Laseandia Pounds has a couple of nicknames. She goes by Sean, but also goes by "Savvy Business Chick" which is her brand and website for her consulting service.

Sean didn't start out in home care or even healthcare.. Instead she "grew up" in her career working in financial services and worked with stockbrokers and similar folks. But then a family friend who ran a home care agency offered to mentor Sean to start her own agency.

Sean was a great student and grew her agency very rapidly to $3M in revenue in the first 18 months and ultimately to $5M.   Since then Sean sold her agency, became a mom and started consulting.

Another interesting item in our discussion with Sean was that she mostly focused on care for medically complex children. This put her in a great position to 1) get high revenue clients and 2) make friends (and get referrals from) the other home care agencies in her area. 

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities are simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

Today's guest, Latoya Thompson, grew up in a "healthcare family" with relatives who are nurses, CNAs and Aides. When Latoya's grandmother needed care, she couldn't find a provider with the standard of quality that she was looking for, so she started her own. One interesting aspect of Latoya's agency is that she has a blend of private pay and Medicaid clients and in fact she has two trending videos on YouTube, one about getting private pay clients, and the other about how the Missouri Consumer Directed Services (CDS) program works.

Latoya studied the interesting combination of social work and fashion and she considers her self to be a multi-preneur with ventures in home care, consulting and fashion. 

LaToya provides consulting services to home care agencies and other entrepreneurs. To connect with Latoya, go to www.latoyaelnora.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities are simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

This episode of Home Care Heroes is all about growing by bringing more clients and caregivers to your home care website. We feature two guests: Khadira Muhammed focuses on driving traffic to your site with Google ads and making sure that you keep in touch with everyone who visits your website.  Carl Rogers talks about getting your website into some key online directories so even if your site doesn't make the first page of Google searches, you'll be in directories that do.

Both guests tell the same story - that their initial intention was to help drive clients to home care websites, but that they quickly learned that attracting caregivers is at least as important if not more.

Khadira offers some great advice for smaller agencies that tell you how to "stay on the radar screen" of people who visit your site, but then talks about how she works with agencies with $1M or more in revenue to grow them by millions using Google Ads. Khadira's website is localseniormarketing.com.

Carl and Khadira both talk about the importance of having a good profile in "Google My Business." Then Carl talks more deeply about his area of expertise and passion which is online directories.  He encourages home care agencies to claim and pay attention to free listings like GoogleMyBusiness and Yelp, but then talks about his own company CareListings. Carl anticipates 2 million site visitors this year including caregivers and care seekers (clients).  You can list your agency (with pictures and a link to your website) AND post your job openings for FREE.  There are also some paid premium services to see profiles of caregivers in your area (even if they didn't look at your job posts) and to have your agency featured in your geography.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities are simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

With 33,000 followers, Karl Pierre is arguably the top home care influencer on Youtube. He started in home care at age 14 when he was "the computer guy" for his mother's home care agency.

In this episode of Home Care Heroes, Karl shares advice and perspective on questions from home care agency owners.  Topics covered include the following:

- Engaging caregivers for a higher  purpose
- Home Care Websites - what's important and what's not?
- Social Media and Search Tips
- Great Books for Home Care owners

You can learn more about Karl by visiting entplife.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

Stephen Tweed is one of the home care industry's top consultants. I met Stephen at my first home care conference, where he was a keynote speaker.  In my view, two things that set Stephen apart are 1) his process-centric approach, and 2) his ability to pull agency owners into "mastermind groups" to establish best practices.

Our conversation focused on Caregiver Quality Assurance and Stephen walked us through a 5-pillar approach (where he outlines each pillar in detail), as follows:

1. Company culture
2. Recruiting System
3. Selection
4. Onboarding
5. Retention

As a bonus, Stephen mentioned that the 6th pillar is using your Caregiver Quality Assurance program as a marketing tool to differentiate your agency. 

I usually pick a key takeaway and this time I have two:

1. Stephen's team measured cost of caregiver attrition at around $1,600.  He also shared that caregivers who come to you via the referral of another caregiver are likely to stay 10 times longer than one who finds you on an online site like Indeed,  and a $250 referral bonus goes a very long way with caregivers.
2. One of the most important keys to retaining caregivers early on is determining how many hours they expect to work and making sure that they get this number of hours. If for example, a caregiver is "expecting" 40 hours (and really is expecting the $345 after taxes that go with 40 hours), and they only get 30 hours, they can find themselves in a spot where they can't pay their bills and become vulnerable to being poached by another agency. 

To learn more about working with Stephen, visit CaregiverQuality.com or HomeCareCEO.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

Anne-Lise Gere is one of the foremost human resources experts in Home Care.  She works with Hurricane Marketing Enterprise (aka Steve the Hurricane) to teach the Momentum program (link includes discount code).

Our talk with Ann-Lise comes at a time when the US is in the process of "opening up" from the COVID-19 pandemic. Some key points discussed cover the following:

• The improved visibility of home care as a result of Covid-19
• The negative impacts of the pandemic on the home care work force
• Ideas on how to raise the profile of caregiving jobs
• The reality that the agencies with caregivers are the agencies who will grow and thrive
• How to compete by being the "best home care employer in your region"
• Best practice ideas*

* My favorite of Anne-Lise's suggestions was to reach out to each member of your caregiver team who  work fewer than 35 hours in a week to see if they'd like to work more hours. This initiative has the benefits that 1) you can increase your work force capacity by up to 40% with no hiring fees, and 2) the personal phone call will show caregivers that you care for them and will engender loyalty. 

Born in France and raised in the UK since age 7, Anne-List came to the US as an adult and as a military-bride. She lives in Coastal Virginia.

You can contact Anne-List and sign-up for her weekly insights email through her website www.gereconsulting.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

After successfully starting, growing and selling the home care agency NeuvaCare, Kamran Nassar set his sights on a new venture that would help home care agencies captivate website visitors in 8 seconds or less.  That company is appropriately named Captiva8 and you can learn more at Captiva8.com.

Kamran explains that many home care agencies spend a good deal of money creating their websites, optimizing them with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and driving traffic with Google Ad Words. But if those site visitors aren't instantly engaged, all of that effort is wasted. 

Some of Kamran's practical tips are as follows:

• Recognize that both prospective clients and caregivers come to your site
• Make your phone number very prominent and unobstructed
• Provide a capture form, and DON'T make it hard to fill out. Instead, get a name and number and "how you can help"
• Provide LIVE CHAT

Captiva8 is a live chat service that comes with both a chat technology, but more importantly it comes with 24 x 7 staffing with home care experts who can answer questions, capture leads, and even search for available caregivers. They literally get you clients and fill caregiver shifts while you sleep. Learn more at Captiva8.com.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

Steve "the Hurricane" Weiss shares great tips on caregiver retention. He starts with some very basic and actionable suggestions like adjusting your attitude to love your caregivers, speaking in the language of "shifts" and making sure that new caregivers get a lot of supervision. But then the magic comes where Steve shares some great ideas regarding career paths and puts important metrics around the benefits of retention.

Steve's team is offering a top-notch program on caregiver recruiting and retention called Momentum. You can learn more and sign up at https://homecaremarketing.net/momentum and get a $500 Discount with the code ANKOTA500.

As an added bonus, a friend of Ankota named Nancy Muckle tells us about her mom's caregiver and the impact she's had on their family. Nancy says that "home care heroes" doesn't go far enough and that in her case, the caregivers are Angels.

Steve runs Hurricane Marketing Enterprises (https://homecaremarketing.net). Steve and his team run boot camps and provide consulting services to help agencies to blow away their competition. To engage further with Steve, he recommends first that you check out all the free content that they've put on YouTube (search for "Steve the Hurricane.") If you like what you see and want to learn more, please send email to [email protected]. They'll give you a free initial consultation if you mention the podcast.

Nancy Muckle is a serial entrepreneur and a contracted sales executive who has helped many companies with sales, funding, strategy and more. Her latest venture is called "Problems Solved" (https://probssolved.com/) where solving elder care issues is one of her specialties. We'll invite her back to talk more about problem solving for seniors and their families.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

On this episode of Home Care Heroes, we feature two of our winners for the Home Care Community Caregivers award! These caregivers embody what it means to be an exceptional caregiver in the home care industry:
- Chisha Elam from Exceptional Touch Home Healthcare
- Elisa Casey from Silver Companions

We also hear from their managers who nominated them for this award, Karmisha Miller-Wallace and Leslie Rothenberg.

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.

Providentia Marketing makes websites and manages the online presence for some of the country's most successful home care agency.  On this episode of Home Care Heroes, Jason Chagnon), the CEO of Providentia Marketing shares success tips for managing your home care website, including the following:

• Make sure that the site is built for the market and not for yourself: Jason shares some of the top key phrases that people are searching for
• Make your site attractive to caregivers as well as clients
• Testimonials from happy caregivers can get you more caregivers and more clients
• Don't put up a roadblock for caregivers to apply for a job on your site. If you make them fill out a long and arduous application, they'll move on.
• Measure everything so you know where you stand and how you can improve

Jason also shared that Providentia Marketing would be happy to have a free no obligation call with your agency and that if you just have a quick question, you can email him on [email protected].

Home Care Heroes is produced and sponsored by Ankota - the Software for the Heroes of Home Care. We truly embrace the notion that caregivers and home care companies are heroes. Our top priorities simplicity, caregiver retention and outstanding service. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.