Caring CEO and founder, Jeff Salter, was interviewed by David Knack on Home Care Hindsight. Jeff shares his biggest lesson learned over his three decades in home care: delegation. He reflects on his career and his 9,000-mile cross-country bike ride in 2021 that helped him embrace delegation as the key to growth. Jeff also shares insights into how he is working to push the senior care industry forward through technology.
Listen to the episode or read the full transcript below.
Podcast Transcript
00:52 – David
Alright, we are back with another episode of Home Care Hindsight. I’m joined by Jeff Salter. Jeff, welcome to the show.
01:07 – Jeff
Hey, David. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.
01:09 – David
Yeah. So for people who aren’t familiar with your, how would you introduce yourself?
01:13 – Jeff
Well I’m the founder and CEO of Caring Senior Service. Originally, I spent 34 years managing and operating home care businesses. I started with a single location in west Texas and opened up five locations over about 11 years, and then in 2003 became a franchisor and decided to start helping other people get involved in senior care. Now I’m 34 years in the industry and I tend to expand. I’m now doing some other things that I think are more about giving back to the industry and the community with home specifically. I’m really interested in trying to look at some software solutions that help companies be better while helping Caring Senior Service. I’m also trying to help others within the space so other home care companies get better either through software, creating new business processes or just general advice and help anyway that I can and also involved at national level on boards and other committees.
02:11 – David
Yeah. Um, you know I think the two things that I’ve learned from spending time around you is that like you know a lot about home care. You’ve been around the industry for a little while at least now but also that you’re somebody whose pretty generous with your time, and so I appreciate our conversations and stuff that I’ve learned about the industry from our interactions. What you’re doing with the Enkiscribe is really interesting because I think you get once chance to make a first impression and sometimes people don’t have clear visibility into the kind of first impression that is being made by their business so this whole thing isn’t a sales pitch for Enkiscribe or anything but share a little bit about what you’re doing because I think it’s really interesting and could help some agencies.
02:48 – Jeff
Yeah, that’s my goal as I’ve gotten to this point in my career, it is, well I definitely want to continue to grow within my own organization and see us thrive, I also want to see the industry rise up because I know the challenges that we’re all going to be facing. So, we took a look at how our people were answering the phones and tried to really look at ways that we could improve that process because when people are first calling to ask about home care, they’re uninformed. They don’t understand the questions they should be asking and they need to be comforted. They need to know that the company they’ve called has a solution in mind, and surprisingly as I looked at all of our locations, I found that we weren’t necessarily doing that first call justice. We weren’t talking to people about all the services that we could provide. We weren’t being specific enough and we weren’t understanding the caller’s situation be it an adult daughter looking for care for her mom, maybe a spouse calling for services for their loved one. We just weren’t properly talking to them about what the services are that we offer, and I thought can we create a solution that would help with this. Initially it was a solution that was an internal solution and then we expanded it and now we created a company from it, and it’s purely done to help the industry. I want to see the industry rise up and see everyone be able to know what’s happening in their business and as a small business owner myself and helping lead small business owners and advise small business owners, it’s an area where it’s tough to get right and it’s tough to monitor so we focus on that initial call coming into the businesses.
04:23 – David
Yeah. The think that stood out to me that I think is really a game-changer is a call that doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to and your software detects that there’s maybe some repair work to be done or an opportunity to get business that otherwise probably would have disappeared. If I was an agency owner, I could get a message from Enkiscribe that’s like hey this call didn’t go great. Here’s the details. You should give this person a call and give an opportunity for owners to proactively to step in when stuff hasn’t gone well rather than you know just being in the dark or nervous that stuff is not going the way they want it to.
04:59 – Jeff
Yeah, that’s like the core of what Enkiscribe is doing. It’s taking calls, recording them, transcribing the call, what happened during the call, and then providing feedback to both the individual that took the call and then their supervisor or maybe the owner of that business and exactly which says it indicates was this a new client call and did we schedule an appointment. And if we didn’t schedule an appointment the great thing is that it gives you all the information that you need to call that person right back immediately because it’s all the details from that phone call are discovered and at your fingertips whereas in the past you’d have to depend upon the notes that someone took and they might not be readily available and the notes might not be decipherable. If anyone has ever been handed a sticky note with information on it they know exactly what I’m talking about.
05:49 – David
Perfect. Well, Jeff, thanks for being on the show. As people who listen to this show know by now um I always want to just ask people the question what kind of person are you and when we were doing the prep call what came up in our conversation was you were like well just ask that question instead of asking some dumb question to get at it which is fair but also the thing that I want to do. So, I have no idea what you’re going to talk about. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. I definitely don’t today. So, Jeff what kind of person are you?
06:14 – Jeff
I’m a pretty driven individual, I think. I want to always be getting better so everything that I put into the business, everything that I you know start working on is a constant improvement. So that can be pretty challenging. I recognize that in an organization when you’re constantly improving it means that you focus more on what you did poorly versus what you did well so I’m not looking for perfection. I’d rather just move forward then be perfect moving forward, but I also know that I can improve no matter how well I think I did each time. I think that comes, I think it was ingrained in me as I was a track athlete in high school and in college and that really got instilled in me early on and throughout those many, many years of being coached.
07:02 – David
Yeah. And I have in my notes, “something something bike ride.”
07:07 – Jeff
Yeah. So, part of that trying to get better and trying to improve. When we got to our 30-year anniversary as a business, and you know a great moment. Not a lot of people can say that they’ve been at the start of their company or the founder and lasted for 30 years. I mean people either might fail or they might just eventually move on to something else. I’ve stuck with it. I celebrated 30 years almost four years ago now and for my celebration for 30 years I wanted to do something to touch every location. By that point we had almost 50 locations and I wanted to go visit every single location and typically a CEO would maybe get in a plane. They might drive to the locations depending on how close they are but ours are spread across the nation, so we have locations from the West Coast to the East Coast, all points in between, and almost to the dare of one of the guys that I work with. He said Jeff you should, you’ve been getting into your electric bike more, you’ve been riding it to and from work about 20 miles each way. He said you should ride your bike to every location. And I was like dude that’s the craziest, dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I went home that night and thought, “you know, what would it take to ride a bike to every single location?”
So on April 1st, 2001, I got on an electric bike and spent four months on the road visiting every single location. At the end of the trip, I had basically circumnavigated the U.S. I went from the center here in San Antonio out to the East Coast, up the Eastern Seaboard, all the way back across to California and then back to San Antonio over four months and 9,500 miles, visiting every location, having celebrations and it was important. We wanted to celebrate and that was the main driver of the discussion but as we started really thinking about what we were going to do, we decided to create a movement, and that movement was called Close the Gap in Senior Care. We have now since created a nonprofit and our goal during the ride was to raise money for grab bars. We wanted to install grab bars in senior’s homes. I’m happy to say that we raised $170,000. We installed grab bars in over 400 senior’s homes in seniors that would normally have not been able to afford a grab bar in their home and we put them in the bathroom because that’s the place where most falls happen. Falls are devastating to seniors when they occur. The leading cause of death, accident-related death, is falls, and so it was great. It was a great way to spread the word about senior care and helping people understand it was a guy riding a bike. Why are you riding this bike and I was able to share with them what I was doing and raise money and then give back in a really unique way and at the same time celebrate 30 years of business, so it was a really cool thing to do. I was excited to have done it and get the chance to share with people the many stories of that trip.
10:04 – David
Part of me wants to just derail the entire rest of this podcast episode and just talk about that trip. Maybe that’s another time. I have a friend with a full suspension electric mountain bike and so he and I will ride together sometimes, and I have a hard-tail bike, and it has got no rear suspension and no battery so I’m normally just huffing to try and keep up. There was one time we went when he had not really charged it and so that battery is super heavy, so it goes from being something that helps you to being something that weighs like 35 pounds that’s just on the bike frame. So, did you ever have any issues with charge, or did you keep the thing up and ready to go?
10:39 – Jeff
I get a lot of grief. I tell people I went on this 9,500-mile bike ride and sometimes when I tell people it was an electric bike they’re like oh it’s an electric bike, anybody can do that. Well on the trip I had a companion rider with me. We did it all unsupported which means you don’t have a chase vehicle, you’re just going out and figure your own way the whole time, but we did have a companion rider. I had someone that would fly into the city, they’d get on the bike, they’d go for a week or so and then get off the bike and the next guy would fly in and kind of switch them out. About half of the journey it was a situation where I did half of it solo, well the person that was coming in, it was mostly guys that I worked with, I have one of my sons at one point in time and my business partner at different times, each and every one of them thought it’s an electric bike no big deal I can do this. But what they failed to realize is that you’re on the bike, we were traveling between 80 and 120 miles every single day. So you had to sit on a bike going 15 miles an hour top at max speed and it’s grueling to sit on a bike for 7 to 9 hours every single day. It’s tough and it’s a lot of exercise because the battery only takes you so far on its own. If you’re not putting energy in as far as pedaling then you’ll only go about 20 or 30 miles pure battery power. On top of that we had gear. You know normally a bike someone rides is a 10 to 15 pound bike so you’re moving that thing with no problem. An electric bike often weighs with the battery and the frame has to be heavier and we were riding fat tire bikes so it made it even more heavy, um, the bike at the start is about 70 pounds so you’ve got to move 70 pounds. So, if you don’t have a battery and motor it turns into a normal bike but then we loaded gear on top of that. I was pulling a trailer that had 100 pounds of gear in it. I had about 70 pounds of gear on the bike itself because you’re traveling. You’ve got to bring everything with you that you need. I camped out during a lot of the trip, so it was a lot. Battery management and battery usage was paramount to the entire trip. There was only one case in which the battery died, and we had to kind of pedal that thing and you can imagine. Pedaling a regular bike with gear is a challenge but you put a 100-pound trailer behind it and then you put 70 pounds on the bike it doesn’t go very fast, and it is grueling. So luckily it only happened once. I managed the usage quite well for most of it and you do 9,500 miles, you kind of figure a lot of things out along the way.
13:00 – David
Yeah. It makes sense. Well placeholder for another episode that’s just about the trip because I could talk to you about that all day. Um, but I didn’t bring you on the podcast to talk about all your success or the bike trip and the success that that was. Instead, I bring people on the show and ask them about a big mistake they’ve made in their career and all the stuff that they’ve learned from that. So, Jeff, what’s you big mistake?
13:20 – Jeff
It’s always a challenge for any of us who’ve had any level of success to kind of pick the mistake that they made and if we’re being honest there’s lots of mistakes along the way. I’ll relate back to the bike ride and not to say it’s a big mistake as it is with more of not giving and understanding that we all need more help. We all can use help along the way. If someone is entrepreneurial and they’re driven, you think that you need to make all the decisions, you need to take the reins and move forward. For me one of the challenges that I face in my entire career is not accepting other people’s help. And the journey on the bike ride was something that helped me understand that you need help. You take help when it’s offered, and you get assistance. And that’s been something fairly early on in my career I didn’t pay attention to. I didn’t ask for help when I probably needed it. It would have been a much easier path had I just said, “hey can you help me with this, I’m struggling here.” I would oftentimes more struggle than just ask for help and get the help that I needed and get to the solution quicker but frequently would just go it alone. So, I think from my perspective I don’t know if that answers your big mistake question or not but you know for me there’s plenty that were made because I didn’t ask for help.
14:32 – David
Yeah. You know, as I think I’m a terrible delegator and I’m in the process of having to learn how to delegate because we’re busy and we’re growing but it means I can’t do everything like I could a year ago and so you know as I’m thinking through this in kind of my own life and work, I think there’s a couple of reasons people don’t delegate. The first is they’re like I hate this task. Everybody else probably has to hate this task but I’m the guy in charge and so like I’m just going to eat the frog and do the thing and be miserable but whatever. In reality like there’s people who love the tasks that you hate and it’s right in line with their personality so I’m curious like what were the tasks that you didn’t ask for help with that you should have and then I think my follow-up question to that is going to be like who were the people that were kind of waiting in the wings that you could have tapped or activated to get into the business and help but you kind of overlooked their potential to make an impact. So, what are the tasks and then who are the people?
15:26 – Jeff
Again, it’s going to go back to the bike ride so it kind of becomes a theme in my life here lately but if you’re going to leave your business. So, everyone asks me how did you work during the four months you were gone? You’re running a multimillion-dollar organization how can you just be gone from that? Well, I had to spend time really organizing what my work was and then handing that off to other people. And that process actually taught me that I’m not as important as I think I was. Because the tasks that I thought were menial and I could just do or that, I like what you said about I hate the tasks so much, why would I give this task to someone else. That’s like punishing people. And I learned that it’s actually true. Other people actually like those tasks, and they found them to be rewarding in some way, shape or form. Or it didn’t bother them as much as I thought it would bother them. They were able to take that task on. But it’s all the simple things. When you’re going to be gone and we’re not talking a vacation for a week. You know some people take vacations for two weeks and they’re gone two weeks. All that usually happens is the work just stacks up, and when they get back, they finish all those things. For me, I had to go and delegate everything and teach other people because I was not going to be able to do that. I would either be unavailable completely because I was remote in the wilderness at times and again people don’t realize when you get, most of us when we ride a bike we go on a little tour, maybe go around town. Very few people have gotten a chance to get on a bicycle and ride to the next city and then imagine that city as somewhere you’ve never been before riding to a place that’s completely unknown. So you don’t know what you’re getting into. You don’t know if you’re going to be with service or without service. They were like three or four days where I didn’t have any connectivity. I could not log on to the Internet. I could not access. I had a computer with me and when I had connection, I could do work but I had to account for the fact that there could be something important that needed to get done and other people would have to do it. So, pretty much everything that I did day-to-day I had to let someone else take that on, give them the instruction on how to complete it, and then the next thing was to be willing to let go and someone making a mistake on my behalf. You know that’s kind of a tough thing to do. Like I don’t want to let someone else make a mistake that’s going to harm me and for me it was a matter of like well I have to access that that’s going to happen. I make mistakes so if they make a mistake on my behalf, I just have to accept that and not come down on them for it. Everyone on my podcast think about everything and think about all the things that you think only you can do and in reality you’re not being truthful because anyone else can do everything at the end of the day.
17:59 – David
Yeah. You’ve had it sounds like plenty of experience with delegating, somebody doesn’t do it exactly right, makes a mistake, whatever, how do you as a leader have that kind of conversation because I think like maybe one of the reasons people have a hard time delegating is that kind of future anxiety about oh it’s going to be this whole thing where I have to like criticize someone’s performance or come down on them or be disappointed in them and that feels like a whole kind of Gordian knot that’s hard to get out.
18:30 – Jeff
Yeah. People have written entire books on this subjective haven’t they. For me it’s a matter of just, the one thing I have a lot of is confidence. Sometimes its borderline egoistical in some aspects, I fully admit. But I do have a lot of confidence, and I also know that anything that gets broken I can probably fix. And, I also know that I break plenty of things that I have to fix so I just keep that attitude whenever I delegate to someone else that if they break it, it’s going to be because I did not properly tell them how to deal with the outlier situations and they probably couldn’t have done any different and they did the best that they could. Those combined things knowing that I can probably fix it and knowing that I probably didn’t instruct them has guided me to having those conversations in a much better way than maybe I would have in my early career. When you’re informed and understand that then you kind of have a different conversation. Like oh man you made the mistake and when I delegated it to you pushed the wrong button, but I actually didn’t tell you that in that case you push the other button and that’s on me. Let’s fix it and move on and now they’re a little bit more educated, they know a little bit more, that mistake won’t happen but there’s always going to be outlier situations that we can’t prepare people for. And, we just have to accept, now that’s assuming that they’re conscientious, they’re doing the best they can, they took action based upon a set of known decision-making criteria and they just didn’t not do it at all. So those are the type of conversations when someone’s actually failing, and they had all the knowledge they needed.
20:10 – David
You know you’ve cultivated some folks within your organization not to just to like but the person who can push the button instead of you but to also be a strategic thinker and be responsible not just for executing a plan but also conceptualizing the plan and that’s a much different level of responsibility and delegation and training and stuff. So if I’m a home care owner whose got a couple of people who I trust to push the buttons whether that’s preparing the payroll report or doing the schedule or doing the recruiting, how do you go about identifying maybe one of those people or somebody from outside the organization who can come in as more of a strategic leader who can actually kind of like impact a part of the business and its strategy somewhat independently?
20:57 – Jeff
Yeah I think it’s a little tougher in that area just to identify that person and in the end we can not only identify them but then we actually got to give them the ability to make those decisions and I think it’s more project based and you have to start off with thinking some areas of business you want to change and have them think through and come back to you with some ideas and hopefully you’re in the mode where you’re able to, it’s easier for all of us to make someone else’s idea better versus to come up with that idea from scratch so that’s actually the toughest part so if you kind of take that approach of like let me give you some things that will make this even better, um then they can learn from that versus being someone that you expected to be perfect when it comes to you because that’s a developed skill as well especially if it’s in an area where they’re not used to making those decisions or having the opportunity to make those decisions. Uh, we’ve all got to learn somewhere, and failure unfortunately is a way we often learn, and I think that term “fell fast” is important, you know, figuring out what went wrong and correctly it quickly but you have to let people have that opportunity. You’ve got to give the reins over and tell them to solve the problem and think through this strategically so you can come and then add your value to it. Each one of us has our own flavor to the way we think and operate and it’s what makes us special but you’re seldom going to recreate it so you’ve got to understand that going in.
22:27 – David
Yeah, I like that idea of giving them a project with a defined scope of, hey, here’s something in the business I’ve wanted to change anyways but kind of haven’t had the time or bandwidth to do and so here’s some initial ideas, go crazy and come back to me with what you’ve found and some recommendations and let’s kind of work on implementing it from there. And then you’ve kind of compartmentalized the scope of the project, made it more manageable but also if it doesn’t go great you haven’t blown up the entire business, you’ve just impacted one particular area of it.
22:55 – Jeff
You got to give people the runway to make that decision and take that task on because oftentimes we’re talking about things that are often considered sacred cows. There are the ways we’ve been operating always. I’ve always done it that way, why would I change it. You’ve got to be the one who’s the owner oftentimes and say, “let’s look at that and make it more efficient and more effective but let’s make it better. Because otherwise people think, “oh that’s just the way we do things, and they want to touch it.” But the owner has to be the one to say, “yeah.” I try to tell everyone in my company there is no sacred cow. Even though we believe strongly in the way we operate and what we’re doing, if there’s a better way and we can look at it then you should be the one coming forward and talking about those things.
23:34 – David
That’s great. Um, alright we’re going to move to another segment where I ask you about something that you think is totally overrated in the industry. Everybody thinks it’s great. It gets talked about a lot. It’s kind of the shiny object but you don’t think it’s actually nearly as good as it’s cracked up to be.
23:46 – Jeff
Yeah, I think for me it’s I’m going to say data is overrated but I got to qualify that by the fact that I think over people’s data and using that date to make decisions on your business is where it’s often overrated. My example for this is close rate. People often want to cite what’s your close rate. And that’s the rate between how many calls for new service do you get versus how many admissions do you get. And there’s kind of two measurements people do. They measure that one, calls to admission but they also measure appointments. How many appointments did you end up making based upon the calls coming in. We usually well make an appointment; the industry I think falls in line here and says okay we more times than not land that client if we get in front of that client. But the tendency is for the industry to use statistics that are provided to us through various sources, and I just think that that’s you’re chasing the wrong number when you’re chasing someone else’s close rate. And your close rate is your close rate. You’re in complete control of that. It should be something you measure internally. You should try and improve it of course but you need to first of all make sure you’re measuring it properly. That’s why we created Enkiscribe. We knew that more calls were coming in that we were documenting and showing so first of all we have to know all of our numbers. We have to know how many actual calls did we get. Whether or not the caller became a client or not, whether or not they even knew they were calling the right number is almost immaterial. They dialed your phone number for some reason. They might have misunderstood what service you provide but what we found is more frequently people call us, and they just don’t the right question to ask. So if you’re only logging the calls of the informed callers, then you’re not really counting your close rate properly. And, if you’re following some else’s statistics and they’re not following those rules and you’re chasing their number, then you’re chasing a ghost number. It’s not true. So, for me, overrated is other people’s data, other people’s statistics. I think it’s something internally. You should know those numbers. Your key performance indicators, whatever you want to call them. You just need to know exactly how do I measure them and how do I improve based on my measurement. You’re consistent measuring, your consistent review, and then taking actions to make adjustments. But that’s true. You know I look at close rate. I look at the other one’s retention rates often cited in the industry, and I think it just depends upon your system and what you’re doing that we should all just know our own statistics and follow those. And when you compare yourself to anyone else you got to ask a gazillion questions to make sure that you’re comparing apples to apples.
26:33 – David
Yeah. It totally makes sense, and you know there’s so many variables that go into that kind of publicly available statistics. I mean there’s payor profile, what’s the kind of going rate for bill rate in the area, what are you able to pay as a result of that, are you paying at the top of your market, the bottom of your market, what other practices do you have in terms of retention, and so I think instead of measuring and saying okay what’s the one thing we can do this quarter that’s going to make a measurable difference on our retention rate or on our close rate or whatever the case may be, and then measure. Hey, did that thing that we did make a difference on our close rate? Great, move the business forward, unlock some revenue potential or some cost savings or whatever, let’s make another tweak and see what the impact is.
27:22 – Jeff
Yeah absolutely. I’m a big fan of people using your own umbers. You can compare yourself to someone else as long as you know they’re recording the data the same way that you’re recording the data.
27:31- David
Yeah. There’s a kind of umbrella question here of methodology. Are the publicly available numbers are they collecting those numbers through the same methodology that you think about, close rate, retention rate, and all that kind of stuff within your business and if yes then great, that’s a useful number. At the end of the day there’s a lot of people going into that process, so I think we talk a lot, we talk a lot of 90-day retention as a success metric in caregivers. And I wonder if the reason we focus on 90-day retention so much as kind of the cornerstone of our recruitment practices is just because that’s the thing that we’re measuring. What’s to say that 64-day retention isn’t the magic number that if you keep them the 64 days, you’ll also keep them the 90 days but if you don’t keep them the 64 days that’s like the critical event. So that’s something I think about a lot. It’s like are the metrics that we pay attention to really the meaningful metrics or are they the metrics that we’ve been measuring for long enough that they’ve just become what people reference.
28:35 – Jeff
I think it’s the latter. I think they use whatever everyone else says they should be using and they try and then decide are they meeting the industry standard or not but the retention question is something we can spend a whole podcast talking about that number itself because I’m highly opinionated in that area and I just think that there’s too many factors that go on that you have to review to say can you impact that number. It’s impossible to come up with a standard I feel like in this industry without looking at all of the other factors, the number of shifts offered, length of shifts, desire of that person what they were trying to get to hours. I think some of the studies came out talking about just the profile of your typical caregiver and I think there’s just so many people out there working for work now in different ways and we’re using a standard that’s based upon if you’re hiring only caregivers and they’re making a decision to work for one company and not jump around, what’s your retention rate then? Which I think is difficult to put everyone into that kind of category.
29:35 – David
Yeah. We think a lot in the language of preventable turn-over versus non-preventable turnover because there’s always going to be incidences where that turnover was inevitable. No solution that’s promising to make an impact on turnover on retention, etc., is the silver bullet that’s going to get you to zero and I think everyone listening to this knows that that’s the case. So, the question for us is always what’s the cause of that preventable turnover that we can impact in a meaningful way. And a lot of times scheduling is this kind of fixed point of it we don’t have a client for you it’s going to be hard for us to put you to work but there’s this kind of second layer that is a lot of times the communication about this schedule is what’s missing and if there’s clear lines of communication and there’s clear expectations about timeline, a lot of times you can keep somebody engaged for long enough that you can catch up and get them a client and get them across the finish line. So even though scheduling is always going to be an impact on turnover and it’s going to kind of fall into that category of non-preventable turnover, there’s this layer of communication engagement above that that you can actually make a big difference on. It’s just one example of like yes scheduling is always hard but if you have the right kind of communication practices around your scheduling, there’s an opportunity to impact that retention figure.
30:50 – Jeff
I tell people that if you’re a good employer, you’re paying fair wages, you’re offering regular shifts, if people are kind and respectful to caregivers, they truly show the appreciation, like I tell everyone that works for me, I don’t’ own a single thing David that is not derived from the work of a caregiver. I’ve been doing this since I was 20 so I didn’t have a chance to work in some other career, bring all that wealth and experience to this. I’ve been in this since I was 20 so I don’t own a single thing in my life that’s not derived from the work of a caregiver so I have this appreciation for caregivers in a way that sometimes other people don’t have. So, I speak of them and to them in a way that might be different than a lot of other people but if you’re a good person, you’ve got a good team member, you’ve got good offering to caregivers, then I think that’s something that you’ll have success. One of the other things, talking about Enkiscribe for a second is that what we’re able to do now we’re able to record and transcribe and analyze those calls so we can tell when we think we’re being good to our caregivers and we discover that actually we’re not talking to them the way that we thought we should be, we’re not following that model, and my staff has been short with a caregiver, my staff is saying words that they shouldn’t be saying during that quick calls to caregivers, that we spent a ton of money putting an ad, we’ve had hours of interview time by somebody involved to get them to the point where they’re just ready to go to work and I haven’t put that person to work yet. If I have training that has to happen for that caregiver then I’ve now invested all of these dollars so there’s a lot of money tied up in just getting someone to the point where they can schedule them to a shift and then if the team members working around you aren’t treating those people in a way that is very respectful truly like a family member or like a team member and they’re not doing this then you just wasted all that money because that person unless they’re desperate and they only need a job to work, which some people are, and they’re like I need pay so I’ll deal with this crappy attitude but it’s such a better scenario when we treat them fairly, we treat them with respect and we talk to them in a way that’s more akin to the conversation you and I are having then what I’ve heard though this Enkiscribe oftentimes can happen is just a quick rude, what do you mean you’re not going to cover that shift, okay I got to cover it. And, you know we all know people can lie, they can make up a story but let’s give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume that they’re telling us the truth. Even though we might know their grandmother has passed away seven times now, we have to be able to say okay I understand, no problem, just talk to people properly. And that’s enlightening with this product to be able to say we can actually hear that happening. We can spot it because it’s identifying those situations and then we can do corrective action, so we know we’re all on the same page.
33:45 – David
Yeah. I think that’s great. Um, let’s move on to talking about, we talked about a big mistake that you’ve made in your career, but what’s a little mistake that you see home care owners make all the time that if they stopped it would make their lives and business 10 times better.?
33:59 – Jeff
I think it’s back to that delegating. There’s too many owners that think they’re the only ones that can do certain tasks and they don’t delegate those tasks to somebody else so they can focus on the more important things. I’m guilty of it still today. I don’t what to sit here and say I’ve figured out delegating and there’s lots of things I like to do because I enjoy them, and I don’t want to hand them off but just because I like to do them and I enjoy them doesn’t mean I should be the one doing it. It actually gets in the way of being more productive and I need to move those off my plate into someone else’s and I have become a bottleneck because of some of those things. If it only moves through me therefore if I’m not around and available because maybe I’m the owner or the top manager then it kind of stifles other people’s ability to move things through and that sound like it might also be a big mistake but I think there’s a lot of little things people are doing that they probably shouldn’t be and they think it’s because they’re the only ones that can do it or should do it. I’m going to stay with that today on the delegating part.
35:00 – David
Do you have some kind of orienting questions if I’m, we’re recording this on December 16th and it will come out in January sometime, if people are thinking kind of okay my new year’s resolution is to delegate better. Are there some orienting questions, as they’re thinking through the stuff that they do on a day-to-day basis, like how do we identify the stuff that’s going to be either easiest to do or highest impact to do if they delegate that and find the right person to take that task on?
35:26 – Jeff
It’s kind of the same process I would use; I’ve been over the last few years on an automation kick so I’m trying to automate a lot of different things. I think it’s the same process. In automation you look for what’s the highest value thing that I can automate. Usually, the highest valued thing is what’s taking the most amount of time when you stack it together. So, someone does a task three times a day that takes 10 minutes every single day. That’s 30 minutes, 10 minutes each task, three times a day. That’s 30 minutes a day. That might not seem like a lot, and they’ll tell you it’s no problem, its 30 minutes of my day. Well, when you add that up x5 and add that up times the total number of workdays in the year it’s a lot of hours that are being spent doing that task. The same thing for delegating. Just look at how much time it’s taking you and is it something that you can teach someone else? Can you write it down? Can you give those steps to someone else? And can I go from delegating to automating pretty quickly and if you do the delegating part really well then you can actually move to automating to where you actually get rid of the task entirely, so those two things are kind of hand-i-hand for me so it’s rally how much time it’s taking from you to do it. Of course, there are certain things that bring us joy and we all have to find joy in work so if I like doing that takes them maybe you shouldn’t hand it off, but you’ve got to analyze lie is it taking too much of your time, do you have something else that could be better spent. And that’s the other side of the argument is, what things would I like to be doing that could bring value to the organization that I don’t feel like I have time to. And hopefully there’s something there that’s so compelling that’s like gosh if I do this one thing over here it’s going to be transformative for your company. So that’s something that you can really think about and try to do as they start off their new year.
37:11 – David
Yeah, I think that’s really good wisdom. And I think the thing to thing about is what are the things that I wish I had time to do but I don’t. and that can be a good kind of not just let me get this off my plate so that I don’t’ have to be stressed by it and it’s somebody else’s problem but instead like what are the things that I could be doing that only I can do but I don’t have time to do right now because tasks that somebody else could probably take care of. Well, let’s move now to the win of the week. We’ve talked about a lot of mistakes, but I always like to end every episode on a high note of hearing about something that’s happened lately in your business that you’re really proud of.
37:45 – Jeff
This kind of goes back to that perfectionist comment, not that I’m a perfectionist but I’m always wanting to improve, so I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my wins. I look at what I did and could improve. Again I take that back from my career in track and field and I was a hurdler, high jumper and long jumper so I thrived on being told what I could improve because I knew my time, I knew my distance, I knew my height, that was part of the event itself, but what I didn’t know is what I did wrong during the jump maybe. I didn’t know what I did wrong going over the hurdle, so I wanted to listen. So, the wins for me are a little tougher. I will say that I’m real proud. We’ve been expanding as a company at Caring Senior Service. We’ve been expanding as a company and adding locations so that’s been good. Last week we signed on another location so that’s improvement. Enkiscribe continues to grow as a company. We split that off and became its own company. We’ve seen new clients come on board there every week so that’s a win. I suppose that’s what everyone expects saying a win is like signing up a new client. It may not be a big win but for me that was pretty good. From a personal perspective I just had both my sons graduate for ANM University last week on Thursday and Friday so that was a personal win but not business-wise. But it’s going to turn into business because they‘re both coming to work with me so.
30:07 – David
That’s a unique recruitment strategy. So, everyone listening you can have children and at 18 to 20 to 22 years you’ll have maybe an employed. Yeah. (Laughter) Well, Jeff, thank you for engaging in that character development exercise. You’ve got to celebrate the wins sometime. And before we go, where can people find you? What would you like to plug?
39:29 – Jeff
It’s easy to get hold of me. Just go to caringseniorservice.com or now Enkiscribe.com. Both places, Jeff Salter. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jeff Salter, CEO and Founder of Caring Senior Service. Pretty easy. Email me, text me, any available ways to contact someone, I’m available.
39:50 – David
That sounds great. Well Jeff, thanks for coming on the show today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Excited to bring you back for just the bike trip episode.
39:57 – Jeff
I look forward to that, David. Thanks. It’s been great being on today.
40:01 – David
Jeff, thanks so much for making the time today. This was really good.