Ep: 18: How to Tackle, Staffing, New Client Demand and Team Accountability, According to Gregg Mazza of Home Care Breakthrough Solutions

Miriam Allred (00:01):

Welcome to Vision |The Care Leaders’ Podcast. I’m Miriam Allred with Activated Insights. Today. We’ve got Gregg Mazza, the Founder and CEO of Home Care Breakthrough Solutions here to dissect the top three challenges we’re hearing from home care providers nationwide. Gregg, it’s great to have you. I know you’ve had a busy week, but we’re really excited to get you on the show. So thanks for taking the time and welcome to Vision | the Home Care Leaders Podcast.

Gregg Mazza (00:24):

Well, I am so excited. Thank you for having me on here, Miriam. And yes, it has been a busy couple of weeks, but I’m really, really looking forward to this.

Miriam Allred (00:32):

Well, we’re going to address some hot topics right now, and I think people are really anxious to hear the information that you’re about to share. So we’re really just going to talk about kind of three main pain points that agency owners are experiencing. So let’s get right to it. We’re going to start out talking about staffing. I’d love to hear what your hearing from all the agencies that you’re talking to for those of you who don’t know, you know, Gregg has a very active Facebook group, Home Care Breakthrough Solutions — find him on Facebook, highly recommend being a part of that. You know, what are you hearing in that group in regard to staffing and how are you helping agencies directly and maybe indirectly address that issue?

Gregg Mazza (01:12):

Yeah. Great question. You know, obviously with Coronavirus I mean even before Coronavirus, things are tight, the unemployment market you know, unemployment was so low that people were consistently having issues with finding caregivers. And I know it’s gotten more difficult over the last few years since I sold my business. The truth is, is we look at the data, especially stuff from, you know, the Activated Insights Benchmarking Studies, turnover in our industry has always been a challenge, right? It never got as high as it did. What last year? I think it was like 82%, but prior to that 50, 60%, it would kind of go up and down. So in our industry, I think staffing has always been an issue. But it’s become a lot more pronounced recently with Coronavirus and people are scrambling trying to find caregivers, get caregivers, to show up to interviews, get caregivers, to show up to their shifts. And it just seems a lot more pronounced than it was pre Coronavirus.

Miriam Allred (02:17):

Definitely, definitely. So what are you consulting or, you know, what are you encouraging agencies to do to, to, you know, to address this issue?

Gregg Mazza (02:30):

Well, it’s a good question. You know, the reality is, is that, you know, the stuff that I’m about to share, there’s stuff that you should be doing, whether current virus exists or, or not. You know, one of the biggest things I tell people to do is it really starts with what I call reverse engineering, the numbers. Okay. We need to kind of get a gauge or figure out how many caregivers do we need to hire. Right. So, so there’s two, two numbers that we kind of look at the first number is what does our bench look like? Right? So what’s the ratio of the number of caregivers or the number of clients to the number of caregivers typically, and this varies. So don’t hold this number as like absolute truth. It varies based on the types of cases that you’re getting, the type of business, are they short shifts?

Gregg Mazza (03:21):

Are they long shifts? You know, so your average hours per client. So it varies, but as a general rule of thumb the number we want is about 1.5, right? So if I’ve got a hundred clients, I want to have at least 150 caregivers on the bench, that’s a general rule of thumb. And again, it can vary. So first thing was, we look at that, the second thing to really figure out where we’re having the problems is to get a gauge on how many hires do I need to have a week? And then we kind of reverse engineer it. So if I say, alright, I need three net new hires per week in order to get three net new hires. How many interviews

Gregg Mazza (04:04):

Do I have to actually get to show up in order to get three hires? Is it six? Is it five? You know, are you hiring a hundred percent of the people that walk in the door? You know, so we look at general numbers if you’re not sure, try to get a gauge on your numbers over the last six months and see where you are, then we have to look at alright, so if I need, let’s just say, hypothetically, the numbers, I need three net new hires. I, in order to get that, I have to have five or six actually show up, well then how many interviews we’ll have to actually schedule in order to get that many to show up? Is it 10? Is it 15? Is it 20? Right? Cause I’ve heard people have like you know, some people in the industry have a 30% show up rate, some have a 50% show up rate and there’s things that you can do along the way to fix that. And then in order to get that many interviews set up, well, how many applications do we have to get? Right. So if I need 10 interviews, hypothetically actually scheduled to get five, to show up, to get three or four, you know, or three net new hires how many applications do I need, right. So is it 30? Is it 50? What’s the number? I mean,

Gregg Mazza (05:25):

We know, or I know, and this isn’t a hard number. I don’t have, I don’t know if you guys have, have data on this Miriam, but it’d be interesting to see, like how many applications does it take to get like, you know, what percentage of the number of applications are you get are actually qualified candidates? And when I say qualified you know, they, for most people hire people that are at least certified have some experience, you know, and in the past I know that if I got a hundred applications, about 40% are not qualified sorry, I dropped something. So with that being said, if I need 10 or 15, actually actual interview scheduled, I’m probably going to need 30 to 40 applications a week. Okay. And so just perspective, we start with reverse engineering. And once we get that you know, once we get that figured out, sorry, I got a phone call coming in, let me mute the phone or text coming in.

Gregg Mazza (06:26):

Once we get that figured out, then we start to look at where we can make improvements. Okay. So the biggest, biggest, biggest challenge that I see Miriam is that most people especially if you have a company where the owner is not doing the recruiting and they’ve got someone on their team, that’s helping is they treat recruiting more as what I call it a logistical process. Okay. What does that mean? Logistical process just means, like we talked to people we find out there might be a little bit, Hey, how are you? Nice to, you know, thanks for applying, blah, blah, blah. But then we go right into, well, are you certified? You know, do you have a driver’s license? You know, do have you ever been arrested or whatever questions you ask on your logistical. I need to know these things before I bring you in.

Gregg Mazza (07:14):

And what happens is, is that when you treat it more logistical versus a sales process, it lowers your show up, rate your caregivers. Aren’t excited to work for you. And at the end of the day, we don’t get the number of hires that we need. Now. It could be other problems. It could be that we don’t have enough hooks in the water, meaning that our applications are, we don’t have enough. We just don’t have enough. So we need to start exploring options. And the problem there could be either I don’t have enough sources driving applications. And so I have to go through all the different options I have for getting more applications, or it could be the copy on my ads are not compelling. Right. And what I find is a lot of home care owners, they’ll run ads that look just like everybody else’s and that’s a problem, right?

Gregg Mazza (08:03):

It’s not as effective. So you’re competing with 30, 40, 50, 60 other agencies in your market. And if all the ads look the same, the caregivers are just going click, click, you know, or seeing which one peaks their interest. So you need to get good at writing ad copy to get more applications. So I hope that makes sense, but it really starts with getting a clear understanding of your numbers, reverse engineering, the numbers. And then after you look at that, we figure out, well, where’s the problem. Where’s the gap? Where can I make some improvements? I’ve had clients in the past where they’re like, Hey, look, I’m going to just, I’m going to go to the trade schools and, or the CNA schools and the nursing schools and go do that. And I’m like, okay, not a bad idea. Let’s look at your numbers first.

Gregg Mazza (08:46):

And it turned out that as we started looking at her numbers, her applications were fine. She was getting tons of applications. I don’t remember what source she was using. Note to everybody that’s listening. You know, the, the sources, whether it’s myCNAjobs, Indeed, et cetera. I find that it varies market to market where some markets are more successful than others. I don’t know why that happens, but it happens. So you can’t say like, what’s the best source. It can vary. All right. But my point is is that she was getting a ton of applications. I think she was using indeed. And the problem wasn’t in the application, the problem was in the process on how she’s pre-screened how quickly she pre-screened, how her team handled the prescreening process. Were they getting them excited? Were they treating that as a sales process? And they weren’t. So I’m like, you don’t have to go spend more time or money. We need to focus on this part of your business and make it better. Right. Does that make sense?

Miriam Allred (09:46):

Yes. I love this idea of reverse engineering, the numbers. I think it’s so simple, but if we start there, you know, if an agency outlines their, we refer to it kind of as the funnel or, you know, the hiring conversion process and identifying, like you’re saying the pain point within that funnel, because there are so many steps and it may not be, you know, it may be just one step in that process that needs tweaking or needs some adjustment that can make all the difference. So identifying that piece of the funnel so important at the agency level.

Gregg Mazza (10:15):

Yeah. And, and, and it truly, it does, from my perspective, it starts there because if we don’t know where the break is or where the gap is, then we don’t know where to put our energy to fix it. And I tell people all the time, I promise you recruiting is fixable. It’s not a hundred percent fixable, right. But it’s fixable. It can get better. And what I find, you know, especially with people that are a part of a franchise, it’s like they do what they’re told and they don’t always, and this is not true across the board. So those of you that a part of a franchise I was too, this is not meant in any shape, manner, or form to be disrespectful at all. It’s just, sometimes we just follow the herd instead of becoming creative and, and, you know, engineering better results.

Gregg Mazza (11:05):

And part of that is testing and trying different things. And you know, oftentimes thinking outside of the box and, but it starts with knowing your numbers. Cause once you know the numbers, then that can tell you, okay, here’s where I can put a little more attention and find a solution. You know, whether that solution a new source, whether that solution is a new process for recruiting where, whether that solution is, you know, being more efficient in your recruiting, you know, we have to sometimes just break it down and figure out where the, where the, where the gap is, where the problem is. And then once we know the numbers, then that drives our innovation.

Miriam Allred (11:43):

Definitely, definitely. We’ve heard a lot from larger agencies too, that while recruitment is such a struggle, they’re putting an enhanced focus on retention. It’s more of an indirect approach to the staffing issue. So anything you can speak to there as far as both caregiver retention, but also even client retention as it, as it ties back to the staffing issue.

Gregg Mazza (12:06):

So yeah, it’s a great question. And in truth, they all matter, right? They all matter. I like to start with the recruiting and the recruiting process first, and then you know, it can happen simultaneously or it can be another initiative within the company, but you start looking at both, right? Because at the end of the day, you you’re keeping clients. One of the things you’ll hear me say repeatedly, maybe even in this conversation is how important it is, especially with retention. You know, and your recruiting processes, that if you have enough cases, if you have enough shifts where caregivers, because one of the biggest complaints caregivers have, or according to it, might’ve been from some of your benchmarking studies. I honestly don’t remember. I’ve also seen some stuff from myCNAjobs, some of the you know, research that they’ve done and interviews that they’ve done, but one of the biggest problems, and one of the reasons why caregivers will leave an agency is because it’s not the right client, or it’s not the right shift.

Gregg Mazza (13:04):

It doesn’t work with their schedule. And what you’ll find is that with some of the agencies that are either newer or smaller, is that they often struggle having the right shift for the caregiver. So it’s not uncommon for turnover to go up. You know, so the reason I’m bringing this up simultaneously is because if we do, if we focus on client retention, a big part of you know, caregiver retention is having enough options for your caregivers. So if you know that they’re not happy, and we’ll talk about that in a second, because I’m going to segue into what I call feedback loops, right? We’ve got to have some feedback loops built into our business, but if we don’t have enough opportunities for them, and they’re not happy, they’re just going to leave. Or sometimes many of you have experienced those of you that are listening that are home care owners, they just don’t show up.

Gregg Mazza (13:55):

Right. Which is so frustrating. So, so kind of the indirect as you called it, Miriam is you know, and you can be proactive with this, but we want to have feedback loops. What do I consider a feedback loop? Well, there’s a couple of ways to go about it. One of the things that you can, and I highly highly encourage is to have surveys, right? Satisfaction surveys, both with your clients and with their caregivers. I know it’s something that I believe it is something that Activated Insights does. They have a program for that. And this isn’t meant to be a plug for you guys necessarily, but it’s an important piece to running a home care business. We need to know how we’re doing. You know, I look at, we talked about reverse engineering, the numbers and KPIs. That is a feedback loop, right?

Gregg Mazza (14:42):

Because it gives us information. I think customer satisfaction scores, that is a feedback loop, caregiver satisfaction scores, that is a feedback loop. And that tells us, is there a particular area if we’re, or if we see that we’re not scoring well in a particular area? Well, as the business owner that gives us information and that tells us okay, here’s where we should probably put some attention. And one of the biggest challenges that I experienced as a business owner and that I witness now being on the coaching and consulting side is that, you know, business owners, we have what I call shiny object syndrome. This is true for probably all entrepreneurs and business owners. It’s like, we’re looking for that next shiny object. Oh, let me put my attention towards that. And then we go to a conference or you go to one of my virtual events or you, you know, your franchise conference and you have all these great ideas.

Gregg Mazza (15:38):

And then we try to focus on all of them and we get little to nothing done. Cause we’re still trying to run our business. We’re still trying to get cases. We’re still trying to get caregivers and it’s, it becomes inefficient and ineffective. And one of the things that I learned from traction, right, because we had hired them as consultants. And one of the things they suggested that we do in fact, the former founder of, of home care policy, isn’t he an EOS implementer now. Right. which is awesome. It’s a great, great program. But my reason for bringing it up is that, you know, they have you focus. I think they call it rocks. You know, we call it targets or whatever in our own business. But you know, you establish these goals or these targets and you don’t want to have 30.

Gregg Mazza (16:27):

You pick, let’s just say each quarter, you might pick two or three to seven, and then you put your attention on making that better and you try to avoid all the other distractions. It doesn’t mean that you can’t keep a little, a million dollar idea book or your, I, you know, something that you’re gonna implement in the future. So you want to keep track of all the great ideas that you’re getting in your learning. But if you start chasing each idea, you get nothing done, right. Or little done, and we need to stay focused on our main priorities. And that’s, I mean, this is really all kind of circling back to why it’s so important to track and to benchmark and to really know what are the key areas that I need to focus on. What’s going to be the biggest needle mover in my business. And then if there is a new idea and it supports that goal or that initiative, great, great. We can possibly add it back in there, but if it’s something that’s something totally different and it doesn’t align with our primary targets, we need to get good at this business owners to kind of put that to the side let’s let’s document it. Let’s put it in our little journal or idea book, but we’re not going to give it attention, not now until our I, our, you know, our targets or our rocks change. Does that make sense?

Miriam Allred (17:50):

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that you’ve hit on both feedback loops and even a little bit of EOS. You know, some of our listeners may or may not know what that is, Entrepreneurial Operating System. We operate under those, that strategy here at Activated Insights, but yeah, other business owners like Gregg have, have implemented that, you know, structure in their business and we’re huge fans of it. And like you’ve said, it really just helps us stay focused and, really zoned in on our priorities at a quarterly basis, but also at a year three-year five-year outlook and it’s really helped us advance. So we’ll have the bit about feedback loops too. Like you’ve said, you know, if you know exactly what your clients and caregivers are saying, you know where to focus your attention on it. It almost does. The hard work for you because it’s telling you exactly where your pain points are and then you, as the agency owner, as your admin staff can attack those pain points and address them head on instead of running circles around what it could be or could have been. So that is so important. So love everything said on that topic, should we kind of move into the second pain point that we’ve got here?

Gregg Mazza (18:52):

Let’s do it. I’ll let you direct where we go. Okay.

Miriam Allred (18:56):

Yeah. So let’s get into it. Let’s talk about getting in front of, and hearing back from referral sources. This is another big topic, but what are you hearing around referral sources? You know, are people getting in contact with them? Are they not, are they not hearing back? You know, what is kind of the pain points you’re hearing and how, how can we be addressing those?

Gregg Mazza (19:13):

Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, interestingly enough the truth is, is that a lot of my clients that are getting a lot more referrals are getting a lot of referrals right now, partly because of the demand, partly because, you know, they’re learning a new process there. Their biggest complaint really is like, now I got to fill it. You know, some of them actually kind of put a little temporary pause on selling cause they’re trying to get their recruiting and staffing up. With that being said at the end of the day, not everyone falls into that bucket and there’s people that aren’t getting enough referrals and they weren’t before Corona virus now, you know, during the coronavirus era it’s getting harder to get in front of people because you know, what I find is I’ve got clients all over, you know North America and really even some in other countries, but in the U S I’m really other parts what’s happening is they’re just not able to get in front of people or some markets they’re allowing them to do more.

Gregg Mazza (20:13):

Face-To-Face others. They’re not. So it really does vary, but here’s what it boils down to. And my assistant she’s like, I did a webinar. She’s like, Oh, people don’t want to hear it. It’s the same. The problems that people are having are very, very similar. For at least for the ones that aren’t getting enough business. And weren’t even before coronavirus, the problems that they have and the challenges that they have are very similar. All right, there, they don’t have a sales methodology. You know, they don’t really have a sales process. They don’t S they don’t, a lot of them don’t put enough attention on that part of their business. And I realize our business is our caregivers, right. And our, our team, but our caregivers is really what, what, what our business is about. That’s our product. But if we don’t have enough cases, the getting the cases, that’s what is the lifeblood of the business?

Gregg Mazza (21:07):

Because if we don’t have enough referrals coming in, it limits our capacity for so many things, right? It limits our capacity to having someone help us with recruiting. It limits our capacity to have the funds or the resources to, to get some more caregiver sources. It, it, it, it just puts limitations on your business overall, and it stunts your growth. So, and then there’s the people that are getting business, but it’s changed or we’re getting business before coronavirus. And it change because, like I said, they’re having more difficulty getting in front of people. And the truth of the matter is, is that the sales methodology, right? The strategies, the process stays pretty much the same in a lot of ways, the things that change are the tactics. Okay. The tactics on how we go about implementing the methodology. That’s, what’s getting tweaked a little bit.

Gregg Mazza (22:01):

Okay. And what most people fail to do is they don’t try. And I know not everyone that’s listening is going to fall into this bucket. So if it doesn’t, you can say, okay, thanks. That’s not true for me. But a lot of people that struggle with getting business, whether it was pre coronavirus or post coronavirus, is that they just one, they don’t have that process and they don’t stay consistent with hitting what I call the lead measures. What are the activities that are going to drive the result? And they don’t, they’re not making enough touch points. They’re not trying enough different ways to connect and reach their prospective referral sources. Now what some people are doing is, yeah, they’re going to do more online and that’s fine. Just like pre coronavirus. A lot, most people were getting their business through direct referrals from clients or referral sources.

Gregg Mazza (22:52):

Now more and more people are going a little bit to online. And I’m all for, I’m an advocate having online as a, as a piece of the puzzle. Absolutely. Like I, I teach something called you know, the, the Parthenon strategy, something I learned from one of my mentors, and we want to have multiple lead generation sources to drive referrals for our business. Okay. And what does that mean? That means that direct sales as a part of that online marketing is a part of that email marketing is a part of that potentially direct mail. That could be a part of that bulky mail you know, leveraging. And this is something we taught before coronavirus, and it’s something it’s still works. Post Corona virus, or in the coronavirus era is leveraging relationships with your dream team and your strategic partners. So there’s a lot of little pieces go into it, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to stay focused on the lead measures.

Gregg Mazza (23:49):

What are the lead measures? Am I making enough touch point phone calls, emails, am I leveraging my dream team and my resource partners and, and my making in my kind of what I call turning over every stone. All right. Let’s, let’s kind of backtrack for a second mirror and kind of go pretend Corona virus wasn’t here. Okay. And most people are a lot of people, they were out trying to get business and, and there’s a whole methodology, you know, make sure you’re targeting the right types of accounts. How are you, pre-qualifying the accounts? How are you pitching your services? You know, is it impactful? You know, have you identified what we call with them? What’s in it for them, right. Value based selling. There’s a lot of pieces that go into it. And that topic alone, you know, even if I just, just touched on it surface level, that would take a whole hour, a minimum just surface level stuff.

Gregg Mazza (24:43):

But my reason for bringing this up is that pre Coronavirus, a lot of times in the people that are struggling with getting enough referrals is that they’re not doing these things. Okay. So we still need to understand what’s the whiff on what’s in it for them. You know, how are we positioning our agency? How are we differentiating our business? All this stuff still applies, right. Even in the coronavirus era, the thing that’s changing, as I mentioned earlier, is the tactics, right? Are we doing it more by phone? Are we doing it by email? You know, are we doing it by you know, direct mail? How are we approaching this? We still have to understand all of those same strategies and all of those same concepts and pre Corona virus. You know, if I’m trying to build a relationship with an account, I’m going to turn over every stone.

Gregg Mazza (25:33):

What does that mean? It means that I’m going to try to reach out to them face to face. I’m going to try to reach out to them by phone. I’m going to try to reach out to them by email, I’m going to try to reach out to them through one of my dream team or strategic partners. And I’m going to keep going. This is what happens is most people try a couple things and then they stop and then they stop. And they’re like, it’s not working. I don’t get it. You know, it’s just not happening. And then they stop. And part of turning over every stone is like really looking at each opportunity in each Avenue. Do I know someone else in the facility? Do I have a client in that facility that can, you know, connect me? So we’re, we’re trying all these different angles to get our foot in the door with the right people.

Gregg Mazza (26:17):

And then we still follow the sales process or the sales methodology as I called it. So this is a pretty, pretty deep topic. It’s one of my favorites, cause I’ve been doing sales for so long. And you know, there’s people that become successful at doing this and then there’s others. That kind of struggle. So regardless of whether it’s a pain point now or before, a lot of times it’s because people are missing some pieces to sales or the sales methodology and, and even the strategy part of like, how do you separate yourself from the competition? All of these things go together to create success in this industry, in this business. And even if it wasn’t in this business, I’d be having the same conversation with you because we need to be doing things that help us stand out from people and know our value proposition and then go through the whole pre-qualifying knowing what they want.

Gregg Mazza (27:16):

And then pitching, presenting, not just dropping off brochures, not just dropping off candy, not just trying to call them once or twice. And like, I don’t know what to say. You know, it’s having a process for doing all of that. And that’s where people struggle the most. And I know that was a long-winded answer, but I get super passionate about this piece because I see it. I know I’ve lived it myself, you know, cause I used to struggle. I used to follow what I call the spray and pray method and all this stuff that I was initially taught in this business. And just my results were limited. I mean, my results were limited to the point where many of you heard my story where we almost ran out of capital and I was like, I’ve got to do something different. And you know, learning how these pieces work together made a huge, huge difference in our business. And it has for many of my clients as well.

Miriam Allred (28:10):

Yeah. Well I think these are great points and should come as somewhat of a relief to agency owners in that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We don’t need to reinvent the sales process. It’s just adjusting and finding the new tactics or the new tools that we need to leverage in order to drive new results in this time. So, you know, it’s, it’s, I think it’s important to address that. You know, we really don’t have to reinvent everything that we’re doing. We just have to adjust and be flexible. Earlier this morning, I was talking to an agent, the owner that she said, you know, pre-COVID, they had 50% of their caregivers were 50 plus. And she said, now we’re hiring Gen Z and it’s completely changed their recruitment process. And she said, you know, at first we were kind of struggling or in denial and didn’t know what to do, but now we’ve just, you know, accepted it and now we’re moving forward because of that initial acceptance and that flexibility. So similar to this topic, we just have to be flexible and look for new opportunities and adjust accordingly. And really we can fill the demand and we can address these pain points and really solve them if we have that mentality.

Gregg Mazza (29:20):

The demands there. I mean, for those of you that are having difficulty or you know, not getting as many referrals, I mean, I can’t speak for the entire industry. I know you you guys have at home care pulse have done some surveys around this. And I know some of the ones that I saw were, were early on in COVID. But the reality is, is that I know from working with my clients, that the demand is there. And many of them, if not, most of them are not struggling with getting the referrals. Now they’re struggling with staffing them. I have one client in, in Texas and I’ve been working with her for close to two years. And in two years, we’ve not necessarily had to address recruiting in her business because it wasn’t a problem. Right. So kind of circling back to what we were talking about earlier, we need to know where our problems our issues are.

Gregg Mazza (30:15):

And then we put energy and attention towards those and those become part of our initiatives. Well, it hasn’t been until the last two months that we were now having to address recruiting fortunately for her. And I think she, you know, she feels blessed with this. The referrals are still coming in, but we had to start working on the staffing piece. It’s just that you know, if you’re on here and you are the person that that’s a pain point, you know, you got to look and see you know, do you have the right strategies in place for sales, right? Are you targeting properly? Are you pre-qualifying the right way, right? What is your pitch and presentation look like? You know, if, if I look at my clients, I can tell you unequivocally that without a shadow of a doubt, how my clients pitch and present is like the biggest needle mover in their business, right.

Gregg Mazza (31:10):

Because there’s a whole methodology that we teach for doing that. It’s something that I learned from some of my mentors. And when you learn how to be impactful in your message and your messaging, and you know, there’s a lot of little pieces that go into that, the businesses there, even if you have to do those presentations virtually okay. Right. Tactic changing, not the strategy, but the tactic changes. So what, right. So we’ve got to do it virtually instead of you know, face to face. I prefer face-to-face of course, but you know, if we’ve got to do it virtually, that’s no problem, but we got to make sure that when we are getting through that sales process and we’re presenting our business, we have to remember, we’re competing with so many people, you know, we’re competing with so many people, so you’ve got to have something that helps you stand out from the competition and addresses their needs, their wants their desires, and I’m kind of oversimplifying it.

Gregg Mazza (32:09):

There’s other components like overcoming the most common myths. Like my patients can’t afford care. And there’s a lot of other little pieces like building that instantaneous, emotional connection. Right. And we do that through what we call like an epiphany bridge story, origin story. So there’s all these little pieces that go into it. But at the end of the day, it’s all designed to help you get the business. So this way, when something comes up, they’re like, Oh, you know, we’re, we’re thinking about Miriam and her home care agency. You know, she connected with us, she addressed our needs. Like there’s, there’s a way to do this. And, and that’s what I find is a big problem is that most people they’ll start something and they don’t get the result. And then they stop instead of continuing to look for ways to get better. Right.

Gregg Mazza (32:56):

Because I can promise you as a prior business owner, I wasn’t always successful at it. You know, the first few years were a struggle, like a big, big, big, big struggle. Even with all this prior sales experience. Yes. I was getting referrals. Yes. You know, compared to the rest of our franchise system, we weren’t doing bad. We’re actually doing pretty good, but we were still having issues and it wasn’t consistent. And there are moments where I literally thought I was gonna lose my mind. Cause this can be stressful. And then once I started learning a better way of doing it and the strategies and the process and all the little pieces that go into that, it changed the game. You know, in many of my followers know this, cause I talk about it a lot is that, you know, over, after learning some new strategies and implementing them over the course of the next 12 months, we increased over a million dollars in revenue in a year.

Gregg Mazza (33:53):

And that was life changing. You know, it truly was life changing for my family, for my business. My peace of mind, my sanity and it put me in a position where I can start to build out my team and serve my clients at a higher level. And you’re getting more business and you’re retaining more caregivers and it’s like, some people have the misconception that getting bigger means more problems and that’s not necessarily true. In fact, I’d argue that the opposite is true is that when you get bigger and you get better, I guess that’s the key thing I want everyone to hopefully take away from today’s that you got to keep working on getting better. Right. I think problems get thrown in our way for a reason. You know, I call it divine intervention. And in the past I used to look at problems as problems instead of looking at problems as opportunities for my own personal growth.

Gregg Mazza (34:49):

And when I started shifting how I looked at things, right, the problems I still have, you think I don’t solve problems today? Of course I do. I have problems today, big problems they pop up, but I’m better at dealing with them because I look at each problem as a all right, what do I need to learn from this? You know, what, what do I need to get better at if I’m having trouble finding caregivers? Well, that just this, I means I need to get better at it because there are, I promise you, there are agencies that are in this market, getting caregivers and scaling their business. There are agencies in this market that are getting referrals. And yet inside the Facebook group, you know, someone posted last week, I think it was, you know, who’s doing well in this market. And it was interesting. It was like 70%.

Gregg Mazza (35:40):

Maybe that wasn’t the exact question, but it might’ve been, who’s getting referrals, something like that. And it’s like, it seemed like 70% were saying yes. And then there was still 30% that were like, no, and I’m sure there’s even more that just didn’t answer because you know, social pressure I’ll call it. You know, they didn’t want to look bad like, Oh, I’m not really doing well. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just, it’s the mindset. Like we can talk about all this stuff, mirror him on all the strategies and all the tactics and all the systems and all that stuff. And I’m not discounting the importance of it. It’s important, but you learn as you go and you seek the information, but it’s the mindset that I believe has equally, if not a bigger impact on your success as a home care owner, as a business owner and just in general in life, right.

Gregg Mazza (36:30):

Due to however you approach your job, Miriam, it’s like how you approach it. It’s the mindset part that will determine to a large extent, the level of success you have because, you know, we all have problems. We all things that need to work on can get better at, but we need to approach it in a way where we’re like, instead of woe is me and, ah, gosh, this is so hard and so difficult. And you know, it’s like, okay, well what do I need to learn from this? And how do I get better? Because the resources are out there. They are. If my mindset, if someone out there is doing it successfully, then there’s an answer out there. I just need to find it.

Miriam Allred (37:09):

Yes and I think this is a really good segue into this last pain point we can address. We’re kind of running short on time, but team accountability, you know, getting your whole team on board with the same goals and the same mentality, you know, setting clear expectations. Just briefly any kind of thoughts there about the importance of holding your team accountable and getting on the same page?

Gregg Mazza (37:31):

Yes. There’s this whole getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. There’s so much truth to that. I know it sounds cliche, but there is, you know, and there’s a, you know, an art and a science to finding the right people you know, there’s personality profiles. What are the traits that you’re looking for for specific roles? That’s a whole nother topic, but important. Once you find that person, it’s like, okay, how good are you at at one clearly defining their role, like clearly defining their role, their jobs, et cetera. Clearly defining the expectations. Many of you that are part of my group, you hear me talk a lot about like KPIs and they’re important. What are KPIs, key performance indicators. When you look at each role in the company typically, and I know it’s harder for the scheduler.

Gregg Mazza (38:25):

Maybe if you have a clinical person, but I promise you it’s doable. Typically there’s two to four or five or more numbers that we should be tracking that key determination of the success for that role. So for example, let’s just talk about recruiter. That’s an easy one, right? Sales is another easy one schedule are a little harder, but doable. Even the clinical person, imagine trying to find KPIs for a clinical person. Well, they’re there, right? You just have to dig a little bit more and get clear on the KPIs, the outputs, what has the biggest impact on this role recruiter? It’s easy. I need three net new hires a week, right? And then we have all the other KPIs we talked about earlier when we were reverse engineering, the numbers, and then the last piece and please, it, this shouldn’t get overlooked is the importance of having a weekly cadence you know, a meeting structure that is impactful and effective.

Gregg Mazza (39:21):

And, you know, we’ve followed a lot of what we learned when working with our traction consultant or following EOS as you call it, what is it, an entrepreneurial operating system, right? So we had a structure to those meetings where you review the data, you know, and there’s this whole process. And, you know, I remember early on, it was hard to stay committed to that. But as we want, especially when we got into traction you know, those weekly meetings and the structure, that meeting that really drives your success looking at the numbers, knowing where the problems are, addressing the issues and to just keep, you know, doing that. And there’s something powerful about the word traction, cause it really embodies what the process is designed to do. And there’s a lot of little pieces that go into this, but at the end of the day, I know it’s tough. It is, it’s hard getting the right people on your team, you know, sometimes not always, but sometimes we get what we pay for. But even if you’re not going to pay, you know, average to above average market rates for hiring your team members, we can still do the other things and get better at making sure we have the right people getting clear on the expectations, outputs, et cetera. And when you get better at that, you’re going to start to see better results in your business.

Miriam Allred (40:40):

That was great. Just last thing. What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you and recap your Facebook group?

Gregg Mazza (40:49):

I appreciate you asking that. So you know, w in our business, we, we do coach and consulting. We’ve got an amazing, amazing mastermind group. W we’ve got three groups running based on approximately revenue, where, where they’re at. And last time we rolled out our mastermind group, we had over 120 applications for about 30 spots. So we’re going to be rolling that out again soon for those of you that are interested in participating, you can shoot me an email. We’ll put you on the list. And then when we do roll that out, I’ll be happy to share information. You know, if you’re interested in participating, we’ll get you an application. When we roll that out, our Facebook group is amazing, you know, and, and I, I’m not taking credit for it. We have such an amazing group of people. You know, you’ve got people that have been in this industry for 30 years.

Gregg Mazza (41:36):

You’ve got people that are a little bit newer. The requirement is that, yes, you have a home care business. So that’s number one, it’s predominantly for owners and managers and salespeople. There’s over 3000 people in there. It’s a support group. It’s a resource group real, I’ll go in there and I’ll do like videos, trainings, et cetera. So if you’re not part of the group, go find us right now. Look up home care, breakthrough solutions for service providers inside of Facebook. Yeah. And then you can always go to our website, www.homecarebreakthrough.com. So hope you guys got value out of this and Miriam super grateful to you, your team at Activated Insights.

Miriam Allred (42:24):

Thanks for listening to this episode with Greg Mazza, visit the episode landing page on homecarepulse.com/podcast to get Gregg’s email, connect with him on LinkedIn, access his Facebook group, or learn more about his Mastermind Groups. Thanks again and we’ll see you next time.