Servant Leadership in Senior Care: Andy Buiciuc’s Vision

Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity and explore current challenges they’re facing. Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity.

My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Andy Buiciuc, CEO and co-founder of the VillaCare Senior Living. They were founded on the belief that kindness enriches lives. As a second generation family owned and operated company, they’ve come to deeply understand the importance of staying connected.

They’ve created a culture in which both team members and residents feel like they are part of the family. The founders came to America to escape communist persecution in Romania. Excited by the possibilities of what an American education provided, they brought the Romanian mindset of multiple generations living together into the company culture. Before Andy first began working in senior care in 2007, he founded and directed a successful digital marketing company and his skills position him to lead the mutual enrichment of both staff and residents alike. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency.com. All right, now back to our guest today, the CEO of VillaCare. Andy, I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Pleasure’s all mine. OK, so how badly did I butcher your last name?

Can you give us the correct pronunciation? You know, just it depends. It depends on how it wants to be. You just kind of roll with whatever comes out, huh?

Yeah, I’ve learned to be Andy B for for a while now. OK. And the but traditionally Buiciuq is the way I pronounce it. Some of the family likes to recognize it a little bit. It’s a Bucic in English, but I stick with Buiciuq. It makes it makes it for an interesting conversation starter.

And we use it right here today. OK, so so Andy B, tell us the story about the escape from communist Romania. How and when did that occur? Well, my my father left Romania in 1987.

When he left. You don’t just book a flight and not out of communism anyhow. He took quite the journey. There’s the Duna River that borders Romania. And so he swam across that, not the easiest river, but he took that trek out to to the States in 1987 and was brought in through the American Red Cross. And then they flew us out in 1989 as well, refugees, in a sense. So your dad left in 87. Yes. And so for two years there between 87 and 89, you’re separated from your father.

Correct. My mom with six kids just had to manage. And it was one of those things where when dad was no longer there, everybody knew what happened. And so you weren’t you weren’t treated really well once once daddy disappeared or their brother disappeared. And and so mom mom endured for a little while. That was a little bit over a year and a half total.

And then in May of 89, we got to fly out and joined joined dad at Chicago International. And how did that come about? How was it that the Red Cross was able to get you out a year and a half later? You know, that part I’m not too sure, but there were a lot of cases. It really hit the political news that Romania was was kind of not as friendly towards Christians as they put out to be. And I believe the Bill Graham organization had quite a bit to do with that, as well, and some of the other visiting missionaries that kind of talked about, hey, this is what’s really going on. And a huge player was Richard Boldrant, which died in California not too long ago.

Well, years ago, he he testified before Congress out here. And so that’s where a lot of that realization happened and how bad it truly is for Christians in Romania. And so the the Red Cross and the US government worked with refugees from Romania a lot closer. And as long as you went through the right channels and and did the right things, they they built up the process and help bring your family over. So how old were you when you came over? I was five. So probably not a whole lot of memories of communist Romania, probably more stories that were told by your parents over the years. That is correct.

That is correct. A lot of stories parents. I’m a second youngest of six. So my older siblings did did also experience a lot of Romania. And so hearing from them as well as parents definitely got.

All around all around knowledge of how how how it was under communism. Do you think that struggle of coming from such a difficult environment to the land of opportunity shaped you in some way that drove you to the level of success that you found today? So I would say yes. Although I think some can answer no. I say yes because it was instilled in my parents that really, really hard work ethic. You work hard and you do the best you can to make sure that you’re able to accomplish and achieve what you need because you have no idea when what you currently have maybe taken away or when you may be taken away for your beliefs.

And so it really makes when you have opportunities versus under communism, you’re really set with, Hey, this is this is all you’re allocated. This is the most you can do unless you want to, you know, scheme and all those other things to get up into the political area. But as the majority of people, you don’t have options.

And so. You come to a country where you do have those options and you say, man, I want to do the best I can for my family. I want to do the best I can for, you know, for the area I’m in to make sure that this type of freedom is maintained and doesn’t go back to what what.

Where we came from. And so it has helped shape what I do. At the same time, for others, that freedom. Can take them into a different direction. And so you have to kind of make the choice that you want to use that freedom to do hard work versus to. So.

Maybe take advantage of a system or some other things that maybe some people would view towards. So tell us about the path that led you to starting your first company, the digital marketing company. Well, it’s actually the second company, the digital marketing. I did have a foreign company in. In Florida that I that I did for a short while and sold prior to moving to.

Washington. And so I my father, I’ll just briefly brush on it. It’s a somewhat of a funny story, I guess. My father did floors for a long time. That’s what he did in the States. That’s what he knew. And today my father is almost 80 and he still works for. For general and out in Washington and every so often I’ll call him in when he has specialized jobs and just can’t understand how my father outdoes some of his younger workers. So that’s the ethic I was brought into. You just work hard.

And so. I started this foreign company, never working a day in flooring of my life. But I said, you know, my dad did it and I’ve got a phone and I’m willing to bet if I get a job, I can get my dad on the phone and know how to do it. This was pre YouTube YouTube and do whatever you want today on YouTube. But we either didn’t have YouTube then or I just didn’t know how to use it. It’s too long ago. So. First job comes along.

I managed to, you know, persevere in getting it. Back in the day, they were called lumber liquidators. I think today they’re LL foreign man. I was in that showroom every day asking Mr. Anthony, give me a job. Let me show you what I could do. Young guy 20s, 21. I was, he just, he finally got a client that was the pickiest and hardest to deal with and he goes, okay, I’ll give you a chance, Andy. Here you go. Right into the fire. Literally into the fiery furnace, triple heat. And so I got on the phone. I just did everything I can to be as nice to Mr. Washington as I could.

And. Had my dad on the phone the whole time. All right, this is what you do. This is how you get it started.

This is how you prep the floor. And, you know, I just, I did not quit. I wouldn’t quit. I knew I had to get a start. I knew I had to do a good job and I did whatever I could to make sure it turned out as as as great as it could.

And so Mr. Washington, surprisingly, I do say surprisingly, was, was very pleased and in fact called the manager at Lumber liquidators and gave a standing ovation. From then we were packed. So much so my father ended up moving out to Florida about a year into it.

Well, he visited regularly and stayed for prolonged periods until my mom’s like, hey, listen, if he’s out there that long, we’re moving there. Yes. Come on. Free laundry.

I love it. And there’s still certain things I’m going to take advantage. My mom’s there. I got food and laundry. And so that was the start there. But then I went into a marketing out in out in Washington. I started to catch a marketing and we did well.

We did really, really, really well. Again, I wouldn’t quit. By then we had Google. By then we had a lot of the internet.

We had a lot of, you know, learning how to do things on your own. And so I said, this digital marketing thing, this is pretty new. It’s going into a new direction. And I think if I could be ahead of the curb, started the company with a partner. And if we could stay ahead of the curb, we could do a great job.

We could market ourselves, local businesses, accountability is going to be at all time high and it’s the easiest way to get new clients in this realm. I thought to myself. And so that’s the idea that brought me moving forward and did well. So I’m hearing a similar theme between these two ventures, which is I wouldn’t quit. I just wouldn’t quit. So you started in flooring. You didn’t know what you were doing, right?

But your dad did. And somehow he was able to talk you through a very picky customer job over the phone without video, but you wouldn’t give up. You just kept at it.

So now the digital marketing idea comes around. You wouldn’t give up. But this time, who was your mentor? Like, where did you learn from? The internet. So this time, there wasn’t anyone that I could learn from.

So it was how do you learn when there’s no one to learn from? That’s something that’s really important. That took a very big role here in my current business environment.

And I’ll get into that in a minute. With with Kaizo, one of the one of the downfalls with the digital marketing, it really, it was really very successful. And for a young man, just married with one kid. It took a pretty big toll because I loved doing what I did. When you take a company and you help them bring in so many new leads. Maybe struggling companies or companies that are doing OK. And now they’re doing so well that they have multiple offices, chiropractors, dentists, a lot of. I. Dollar per client type businesses that are willing to throw a lot of money at at new leads. And so.

When that happens, they love to try to buy your favor, whatever it is, whether it’s taking you out, whether it’s free services for you, for your staff, whatever it is, if they can try to buy your services by your favor, they will. And so. It ended up being maybe 80 to 100 hours easily per week. Not that I had to work, but I wanted to work because it fed into my ego. It fed into just that. I guess that that that craving that men tend to have of over over appreciation. And so because so much appreciation happened, everyone was just so seemingly so happy to have me around all the time. I said, man, I just want to be around this more.

And so. Came to a point where I had to choose between that or being a father and a husband. And so I didn’t have the mentorship to know how to be able to do both at that time. I wasn’t a very good leader either. You know, turnover rate at the marketing company was was not great at all. Most things relied on me because I was very good at teaching others to do what I did because I felt if if I were to give that up, then I’d be replaced or then I wouldn’t be as appreciated.

I wouldn’t be as recognized and I needed it to be all about me because that’s really where I felt and found my software. And so it was a spiral. But fortunately, I had enough common sense or at least my upbringing was was good enough to where it allowed me to say, hey, I’m going to choose my wife and son at that time. We had two more boys after that and a little little girl here. Finally has our fourth.

But it was at that point where I said, hey, I’m going to pull away and find something different. My sister happened to be in. Sorry, I just want to make sure that I get this. And so business was going incredibly well, feeding into your ego and good on you for recognizing that and kind of calling yourself out on it. But you had to make a choice, right? It’s like I’m spending too much time here. It’s it’s it’s hurting things at home.

I’m not being a good leader in this environment. But why the decision to get away from it completely? Was there a thought process of maybe just scaling back or becoming a better delegator, hiring people to take some of that?

What like why the decision to get away from it all together? Good, good question. Good point. I did try. I brought in a partner and. That. That. That that fear of. Not being as important just kept. Getting in the way for me truly being able to teach somebody else to do what I was doing. You know, it was very, very, you know, seemingly helpful on the cover. But, you know, beneath the surface. I wasn’t rather than than helping.

Through a problem or through something they didn’t understand. Well, I’d just say, hey, you. You suck. You did not do this good. Don’t you know how to do this? Don’t you know how to use Google? I learned all of this myself.

Can’t you learn it yourself? And so. It was a. I think it just it’s the way that. Things I think maybe needed to turn out. With that, because there was just something a lot bigger, a lot better. That was in store, which is where, you know, we headed towards. But I did try a little bit to to make things meet. But by the point it got to where my wife said, hey.

You know, our son has no idea who you are. I’d leave home before he woke up and get home after he’d be in bed. And so six days a week, Sundays was a church. And so. There wasn’t really a lot of time. And it was make a big change if you, you know, want to keep. Keep what you have, but in your in your family life.

So you yeah, you just you needed to get away from that entire space, that entire world you needed to sort of blow it up and start anew. Yeah, it’s very addictive. Your events at night, you have to be always be staying in touch with those that are providing the leads, providing a good, you know, your services that are. Well, I guess in my mindset, you had to write so many, many nights where I just would be at different events for different fundraiser, or different business opportunity meetings, you know, B2B events. So it was too addictive to say, OK, well, I’ll continue a little bit and start something else. It was a man, I just had to separate. And so there were still clients. I actually put somebody else in charge and said, hey, just deal with it.

It actually still continuously runs today. I do more of consulting there. I don’t have desires to to get back into it too much. But maybe in the future, there will be somebody in the company that will say, hey, actually, I want to kind of do that.

Let me let me take over and maybe, but not not for me right now. But you still keep your your marketing sword kind of sharp. And I’m going to guess those skills have probably come in handy for what you’re doing. Now, they really have. It gives me it gives me a pretty good advantage.

Yeah. So how did this transition? Like, how did you get into senior care in particular? I understand now why you had to leave? You just you needed a fresh start and to pull the plug and start something new.

But but why senior care? So I’ve always been. And for those that I that I meant for, I always start with look around you. Look around you. You may know that you want to get somewhere. This is where I want to get to. But be wise and look around you and see if you can identify the road that can help get you there.

Identify a road that can be a good tool that’s easier to get into that will help you get to where you want to get to. And so as we as my wife and I just sat and looked and looked around because I’m ultimately leaving my position as a founder and CEO of our marketing agency and stepping into something different. We’re looking at very different, very different income. And so my sister had a senior care home. In Washington state, they they were able to have a six resident count and, you know, residential environment, the home you can convert to kind of a small scale assisted living type.

Type of a home. And so my sister had one and she so happened to be needing a caregiver. I think most people know what a caregiver is, but essentially I I left my role and my suit and tie and I put on scrubs and gloves. So I thought you were going to tell us you set up a marketing campaign to help her find a caregiver. You decided you were going to be the caregiver. Yeah, I exchanged the suit and tie for the scrubs and gloves.

My friend. And for many, many months, I was what’s called a live in caregiver. My wife and I moved in. Separate residents upstairs was just us.

Family was full kitchen, bathroom downstairs was six bedrooms for six elderly residents that needed help 24 seven. And so for many months again, while I tried to make incomes meet properly or income meet expenses properly, I should say, we had to eliminate much, much of our expenses. And so we did that in a couple of things happened. One, clearly my wife and I and my kids, my son at the time, we got a lot closer.

And and that’s that’s huge. I’m home all the time now live in. They can simply come downstairs and hang out with dad.

That’s wonderful. But it was also, I guess, for those that don’t know what a caregiver does or is you help the residents get up in the morning, you make them breakfast, you give them their medications, you. You know, do activity and then you do lunch, you do more medications, you change them again. You it’s a demanding schedule.

And it’s all day every day. Yes, absolutely. And so we did all of that for many, many, many months after maybe six, seven, eight months, we brought in additional staff to take weekends off. And then we took on more responsibility with those decisions and started running the operations for the business as well. My sister had a couple of homes like this. So she managed one and I managed the other.

That way she can have a little more free time and we can get a little more experienced. And so I did that, learned the ins and outs. I realized quickly that this industry is at least in our culture, in our community. It’s behind by a good decade in terms of technology and my marketing background is just spinning wheels at this time. How do I, how do I, how do I make this more efficient?

Because, you know, for example, admitting a resident, so bringing a new resident in, that’s never been there before. It’s, oh, so many hours, at least a full day’s worth of hours of work. And so, man, if I can digitize this, wow, I could do great things here.

So I ended up creating procedures and processes for everything and then attaching at that time, smart technology to everything, you know, instead of putting your name in 15 places on an application as the new resident comes in, you just fill out one page and everything gets automatically inputted everywhere. And so did a lot of these things that saved just incredible amounts of time. And so I wasn’t paid extra for that. But that’s just how your mind works. You’re an entrepreneur, you’re tech oriented, you’re, yeah, you don’t quit. You’re always looking for a more efficient way to do things. So of course, that part of your brain is working to look for those opportunities.

Absolutely. And so I got to find really good ways to make this process a lot easier, a lot better for people, for my sister, for myself, I should say. Word went out and I was then asked by others to say, hey, what did you do and how could we do it? How could we save time? How can we make our systems and not just save time, saving time, that’s a good thing.

That’s one of the best things I think. But for families, they don’t really care about that. What families cared about was some of these processes really created accountability and allowed for a lot more transparency. It gave the owners of these homes the ability to really see what’s happening at a much, much more specific level.

And so consulting happened. I helped a lot of people get their things in order and my mind’s always gone towards business and how to be more efficient. I’m big, big on efficiency, the more efficient you could be, the better you could pay people, the better you could pay people, the better quality people you can get. And so whenever I’m asked how can you do the things that you do, I say, well, I hire the best I can. I’m not afraid of hiring people smarter than me. That’s the single best thing you can do as a person in the position of hiring. Hiring people as smart as you can, smarter, better in every possible way. And doing so, you’ll get a good company. But the start and why I spent some time on that is the start for my senior living foundation or the foundation for my senior living company now.

It’s premised and founded on the fact that I did everything by hand. I know what it’s like to be a caregiver. I know what it’s like to be a med aid. I know what it’s like to be a housekeeper.

I know what it’s like to be every part of my business. And John, my founding partner, who happens to be my brother-in-law, my wife and his wife, our sisters. But John did the same thing.

He owned his home. So a little more advanced than I am. I was, I should say. But he’s done that since, man, literally, I think he helped his parents start their first home late 90s. And so that’s where the second generation comes from.

My wife and I, she started first time in 2007. So we’ve been doing this for a very long time. But John had the same exact experiences I did. He just had a lot more money than I did at the time because, well, he’s been doing that for a while.

I had to leave my company and start as a caregiver. So we said, man, let’s try to do something different. Let’s try to scale. Let’s try to do assisted living, not these smaller, they’re called adult family homes. Some places call them residential care homes, boarding homes, different names for them.

But the smaller, six to eight resident homes. So we, we did. And that’s the next, next phase of our conversation, moving into what we are now. And how would you describe what you are now? Somebody who’s coming to an Avalos Center.

What does it look like? What’s the services that they can get? So the foundation was the smaller, smaller six person homes, memory care, very, very high, high, high levels of care.

And that’s what the specialty was. Now, our homes are a bit bigger. The biggest one is 32, 32 beds. And there’s a variety of services.

They could be a lot more independent. And, you know, one of our homes out in Flower Mound, it’s, it’s less care. You can find good conversation.

You can find people to play cards with. And so it’s not just residents coming in that are high levels of care or dementia, memory care. It’s just adults, older adults that say, I just need help with medication. I can’t manage my medication or diabetes or I just want around the clock help.

But I don’t want to be somewhat independent. And so depending on where they are at in life, we now have room throughout our communities for every level of care. And so John and I came together to form a villa care. And the villa care is everything needed for the seniors that no long or just need that extra help or no longer can be at home or independent or have just really lost a lot of ability to do anything due to cancer or Alzheimer’s or different, different types of diseases. And, and we’re now growing into parts even beyond that. But as a villa care senior living, we’ve been able to grow and help many, many, many, many seniors of all different levels of need. Andy, how many facilities do you have and in what locations are they? We’re in Washington and in Texas. State of Washington, state of Texas.

Correct. And all together we have five senior living facilities. We’re looking at six facility that combines assisted living. And mental health in Seattle. So that would be a six facility under, still under the banner of assisted living, but it combines mental health. And so in Texas, we also have neuropsychology testing and wellness clinic. So this clinic essentially for the most part tests for everything mental health related from depression, ADHD, schizophrenia, dementia, nae-ment, any kind of mental cognitive impairment test possible. We also test specifically for our school district where the clinic’s at.

Teachers are allowed to open carry. They have to go through rigorous testing. And so our clinic is one of the few that does the testing for that. It’s a very, very extensive, both background and psychological testing. So it’s not just testing for the senior community? Nope.

You’ve opened this up to any age groups? Correct. Yes. And the growth plan for next year for that is bringing in our psychiatrists for prescribing. We have therapists for all types of counseling currently. We’re also going to bring in practitioners for pain management. And so we’ll have a full scale clinic that just helps everything that has to do with the head and helping people get better. And our focus is to use as much of what’s around us to help and improving situations, improving things around you, and then supplementing medication to help get you through. Some people just need medications forever. Some people don’t. And so we want to make a distinction between that and say, hey, if you can get through life without, by making changes on both diet and your awareness, what you’re doing, fantastic.

And if you can’t and you need prescription, that works as well. But we want to be as holistic as we can. And so that’s kind of the mindset behind that clinic. And so I’m kind of curious from a practical standpoint how you approach that. And I’m overgeneralizing here.

So forgive me. But traditionally a psychiatrist, they’re equipped and their expertise is to prescribe medications. They know how these different compounds work. They know what to look for and certain behavior patterns to know, let’s try this one for you. But it’s sort of a different skill set, a different level of training that’s saying, hey, let’s work on your diet and physical activity. And so do you have sort of a team of folks that’s kind of helping each individual patient?

Good question. So again, it goes back to the foundation. When I started senior care, I started from the ground up and built everything from that perspective or from that point of view, stemming everything up.

When it comes to the clinic, we started with trickly testing with psychologists and therapists and employed those that had skill sets in multiple areas and specifically in naturopathic medicine or had a lot of experience with that or had maybe an undergrad or additional certifications for areas that we felt worked really well or worked in line with our vision. And so what we wanted to focus on first is our vision. This is the direction that we’re going in. And then we brought in people who filled in some of those spots based on here’s what the vision is. And then as we grow up to the next level, which is the psychiatrist and the pain management side of things with those practitioners, We’re filling them in and plugging them into our vision. And so when we have a client that’s diagnosed by our psychologists or are doing therapy with our therapist, we’re using the psychiatrist now to help bring them on the path that they’re currently on or that have been already created or subscribed to.

Here’s what we’re going to try to do. And they have that awareness of, hey, my goal isn’t to keep somebody on medications for the rest of their lives unless they need it. They need it. That’s what they want.

That’s what’s best for them. That’s fine. That’s not a problem. But that’s not always the case. And sometimes, I’m sure it doesn’t ever happen, but I think sometimes it could that, you know, some doctors are more interested in just keeping the patient coming every month for a prescription or every three months to build up that clientele that becomes very easy to manage.

I’m sure there aren’t many, but there could be some. We don’t want to be those people and we want to steer away from that as much as we can and be more of helping people get better. And if our client list runs low, we’re going to be very efficient with our money and make sure that we don’t run into issues. I don’t need a several million dollar a year salary. I can invest a lot of that into the company to make sure it continues to do well.

And in the times it doesn’t do well, well, we have a good blanket. So that’s kind of the structure. And that’s how we are going to be getting to that point with our psychiatrist and the rest of the doctoral team we want to bring on. Andy, tell me about the new facility in Washington. What’s going on there? Ah, that’s a big size.

That’s a size in two directions, right? So we have a base, I said senior living. Prior to that, I did marketing well.

So I know how to market myself well and the company. But more so, I think the care we provide is the biggest influencer. But we’ve established a good base for our senior side or assisted living. And I want to emphasize that word assisted living, which is simply people that need assistance in living. And of course, when you think of assisted living, anyone has any experience, 98, 99% of people, mindset goes to geriatric care. Geriatric care means elderly, so the older population. Unless you’re a woman and pregnant, then you’re geriatric at 30, I think 30 or 31. I was shocked to hear my wife is a geriatric pregnancy.

Right? Because she was over 30 with our fourth child. Yes, I was.

That’s quite a definition. I like the doctor and I’m just thinking to myself, unfortunately, didn’t say it aloud. Ma’am, I think you’re geriatric, not my wife. What are you talking about? Oh, words matter and those ones confuse me. But go ahead with your story, Andy.

We’ll let that one go. So when I say assisted living, I don’t want it to stick to or to be defined only as elderly. Our facility, which is in Washington, is assisted living, but we do have some residents there, the one that we currently have that are in their 20s. Assisted living by definition just means people that need assistance in living, regardless of age, regardless of what that assistance is. And so the more general term is long term care. And so we’re under long term care, assisted living. And then to create a small parallel there with our mental health office, there we are. We have a lot of skill set in mental health awareness and how to treat and how to diagnose and the staff that’s knowledgeable in how to really be able to treat people the best. So that was going to be my question for Andy. Is this new facility, is it helping people that have physical challenges or mental health challenges or a combination of the two?

A combination. And so this is where this is now, it’s similar, but it’s also different. So this new facility will house over 60 residents. And it is going to have that base of assisted living.

And then it’s going to use the mental health services. Now, what’s really important here that I like to draw, because it wasn’t in any way by my ingenuity. It wasn’t me being a genius or smart or forward thinking at all. I just did what I saw as the best avenues as things were coming up. I’m just looking around to see what the best way to grow my company is. We did the mental health in Texas and we have the assisted living. We have assisted living in Washington, state of Washington.

And now this new facility, it actually to be really good. You have to have both that assisted living side and then that mental health side. You could do it with just one, the assisted living, open it in higher services and then you’re dependent on whether or not those services are good, those providers are good or not.

Or you can have your own base and be able to help your own residents and others. And so we’re in a very unique situation where we have this experience from the mental health side, from our clinic here. And now opening up this assisted living, which is a very special contract through the state of Washington. And it’s very specific to Medicaid. And so a lot of those that are under-served and underprivileged. And so we’re helping a niche of people in the actual city of Seattle that have nowhere else to go.

They have no other help. The contract that we have with the state is a very specific contract. And it doesn’t exist in King County, at least not north of a city called Auburn, which is all the way to the south. So anything Seattle area north all the way up to the border of Canada, there’s just nothing, nothing for anyone that’s under-served and underprivileged. And Medicaid is the only insurance they have. There’s really nothing for them.

Nothing like what we’re opening up. And of course it’s difficult. Real estate in Seattle is not easy. The business environment in Seattle is not always the easiest.

Legislation is not always for small businesses, especially if you’re getting started. And so we’ve been very fortunate and blessed to be able to take meetings and have meetings accepted by City Council to be able to kind of talk about what we’re wanting to do. And the road maps to get there and kind of what our plan is. And they’ve been gracious enough to meet with us and kind of help walk us along the best path to get what we want started because what we’re doing is converting very ugly and troubled hotel to the assisted living that we need it to be. And it’s a very arduous process and we will need to work with both the local city governing authorities and the state governing authorities.

Our licenses are regulated by the state of Washington, so the state authorities, but the building itself is also under city code. And so we’ve got to work along with a lot of business, a lot of government agency. And so I know sometimes that can get lost in translation. So the the councilman for that district, Mr. Strauss has been very gracious to help guide us along this process to make sure that things don’t get just stuck somewhere stuck in nowhere. Yeah, it sounds like a lot to manage a lot of different conversations with different government entities that you have to juggle and try to get everybody aligned. It’s a lot of work.

Yes. But we’re going to be able to combine our services and help people that quite literally maybe 85 plus percent of our residents that we will house there. They will be they would otherwise be in a state institute that is for those that are diagnosed and insane.

Right. So they have significant mental diagnoses and they have to be in a place where they’re restrained or in prison or in hospitals because of harm. Or they’ve caused harm or maybe they’ve overdosed or on the streets.

Many, many, many. I would say at our other Washington facility, maybe I think we were told about 65 70 percent would be homeless if they were not in our facility. And so we’re quite literally taking people off that would be off the streets and the danger to themselves or others. And so we’re providing a very unique service because one, we get to help people, which is awesome. But two, we also get to clean up the streets efficiently, effectively.

And so that that helps everyone, the residents of that city, the city council, because now they have less people to worry about. And so we’re we’re we’re filling in a gap that not many people are doing or willing to do. That was going to be my question.

Are there other people that are kind of following a similar model? Nothing in Seattle. Nothing in a in a nothing, nothing in any of the bordering cities. So Seattle Metro, or I shouldn’t say Seattle Metro, but Seattle is in King County and in King County all the way in the south, all the way in the south.

The furthest out, you can get there is one or maybe two facilities like this. And on the entire west coast of Washington, there’s two. Why do you think this is so neglected? Is it because of all the regulatory hoops you have to jump through or other people not sort of observe the same opportunity that you have?

I think there’s a combination of reasons that kind of bring you to this one. Nobody really wants to deal with Medicaid. You have to deal with Medicaid insurance.

A couple reasons for that one. It’s really hard to get paid. You’ve got to know billing and you’ve got to have someone doing billing. And it’s unfortunate because they don’t pay a lot. And that’s the second reason they don’t pay anywhere near what the private sector does. And so with the private sector, very lucrative, very booming lots of these businesses, every single way, everywhere, because they’re highly profitable. And so if somebody’s going to do it, why are they going to go Medicaid when they’re underpaid?

And even when you’re underpaid, you’re having troubles collecting, but they’ll be easy to take money if they think it’s overpaid very quickly. But I won’t get into that one. I digress. Sticking to the subject, you have to have a heart for people. If you don’t care for people, it’s really, really hard to do this type of service because you can’t have money as your number one authority. That can’t be the reason you find self-worth and self-value. You have to have a different reason. For me, my reasons are my personal beliefs.

My religious beliefs. I follow a carpenter that happened to walk the earth about 2,000 years ago. And so that’s where I draw what I believe in and what steers my mind and motivation. And so we’re able to help people. I have a heart for people. And we happen to have the experience.

And that’s the second part. You have to really know how to navigate this cohort of people because it’s not simple. You have to have a specific staff. And staffing is not easy, especially in Washington. We have difficulties. There’s a lot of difficulty in finding good staff in Washington. I’d like to say, as a company, assisted living in general has an insane, just a ridiculous turnover rate. Really, really hard to keep good people, find good people. There’s just a lot that happens because it’s a really hard industry to be in. People are dying all the time. And so you as a caregiver have to kind of go through that roller coaster so often it’s really hard. I’d like to say our turnover is almost non-existent. It’s so low. We don’t lose a lot of staff.

My goal is out of 20 staff and facilities, so a facility that has 20 employees, to maybe replace one every three to six months. And many times, for example, we have one girl that is looking to leave that one of our photos in Texas because she’s getting married and we’re trying to convince her that BALS is better than Houston. Don’t go girl. We create a family environment because we care. Again, from the top, John and I are family oriented. We’re all about making sure that our family is well nurtured and taken care of. And that heart and that mindset goes down towards the rest of how we do everything.

And so we bring that mindset to our leadership team and then we have them bring that mindset and culture to all of the staff and all the facilities. And so they feel appreciated. They feel loved. They feel welcomed. And we know that they’re going to be taken care of. They know they’re going to be taken care of. So it works well.

This is actually a question I always like to ask on the interview because I hear from a lot of folks, regardless of industry, the labor market is tight, hard to find good people, lots of turnovers, hard to hold on to them. And so like, you know, what are the things that you’ve tried that have worked? And what I’m hearing you say, and maybe there’s something else to this, but, you know, it’s a lot about culture and sort of building this family environment and you instill this and your leaders and encourage them to, you know, have that mindset and that same treatment of taking care of your employees and a cascade down, you know, from the top on down. Is there anything else outside of kind of this, you know, family environment, this, hey, we’re going to take care of you, you’re cared for and you’re heard.

Anything besides that that you guys are doing that you think has been particularly effective and finding and retaining good folks. Absolutely. Two more things. One, take less profits, pay better. So Delta does that really well.

Really well. I think the story of the CEO of Delta is a great comeback to read anytime. Somebody has some free time. And secondly is just down to earth procedures. I’m able to create processes and procedures from a place of intimate knowledge. I know, and my staff knows in every single facility that everything I asked them to do is something that I have done personally.

I know how to walk that walk and I know how to talk the talk and it is not uncommon to see me coming into a facility and be there in scrubs. You know, it’s just one of those places where I lead from a place of what’s called servant leadership. And that’s the type of leadership that we instill in every single one of our leaders. We lead from coming alongside of we’re serving those that we lead. And that’s the heart of everything servant leadership. So that’s a that’s a big part of I think what makes us as successful as we are. When it comes to staff and of course when you have a successful relationship with your staff, your residents are exceptionally taking care of not without error, but you know, they’re always minimized and everything taking care of in the end.

That’s great. I’m curious what’s something maybe innovative or different that you’ve introduced to enhance the patient experience. Oh, there is quite a bit. A lot of depending on which facility and which cohort of people were either dealing a lot more with families or we’re dealing a lot more with the patients. And so when it comes to families, transparency and an app that we’re developing to help create more of that transparency is one of the keys and answers to that question. What we’re doing is giving them an inside look into the entire life of their loved one that’s in our facility.

And so it’s unique. I have not heard of it, but what we’re doing is giving them instant access to life. That means through this app they have regular pictures of what their loved ones doing throughout the day. Instant access to whoever’s part of their care team throughout the entire day. Instant access in that same portal app, I should say, to anything regarding the doctor’s orders, the meds, you know, whether it’s taken, whether it’s not taken, something was refused. Hey, question the doctors in that app and they’ll get a response from the secretary immediately or their assistant immediately. And so it brings everything together into one app and all of our staff and extended staff have access to it and they’re updating it all the time. And so it gives us an opportunity to employ another person to make sure all of that is happening in every single facility. But it just gives peace of heart and that transparency is irreplaceable for some families. Yeah, I mean, you’re wondering how is mom, how is dad doing today?

I can’t get there. I got a busy day with the kids with work, etc. And wow, yeah, what a great feeling to be able to pick up your phone and say, oh, look, there’s dad, he’s, you know, playing checkers in the in the break room. Like that’s that’s cool to see.

It gives like you said, peace of heart, peace of mind. Andy, I’m curious to hear a particular challenge, either personal or professional that you overcome and some lessons coming through the other side of that. Wow, let me turn over for this. Which one to pick, huh? There’s a thing I think it comes out of the Spider-Man movie with great power comes great responsibility. You know, everybody has a different giftings in life.

Everybody has different things that they’re really good at. I don’t watch sports. Really don’t know anything about sports.

Sometimes I pretend to a Google who’s good and say something. My kids play soccer, encourage sports. I have no problem with sports. We’ll we’ll watch World Cup. I am more soccer. I’m European, but I do watch Super Bowl as well.

Just nothing prior to that. So, but I do enjoy business and efficiency. I love efficiency. I love processes.

Those are my two, my two things. I mentioned a little bit about my life with the marketing agency and where I had to make a pretty good distinction and break away. Start something new. Part of that part of life or part of that season of life with with all of those events and with everything came just a tremendous amount of drinking. And so amongst many reasons why I was not a very good leader at that time. And I mentioned a little bit and I’ll finish off what I mentioned.

I said, I’ll speak a little more on this later. I didn’t have a lot of people to draw from the experience with the marketing industry. So I had to learn myself. Well, when it comes to being a better leader, I didn’t have too much role model, especially not in my community.

Being Romanian in the Seattle area. I mentioned adult family homes, those small assisted livings. There’s over four or five hundred homes just from members of the church I went to out there.

We’re very big in that community, very, very big in that industry, but nobody ever went beyond that. And so I never really had any good mentorship and business. I didn’t really know how to grow. I didn’t know how to be a good leader.

I didn’t have very good examples and role models on how you could be a good leader in today’s culture and today’s people. And so I had to learn. I learned from John Maxwell. I learned from many, many of the greatest leaders by reading books and became an avid book reader. I love to read.

I read everything I can from seven habits to how to win friends. Right. Del Carnegie. Great, great. I just I got the best leadership team that I learned from and I’m constantly on audible and just reading and taking notes. And so that’s that’s where I learned. And that’s why I am today. And that’s why I became who I am today by learning from others. You know, a lot of people say, you know, self-made, self-made. Although I did build everything. I’m not self-made because I got where I got to by the helps of all of these incredible people that I’ve gotten to read. They’ve assisted me in my journey, though they don’t know. They don’t know who I am.

I know very well who they are. And so I got to learn. But back then I was and I was a very good leader at all. And my decisions were very, very egotistical, very arrogant, very me centered.

And so drinking was a big part of that. And it really took a very big toll on my lot of bad decisions, a lot of just wasted time, energy. And not only did it cause problems in my personal life, which again, the the ultimatum one or the other. It also caused legal trouble. And so I had to do a lot of overcoming other than just leaving the lifestyle and the drinking and all of that behind.

There were the legal ratifications of everything now. Well, fortunately, I’ve never done harm to anyone. So I’m very thankful and protected from that. But there was a lot of things that I’ve had to walk through. And today, those things are still there and affect whatever is whatever I need to do moving forward as you’re getting loans, as you’re doing all these things.

Background checks are always part of everything. And so it’s always something that I have to go through and explain and say, Hey, here’s here’s here’s what happened here. Here’s who I am today. But I had to go through quite a bit of a season of troublesome being troubled. And what what’s really good, what good comes from all of that is that I’m very easily able to speak to anyone that’s going through a tough season in life and be able to say that you can overcome it. You can do better. You can always always do better regardless of what you’ve done. And no matter what hardships you’ve endured or no matter how bad things have gotten, there’s always a light and you can do it. You have the ability within you. You just have to choose what your priorities are and who you allow to lead your life.

Whether it’s, you know, MTV and celebrities telling you what what what you should be doing and how you should be doing it or have a better moral compass and something that’s really good to lead you in the right direction and help you make better decisions because as bad as it gets, I’m living proof that you can overcome that and really use your gifts and talents to make a really good, strong and positive impact in your community and in other communities as far as your reach can go. Andy, what was your light? What was your leader out of those dark times? Truly, number one would be a George Carpenter that lived about 2000 years ago.

He goes by the name Jesus. And and then my wife and kids of which one who do we have here. This is Miss Anna. She’s my youngest and the first.

She’s beautiful for kids. And they they help make sure that I stay on the right path and give them enough time. They they’re first to let me know when enough time has not been given, but that’s that’s where I really was able to say, Hey, I know where perfection is.

And I know I’m never going to get there. But at least I have a compass of, you know, this is a great leader to look up to and to say, Hey, this is this is where I’m going to try to get. And in Jesus and his examples and and all that he’s taught, it’s a lot to learn from, you know, a lot of what we do and how we do it. It comes strictly from his teachings.

And so my light out was saying, Hey, this is this. I’m convinced that this is the best way. I’m convinced that I’ve tried it my way and I’m going to 100% try it his way and see if it works. And being very stubborn and very atheistic in my thoughts for a very, very long, long time. I went throughout and have never turned back because truly, although it’s not easy, it’s definitely worth it. And it’s brought me where I am today.

Can you pinpoint, obviously it was a multitude of things, but maybe can you pinpoint the biggest thing about this new direction that has really worked so well for you? Yeah. If I can choose and if it’s I’m understanding the question, right, I’d say servant leadership. I’ve learned what that means. I’ve learned that the best way to lead those around me is by serving them. I don’t lead from on top. I lead side by side. I don’t talk down to people.

I ask them what’s going on. We don’t do write ups. We do coaching, corrective actions. You know, this is the mistakes. This is what’s going on.

This is what’s wrong. You come alongside of and you coach. Here’s how we can do this the best. How can I help you become better?

What do I need to do to help you be as successful as possible in what you’re doing? Now, I can’t do that with everyone. I have to be selective on who I do that with.

But over the years, I’ve got to do that with so many people in my company. And so the servant leadership is just a lifestyle. I serve my family. I serve at my church. I serve at my place of business. But I serve by coming alongside of people and collaboratively finding out what the best direction because no two facilities are the same.

I’m going to have to have different policies and procedures for each one individually. And so I come down to the level of everyone else when I stay there. And that’s where everything else happens from policies and procedures to the practical ways things work out.

And I learned that from Jesus because he came down onto this earth and lived a life with everyone else, like everyone else, and went through everything with everyone else, not from above. And so that idea, that mindset is to me the key of knowing how to deal with people and how to deal with them in the best way so that you can have the best team behind you because you can grow a huge company and not provide the best service, not have the happiest people. But to me, if I’m going to grow, I want to grow with purpose, not just to make more money. I want to be able to make more employees lives better. I want to make more residents and clients lives better. Unless we’re doing something better than everyone else, what’s the reason I’m doing it? Because I’m essentially taking more time away from my family and I love spending time with my family. And so if I’m going to, I want to know I’m doing it for a good purpose. And so that’s where I say learning servant leadership. That was the biggest thing. Everything comes out of that for me now. Andy, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. Everyone listening today, if you enjoyed today’s content, please hit the like, share or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I also want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you.

Andy, what is that? I’m not very good with social media. I’ve been told and I’m trying now to be a lot more involved and engaged, whether it’s on X or Facebook.

I don’t even, it’s so funny. When I was in digital marketing, everywhere. I was across everything, everywhere I had to be. And then I just went completely opposite and then just am not involved anywhere. So, you know, I am going to be restoring my, my, oh, except for LinkedIn. I definitely have my LinkedIn continuously going. But the X profile on Facebook is something that I will be getting a little bit more acquainted with here shortly.

But I’d say LinkedIn is probably the, the biggest and then as the others come along as my, my aid is trying to push me towards that. I said, okay, I give in, I’ll be more accessible. I’ll work towards that.

Well, we’ll include links to at least your LinkedIn profile in the show notes for everybody. So last question I have for you, Andy, what do you think are the biggest changes coming to your industry in the next couple of years? Well, well, we know that assisted living is going to hit a big bubble here in the mid 30s.

The baby boomers are going to hit peak somewhere 34, 34, 2035. And so that industry is going to really start changing there. Right now, it’s growing at an unprecedented rate. The mental health industry has hit a major crisis, especially in specific areas of the States. There is just not enough providers that are wanting to help people. More and more providers are coming out, but you know, just to continue things the way they have been. And so I think, I think there’s going to be a very big push towards getting individualized care, mental health wise for, for people versus using cookie cutters all across the board. I think that that’s going to really start getting forced because we just can’t continue to go the way we are. Things aren’t getting better and they’re not getting better because there’s a, you know, a virus that’s spreading.

It’s people’s lifestyle and choices that are producing some of the mental health issues, not all, not all, but many enough to where if we’re able to create a better culture and community as a whole as cities as states, we would be able to help people in such a significant way. And I think that that’s going to be one of the really big changes that are going to really start happening as more people are getting dialed in. And as more of us providers are stepping up and saying, hey, I’m going to pull out of the status quo and I’m just going to allow my heart to lead more so than my pocketbook.

And I think that that’s going to be one of the big, I hope that that will continue to be one of the big changes. All right. Well, Andy B, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I’m grateful for it. It’s been my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. .