Episode 41: Heather Dill on Comfort Keepers, the Senior Care Franchise She Named at 10

Pam Currie (00:01.528)
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Franchise Sisters Business Radio Show. As franchise consultants, we represent over 800 different franchise brands and specialize in coaching aspiring entrepreneurs looking to buy a franchise and dodge costly mistakes. I’m your co-host, Pam Curry.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:21.624)
And I’m your other co-host, Sherry Curry Skoldager. And on today’s show, we have Heather Dill with Comfort Keepers, a lucrative and rewarding franchise business that provides companionship and personal care to help seniors stay in their homes and live their best quality of life. Welcome to the podcast.

Heather Dill (00:42.846)
Hi, thanks for having me, ladies.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (00:44.848)
It’s very good to have you. I I love your story because of your parents founding this. So can you share with our listeners a little bit of background around you?

Pam Currie (00:45.987)
yeah.

Heather Dill (00:55.466)
Yes. So as you mentioned, my parents, Christina Butler and Cherry Clum, they are the original founders of Comfort Keepers. So I took a little bit for me to get to Comfort Keepers. After college, I wanted to go carve my own path, do my own thing. my mother, I joke with her saying, you know, she wanted me to come work for the business. And I I I think maybe just to get a return on her investment from my college.

but I I was like, no, I need to go do my own thing. And I did that for for years and everything that I was doing just really wasn’t fulfilling the need that I had to do excellent work with my community and with with having a purpose in my career. So my mom was persistent over those years and just kept asking, will you please come work for me at Comfort Keepers? And eventually I was like, I think this would fulfill.

that need that I have that empty feeling that I have in my career and it it really did. So I joined at that point my parents had sold the the corporation, the franchising side of things. And they sorry I thought I put it

So they had they had sold the Comfort Keepers franchise portion of it at that point. My mother still owned six territories. And so I went and worked, started my career managing her territories and doing business development, all the things that you can do inside a Comfort Keepers franchise. And so did that for about four and a half years. And then she decided she wanted to retire from day-to-day operations. And that’s when I made the transition over to our headquarters.

And I was on our learning and development team for about five years and then have been part of the franchise development team now for a little over a year. So really excited to to be in this role and help to kind of continue that vision my parents had by expanding our care into more communities.

Pam Currie (02:51.054)
Shari Currie Skjoldager (02:51.28)
That’s great. That’s really impressive with your parents and I love that you’ve gotten into it and it seems to be hitting exactly what you want it to hit. So before we kind of dig into some in-depth questions about comfort keepers, can you give us a high-level overview of just the history and evolution of Comfort Keepers?

Heather Dill (03:09.077)
Absolutely. So comfort keepers kind of came to be because my mother, Christina, she was a home health care nurse and she would care for patients when they came home from the hospital doing the medical side of things. And this was in the late 90s. And back in that time frame, non-medical care really wasn’t a thing. And oftentimes the people that she was caring for, they didn’t have, you know, loved ones or family members to help out. And so she would get asked for those non-medical pieces, like, hey, tomorrow on your way in.

Could you stop and pick me up some groceries? Or it’s a little more challenging for me to do the laundry after this surgery. And she thought it’s really important to care for the whole person. How can you provide medical care to someone who doesn’t have food or clean clothes? So she would do those things. And her employer found out that she was doing things outside of the scope of her job duties and said she couldn’t do those things anymore. And so

Pam Currie (03:53.602)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Dill (04:03.813)
She needed to find a solution for these non-medical pieces of care and lo and behold, there wasn’t a solution. And so brought the problem back home. My parents are you know very collaborative and my dad suggested, well, why don’t you just start a company and you do these things for the community? And so we did.

And a fun side story I share on that note is at at dinner one evening, they were telling my brother and I, who I was 10 and he was five at the time, and shared, hey, we’re thinking about starting this business and we’re trying to come up with a name for this this non-medical care, caring for seniors in their homes so they can stay at home for as long as possible. And my brother said, What about seniors R Us?

And luckily that one didn’t stick. But I I mentioned, what about comfort keepers? So I got to name the company when I was 10. So I think that’s a little fun tidbit there. But since then, you know, they started getting calls from all over the United States. Hey, we heard about what you’re doing in Springfield, Ohio. Do you have this in Florida? Do you have it in Arizona and California? And they very quickly realized this is not a regional issue. This is a nationwide issue.

And so just one year after founding in nineteen ninety-eight, they started franchising in nineteen ninety-nine. And fast forward to today, you know, we’ve grown all over the United States, Canada, we’re in other countries as well. And so we’ve been really fortunate to be able to grow and evolve to expand that footprint.

Pam Currie (05:38.295)
Other, that’s great. I I’ll share with you. And you and I’ve worked together, obviously. and I I love your story, your backdrop. It it it kind of even goes beyond you having had the opportunity to wear so many different hats in the business. But it also to me is it’s this good representation of what it means to have a family business and create that legacy. And talk about succession planning, right?

redefines it. So that’s really cool. you’ve already mentioned that comfort keepers focus is non-medical in home care. Can you please explain in more detail the services that you’re offering?

Heather Dill (06:20.981)
Absolutely. So we do focus on kind of two core areas. So one side is companion care. I like to think of that as kind of hands-off care. So we’re helping people, just genuine companionship, keeping them company, getting them to enjoy those activities that maybe are a little more difficult for them to do by themselves, like gardening or visiting with friends. That also would include meal preparation and transportation, like housekeeping, those types of things, just to maintain the household.

And then the other core service is personal care. So that’s more hands-on helping a person with things like bathing, grooming, dressing. Those are the common pieces. But we also, as a franchisee, they can kind of branch out if they want to and dive more into the medical side of things. Skilled care is an option for our franchisees if they want to go that route. And then technology is kind of a big thing that’s happening in our industry.

And franchisees can choose to offer safety different types of safety technology in the home for their seniors as well when there’s a caregiver there or when there’s not a caregiver there.

Pam Currie (07:28.364)
That’s really cool. When you say technology, what what does that mean? Is it a camera? What do what do you mean by that?

Heather Dill (07:34.048)
So we have a program called Comfort 360. Comfort 360 is really a package of three different technologies that we could kind of customize what the client needs. So one of them is more of a just making sure a client is safe in their home without necessarily cameras. Cause when you tell, you know, someone in their 80s or 90s, hey, we’re gonna install a bunch of cameras around your house, they’re probably not gonna be very excited about that. So the cool technology that we’re using is actually radar detection.

And so there are different radars that go in the house. It can detect where that client is, how long they’ve been there, if there is a fall. So it can look without kind of diving into that more personal side that makes seniors a little uneasy. there’s also a technology that we can offer that’s a camera that goes on the TV where we could drop in and do virtual visits with the senior. Family members can do virtual visits. This is great if they need, you know.

The caregiver maybe comes on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but they still need someone to drop in every day to make sure that things are going well, they’ve taken their medications, and we’re not introducing like a new piece of technology, like a phone or a tablet that they’re probably not gonna be as successful using. They already know how to use the television. and the last one and the one that’s kind of one of our legacy products is

A technology that’s like a wear wearable device where it’s a pendant or a watch that can indicate if there’s a fall in our emergency and it’ll reach out to emergency services. There’s a few other products, but those are kind of the main ones that we offer.

Pam Currie (09:07.032)
Very cool. But you mentioned that subbing your franchise may eventually have the option to get into skilled care. Could you explain what the difference is between home health care and in home care?

Heather Dill (09:20.839)
Yes, so home health is more of that skill. That’s kind of the primary focus. We work really well with home health agencies. We kind of cross refer to each other because a lot of our franchisees, only about 30% of our franchisees, will dive into that private duty nursing side. And we’re really not going that deep into it. It’s typically a nurse that’s, you know, refilling medications and checking vitals and doing skincare and those types of things. But a true home health is is doing

more of that skilled care, that nursing care inside the home. Whereas home care, like comfort keepers, we’re really focused on those companion care, personal care things without diving into the medical side. And unless there’s licensure in the state, that means that a franchisee wouldn’t necessarily need to have a nurse on their staff.

Pam Currie (10:09.262)
And I do want to talk about licensing requirements, but before we dive into that, could you help us understand what is covered by insurance, what’s considered insurance based payment versus a private pay?

Heather Dill (10:20.093)
Right, so comfort keepers, we don’t dive too deep into insurance considering it’s non-medical. We’re hoping, you know, in the next five years or so we’ll see more payments come through Medicare. right now we are able to work with Medicaid, depending on the franchisee and their their preferences. They can choose to work with Medicaid. Most of our clients are going to pay privately through their pockets or family members helping with the payments. But they also have options for working with long-term care insurance companies if that client has a

policy. They can also partner with the VA. So we have a national partnership with the Veterans Affairs and our franchisees can get contracted to work with them. They would then become a referral source or a payer source. Sorry, referral source and a payer source for the franchisees. So they’re able to service those clients just like they do a private pay client, except at the end of the day they just build a VA. We have a couple national partnerships that are set up very similarly to those types of relationships.

Pam Currie (11:19.32)
Break down the licensing requirements for us. I mean, as on a state level, is it on a service level? Break that down for us.

Heather Dill (11:25.607)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it is a state level. So there are 32 states that require some sort of home care license for a franchisee to offer our services in that specific state. So those people who live in the states that are non-licensure, they’re lucky. They can just get their requirements met through Comfort Keeper’s initial requirements and open their doors. Those that are in the 32 states that require licensure have to go through some sort of application process with the state.

They may also require certain types of training for the administrators and or the caregivers, sometimes more heightened background checks. And so it really just depends on the state what the additional steps that you have to go through licensure are. Comfort Keepers does partner with a few consultants that can help advise and guide through that licensure process. Some states are really easy, it’s just a paper application, and other states are a little more complex.

Pam Currie (12:23.968)
Sense. And it’s sort of interesting because we like to say anytime someone is looking to be a business owner, we say, you know, well, one of the number one things you’ve got to understand is how do you go about acquiring customers? Because if you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business. And I want to talk about how you acquire customers, but before that, I think of equal importance is the effectiveness of the recruitment and the retention of the caretakers. So

What kind of what do you do to help out on that level?

Heather Dill (12:57.749)
Absolutely. So you’re right on the client side of things, this is kind of one of the the few industries where demand is kind of built in, where we just have such a huge need in the population and the demographics that your phones are probably gonna ring when you open your doors. But finding the caregivers is usually the part that takes a little bit more effort. So we will help train our new franchisees on what makes a great caregiver, who we should, who should we be looking for.

Pam Currie (13:05.976)
Uh-huh.

Heather Dill (13:26.751)
But not just your typical caregiver, right? Because that’s where all of the compet competition is looking to. They’re going after that caregiver that has experience, that are is already trained or has a certification if that’s required. But there are great people who make great caregivers that aren’t caregivers today. And so we teach them profiles of different types of people who could make great caregivers. Where do you find them? How do you attract them to your business?

How do you bring them in? And then how do you retain them on your staff? So that’s one piece, but we also dedicate a good portion of our national brand fund to national recruiting efforts so that more and more applicants are exposed to our comfort keepers’ positions and they’re able to apply directly with those local franchisees. but I think the biggest piece of the caregiver side is just.

Overall, how we’re treating our people and the culture that you set in your office. So having that people first mindset that’s really important to us as a franchise or looking for franchisees, but it’s very crucial to your success as a franchisee, the way that you treat your employees, the way that you support them, how much you invest into, just checking in and making sure that they’re doing well. those pieces will really take a franchisee a long way.

and get them that staff that is loyal and that wants to go and care for their clients and do a really excellent job.

Pam Currie (14:55.224)
So what are some best practices to get that phone ringing to start bringing in those customers?

Heather Dill (15:01.501)
Yeah, I think there are two bigger practices that make the phone ring. So one of those is the the digital side. So online marketing is really important, getting good search engine optimization and pay-per-click campaigns. We have a few different digital partners that we offer to our franchisees that they can partner with or they can look for their own or even do it themselves. But that’s really important. When people are searching for care for my mom in Cincinnati, Ohio.

you want to be towards the top of those results, right? so we’ll help them on that side learn how to do those things through digital partners. But the other thing that’s really, really important is your relationship with referral sources in your community. No one’s gonna trust an opinion more than say your doctor saying, hey, I really think that you need to look at this company Comfort Keepers to help keep you safe at home or do the different things that we’re trying to accomplish with your health in home. And so

Building good relationships with doctors’ offices, with nursing homes, with hospital systems, elder law attorneys, those are really, really critical. And those pieces also get your phone ringing. And that’s also part of our new franchisee training. We’ll teach them the top referral sources that we see. How do you get in front of them? We can’t just go drop off a brochure and expect them to give us referrals anymore. Those days are over.

So we teach them, you know, what are their pain points? What are those referral sources struggling with and how can you be that solution to those pain points? And I think those two pieces are really critical. If you do those well, your phone’s gonna ring.

Pam Currie (16:40.494)
Thank you. You’ve already shared a lot in regards to some key features, key business features. any additional differentiators that you’d like to share about comfort keepers?

Shari Currie Skjoldager (16:40.984)
That’s good.

Heather Dill (16:43.43)
Ha ha

Heather Dill (16:52.253)
Absolutely. So I think just generally our philosophy on how we see our clients makes us different and makes us stand out not only as a franchise, but as just someone looking for care. If I were looking for care for a loved one, I would respect the our philosophy of elevating the human spirit. So essentially what that means is let’s let’s take an example. A daughter’s calling for her mother. She’s distressed because mom fell.

She had to get surgery, and now she’s really worried that mom’s gonna fall again in the future. So she’s calling us with a problem and she wants comfort keepers to help solve that problem. So we will absolutely keep mom safe. We will make sure that she’s getting her meals and all the different things that mom needs on a day-to-day basis. But we also wanna say what else does mom wanna do? Because she’s not just worried about meals and not falling, just because mom’s 80.

doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to still be connected and have purpose and feel that joy day daily. So we’re going to make sure that we’re getting her involved. And maybe she really loves gardening in the backyard, but daughter’s like, hey mom, you can’t go outside and garden because that’s a fall hazard. You’re going to trip. I don’t want you doing that anymore. So we’ll build into the care plan for the caregiver to take that client into the backyard. They can garden together. Mom can live that really excellent life.

Maybe she wants to listen to music together or have someone to look through photo albums. All those things are built into our care plans. So now she’s getting an excellent quality of life. She’s enjoying her time with her caregiver. The caregiver is enjoying their time because it’s not just a checklist of tasks that they have to do. And then daughter is realizing, wow, there’s so many great things that mom can do. So that sells our services to a consumer, but that also sells to caregivers and to our brand.

a whole and kind of on that same piece of elevating the human spirit is what we call interactive caregiving. So our caregivers are trained on doing all the tasks with the clients rather than for the clients. And that’s really important to ensuring that our clients are retaining those independent skills that are crucial for them to live at home. So instead of just making a meal and serving to them, if they’re able, we’re gonna bring them into the kitchen, we’re gonna cook together

Heather Dill (19:12.223)
We’re gonna have those conversations and now they’re they’re staying as independent as they possibly can.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (19:18.724)
Wow. Wow, you guys are certainly a wealth of knowledge. It’s obvious. It’s obvious with everything. And I love all the point touch points that you’re hitting, especially with you know this the spirit of the client. That’s yeah, that’s definitely a I would think a stick. That’s so important. And it definitely makes it more sticky, I would think. just kind of getting to the franchise system and the growth. you’re mature, you’re very tenured franchise. How many franchisees do you currently have?

Pam Currie (19:19.298)
Like it.

Heather Dill (19:22.484)
Ha ha

Pam Currie (19:22.678)
Yeah.

Heather Dill (19:33.653)
important.

Heather Dill (19:49.332)
Yeah, so we are close to three decades in business. We have over six hundred and thirty territories, and that’s comprised of about two hundred and ten owners.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:00.314)
Wow. okay, that was my other question. So it sounds like there are multi unit owners. So okay. More so

Pam Currie (20:00.942)
Thanks.

Heather Dill (20:02.643)
Ha ha.

Heather Dill (20:06.153)
There are. Yeah. Our average franchisee owns about three territories. and of our two hundred and ten owners, a hundred and thirty of them are multi-unit owners.

Pam Currie (20:18.21)
Yeah.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:18.66)
Wow, that’s great. and then okay, I have to ask, th you have a lot of franchisees. Is there any room for new ones? Any room for growth here? Okay.

Heather Dill (20:26.185)
There are, there are. Yeah, we do have a lot of white space that we love to fill in. We have about 400 open territories still remaining. There are some big markets that we are really focused on growing and expanding into. That not only helps us with our national footprint so that we have a comfort keepers in in most neighborhoods, but also it helps us with our strategic partnerships on a national level. We’re able to attract bigger partners when we have less white space. So that’s our big goal right now is.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:33.73)
Okay.

Pam Currie (20:49.87)
So you like to have some kind of thing.

Heather Dill (20:55.571)
to continue expanding into those key markets.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (20:58.458)
Okay, Pam, we’re gonna have to find out where those are. what what about casting a vision? today, do you guys have a certain vision you’re trying to take comfort keepers to?

Heather Dill (21:08.893)
Yeah, I think right now we’re really focused on expanding our footprint and growing our network. That’s huge. Growth is probably our number one initiative, but we also are making sure that we are responsibly investing and in looking into technology from a back end perspective with our office staff. So, you know, I think everyone hears about AI a million times a day. And and you’d think, yeah, well, senior care maybe isn’t so into technology and AI, but

In all honesty, Comfort Keepers is very invested on the innovation side of things. So we have partnered with a company called Viv Technologies, and they are now who we’re using for our home care operating systems. So it’s pretty much everything on the back end of the business where your schedules lie and your client care plans and your caregiver availabilities. And this technology is also also, I would say, one of our differentiators because it

Pam Currie (21:52.088)
But

Heather Dill (22:05.159)
Allows your office staff to be a lot more efficient. For example, when I was in the business, I had two full-time schedulers, and that’s all they did all day long was build a schedule, work on if there’s a call-off or there’s a new client added to the schedule, where Viv has AI built into it and it’s able to recommend schedules to you. It’s able to help you find caregivers and even contact caregivers if there’s a call-off or

you know, if a caregiver is late, running behind, it will call the caregiver and and check in to see where they are. So those big pieces that were monotonous when I was in the the business are are now so much more efficient and automated for our franchisees. And that’s where we’re really kind of focusing our attention. What other ways can we make our owners and their staff more efficient so that at the end of the day, they can spend more time.

checking in on their caregivers, caring for their clients, and just making sure that the customer service is top-notch and everything else is kind of taken care of by a computer.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:07.758)
I love it. That’s why I love franchising. There’s so many hats to wear as a business owner. And if you want to be really effective and scale, it’s great when corporate can take on what I call research and development and staying current in technology, which is more than a full-time job, so that you can stay focused on scaling and being really effective at taking your care of your caregivers who are taking care of your clients. And that’s great. All right, so franchisees.

Heather Dill (23:11.753)
There are.

Heather Dill (23:21.877)
Absolutely. Right.

Pam Currie (23:24.597)
Heather Dill (23:30.674)
Exactly.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (23:36.186)
You’re you’re looking to grow, you’ve got four hundred territories. What qualities and characteristics are you looking at for in a franchisee?

Heather Dill (23:43.646)
Say a few things stand out to me is having that people first mindset, that’s really important, being empathetic, being compassionate, but also having that business acumen, right? We want someone who can understand profits and loss and all in those different types of pieces. people who can multitask, as you mentioned, wearing multiple hats is a big piece of this as well, but also people who are process-oriented, right? We’ve

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:02.224)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Dill (24:08.137)
been doing this for close to three decades. We have a system that works really well. And so we’ll teach you that process. But you know, being able to replicate that process and follow it, that’s important too. but that that people centered part of it, I think, is kind of key to this.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (24:24.196)
Yep. Follow the process. Makes sense. all right. So if I I’ve we’ve got somebody listening and they’re thinking, I I’d need to check out Compo Keeper and I’d be interested in maybe being a franchise owner with them. what can the day or what would the day in the life look like if someone’s somebody on boards with you?

Heather Dill (24:42.269)
Yeah, so for our average franchisee, typically most of them are gonna start as an owner operator. They will take on one of two roles. So we want our franchisees to start with two full-time employees. One of those is kind of responsible for the demand engine, the other one’s responsible for the supply engine. So what that looks like is someone will be out in the community building those relationships with referral sources.

visiting prospective clients in their home and doing the care consultations and following up with those particular people. The other person is typically more in the office, answering the phones, recruiting caregivers, doing the interviewing, onboarding, and then make sure that the scheduling is working appropriately. So owners can stick themselves into either of those roles wherever they feel their skills are the strongest. Sometimes people are like, I’m really good at marketing and building relationships. And other times people

Are like, I’m really great at team building and and getting in strong talent into my business. So we don’t mind which role they want to sit themselves in, either is fine. But we do then sometimes have franchisees who don’t want to take into those two roles and want to take on more of a general manager or advisor role. And so they’ll be primarily, you know, just ensuring that the day-to-day is running smoothly, setting goals, ensuring that the team is prepared and has what they need.

But at the end of the day, the owners are not the ones that are out there providing the care. They’re hiring the caregivers to do those types of things, making sure that they’re skilled in all of the areas that they need to be efficient in their roles. But comfort keepers will train you on all of those big pieces of how to how to operate in the either of those roles.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (26:23.074)
Makes sense. And and we know that in-home care is such a lucrative, great business. but with that, what’s your philosophy for operator? Do you allow for semi-involvement or is this a business that really needs to be fully involved?

Heather Dill (26:29.044)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Dill (26:38.863)
We’ll allow it for the right person. It really has to be someone who is a strong candidate that has really, you know, good motivation, very proactive, and can find the right person to manage the day-to-day. Now, obviously, ideally, we would love to see that person kind of build the business and grow the business. I always say no one’s gonna care more about your business than you do. However, it’s possible.

right with the right person, with the right manager, and in ensuring that you’re still maintaining open communication and kind of coaching and guiding them through those those those first few months. But a lot of our franchisees, once they get past that ramp up period and they get more of that stabilization,

then I do see a lot of them stepping back and not being as heavily involved in the day-to-day. And so semi-involved can come pretty quickly after your business gets up and running. We have some some franchise owners that are in it day to day and some that live states away that are semi-retired. It really just depends on what your business is doing, what your goals are and how quickly you want to get to those different pieces.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (27:46.948)
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And and sometimes people get that reversed. They want to start semi-involved and then become let keep their W-2 and then come full time after it gets to a certain point. And oddly enough, it’s the reverse. You need to build an outstanding foundation, know your business inside and out, spend a year or two doing that. And then you can back off and start traveling or or build something else. So it sounds like

Heather Dill (28:10.131)
Right. I mean, it makes sense, right? You know, it’s a risk. Anything that you’re doing where you’re involving your money, you’re investing something, it’s a risk. And I can see where people would hesitate to leave their W two and and risk not having that security net and that safety. But I do sometimes see that slows your growth. and taking that leap of faith and really putting your all into it typically leads to your business growing faster and it getting to the point that you’re comfortable in a lot quicker.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (28:13.945)
Nast.

Pam Currie (28:18.894)
Mm.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (28:29.989)
Yeah.

Heather Dill (28:38.919)
than relying on someone else to do that while keeping your full time job.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (28:43.008)
Especially if you do your due diligence and get with the right brand who has a great training and coaching program, which leads me into my next question. If I decide to go with comfort keepers, what does my ongoing my onboarding training look like?

Heather Dill (28:46.248)
Exactly.

Heather Dill (28:56.755)
Yeah, so I think we do have a very strong new franchisee onboarding path. So one of the very first things that will happen is as soon as you sign on as a franchisee, you will immediately be transitioned over to a manager of new franchisee success. And that specific person is responsible for guiding you through your pre-launch phase. So she has a checklist of all the different action items that need to happen before your doors can open. And we have

Partners set for those steps. We have different teams to help with those items. And all of that kind of leads up to our new franchisee training. And so once you’ve met with your franchise success manager week over week and you’re ready for new franchisee training, which is typically just before you open your doors, it’s a three week program. Some of it’s gonna be online just to learn kind of the core elements of the business.

Pam Currie (29:46.114)
Right.

Heather Dill (29:52.19)
And then you come together with the learning and development team for two weeks of webinars, kind of like this, like we’re doing online. The webinars are two hours each day and expand upon what they learned from their e-learning. And then at the end of those two weeks, they’ll come to our headquarters in Irvine, California for a week of in-person training where they’re physically doing the things that they learned, right? They’ll learn about a care consultation. How do you go into a client’s home and

discover what their needs are and build a care plan that works for them and build that schedule or how do you interview a caregiver and how do you do the onboarding piece of it. So we’ll teach them that, then they’ll be able to physically practice it in person with other new franchisees. So they’re building relationships at the same time that they’re learning about the business. And then they’re ready to open their doors. But that support really doesn’t go away at the end of it. We’re going to continue supporting them throughout the time that they’re a franchisee.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (30:47.944)
So you’ve got your onboarding training, but then you have your ongoing support. If do you wanna add anything to what the ongoing support looks like or?

Heather Dill (30:54.483)
Yeah, so once the business is kind of stable and we’ve we’ve made it through ramp up and they’re in a good spot, then they’ll transition from that new franchisee success manager to their regional director. So the regional director is their dedicated support person. They’ll meet with them at least once every month, but more frequently if they need to. And that person is really tracking to gauge how their business is doing.

Seeing if there’s any trends up or down, if they’re going down, they’ll kind of jump in early and put together an action plan, how to get them back on a growth track. and then they’ll you suc celebrate successes with them and make sure that they’re connected to the franchise or we don’t want them to buy a franchise and then feel like they’re on an island all by themselves. We want them to still feel connected with us, to come to our annual conference, to join our monthly training webinars on different topics.

you know, they get access to a lot of self-help training materials and and really great resources. So we do offer quite a bit of support. but it’s up to the franchisee to kind of lean in and invest in in that support too.

Pam Currie (32:01.314)
Yeah. And taking advantage of the peer exchange of your fellow, all right, fellow franchisees. I’m plugging into that. Mm-hmm. let’s let’s quickly just talk about the numbers, Heather. one of the appeals to this business model is the fact that it is service oriented. You’re not getting into retail brick and mortar, which makes it very affordable. What is the estimated initial investment for a franchisee?

Heather Dill (32:06.493)
Exactly.

Heather Dill (32:27.155)
Yeah, so we estimate that kind of all in investment is between a hundred and nineteen thousand and a hundred and nine ninety thousand. and that includes the franchise fee, which is fifty five thousand dollars, and you know, all the different pieces through your first few months of getting started.

Pam Currie (32:44.416)
And what is your financial performance representation look like?

Heather Dill (32:48.607)
Yeah, so last year in our franchise disclosure document, our franchisees were seeing an average of about one point two seven million per territory. so that’s just one territory operating.

Pam Currie (32:56.942)
Nice.

Pam Currie (33:00.812)
Yeah, that’s per territory, not per franchisee. And like you said earlier, your average franchisee or did you say it has three territories? Was that right? Okay. Yeah. could you explain your royalty structure for our listeners?

Heather Dill (33:09.129)
Yep. Yep.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (33:11.006)
nice.

Heather Dill (33:14.995)
Yeah, so our royalties will start after they’ve been in business for four months. We start collecting in their fifth month. And the royalties are five percent. and so those are collected every single month.

Pam Currie (33:27.586)
Makes sense. And I guess just a quick catch all question. Anything else we should be asking about the business that we have not?

Heather Dill (33:37.14)
I think you guys asked some fantastic questions. So very, very thorough. I would just say, you know, we’ve talked about multi-unit owners, and I don’t want that to scare anyone. You know, we’re not gonna ask a person to come in and buy three territories if they’re not ready for that. we will start at what that person is comfortable with. You know, our process, our franchise development process is kind of self-paced. So, you know, I’m gonna work at your pace. I’m gonna make sure that you’re comfortable, that you’ve got your questions answered.

Pam Currie (33:39.832)
Right.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (33:40.176)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Dill (34:06.857)
I kind of go as at franchise development from, hey, I’ve been here, I’ve experienced this, I’ll share my perspectives with you. And I want I just want you to get your c your questions answered and make sure that you feel aligned to us, that we feel aligned to you. but yeah, if if one territory is where you want to start, fantastic. we do see a lot of people expand over the years. Our franchisees didn’t come in buying three territories, they’ve expanded to those as they’ve, you know, grown in their communities and kind of seen the need to expand.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (34:37.956)
This has been great, Heather. You have been so informative and educational. clearly know what we’re you’re doing. we’re gonna we like to wrap up our show with one final question. So here it is. In closing, what tip would you give to budding entrepreneurs?

Heather Dill (34:41.417)
Okay.

Heather Dill (34:45.237)
Thank you.

Heather Dill (34:55.145)
Say jump in, you know, a lot of times we get scared and we second guess ourselves and we start to have the doubts in our mind that say, well, you know, I it’s a little scary to go out there and start something of my own. So I would say jump in, do your research, be smart about it. ask questions, really make sure that you’re learning everything that you can possibly learn, but don’t be scared to take that jump. The higher you walk up that high dive, the scarier it’s gonna look to jump in.

But I think the nice part about looking at entrepreneurship in a franchise system is that even when you do jump in, there’s gonna be people there to jump in and help you if you need assistance. So, you know, take the risk, move forward and and hopefully everything will work out in the end.

Pam Currie (35:44.398)
Great advice. And I I was just trying to find a quote from Dolly Partons since that is such a relevant topic. she has so many good life messages and quotes. but yeah, but anyway, nonetheless. Yeah, she was. A little tribute there, little tribute to Dolly.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (35:45.562)
Very good.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (35:53.283)
It is

Heather Dill (35:57.845)
She died.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (36:01.144)
She was a great business owner too, wasn’t she? Yeah. Yep, yep.

Pam Currie (36:08.866)
Yeah, so with that, with that being said, I really appreciate you being a guest on the show, Heather. It’s been wonderful having you on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. And to our listeners, if you are considering franchise ownership, reach out and request a free franchise sisters discovery call. We would also like to send you our ebook, Top 10 Questions to Consider Before Investing in a Franchise.

Heather Dill (36:14.901)
Thanks for having me.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (36:35.024)
That’s right, our mission is to help you navigate the franchise selection and buying process through our client-centric align-wise methodology and to put you in a position to make an informed decision with the help of our investigate before you invest toolkit.

Pam Currie (36:50.862)
Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in. Fist bump.

Shari Currie Skjoldager (36:53.764)
This one.