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Small Business Bestie
Entrepreneurship is hard, and sometimes we could use a friend to walk a mile in our shoes. Small Business Bestie is here to provide that friendship, support, and inspiration that small business owners need from time to time.
Small Business Bestie
38: From Production Lines to Entrepreneur with Sarah Diener
How does a corporate manufacturing professional transition into the world of in-home senior care entrepreneur? Sarah Diener, co-owner of Always Best Care Senior Services, shares her remarkable journey from the structured environment of manufacturing to leading a team dedicated to elderly care. In our chat, Sarah opens up about the challenges she faced, including the steep learning curve of managing a business and building a team that upholds the company's values. Listen as she provides invaluable lessons on leadership and the importance of empowering your team to achieve the best for both clients and the business.
Scaling a business in the caregiving industry isn't without its hurdles. Sarah and I explore the intricacies of establishing supportive systems for caregivers and preventing staff burnout. We delve into the benefits of being part of a franchise, which offers a mix of foundational support and operational autonomy. This episode underscores the significance of systemization in business growth and the crucial role of empathy and boundary-setting in healthcare careers. Discover how documenting processes and refining them can lead to a more sustainable and efficient business model.
Finally, we confront the sensitive topic of end-of-life care planning. Sarah and I discuss the emotional and logistical challenges families face and highlight the importance of early conversations around financial and estate planning. We offer insights into the roles siblings often play in these scenarios and the conflicts that can arise. By promoting preventative care and sharing personal stories, we provide practical advice for navigating the burdens of family caregiving, encouraging listeners to prepare for the future with compassion and clarity.
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Small Business Bestie is edited by Bourbon Barrel Podcasting
Welcome to the Small Business Bestie podcast. I'm your host, michelle. We are creating community and coaching women entrepreneurs, and we are so glad that you're here. Let's meet this week's small business bestie. Sarah Diener, with Always Best Care Senior Services, is hanging out with me today and I'm really excited. She brought up a great point before we started recording, which is that her business isn't the sexiest of businesses to talk about, but it's so necessary and I think we're going to get into some really interesting conversations, so I'm very excited to introduce Sarah to you all. Sarah, take a moment and just tell us who you are and what you do.
Speaker 1:So I'm Sarah Diener and I am part owner with my partner, phil Morgan, of Always Best Care Senior Services. We've been doing this about seven years, so we do in-home care for elderly people in Lexington and all the surrounding counties. So that can be anything from companionship all the way up to end-of-life bed-bound type of care, and we partner with hospice. At that point. They provide the medical and we do the non-medical.
Speaker 2:That is amazing. I don't know if any of the listeners know this, or even if you know this, but I have a special tie to end-of-life care because my mom was a patient care coordinator for palliative patients for many years and my sister has been a hospice nurse for like two decades now.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, so.
Speaker 2:I am constantly bombarded with the talk of end-of-life care. I'm very comfortable with that topic, which a lot of people aren't, so again, I'm really excited to like kind of dig in and find out more about exactly what you guys do, why you started doing it and how it can be helpful for our audience to know. You know what they should be looking towards. You know for themselves or for their loved ones, right? So before we get into all of the like mushy part of it, I want to know about the business itself. It's local here to Lexington correct?
Speaker 1:Yep. So our office is here in Lexington. It's on Manowar and Richmond Road in the Prosperous Place condos. We have about six people in the office but we have about 80 caregivers that go out either full-time or part-time and take care of people in our community.
Speaker 2:Holy moly, 80 caregivers. That's a lot to coordinate and manage.
Speaker 1:It is a lot, and that's kind of the biggest part of what we do is managing and leading and training. Coaching, I guess, is what I'm looking for. Yeah, that whole team. So it's a very human business. There's a lot of variables at play. I worked in manufacturing my whole life up until now. Right before this, I actually worked in a hospital for one year and that's more cut and dried. You know you have specifications and you have timelines and you know you have to make this part in so much time and you do it this way and it has to be three by three and it has to be yellow, and home care is just not that way. Right, everything is movable all the time, all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's such an interesting pivot from manufacturing to such an intimate you know personal care service as well. So how did that opportunity come to you? What kind of pivoted you from the?
Speaker 1:manufacturing to this different opportunities and had decided it was better to work for himself than someone else, and he had worked in senior care as a younger person. My background is in industrial engineering and so I've had a lot of supervisory jobs in manufacturing. I was a quality engineer and a manufacturing engineer and then I was a plant supervisor and all the things. So I've done a lot of people management and things like that. So he asked me to come on and run the operations side of things when he decided to open this and, being who I am, I'm like sure you know I've got tons of experience. This will be easy, but having worked in the corporate world, you know when you're in a corporation you have people for HR issues, for training, for whatever you don't do all the things you know. And I guess I really didn't put as much thought into. If this is my own company, I am all of those things. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So you said it's been seven years Yep, so you've been wearing different hats for seven years. It sounds like you've built a pretty good team, though you said there are like six in the office, yep.
Speaker 1:That includes Phil and I, so we have four plus Phil and I. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay so you've been able to delegate, maybe some of the hats For sure, but you still have to put them on occasionally to have that oversight. Yeah, it's been a real growth process for me to figure out how to lead people, how to delegate. I mean, you probably know, if you're a very experienced person, I guess I'll say I don't want to say like, oh, I'm so smart, but like a very experienced person like you know how to do all the things. But to be able to teach someone else how to do all the things and then let them put their own spin on it has been a real challenge and a real growth opportunity for me, absolutely so. And then making sure you have the right people, that they, you know, stay, that they're happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the people part of your organization is. Honestly, it's not only the most important but it's the most difficult, Because you know you can know how to make the box that's two by two, that's yellow, but to be able to not only tell someone else how to do it or train them how to do it Right, but to keep them excited about doing it yes, you know, to keep them on the bus with you and you know like that's the difficult part, for sure.
Speaker 1:And then having a company philosophy that you want people to follow is really difficult, because every time you explain, let's say, your core values to someone, that means something different to them, right? Or they just everybody was raised differently. They all have different ideas of what's appropriate and what's not appropriate, right? So you've got these clients with an idea of how people ought to behave and speak and walk and talk. And then you've got these caregivers who come in with completely different experiences and walk and talk. And then you've got these caregivers who come in with completely different experiences and they might be the best caregiver in the world, you know, and they're very proactive and they, you know, make their house sparkle and they take excellent care of the client. But if they're over here talking about all their personal problems all day, then that's not a match, you know, right? So you have to kind of massage all those things all the time, and it's a lot of moving parts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was so interesting. I just worked with an organization over the weekend at like a little, I guess, like a board retreat, helping them to like come up with the ideas of what's the mission of the organization, what are our values, you know, really solidifying all of those things. And one of the things that they told me is that one of the hardest parts of their organization is matching the care provider with the right client. They have lots of clients and they have lots of care providers, but making sure that that match in place, and we were even like getting into crazy conversations about like I wonder if there's an AI model that can help with that process. So it's not, you know, up to one person to really go through and like read each and every profile and think like, okay, well, this marks that box and that marks, you know, there's probably a technology that's either already been developed or, you know, is in development. So do you guys have any sort of like tools that you use to help with that matching system?
Speaker 1:So there are products out there that you can use that will give you kind of more of a distinct profile of who someone is. But the honest answer is we match people by skill and availability. So because people in particular caregiving it tends to be like flexible employment. For people it often is a second job, for some people it's a career, for some people it's a second job or it's a job while they're a student or while they're in nursing school or whatever, and so their availabilities change all the time. Like you know, they may walk in the door and say I can work Monday through Friday, eight to five, and then two months later they're like oh, I'm taking a class now, or we have clinicals every Wednesday, so now I can't do Wednesdays, you know. So you're kind of always trying to change that.
Speaker 1:So what we tell people is we're going to. You know, we ask when we do the care consultation kind of, what they're looking for, what are their likes, dislikes, you know what would drive them crazy, what are their goals for care. And then we really just sit down as a group and kind of try and figure out who we've got that's available, who has the right skill level and who we think would be a match with them. We're not always right and so we just tell people, you know, give it the old college, try, give it like three visits, and if that doesn't work out, you know, we'll swap them out for someone else. We'll try someone else because we try to explain to people like it's socially awkward for everyone, you know, because people feel they have a real fear or a trepidation or whatever of having people in their home that they don't know, which I totally get because I hate having people with us.
Speaker 2:we just had this conversation in a different light. You know we I record the podcast in my home studio, if you will. It's really just my dining room. But you know, you and I were having that conversation about like it's such a vulnerable thing to invite someone into your home, and you know anxieties of are they going to judge me, are they going to expect something that I don't have? You know, maybe they want whole milk in their coffee and I only have skim, or you know, there's this whole litany of things that's going in the back of your head when you have a stranger come into your home and then, especially, I'm sure in your instance, there's other layers of sensitivities that are piled on. That already anxious moment, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's very anxiety inducing for people you know from the client side, for a ton of obvious reasons. You know they're very vulnerable, right. Obviously, a lot of them really don't want to need help, but they do, and so you know a complete stranger is coming in to help them with really intimate things. You know showers and you know maybe changing them and skincare and whatever it might be. Plus, you know that person's going to witness their family interactions and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:But it's also really hard for the caregiver who's walking in there and they're like are they going to like me? Are they going to be respectful to me? Are they going to be nice to me? Am I going to do a good enough job? You know, yeah, so they. You know it's always that first meeting is always really awkward. So we try to. You know we do in-person introductions and do orientations with a care manager and things like that, but it's always been kind of difficult. But that was a really long answer to are there any AI tools that we use? No, they exist, yeah, but I know that there are tools out there that at least will give you like a really thorough profile of the caregiver. I don't know that I've seen anything that matches them with a client.
Speaker 2:All right, also our software developers out there, yeah.
Speaker 1:Get at it.
Speaker 2:Get at it. We need it. That's awesome, okay, so what other types of challenges do you find in? So I mean, to be honest, I think you're probably I'm trying to go back through my like Rolodex in my head, but I think probably you have one of the largest organizations of any of the small business besties that I've interviewed at this point. So you know we all talk about. You know our goals for our businesses.
Speaker 2:A lot of people you know doing the solopreneur thing is where they want to stay. They want to create a job for themselves, and that's the business goal. But a lot of us have dreams of like I want to create an organization or a firm or whatever you know is really growing and scaling, and it sounds like you've been able to really scale a business in seven short years. So I'd really like to just kind of pull on that Like what would be any of the advice or like wisdom that you have about things that you really need to make sure you have in place, or skill sets that you need to really try to develop if your goal is to scale an organization.
Speaker 1:I think it's funny that we're talking about that, about scaling, in particular, because we're not super big compared to a lot of home cares, right. So there are much bigger ones around. We are part of a franchise system, so there are, you know, much bigger ones. But what I would say is, for people that do want to have a bigger organization, for sure, make sure you have things in place so that your office won't get burnt out on the job, and put systems in place that are repeatable, so things that you can teach people that they will do over and over again and be very, very clear on what your standards are, and so that everybody knows this is doesn't give you a lot of faith Exactly you know in what that company is going to do for you.
Speaker 1:But we don't do that with people. We used to have our office people rotate being that on-call person, and so they would have to wake up at three in the morning if someone called them, you know. So we have a service that's home care specific. They partner with us, we have a dedicated team and it costs us a lot of money to do that. Right, but my people aren't stressed out Absolutely, or not as stressed out as they would be, I guess. Yeah, you know so they. We have an admin on call always and so that company can reach out and you know if they have a question or something like that.
Speaker 1:They're kind of a filter, yeah, but they're a filter, so they filter out all the what I like to call garbage calls. You know, like people like I can't get into my training. Or you know, yeah, do I have to wear scrubs? Or you know, or just like we used to have a lady that would call us every Friday night at nine and she just wanted to chat about how our week doing so, yeah, but I would just say, yeah, make sure that you have really repeatable systems in there. Make sure everything's written down. Yeah, you know, teach people to written procedures.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sort of thing. Oh, that's so good Systemizing your operations, and I think that one of the things that I see a lot with businesses, as they're beginning to try to get into. This is we talk about like. Documenting your systems is so important to be a repeatable thing, but oftentimes we get really in the weeds about what that means yeah, you know, like oh, I have to systemize this, so I have to write down every minute detail of how I do each, every step.
Speaker 2:It's like no, no, start with the big picture. Like what are the five steps? Like it for us, you, I need to accomplish this task, or this mission to the mission has been accomplished.
Speaker 2:Like, come up with the five steps and then you can go in and flesh it out a little bit if you need to. You know or provide the resources for each of those steps. But I think that when you talk about systemizing and documenting that it's like I have to write a 400 page manual of how I do all the things and it doesn't have to be that serious, especially in the beginning, just getting something Right.
Speaker 1:Getting it down on paper and we call those core processes. So getting like 20 percent of the steps down, that get you 80 percent of the way there. Yes, absolutely. And then of course we have more detailed procedures that you know they reference or something like that. If we're training somebody off it.
Speaker 2:That's so good. And so you mentioned that you guys are part of a franchise system. Yeah, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say, yes, some of them they did provide, like the client service agreement, like a starter one, which we had to alter to meet Kentucky standards. So they had some standard documentation, like you know, payment agreement forms and HIPAA forms and things like that. But as far as, like, how you run your business, it's totally up to you. Logos and they, you know, they provide a big conference every year where we talk about you know things. But really, aside from saying you're going to use this software to run your business, they were like, well, good luck. Oh, interesting, okay, we do have an area manager who is he's more like an area owner, so he owns like Kentucky and Tennessee, and so he came and he provided us with some training, like some sales training.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then he hooked us up with another franchise owner that was in Louisville at the time and so they could help us do our application to the state to write our handbook and stuff like that. Yeah, so we were able to take a lot of what they had and just change the location, right, you know, and then alter what we wanted to change.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So Phil is the business partner who you said he was laid off, yeah, and then he got this idea like, oh, I could do this, but I'm going to need some support. So I'm going to call my friend Sarah and see if she wants to jump in with me. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what was Phil's background? So Phil's background he's been a marketer at like big companies like Valvoline, rubbermaid, a couple others that I don't remember Kind of like an inside marketer, a couple others that I don't remember Kind of like an inside marketer, yeah. So, doing the social media and doing collateral and helping the sales force with whatever they needed. That's what he always did all of his career. But his degree is in finance, okay. But right when he got out of the Navy way back when he worked in an assisted living out in California I always forget the name of it, but it was a big assisted living that was really fancy and had all these movie stars living there you know older movies, yeah, and he just really loved that. He was like a night security guard and he did the transportation like he drove people to their appointments and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then, at the same time, his mom. She passed away in 2019 of Lewy body dementia.
Speaker 1:Okay so she was kind of we did everything with her. Her husband, I mean, she was in skilled nursing, she was in assisted living, she was at home with caregivers a couple of times. So she kind of ran through the whole gamut, you know, while we took care of her and at the very end of course, she was on hospice and he just really got the sense from that. There was a couple of crises points in her life, you know, during that end of life thing, where he kind of had to help coordinate a little bit and he's like this is also confusing. I have no idea what to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so he really kind of became passionate about wanting to be like a helper, like someone that could help guide people as to what to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really interesting because, you know, my dad went through his end of life journey. He was diagnosed last fall with small cell lung cancer and he passed away in April. And it's interesting because, even having the experienced professionals you know, my mom, who's been in end-of-life care forever, my sister, who's been in end-of-life care forever even with having those people in our family, when it really came down to it, it was like our family was the one in the midst of it. It was was like we needed really just as much help as any other family would have needed, with, like, coordinating everything and knowing how to navigate, because your, you know, your skill set kind of like turns off because that's bad, yeah, you know, whereas that's my husband, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I thought that that was really interesting, though, watching my family's journey through that of like oh, I felt like we were really a lot more prepared than other families would have been. But we still had those crisis moments where it was like, oh gosh, what do we do? Like, you know, is it time to call them and ask them to bring the hospital bed, is it not? You know, like those types of decisions where it would have been really nice maybe to have like a concierge type service. It's saying like you don't have to make that choice, I'm just going to make it for you because there are so many other choices that you need to be focused on right now, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And people, those decisions, they seem so important it is To the family like they're like oh my God, do we need a hospital bed, do we not Like? And they start freaking out because their capacity is so diminished at that point. They're so stressed out, right, you know. So that's where it's really nice to have a home care company or somebody in there who you trust, who can say you know what, yeah, I would get a hospital bed because this is going to progress and you know it's going to make it safer for the caregivers and your family. And then, of course, their next question is like well, how do we get a hospital? And so you can tell them, you know, you just need to call your doctor, they can write you a prescription and the home health, you know, the whole DME company will deliver it and you know.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, people just don't know, and I think you and I talked about this briefly before the podcast but people don't want to know.
Speaker 1:They don't want to talk about how they're going to take care of their parents or even themselves, right, until it's a crisis, until they have to know Exactly. And I think there's so much pre-planning that we could do if people were open to. You know, sitting down and doing like a care planning session way before anything bad happened. Absolutely you know and that's something we've been kind of noodling throwing around is coming up with a package Like we'll do a two hour care planning session with you. You know, if your parents are getting older and whatever, we can sit down and talk through what all your options are going to be Right and what you might need along the way and who's going to pay for it and how much money you're going to need to do it. And you know kind of evaluate your family situation, like do you have, does anyone live where they live or are you willing to have them come to your home? You know, just thinking through all those things that, like once it becomes a crisis, are very hard to manage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it's interesting because so I live far away from my family, you know. And so when you start thinking about when is the right time to have those conversations, it really becomes like, well, when are you going to be together? Because those are conversations you want to have face to face if you can. So then it's like okay. So situations that should be celebratory like oh, we're together, it's the holidays or someone's birthday or whatever, you know I'm like, oh, and also can we talk about what we're going to do when you get sick or, you know, when you can't care for yourself anymore or you know, and so you don't ever want to like bring it up, right, because you're trying to enjoy the moment.
Speaker 2:And I think that if you had like a planned like hey, let's come together for this purpose only, you know this isn't someone's birthday or a celebration or whatever Like, hey, let's have a three-day visit where we're just getting together and the sole purpose is to make a plan and document that plan, yeah, and so that everybody's on the same page when the time comes and it takes all the stress out of it. Yeah Doesn't mean the plan can't change Absolutely, and oftentimes it will, right.
Speaker 1:Right, but it's just crazy. We've thought it through, yeah, and like you were mentioning these conversations.
Speaker 2:They're so all encompassing. It does take into the family dynamic of relationships, it takes into consideration finances and all of like expectations and all of that, and so it really can't be like a, you know, a two hour, like yeah, we've, we've checked all the boxes, you know. If you had, you know, like you were talking about, like some sort of like a system where you can go through and like have questions that are really probing, to say, like, what is this Like, what is that like, and then have an outsider come in and look at all of that information and say, you know, it sounds like this might be a good option for your family. Or have you thought about this, you know?
Speaker 2:to help you with those resources once you get it all out.
Speaker 1:Yeah and like so, for example and it would be an awkward conversation maybe still, but if you could meet with the family and say you know, what are your relationships really like with your siblings. You know, because a situation that we see so often is that the middle-aged daughter typically is arranging for the care and might be the medical POA, and the middle-aged son, who might be younger, might be a little bit older, is the financial POA and typically he'll live in another state. And so you know, when the daughter gets like just underwater and needs some help and reaches out for in-home care, the sticker shock to the financial POA is like oh no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know? And then there's conflict, right, because she's like I am drowning here, we have got to do something, right, you know? And so making sure that you've had those conversations and that you have some understanding of how expensive it's going to be, right, so sometimes it's helpful to you know, maybe make a care plan and then sit down with your financial planner Exactly, you know or your parents' financial planner, and just make sure that everything's set up the way it should be. Yeah, you know, like if it's really going to be that middle-aged daughter doing everything, then maybe she should have financial POA also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that brings a good point that, like, having these conversations can expose where those gaps are. Yeah, right, so maybe it starts as a conversation about, like, what is the care going to look like? And then that rolls into oh, we probably need to visit with an estate planner, you know an estate attorney, to help us line out, like, who is the financial POA, who is the medical POA, what happens if? Yeah, so it really needs to be a conversation with you know, your estate planner. Your financial planner, like all of these people have to have a say. But if we're not having the conversation at all until it starts happening.
Speaker 2:Well then, we can't do anything to try to prevent the chaos? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know we like to say that we provide solutions. We don't just provide care. We provide solutions to families in crisis or not, you know. But what we'd really like to move more towards is to be more of a preventative, to be thought of as preventative health care. Yeah, so like any kind of wellness you would do for yourself, like you take a Pilates class or you go to yoga and you do these things to keep yourself healthy, right.
Speaker 1:But I think also, as you age, you need to start looking at like it's really hard for me to stand at the sink and do dishes and maybe that's kind of dangerous. Maybe I shouldn't be doing that anymore because I've got bad knees and you know whatever. Maybe I could get a little help in here once a week. They help me do dishes and do some laundry so I don't have to go up and down the stairs with a laundry basket. But it's just really hard for people to admit that they might need a little help with something or to lose their independence in that way.
Speaker 1:But I think if we could get people to start thinking like like I'm really sensitive to getting injuries. First of all, I work with elderly people all the time. So you see all the broken hips and arms and all the things that happen. But also I have yoga teacher training, you know, and my yoga teacher was very anti-injury, you know, like everything was you were doing all this basically to prevent injury, right, and so I'm super hyper, but I, you know, I just, but I really wish people would realize how one big injury like that can really take you down and take you out.
Speaker 1:So to prevent that would be great If we could get more on the front end. Of course most in-home care is private pay. Medicaid does cover some, but very few people take it just because of the reimbursement rates and it's very hard to get approved to take Medicaid in Kentucky.
Speaker 2:So really yeah.
Speaker 1:And then Medicare doesn't cover any in-home care because it's like considered non-medical.
Speaker 2:So that's so interesting. When my dad was going through his journey, he had all of his health care and everything through the VA system, oh nice, and so he was able to get in-home care. But he's such a stubborn guy, yeah, you know, he was like so adamant that he was just going to be up until he was down. Yeah, and it really worked that way. Like I don't know if he willed it into existing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I have a photo of him, like on Thursday, out on his tractor. I don't know what he was doing, he was just driving around for the sake of driving around. So that was on Thursday and the next Tuesday morning he passed. Oh my gosh. So he really like had said it in his mind like I'm going to be out doing my chores and doing my things, yeah, until I'm not.
Speaker 1:That's the ideal situation. Right To just keep going strong until yeah that is so atypical, right?
Speaker 2:You know that's not the way and I thought he was delusional. I was like Dad, you have cancer. It's going to be like a process. It's going to be, you know, but he just made it happen in his mind.
Speaker 1:He manifested it, he did it was insane.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I think knowing that we had that available for our family was a huge benefit. You know my mom was stubborn as well Sure're listening, mom, I love you but you know she had that mindset of like oh we can, you know, between our family we can take care of the dishes, we can do all the chores, like we've got enough people to help. But I was like you know, emotionally though, like I'm watching my dad die, do I really want to be standing at the kitchen sink doing everybody's dishes? Right, if we could get help to do that, so that I can process my emotions and be there emotionally, exactly, you know, maybe get some rest.
Speaker 1:I don't know, yeah, you bring up a great point, and part of that is I mean, there's a couple points there, and one is that it may be more dignified for the person who does need the help, who is maybe sick, to be taken care of by a caregiver. It's a little more neutral, right. They know that that person sees this all the time. It's what they do, and it's really, really awkward for a dad to be cared for by a daughter, you know, or a mom to be taken care of by a son, or even sometimes, like my mom really doesn't like me to take care of her.
Speaker 1:I'm the youngest and she's like this is just not how it's supposed to be. Yeah, you know, that's just not her thing. Yeah, and so, and it's that way in a lot of families. So sometimes it helps to preserve the elderly person's dignity to have someone who's kind of more neutral, right, and is trained to do it, but also it allows again the family to be the family and not the caregiver, because there's a line that you cross there, right, you know, and once you've crossed full on into caregiving, then it becomes more about tasks and getting things done and less about the relationship and making memories in those last times of your life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so exactly, you just hit the nail on the head which I know funny in your field, might be difficult or word of wisdom, or just yeah, you know anything at all that comes to mind, that you think, man, I really wish that our small business besties had this information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do have a ton of funny stories, but they're probably not appropriate. Oh, I would challenge you on that. There's so many completely inappropriate stories. I guess what I would leave with is just kind of what we've been talking about. You know, be open to discussing this. You know, start thinking about it early and you know, reach out.
Speaker 1:If there's anything that anybody ever needs or has any questions, like, don't hesitate to call us and just ask us questions. We love doing that. We don't charge for that and if it's, you know, we have all kinds of resources at our fingertips. You know people that we can refer you to and we've just picked up a lot of knowledge over the years about how things work. You know, how do I get someone from the hospital into rehab? How do I get from you know rehab into a step-down rehab? How do I, you know, get home care? How do I get home health services? You know, whatever, how can I get transportation, like, and the VA, you know, is a great resource. So we work with the VA as well. But just reach out and find out. We can steer people, we can help them apply for VA benefits. So, you know, don't hesitate to call and start thinking about that plan.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because, as much as we all want to think our parents are going to be super healthy and great forever, that's not reality, right, right, so but yeah.
Speaker 2:Our parents are all ourselves. Yeah, like I think, watching, watching the stress that it had caused my family, I'm like thinking to myself like I don't want my kids to have to have that stress, like I would rather be proactive about it and already have, you know, a plan in place to say this is what I do want, this is what I don't want, this is how I've planned to pay for it. Right, you know so that you know, so that they don't have to wait until they're in their you know forties or fifties and then start going like, oh geez, mom's, you know she's acting kind of funny, but what do you?
Speaker 1:do and I would say just be open to different solutions than you might have thought of. Yeah, you know, we did have a client and I'll just leave with this. This is several years ago now and she her daughter really wanted us to get an older caregiver for her so that they would have more in common, and we just didn't have anybody. At that point it was during COVID Most of the older caregivers had just sort of like retired or gone underground and we had a college student as who we matched her with. She's like oh, I don't think this is going to work out. Well, they ended up being the best of buds. They were doing each other's hair and posting pictures of doing each other's nails and they just loved each other.
Speaker 1:And the daughter actually called us back like two months later and said you know, you guys were so right. You know, thank you so much for matching my mom with this caregiver. She said my mom was suicidal before she met this young lady and she goes her life has completely turned around. Oh, wow. So the right match can really be magical, you know, for a family also. So that doesn't happen every time, but it's just. You know, don't be afraid to. You know, look at different solutions and don't be afraid to call us if there's any questions that you have.
Speaker 2:yeah, that's wonderful, I think. Kind of the theme like even from discussing, like how you ended up with Always Best Care and everything is like don't be afraid to like take that opportunity or like open the door and look to see what's on the other side and, you know, see where the journey takes you with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of my journey, I feel like, has been accidental. You know, it's always it's easy to string the dots together when you look back, but the year before we did Always Best Care. I did work in the hospital for Kentucky One Health, so like the St Joe hospital system, and I was doing rapid improvement events on the nursing units and that really did change my life, because I had been in manufacturing before, which is fine and everything, but I never really felt like I was helping people. But that watching the nurses, particularly at St Joe, maine and just like these local hospitals around here, they're so passionate about what they do and they literally are helping change people's lives every day and that kind of turned me on to it. Yeah, so I was working on it. Ironically enough, I don't think I'm going way over my time, no, no, I was, we got all the time. It's fine.
Speaker 1:I was working on a project where we were improving hospital access, but basically we were trying to improve the discharge process from the hospital and also shorten length of stay.
Speaker 1:So we were, you know, making sure that people had goals every single day and we were doing this interdisciplinary rounding and it was then that I really learned how hard it actually is to find a lot of people a place to go after the hospital. Yeah, so a lot of times while people end up staying in the hospitals because they have no place else to go, they don't have any home support system, you know, or you know their insurance doesn't cover, or you know there are no beds at, you know, any place that they need to go. So it's kind of interesting now that a lot of what we do is bring people home from the hospital and take care of them, you know, until they recover Right, and so making sure they have that support. Yeah, it's almost like it kind of led into it. Yeah, do you know what I mean? I became a part of the solution of a problem I was trying to solve. So I find that kind of interesting and weird.
Speaker 2:But it is. It's really crazy how, like, if you're open to, like, allowing the opportunities to come to you, you find that like, oh, I've actually been preparing for this and I didn't even realize that you know. Yeah, yeah. I think that that happens a lot, especially in entrepreneurship. Right yeah, you don't even realize what it is that you're preparing yourself for, and then the opportunity comes and you're like, oh right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That makes sense Okay.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure, and I think you know, from a personal development standpoint, I really realized now that I had like no boundaries in my life. I won't say no boundaries, but I wasn't a good boundary maker and now I have to be like it's been forced on me. You know, because the first three years of the business I just wanted to take care of everybody employees and clients and I was up all night and working 90 hours a week and I would take any kind of phone call I got at any time. You know, and I've really had to, like you know, step up, find ways to set boundaries that you know still in a kind way, right. But like I can't be the person that you call at three in the morning, exactly when you're stressed out, I can't, I can't do that, yeah. So it's been a bit of a journey for me, but that's also part of your growth as a person, so you can be more productive, and you know Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, boundary setting in the business world and also in the personal world is completely crucial. And I'm just going to turn off the recording in a minute and I'm going to go stand in the mirror and say it's okay to set boundaries. It's okay to set boundaries Because it's definitely. It's so hard, especially when you're an empath. You know we are a people person and you love people and you want to see people succeed. It's so hard to say no, I can't be that person for you, or no, I can't help you with that problem. Or, you know, because you know we want to support people, we want to see them succeed and you know, I think there's a lot of ego in it for me of like I need to feel important, I need to feel like I'm a part of a solution.
Speaker 1:I can fix this and I will fix it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then your fix doesn't work and right, or you know like you can only stroke your ego so much before you go, like it's not worth it, because I had to sleep until nine forty five in the morning, because I've overrun myself, you know, or whatever it is. So, yeah, I think the boundary setting is a huge part of success, ultimately, because you know you can make all the dollars in the world or have all the impact externally that you want, but if your own personal health and peace is sacrificed for that, then you haven't really succeeded. Right, right, absolutely. Yeah, all right, I'm going to get on a text thread with you. We're going to remind each other, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, I'm going to get on a text thread with you and we're going to remind each other of that. Have you set your boundaries? I need a boundary reset, sarah, help me.
Speaker 1:I had a counselor once that she said if you're you know, someone is kind of unloading their whatever stress situation to you, you can put your hand over your heart you know both to express empathy. It's like I hear you and I know this is stressful for you, but also I'm not letting that. Oh yeah, here you know, cause I can't, you know, just hear the thing and I thought that was a really good like physical reminder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, as a massage therapist I'm about to get into some real hippie dippy stuff, but you know I love hippy dippy stuff. I was a massage therapist for, you know, 14 years and they taught us, you know, like the physical touch, like you're already exchanging so much energy right With your client. Just you know, even if you're doing medical massage, like you're already exchanging a lot of energy in that space, but then you have clients who really feel so comfortable in that environment and they end up, you know, just kind of unloading all of the things that they carry around with them. It's, you know, they say it's like it's an emotional release. You know that happens when you get physically relaxed in your body. An emotional release can happen. And so they taught us like literally to shake out. You know, after a session, like walk taught us like literally to shake out. Yeah, you know, after a session, like walk out of the room and shake out the energy, and like there was like this whole thing where you could like wipe yourself clean and like visualize wiping.
Speaker 1:Oh, I like that Like it off of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, not that your emotions are ick, but you know, yeah, some of that stuff isn't for you Right? And I'll be completely honest, I never did it because I thought it was kind of silly. And now, looking back, I'm like I should have done this. Yeah, all those years I was picking up everybody's stuff and carrying it around with me, you know.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really really good advice. In fact, I'm going to go back to the office and like teach my people how to do that, yeah, we're going to do it, because they do absorb so much energy from every side.
Speaker 1:You know it because they do absorb so much energy from every side. You know from the, from all of our you know caregivers, from our clients. You know their clients. You know children they just are. You know all day long is what they do. You know they're on the phone just absorbing people's energy, or in people's house.
Speaker 2:You know, and so yeah, yeah, all right. Well, we've got some action items. Then I'm going to text you to help me set my boundaries and you're going to teach your people to wipe away it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this has been so fun, and I want to circle back to the very beginning. This was a very sexy conversation. I mean, come on, we made it that way. Yay, this has been a lot of fun. As always, we're going to link your social media, your websites, all of that in the show notes and, as a special follow-up because of the conversation, if you guys do end up coming up with some sort of a program for the planning of it, be sure to reach out and let me know so I can add that into the show notes as well, to give some directive of how to navigate that process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in development now, so I will let you know.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, thank you so much, sarah, and thank you to Phil for having the idea and bringing Sarah on board with it, because this is a very needed service in our area and everywhere, and I'm glad that you guys are here.
Speaker 1:Thank you, we're glad to be here and it was so nice to be on your show. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Absolutely All right, besties. We will talk to you guys later. Thanks for listening, friends, my name is Michelle Smock and I own Cultivate Accounting, a boutique accounting firm specializing in small business, and I own Small Business Bestie, where I help women entrepreneurs go from idea to launch and beyond. Check the show notes for links to my website and socials, and also please take a moment to subscribe and review. It really would mean the world to me.