Marcos Moura: 00:28 Hey everyone! Marcos here with Amada Senior Care. Welcome to the podcast. Today I am with Chris Fowler of St Louis, Missouri. It's a really cool podcast today because Chris is at the time of this recording, smack in the middle of his first year, his first year anniversary is any day. Now we're going to talk about that. So he is in the middle, in the throes of building that business. And what we want to talk about today is this idea that entrepreneurs make decisions all the time and yet what they need to do is they make a decision and then they have to go make it right. There's no amount of due diligence that will ever take away the fact that you have to go work your tail off to make the decision you make right. So that is the topic of today. So Chris Fowler, welcome to the show.

Chris Fowler: 01:08 Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

Marcos Moura: 01:09 And Chris. So before we talk about the crazy decision you made about a year ago, just tell us a little bit about your background. What were you doing before Amada Senior Care?

Chris Fowler: 01:19 Sure, thank you. Well, I spent the last 10 years as an executive with Express Scripts, the largest pharmacy benefit manager here in the United States and based out of St Louis. I did a variety of roles with them in those 10 years. I lead client facing teams as well as product management teams. And my last role with them was really looking at the home delivery pharmacy and how to try to use the member experience and the website to become sort of the Amazon, if you will, of pharmacy. But then, like you said, made the crazy decision about a year and a half ago to part ways and started looking at alternatives, whether it be another corporate job with a healthcare organization or even not healthcare or go venture on our own and started researching some entrepreneurial opportunities and Amada was at the top of that list and we met you and others there at the Amada office and just really, really impressed. And here we are 18 months later and like you said, just in the throes of celebrating our year anniversary.

Marcos Moura: 02:19 Wow. So a year anniversary. So we talked about due diligence. Right. How long did it take you from the time you're like, oh, Amada. And the date that you signed a franchise agreement. Do you remember roughly how long that took?

Chris Fowler: 02:30 I think I first started talking to some of the folks at Amada in March and then I signed the paperwork and the agreement at the end of July. So a few months, a few months, few months of conversations, webinars. We didn't have podcasts then, but no, doing due diligence and then coming out and visiting. And here we are.

Marcos Moura: 02:50 And by the way, we find that on average it's about three months at most entrepreneurs, it's a conversation about three months, even if they inquired about Amada back in 2014 and kind of left it once we start engaging, it's about a three month process. And I don't know if it's not to put judgment on is that long or short. But you and I, before the taping of this, we were talking about this whole idea that no matter how much due diligence you do, you're still going to have to go make it. Right. Talk a little bit about that. What does that mean to you about making a decision as an entrepreneur and then having to make it right?

Chris Fowler: 03:21 So as you said, hundreds of decisions a day, some obviously taking more priority and having larger ramifications than others and some of them on the fly, some of them doing more due diligence. I think the best example I have, and I sometimes tell the stories to other potential franchisees when they call and we're talking about how my journey went and any recommendations I may have. I will always remember the day I actually signed the paperwork to purchase my franchise here in St Louis.

Marcos: 00:27 Hey everyone. Marcos here with Amada senior care. Thank you so much for joining us for another podcast episode of We are Amada. Today we Have Ryan Hart, our franchise partner in Reno, Nevada. You could say that Ryan is Reno, Nevada. Amada. He owns the entire market there. Not only just that he owns a franchise, but he really owns that market. He's local to the Reno market and he's going to talk to you a little bit more about when he found this opportunity, would it meant to him to be in his hometown and I think there'll be some things that will really surprise you about Ryan and what he's doing there in Reno. I can tell you right now, if you look at our franchise disclosure document, one thing we just closed there is that Ryan billed a $114,000 in gross billings in March of this year and Ryan started as franchise in, I believe it was June of 2016, so that is pretty fast. I'm excited to introduce you guys to Ryan Hart. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan Hart: 01:21 Thanks Marcos. How's it going out there?

Marcos: 01:23 Going great. Thank you for taking the time. I know you've had a busy day today as every day, right?

Ryan Hart: 01:28 Indeed, yeah. It's been quite the whirlwind lately.

Marcos: 01:31 Yeah, so I really thank you for taking the time and for those of you guys who are listening, there's a lot of you who may be in a pharmaceutical job or medical device job, so this will be good for you. Ryan. You spent a large amount of your career at Stryker and other companies like that. Would you give us just a quick introduction on who you are and what were you doing before Amada senior care?

Ryan Hart: 01:51 Yes, absolutely. So most of my life I've been in sales since I got out of high school and college and most recently I had about a 10 year stint in medical device sales were I sold prosthetic knees and hips. I was in the reconstructive business, worked for Zimmer and Stryker, multiple time president's award club, and just had a wonderful career with them.

Marcos: 02:10 How many years were you there for?

Ryan Hart: 02:12 Yeah, it was Stryker for about five and Zimmer for about five. So a total of about 10 years.

Marcos: 02:16 Okay. So you're 10 years in. Can you share just what got you interested in entrepreneurialship? Why did you decide it was time

Ryan Hart: 02:25 More than anything I just wanted to be my own boss. I was very sick of going to the operating room, waiting on a case that was supposed to start at 7:00 at night and being there till midnight, you know, this whole time being away from my family and just having to be at other people's mercy, you know, going to coach my kids' soccer team, getting pulled away to go do a hip fracture. It was just, it was getting really tough on the family life and you know, all the money's really good in that, in that industry. It's getting really commoditized and I thought the writing was on the wall, so I chose to get into this and you know, it wasn't an easy decision. My wife and I made it together and I looked back since it's just been the best choice I've ever made.

Marcos: 03:01 That's really cool and I think most people that hear this podcast, I don't think anyone has gotten into becoming an entrepreneur or whether they just woke up one morning and they're like, you know what? I really want to run a business. I find most of the times people have had that feeling maybe even since college. I really like, I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. Is that true of you or was it later in your career or was it always their kind of nagging at you?

Ryan Hart: 03:23 No, actually not at all. It was something that I started thinking about as the medical device field started getting harder and harder and contractually we were getting pushed out of the hospitals and stuff. And I just really wanted to get into something where I could control my own schedule, I have my own staff and really build it up to a p...

Marcos Moura:00:27

Welcome to the show everybody. This is Marcos here with Amada Senior Care. Thank you so much for joining us. And I'm here with Ed DuBorg, Ed welcome to the show.

Ed DuBorg:00:35

Thanks Marcos. Happy to be here.

Marcos Moura:00:38So I want to ask you right away. You had an amazing successful career in medical device and pharmaceutical sales, almost 20 years, right?

Ed DuBorg:00:46

Yeah. Close to it.

Marcos Moura:00:48

So I wanted to ask you, and we talked about this back when you were looking at Amada Senior Care, but what's going through your mind? Why does somebody take this kind of a risk? A lot of our show is about the men and women who took incredible risk to provide amazing senior care to people in their communities. So here you are. Why take the risk?

Ed DuBorg:01:10

Well, I was in the pharmaceutical industry and I was in the medical device industry for a long time, like you said, and a lot had gone on, a lot changed and I found myself working with a lot of people that weren't necessarily happy. I wasn't. I didn't feel good about what I was doing. I was making good money. I was hustling, I was doing everything I was supposed to do, but I kind of became disenchanted and nobody would speak up when the leadership was making a bad decision and I thought it was impacting us negatively. Nobody would speak up when there are people weren't being treated properly and people were being let go for ticky tack reasons. I didn't feel right. I wanted something different. I always knew I wanted to do my own thing and, and be an entrepreneur.

Marcos Moura:01:56

You said I always knew like, what are we talking about? Are you saying from college, from before college? When did that itch of like or, or maybe somebody in your family? When did this start?

Ed DuBorg:02:07

I think it actually says in my high school yearbook that I wanted to be a corporate owner and I think, so probably since back then I came from a blue-collar family. I didn't have a lot of opportunities. I needed to take a job and make some money as soon as I could out of college. So getting back to your first question, I was now to the point where I was commission only sales in my last job and I was doing really well and I lost a little faith in the products I was selling. I would just put it that way. If I'm betting on myself in a commission only sales job, why can't I do it in my own business? You know,

Marcos Moura:02:44

you already felt like you not only felt but everything depended on your efforts. There was no cushion. There was no golden handcuffs. Right?

Ed DuBorg:02:51

Flying without a net. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, exactly. I had the good cushy salary job and you know, it's nice when you have kids and you have a little bit of free time, you can make the most of your free time I guess, but um, it leaves you wanting something more. So I always knew that I wanted to do my own thing and to be in control of my own destiny. So that's how I ended up looking.

Marcos Moura:03:12

Now. I was looking at our history. I think you signed your first agreement. You have, you have two markets, one in Pennsylvania, one in New Jersey, right. And I think you worked pretty fast because the Pennsylvania market you guys started in, like Mid 2017, right?

Ed DuBorg:03:28

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, we, we opened our doors like mid-2017. We had our first client in November of that year and growing since then.

Marcos Moura:03:38

I think a lot of people get excited about being entrepreneurs and they take the plunge. Maybe starting your own business, starting a franchise or some folks, they keep their day job and they start something on the side. And I think all of us entrepreneurs when we do it, there is a little bit of a wakeup call. I don't think anyone really realized how hard it really is going to be.

Marcos Moura:00:28

Good morning or good afternoon to you. This is Marcos here at Amada Senior Care. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us to hear from one of our franchise partners. And by the way, this call is for you. The reason we do these calls so you can ask questions. So if it's your first time you've ever listened to one of our phone calls or if you've been following Amada Senior Care for a long time, welcome. And again this is a call for you. So before we start, just want to do a few things. For those of you who are joining us live, in order for you to ask questions, there's two ways for you to do this. One is you just go to the question box in the go to webinar panel and in fact would it be really cool is if you are here with us and you can see the question box, click on it and just say hello.

Marcos Moura:01:07

Hi. Anything you want to do? Tell me what the weather is like or what your favorite team is. I don't know. Put something in there just to know that I can see that you found the question box. Okay, cool. So some of you are coming in letting us know that you can hear us loud and clear. Thank you for that. So that's one way to ask questions. Muggy in LA and Will from Maryland. Okay cool. So we got some good folks there. So thank you for doing that. It really helps us know that we're going out to you loud and clear and by the way, if there's an issue with audio, please go in there and if you can't hear us or something's going on, let us know so we can fix the audio. Now the other way to ask questions, which is the way that we prefer that we love for you to do is raise your hand.

Marcos Moura:01:41

What we'll do is unmute you and you can ask a question live from Kevin and Greg and asking the live question allows you to have a followup, right? You could have like a four part question and again, this is really for you guys, so let me go ahead and share my screen here. All right, there we go. So I'm sharing my screen now. Real quick. Before I introduce you to Kevin and Greg, I wanted to tell you real quick, for those of you who are brand new to Amada Senior Care who don't know what we do, just real briefly, we are a senior care company, which means we send caregivers to seniors' homes to take care of activities of daily living. That is things like dressing, bathing, walking, grooming, toileting, and then also other things like meal preparation, companionship, even driving the senior to a doctor's appointment or to the grocery store.

Marcos Moura:02:23

It's really whatever it takes to help that senior thrive in their home. Now when home is not ideal, we can also help them find services like going to an assisted living, helping them with affording the care through veteran's administration, longterm care insurance, or whatever it takes. We really talk about the fact that we're like the navy seals of home care because although it is important to have amazing caregivers, it's also really important to help them navigate all of the crazy options that are out there. As Kevin and Greg will tell you here in a little bit, when you are in the situation of finding care for a loved one, it is absolute chaos. It is really difficult to find out and figure out what is you need to do to make sure you can provide the best care for your loved one. And that's what we're really here to do.

Marcos Moura:03:03

So that's Amada Senior Care and as you're going through this process, you're going to find out a lot more about Amada, what the process is, what does it mean to become a Franchisee, but that is going to come in the process as you go through and it takes a little bit of time. We'll walk you through that, but today I want to introduce you to Greg Hines and Kevin Manuel. I've got their profiles here on Linkedin because I know that they are cool with you guys reaching out to them, connecting with them on linkedin. So here's Gregory Hines and Kevin Manuel.

Marcos Moura:00:00:28

Welcome again to our call for Amada Senior Care and I've got a real treat for you guys. I have two guys here with me. One of them is Chad Fotheringham, one of the founders of Amada Senior Care here in Orange County and the president of our company today, so say hi, Chad, Chad and the other one is a Ken Jenson. So Ken Jenson was our second franchisee ever. So we're talking when we had one Franchisee, which is Robert Christians who actually. He's in the office as well, but I think he's busy. Right? So Robert's here as well. He was our first franchisee right after that. Ken Jenson was our second back in 2012. You believe that? I am old! Holy toledo! 2012. And so Ken is here as well. Obviously, as you guys know, Chad Fotheringham built an enormous organization here in Orange County, California, and then we started franchising. Ken Jenson and Colorado Springs is now billing over $500,000 in gross billings in his market in Colorado Springs.

Marcos Moura:00:01:33

He is now expanding into other markets in other states, but again, Ken is doing over $500,000 in billing in his market a month, for a month I him a demotion there, so $500,000 a month in billing and gross revenues. That is in our franchise disclosure document, so I have both of these guys here, but it's not just the fact that they built huge organizations. I wanted to introduce you to their backgrounds. I know that a lot of you, I would say probably two thirds of you on the phone come from medical device and pharmaceutical sales. You come from Abbott, Merck, Pfizer, Striker and all these other companies, but there's about a third of you guys who do not come from medical device or pharmaceutical sales and actually that's what I have in the room today. Chad Fotheringham spent about 10 years, right Chad? Right, 10 years in pharmaceutical sales and then he quit his job cold Turkey and started Amada Senior Care with Tofa Jefferson.

Marcos Moura:00:02:26

This is in 2007, so 10 years of pharmaceutical experience. But you also have it almost like, it's like a battle of the background. I also have Ken Jenson who had how many years in pharmaceutical sales or medical device sales, Ken, zero zero years of medical device or pharmaceutical sales. None of whatsoever. So what makes these two guys incredibly successful? And that's what I want to share with you guys. So that's setting the stage to. So Chad, talk a little bit about your background when you started Amada senior care back in 2007 a. and you can go a little bit into more specifically what that Pharma background was. And what did you take from that that you believe made you successful in Amada?

Chad F:00:03:03

That's a good question. I think that my background, I had 10 years, actually about 12 years in pharmaceutical sales, 10 with Pfizer and I started out as a sales rep. um, I kind of moved up within the sales rep ranks and then eventually got into national account management where I was managing relationships with large managed care providers and so it was good. I think the main thing that allowed me to move from pharmaceuticals into home care or senior care and be successful with my ability to build relationships. Then that really came from my background in calling on physicians and hospitals and different areas within the healthcare arena. But it wasn't necessarily my understanding of the healthcare. That was something I learned and as good as helps us now. But really it was more the ability to continually and consistently go out and build relationships with providers.

Chad F:00:03:52

And even though the property, the providers I call them when I was in pharmaceuticals were mainly physicians. There were some other thought leaders that we worked with. But for the most part it was physicians. Now it's social workers, case managers. It's similar environment but just different people. Um, and so that was my background and I think a lot of peop...