Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 2: So can you talk about that As far as your
Speaker 2: backstory into coming into the health field and what made
Speaker 2: you transition your family's trajectory from being a healthcare worker
Speaker 2: to being a healthcare.
Speaker 3: The trajectory was started with my mom.
Speaker 4: Wait, she was the first one to make the pivot
Speaker 4: into doing something entrepreneurial in healthcare. She started a nurse
Speaker 4: staffing firm or what they call nursing agencies, so I
Speaker 4: was helping her out with that, and that's what got me.
Speaker 4: Like that early exposure to, you know, being entrepreneurial in healthcare,
Speaker 4: my mind was still on, Okay, I got to get
Speaker 4: go into a healthcare profession. They were thinking that all
Speaker 4: of our kids were going to become doctors. My brother
Speaker 4: is a physician, and another one of my brothers as
Speaker 4: an MRI technologist as well. So a lot of us
Speaker 4: went straight into healthcare because that's what was drilled into
Speaker 4: our heads. But as I was going through school, I
Speaker 4: started to focus more and more on the business side
Speaker 4: of things, eventually opening up an expansion of the healthcare
Speaker 4: company in Long Island. And I was using school and
Speaker 4: using that experience to kind of build and improve the business.
Speaker 4: She was working at a nursing home and they were
Speaker 4: using what they'd call agency nurses, and she was like, well,
Speaker 4: why don't I just start when I want to start
Speaker 4: an agency and get my friends from other hospitals to
Speaker 4: work for me and be one of your providers.
Speaker 3: And that's where that company started.
Speaker 4: But my mom has like zero computer skills, So when
Speaker 4: it was time to create the documents, it was me
Speaker 4: making the documents.
Speaker 3: When it was time to.
Speaker 4: Create spreadsheets, to do the invoicing, to manage quick books,
Speaker 4: anything that was on a computer was me, right because
Speaker 4: I was the kind of computer geek of my household.
Speaker 4: So I was like, Oh, Carl, I need this, Can
Speaker 4: you know how to make this? Could you get get
Speaker 4: it out of the computer. So it was always me
Speaker 4: and my mom working on that side of the business.
Speaker 4: So when I went to college, I ended up expanding
Speaker 4: the business into Long Island, and every lesson that I
Speaker 4: took that I could kind of like learn from to
Speaker 4: bring that knowledge back to the business, I did, and
Speaker 4: I ended up studying health technology and management with the
Speaker 4: concentration in radiology radiological studies, and that was to become
Speaker 4: an X ray tech and a cat scan technologist and
Speaker 4: an MRI technologist. And I chose that path because I
Speaker 4: wanted to have flexibility in when I worked, right, because
Speaker 4: there's certain positions in healthcare that are twenty four seven
Speaker 4: and there's some of them that are only like nine
Speaker 4: to five, and I didn't want to choose a career
Speaker 4: path within healthcare that would narrow me down to work
Speaker 4: in nine to five, because I knew I needed to
Speaker 4: have the nine to five the business hours free to
Speaker 4: expand on my business. So that was kind of the
Speaker 4: reason why it chose x Ray because it's you know,
Speaker 4: their x ray techs are working all shifts, they're doing
Speaker 4: cascaing at night, or they could flex into MRI. So
Speaker 4: I thought that that was going to be the best
Speaker 4: fit for me. And plus I knew that I would
Speaker 4: have work as well. And I never you know, and
Speaker 4: this is a message to anybody who's thinking about going
Speaker 4: the entrepreneurial I never like to not have.
Speaker 3: A guaranteed income from somewhere.
Speaker 4: And I felt like, if I'm if I can work
Speaker 4: nights and I could work weekends and use all of
Speaker 4: my free time during the day to folks in the business,
Speaker 4: then I'm going to do that. But I'm never going
Speaker 4: to sacrifice the potential to earn. And that's one of
Speaker 4: the things that is pretty special about about healthcare is
Speaker 4: because you know, a nurse could work, you know, three
Speaker 4: three days a week, three thirteen hour shifts or three
Speaker 4: twelve hour shifts, be full time, and then have four
Speaker 4: days a week you know, on a nurse'ssalia at that
Speaker 4: four days a week to focus on whatever else.
Speaker 2: It is that focused on whatever else they want to
Speaker 2: do in life. So it's like you can be a
Speaker 2: real estate entrepreneur, you can work another job if you want.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, it's pretty flexible out and so
Speaker 2: let me ask you this. As far as the healthcare
Speaker 2: industry is something that pretty much is recession proof, there's
Speaker 2: a shortage just like the only especially nurses, there's the
Speaker 2: only profession I think that is extremely on demand right
Speaker 2: now where everybody else is firing people and it's like
Speaker 2: they can't find enough nurses, especially where we're at in
Speaker 2: New York. So as far as that is concerned, right
Speaker 2: for an entrepreneur, because we don't get in the business
Speaker 2: model of it, how did you like, what was the
Speaker 2: steps for you to start your home is it? I
Speaker 2: don't a misquote. It's a home nursing service home long
Speaker 2: term nursing service.
Speaker 4: See licensed home care service agency and then New York
Speaker 4: they call them.
Speaker 3: Link says and chops. It's two types actually, But.
Speaker 4: It started first as a staffing firm, which is very simple.
Speaker 4: Our staffing firm just need to incorporate yourself. You need
Speaker 4: to have a contract that says that you're going to
Speaker 4: be providing you know, contracted services, a rate sheet that
Speaker 4: says how much you're charging, and you're in business literally
Speaker 4: for less than a thousand dollars. You could start out
Speaker 4: a nursing agency, right because and it's it's actually mislabeled
Speaker 4: as a nursing agency because you're not you're not taking
Speaker 4: a percentage of the wages of that employee. So like
Speaker 4: in New York City, you could get a license to
Speaker 4: be an agency through consumer Affairs, so and that's a
Speaker 4: very easy process, but that's because you're charging a fee
Speaker 4: to the person that you that you're getting the job for.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: A staffing firm is different because those people work for
Speaker 4: your company and you're assigning them to work in a hospital,
Speaker 4: in a nursing home or something like that, and you're
Speaker 4: charging the hospital a fee, taking your cut, and then
Speaker 4: paying your employee. So it's not by definition an agency,
Speaker 4: but they just refer to them as agency nurses because
Speaker 4: that's what the terminology is.
Speaker 5: Where did the idea for the staffing agency come? Right,
Speaker 5: So you're doing X rays, you deviated from the plan
Speaker 5: of being a doctor. Was it from the influx of
Speaker 5: people coming into the hospital and seeing that there was
Speaker 5: a shortage.
Speaker 6: Where did the influence come from?
Speaker 3: It came from my mom.
Speaker 4: She just saw an opportunity for a money grab and
Speaker 4: she was like, well, if I know several nurses myself,
Speaker 4: and I'm a nurse, so if I could start this,
Speaker 4: then I could just pull my friends together and we
Speaker 4: could provide services to these you know, understaffed hospitals and
Speaker 4: nursing homes. So that's where the idea came from. I
Speaker 4: got to give her that. But being exposed to that
Speaker 4: at fourteen years old made and seeing what the numbers
Speaker 4: were made it like, okay, this is a no brainer
Speaker 4: for me to kind of expand on that. But while
Speaker 4: we were in the staff infirm business, she also was like, well,
Speaker 4: since we're doing well here, there's an another side to
Speaker 4: this business, which is home healthcare. And I see those
Speaker 4: companies and she worked. She would work, and that's my
Speaker 4: mom is I guess pretty genius. She would have worked
Speaker 4: for them to kind of learn how they maneuver and
Speaker 4: get exposed to like where they get their contracts from,
Speaker 4: how what's the money flow. And then she was like,
Speaker 4: all right, let's look into getting a license. So while
Speaker 4: we're in high school, we were working with a license.
Speaker 4: A license didn't hit until two thousand and one. But
Speaker 4: the staffing firm business was going well. I had expanded
Speaker 4: to Long Island. We didn't do anything with the nursing agency,
Speaker 4: I mean with the home healthcare agency. It was just
Speaker 4: sitting there dormant. But something cool happened, which is New
Speaker 4: York State stopped issuing the licenses, right, They capped out
Speaker 4: the licenses.
Speaker 3: So we start getting phone calls to buy our license.
Speaker 4: And the phone call first was fifty thousand dollars, then
Speaker 4: it was one hundred thousand dollars, then it was two
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty thousand, there was four hundred thousand, and.
Speaker 3: We thought about selling it just to fuel the staffing firm.
Speaker 4: But it was like, wait, if we're getting offered four
Speaker 4: hundred care for this license.
Speaker 3: To operate, there's money here.
Speaker 6: So what was What was the reason that New York
Speaker 6: State decided to stop issuing.
Speaker 4: Ze same reason why they're trying to scale back the
Speaker 4: agencies now. It's just too much oversight. Right, So there's
Speaker 4: more than two thousand agencies in New York, right, every
Speaker 4: three years, we get surveyed by the state and they
Speaker 4: have to send three nurses to your agency to review
Speaker 4: your medical records. So to do that to two thousand agencies,
Speaker 4: you need a lot of you know, personnel, So it
Speaker 4: gets out of control every now and then where it's
Speaker 4: just too many people to monitor. So they're actually trying
Speaker 4: to force a consolidation within the industry, shrinking the number
Speaker 4: of licenses that are out there.
Speaker 3: So it's easier for them to maintain oversight.
Speaker 2: So all right, so in a sense you have the
Speaker 2: company where it's like a middleman. In a sense, staffing
Speaker 2: is actually really big. We haven't even to talk about
Speaker 2: staffing on this podcast before. But so you recruit, you
Speaker 2: recruit people for job pretty much, and staffing you could
Speaker 2: do any you could do staffing in any type of it, staffing,
Speaker 2: naf staff and stuff like that. And then you you
Speaker 2: charged the hospital and they pay you and then you
Speaker 2: paid a difference. How lucretive can that make?
Speaker 4: Is there?
Speaker 3: What's the profit margins on that?
Speaker 4: It could be as much as fifty percent because it
Speaker 4: depends on what the hospital is willing to pay. In
Speaker 4: home care, the profit margins about eleven to thirteen percent
Speaker 4: because it's getting Medicaid dollars and the margins are small there,
Speaker 4: just like the margin for a hospital is only eight percent, right,
Speaker 4: hospitals are a functioning on eight percent margin. Or with
Speaker 4: staffing itself, it could be as high as fifty because
Speaker 4: it's it's how desperate are they for.
Speaker 3: Staff and what are they willing to pay?
Speaker 4: But usually you're charging like a thirty percent markup over
Speaker 4: what you're paying your staff.
Speaker 2: That's kind of so fifty percent the best case scenario.
Speaker 2: If they give you two hundred, you give the employee
Speaker 2: one hundred.
Speaker 6: And you say, and you're taking one hundred.
Speaker 7: Yeah clean, it's like if if if that's what they negotiated, right,
Speaker 7: So with the nursing comp it's usually about thirty percent
Speaker 7: over because the hospital and the nursing facilities thinking well,
Speaker 7: what do we pay our nurses?
Speaker 3: What about matching their payroll taxes?
Speaker 4: Right, that's another expense their workers comp and their healthcare
Speaker 4: expenses plus PTL. So when you're trying to you want
Speaker 4: to come in as close to their price or their
Speaker 4: overtime price as possible because they're either going to mandate
Speaker 4: their staff to work overtime or they're going to use
Speaker 4: an agency, and if you come in for like a
Speaker 4: dollar or two less than what that figure is, it's
Speaker 4: now a saving to that facility and they'll be interested.
Speaker 4: So you could charge like thirty to fifty percent above
Speaker 4: because if it's at fifty percent, you know you're hitting
Speaker 4: the time and a half money, right, and they're still
Speaker 4: going to they still may be short, so they still
Speaker 4: may go with you, even though it's equal to their
Speaker 4: time in a half number, and that doesn't include the
Speaker 4: workers comp and taxes that they're going to have to
Speaker 4: pay as the employer.
Speaker 6: So undred thousand offer for the license, did you guys
Speaker 6: decide to sell? You decide, you know what, we got
Speaker 6: something great here, let's hold on to.
Speaker 3: It, hold on to it. And at the same time
Speaker 3: the market crashed.
Speaker 4: So in the staffing business, right you have a contract
Speaker 4: that says, all right, you're gonna pay me forty five
Speaker 4: dollars an hour for an LPN nurse, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to pay them and we're going to provide the service.
Speaker 4: But what ends up happening is that you have the
Speaker 4: terms that maybe every thirty days, every sixty, every ninety,
Speaker 4: so you're front running the payroll until you get reimbursed
Speaker 4: on your invoice, right, you're not getting paid weekly from
Speaker 4: the nursing facility.
Speaker 3: They don't pay out weekly.
Speaker 4: So right before the market crashed, we were growing pretty
Speaker 4: aggressively and we had line of credits to float that money.
Speaker 4: So just like what's happening right now in this crash,
Speaker 4: the banks pull back on those line of credits, so
Speaker 4: we couldn't even provide as much services anymore. So it's like, well,
Speaker 4: what are we going to do because now we can only.
Speaker 3: Provide like thirty percent of our services.
Speaker 4: And that's why we're even flirting with the idea of selling,
Speaker 4: because it's like, if we've sold this for four hundred K,
Speaker 4: that helps us, you know, have more buffer money.
Speaker 3: But then we thought like, well, the.
Speaker 4: Home healthy's get paid less than nurses, so let's just
Speaker 4: start spooling up that side of the business, making you know,
Speaker 4: smaller spread, but we can grow this beyond and people
Speaker 4: are thinking about paying you almost half a million dollars
Speaker 4: for the license.
Speaker 3: There's got to be some money here, and that's where
Speaker 3: that paper took place.
Speaker 4: Is that true just for New York State or was
Speaker 4: that something that was happening throughout the country where licenses
Speaker 4: were being ceased.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, that's that's New York state.
Speaker 4: Like right now in Florida, where I am and expanding
Speaker 4: on my new venture, there isn't a moratorial licenses. I'm
Speaker 4: applying for a license right now. Some states, I think
Speaker 4: Michigan doesn't even have a license to operate. You could
Speaker 4: just start a home care agency without any oversight, which
Speaker 4: is kind of nuts to me because New York is
Speaker 4: heavily regulated. California, of course heavily regulated. So you know,
Speaker 4: short answer is that it depends on your state.
Speaker 2: So a friend of mine in Ohio, he has a
Speaker 2: health clinic and he was kind of explaining it to me,
Speaker 2: and it was it was crazy because he was saying,
Speaker 2: like with the healthcare industry, the common mistake that people
Speaker 2: make is that they think that they actually have to
Speaker 2: be in the field to actually be, you know, an
Speaker 2: entrepreneur and like open a type of business. But you
Speaker 2: don't have to be a doctor. You don't have to
Speaker 2: be a licensed doctor to have these type of business right,
Speaker 2: like that you have like you're not a licensed doctor, right.
Speaker 3: I'm not a licensed doctor.
Speaker 4: But in most states you have to have a licensed
Speaker 4: person like either a nurse, or a physician on your
Speaker 4: founding team if you're gonna if you're gonna do a
Speaker 4: license home care agency, but as a staff and firm,
Speaker 4: you could turn around and start one tomorrow.
Speaker 6: So your mom would Your mom filled that role, right,
Speaker 6: she was the nurse.
Speaker 3: So that's that's how it worked.
Speaker 4: So you know, if you're thinking about getting into this business,
Speaker 4: like I get increase.
Speaker 3: All the time on my channel where it's like how
Speaker 3: do I start? How do I start?
Speaker 4: So I started showing them step by step this is
Speaker 4: how you do it. So step one, if you're going
Speaker 4: to go and become a home care agency, you've got
Speaker 4: to just research your Department of Health website and find
Speaker 4: out are the issuing licenses, what is the application process,
Speaker 4: and what are the rules and regulations right, because those
Speaker 4: regulations are going to dictate what your policies are and
Speaker 4: how your policies need to be drafted, and you're going
Speaker 4: to need to develop your policies when you're applying.
Speaker 3: It's actually pretty a pretty.
Speaker 4: Grueling process because you're doing like man like four hundred
Speaker 4: pages of policies, your forms that you're going to be
Speaker 4: using to do your assessments. It's pretty intense, but you
Speaker 4: could also hire a consultant to help you with that.
Speaker 4: Like right now in Florida, since I'm in a much
Speaker 4: better financial position than when we started the home caurgency before,
Speaker 4: I'm just paying a consultant to handle the entire application
Speaker 4: process and working on building my team while while they're
Speaker 4: doing that piece, rather than physically typing. But from the
Speaker 4: staffing firm perspective, you just need a you can get
Speaker 4: like a boiler plate generic staffing firm contract. Pull that
Speaker 4: up on Google, determine what area you're going to focus on,
Speaker 4: if it's going to be healthcare or nursing, and then
Speaker 4: decide what your.
Speaker 3: Rates are going to be.
Speaker 4: Make sure you're you're cushioning in at least thirty percent
Speaker 4: spread because your payroll taxes are going to cost you
Speaker 4: close to like ten percent, and then your worker's comp
Speaker 4: is going to be around six to seven percent, so
Speaker 4: then you're only going to be left in like twenty
Speaker 4: So at least you charge your thirty percent markup if
Speaker 4: you're going to do that. But the process, you know,
Speaker 4: once you get licensed is all about what relationships you
Speaker 4: build and executing on your marketing strategy so that you're finding.
Speaker 3: Those those patients.
Speaker 4: But on the staffing firm side, the process is call
Speaker 4: the nursing home, called the hospital, speak with either the
Speaker 4: administrator or the director of nursing and say, I am
Speaker 4: a staff infirm.
Speaker 3: I'm looking to gride services. Do you need coverage? Best time? Summertime? Why?
Speaker 4: Because people are going on vacation. They're going to be short, right,
Speaker 4: So that's when people are going to be desperate. They'll say, hey,
Speaker 4: you know what, sure, you know, send us over your
Speaker 4: send us over your contract and we'll have a reviewed.
Speaker 4: The first contract that I got when I expanded in
Speaker 4: Long Island took me about maybe two weeks of phone calls.
Speaker 3: I just literally downloaded National County.
Speaker 4: Nursing Homes and I just picked up the phone two
Speaker 4: years old alone.
Speaker 3: Call it cold calling.
Speaker 5: You created the contrast yourself, or you sat down with
Speaker 5: a lawyer. How did that process work?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: She took my mom took a copy of the contract
Speaker 4: that her nursing home is using, and I just retyped
Speaker 4: it all right.
Speaker 2: Well, in the next segment, we want to talk more
Speaker 2: about the business and also about the acquisition that you guys.
Speaker 2: I know you were saying off camera that somebody had
Speaker 2: offered you some money and you looked at that, And
Speaker 2: because we'd like to talk about stories like that on
Speaker 2: EUYL because these are things that the general public does
Speaker 2: not know and isn't privy to. So yeah, we're going
Speaker 2: to talk some more in depth about the healthcare fail
Speaker 2: in the next segment. All right, So in this in
Speaker 2: this segment, we're gonna we're gonna talk some more about
Speaker 2: some actionable items. This is what everybody loves EYO for.
Speaker 2: So you have two different businesses with the staffing firm
Speaker 2: and the nursing But first I want to talk about
Speaker 2: staffing so for people, because you said that's that's probably
Speaker 2: like the more practical thing that really anybody can can
Speaker 2: do as a staffing firm. And like I said, staffing
Speaker 2: firms are big on a variety of different levels, not
Speaker 2: just the medical. All over, staffing firms extremely big and
Speaker 2: pretty much is just bridging the gap where somebody needs
Speaker 2: work and their employees that are skilled to work but
Speaker 2: they don't. They got to come together. So the staffing
Speaker 2: firm job is to find the qualified employees and match
Speaker 2: them with good employers. So what are some steps if
Speaker 2: somebody wants to start their own staffing firm?
Speaker 4: I'm going to try to break it down as simple
Speaker 4: as possible. If you're going to be starting a staffing firm,
Speaker 4: the first thing that you're going to need to do
Speaker 4: is get your hands on just a basic staffing contract.
Speaker 3: Okay, get a contract.
Speaker 4: Review that contract, and part of that contract is going
Speaker 4: to have a feed schedule, right, This is what you're
Speaker 4: charging for the positions. Right, So if you're starting with nursing,
Speaker 4: start with a feed schedule for urns, a feed schedule
Speaker 4: for LPNs, which are licensed practical nurses, and then for
Speaker 4: nurse aids, because those are the most utilized workers in
Speaker 4: a nursing home or in a hospital.
Speaker 3: Right. So that's one thing that you want to have.
Speaker 3: But you're going to do your market.
Speaker 4: Research next to know what is a nurse commanding as
Speaker 4: far as salary, what is an LPN commanding as far
Speaker 4: as salary?
Speaker 3: And the nurse aid right, so that you know what
Speaker 3: you're supposed to be paying.
Speaker 5: Out specific to each state that you're in, specific to
Speaker 5: specific to the state that you're in.
Speaker 3: Specific to your region.
Speaker 4: Even in New York, New York City is going to
Speaker 4: charge higher rates than Buffalo, right, So you have to
Speaker 4: just research your local market just to know what does it?
Speaker 4: You know how much are you going to be paying,
Speaker 4: because that's going to dictate how much are you going
Speaker 4: to charge because.
Speaker 3: You obviously need to cover that.
Speaker 4: You're going to need to cover payroll, you need to
Speaker 4: cover a worker's coup and then you're going to need
Speaker 4: your profit marginal right, So I advise that whatever the
Speaker 4: local rates are, charge a minimum of thirty percent more
Speaker 4: or you know, as much as double, because it depends
Speaker 4: on what's again the need of that position. So once
Speaker 4: you have your contract set, the next thing that you
Speaker 4: should do is obviously incorporate yourself, right, either go to
Speaker 4: the LLC route or the corporation route, just so that
Speaker 4: you have an entity and some sort of barrier between
Speaker 4: you and liability. Right, that's the purpose and also the
Speaker 4: tax benefit. So make sure you go out there and
Speaker 4: incorporate yourself. You could do that on legal Zoom. I
Speaker 4: use a service called Blumberg Excelsior. I'll send you guys
Speaker 4: a link. You know, I like working with them. They're
Speaker 4: quick and they'll set up your corporation within a day
Speaker 4: or two. They'll even apply for your tax ID number,
Speaker 4: all the things that you need to be recognized as
Speaker 4: a business right, and that cost in New York is
Speaker 4: going to be anywhere from like three hundred if you're
Speaker 4: doing a corporation to like almost two thousand if you're
Speaker 4: doing an LLC because of the publication fee that's associated
Speaker 4: with that, because LLCs have to publish that they're coming
Speaker 4: into existence. So once you have your contract and you
Speaker 4: have your entity set up, and you have you know,
Speaker 4: open up a bank account and the entity's name, the
Speaker 4: next thing that you should do is probably hire a
Speaker 4: few people right to get your application. You can pull
Speaker 4: up any generic application online, but you're going to need
Speaker 4: to get an application so you can actually on board
Speaker 4: and have a pool of providers, nurses, nurse aids, LPNs,
Speaker 4: whatever you're going to be hiring.
Speaker 3: And you know, once you do get a hit, you're
Speaker 3: going to be able to staff.
Speaker 4: You don't want you don't want to get into contract
Speaker 4: to provide staff.
Speaker 3: And you got the staff right.
Speaker 4: So I think if you're a healthcare professional, it might
Speaker 4: make the most sense of staff yourself be one of
Speaker 4: the people that gets dispatched, so at least you know
Speaker 4: that you could fill in certain gaps if you get
Speaker 4: that immediate call that you can work that shift yourself.
Speaker 5: How many people? How many people are you putting on
Speaker 5: the team to start? We're doing like two or three
Speaker 5: including yourself, So you've got a four person.
Speaker 4: Team in if you're starting a staff infirm, Yeah, I
Speaker 4: would at least three in each position that that you're marketing.
Speaker 4: So at least you have, you know, some depth to your.
Speaker 3: To your staff.
Speaker 6: So we have r N LPN and then health Day
Speaker 6: so that would be nine people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 2: So how do you because like there's a shortage of
Speaker 2: nurses right now New York and there's like they're like
Speaker 2: begging nurses to come from all over the country. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is like a perfect if somebody had a
Speaker 2: staffing agency for nurses right now, it'd be perfect, But like,
Speaker 2: how do you find the candidates?
Speaker 4: Like, I'm track talent, Okay, So first you've got to
Speaker 4: just public. You're going to post on whatever you can indeed,
Speaker 4: LinkedIn Facebook, jobs wherever, threads list, just post that you're hiring.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, people are nurses.
Speaker 3: I know. Most nurses I know are working two jobs. Right.
Speaker 4: They're usually the top earner in their households, especially in
Speaker 4: our community.
Speaker 3: They're working two jobs, sometimes three jobs.
Speaker 4: So they're always looking for jobs, right, because one, their
Speaker 4: jobs exist and they're always looking. But if you dangle
Speaker 4: a carrot, like higher rates than what they're normally getting paid,
Speaker 4: then that also attracts them. So let's just say the
Speaker 4: average thirty but you're paying thirty three. Then nurses who
Speaker 4: are working for some other agency or they'll give up
Speaker 4: their part time job and work with you for a
Speaker 4: little more money. So you make it a smaller spread,
Speaker 4: but you're attracting the talent that way.
Speaker 5: But what what is what makes a candidate qualify? What
Speaker 5: are the things they need? I'm assuming experience or maybe
Speaker 5: not in this type of crisis.
Speaker 3: Even experience.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 4: Licensed, they need to have most most people in healthcare
Speaker 4: need to be licensed, right, So our answer license LPNs
Speaker 4: are licensed. Nurse aids have a certificate. Home health aids
Speaker 4: have a certificate, so they obviously need to be meet
Speaker 4: whatever the guidelines are for the state. They also need
Speaker 4: to have an up to date physical which shows that
Speaker 4: they're immune to beesels, monks, Rubella rubiola, chickenpox for oursella,
Speaker 4: that they also are TV negative so they can't have
Speaker 4: active tuberculosis, and that they're what's called you know, safe
Speaker 4: and fit to work okay, so that physical needs it's
Speaker 4: done annually. All healthcare workers working in direct contact with
Speaker 4: patients have to have an annual physical, so their physical
Speaker 4: needs to be up to date. But every nurse and
Speaker 4: everybody in the field knows that. So either they're getting
Speaker 4: the physicals done at the job and they could get
Speaker 4: their physicals from their job, or they just get their
Speaker 4: physical from their doctor. But once they have that, they
Speaker 4: have the application, they filled out their W two forms
Speaker 4: or the ten ninety nine forms if they're or W
Speaker 4: nine's if they're going to be ten ninety nine, and
Speaker 4: they have their medical clearance and you have a copy
Speaker 4: of their license, that's what you would consider a profile.
Speaker 3: For that for that nurse.
Speaker 4: Of course, their resume helps, but most of the time
Speaker 4: they're not even asking for the resumes.
Speaker 3: Because they're so behind.
Speaker 4: It's just like, does this person have at least one
Speaker 4: year's experience typically is what they're looking for, so you
Speaker 4: would also look for that.
Speaker 3: But sometimes you might have a new nurse who has maybe.
Speaker 4: Eight years experience as a nurse aid that understands how
Speaker 4: things move in a nursing facility that they'll be willing
Speaker 4: to take as well.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they orient them at the facility.
Speaker 4: It really it's really a case by case, but at
Speaker 4: minimum physical license or certificate and.
Speaker 3: Identification and you know eligibility work in the United.
Speaker 5: States, are there terms after you you find a candidate
Speaker 5: that they have to stay with the company for six
Speaker 5: to twelve months or does that exist in this in
Speaker 5: the staffing aguencry you if.
Speaker 4: You have that agreement with the worker, and usually within
Speaker 4: the contract you have like a provision that they can
Speaker 4: hire that person after one year if they pay you x.
Speaker 3: Percentage of that person's salary. If not, they can't hire
Speaker 3: that person.
Speaker 4: So it's also a way for them to kind of
Speaker 4: vet and recruit talent to a certain extent.
Speaker 5: So that in that sense, right, let's say that they
Speaker 5: made one hundred thousand, if they want to hire them
Speaker 5: after the year, you take a percentage of that, so
Speaker 5: you like, maybe I get five percent, so that's fifteen
Speaker 5: fifteen thousand if we make it one hundred earners.
Speaker 3: What's up?
Speaker 5: You ever walk into a small business and everything just works,
Speaker 5: like the checkout is fast, the receipts are digital, tipping
Speaker 5: is a breeze, and you're out the door before the
Speaker 5: line even builds odds are they're using Square. We love
Speaker 5: supporting businesses that run on Square because it just feels seamless.
Speaker 5: Whether it's a local coffee shop, a vendor at a
Speaker 5: pop up market, or even one of our merch partners,
Speaker 5: Square makes it easy for them to take payments, manage inventory,
Speaker 5: and run their business with confidence, all from one simple system.
Speaker 5: If you're a business owner or even just thinking about
Speaker 5: launching something soon, Square is hands down one of the
Speaker 5: best tools out there to help you start, run and grow.
Speaker 5: It's not just about payments, it's about giving you time
Speaker 5: back so you can focus on what matters most ready.
Speaker 5: To see how Square can transform your business, visit Square
Speaker 5: dot com backslash go backslash eyl to learn more that
Speaker 5: Square dot com backslash, go backslash yl. Don't wait, don't hesitate.
Speaker 5: Let's Square handle the back end so you can keep
Speaker 5: pushing your vision forward. This episode is brought to you
Speaker 5: by P and C Bank. A lot of people think
Speaker 5: podcasts about work are boring, and sure they definitely can be,
Speaker 5: but understanding of professional's routine shows us how they achieve
Speaker 5: their success little by little, day after day. It's like
Speaker 5: banking with P and C Bank. It might seem boring
Speaker 5: to save, plan and make calculated decisions with your bank,
Speaker 5: but keeping your money boring is what helps you live
Speaker 5: a more happily fulfilled life. P and C Bank Brilliantly
Speaker 5: Boring since eighteen sixty five. Brilliantly Boring since eighteen sixty
Speaker 5: five is a service mark of the PNC Financial Service Group, Inc.
Speaker 5: P and C Bank National Association Member FDIC.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday?
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast, easy to use
Speaker 1: Indeed Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on
Speaker 1: other job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps
Speaker 1: to the top of the page for your relevant candidates,
Speaker 1: so you can reach the people you want faster. According
Speaker 1: to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have
Speaker 1: forty five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't
Speaker 1: wait any longer, speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need.
Speaker 6: Yep, okay, gotcha, Okay.
Speaker 2: So to staffing, how lucrative is staffing?
Speaker 3: We pivoted to home care.
Speaker 4: We're doing about a million year year in revenue and
Speaker 4: like the net margin is about twenty percent, so you're
Speaker 4: seeing two hundred grand profits.
Speaker 3: It see enough to earn.
Speaker 4: On It wasn't it wasn't what it's what it was
Speaker 4: for for like how it is for home care. But
Speaker 4: we never got to the point like as far as
Speaker 4: size that we did with the home care agency.
Speaker 2: So pivoting to pivoting towards home care, So home care
Speaker 2: is more is way more lucrative in your opinion, No.
Speaker 3: They're they're I think I think they're equally lucrative.
Speaker 4: It's just that the the funnel is different and there's
Speaker 4: a larger barrier to entry. So you know there's with that,
Speaker 4: of course, there's money, right, there's fewer view there's fewer providers,
Speaker 4: and there's still a need. So we were able to
Speaker 4: scale that aggressively because you know, a home health aid
Speaker 4: only needs to train for eighty hours right to get
Speaker 4: a certificate, and that means that there's there's a lot
Speaker 4: of them out there, so we're able to scale up
Speaker 4: the number of people that we have faster than a
Speaker 4: bunch of a bunch of nurses. To get three hundred,
Speaker 4: four hundred nurses, it's a lot harder to do than
Speaker 4: to get three hundred or four hundred home healthy.
Speaker 2: So to be a home health aid, to be a
Speaker 2: home health aid, what do you have to do to become.
Speaker 4: It's an eighty hour course, so it's you know, body mechanics,
Speaker 4: how do you care for a patient? You know, making
Speaker 4: sure that the water isn't too hot so you're not
Speaker 4: burning a patient when you're giving them bath safe technique
Speaker 4: at home safe technique.
Speaker 3: Anybody can do that as long as they link up
Speaker 3: to work in the United States yep.
Speaker 2: So that's actually when we're talking about the business side.
Speaker 2: But that's actually a job opportunity I guess as well
Speaker 2: for people that might need work right yep.
Speaker 4: And in New York they're making anywhere between fifteen and
Speaker 4: twenty dollars an hour.
Speaker 6: And the qualifications are like training program, that's it.
Speaker 4: To training program and then also physically background check, background check.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all right, so you guys scaled that up
Speaker 2: pretty pretty aggressively, and then you were saying that you
Speaker 2: got to offer to sell the company.
Speaker 4: So right now we're doing like for twenty nineteen, you
Speaker 4: did about just under twelve million dollars in annual rev
Speaker 4: and I got a mailer right from somebody who was like.
Speaker 3: Are you looking to sell?
Speaker 4: So I was like, let me, let me, let me
Speaker 4: entertain this and see what numbers are throwing around.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So it was actually an agent who who a burgers
Speaker 4: and acquisitions agent who broke his businesses. So he sat
Speaker 4: with me and he was like, we could get you
Speaker 4: fifty percent of your annual revenue and I was like,
Speaker 4: all right, so talking about you know, between five and
Speaker 4: six million dollars sale based on where we were at
Speaker 4: that year, I was like, all right, cool.
Speaker 3: So they brought in I'm not sure if I got to.
Speaker 4: See the terms and conditions of the contract, so I'm
Speaker 4: not going to say their name, but they brought in
Speaker 4: a publicly traded home care agency that was acquiring agencies
Speaker 4: like mine, right, and they reviewed our case mix and.
Speaker 3: How much money were we making, and they made an offer.
Speaker 4: That was consistent with that so it's like, okay, I
Speaker 4: was my trader background. I started looking up the financials
Speaker 4: of that company and looking at how they were organized,
Speaker 4: and I saw that they were trading at.
Speaker 3: At sixty times.
Speaker 4: Earnings, right, they had a sixty pe And I then
Speaker 4: looked at how many cases they have, and they have
Speaker 4: like thirty thousand lives.
Speaker 3: In the management in the country. And I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, well, we have.
Speaker 4: Three hundred patients, so we would just need to get
Speaker 4: you know, one hundred times larger, right, And what would
Speaker 4: that take?
Speaker 3: How can we do that?
Speaker 4: And I was like, well, they're trying to buy us
Speaker 4: at like five times earnings, but they're trading at sixty.
Speaker 4: This is a this is a dope brainer. They brought
Speaker 4: in another company as well, not not not not the
Speaker 4: public trade company, another another suitor, and they're like yeah.
Speaker 4: I was like, what is your strategy here, which's the
Speaker 4: what's the game plan?
Speaker 3: The guy was like, we've.
Speaker 4: Already taken another Uh, we've already taken another company public.
Speaker 4: All we do is aggregate companies and go public. That's
Speaker 4: that's our model, right. It's like we've done it in
Speaker 4: fashion and now we're doing it in healthcare. So they
Speaker 4: were trying to offer me four times earnings, and I
Speaker 4: know that the publicly traded company is trading at sixty.
Speaker 4: So it's just a matter of getting financing and going
Speaker 4: out there and gobbling up smaller and mid sized agencies
Speaker 4: so that you get the numbers to go public and
Speaker 4: then you're gonna you're gonna make twelve x return on
Speaker 4: what you just bought, because all you're doing is buying
Speaker 4: functional agencies, putting them under one umbrella, stripping back duplicated jobs,
Speaker 4: like you don't need a bunch of CFOs, you have
Speaker 4: one CFO in your company, right, so they just aggregate
Speaker 4: and go public. And I was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: maybe we shouldn't sell, right, Maybe this is not the
Speaker 4: direction to go in.
Speaker 3: Maybe the direction to go in is emulate.
Speaker 4: That model and start thinking about, you know, expanding the
Speaker 4: business into different markets and expanding the business in a
Speaker 4: way that you know, we're on a trajectory to go public.
Speaker 4: And that's what I'm doing now with eight book.
Speaker 6: So you turned down six million and to scale your
Speaker 6: own business.
Speaker 2: Yeah so so so all right, so eight book? What
Speaker 2: is what does that include? As far as you're new
Speaker 2: So you said that once you got that idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our mission at a book is really to just
Speaker 4: streamline the discharge planning process because hospitals. Hospitals are under
Speaker 4: pressure to discharge patients quickly and make sure those patients
Speaker 4: are readmitted. But what happens when somebody has pneumonia, goes home,
Speaker 4: doesn't pick up their medication, they don't know how to
Speaker 4: take their medication, they're not following a good diet, They regress,
Speaker 4: they relapse, styand up back in nursing facility. When that happens,
Speaker 4: the hospital gets penalized. So our mission is to streamline
Speaker 4: that process so that hospitals are discharging using our software
Speaker 4: solutions right discharging to home care so that immediately we're
Speaker 4: picking up that patient, servicing them, making sure that someone
Speaker 4: is there to pick up the medication, take care of them,
Speaker 4: making sure they're not falling at home, making sure they're
Speaker 4: not regressing so they don't trigger back into the hospital
Speaker 4: and trigger that penalty, and by doing that, refunneling ourselves
Speaker 4: with a lot of new referrals so the hospital solving
Speaker 4: that hospital's problem.
Speaker 5: The hospital gets penalized is like a fee or a
Speaker 5: fine that the hospital gets.
Speaker 4: That's not a fee or a fine they will subtract
Speaker 4: up to three percent of their top line revenue.
Speaker 3: For penalties on the following year.
Speaker 4: So let's just say the hospital is making one hundred million, right,
Speaker 4: the hospital margin eight percent, right, so they only make
Speaker 4: an eight million dollars profit.
Speaker 3: Medicare will penalize them three percent on.
Speaker 4: Revenue and reimbursement, right, but their operation costs are still
Speaker 4: going to cost them that ninety two million. So from
Speaker 4: going from one hundred million to ninety seven and having
Speaker 4: an underlying ninety two million dollar, you know, cost to
Speaker 4: provide services, they're only making five million. That's that's almost
Speaker 4: forty percent loss in their bottom line if they get penalized.
Speaker 5: How many patients would it would it take for like
Speaker 5: a hospital get penalized for something like that kicking.
Speaker 4: It's it's like ratios, So it depends on how many
Speaker 4: bets they have, how many what disease processes, because they're
Speaker 4: targeting six disease processes, pneumonia, heart failure, cabbage which is
Speaker 4: bypass surgery, complete joint replacement surgeries. So those are the
Speaker 4: ones that are like the high risk because they're expensive
Speaker 4: to take care of, and it's you know the mentality
Speaker 4: of the government is we're paying you to fix them,
Speaker 4: fix them, you get what I'm saying, Like, fix them,
Speaker 4: make sure that they're healthy. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: we're only paying you for four days for this hospital
Speaker 4: state because that's the national average. So what is the
Speaker 4: what is the hospital doing They need to get them
Speaker 4: out or is they losing money and they need to
Speaker 4: ensure that they don't come back. So our company is
Speaker 4: focusing on that transitional care and converting into long term
Speaker 4: care for.
Speaker 6: Those who Yeah, you're helping making sure they don't come back,
Speaker 6: we help.
Speaker 3: Them to make sure they don't come back and saving
Speaker 3: their reps.
Speaker 6: Gotcha?
Speaker 2: And so what's the business modecle? You said, like eventually
Speaker 2: you want to take this public? Right, So how is
Speaker 2: this different from Avalanche?
Speaker 3: And like what do you see?
Speaker 2: How did you replicate what you saw the larger company
Speaker 2: do to you and how are you going to implement that?
Speaker 2: And like really scaling aid Book is it to acquire
Speaker 2: other small sized companies and bring them under the umbrella
Speaker 2: of aid Brook or Okay?
Speaker 4: So for me, what I because I've been trying to
Speaker 4: push my partners in the home care company an Avalanche,
Speaker 4: to think about things on a larger level. Always That's
Speaker 4: always been the case, right. I always wanted to push
Speaker 4: the business further. And what I realized is that they
Speaker 4: were going into business for the freedom that you know,
Speaker 4: owning your own business allows, right, you can take vacation
Speaker 4: when you want, do what you want. And they were
Speaker 4: comfortable with what we're making there, right, So they weren't
Speaker 4: looking to push. They do want growth, they do want
Speaker 4: to make more money, but they're not willing to adjust
Speaker 4: their habits and mindset to run multiple locations to expand
Speaker 4: into different states. They're not They're not there. So the
Speaker 4: first thing that I'm doing with aid Book is assembling
Speaker 4: a team that has industry knowledge and working in public companies.
Speaker 4: So what I'm doing at aid Book is focusing on
Speaker 4: talent that has worked in publicly traded companies and just
Speaker 4: building our infrastructure with that mindset. So not only are
Speaker 4: we going to be using technology as and solving that
Speaker 4: problem for the hospital to be a driver of growth
Speaker 4: in our business, but we will entertain, you know, acquisitions
Speaker 4: as well, because as we get close it makes more
Speaker 4: sense to so let me let me put it this way.
Speaker 4: I believe that our software and aligning ourselves with the
Speaker 4: hospitals will allow us to grow by you know, one
Speaker 4: hundred patients per month.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: If I'm growing by my one hundred patients per month
Speaker 4: in one city, then I need to set up in
Speaker 4: another city and grow an agency by one hundred patients
Speaker 4: a month by employing the same software, the same marketing
Speaker 4: team to do that.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So, if I'm going into a new state, rather than
Speaker 4: go through this lengthy, you know, licensing process, which for
Speaker 4: Florida is going to take me four months to have
Speaker 4: the license and then another six months to get Medicare approval,
Speaker 4: what I could do when I'm going into a new
Speaker 4: state and better capitalized.
Speaker 3: I could just start buying.
Speaker 4: Smaller mid sized companies at five times earnings and just
Speaker 4: point our marketing engine to them and scale them up
Speaker 4: to two thousand, three thousand patients per per an agency
Speaker 4: per state. Once I get to like twelve fifteen thousand
Speaker 4: lives in the management, I have something that I can
Speaker 4: take to the public market, or once again, step to
Speaker 4: a larger conglomerate and say, look, we're growing at a
Speaker 4: thousand patients per month.
Speaker 3: We don't see an end in our funnel.
Speaker 4: You're growing by acquiring companies right at five times earnings.
Speaker 4: If you just buy our system that's already functional and
Speaker 4: fully aligned with the hospitals, then you're going to grow
Speaker 4: at this rate in perpetuity, right, So why wouldn't you
Speaker 4: want to buy this? And at the same time, I'll
Speaker 4: still be on the track to take the company public.
Speaker 4: So for me, the most important thing is an initial
Speaker 4: team that has that experience. So I've already coached some
Speaker 4: talent from Toperware, and now I coached one person from
Speaker 4: h Emory the hospital system in Atlanta, And these are
Speaker 4: people who are interested in being involved in a startup
Speaker 4: with this with this trajectory in mind that within five
Speaker 4: to seven years we're going to exit and to exit big,
Speaker 4: and we need to function this way and just replicating
Speaker 4: systems with that that you would come to find in
Speaker 4: a public traded company. So you'll see that most publicly
Speaker 4: traded companies are you know, will have one of the
Speaker 4: major accounting firms doing doing their accounting or at least
Speaker 4: doing their audits, like PwC for instance. So from from
Speaker 4: day one, our accounting structure has to be on point, right,
Speaker 4: because that happens if you if you notice, like when
Speaker 4: you're looking at like startups that are trying to go public,
Speaker 4: they some of them get jammed up because of accounting,
Speaker 4: you know issues is because they didn't have their structure
Speaker 4: right and now they got to get they got to
Speaker 4: spend two or three years getting their financial straight to
Speaker 4: then take the company public. So by building from from
Speaker 4: the very beginning with the mindset of this is this
Speaker 4: is how accounting is done in pubularly traded companies. This
Speaker 4: is how much money is allocated to marketing spend versus revenue.
Speaker 4: Having all those details and people who are familiar with
Speaker 4: those details being on your team from the beginning is
Speaker 4: what you need. And also you're going to need money
Speaker 4: to support that. A lot of one of the mistakes
Speaker 4: that we make, as you know as a community is
Speaker 4: we'll start our business with too little money with our friends,
Speaker 4: with our family, and they're not skilled to take it
Speaker 4: to a certain point.
Speaker 3: And then you don't even have the discussion of what
Speaker 3: is the vision.
Speaker 4: For the company, Where are we trying to go, what
Speaker 4: are we trying to do, how are we trying to
Speaker 4: get there? Are our visions aligned, are values aligned? And
Speaker 4: those things you need to send you need to set
Speaker 4: them from the beginning. If you don't. You're going to
Speaker 4: be building a company on a shaky foundation, or you're
Speaker 4: going to build a company that you know at a
Speaker 4: certain point it can't grow anymore because your your foundation
Speaker 4: is in set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's big. Well, obviously I've heard vast sets under management.
Speaker 2: I never heard of lives under management before, but makes
Speaker 2: sense if you're in a medical field. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that. Like you said, I mean you just outline
Speaker 2: your vision. And I think that that's important for entrepreneurs,
Speaker 2: whether it's big, small, middle whatever. You have to have
Speaker 2: a vision. And it's like you already kind of have
Speaker 2: an idea in your mind. Nothing ever goes according to plan,
Speaker 2: but at least you have a roadmap of where you
Speaker 2: want your company to go. And that's more than half
Speaker 2: the battle right there. I think a lot of entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: are just winging it, winking up and just trying to
Speaker 2: figure it out day to day, like they're literally living
Speaker 2: day to day, and times like this it just really
Speaker 2: exposes that. And now you're in a financial crisis because
Speaker 2: you never really had a business plan. You just had
Speaker 2: you know, figure it out mentality as you go, and
Speaker 2: that can only take you so far.
Speaker 3: Correct, It's it's a and the thing, I'm lucky.
Speaker 4: Really, I'm lucky, like just like like like.
Speaker 3: Like the VC dude that was just from Black Star Fire, Yeah, Kwame.
Speaker 4: When I was watching, I was like, this is like
Speaker 4: my story, right because his father's a physician.
Speaker 3: He's helping out at the office, he's learning and he's
Speaker 3: watching and like.
Speaker 4: Having that that information coming into your mind from that
Speaker 4: young you start to just like you say, I think
Speaker 4: you say something. If you start looking at a yellow car,
Speaker 4: you start to notice more yellow cars.
Speaker 3: Right. So if I am ready I'm looking at okay,
Speaker 3: my mom's staffing business, and I'm now I'm in the
Speaker 3: staffing business myself. You start and I'm working in hospitals,
Speaker 3: you start having your eyes open to where's the money moving,
Speaker 3: how's it moving? So certain things that will go over
Speaker 3: your head don't go over your head anymore immediately. Right.
Speaker 3: So it's the same thing.
Speaker 4: But what I see with a lot of people is
Speaker 4: that they either they don't have much, you know, entrepreneurial experience.
Speaker 4: They get it later in life and they start just
Speaker 4: winging it. The best thing that you could do is
Speaker 4: you know, here what one do like a business, a
Speaker 4: business template or a business model, right just look just
Speaker 4: google business model and youtubeer a business model video. It
Speaker 4: walks you through how you should be thinking about your business.
Speaker 4: The very first thing is what is your value proposition?
Speaker 3: What are you offering?
Speaker 4: What problem are you fixing or what need are you addressing?
Speaker 4: What what is that in your company?
Speaker 3: Right? So at eight book, what is our value proposition?
Speaker 4: We're dealing with this problem that hospitals have of patients
Speaker 4: being readmitted, and that's the problem that we're trying to solve.
Speaker 4: And we're going to monetize that by solving that problem
Speaker 4: and by being the service provider to those patients.
Speaker 6: How many how many states are you operating in right now?
Speaker 3: Right now? Well, New York and then what's eight book
Speaker 3: is going to be Florida?
Speaker 6: Florida.
Speaker 5: And when I'm thinking Florida, and I'm thinking, like when
Speaker 5: you said you want to grow your your clients by
Speaker 5: one hundred per or thousand per year, you're in a
Speaker 5: state with the largest population, well the oldest population.
Speaker 6: In the kind of was that done intentionally?
Speaker 4: Actually not really, because Florida, like in New York, we're
Speaker 4: dealing mostly with Medicaid managed long term care right as
Speaker 4: the payer Florida has a cap on how many waivers
Speaker 4: they put out. Right, it's a red state mostly, so
Speaker 4: they put out you know, they do less spending, so
Speaker 4: a lot of the people here are self paid. But
Speaker 4: I liked Florida because you know, I'm going to be
Speaker 4: living part time in Colombia. So it's a good midpoint
Speaker 4: between Columbia and New York. So, and it has the
Speaker 4: international airports. The weather it's good, So that's why I chose.
Speaker 4: I chose Florida. But I'm going to be expanding into
Speaker 4: every state that has, you know, a thriving home care
Speaker 4: community like come care infrastructure, so Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Atlanta,
Speaker 4: or Georgia, Pennsylvania, California. So those are states that I
Speaker 4: would be willing to enter because I know that the
Speaker 4: home care infrastructure is good there.
Speaker 2: You haven't, ladies and gentlemen. So on the last segment,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about your software system. That's actually
Speaker 2: something you're a lot going on. We're going to a
Speaker 2: time on time your software system, and then we're going
Speaker 2: to bring home with everything yet you got going on now,
Speaker 2: So yeah, all right, so we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: your software system. But before one quick question about your company, So,
Speaker 2: how do you raise money? Because I you know, it's
Speaker 2: probably a lot as far as the expenses to run
Speaker 2: these type of organizations. You say you have to pay
Speaker 2: up front, then you get reimbursed on the back end.
Speaker 2: So finance finances is always the biggest hurdle for any
Speaker 2: business for the most part. So how do you how
Speaker 2: do you raise money? How do you have money coming
Speaker 2: in on a consistent basis to float your operations?
Speaker 3: So in.
Speaker 4: Looking at the staff and business, that started with five
Speaker 4: thousand dollars five K and obviously that's under capitalized, right,
Speaker 4: That's what ended up happening, is that all right, we're
Speaker 4: limited to how much services we can provide. Some people
Speaker 4: waiting a month to get paid because we were getting
Speaker 4: paid on a monthly basis. So first was like the
Speaker 4: most traditional people, you go to a bank, you apply
Speaker 4: for a line of credit, right, but that's only going
Speaker 4: to be if you have business history, right and that
Speaker 4: they feel that you're credit worthy. But with time, those
Speaker 4: lines of credit it was tapping. For one case, it
Speaker 4: was tapping friends and family and that's usually where most
Speaker 4: people start with either basic credit cards or getting money
Speaker 4: from the bank, right, but they're not lended much and
Speaker 4: it's not enough to really turbo charge your company. It
Speaker 4: wasn't until I was trading stocks and building, you know,
Speaker 4: a tech company that I started to understand that starting
Speaker 4: with some family money is schools fight's you know, it
Speaker 4: could get you started. Starting with little credit cards and
Speaker 4: make money is enough to get you started. But if
Speaker 4: you're really gonna try to expand your business, you're going
Speaker 4: to have to raise money from institutional investors, right, from
Speaker 4: VC firms, from angel investors, and their entire business model
Speaker 4: is to identify solid companies, pump money in with the
Speaker 4: intention solely to scale them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's a little different than starting from scratch, right because
Speaker 4: if sometimes all right, so in the world, in the
Speaker 4: in the startup world, right, and it's not just tech startups,
Speaker 4: because any obviously, any industry could be a startup. But
Speaker 4: in the startup world, your first objective is to develop
Speaker 4: an MVP, right, your minimally viable products, and that's the
Speaker 4: first thing that you need to finance. Right, Prove that
Speaker 4: you have a product or service that the market is
Speaker 4: in demand for, Prove that you can monetize it.
Speaker 3: That's the first thing that you should raise money for.
Speaker 4: And if you're gonna do it with your credit cards
Speaker 4: and with friends and family money, that's the time because
Speaker 4: you don't you don't necessarily have to go out there
Speaker 4: and form a business. You just have to prove that
Speaker 4: you have a product or service that people are willing
Speaker 4: to pay for. Once you can prove that with this
Speaker 4: product or service, it costs, you know, ten thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a month to operate, but it generates fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: of money like annual profits. Once you could prove that relationship,
Speaker 4: that money in doing this thing produces money out at
Speaker 4: a multiple larger than money in. You can take that
Speaker 4: that that little company to market and start raising money
Speaker 4: from angel investors and venture capitalists.
Speaker 3: And there's gonna be different.
Speaker 4: There's gonna be different levels of them, right, there's gonna
Speaker 4: be there's gonna be like Brooklyn, what is it Brooklyn
Speaker 4: brids Right, Charlie Charlie O'Donnell is the guy who hits
Speaker 4: that fund. He likes to deal with companies that are
Speaker 4: at that seed level, that first investment usually five hundred
Speaker 4: thousand million in capital. Then there's like the series A,
Speaker 4: Series B and so on and some so there's some
Speaker 4: VC firms that only get in at that pre like
Speaker 4: like two hundred million dollar minimum. Like, we don't look
Speaker 4: at any company that doesn't require two hundred million dollars
Speaker 4: or more. Right, So it's all about what where we're
Speaker 4: trying to go. But the first, the first that seed
Speaker 4: funding of that that anywhere from half a million dollars
Speaker 4: to like one one point five. There's there's VC firms
Speaker 4: that specialize just that. Then there's VC firms that specialize
Speaker 4: in and then different sectors. Some are healthcare focused, some
Speaker 4: are technology focused, some are industry agnostic. It really depends,
Speaker 4: but you need to have some sort of traction, some
Speaker 4: of proof that your business is growing.
Speaker 3: And I learned that by doing.
Speaker 4: My tech start up because I was like, all right,
Speaker 4: I know, I'm gonna need money to fuel this thing.
Speaker 4: And in going to like tech startup meetups, listening to
Speaker 4: the conversations, going to pitching events where you're actually you know,
Speaker 4: competing to raise money or you are even just practicing
Speaker 4: you're you're pitching, you hear what they what the VC
Speaker 4: firms are interested in.
Speaker 3: What's the cost to acquire a user? What is that
Speaker 3: user worth? How much?
Speaker 4: How much does it cost to acquire a user, and
Speaker 4: what's the lifetime of a user? What's the value proposition here?
Speaker 4: That they're going to ask you those questions and sometimes
Speaker 4: you need to be asked that question, so you can
Speaker 4: go back to your computer Google what the hell they're
Speaker 4: asking right, and then you end up start you end
Speaker 4: up creating what they're asking for. We need you to
Speaker 4: look like this. They you know, in the startup world
Speaker 4: that we talked about the hockey stick, they want your
Speaker 4: growth to be the hockey right, gradual growth or if
Speaker 4: you just look at the that's viral right, look at
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen right, that's truly the definition of going viral.
Speaker 3: You look at the curves. What were the numbers, and
Speaker 3: then it's.
Speaker 4: Exponential that they're they're looking to see that you're on
Speaker 4: that trajectory, that there's going to be that level of absorption.
Speaker 4: So once you start looking at vcs to answer that
Speaker 4: question is how do you raise money? How do you
Speaker 4: get the money? Once you start looking at them, it
Speaker 4: forces you to become, you know, a builder of a
Speaker 4: business because they want they want your business to succeed,
Speaker 4: but they can identify that you're on shaky grounds, so
Speaker 4: they want your foundation to be tight. They want your
Speaker 4: team to be tight. They want there to be traction,
Speaker 4: they want the market size to be large enough. And
Speaker 4: those are the things that they're interested in.
Speaker 1: You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday.
Speaker 1: How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy? Just use Indeed.
Speaker 1: Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other
Speaker 1: job sites. With Indeed sponsored jobs, your post jumps to
Speaker 1: the top of the page for your relevant candidates, so
Speaker 1: you can reach the people you want faster. According to
Speaker 1: Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have forty
Speaker 1: five percent more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait
Speaker 1: any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed,
Speaker 1: and listeners of this show will get a seventy five
Speaker 1: dollars sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility
Speaker 1: at indeed dot com slash pod Katz thirteen. Just go
Speaker 1: to Indeed dot com slash pod katz thirteen right now
Speaker 1: and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is
Speaker 1: all you need