Get ready to elevate your home care agency to new heights! This episode is jam-packed with insights into the game-changing strategies that made waves in 2023, from tapping into the power of a robust online presence to harnessing the community's trust. We delve into the art of setting goals early and creating an actionable roadmap, and maintaining a consistent field presence to keep your home care agency thriving!
Ever wondered how to effectively track your progress and stay motivated to achieve your goals? That's what we're dishing out! Learn about the SMART goal setting framework, the secret sauce to increasing client hours, retaining clients, and unleashing the power of effective marketing. We also dive into the magic ratio of referrals to aim for, and how to turn holiday outreach initiatives into a sales powerhouse.
But that's not all! We're also serving up some innovative ideas to kickstart the New Year on a high note. Find out how you can decrease readmissions in a snap and learn about the often-overlooked benefits of home care for eye health. Plus, get ready to dazzle your referral sources with our creative ideas for custom cards. So, buckle up and get ready to skyrocket your home care agency to success in 2024!
Get ready to elevate your home care agency to new heights! This episode is jam-packed with insights into the game-changing strategies that made waves in 2023, from tapping into the power of a robust online presence to harnessing the community's trust. We delve into the art of setting goals early and creating an actionable roadmap, and maintaining a consistent field presence to keep your home care agency thriving!
Ever wondered how to effectively track your progress and stay motivated to achieve your goals? That's what we're dishing out! Learn about the SMART goal setting framework, the secret sauce to increasing client hours, retaining clients, and unleashing the power of effective marketing. We also dive into the magic ratio of referrals to aim for, and how to turn holiday outreach initiatives into a sales powerhouse.
But that's not all! We're also serving up some innovative ideas to kickstart the New Year on a high note. Find out how you can decrease readmissions in a snap and learn about the often-overlooked benefits of home care for eye health. Plus, get ready to dazzle your referral sources with our creative ideas for custom cards. So, buckle up and get ready to skyrocket your home care agency to success in 2024!
Hi, happy Friday everybody. Let's see rules of the road. So if you haven't been here in a while, are you going to put on your mask?
Speaker 2:I don't know, Should I? I was going to ask if people like to be asked. Yeah for a little while there you go.
Speaker 1:We need to get a screenshot of that. I am your father. So, uh, hold on a second, just leave that on there a minute. Let me get a little little screenshot of this grace, little screenshot of the crazy, all right? So, oh, people are just coming in all over the place here. So, um, yeah, it's our Halloween show. Because we're not going to be around, I guess we're not going to have maybe that week we are, but it'll be after Halloween.
Speaker 2:So yeah, anyway, yeah, so this is it.
Speaker 1:Rules of the road. If you haven't been here in a while or you've never been here, we want you to share your successes, but please keep your line muted if you're not sharing, because we hear, like you know, your drive through chicken McNugget order or your dog's barking, or you'll hear my dogs barking if I don't shut mine off. Ask for help, tips and advice, contribute to the conversation and suggest topics for discussion. We do get a lot of suggestions. Don't be shy. Put it in the chat. Lisa has already said hello, I think, in the chat. So you look where your chat is lit up with a one or a little red thing. Then you can chat in there, ask your questions in there.
Speaker 1:If you want to unmute your line and just yell at us to stop, you can do that too. All right, the private portal is at wwwhomecaremarketingmastermindcom, so I want to get there. You put in the email address of where we not where zoom send you your reminders, but where we send your reminders. Put in that email address and then use whatever password was set or use the forgot password feature. If you're still having trouble, please reach out to us so that we can help you through support. Okay.
Speaker 3:Today is October 20. Where is the time going very, very fast.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So we are going to talk about 2023 reflection. It's important that each year, as the year is coming to an end, I've always done this late, late, late September, early October, somewhere around then to kind of think about what has worked this year, what didn't work and why I think it worked or didn't work. Because how are you going to set goals for next year if you don't really have and I know in home care it's very hard to find the time to just sit I used to say I'd love to stare at a wall for five minutes. There's just so much going on all the time. But it's important that you put this in your calendar and you sit down with yourself, your team, maybe everybody in each department however you're structured and think about how did 2023 go? What do we want 2024 to look like? What was successful and what maybe wasn't? What can we tweak? And then you should set your goals. This is the time to start thinking about finishing this year strong and setting goals for next year so that next year starts off on the right foot. And then, of course, we have a lot of December and January handouts. Lisa, my God, she's like the lead behind queen. You guys are going to love all of the things that she's created for you, right? So 2023 reflection we did send out an email I think it was Thursday it's kind of late before we sent this out, but we did get a few responses back and if you guys want to chime in, you know I'm going to share these two and then we're going to give you some time to chime in on what worked, maybe. What did you need help with, what could have been better and why. And then, of course, we had a lot of time to spend time each year doing this. So someone sent in. We hit our billing goals for two quarters so far this year. And then, of course, why did that? Why were you successful with that? They said we spent more time out in the community and set goals early this year with action steps. So that's great. So the last quarter is not over. So I don't know if they're going to hit their last quarter numbers or not, but two out of three so far is really really good.
Speaker 3:You absolutely have to have a field presence in this industry. It's all about trust. It's all about that face to face time with those social workers, assisted living communities all over, wherever you're going. They need that face to face and they need consistency. They need to see you a lot. So I'm not surprised that they spent more time out in the community, that that worked for them. And then they set the goals. You have to set goals and you have to be watching where you're at with these goals every week. If you wait for two, three months to go by, you can't go back and fix whatever didn't work out those two to three months. You have to be looking at this weekly so that you know if you're hitting it or you're not hitting it and you can take action one way or the other to correct if you need to.
Speaker 3:Another one we were able to hire enough caregivers to keep up. This year we got rid of the wait list. Oh, that's exciting. Why were they successful? They said they spent more time on the ads and set up interviews faster, which led to faster hiring. So again, when you break down your goals, you're going to want to look at all of the steps and caregiver ads. If you want to hire more caribers, you got to look at those ads. What are you saying in the ads? And you do need to move the caregivers faster. That just I mean. You're not going to vet them, but they are very much in the now people. They're in the moment, they live in the moment. If they want to work now and they've applied now, you got to get them through your process quickly. So I'm not surprised that this you know. They got them through faster. They spent more time on the ads. I'm not surprised that they were successful in this area.
Speaker 3:Does anybody else have a reflection, something that they want to share? We do have. We have one more to share with you about somebody being in the field and not necessarily getting the referrals that they were hoping for. Is there anybody else that wants to share something that worked, didn't work? This is why we ask ahead of time, because a lot of times nobody wants to share. Nobody wants to. I love talking to people, so I talk and talk, but I know most people don't. That's fine. You can put it in the chat too. You don't have to talk. I'm going to keep going, but if you raise your hand, put it in the chat, unmute yourself if you want to talk about something that work didn't work.
Speaker 2:I know of some successes this week, but I'm not going to call them out if they don't want to.
Speaker 3:I don't want to share, well, just share what happened and don't tell us who it is.
Speaker 2:We have someone who's in our home care sales and marketing program and was able to get out in the field, and the first day of getting out in the field was able to get in, have a great conversation and get lots of information with the person that mattered and is on a talking basis. I think that they got their first referral right after we got off the phone. I know who you're talking about. The juju is just flowing and I'm super excited because we've been working a lot together and so it's been awesome to see the fruits.
Speaker 3:I'm so happy I know who you're talking about and this person wasn't thrilled about going out into the field. We'll just look at that. Then they did, and they had a success First time too. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a tough kid getting out in the field, but it's well worth it.
Speaker 3:The more comfortable you feel. And I think there's still days, though, even though I did it for years and years and years, and there would be a day I'd get up and I'm like I really am not feeling this today. How am I going to do this today? When you feel like that, you go to the places where they love you and you let them help you get your mood going. The senior centers always love to see you. Independent living always love to see you and you just talk to them for a while and then it comes in. You feel like going out there again. Here is one that isn't a bad thing. Their efforts are turning into billing.
Speaker 3:Our marketer seems to be fairly popular. She gets calls for help with co-marketing, helping with activities. She has set up and runs a dementia support group at one of the SNFs assisted living facilities. She does the Alzheimer's Walk Committee. She seems really busy, but we aren't getting that many referrals or calls. I see this happen a lot and what I can tell you is you're halfway there, it's great that she's networking, it's great that she's out there, it's great that she knows people, and when you're involved like this and you're in deep, you feel it. You know that something great's about to happen.
Speaker 3:So there's a couple of things here. One she may not be in these buildings. The support groups for one. That's a great idea, but that's usually something you do with the activities director. The activities director typically is not going to refer to you. So it's important. It's great that she's doing the dementia support groups, but she needs to make sure that she involves the social worker in the SNF and assisted living. It's the director of nursing. We want to make sure the right people are seeing her efforts in what she's doing. So if they've not been invited to the dementia support group or maybe there's a lead behind she can give them so they know that she's doing this. Maybe she has the activities director. Help her to talk to the social worker or the director of nursing. If she hasn't had that opportunity, whoever she's doing the support groups with can help her get to the right people in the building. So it's great that she's doing these things, but you have to make sure that you're talking to the right person in these buildings. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 3:The second thing is you have to ask for the business. There are five impressions you must go through with every person that you're marketing to business development what you're doing out there in the field. There are five impressions you have to go through to get those referrals. We have a training program. It's a great video training. Go at your own pace If anybody's interested in that. It's 12 hours of video training. We walk through all of that.
Speaker 3:But what's very hard for salespeople is that last step, because you've built a foundation. Hopefully you've laid a very strong foundation, a relationship in which they can say to you hey, your caregiver was here and she was dressed terribly, or she's not being nice to my staff, and that your relationship is going to survive, that that they feel comfortable enough that they can say that to you and you're going to fix it and it's not going to ruin anything. That's the kind of foundation you need, and the five impressions help you get there. The last thing, though, that's the hardest for people, is to ask for the business, because it's like, oh, but we're friends. This is uncomfortable, right, it's hard, but what's great about this industry is you're not trying to sell them something they don't need. You're not trying to sell them a Lamborghini. You're not trying to sell them something that they don't need. You're just directing the referral A social worker to skilled nursing facilities.
Speaker 3:She's got seniors discharging. They're going to need home care anyway. You're just saying choose my company and not this company. This company, this company, they need your service. You're just directing the referral and when you think about it that way, it takes the heat off a little bit and that uncomfortableness off a little bit. So one make sure she's seeing the right people in the buildings, and we have all of that in the training program too. Number two she's got to start asking for the business. It's great and wonderful. People will use you as a resource all day long. I used to call Bingo on Saturdays and I did it, and I did it, and I did it and nothing was happening. And I'm like I think we feel like, well, it should just turn into referrals. It doesn't work that way. I had to then talk about that with the social worker. The activities director didn't really even work much with the social worker on the Saturday that I was there. The Saturday activities director was not the same person that was there during the week, so there were a lot of disconnects.
Speaker 3:No wonder it wasn't turning into a referral. So I had to figure out. I'm in the building, everybody in the building knows me now because I'm here on Saturdays. I had to get with that social worker and talk to her about what I was doing and the Bingo, and this is what we do. It helps you to get in the door by participating in events in the building, but it's not gonna get the referral unless you're talking to the right people. Anybody have any questions? That's something in the chat. Is that just everybody? Oh, okay, all right, we're good. All right, I'm gonna keep moving on Goals.
Speaker 3:So the goals important. Set an annual goal, break the goal down into pieces and then figure out what your steps are to reach the goal. Goals must be smart. That means they must be specific who, what, where, when, why, which. They must be measurable. They must be attainable. You don't wanna be doing 200,000 a year in billing and now it's gonna be 5.5 million next year. I mean that's probably. I mean I guess it could happen. But the goals need to be attainable. If they're too far out there, your staff isn't gonna even try because it's just too far out there Needs to be relevant and timely.
Speaker 3:So the way that I always took care of this is I would pick goals for each department or function of your business. So you have sales, you have recruiting retention, you have your scheduling department, you have HR compliance, you might have a quality control department, people out in the field doing, you know, those field supervisory visits. So I just picked sales for now, and if I wanted to pick maybe one of my sales goals, maybe you pick one goal for each department or function, or maybe three or four for each department or function. Don't go crazy. You've got 20 goals to hit and each. You know it becomes so much work just to track the goals that nobody even wants to deal with it. So make sure you keep it simple.
Speaker 3:So one you could do for sales would be billing your annual. What is your annual billing goal? Choose what that is, but you need to be looking at it weekly. So then figure out what's your weekly run rate. You just take that annual billing, divide it by 52 weeks. That's your weekly run rate. That's the goal. What are the steps to get to that weekly run rate? Your marketer person in the field, who's ever out there full-time? If they're full-time, they should be making 40 to 50 stops a week. You should also have a strong online presence SEO. From those two things you should be getting five to seven referrals a week. That is, your marketing stops physically and your strong online presence. Five to seven referrals a week should be coming in from those things. From those referrals, 70% of them should be booked for assessments and 90% of those assessments should be signed.
Speaker 3:You also can increase your billing by retaining your current clients. What are you doing to retain them? Are we checking in with them? Are we doing supervisory visits as a scheduling department? Talking to the adult children often? You can also increase current client hours by a certain percent. You can decide what these percentages should be Clients we don't want them to decline all the time, but sometimes they do.
Speaker 3:Sometimes, many times, they don't sign up for enough hours to begin with. Sometimes it's all you can do to get them to sign up for three days a week and you know they need seven. But it's baby steps with some people. It's better to sign them up and have them be safe three or four days a week than not safe at all and you just work into the seven days. Some people need to get comfortable and see that it's really okay. So increasing current client hours by a certain percentage also helps to increase your sales in your billing.
Speaker 3:So you get your annual billing goal, your weekly run rate, and then you choose the steps that are gonna help you get here, and then you check it every single week. Where are we at? So in this situation? Going back to our example, maybe they aren't hitting their annual billing goal or their weekly run rate. So if that's not happening, if your weekly run rate you're not hitting it you're not hitting it week after week after week you're not even getting close. You need to look at the steps in the process.
Speaker 3:Am I making the 40 to 50 stops? I would say yes, this marketer probably is doing that. Do I have a strong online presence, seo? I'm not sure who sent this in. I'm hoping they're a client and yes, they do. Are they getting five to seven referrals a week? Probably not. This is probably where the process has broken right here, and so you need to go back and figure out. Why am I not getting referrals? Maybe I'm not being effective in the marketing, and we already talked about that.
Speaker 3:Let's say, though, that they are getting five to seven referrals a week. Let's say everything's going really well, but they're still not hitting their weekly run rate. They've got the five to seven referrals. They're doing the 40 to 50 marketing. They've got the strong online presence. They're not hitting the run rate. Maybe their booking ratio is not good. Maybe they've gotten five to seven referrals but they're only booking three. They're 30%, not 70. Or maybe they booked 70% but they're not at a 90% assessment. Maybe they're only signing half the clients they go out to sign. So by breaking it down like that, you can quickly find out where in the process are we broken? What area do I need to fix so we hit that weekly run rate? Any questions? Nope, quite group today.
Speaker 3:Okay, we're gonna get into leave behinds. This is the fun. We wanted to make sure we had a lot of time for this, but you can still ask questions or give us examples and we will talk about them. We've already talked about home care and hospice month, so I'm not gonna dig into this one, probably any of the ones in November. It's already October 20th. I hope the pumpkin decorating went well for everybody. I hope that you got some referrals out of that, and so we're gonna go into leave behinds.
Speaker 3:We do have a quick question what do you mean by run rate? So run rate is just what you're billing every single week. So if you take your annual billing and divide it by 52, then that's how much you should be billing every single week. I know some people maybe you don't bill your clients every week, maybe it's every other week, but the run rate is just the rate that you're running in the moment. So if you're billing weekly, your weekly run rate would be divided by 52. So I hope that answers your question.
Speaker 3:But looking at it every single time you bill is gonna be important, because if you're not hitting that number, you're gonna have to take action now. It's not gonna do you any good six months from now. I mean, it's not gonna hurt to take action six months from now, but the chances of you hitting your annual goal are gonna be a lot slimmer if you're not taking care of it as you go. Okay, so November leave behinds we had lots of great ones. Please go back and take a look at these. We've done several videos where we've talked about how to do all the November handouts leave behinds and I'm gonna turn it over to Lisa for her wonderful December stuff. Go ahead, lisa.
Speaker 2:Hey, hey. So I wanted to keep that momentum going where you're out in the community and just getting in where you can at facilities and communities and bringing some fun to them. So I think, taking something like this out to just pick a couple, you don't wanna dedicate too much time or resources, but let's do crafting cookies and take out all the stuff that you need table disposable stuff what did I say disposable yet festive table covers, scissors, in case you're using piping bags and be able to open that up and let the community, let the people that work there too, all the staff, anyone who lives there, let them sit around and do some cookies for the day. They can keep them, they can give them out to their grandchildren, whatever it is. Just be out there and just giving Mac a little bit, having some fun, and maybe take some hot cocoa. This little setup right here. I did an open house one time in December and I kinda had a little setup like this and we had cocoa, we had cookies, we had lots of fun, I had my little blow up stuff, I had the Grinch and some other stuff and it was a lot of fun and a lot of people turned out and it was a blast. I wish I had pictures, but I don't but definitely something to keep that momentum going.
Speaker 2:So if you wanted to make your own cookies, we have some cookie recipes that I snatched off the internet there. But here's this is for sugar cookies. It makes like 200 or something like that. So if you had the time, you and your family wanted to maybe set something up like this. It probably is a little less expensive doing it this way, but you can bake cookies, take them out and share and enjoy. And then I also did a gingerbread man cookie recipe.
Speaker 2:I think this one takes a little more time, but it's such such funny. Your cookie cutter's out and you just have a blast Also have royal icing. So if you want to do this all yourself, here it is, here are the recipes. You can go out and buy all this stuff and make it yourself If you want a DIY. If you don't want a DIY, you can go out to your local grocery store that has a bakery, and they do have ready-made stuff, but you can go and talk to the bakers behind the scenes and ask them what kind of leeway time do you need to get 200 cookies or what have you? And they'll usually get that going for you, and they also have icing and sprinkles and sanding sugar there too if you run out. But I know Dawn used to go and talk to the bakery all the time and get sugar cookies galore to go do things like that they would if you tell them what you're doing.
Speaker 3:I've even had them just donate. I've had them just hand me 200 sugar cookies. I show them my badge, I show them my business card. I'm going to an assisted living facility. We're gonna decorate, we'll talk about fries, the grocery store while I'm there. If you have a card, you want me to. And I've had several grocery stores just donate cookies to me, like I mean, I've never gone. Personally, I've always kind of wanted to eat them, but for this purpose though, I've had them donate. So don't try ask, it's not gonna hurt.
Speaker 2:All they can do is say oh, Close mouth, don't get fed.
Speaker 3:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:So I made this little handout just with the season and the cookies and the thought that we could use this kind of multi-purpose here. Your one smart cookie thinks are choosing us to get patients safely home for the holidays. I think that really plays on just discharges in general. Getting home for the holidays is who doesn't want to be home? You know family and all that good stuff. So I thought that we could put together some cookie stuff this would go out to. Maybe, like you could take this to your caregivers and your like bigger referral sources, because it's just gets a little more on the pricey side, but not too bad.
Speaker 2:Get some mason jars, decorate them up. You can even print like something like this out as a sticker and slap it on the mason jar. We've got cookie cutters and bells and bows and holly and everything, so I think those look really beautiful. Just imagine them with like cookie cookie mix it's like almost instant cookie mix and some sprinkles on the top and here you go. So you don't have anything you have to do or look for, I've got it all here for you. You can go and get a whole bunch of mason jars I think this has. This is like 20 for 28 bucks, not too bad. You can pour literally one of these in each, and then you can put poor little sprinkles on the top, and I've seen to like these little vintage. What is it? Christmas light ornament things. They're clear and you can. I've seen people pour sprinkles in there too and add it to the mason jar, and I think that's super cute too.
Speaker 3:I did do this one year we had. So we decided to do referral sources and caregivers, and so we went to Costco and bought the flour, the sugar in huge amounts and we sat in assembly line. It was quite a project. We did, I think, 600 of them, and we did the flour, the sugar, the whatever and with our little recipe on the side and the smart cookie. I love how she tied that to the business line, letting us help you get them home for the holidays safely. So, anyway, you just put the little recipe on the side too and you give in. The caregivers at our winter party came and they each got one, and then the referrals are.
Speaker 3:And I'm telling you this went off really, really well, but I don't know that I would suggest doing it like homemade. I would probably go this route now. And we figured out, did we figure out, like these ounces Like these are eight ounce jars and this is 6.25 ounces per bag and fill up the top with the sprinkles, like she has shown? You know, you can put sprinkles on the top to fill up just a little bit. That's left, or M&Ms or I don't know something, but it really went over well. I think it just really shows your heart and it's creative and fun and probably nobody else is going to do something like this. Loved it.
Speaker 2:Loved this and it does have that. They have like red and green M&Ms and minis and you can put on top too. Those are cute too.
Speaker 3:And they can throw them on top of the cookies when they're done.
Speaker 3:And they told me then they shared with me. Oh, my grandchildren came over and they wanted to bake and I just don't want to do that, I'm tired, and she goes. And I remember the jar you gave me and so we even had, like this we had tied a cookie cutter on the outside and so she had everything I needed. I just needed to throw eggs and butter and butter I mean in this I think it's just eggs and maybe oil, I don't even know. It's some water, and they did made them and she's like it was a wonderful activity that I did with my grandkids. So she remembered that and it's just a very thoughtful thing to do so.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's just pretty and cute and shiny and sparkly, just like the holidays, yeah, okay, the next, sorry, next slide. Oh, I'm frozen. Oh, you're frozen. Okay, I don't see anything, okay.
Speaker 3:The next slide are the cookie cutters. So these are 15 cookie cutters for 7.99. So you can tie those on the outside of the mason jar and just make it look really cute with this year One smart cookie. Thank you for choosing us to get patients safely home for the holidays. So I love to tie the leave behinds to the business, right? You're talking about cookies and the holidays. You're also talking about how you're going to help people get home safely for the holidays. And Lisa's got some great ribbon and some candy canes. You could tie candy cane to the outside and really make this look festive and fun. She's even got some kitchen Gosh. You really went great with this, lisa. I hate that you can't see it.
Speaker 2:I can see now. I can see it now. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, these are was like gosh. Well, if you're doing something special for a special referral source, you could like make a little basket or fill up your little brown bags or white bags and just make it really cute with lots of ribbon and a little. I like the home for the holidays, because if you go back to the cookie that is exactly what you said, yeah especially home for the holidays. So I was like, oh my God, it all works.
Speaker 2:So I just thought it was really cute Put it all together and I think, for a referral source I'd really really love this and remember you after that. Absolutely. Oh okay, we're on to the we're already there.
Speaker 3:So I've done this campaign. I probably did it for six solid years and I actually had a couple of referral sources after I left my last job say they didn't do this this year. I'm devastated because I wasn't there anymore. So, anyway, this is really fun. It's a. I would say out of all the things I've ever done, this is probably the one that brought me the most business. It's a great way to finish the year strong and for people to know who you are when the new year starts.
Speaker 3:So what you're going to do we have several designs for you. You can see them all here. We will make sure you have a link to all of them. You're going to put your logo and a little statement up here in the right hand corner and your phone number. Make sure the statement doesn't say anything about keeping seniors home, because this is going to go to assisted living facilities and other places. We don't want to insult anybody. What you're going to do is you're going to take these to the schools starting in November and you're going to ask them if they would like to participate. You can send them the files through email if you want. Some schools are low on paper, so I would always print them and bring them in done. I would print them maybe I don't know 50 of each design, depending on how much they want to participate.
Speaker 3:Kids from the age of probably kindergarten all the way through sixth grade will do this. They each get this. The teachers love this because it keeps people busy when others are working on whatever they're working on. You give them the whole month of November to work on this. The child's going to put in their first name, only their age, their grade in school and a special message to a senior, and then you're going to go back to the schools. You're going to give the school a deadline. I made a mistake the first year. I did not give the school a deadline and it was a disaster. Make sure they have a deadline. All of these need to be done, maybe before Thanksgiving, maybe before they leave for Thanksgiving. That's probably a safe bet.
Speaker 3:You get them all back. They're all colored and beautiful and I'm telling you, the kids, the things they put in these messages and you can tell kindergarten's got real big letters. The things that they say in these messages are so touching. Some are funny, some are quirky. Either way, it's a really beautiful thing to do. You get them all back and then, starting December 1st, you go out when you're doing your marketing stops and you ask them would you like some of these? I've let them, they've let me walk through the halls in a skilled nursing facility and hang these up in every patient's room. Show it to them, talk to them, hang it up in their room. This might be all they get for the whole holiday season. Is this one little? It's bringing the kids together with the seniors. It's very touching. It shows your heart.
Speaker 3:People love this. I had somebody I cannot remember was a gentleman, one of our clients, last year and he said you know, I'm telling you, go big, do 200, do 500, do a lot, because people are going to love this. And I think he said he did like 150, got them back and he went to an assisted living facility and they took them all. They didn't have any more. They wanted them all and it was because they were using them and I've had them do this for me too in several places. When they had their holiday meal as a group. They said it with a lot of times they'll bring the family members into. They set it down next to their plate and they used it like as a table setting for everybody. Everyone will use it in their own way, but I would say by far this was the most popular campaign and I got the most referrals just after from doing this one. It was very special, very heartwarming and everybody's in the holiday spirit and it's just a really fun one to do too and it really helped us with referrals as well.
Speaker 3:We've got some questions. Let's see how can we edit the picture and put our business logo. So we're going to send the slide deck to you and there aren't Google links now, but there will be a Google link. You click on the Google link and then you go to file, make a copy and then you make your own copy and then you can edit the logo. What you say here in the phone number. The rest of this is kind of frozen, but that's okay because you want all of this to be frozen, just this top right hand corner. You'll be able to change and make it your own. Oh, lisa, there's a link at the bottom. She answered here in Canva. Okay, it will be a Google link. Probably. I don't have these in Canva, but it's just really fun. So I hope everyone will participate in this, I promise you, you will not regret participating in this.
Speaker 3:It's a little more work, but the benefit of it is definitely worth it, I promise. So finish strong. Take advantage of the holidays. We're here at the end of the year. You had your pumpkin decorating contest or Halloween. You can always come up with something to do to get them to come out of their office and see you. The thankful poster that is one of the slides in here. We talked about it several times in different masterminds. And then the winter coloring pages. Those three things are a very strong way to finish the year and get in front of them, and a lot of people don't market as much towards the end of the year.
Speaker 3:I just don't know why I always use that time to get in and get in front of people. People are on vacation. They're doing their own thing. You have more time with them. There's more face-to-face time during the holidays too, so use these holidays to your advantage and get in front of your social workers, assisted living facilities and everybody else. Here's one January leave behind and Lisa's done a bunch after this one. I'll go through this one just a little bit.
Speaker 3:Let us help you bring in the new year with less readmissions. This is for skilled nursing facilities. About this time of year, they're starting to get lectured from their corporate office. Your readmissions are too high. And if you don't know what a readmission is, I don't know the exact terminology if you're to look it up, but basically it means that somebody has left the hospital or a skilled nursing facility, maybe for a broken hip, I don't know. If they come back within 30 days with that same problem, some complication with this broken hip, that's a readmission. When they come back to the hospital or skilled nursing facility, medicare is not going to pay fully for that person. This time it's going to come out of the facility, the hospital's budget. They have to pay for a portion of it, or they're just not going to get reimbursed at 100% or whatever percentage Medicare normally reimburses. They're not going to do it because it's a readmission. So you can see, then, how home care reduces readmissions, right, because if they come home with a caregiver with a hip replacement, the odds of them falling are less. The odds of them re-injuring themselves are less because they have help at home. And so the fact that you're bringing this around right around the new year, talking about just the fact that you know what a readmission is, is a big deal, but home care is going to help reduce the readmissions. And this is top of mind for them because the corporate office is telling them you've got to get your readmission rate down. It's too high.
Speaker 3:So you can use this in the hospitals, you can use this in skilled nursing facilities and you attach it to a bag and inside the bag we have glasses to celebrate the new year. So these are cardboard. You get 12 of them for $10.99. They're probably not the best quality, you know, it depends on how much you want to spend. I have more expensive ones on the next slide. But they'll wear these around the facility that they work in. They'll wear them on New Year's Eve night. Maybe they give them to their kids. It's just something fun to put in the bag to tie in the new year and reducing the readmissions. We also have some that are made of plastic or PC material. It says they're a little more expensive, though. You get eight pair for $18.99. So you can go and do whichever. Give some. You know, maybe you do this in some places and you do this in others, but this is a great way to tie again the business to what's going on with seasons. All right, lisa, you're up, love it.
Speaker 2:So here's the poppin' into the new year, woo-hoo. So I think that this would be really cute just to take in, with probably some popcorn. But yeah, this is really good, take it into any facility, any community you're going in, just to let them know that you're here, you're here for the new year and you want them to be successful in all that jazz Couple of different options. Just, you know, baggies. You can wrap lots of the leftover Christmas ribbon you can use to wrap this, pour some popcorn in that bad boy. You can even put some candy in there and call it a day Popcorn in oh, I just lost.
Speaker 3:I was thinking candy corn, but that's more, that's more Halloween. That's not going to work. This is Christmas Caramel caramel popcorn or cheddar popcorn.
Speaker 4:Yeah, all of that Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely love that I was thinking about something I wanted to tie in health too. So eye care, keep your vision. You know it's glaucoma awareness month, which I don't think I never hear anyone talk about. So I was like take care of our eyes. How often do we just sit and stare at a screen, or even on our cell phones, and how often do we have an eye exam and protect our eyes with sunglasses and other Like? When I'm on my computer all day, I wear glasses that keep that blue light out of my eyes. So I just thought that we could tie it in with our caregivers are trained and understand that the safety risks of eyesight loss will help your patients navigate home safely.
Speaker 2:And so, taking this in, I mean there's lots of people, I mean the percentage I forgot I should have put it in here, but percentage is great of how many people are losing their eyesight. And glaucoma just doesn't really have a lot of symptoms. You just kind of start to lose it, you lose your peripheral a little bit and then it's just you're. There's no turning back, you know. So it speaks. So I thought this was something that was kind of overlooked a little bit. Just that, oh, the cute little eye mask to relax, because you do need to relax the eyes and then a message for someone like on a bracelet, you can go customize these for not that expensive, you know. I just thought you know, step away from your computer, I care. And then ABC home care, you know, I care, get it Like I care, but I care so, and you can customize this anyway you want. But just telling your referral source, you know, step away for a few minutes, take a break, take a breather, take care of your eyes and we'll take care of your patients, you know that are having issues with their eyes too, and you can bag it all up in a little cute bag like that too and attach your collateral there On that, yeah, and then I was thinking, oh gosh, what else do we think of when we're coming into the new year? Resolutions eating right, so eat well, feel well and let them know.
Speaker 2:I used to have people ask for meal plans all the time. Well, all I really want is your caregiver to create a meal plan and freeze some stuff and this and that ended up being more. But you know, our caregivers are trained in special diets and preparing nutritious, healthy meals. We can create a meal plan based on your discharge plan, maintaining their healthy dietary needs with balance. I mean, boom, that's like wow, you don't even think about that. Like, what are they going to eat once they're out? And you're not, you're no longer making sure that they're having this. You know they're keeping up to exactly what they need to be. So I think this is one of those things that kind of, too, gets overlooked a little bit. So I want you guys to go out and share that with your communities and your resources, because, hey, that's a big thing, knowing that they're being taken care of once they leave.
Speaker 2:Oh, and then you know, I used to go out and use cuties in a different way. I used to go out to the hospitals and things and I used to say what would I say? I want to see you be healthy. Here's some vitamin C or something like that, something corny, but it worked right. And I would, you know, just kind of trial law law this was before COVID trial law law through the hospital leaving you know, little snacks and treats, because you know it's good for you, it's healthy and it's it's great. And I think that a little presentation, you could get these little boards here. I just threw in a whole bunch of different fruits and stuff. But I mean you get the idea you could do something like that for a bigger referral source. Or you know just a couple, a couple of little cuties, or even those little bags of cuties. This is just a five pound version of that, but you can go in your store and probably find you know something a little less expensive, especially during the season.
Speaker 3:Great, these are all really great. Are we going to? We got through fast. We have any questions? We want to make sure we had time for the leaf behinds and we really did get through quickly. Anybody have any questions or anything that they anything they thought of that work didn't work. Any questions about goal setting?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Any questions about stuff that you might want to talk about for the new year, for 2024? I know there's some things that we talked about last year at the end of 2023 that really relate to every year. So, yeah, I mean, I think you know you did KPIs and what that means and how to look forward into 2024. Maybe we've already done that, but I think that's a good one for next year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we can get into KPIs. Sharon's asking what is the link to access the leaf behinds. So you're going to get an email from Valerie letting you know that everything's been loaded to the portal, the mastermind portal, and you can get into the portal to get the leaf behinds. And, Valerie, don't you send them? Do you send them the Google links too, or is it just the?
Speaker 1:I send them this presentation and a PDF. I send everybody, okay. So here's what happens if you check your email, including spam, so once I have the recording up inside the portal and I posted in our Facebook group so if you haven't joined our Facebook group, it's just for our mastermind group you can also see all of this there, the replay, the video and all the files. So what happens is I send out an email after I get the file all loaded in and edited and I say you can either go to Facebook and find it there in our Facebook group. Both the video and this PDF of this PowerPoint presentation and the links are live in that PDF. So you can just click on the links in that PDF.
Speaker 1:And the other thing is inside of our portal. If you go there and you log in and you go to this date, you'll see the links to everything there. So you have lots of. You know there's lots of ways to get to all of this, but if you haven't joined, do we have the link to our? What's the link to our Google, I mean our Facebook group? Do I take that out of this presentation? Let me see if it's in here. It might be the last slide, but I might have removed it.
Speaker 3:I thought it was in the first one, didn't we put it in the Goodness?
Speaker 4:A lot of slides here, no.
Speaker 3:It's not Okay. Okay, so maybe send out the Facebook link this time too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me, let me go get the Facebook link for everybody, okay.
Speaker 3:And I wanted to show you guys. So if you get the slide deck, you'll have this whole slide deck. This is the Google link. You click on it and it takes you and you can swap out the logo and the contact information right here. There's also a candle link. If you want to get really creative, you can edit the template and you can change the colors and the wording in here too. So there's two ways to do it.
Speaker 3:And then to get into the mastermind portal, just so you have an idea of what it looks like. You click on it and it'll be so. This is to 2023, january, february. It will be. Everything's in there Right after this one. So, like last time, this was it. The PDF is here. I mean, valer's gonna send you the PDF, but if you can watch the video again here and the PDF is here, so you click on it and there it is. And so anything that is hyperlinked in here, like we had October, the Google links they're all hyperlinked, so you just click on it and it takes you right to the document so you can make your edits. So that's how you get in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so also. I just put the link to the Facebook group in the side of the chat. So if you go to the chat right now, you can see the link to our Facebook group and if you have to request access, because we only want our members to be in there. But if you request access, then we'll let you in.
Speaker 3:So you can just copy and paste or just click right on it right now, before we leave and request access to the Facebook group.
Speaker 2:Ooh, we have someone who wants to share.
Speaker 4:Oh good, yeah, this is me, rebecca. Hi, I wanted to share a couple of things I was trying to think because I saw the email earlier this morning. But one of the things that was really nice was I know you guys do, or I don't know if everyone knows, that you do our newsletters for us and we had one of the directors of the agency of what do you call it, the agency on aging. He's very highly respected in the area and a few times more than probably three times he had forward not the whole newsletter but the link to the blog to all his contacts. He's done like a massive blog Wow nice.
Speaker 4:And he has said this is a worth reading article from Care With Love and he would put the link there. And that was like huge, because he's highly respected. He goes to all the networking events. He's been in the area for a long time, so I have thanked him personally, but I don't know if I have shared that with you guys, but I thought that's amazing. I like that. I don't know that we saw necessarily a referral out of that, but it's just all the little things that mount up to being to our brand being more recognized, to our quality of service being more recognized by the community. So that was a huge thing.
Speaker 4:Another thing the pumpkin decorating. We're in the midst of that. This month. We have already received a couple of pumpkin decorations that look really good. Every year they're stepping it up. Oh boy, I even had one of our account managers text me yesterday and said can I give a few pumpkins to one community? Apparently they want to do something really big this year and I was like, yes, give them a watch. You know like so it's. I know you said, dawn, that some of this promotions every year you know people ask about. We definitely have had this happening with the pumpkin decorating and I can see, like you know, after the 15th we're definitely getting a lot more excitement about it.
Speaker 3:Oh, good, good, so we'll have a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4:So we'll see. The other thing is we this year we have ordered the turkeys, the stressful turkeys. We wanted to do that last year but the timing didn't work out. We needed more time. So we have. We have that ready to go. So I'm so thankful for your information ahead of time because that helped us to order them a month ago. We're ready to receive them, I have them in the office and I'll sort them out before the beginning of November for all the account managers. So we're excited. I'll let you know how that goes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're going to love them. They absolutely love these, and you probably. I mean, we ordered a lot and we just didn't have it. Everybody wanted one of those little turkey butt right, their little butt, yeah, and they get them out of the drawer every year and you'll see them sitting on the desk. It's just wild.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm excited to do that one. So I'm thankful that you guys are doing all this information ahead of time that really helps us to be able to order things and prepare ahead of time and that way where we have margin for the last minute things that happen every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, then that does come up and you might think about doing the coloring pages too, because it actually, you know, did even better than the pumpkin decorating. I know that's more involved, for sure, but just do a small just to see how it goes, like me.
Speaker 4:I'm encouraged to do it. We didn't do it last year, even though we did do the edits on all of them, but then we kind of ran out of time. But after hearing you today, I'm encouraged to do it this year and see how it goes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, do it small scale the first year. You'll wish you did more, probably, but still start somewhere and just see, see how it goes for you, but it was always a big hit. That's so much. So, rebecca, yeah, you're having some great things and it's great too If you are a client and we're sending out your newsletters. If Lisa hasn't already called you to tell you this, you need lots of contacts. We need lots and lots, and Lisa's the one that's going to call you and tell you you only have, you know, 200 people getting your newsletter.
Speaker 3:Look what happened with the area agency on the chain for Rebecca, like you just never know. So the more contacts you have, the more people get that newsletter. The more people you're in front of you know and you also get that website traffic. When they click on that blog they go to your website. You get the traffic. There's a contact us form there call to action. So it's just going to increase your visibility and the chances that you get a call.
Speaker 3:Sharon's asking when dropping off coloring pages of schools, do you take them to the front office so you can call? I called the schools ahead of time and some people are like sure, bring them down. You know it's usually the front office that you're dealing with and some say, well, let me talk to a few teachers and give me a call back tomorrow. You know, or can you send me an email about this? Every school's going to be a little bit different.
Speaker 3:If I was just driving, sometimes I'd see a school and just walk in and say, hey, do you want to part? And I'm going to explain it to them. Do you want to participate? I've not ever had a teacher not want to do it. I mean like it's busy work and it's fun work and it's easy to do and some kids will do four or five of them because they just get their work done really fast and they can say corner and get it done. But I can't stress enough, they have to have a deadline because, my goodness, we didn't do the deadline and I was picking up coloring pages.
Speaker 3:You know December 15th and December 9th and it's just, it's not too late, but you don't want the stress of that. It would be best get them all out the first of November, pick them up maybe right before Thanksgiving and then hit the roads first of December with all skilled nursing facilities. We gave them out to our clients too. Our clients loved them. You know, when we were doing our field visits we would give them one and they thought it. They loved it too. The clients loved it. So I hope that answers your question.
Speaker 2:Any any I have oh yeah, sorry, I have some people that are a little shy behind the scenes. So Junie, with a caring touch, and Tom Yer went to a couple of different communities and they actually sent us a ton of pictures of the pumpkin decorating and they just had a blast. I mean they made a day of it at two different places or three different places, I can't remember exactly. But they just said thank you so much for the ideas, and you know they wouldn't have really thought of it or been able to put it together. It was a huge success, and maybe next mastermind will share pictures. I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, everyone share your pictures with us. I did see some of theirs and they did look like they took full advantage of this. It's just one. They're very, very involved. I loved everything. I saw all the pictures but, yeah, we need to put them in mastermind and share them for everybody, definitely. I do have one coloring page somewhere here. I'm gonna probably screenshot it and I'll have it. Valerie, she can add it to your email because it's just so cute. I only have one left. I wish I would have kept a lot of them. They're just, it's just so endearing. You guys will just.
Speaker 3:The Christmas spirit is just the winter holidays, whatever you wanna call it. It's just in full motion with these coloring pages. It's really, really fun. Even the staff got into it. They all hung them up in their little cubbies and the longer they were with the cubby they left them up there all year and then the next year would come and they'd get another one. You know some of them had four or five pictures from children up in their little cubby for all the time they've been with the company. So it's a great one. Well, I guess, if nobody has anything else we're about, I'm glad we didn't have to rush through this time and I hope to leave behind the group that's happy about them, excited about them. I think that they're all, lisa, really just like we were working on this yesterday and this morning there were three more. I'm like what have you? But you were up all night. It felt like she was wanting to say this little help for us.
Speaker 2:It was. I was just get a get her done.
Speaker 3:Get a get her done. Yeah, anyway, thank you everyone. Have a great weekend and I think the next one's November 3rd. Yeah, yep, we'll see you in November.
Speaker 2:Thanks everyone, thank you everybody, trick or treat, bye, bye. Yeah, happy Halloween.