The Heart of Home Care: Chad Tracey’s Journey from Finance to Family-First Business | Nursing Home Series

Intro: 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.

Anthony Codispoti: 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 Kodespode and today’s guest is Chad Tracy. Chad is the co-founder and president of Second Family, a family-owned home care franchise specializing in fully managed home care services for elderly individuals. Founded in 2011, Second Family was born from Chad’s personal experience where he and his cousin struggled to find suitable Alzheimer’s care for their grandmother. Their mission is to provide compassionate, personalized in-home care that helps seniors live independently with dignity. They offer services like personal care, Alzheimer’s and dementia care, companion care, respite care and transportation services.

The company is known for its grandma guarantee, assuring safe and reliable caregiving. Under Chad’s leadership, Second Family has been recognized as small business of the year multiple times, has received numerous service of excellence awards and was named a top workplace by the Baltimore Sun. Before venturing into health care, Chad was the president of Serenity First Financial and managed operations at savings first mortgage. His transition from financial management to senior care was driven by his passion to enhance the quality of life for the elderly. 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. Now back to our guest today, the co-founder and president of Second Family, Chad Tracy. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Chad Tracey: Oh, I really appreciate you inviting me today, Anthony. Looking forward to it.

Anthony Codispoti: So Chad, you made a pretty significant career shift from financial management to co-founding a home care company. What motivated this transition?

Chad Tracey: I’d say it was twofold, Anthony. You know, I was going through a period of time in my life where I just felt like I needed more satisfaction out of my career. I really didn’t know what that was ultimately going to be. I just had started looking into other things. I mean, I felt like I was helping people, but not in a way that was like super meaningful to me.

And it was around the same time that our grandmother was going through, you know, the tail end of the Alzheimer’s. And, you know, literally, it literally hit me one day, like a ton of bricks, that the business I had been seeking was right in front of my eyes, really. And so, you know, we could talk more about the story and how we got it off the ground, but it really stemmed from, you know, wanting more satisfaction out of my career and doing it in a way that we kind of honor our family and maybe do a better job of helping other seniors in the future than what our family had seen.

Anthony Codispoti: Let’s talk a little bit about how you got this off the ground, because you were coming from a very different professional background. I’m curious, you know, how did you guys, was there like a course you could take to sort of learn the ropes, you know, where you guys just bumping your heads against the wall, sort of figuring things out in the early days?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, well, we formed the company in 2011. The idea really started right around the time, my grandmother passed in 2010. So we spent about a year formulating things, but I had been a business owner for many years. So I understood, you know, a lot of the ins and outs of starting a business from scratch and learning how to do that. But as far as, you know, getting it to senior care or health care in general, I had zero background, right?

And so I guess the story started, you know, as you said, you know, I was owner of a financial company. I was very busy at the time. I didn’t really have the bandwidth.

Once I had decided to kind of start this other business in the senior care space, I didn’t really have the bandwidth to do it. I’d done a lot of research, kind of figured out, you know, what was necessary to get started. But I was kind of at a loss because I didn’t know how I was going to be able to get it started. So I approached a work colleague and we did some research together and we were going to kind of jump in together and share the duties and start that way.

That ended up not working out. And literally, I mean, if you want me to get a little bit in the weeds, my dad was in surgery and my aunt was there. And you know, he would have had a pretty major surgery and it was many hours that we’re just sitting there just kind of talking.

And I was like, you know, I got this idea for this other business and it could be a family business. My partner that I thought was going to move forward with us is not. And I just can’t do it on the time. I don’t know what to do. And it just so happened that her son, my cousin, was the one that ultimately became my partner.

Now, I had no idea that that would occur. He’s 10 years younger than me. So at the time I was in my, I don’t know, mid to late 30s and he was, you know, in his mid to late 20s. And he was kind of going through a transition. And, you know, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do.

We were kind of both in the same place in a certain way. And to make a long story short, he was just kind of picking up some odd jobs. He was doing some painting.

So I invited him, he was lived about three or four hours away, invited him to come to my house and do some painting. And got really got to know him because if anyone out there has a cousin that’s 10 years younger than them, right? It’s like you go off the older one goes off the college and they’re still a kid, you know, and then you kind of lose touch for a little bit. And then you kind of circle back when they become an adult, you’re like, Oh, you’re a whole new person, right?

And so you really don’t know what kind of person they are. And so, you know, I actually, after he was painting, I asked him to come and help me to stay for a few months, help me get this new idea, this new business licensed, and, you know, also help me with my other business. So he agreed to do that. And through that period of time, I was able to understand a couple of things. Number one, you know, I have more of a sales marketing background. I had been a business owner managing people. But there’s plenty of things I admittedly am not good at.

You know, a lot of the operation stuff, a lot of tech stuff. And I came to realize that he was really great at those things. And so it was, we always say it was like divine intervention that, you know, we have a lot of divine intervention stories that we could probably talk about today, how it all came together. But again, I didn’t know his skill set, he didn’t know mine, but it worked out perfectly that what I was poor at, he was great at and vice versa. And so we worked out a deal. And the rest is history. You know, it’s interesting how these things sometimes happen.

Anthony Codispoti: So you’ve got these complementary skill sets, but neither one of you really had experience in this home care space that you guys were entering. How did you overcome that learning curve?

Chad Tracey: Well, we always say that that was probably a blessing of disguise, to be honest with you, because we, you know, there’s plenty of people out there that have been in the senior care space for a long time, right? Healthcare, senior care, there’s different aspects to senior care. But, and I would say that a lot of them are kind of stuck in the old school way of doing things. We wanted to bring a fresh approach, right? We had to learn everything, obviously.

But the one thing we saw when doing our research is there was definitely a lot of complaints in our industry. This was back 2010, 2011. There was a lack of technology. And even today, sometimes you know, people are like, seniors don’t use computers, right? But that didn’t, that wasn’t satisfactory in our minds.

And the lack of technology caused a lack of reliability, poor customer service, and then the complaints, right? So that, those were the things that we knew we needed to attack. Not really knowing how to do it, we learned as we went. But we didn’t have a blueprint at all.

You know, we’ll talk later about how we’re franchise or is now we have a blueprint, we can give it to someone else, but we didn’t have that luxury. So we really just learned from research. We learned a lot by going to some local like senior networking groups, talking to people, going to all the events, just learning as we went. You know, at first though, people would say these acronyms in the senior care space, they were like saying sniff, sniff, sniff, what’s a sniff? I go back and look up what the heck they were talking about.

It’s a skilled nursing facility. It’s like a, you know, so there’s one example of many things that we kind of had to learn, but a lot of it, man, was just kind of faking it till we made it and learning as we went.

Anthony Codispoti: How did you get that very first client?

Chad Tracey: Well, that’s an interesting story. We found our first clients through online, you know, just just kind of putting out some feelers online as far as, you know, trying to do the Google AdWords thing. There’s also ways that you can buy leads, people Google, you know, senior care in Baltimore, Maryland, and, you know, it goes to a lead generating company. And then it comes to us and three other companies and we fight it out to see who’s going to get that client. So yeah, that was, but really the way we got our first client was it was a daughter. Often we talk to the children of the care recipient by the time it gets to us, the care recipient is often not the decision maker.

They’re just maybe just not able to do it anymore. So the daughter was caring for the mother, but she had just signed on to get a personal trainer from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. three days a week to so she could go to the gym and that was normally the time when she would help her mom before she went to work, right? And so no, most even today, we wouldn’t probably take that on most senior care companies find it too difficult to do 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. three days a week. It’s just too much work, but we did it because, hey, we were brand new. So in the beginning, when you’re starting a senior care business, you do whatever it takes to get started.

Anthony Codispoti: What do you think have been some of the biggest levers for you to pull to fuel growth along the way?

Chad Tracey: I always point back to our technology, you know, just constantly learning. In the senior care world, as you grow, a lot of companies can’t scale properly. And I learned this talking to other people because we would, like I said, go to these networking groups and people would lament, well, I had 12 clients, but four of them passed away and two went to assisted living and now I’m down the end. And the reason is because they get, I’ll call it, get too caught into the weeds on the day to day care for this particular set of clients that you have at the time.

And you need to get into the weeds, right? You need to make the client feel heard and helped and all that. But it doesn’t have, it shouldn’t be the owner of the business doing that.

The owner of the business should be overseeing and scaling. And so a unique thing that we did beyond the technology was we utilize, we would bring on RNs to be our care managers. And even today, we call them RN care coordinators. And so what we did was when a family comes on board, the nurse goes out, does an assessment and says, hey, I’m going to be your point of contact.

Let me know as things go and the nurse is involved. And it really enables the families to have a better experience because seniors don’t decline in this manner. It’s ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys. And the nurse is kind of along with them for the ride. And so I feel like it really helped A, the family get a better experience from an RN and B allowed us to kind of get out of the weeds of the day to day and work on scaling the business.

Anthony Codispoti: How’d you come up with this idea? Was this a brainchild of yours or influenced by some peers?

Chad Tracey: No, it really hadn’t been done. So in most states and in Maryland at the time, you are required to have an RN do an initial assessment. And then the requirement is for the RN to do reassessments every 90 days. Some states are different, but that’s what it was in Maryland, where our home office is located. And so we said, okay, so it was customary for an RN to get paid when he did an assessment, pay an RN, go do an assessment and they go home.

Right. A lot of those RNs would have maybe other jobs and they picked up stuff on, you know, kind of a la carte. We said, why don’t we just pay the nurse a little bit more to kind of, you know, work with the client and the family over the course of time, because we knew to scale the business we had, we couldn’t be doing this. And it seemed to make a lot of sense to do it this way with an RN versus hiring a full-time employee to do that. And plus they’re not even an RN. And so, you know, we just got, you know, we had to get to the point where we made it worth the RNs while. And so we pay the nurses per case. So as long as this is a client of ours, it’s a client of yours and you’re going to get paid. So everybody’s kind of in it together. Right.

Anthony Codispoti: And so everyone goes with an incentive are aligned, right. They everybody wants to keep the clients happy, keep them on board. Exactly.

Chad Tracey: Yep. Yep. And we also allowed the RNs to choose how many clients they wanted to have. I’ve had plenty of nurses. I just want five clients. That’s it. I just want to, I just, you know, I’m tired of working 12-hour shifts in the hospital. I have kids at home. I want to keep my license active.

I want to help families, but I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to work, you know, 40 hours a week. And so we allow them that flexibility. And if we need more nurses, we just bring more nurses on. They all get paid per case. It doesn’t cost you any more money as a business owner.

Anthony Codispoti: And if they want, they can kind of do it part time. Absolutely.

Chad Tracey: Give me a few cases. Yeah. The vast majority of our nurses are that scenario I just described. Kids at home, flexibility, not a lot of RN jobs out there where you could pick your own hours, right? We basically said, hey, you do the assessments before the time they’re due, and be available. That’s essentially it, you know, and they liked it.

Anthony Codispoti: Chad, talk to me about the core of services that you first started with and then how that’s evolved over time.

Chad Tracey: Yeah. So the licensure that we’re under is, would be considered non-skilled care, but it is hands-on care. So clients don’t really need us to just sit there and play cards with mom, right? There’s some additional issue that’s going on, whether it’s cognitively with dementia or confusion, or physically with mobility usually. And so hands-on care, you know, dressing, bathing, helping them in the bathroom with hygiene, stuff like that. You know, we can help with like laundry, some light housekeeping, helping prepare meals, transportation, and I like to call it just allowing that senior to get through their days safely.

And so honestly, that’s really never changed. We kind of stay in our lane and provide the same types of services that are allowed under our license. Although we have in our Maryland office begun to do some skilled care with nurses and LPNs, but primarily our bread and butter is the private duty non-skilled care, keeping that senior safe as they go throughout their day and it kind of will continue to be that.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I love the name Grandma Guarantee. What is that exactly?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, Grandma Guarantee is something that we trademarked. It’s kind of what we have used ourselves when we first got started in the business and it’s been passed on to our hiring specialists, our HR department, and to our franchisees that we’ll talk about later. But basically the Grandma Guarantee is when I’m vetting caregivers that we’re going to bring on board.

I’m basically thinking to myself, is this someone I would trust with my own grandmother, with my own mother, with my own father? And so that’s really what it boils down to. We have a process. Obviously you got to meet certain criteria. In Maryland you have to be a licensed caregiver, what’s called a CNA, a certified nursing assistant. Other states have different requirements, but regardless of what the requirements are, would I put this person with my own loved one? And it’s simple as that.

Anthony Codispoti: So I’d be curious to hear, Chad, how your previous experiences in finance have influenced your leadership here at Second Family?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, well I was always used to running teams and building something and going through the sales and marketing funnel, all the things you got to do at the top of the funnel to get business at the bottom of the funnel and constantly just trying to drive sales and do it effectively, communicating well. There were plenty of differences though. The biggest difference was I came from more of a cutthroat, harder sell kind of industry, more competition.

And in our space it’s not like that at all. It’s really, you know, when I’m involved quite a bit now with training and sales and marketing and senior care, and it’s very much a more passive approach. Number one, you’ve got to be an outstanding listener, right? It’s a business about stories. I need to hear your story.

I need to maybe share my story, why I’m passionate about this business, why I got into the business. That means a lot. And, you know, just listening to their concerns, what the situation is, and then maybe providing a solution. You know, hey look, you know, I’m really sorry you’re going through this with your mom. I know it’s a really difficult time. We see it every day.

But you’re not alone. This is the kind of situation that we deal with all the time. We’ve been able to help other people in this type of situation. And here’s how our program works, right? And then allowing them to kind of decide what they want to do moving forward.

It’s being a resource too, right? We don’t do everything related to senior care. For example, if we have a new client and they need a lift, something to lift them up out of bed because they’re not able to move, mobility has gotten to that point, then we call in other partners in the local community that maybe handle that. That’s not something that we do.

But we’re giving them resources. A lot of our business is about connecting with other types of businesses that also cater to seniors. That could be anything. You know, equipment company, it could be a hospice company. It could be an elder care attorney because the family needs some advice on finances. We don’t do everything for seniors, clearly.

We just do a small portion. But we need to connect in the community with others that can help this particular individual. And if you do those things, you’re going to, in their eyes, be very trustworthy. And I’m not going to move forward with a senior care agency that I don’t deem as trustworthy. They’re sending strangers into people’s homes, right? So their families are relying on us to do all the things that we have to do to provide the best possible care.

So it all starts in the beginning with building that trust. And I’d say that’s a big different, very different circle back to your original question from what I used to do in a different industry.

Anthony Codispoti: You’ve talked several times about the importance of the technology that you guys have implemented. Can you say more about that tech stack and how it’s helping your team as well as your clients?

Chad Tracey: Absolutely. Everything that we do is 100% electronic, mobile, and paperless. So we’ve developed that over the course of time. It all starts, everything is used by all parties. So in the beginning, we used the word transparency, right? So we want to be transparent with everything we do. Everything we do internally with our staff needs to be seen externally by our client. And I’ll say their families, families love our software because they feel like they’re part of the care, even though they might live across the country. And so, basically, I’ll use our second family app as an example. So our competitors, what we would hear in the beginning was, well, mom has dementia and she said that the caregiver got there 10, but the caregiver was supposed to be there at nine. I don’t know. Mom’s got dementia. I’m not sure what time they got there.

So there was this lack of transparency that was going on with our competitors. And so, the way we solve that is we give the clients access to an app which allows them to see exactly what time the caregiver clocked in, which is GPS verified. So they can’t, in other words, the caregiver can’t clock in when they’re down the street at McDonald’s, right? And so, the family can see exactly what time we clocked in.

They can also see right from the app all the things that we did on the shift. We helped mom with the bath. We gave her lunch.

We took her to the doctor, whatever we did. And then they could see the exact minute that we clocked out. All of that flows into our billing so the clients can see exactly how much the bill is or if it’s a third party payer. It’s all verified. And so, these are the same things that my internal office staff is looking at, right?

Like if a caregiver’s not clocked into a shift, we got to find out why, what’s going on. So, I think all of our technology from a general standpoint allows everybody to stay in the loop. It really makes it seamless to do billing, seamless to do payroll. Everything integrates with each other. So that’s really a big part of what we’ve built.

Anthony Codispoti: It sounds like maybe unlike some legacy competitors who came up in a time where the technology wasn’t as sort of well formed, you guys were able to hit the ground running with a strong tech platform under you that has allowed you to have these efficiencies right from the very start.

Chad Tracey: No, exactly. And that’s really an advantage for us in the franchise system. A lot of our competitors expanded quite a bit in the 90s, early 2000s. That was kind of the initial boom, I’ll call it for senior care.

You probably heard of some of the brands. But yeah, when technology started coming along, right, because it used to be and even now some of these companies are using paper. But back then it was really hard to turn the ship, I guess, because you have hundreds of locations that are kind of adding technology when they feel like it or when they want it versus us. We didn’t start franchising when our first franchise opened in 2020. So by then we had a system in place. We were thinking ahead like, hey, if we’re going to be franchise oars, we need to make sure that the software platform is going to be the same for everybody.

We’re going to give it to you. Here is the platform. But not only that, the most important thing probably is it’s upgradeable. So maybe about every six months or so, we listen to our franchisees, any suggestions, we add to our software platform, and then we roll it out to everybody at the same time with instructions, hey, here are the changes that we made. It’s like upgrading your app on your phone or something.

Here’s all the bugs and fixes that we changed. So it’s the same kind of thing that comes along with a video that they watch and they can kind of see all of the changes that they made. It also really helps with making them feel like they’re being heard. It’s not just us telling them, here’s what we should be doing. It’s us listening to them and implementing their ideas.

Anthony Codispoti: So you mentioned that you brought your first franchisee on in 2020. Where in sort of your growth curve did you guys kind of get to a point thinking, hey, we’ve got something that can be replicated. We’ve sort of figured out a system. This works. We’ve ironed out a lot of the kinks. We’re ready to take this to the franchising market. Well, we didn’t even start

Chad Tracey: the idea of franchising until we thought that we were in a good place with that. I’d say a few years before that, it’s kind of when we started saying, okay, we’re going to become a franchisor and for any business owner that’s thinking about doing that, that’s not a small feat.

That takes a lot of time, like years, not months, probably, maybe a year, and it’s very expensive. And so as you go through the process of a year or more to become a franchisor, be eligible to sell franchises through that process is kind of when you’re buttoning everything up, making sure that your system is replicable and can be passed on to someone else. That includes your instruction, your training manuals, how you’re training them, how you obviously, how do you find franchise candidates? How do I vet those candidates? How do I find the right candidates? So, that was kind of done internally, but we also learned a lot more, a lot of that through joining the IFA, the International Franchise Association, was very, very instrumental in helping us because the whole point of the IFA, and if anybody’s, again, thinking about franchising their business, you got to join the IFA because they’re tasked with helping all types of franchisors, brand new emerging franchisors. Okay, let’s get you in some roundtables and teach you the ideas. Here’s what you need to be doing all the way through mature systems. So, that was very, very helpful in getting us moving as well. So, just listening, just like starting a home care business, just listening, learning. We had never done franchising, obviously, before. So, you just got to be a learner. You never stop learning. Right.

Anthony Codispoti: You guys weren’t afraid to get into the home care space, which you had no prior experience in, and so it seems like that same kind of confidence came through and deciding, hey, we’re going to take what we figured out here over the years, and we’re going to learn how to do it in a franchise model. So, tell us a little bit about what the franchise opportunity looks like.

Chad Tracey: Yeah, and just to piggyback on what you say, it’s like, you have to believe in what you’re doing. It’s like, I believe that we’re going to start this company and it’s going to be amazing.

I don’t know how we’re going to get there, but you guys got to, if you have that belief, everything else is going to work itself out. Yeah, so I guess we got started in franchising around 2018, I guess when we were official, we had to learn how to take it to the next level. That was really the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my career, was trying to get strangers to buy into what you’re doing without any, other than our home office operations, we could show them what we were doing there financially and just how we were operating. But it really started the initial way that we got the word out there involved a lot of videos. If you go to my secondfamilyfranchise.com, which is geared toward bringing on perspective franchisees, it’s just tons and tons of videos, content, being transparent.

For example, just saying, hey, you might have questions about how to get licensed in the senior care world, but here’s how it works and do a three or four minute long video. So we get a lot of hits and stuff like that. And it wasn’t really a direct way of saying, hey, you should come be a franchisee of ours. It was more just providing content, again, that hands off more passive sales approach, where you’re providing value in some way. And then, hey, by the way, we’re franchisee, what do you think? So that’s kind of the initial stages of how we got started.

Anthony Codispoti: And then what is it that franchisees are getting when they sign up? Yeah.

Chad Tracey: So once they sign up, it’s what we’re providing to them. And it’s also what we’re asking them to do for us. A franchise system, you need, but it’s a symbiotic relationship.

It’s a partnership. So it all starts with our training. So this is how we do everything. Our training consists of tons and tons of educational videos. Here’s how you operate our system. Everything from our CRM software, which would include marketing to senior care professionals.

It’s a lot of what we do. We want to create a referral relationship with a lot of people out there that are working in the senior care space. So our CRM software works with that.

And then once we have a prospective client, our CRM software walks you through that process. I mean, we have automations built in, text messaging, emailing, email drips, stuff like that. It’s all automated for the franchisee. Our entire hiring process is completely automated.

And I’m not going to get too much into weeds with this, but we do use a series of AI technology that we’ve been expanding upon to kind of vet our caregiver applicants. Literally, Anthony, it’s like, it replaced an entire employee. I mean, we didn’t fire the employee, but we just transferred them.

But it eliminated a position. So I think that, and then all of, we have our scheduling software that they kind of piggyback on. And it’s all flows together. That all flows into billing, to payroll. There’s just so many things that a franchisee doesn’t have to think about when they get started that we did. And I think that when you’re a franchisee or, you know, obviously, if you take, if you have two different groups of people, one of them decides to start a senior care business on their own, and their other goes through a franchise system, I guarantee you that the person that goes through our franchise system, I’m providing speed for them, taking away all the things they have to learn. And they’re going to be able to hit the ground running. And so they’re going to get to 10 clients faster. They’re going to get to profitability much faster.

They’re going to get to much higher profitability, much faster than they’d be able to. Obviously, there’s a cost for that, right? They franchisee’s pay royalties to franchiseeers.

That’s how it works. But if I can make you profitable faster, then that’s really the reason why you would go, you know, with us versus maybe try to do it on your own.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, they’re learning from all the experiences that you guys have gone through over the years. They’re getting to take part in the tech platform that you put in place. They’re getting the efficiencies of the, you know, AI assisted hiring process.

There’s certainly a value to that. Not only does it get them there faster, but ostensibly, it would make them more profitable than if, you know, they had to do it on their own.

Chad Tracey: And I’ll add that, you know, what we’re asking them primarily to be the face of the business in their local community, right? There’s a reason why this has traditionally been a franchise concept because we could have expanded through hiring, you know, regional managers. But in order to preserve quality, we need the people with skin in the game and people that were going to be the boots on the ground and represent their company in their local market.

Now, we’re going to teach them how to get out there and market, how to handle sales. Remember I said in the beginning, we didn’t have a playbook. We didn’t have someone helping us.

We had to learn everything. And if they went on their own, that’s what they would have to do as well. I understand that people want to do that. We did that, right? But we had higher aspirations. We wanted to create a national brand. But, you know, we’re going to give them the playbook, train them, meet with them all the time, look at, I could see in their software platform to see what they’re doing, maybe how they could be doing it better. But at the same time, we’re asking them to drive business in their local community following our process. So it’s kind of give and take what we give to them and what they can maybe do for us.

Anthony Codispoti: So what is it that you’re looking for in a franchisee, whether it’s, I don’t know, personality or skills or background?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, we do look at personalities quite a bit actually. Most candidates that come our way have already done some sort of personality test. A lot of them come from franchise brokers, franchise consultants, who kind of find candidates and then pass them your way if they’re the right fit. So we’re really looking for the personality type that would be considered an achiever, someone that really wants to drive sales and be kind of that person that is really excited to get out in the community, meet people.

You know, really, you, it’s kind of a combination of personalities. You have to really be compassionate. A lot of people come our way because they’re super compassionate and want to help people and they love that, but they’re not really drivers of business, right? They’re more like a belonger. They want to help people and they’re very empathetic. So it’s a little bit of a unique type of personality of someone that really cares. Maybe a lot of our franchises have their own personal story that made them consider this industry, but also someone that really wants to drive business, to drive sales. And so that’s really the type of person that we’re looking for. I often say, like somebody who’s like really good at organizing like the friends birthday parties, you know, like someone like that type of personality that’s just really excited to do those things.

Not everyone is. Types of industries that typically are successful. I’d say anybody that’s got a background in like B2B sales is very helpful, right? Somebody who has already kind of done some of the same things because what we’re asking them to do is go make connections in the community with other senior care type of businesses.

It could be hospice, could be a skilled nursing facility, could be someone that’s just out, has done boots on the ground in the past, has made connections. A lot of that nowadays, of course, is through like LinkedIn and connecting. We have a playbook that we go over with them before they, you know, as they go through the process of learning about our franchise system. We get into this stuff, right? We talk about like, you know, what we’re asking them to do.

We have what’s called a launch guide, where we kind of tell them exactly what they need to be doing on a daily, weekly basis to get this business off the ground. You know, nurses can be a big help. You know, some of our locations have an RN in the ownership group.

It’s not necessary. We didn’t have that in our Maryland location, but some do. Anybody, if now some people do have some sort of medical or healthcare background, like for example, I have one franchisee that’s a pharmacist, and he really loved the concept and kind of already was, you know, had some local people in the area that knew him. We like people that have maybe lived in their community for quite some time, have built connections in any way, really, like maybe through their business or, you know, we’ve got people we talk to that their kids are on sports teams and they just, they’re coaches or they’re just, you know, they’re part of the local chamber of commerce.

They just are entrenched in their local community. Those things, and you don’t need all of those things. You just need some of those things, right, and a strong desire. So, you know, I think that it could be a few different types of professions, but I think that at the root, the personality type that I described earlier is really the main thing that we’re looking for.

Anthony Codispoti: So from what you described there, it sounds like perhaps a lot of the, I’m going to call it deal flow, because that’s, you know, sort of a business term. A lot of the clients that come in are coming in as referrals from other places, from a doctor or, you know, a hospital or something like that, where they’re like, oh, yes, you have a need. Here’s a flyer. Here’s who we recommend. Is that right?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, you nailed it, Anthony. I mean, it’s people that are, people don’t typically investigate getting in-home senior care until they need it. And often when they need it, they need it now, right? When you need care from us, you know, you really need it right now. It’s, you’re not going to, if I say, well, okay, great, well, thanks for telling me your story.

I’m going to now try to find some caregivers for you, and you know, I’ll call you when we find some. They’re going to go move right on to the next company. So, you’ve got to be positioned well with your staff to be able to take on clients, like whenever they come your way. And so that’s why the professional referrals, to your point, is so important.

That’s what we need to franchise these out there doing. You know, social workers, nursing staff, physical therapy departments, doctors, like you said, they’re the ones that are recommending to families who have no clue where to go next to people like us. And the conversion rate of, you know, getting a professional referral is close to 50% to get that client versus someone that just Googles you is maybe 5%. So it goes such a long way. And not only that, you know, those type of professions, nurses, physical therapists, social workers, they’re not, they’re not typically leaving that profession. They’re going to be in this profession forever.

So short of them moving to another city or state, you know, that’s going to be a long-term relationship. I personally did that role. And some of my best friends are people that I met in those roles doing marketing, right? And so, you know, it’s the best way to get good business. It’s the best converting type of referral, intakes of referrals, and it’s sustainable over the course of time. So it’s really important that our franchisees understand that and are comfortable handling that role.

Anthony Codispoti: What geographies are you looking to move into, Chad? Or is it kind of wide open at this point? It is wide open. You know, we have a

Chad Tracey: total of six locations right now, more coming very soon. And we’ve been, I’ll answer the question by saying we’ve been successful in urban locations as well as very rural locations. You know, and that’s kind of a new thing actually with the way things are working in our industry. So we’re not really targeting anything specifically. We’re available in, I think, 45 states right now. The few states that we’re not in is only because of difficulties with that state with licensing. And so the answer is we’re looking all over and we’ve got a plan for how people can be successful in just outside of New York City. We have a location and in the very rural area of East Central Ohio, we’ve got a successful profitable location as well. So the answer is all over.

Anthony Codispoti: We’re in Ohio. I’m in Columbus, Ohio. I wonder if I’m familiar with the area.

Chad Tracey: Yeah, he’s not too far. He’s like East Central Ohio, which would, his office is in New Philadelphia. Oh, sure. So I went to Side Story. I went to visit him and help him out and made half of the vehicles on the road were like horse and buggy. It’s not a, not no motorized vehicle. So that gives you an idea of how to play football.

Anthony Codispoti: There’s a strong, strong Amish population in that part of the state. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not too far, maybe an hour or so from where I grew up. So I’m familiar with the area. Yeah. Nice people there.

Absolutely. So Chad, you guys have been recognized multiple times as small business of the year and a top workplace by Baltimore Sun. What, aside from the tech that you have in place to help make everybody’s lives easier, what are you guys doing differently that sets you apart in, you know, this competitive home care industry?

Chad Tracey: Well, a lot of those awards, you know, the small business of the year really comes from year over year growth and things like that. So a lot of it’s financial based.

But, you know, and so I would attribute that to just everything, you know, it’s like the technology improving just at, you know, our reputation that’s out there, just word of mouth. I mean, it’s definitely the kind of business where as the longer you’re in business, the less you have to to market out there, right? Like, like you’re still marketing, but people have heard about you. It’s like sometimes people will call and looking, we always try to write in business, you always want to know where they called from. And a lot of times it’s like, I don’t know, I just heard about you in the community. Well, you don’t have that luxury in year one, right? No one heard about you in the community when you just opened.

You got to work a little harder. So a lot of it, it’s really, really a lot of word of mouth and then hearing about you in a few different ways. The other part interesting that people don’t often search online for like senior care in my city. It’s more like they look up, they’ve heard about you from someone else or somewhere else, and they Google your the name of your company. So that’s a far more searched term in our space than what you then if I’m, I don’t know, let me think of something else. If I’m selling like, I just

Anthony Codispoti: if I’m a plumber, yeah, I’m I’m typing in plumber. But in your case, people aren’t typing in senior home care, Alzheimer’s care, they’re typing in second family because they’ve heard about it from somebody else.

Chad Tracey: Yeah. And that’s a great example. Exactly. Exactly. And then what do you do when you find a plumber, you start looking at reviews, right, stuff like that. So that’s important. Top workplace, you know, that’s driven by your employees. And so we’ve gotten plenty of business. I can remember people saying, you know, I really, I really saw it’s important to me that that your employees were gave gave you good reviews. So that’s where that comes from is your employees reviewing their experience with you. And there’s a lot of companies, honestly, in our space that that have poor employee reviews, primarily from caregivers, for, for whatever reason, I mean, you’re not going to, we all know that when you when you’re dealing with a lot of caregivers, you know, you’re not going to keep everyone happy. You know, we all know that in business, and every client’s not going to be happy, you know, and, you know, as a business owner, sometimes you think that that, you know, they weren’t being fair or just kind of being a little angry or whatever it is, take the good with the bad.

But overall, you got to treat your employees right. You know, I always say, I knew that I would get tons of satisfaction. Before I got into this business, I knew I’d get tons of satisfaction by being in this business, by helping these seniors always had a soft place in my heart for seniors ever since I was a little kid. I knew I would love that. But what I didn’t realize was how much satisfaction I would get with my employees, caregivers, nurses.

We have a general manager now in our Maryland location. She’s been with us almost nine years. She started right out of college. The reason she started, we couldn’t pay her a ton of money back then, but she believed in our story. Her, she had grandparents that were going through similar things that we had seen. She believed in our story. She’s still with us. My director of nursing has been with us over 10 years.

She believed in our story. And so it’s getting your employees to buy in, I think is just as important, if not more important than getting your clients to buy in. Clients, they’re not, we’re not selling a fancy brand new car. We’re not selling a nice, fancy watch. It’s not an exciting thing to pay for. I don’t want to have to pay you guys because that means there’s a problem. Someone in my family has lost us. They’re independents. And sometimes I’m a little grumpy because who wants to deal with all that? And it’s understandable.

Anthony Codispoti: But I could be a challenging time that has connected you with the client.

Chad Tracey: I can’t tell you how many times I said to my employees, take it with a grain of salt. They’re going through a hard time. And a lot of times when you treat these people back with kindness that they’re going to be like, oh, I’m sorry.

I’m just dealing with a lot. So you try to keep, I tell my staff, whatever you do, when a client leaves us for whatever reason they leave us, I don’t care if they leave. Obviously, sometimes they leave because someone passes away. But it could be that here and there that they’re just not satisfied for whatever reason. I’m like, make sure they go away happy. That’s all I care about. I don’t care what you have to do, make sure they go away happy.

Anthony Codispoti: Chad, I’ve just got one more question for you. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, for everyone listening today, I know that you love today’s content. Please hit the like, share, subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. I also want to point people to your website so they know how to get in touch with you. We’ve got SecondFamily.com, which is more like the customer facing. And then we’ve got SecondFamilyFranchise.com, which is for folks who might be interested in the franchise opportunity, what that might entail. And so the last question that I have for you today, Chad, is I’m kind of curious to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, either something personal or professional, maybe how you got through that and some lessons that you learned coming out the other side.

Chad Tracey: Chad Yeah. And I’d say both personal and professional, the hardest challenge that I had to overcome was just selling those first couple franchises. There’s no question about it. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my career. Very emotionally draining, a lot of hours, a lot of sweat and tears, a lot of just really going through the process of thinking that you have people ready to buy in at the last minute, they change their mind or something like that. And I always say every franchise that you sell makes the next one a little bit easier than the last, maybe by 1%. And so it was, I just, I had this vision of when we sold our first franchise. And by the way, our first franchise in Philadelphia, they’ve done amazing. They opened literally a month before COVID hit.

And so you go through all this trial, tribulation, blood, sweat and tears, and then they open and it’s a month before COVID. And so that was just a whole giant thing. Yeah. I mean, we’re all about taking a negative and turning it to a positive here. And we got a lot of examples of that.

But yeah, it’s just going through that whole process. I had like vision, I had like these moments where like, okay, this is what I’m going to feel like when we finally sell our first one, you know, and it’s going to be this amazing euphoria. It really honestly, like when it happened, I was just like, all right, who’s next? You know, it’s just like, it was like, it was

Anthony Codispoti: classic entrepreneur, you don’t take any time to celebrate the win. You’re just, you’re onto the next one.

Chad Tracey: I remember I took a picture. I’ve heard a lot of stories like this going to conventions and franchise conventions, and, you know, where people just break down and cry, they got their first check and it’s so hard to first group to buy in. And I was thinking that’s what would happen.

But, you know, it didn’t happen that way. I had like, but I did, I did, I have this one picture where I took a picture of the check. And in the background, in my office, I have a picture of our grandparents, you know, from the 70s. And this really reminder, we encourage our franchisees do this as a reminder to of why you’re doing what you’re doing every day. So sometimes we have a bad day, you walk around the office and we have pictures of my grandparents, we have pictures of clients and caregivers in our office. And so it helps me remember even when I’m having a hard day.

But I took the picture of the check and in the background was my grandparents and I smiled, I took the picture, and I thought there would be this moment of just like, tearful joy. But no, I just went back in the office and started grinding some more. So, no, but it was very challenging, man, and only about 10% of people that set out to become franchisee or succeed. And we’re still in very in many ways just getting started. But, you know, think the momentum is really phenomenal right now. So we’re really pumped about where we are. So we feel like the that really hard hump that you have to overcome is past us.

Anthony Codispoti: Was there any point before you got that first franchisee that you thought, maybe this isn’t gonna work? Like just throw it with a towel?

Chad Tracey: All the time, every day, Anthony, every single day. But I, how do you get through that? Well, for me, like I said, I would walk out and just like look at my grandparents. I would just like, I’m not a quitter, man.

Like, I can’t, I would be letting my entire family down, my kids down, my partner down, my, my employees down, and my, all the people in my life that had passed, my grandparents, I’d be letting them down and just wasn’t going to happen.

Anthony Codispoti: And like you said, now you’re kind of over that hump, right? Like you’ve got the first ones under your belt, you’ve got proof of concept, that first one that opened in Philly, opened up right before COVID and look at them now, they’re doing amazing. And you were telling me a little bit off air that you’ve got a new franchise partner that’s working really well, helping to open up some doors. Do you want to give some voice to that?

Chad Tracey: Yeah, so we partnered not too long ago with the RepaM group. And the RepaM group is a full service franchise sales organization that we’ve partnered with to take over our franchise sales. It’s been amazing so far, been with them about six months. And we’ve sold one recent franchise in Fort Worth, Texas, and we’ve got many, many others coming along.

But yeah, it’s been outstanding. It’s really, it can be a common way for companies like us to scale because you can’t do everything as franchise oars. You can’t handle all the franchise sales and also on board new franchisees, train those new franchisees.

And then even as they scale up, how are you going to help them get to where they need to go? And oh, by the way, you’ve got to keep improving your systems. You’ve got to stay knowledgeable about the industry trends.

There’s just so many things you have to do. So it is a pretty common thing when you get to our stage that you would maybe outsource your franchise sales. But at the same time, we’re still very much involved.

We do founders calls. When a franchise prospect gets toward the end of really the very end of the process, we’ve already vetted them. We’ve already given the green light for these people.

They’ve already basically given the green light that they want to move forward with us. We all break bread together. They come in that they fly into Maryland, our home office. And at that point, we’ll go to dinner, we’ll kind of learn more about each other, talk about each other, learn more about each other. And then we give about a half a day long presentation for them where they it’s very interactive.

They can ask questions. So we’re very, very involved, even though they’ve kind of taken over the bulk of the vetting of franchise candidates. So we’re going to continue down this path for now. And it’s going really, really well so far.

Anthony Codispoti: Sounds very exciting. Chad, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Chad Tracey: No, this has been great. Anthony, really, really appreciate the invite. And yeah, looking forward to continue to get to know you and see you out there. Absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti: I’d enjoy that very much. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.