Does your company offer any sort of support or benefits to help your staff with caregiving responsibilities? For most companies, the answer is probably, “No,” but it doesn’t have to be that way. Our guest today, Frank Samson, is the founder of Senior Care Authority, an author, and the host of The Boomers Today Radio/Podcast Show. Frank has also built two national franchise networks, the first heh built to more than 200 locations and then eventually starting Senior Care Authority which has a national network with more than 70 locations today.
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Learn more about Senior Care Authority: https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/
- Learn more about offering Employee Benefits through Caregiving Support at: https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/resources/employee-benefits/
- Listen to Frank’s Podcast, BOOMER’S TODAY: https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/resources/boomers-today/
- Purchase Frank’s Book, “The Aging Boomers: Answers to Critical Questions for You, Your Parents, and Loved Ones” – CLICK HERE for the Amazon Link
- Learn more about the Beyond Driving With Dignity Program: https://www.seniorcareauthority.com/beyond-driving-with-dignity/
- If you are ready to franchise your business or take it to the next level: CLICK HERE.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Frank M. Samson, CSA is the founder of Senior Care Authority, author, and creator of The Boomers Today Radio/Podcast Show. Prior to founding Senior Care Authority, he worked in franchise consulting and the travel industry for over three decades. He built an organization with over 200 franchises, which he later sold and the company still operates successfully today. His expertise in senior care has given Frank the opportunity to write a regular blog and host a national radio show and podcast called Boomers Today. Frank authored a book, The Aging Boomers: Answers to Critical Questions for You, Your Parents and Loved Ones, and is available on Amazon.com. Frank is a Certified Senior Advisor, a member of the Society of Certified Senior Advisors, on the Board of the National Placement and Referral Alliance, and an Honorary Faculty Member at Michigan State University.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/ or by calling Big Sky Franchise Team at: 855-824-4759.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:00):
Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. And as we open today, the question has to do with your company benefits. Do you offer any sort of support or benefit that helps your employees or your staff with caregiving responsibilities that they have at home with a close family member or friend. For most companies, the answer is probably no, you don’t have benefits in place for that, but it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s why we asked our guest today, Frank Samson, to be on the show to talk about this caregiving benefits and program.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (00:51):
His company, Senior Care Authority, which he founded and is a national network with over 70 locations across the country, offers a program like this, and he talks about why these are important and how and why it matters to your employees, and how it actually benefits you as an employer in retaining and attracting great staff and talent, which is always a timely issue. I feel fortunate to have had the great opportunity to get to know Frank over the course of the last year, year and a half that we’ve been working together and getting to know him as a person, as a leader and as a client. So let’s go ahead and jump into our interview.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (01:31):
Well Tom, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. It’s a great podcast that you run, so it’s an honor to be on. My name’s Frank Samson, I’m the founder/CEO of Senior Care Authority.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (01:45):
Great. Well, so grateful to have you on the show and you have such an awesome background as an entrepreneur, as a franchisor and really innovating and creating just some new businesses and new ideas that you’ve taken to market. So I’d love for you just to share a little background about you and how you ended up at Senior Care Authority.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (02:06):
Great. Well, I’ll try to make it short because I have a long background, not only because of my age. I got many years, but actually started out in the travel industry for many years. I was in the hotel restaurant school where I to university and studied that. So I was in the travel industry for well over 30 years and had a great career. Kind of like many people when they get to a certain age in their life and they’ve been kind of in the same business. Many people go, I want to try something new. My kids, I have two older kids now, but at the time they were a little younger. They go, “Dad, you don’t seem happy.” That was just kind of a wake up call to me going, you know, I’m not.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (03:03):
It was great, great industry. I actually franchised a company that had about 200 locations and sold that company. I was actually going to move away from it at that point and get into something else. Somebody called me and said, we want you to run our company. So I did that for a while and realized that, Hey, it was time to move on. Right around that time, I lost both my parents seven we weeks apart from one another, after some illness and it was tough. It’s hard to lose a loved one, but kind of a light bulb went off me saying, how are people going to do this?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (03:57):
I’m smacked in the middle. I’m a boomer, right smack in the middle. I’m thinking, how is that generation going to do this? This is tough stuff. It’s not something we’re we’re used to dealing with. I basically took some time and started researching the industry, the senior care industry, and founded Senior Care Authority. Started doing it here in Northern California initially. Now we franchise it and today we have over 70 locations. Love what I do again, love what I do again.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (04:39):
Well, that’s a great background and you are very modest about your background here, but in my vantage point, having the opportunity to interview and work with you and talk through this. Having grown one business in the travel industry, franchise it sell a couple hundred locations and then exit, and now get in a new industry and do the same kind of thing. Again, it’s really impressive work. Your perspective is very unique just in business, in general, from that regard. I’d love for you to share about Senior Care Authority, because you provide a really unique and valuable service for folks out there and, with the national presence, this is something that someone tuning in may have mom or dad, or an aunt or uncle or sibling or somebody that might need what you’re offering.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (05:34):
Great. No, I’d be happy to tell you a little more. The one thing I love about it, and I loved about it in the travel industry, is really helping people be successful in business. That’s what I really enjoy. I still franchise as I had in the travel industry. Some of those people still reach out to me to just kind of check in, whether it be on Facebook or LinkedIn, and how you doing, and just want to tell you thanks again. I’m doing well. That’s a wonderful thing to hear. So that kind of charges me up when I help others.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (06:11):
But so Senior Care Authority, I started it after doing a lot of research from scratch. I myself was working with the families and helping them. We do a couple different things at Senior Care Authority. One, our primary service is what’s called senior placement. Senior placement is helping families find the best place to live and to get at the proper care. That might mean an assisted living, that might mean in memory care. That may mean in more of a 55 and over type of a community. That may mean, unfortunately, and I say unfortunately, in a skilled nursing facility. We try to keep people out of skilled nursing, but sometimes, for a lot of different reasons, there may not be a choice with that.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (07:05):
So there’s various levels, and that’s really how we started. That’s how we started and that’s our franchisees primary source of income. That was my primary source of income when I started. We earn our dollars. Fortunately, we don’t have to charge the family anything for that type of a service because we have contracts with these locations and they pay us a commission, and that’s pretty standard in the industry to do that.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (07:34):
But what really helped expand our franchise network is adding what we’ve called elder care consulting. Elder care consulting is providing a number of different services to families that may have nothing to do with placement. I’ll just give you a quick example, and this is pretty common, that we might be dealing with the adult children. Let’s just say there’s three of them, two daughters and a son. One of the daughters that we’re dealing with feels that maybe dad should go to assisted living. Then she consults with the sister and the sister goes, “Nah, I think dad just needs a caregiver at home. He doesn’t have to go to assisted living. We’re never going to be able to get him to assisted living.” And then the brother goes, “What’s wrong with dad? There’s nothing wrong with dad.”
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (08:34):
That’s pretty common. So it’s so important to get everybody on the same page. So many times we have meetings. They may be Zoom meetings or they may be just sitting around the kitchen table, but to get everybody on the same page and providing the best options for dad and for the family based on what the needs are financially and everything. So that’s just one example of so many. Another quick one is a company that we acquired last year called Beyond Driving with Dignity. It’s a program. It’s a self assessment program to help determine if it’s maybe the right time to … we like to call retire from driving. We don’t like to say, take away the keys. I know a lot of families are confronted with that.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (09:23):
That’s part of our elder care consulting program. So there’s a number of different services where they’re just there to support the family and help them through a difficult time that they probably have never gone through before and may never go through it again. So it’s not like it’s renting a house or buying a home. Well, people do that multiple in a lifetime. Here, they might only be doing it one time. When you are dealing with a loved one and especially dealing with care, it’s a pretty big deal and it could be pretty stressful. I like to say that we work hard to try to reduce stress.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (10:10):
Yeah. Well, and what I love about the service is that you’re really come into this with where the actual consultant or person that’s consulting with the client is really considering all options. From your vantage point, you’re servicing this client to make the best recommendation for that specific scenario and whatever that recommendation might end up being. So they’re kind of more of a neutral party that’s this expert that’s going to be able to help them out, as opposed to what maybe could be confused with. I could just see it, if you’re going to a senior living facility and you’re talking to an admissions person or an advisor that’s helping you. Well, their interest is to try to fill a bed or a room that’s there. So in your-
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (11:06):
I have a lot of relationships with those people. So I’m glad you said it, not me. It is true.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (11:15):
I’m just kind of putting some peace is together. So I really like that you’re doing that. One of the things that we talked about before we went on air here is we talked about this corporate benefits program that you’re offering and that you have available. It’s very timely just in general. But I think one of the reasons I excited to have you on, not only with your franchise background and entrepreneurial background, but this is something that I think businesses need to know about, that they can do these kinds of programs that you have to offer. So I’d love for you to share what that is and how it works.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (11:55):
Well, I love to say that we had this whole big plan and we put it together and, for two years we were planning this, and it’s been a great success. Well, first of all, it has been a great success, but there wasn’t this big plan. I’ll have to say that I was planning it out, but I, in a sense, fell into it. Sometimes you need a little bit of luck in business too. But basically what we call now our EASE program, and that stands for employee assistance solutions for elder care. The one thing, I had been doing a lot of research and I actually wrote an article about this quite some time ago and realizing that there are statistics showing that absenteeism and presenteeism were on the rise.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (12:53):
Everybody kind of knows what absenteeism is. Some people have never heard of presenteeism. Presenteeism is kind of interesting. I didn’t know what it was when I first started, but basically what it means is that that employee could be in front of their computer doing work, but they’re thinking about mom or dad or grandma and grandpa or aunt and uncle at home and needing care. They can’t concentrate on work. They’re on the clock, but they’re not working. That’s presenteeism. Basically, I realized that companies were offering quite a bit in benefits as it relates to childcare and time off, and you have a baby and you get time off. That’s a great thing, but what has been forgotten, and is now becoming quite apparent and a lot of companies are now implementing it, is to provide benefits to their employees as it relates to senior care.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (13:59):
Where a loved one … it’s very time consuming, especially if you try to do it alone. So, that’s what we want. The plan was to put together a program for companies so their employees don’t have to take off as much time. They don’t have to be as stressed out. I’d like to say we would eliminate stress, but I would say we relieve stress. And that they have somebody to turn to for help. Now, when I was kind of planning this out, I got a phone call from remain nameless right now, but a pretty good size company in the fortune 500 realm. I was introduced through a mutual friend and they saw what we were doing. They said, we need this, and literally we put it together for them.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (14:57):
So that’s kind of how it started. So basically the program is all the services plus more that we provide in elder care consulting, in placement, in overall just advice. We provide a landing page for companies, so their employees can go to. We provide … As you know, Tom, I do a podcast as well. So my podcast is on there and our blogs and articles, all sorts of educational things that we put on the company site that is kind of co-branded with us for their employees. We’re putting a huge emphasis on it come the first of the year. Because of this company that of kind of came to us, I would have to say that that’s not where we would’ve started, because they have somewhere in the vicinity of about 15 to 20,000 employees.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (16:03):
So we’re talking, that’s a pretty good size company. That would not be the test company that we would want to do, but they were willing to work with us and they knew we didn’t have anybody else. They knew they were the first, but they were still willing to work with us. It’s turned out to be a great success story, and now we want to reach out to other companies, and I would say smaller. I think we believe our sweet spot is the 500 to 5,000 employees, and really, really to help them provide benefits to their people.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (16:43):
Do you mind if I give you some statistics here that I didn’t make up?
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (16:48):
Sure. Please.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (16:50):
These are real things. So AARP reported on this. One in six US employees are spending 20 plus hours each week providing assistance to a friend or relative. One in six providing 20 plus hours. Something from Harvard Business School, they did a whole study. By the way, they did that study right around the time I was talking to that company I mentioned. It was kind of ironic that Harvard did this huge study. One of the things they came up with is upper management has a higher incident of leaving employment due to caregiving conflicts. So it’s a big issue today. It’s a big issue. Especially, I don’t know when people would be listening to this podcast, but today we’re dealing, as you know, with people who are not going back to work.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (17:50):
So it’s tough to find good employees. So to provide a better benefit package. That’s what we want to be part of, that benefit package that somebody might look at it and go, you know what, that’s a great benefit because my mom’s not doing so well. It’d be nice to have somebody to lean on. I’m glad this company has thought of having that benefit. So you could attract some people that maybe you wouldn’t have attracted before.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (18:21):
Yeah. Well, that’s the thing I like about it, especially as you share that statistic about senior leaders in your organization that are more likely to leave because of some personal caregiving demands that they need to step down or maybe step back. If there’s a solution in place for them, I just think about someone, for our company, for anyone maybe listening in. The great resignation is real and, to me, this is not only attracting talent, but it may be keeping talent that you didn’t know you were actually keeping, keeping some mid to senior folks that maybe are in a position or at any level, really, to be able to have this as a value added benefit for them to get into. I just think it’s extremely timely to be coming in because you think about it.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (19:13):
Okay. If you’re a company in the range you described, you already probably have some benefits. You have health insurance and a retirement plan, and you have some of these ancillary, maybe a health savings account and some of these other things that are kind of standard things for company of that size. But now we’re looking at this next phase of life and going through this. So I think it’s a phenomenal program. How can they learn more about this? Where do you have some information that someone that’s listening in might be able to go to?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (19:45):
Well, our website is SeniorCareAuthority.com. But I’ll give you my email address. If they have some interest, either learning more about our company or that particular program, you could just email me directly Frank@seniorcareauthority.com. On our website, we do have a section about the employee benefit as well. The more I’ve gotten into it, I don’t know if we have time just to read you a couple others.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (20:22):
Yeah.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (20:23):
Harvard did this very extensive study on this, and they interviewed employees from all over the country and they interviewed some of those same employers that those employees were working for. There was a disconnect. There was a disconnect, the employees basically saying, yeah, I need this, and the employers generally going, eh, I don’t know if they need it. So it was Harvard saying, basically to employers all over the country, you better wake up. So one of the things they showed is 32% of the employees admitted, the ones that left their jobs, admitted they left their jobs because they get the support they needed regarding caregiving needs. 47% said that caregiving affected their work performance all or most of the time. 55% said caregivers are less likely to progress as fast as their peers, even if they put forth the same effort, because they’re having to take more time off.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (21:29):
And 59% of the employers said that caregivers were perceived as less committed to their careers. So it puts a lot of pressure on the employees as well. So again, our goal was to kind of be able to step in and say, let us work with your employees that need this help so they don’t have to take off as much time of work because trying to do it themself when they have no knowledge on the subject matter, I can’t even … Hey, I did it with my parents. You’re learning something brand new. Again, it’s not like something that you do on a day to day basis.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (22:10):
Yeah. Yeah. I remember, it’s interesting when my grandmother … she was the matriarch of our family. We have a big extended family, all close knit together when I was growing up. Anyway, when he was diagnosed terminally ill and kind of going through this two year kind of just battle that we just knew what was going to come of it. Fortunately, she was in a situation where she had seven kids and three or four of the kids really helped out, plus one of my cousins. So my grandmother had 24/7 care from a family member, but that meant that Monday through Friday, one day a week, one sibling was dedicated to one day. Plus my cousin was dedicated one day. But it was 24 hour shifts that they had, and that meant they couldn’t work that day. Then they traded weekends and weekend time and extra shifts.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (23:11):
So there was this whole thing. Fortunately, the family was able to do that, to keep grandma at home. But if a program … now this has been 10, 12 years ago at this point, but had something like what you’re describing been around for some of our family, I know that would’ve made a big difference at that moment of need when it was necessary.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (23:33):
Right. Right. There’s a perception out there that, oh, my grandma is on Medicare on Medicaid or whatever, and they’ll take care of it. It’s just so not correct, not in this country. So that’s another part of what we do is help them work through that and understand, how could we get third parties to pay for totally or a portion of the costs for the care. Then where can we help them get funds to pay for this, because it’s pretty expensive. It’s very expensive.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (24:15):
There’s also another perception from the parents. Oh, my kids will take care of me, or my spouse will take care of me and I’ll be fine. The reason that can be a challenge, if that person is suffering from some form of dementia, like Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s is the majority of the cases of dementia type disease. They might not have the know how to deal with somebody, because that’s a challenging disease. It could be other types of things like Parkinson’s and things that it’s not just, they’re just getting older and need medication reminders and all that.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (25:13):
The majority of, once you hit 65 … I’m sorry, once you hit 70 years old, there’s a 75% chance that you’re going to need some sort of long term care. So that’s basically saying you got a 25% chance that you should be pretty healthy and may not need a whole lot of assistance, but 75% chance is pretty high. So people need to plan and that’s a whole nother conversation. But the thing that’s great is that our franchise owners around the country are educated on this. They have a lot of certifications, a lot of training, and can advise families properly on the right direction for them.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (26:00):
Frank, this is a great time for us to transition here. Before we exit the interview, we all always ask every guest the same four questions before we go. The first question is, has there been a miss or two in your career and something you learned from it?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (26:20):
Ah, that’s a great question. Let’s see. It’s easy to look through the rear view mirror. I guess, I told you at the beginning, when I was looking to make a move away from the travel industry and I did sell my company, I guess I wish I would’ve started this, what I’m doing right now, back then, because there was a gap there of me being enticed by a company to have me come in and run their company in the travel industry. They threw dollars at me and I accepted and I did it for a while longer, and I realized it wasn’t the dollars, because they were paying me pretty good and I was running a company, but again, I still wasn’t happy with what I was doing, and I get so much gratification from what I’m doing right now. So I guess a miss, I don’t know if I call it a miss. It was just timing. If I would’ve had to do it all over again, I wish I would’ve started this earlier in my career.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:39):
Yeah.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (27:39):
So not a huge one, but sometimes timing is everything.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (27:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Well thank you for sharing that, and let’s look at it on the other side. How about a make or two. You’ve shared a whole bunch already. Is there anything that stands out?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (27:59):
What stands out is just I realize that the most important thing to me right now is the number of families that we have helped across the country. We’ve actually added them up and said, all right. Literally thousands and thousands of families that we have helped and helped them relieve that stress. When I was doing this myself, before I started franchising, I did this for five years to prove the model. I still get an email or a letter. Literally, I’ve received letters from families that I work with saying, I just want to tell you, I don’t know if you remember me, but you helped us with my mom. Unfortunately she passed away, but I wanted to thank you because you made our life that much easier during a very difficult time.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (28:54):
So I guess the things that stand out is just the gratification that we get from families that we’ve worked with across the country. I think a close second to that is just watching our franchise owners succeed in their businesses in the same way. So both those are things that I have to say that stand out. I don’t think I could think of a particular incident, but just a gratification I’ve gotten from that.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (29:28):
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing. Thank you. The next question we’d like to ask is, has there been a multiplier or two that you’ve used in growing yourself personally, professionally, your company, that you can share?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (29:46):
Well, one of the things that, strictly speaking from a business standpoint as relates to franchising, being the franchisor … you know this as well, if not more than I do, because you’ve been in the field as well. So when you say multiplier, I think of ongoing earnings. So I wanted to have a business that my customers are my franchisees. That’s my customer. So I wanted to have a business that we had the ability to continue to earn dollars, which we do. It’s pretty well known in the franchising industry that I’m earning a little bit of money on their business. So as they grow their business, then I earn more. So, that’s what I would suggest for anybody as a startup, to be thinking about getting into the business where you’re getting, whether it’s a retainer or just ongoing earnings.
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (31:00):
I wanted to have that same thing for the franchise owners. So on the franchise owner side, the one thing that I learned is that most of their business comes from referrals, referrals from elder law attorneys, referrals from hospitals, referrals from financial planners. Once they establish those types of relationships, they’re getting referrals on an ongoing basis from those same professionals. So that’s their retainer, in a sense, on an ongoing basis. So I’m not sure if that was an answer to your question, but I’m always thinking about that. How can you continue to earn from your, in a sense, existing customer base, enjoy that existing customer base.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (31:49):
Yeah. I love it. I think that’s great. I really like it. Thank you. The final question we ask everyone, Frank, is what does success mean to you?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (32:01):
Success to me, a lot of people put financials on it, but I don’t. To me is, if I see that our franchisees are succeeding, that means that they’re helping a lot of families. If they’re succeeding, to me, that’s success right there, to me, because if that’s all happening, I’m making a decent living at it. This type of business, if somebody wants to become a billionaire, then this isn’t the business for you, but you can make a very good living at it. Our franchisees make good livings. I make a good living, but I only do if they’re successful. So when they’re successful, that means I achieved what I wanted to achieve.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (32:58):
Yeah. Well, Frank, as we kind of closed this out, is there anything you were hoping to share that you haven’t had a chance to get across yet?
Frank Samson, Senior Care Authority (33:07):
Well, I guess we’re all dealing, whoever’s listening are all dealing with situations with family members. The best advice I guess I just want to give to everybody is to plan. There’s a 100% chance that we’re going to die. Nobody’s proved differently. So people get life insurance. People do estate planning. There’s probably, as I mentioned you before, when you turn 70, there’s about a 75% chance that you’re going to need some sort of long term care, therefore people roll the dice. Don’t roll the dice because, if you roll the dice, if you’re wrong, it could be catastrophic to you. It could be catastrophic to the family. I’ve seen it pull families apart. So plan properly, and there’s a lot of different ways to do that. We’re all dealing with that from a personal standpoint, or we will be. So, that’s what I wanted to get across.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (34:12):
Frank, thank you so much again, for an awesome interview. We’re going to go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. So takeaway number one is, when Frank talked about absenteeism and presenteeism. As he described, absenteeism, we’re all probably familiar with that one. It’s when someone’s not showing up or they’re not in and working, but the second piece was presenteeism, and that’s when an employee is on the job or working, but their mind is not present. He gave some stark really interesting statistics about what causes presenteeism and some of these things that are related to this benefit situation we talked about. He gave some statistics here.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (35:00):
One in six employees are providing 20 plus hours of caregiving each week to a friend or a relative. He said, upper management has a higher propensity to leave their job due to caregiving requirements. Then the next statistic he said, 32% of employees who left their jobs said they did not get the support that they needed for caregiving. So if that isn’t a compelling case that you need to take this seriously.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (35:32):
Take away number two, Frank talked about planning and especially planning whether it’s for you, if you are approaching 70 years old, or maybe for a loved one. But Frank said, once you hit 70 years old, you have a 75% chance that you’re going to need some kind of additional care. As he reminded us, there’s 100% chance that you’re going to die. So, do you want to kind of roll the dice, as he said, on being that 25%, that doesn’t need the care when it’s more likely that you or your loved one will need the care? So plan. Have a plan in place. Doesn’t mean you have to do anything, but having a plan is critical.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (36:13):
Then take away number three, I thought was great when Frank shared about some of the reasons why he franchised and why he started his businesses, but he said he was looking for a way to find a business to continue generating ongoing earnings. He talked about this as a multiplier, and he did that through three ways that I took in my notes. Number one, he said, do what you love to. He shared part of his past when he sold his business, his first company, and then he was attracted to be hired by another company in the industry, but he wasn’t really happy.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (36:52):
So once he pursued and started Senior Care Authority, he was happy again. So number one, do what you love to do. Number two, franchising, certainly in the business that we’re in, if you’re franchising or thinking about franchising your business, franchising provides that ongoing royalty and that shared gain with your franchisees. Then number three, what he did for his current business with Senior Care Authority and his franchisees was created this ongoing long-term referral relationships where the business is built upon these long-term relationships that continue to develop and produce customers or clients for the company.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (37:35):
Now it’s time for today’s win-win. So today’s win-win is if you don’t have an employee benefit program in place that considers or takes into consideration caregiving services, that your employees are going to be providing to their loved ones, then you need to. Frank talked about Senior Care Authorities program, which is the EASE program, the employee assisted solutions for elder care. Whether it’s implementing a program like key offers or figuring out some program on your own, I think it’s going to be critical because of some of these statistics he said.
Tom DuFore, Big Sky Franchise Team (38:14):
Your employees are dealing with this. So as an employer, it’s in your best interest to provide these kinds of services to your employees and to your team members, because they’re going to need it. It will help in retaining and recruiting great staff and great employees. So that’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise our business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us bigskyfranchiseteam.com. Thanks for tuning in and we look forward to having you back next week.
