? Please tell us how it began for you.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Absolutely. Yeah, I had uh been fortunate to be U.S. uh government securities institutional sales rep in Houston, Dallas, Dallas, New York City for my humble beginnings in West Virginia. And I could afford to come back to West Virginia at the end of uh 1987. So it took a while, but I went to work for a local home medical equipment company. Uh jobs are few and far between in the Wheeling, West Virginia area, where I are from Pittsburgh. And so for about 16% of what I was previously making, I learned how to do pediatric mobility and adaptive seating. So I worked with uh occupational therapists, physical therapists, and special ed teachers to help children with mostly cerebral palsy get their new wheelchairs and seating.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah, that's yeah, that was the beginning. And I did that for four years with that company. And then what occurred was uh my former employer was quite the businessman, he exited that business to uh acquire more home oxygen businesses, which was his main line of uh business in western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia. So I started in 1995 in a basement, uh, married uh wife and two children, age 41 with my savings, and started doing pediatric mobility. And what's interesting is you um you go for a run in the morning and uh you come back from your run and you kneel down, say a little prayer every morning that this is gonna make it. You really do. And my first business plan when I closed it, it was I it was a gateway color book, and I named it Long Shot Rehab, so that it was such a long shot that it would make it. And what's interesting is when you have the work ethnic, you uh care about others, you put 100% empathy in whatever you're doing. It took about six months till all the work you did started cycling back through in checks in the mail from mostly West Virginia Medicaid, who has great pediatric uh programs for children for their mobility and seating. So after about um after a few years doing that, um my former employer, what he did is he sold his business to Lyncare in Western Pennsylvania. He got Lindcare, the national into Western Pennsylvania. So at that point in 1998, uh 1999, I was able to get some financing and I moved into the home oxygen uh business, which I would never compete with him, but I could then go to several of his markets. So from 1999 uh to about 2004, we were growing the home oxygen business, and I took his team from the wheeling area that did not want to work. He was gone. He was he went on to be the chair of Resperonics in Pittsburgh, he's an amazing guy. So they were didn't want to work for a large company. So I brought this team in, and and it was uh high growth, high pressure. We did not outstrip our capital. We grew so quickly, just in five years, that LinCare gave us a call and they flew to Pittsburgh, said, Would you like to sell? And I looked at the um incredible person from LinCare and Clearwater, Florida. I said, Sharon, I appreciate it. I have no idea what I'd have here. I mean, we're just trying to get through every day, uh uh getting the screw getting the prescriptions for oxygen, filling the orders. Um, it was it was chaotic, it was controlled chaos, but we grew and it looked up and we had a really good run um from 1999, and I went on the board of the American Association for Home Care, like he did in the mid-2000s, and then I saw what was coming from reimbursement. It was coming where from CMS there was a competitive bidding program that I knew was gonna really lower the Medicare rate substantially. They looked at LindCare, they look at their they looked at their EBITDA at 39%, like a software company. You go in and look at the sc.gov, and I said they thought everybody in home care is making money, but we were lucky to like do a 10-12% uh return uh as a small company. So I knew the uh reckoning day of reckoning was coming. So by 2013, I called Sharon and I said, How would you like to buy our pharmacy business? We were doing a lot of pharmacy business inhalation meds. She said, How about the whole business? I said, Sure, why not? And here's the kicker they were the only cash buyer, and you talk about taking a risk. We have to take risk. What they do is they say, Um, you tell your people Monday that we're coming in Tuesday to spend the whole week, we're gonna tear the place apart before we close on the deal. We have a letter of intention. If we don't like what we see, we're packing up, we're leaving, going back to Florida. So you have to take the risk and go, come on in. Yeah, you have to take the risk, they come on in. Uh open open season on everything. They had come in electronically for a couple weeks, then our CFO, she hosted them. They went on every truck with every respiratory therapist, they visited as many auction patients as possible. After a week, they said, Well, um, people hate us in a lot of ways, but they love your company. So they took the name, we sold it one time revenue. Extraordinary. Uh, but I jumped off the railroad trucks. Now, not one to wait around. Uh, like many of you, many of your viewers, you read constantly. I had read about personal home care, and I thought, well, that sounds like that sounds like something that's sort of related. It's I don't see it as healthcare, I see it as a consumer service. So when I look at visiting angels, I look at top brands, we see ourselves as a top consumer service. And I tell people, we are not in a healthcare continuum. We're we're a consumer service that is post-acute, let's say, post-post hospital. So um I looked at a couple brands, and when you meet the home care, when you meet the team at Visiting Angels, there was an open house in Columbus, and it was uh 2009. Uh, I was still a few years away from selling the first company, but I had to prepare. So um I became a franchisee, and then uh I had the advantage of having this pretty substantial company I started from scratch, the credit line available. So when when Mary Luca Poozi was the wonderful woman, just retired, sold me a franchise. I kept buying, I kept buying everything they would sell us like every year, a couple more territories, every year, every year. I just kept buying whatever and and what it was is you're putting us together and you're making a lot of mistakes, and we probably burned through $300,000 when we would put people in outposts where there was no revenue, you know, you make some mistakes, but you know, you you learn from your mistakes, it wasn't so by any means fatal. So from from 2010, uh sold the other company in 13 up to about 2015, we were break-even, we lost some money. And for me, when you're a risk taker, the fact that we lost money, my pulse did not go up one beat. It was like this to be expected. I had built a little cushion, right? So I'd make payroll once in a while, and the big distinction was oh, you want me to stop there for another question? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Please go ahead, close it. Go ahead, all right.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

So I will I will definitely take a breath when you need me to. So in by 2015, we're in business five years, and I looked around and said, I need to be an expert at human capital. Walmart had gone from $975 to $11 an hour around then. And I you read everything, and I go, Well, that's that's going to be a problem trying to hire caregivers when it's that much above the market. So I watched that for six months or a year while we were putting a plan together, and we found that Walmart, because they did that, they had an 8% decline in operating income. Big surprise when you give them a million and a half people, whatever they have, a dollar, a dollar more, whatever. I said, Well, that's not gonna work. So, what came of it was our first best practice. In short, it's very simple to explain. If a caregiver does their job, today's today's rules are ours are higher. If a caregiver simply does what they're supposed to do for two pay periods, 25 hours um um a pay period, 25 hours a week, right? 25 hours of pay period, a pay period, okay, 50 hours a month. They get a five percent bonus on gross pay. Now, I took executive pay that no one has for hourly jobs, and I put executive pay for hourly associates. So caregivers that worked 25 hours for two weeks doing their job, they saw a separate line on their paycheck for five percent of the gross pay. The first month we did it in 2016, we had 180 caregivers, and I got the boards, I they had copies of the plan. It was gold, it was gold, platinum, diamond club. Gold was if you do it for one month, two months, three months, made platinum. That gave you the five, five, five, and another five for the last 90 days, which is substantial. I mean, diamond, if you did this for 12 consecutive months, you got a five percent bonus on your last year of pay. This is executive type pay, yes, right? So in the first month, we had 17 of 180 caregivers that qualified. Now, today you move forward, 640 caregivers, about 33 to 35 percent. It's always remained constant. They share about 150,000, 160,000 a year in those caregiver bonuses. No, we keep looking for anywhere in any service industry that has an executive pay for performance plan for hourly associates. I'll stop there.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Wow, wow, that that is you just jumped into a question that we're quite asked. Go ahead, go ahead, Joe. We're gonna ask you. That's that's impressive, Les. It was about you know, you're not only being a visionary but a successful executive. This is this executive, uh a business executive. The question was gonna be how what you've done to retain such a great team, and you just shared one of your secrets, your numbers about it with our joan and paul.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Here's part of it. The the rest of the story on my like Paul Harvey used to say yes, yeah. So it was it was mid 2000 2016. I go, Less is going well. What I did, I put together a 54 question survey that people could do when we bring them in four times a year, three notes twice a year, bring them, bring the teams in after ours, educate feet. They could, I did 20, I spent 20 hours on a 54 question survey that they could take in five and 10 minutes while they were sitting in front of us, instead of mailing it, emailing it. This is this blew me away. So it went from it from one to five. It went from strongly disagree to disagree to neutral to agree to strongly agree, one through five. Okay. I still I will always be amazed by this. They were making 975 was the starting pay back then. Okay, the statement was I'm satisfied with my rate of pay. Wow, 975. Four point out of 4.3. It was agree on its way to strongly agree that they were satisfied with their rate of pay. Well, that told you a lot more than that. They liked how they were treated. Yes, more than ever.

SPEAKER_03 15:00

It wasn't a pay. It wasn't a pay, you're right. That's that's that's how it's how you yeah, you're right. Well, I mean, and unless we've seen it with your team, I think we've seen the way you the way you're very passionate. I think I think that's amazing that's a word I've seen. You're passionate about caring for your people.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Isn't that isn't that a big hallmark of your your success, would you say? Yeah. Um, where that comes from, everybody's culture comes from somewhere. And what's interesting is we we use the profile XT for psychometric testing for leadership team jobs. And if anyone out there knows, any kind of psychometric testing is good as a tool, it has a learning in that at the top, and it's got 10 or 10 or 12 um personality profile, personality traits. We find talking to them, they're in Waco, Texas, Profiles International. We find they tell us that if you take that later in life, you're gonna score the same. So we found out we've got our personality at birth, that personality gives us our behaviors. Now they're accinuating factors that can affect all that, but you can't get away from your core personality for better or for worse, right? So, having said that, what we found was that um what we found was that if if we just hired for the leadership team people that we thought could correlate to that personality, it was never guaranteed, right? And I'll tell you how much it wasn't guaranteed, but it gave us a shot at having people that uh believed in our culture, where the culture came from, uh, not unusual for a lot of entrepreneurs. So um, born in 53, 1963, car dealer family outside of Pittsburgh, Weirton, West Virginia, Italian American family. My uncle was the brains of the business. Um, God rest that he dried at 95, 10 years ago. My aunt was a school teacher, my father was the youngest, arranged marriage, and as soon as his mother died, the Italian mother died. He started an affair with the Den Mother and Cub Scouts when I'm nine. Now, okay, I came home and said, Mom, I saw dad kissing Joyce. Well, you're nine years old. When I've seen my grandchildren at nine, I go, I cannot believe that. So everybody has tough backgrounds. Life was over for childhood and teens, pretty much, right? So you fast forward in the oxygen business. We're dealing with respiratory therapists, drivers making great money, um, the executive team and the first company. Here we're dealing with people hourly workers, right? All my mother did was work constantly at any kind of job for meager pay, uh, no benefits to put her to raise her three children. So you go forward, and all of a sudden, when you're hiring folks that come into the leadership team, and if you saw that they absolutely did not respect the Irley workers nor their co-workers, they're gone so fast. We hired slow, fired fast. Now, I want to tell your viewers if you if you are bold enough to do this, here's what can happen. It's very rare that you can do this. First, everybody in the leadership team, in the the operations people, they're they're cross-trained. The director, three or four care coordinators, they all do the same thing. There's a little differential director versus care coordinator. They do about 10 or 12 things. Anyone that anyone that calls the office, they answer the phone, they can do anything that caller wants. Caregiver, client, lead, someone looking for a job, except billing and payroll. They don't get transferred, number one. All right. So, with that in mind, what we found was that over time we found out within the teams when we hire someone new, how they were working out. We do one-to-ones with the teams, and we still do them. They're spread out a little more in free, more like a month or every two. They were they were weekly. So a new person's on your team, your three people. We had it's two, you had one, three, you had four. We'd say, How's a new person doing not in skill? How's their personality? How how do you feel working with them? Because the people sitting there probably had some of the personality traits, and they'd say, you know, they're they're taking direction, they're they're eager, they're taking notes. If we heard not so great, they're really they're okay, they're really not focused, they're not writing notes. We knew it was wrong. Now, everybody, because the team was cross-trained, we did not have a scheduler and an assessment and an HR and someone else. We had everybody cross-trained. You could easily pull someone out of the team, right? Everyone else Slack scheduling all the responsibilities. Then you bring someone in and you have a chance to get that continuity. The number one thing was if we didn't do, I tell you, there's not a home care company alive, there's not a franchise alive that is an incredible scheduler that would dread the day the scheduler says, I've had it. Yeah, that's right. That's called panic. That is panic with a capital.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

So, because we set the model like that, this is something I will never forget. Over the 16 years for the salary jobs, not the hourly jobs. We already talked about them. Yeah, we I did phone interviews with around 700 people. I always do the phone interviews, even today. Hi, what are you doing? What do you want to do? Here's our culture. And then I float, I said, ask me the rest of the 20 minutes, ask me everything about this job. Don't tell me anything more about what you do. Don't go, I know about that, I know about this. I turn around, you must you must interview me about this company. I'm very insistent, and they understand because they're not used to being interviewed by the head of the company or that way. So, what I find, you get these people, you get the profile, and of this over 700 that I'd phone interviewed, I said 160 over in cohorts of three, four, five to get interviewed in cohorts of three, four, five over 16 years. We have 19 questions fixed, one through five. The ops team takes turns, it's up front. The same question, scientific. They score one to five. The one question, the one thing I put on the end of it after a while was if someone came in at 8 or 9 a.m. and it's four people that day, they'd think, oh gee, I wonder who else is coming in. I said, No, no, no. You have to say yes or no to that one. If it was the only person coming in for the interview, would you hire them yes or no? It forced the decision. So then the rest of the day, you finished the day, you've got these people, these scores, yeses, no's. You have picked a winner, you make the offer, and then once the offer is made, you get a written offer. And then we have six weeks of training. Even at that, out of 160 approximately, we have a 40 person leadership team. We only retained about 20 to 25 percent. Like the Navy SEALs. The selectivity at our place is so high. It's only based on personality. You could walk in, people, people, there's a lot of people on that team without a college degree. They walked in and we said, here's all the things you got to do. If you, if you really nail it on a hiring, if you are persuasive, you get these caregivers in, you're excited about it. We treat our applicants like Google, like software engineers. Well, engineers are be made obsolete with AI. We well say we treat them like AI engineers these days. They get treated like gold, and every day they get treated like gold. And when you have like-minded people that are upbeat positive, they know those caregivers are their salary. That's where their salary's coming from. Treating them well so they go treat the clients well, and it works. When everybody's got some skin in the game, and their bonus levels tied to that, that's where it was really, Joan and Paul, that's where it really was replicated over and over and over again with a static model. Now we hear about first principles. I Elon Musk's first pronounce Aristotle. I really realize I listened to his 26-hour biography, which everyone should listen to, and I'm nine hours again. I'll jump through it again. First principles is pretty astounding. So what are first principles when it comes to a service company? Our our all we have is people, our assets are our people. They walk in and out every day, right? Elon went through, I get the story pretty straight. He went to Russia, uh, they filled him up with vodka. He wanted to buy a couple rockets, 65 million a rocket, he didn't have that kind of money. He goes home, he talks to the engineers at SpaceX. He said, This is first principles. What's the list of everything that it takes to make a rocket? An extensive list. The engineers went out, they came back with the big list, like you're baking brownies. Yeah, came back and said, What's the recipe to make the best brownies? What's the recipe to build a rocket? Now, so far, first principles versus taking an existing rocket and trying to improve it. You don't take people and improve them. No, either they have it or they don't. You take people, you bring them in, first principles, you find out are they the right type of metal for that rocket? Are they the right transistors? Is the right kind of rocket fuel, the right kind of guidance systems? If they fit in your business, is the right personalities to make that rocket take off and not blow up too many times because they blow up. That's first principles. So the grounded the ground level was are they are they the are they the right personality? Are they demonstrating that? Yes or no? It's a super simple question. If not, you got to move them out. So dear Lord, 16 years only retaining about 25% of 700 people phone interview, 160 interviews.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

I've never heard of that before. Here's the result through a calculator, compounded annual growth rate. I tried to figure this out by myself, but there's a calculator. If you start at 500,000 the first year, and if you go 16.2 million for 2025, you plug in 11 years. That is a 24 compounded annual growth rate that flirts with being software or service company. Yeah, there's nothing, I mean, there's nothing else I can say about it, but we keep doing what we're doing.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

There you go. Yes, sir. That's amazing. Yes, sir. Amazing. Wow. Wow. Wow. That is really this is this is this is big stuff. Go ahead, John. You want to add me up?

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah, I was gonna ask you. Let's talk.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Let's talk about let's talk about the bad stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

That's it. I was gonna ask about the challenges.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

You know, what challenges ask me about the bad times.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Go ahead, please go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Ask you, ask about it.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

So Les, tell us, you know, it's been great.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Okay, um you go ahead, Les. Oh, okay. I thought it froze. Okay, let's talk about the the tough times because that's on your questions, which I think are brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

So, what's interesting is you had you had some incredible questions. I've memorized a lot of them.

SPEAKER_04 26:08

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Did I change per no, I did they're incredible questions. I memorized them. So, did I change personally as a CEO? That I did I go from operator to CEO. You had a lot of great behavioral questions, which are interesting. What I found, this is so funny. When I did the profile originally, and I did it in my prior company, and it came, they I did it, it's they sent the results. I looked at it, and I said they had to game this, they had to game it. They game it because it was literally where it was supposed to be for CEO, and that is virtually impossible. Wow, there's no way there, there's no way I have these personality properties, traits, yeah, that are great for CEO. That's impossible because it's rare, right? Well, I talked to I said, No, they said, No, that's who you are. And I go, okay, well, let me let me digest this and get some self-confidence. Yeah, self-confidence, I got some self-confidence, and then I really I feel I really started to understand that from nine to 15, 16 years old blackout for me. The ACT test was a 17th percentile in high school for college, 17th percentile, like your MRDD. So you get your brain chemistry back, you have great careers. Um, I believe to some degree, risk takers are born, uh, not made. Now, that is my majority opinion, however, if you've got some capacity for risk, what's interesting about this, behind there on the walls, there's books, market wizards, some of the greatest traders of all time. They might they might take a position, copper, gold, whatever it might be. What's so fascinating was they could take a big position, but they limited the risk of one or two percent of the position. See, in other words, if you take risk and and you're taking a risk that you can stomach, and you've got a particular tolerance where you go, if I don't see this working out, it was a test, I'm not gonna lose everything. Yeah, so risk management is works all the time, right? So um I will figure this out someday, but I kept buying the franchises, then we've done that, we've done acquisitions, and then you're fearless about process improvement and you surround yourself with people that they get that you never expect them to be like you, you can't be like them, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:44

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Uh, my second best practice was for the leadership team. I just described how we hired them, yeah, and that one was called Supercharge Your Business. Are leadership team members better than you? If if they couldn't be better than me, I probably wasn't interested. Now, what that means is Lauren Folly, director in Wheeling. I'm on the phone, lovely, 28 years old, LinkedIn, everything's fine, very, very meek and mild. She had uh worked at a home care place locally in sales, and the elder woman who was the sales rep there hated her, she hated the young, young, pretty girl. So she went to work for Head Start. They don't exactly overpay people to Head Start, right? So we're on the phone. I'm listening to her attitude, bright, humble. And I said on the phone, uh, she's been with us about six years. I said, you know, I really think you can do this job. And it was dead silence. So set the profile, she got the job, got the care coordinator job. Now you're not gonna get all the sharks that come through the net when you're hiring. Nope. She's in a team in Wheeling. I would say wheeling took from 2010 to 2024 to get the right four people in a room. Wow, oh, it's brutal, it's brutal. Uh Pittsburgh, 2013 to pretty much the past year, Charleston, 2012 to 2020. Our acquisition washington PA was an instantly successful. One person came over who was a star and they just quadrupled down.

SPEAKER_02 30:19

So wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

And if you Google Kavak, he's on some podcasts, brilliant founder, multiple companies in in um in uh the South South America. Yeah, buy cars, restore cars, sell cars, warranty work. I listened to it over and I listened to it over and over again. I really was listening to it because AI, he's big on AI, and I I learned about that. He said, I've really just caught this the last time I listened to it. It's gonna take you 16 years to see the return on what you're doing.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

Oh, wow, look at that.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Wow, wow 16 years because I thought, because I remember I ran this at break even, over staffing, overpaying, 2010, right around 2024. Bit of a profit. Hmm. Okay, now I'm not embarrassed. I've never bragged, I there's nothing to brag about. Stellar, we're growing, we're not very profitable. So I'm thinking about that. We started in a couple acquisitions, okay. Uh 2010, 2024, 2024. Yeah, big high six figure profit. Wow. All of a sudden, boom, right at 14, 15, 16 years, right? Yeah, 2025, double that. And I'm thinking uh that's the overnight success story. Now we have to, as entrepreneurs, somehow please remember hard times, right, John? As tough as it gets, you think it's never gonna work. You everything's working, the machine's running, the people are working, everything's going well, but you're not shown profits because a you're a giver, it's a professional corporation, it's not a lifestyle business. You're sucking every dime out of and not hiring people. We were a professional corporation from the basement to now. Oh, oh wow, when it starts working, look out. Our God willing, the rest of the decade, that income number is gonna get up and it's gonna keep moving up in that low seven figures, move up in a little bit. And if I wouldn't have gone back and listened to that podcast for the fifth or sixth time, he said, remember, nothing you do is gonna work until 16 years. Oh wow, I almost ran off the road. I almost ran off the road because that's that's what a lot of us out there live. Now, what there was a study years ago, my first company. Uh, it was like Vern Harsh Harnish, he was the guy. Uh, I I just forgot some of these great consultants. He's the number one reason a business fails, the CEO gives up. And I'll tell you what, how many, how many thousand times do we think we want to give up?

SPEAKER_02 33:09

It's brutal. That's true. That is, it is, it is.

SPEAKER_03 33:12

I'll stop here for a second. Yeah, yeah, but thank you, Les. But you see, Les, it goes back to the whole vision, you know, the fact that you're a visionary leader makes a big difference in that effort, doesn't it? I mean, we have a vision, you know, because we being people of faith, we believe strongly that um, you know, God does not give you the vision that He's not gonna see through, yeah, in you or through you. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

So that is very profound.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:39

So that's how we look at it.

SPEAKER_00 33:40

You know, you want to talk you want to talk about future future visions? Future visions, okay. Please go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Absolutely. You are you a mind reader, Liz?

SPEAKER_00 33:50

We we know that we must change our software, no names, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

All right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Now, here's why. Um, vision. So the company's doing well. A couple years ago, I was getting like, what am I gonna do for a living here? Because nobody needs me, but then um disaster hit in 2020. God, was it too early 2025? Our CFO left. Uh younger guy, I thought he was totally disengaged. He hid from internally from us, the C group, that the person director for opera director for operations was totally incompetent on the billing and payroll part. She thought they were training everybody. That put a ton of pressure on his controller. All of 2025, we're at the blinders on, thinking things are going well. He resigns. Um, we look up. No, it's not the end of the world. She stayed. Um, she was gonna leave. I said, let's go have a cup of coffee. June, April, April. Here's what's going on. I go, you gotta trust me on this. I will fix it. Do you trust me? Yes. She stayed. She's now CFO. Oh just rolled out a benefit for any caregivers working um 40 hours every two weeks, I believe. I excuse me for not remembering exactly the standard, but if caregivers work reasonable, if they have it, must be for 40 hours every two, 40 hours every two pays, I think. Right? Every two pays, I forget exactly. It's a lower standard than our our caregiver club. Correct. They get free telehealth, dental, free vision, free um um vision, dental, uh, and and group life 15,000. Oh wow. Caregivers get that free for working, I believe, 40 hours every two weeks. She she got that going this fall. We just rolled it out. So that is, along with our CEO, that that's one of those people you're lucky for. Now, vision. So you get out of crisis mode. I called it operation restore culture. I did, it was a written plan, and I could not tell our COO, who would have been up on the roof panicking because not everybody has the and you know her very well. She's in she's I think she's the best in the country. I had to I had to hold off until I did my investigation. I said, Well, so and so's got to go. Okay, what's your proof? We talked, had her talk to a couple people in the inner ranks that trusted me for my investigation. Okay, I put them on SpaceX one. They I put them on a rocket, they're still orbiting. The next person was over Western PA, and I found out they're probably the most horrendous personality in 30 years. I found put them on SpaceX 2 only after I gave our COO time to backfill. So for all the good news you've heard, 2025 was the biggest scare of my life. I like roller coasters. This wasn't a roller coaster, this was it, it goes to the top. The CFO, the CFO resigns. You go, he wasn't happy. The controller goes, I may walk out too because this, this, and this. The roller coaster goes over. You're free-falling. Yeah, there's no tracks, there's no tracks. Yeah, and when there's no tracks, uh, you just go, no tracks. You go, like this, okay, no tracks. Yeah, ground's getting close.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still falling.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Ground's getting closer, but like this, okay. Ground's getting closer, closer. Okay, but you're working behind the scenes. All of a sudden, you you get that. Okay, the tracks came back when the controller stayed, yeah, we backfilled. And then now, what that allowed that's allowed me to do is from 2023. I heavily researched AI. I read the papers, I went to a conference of a major provider we know of. I I had dinner with a few data centers to say, would you please possibly think about these AI solutions? And Connie and I went, they listened, they said, That's a great idea. This particular um software, they've got big silos of other disciplines in healthcare, and they bought personal care to get the Medicare. Okay, okay, uh, to re remain name to remain nameless. Yes, and I said, Well, this has got to go because um my vision is we're going to um by the end of 2027, we're gonna build a number of agents that oversee every major aspect of our company. Agents, all right. Kavak, Google the guy, listen to the podcast in 2022. He tried AI next, yeah. He in he tried AI next to humans. They could it wasn't adopted. Humans couldn't take time for what they're doing to go use the AI. It's it's perfect sense. We use AI when we're sitting around or we got time to do some planning. He said that that did not work. So he said he went all the way down the rabbit hole to have agents built to run this 10,000 employee company. It took a year of flat revenues to get this going. Then they went 400%. Right? Whoa, I I made myself, this is hilarious, right? I made myself chief technology officer about eight weeks ago. Good for you. Our CO is a healthcare IT back. I said, guess what? I'm now the chief technology officer. She said, She said, How could that be? I said, I know, I don't think there was any experience. She goes, No. I said, Okay, I just hired this incredible woman. She had an incredible woman in Pittsburgh for care company for executive assistant. Whoa, she's smart. A woman came in, Ukrainian, left there in 13, uh, incredible, lives lives near us, family, and and she was an executive assistant in Ukraine as a young woman. And we got her out of a Medicaid agency that was driving her over the edge.

SPEAKER_04 39:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Um, you're now uh welcome to the company. You're now director of artificial intelligence. Uh oh. Oh wow. And she's looking at me. Oh wow. Uh-oh. I said, we don't have any. She said, I'm your I'm your chief technology officer. You know what I know? This everything I've researched for three years, I've listened to hundreds of hours of podcasts. I read papers. I flew to Wharton to talk to an author of a paper for two hours. He said, Wow, you noticed stuff in this paper. I didn't know. I don't have any qualifications. In eight weeks, eight weeks. We have a binder for the uh implementation of the other guys, right? Right. I've been I was asked this morning, can we put that off to January of 27th? No problem. In that binder is how we will have agents out to implement with them out in the future, right? This is all this is all tentative. Um deep in the AI. And you know the two companies I'm talking about. The the one who's higher in the alphabet, we know is doing some enabled. Okay, this research I dug down in lists vendors that we can use to build agents that they will API with. Okay. Where's this come from? AI, right? So I'll stop there on the vision. Wow, wow.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

That's we can't wait. We can't wait, this is this is awesome.

SPEAKER_03 41:12

This well, again, like I said, I mean, we promised to see the our audience. We had a heavy heater in the house today, and you you have not disappointed, sir. You have not, Les. Thank you. Les, let's just ask for your you. I know you know you we know you're a busy executive. We don't want to take too much of your time here. Just to close close out to close us out here, uh uh Les, what are you most proud of? And would you also share with us how you see the future of home care?

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Okay. Did you happen to ever read the book? You ever hear the book Thinking Fast and Slow? It's Daniel Kahneman, it came out seven, eight years ago. Darien, our new director in Pennsylvania. I bought it for her, we read it. It's very difficult to get through. But it what it says is they did studies, he just passed away. That if we give the first thing comes to our mind, it may not be as good as if we step back a little bit and think. If you've ever heard Elon Musk interviewed, he spaces out for a while. Yes, yes, that's what he's doing. So I bought myself a little time here saying that story, and I believe that being born uh risk taker, but being born a 100% giver, 100% empathetic, I can't help it. It's been good, it's been bad, personally, professionally. That I think by the time my time's up, it's gonna be a while from now. I will have looked, I will look back and said, you gave every single minute to helping someone somewhere, some way, either yourself or through your coworkers or get the caregivers, um, fellow franchisees. Um so as long as I know I'm giving, that satisfies my soul. And um this super simple. And what's funny is you had a question about legacy, and I smiled at that one. Yes, I really did. Um future of home care. Someone else is gonna someone else is gonna say my legacy. Okay, someone I'm be gone, someone else is gonna write, right? So I have no idea, which is great. The future of home care, because we're gonna double our cohort with boomers. Yes, we will have agents running everything. If you draw a T on a piece of paper and you start, I'm doing little huddle with our teams. Everybody's terrified of AI, terrified of it. It's got a lower approval rate than Congress in Ukraine. Wow, it does, it does. I said draw T, all the human factors, assessments, starts of care, supervisory, hiring caregivers, face to face. Over here, all the five or six things you're doing, scheduling, asking for reviews, um the all the all the all the back stuff of orientation. stuff like that it's gonna free the studies that I've gone way down into AI we probably is a service industry I'm looking for about a 40 percent reduction increase in their available time oh wow so I've been you're your jobs are gonna go higher level you're you're well paid care coordinators on button and directors by the time we're employing agents across five or six agents across every part of the company you're gonna you're gonna be the people you're gonna be the humans over overseeing the agents you're gonna get the alert when you need to intervene on call may go away it's gonna be taken care of and unless there's an emergency in the middle of the night with a death yeah it's gonna get taken care of and I will tell you it's astonishing um I've never in my lifetime 32 years especially working I've never been so excited to go to work I don't like when the day ends I I put myself in 100 hour weeks the last six eight weeks um I'm in founders mode again where I'm happiest wow so I want to get that I want to get that ready Paul and Joan so we can take all the new business that we can our competitors unfortunately they're gonna have to double their workforce in the office if they don't do this which is tough I told I tell our directors you've got four or five care coordinators how would you like to have 10 or 12 people they go whoa whoa whoa whoa four or five is enough to stay on top to to motivate to lead don't give me I don't want 12 care coordinators yeah how about how about you have how about you have your director and you've got four high level people that oversee all the agents that are running your business they're going oh I get it I get it and um we'll stop with that we'll stop right there.

SPEAKER_03 45:57

Wow wow let's thank yes thank you i mean yeah really let's thank you les I think we're gonna have to we're we're gonna have to uh do we're gonna we're gonna have a a second we're gonna we're gonna have to get together again uh let's especially even after the conference don't you think after the agents at this um I I am very fortunate this is crazy I've I've waited my life to take an extended period of time 100 Italian been a couple times I'm gonna go to Italy okay I'm gonna be away for the extended period of time you don't put on Facebook because your house is gonna get robbed although I have a pet sitter so I won't be I won't I won't be at the conference so I would say if we can talk in Q1 next year I can update you on some of the vision as well as update you personally as we see and talk to each other awesome awesome well that'll be awesome well that'll we're gonna do it Les thank you again Les thank you so much we appreciate it continue successful guys thank you God bless you thank you so much for joining us today on the Home Care Millionaire podcast we hope you found inspiration encouragement and practical tools you can apply right away in your own journey our mission is simple folks to shine a light on the incredible impact that home care owners and their caregivers make every single day and to give you the mindset strategies and faithful wisdom to build both purpose and prosperity because here is what we believe compassion is your calling wealth is your reward if this episode spoke to you we'd love for you to subscribe so you never missed an episode and if you'd like more resources or have questions for Paul and I just head over to askjoancole.com we'll be honored to connect with you there. Until next time folks remember we have what it takes to build wealth create freedom and live a legacy through your agency we're here cheering you on every step of the way bye for now