Tim Evankovich’s Franchise Mastery: From Cleaning Authority to Senior Care Revolution

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 Codispoti and today’s guest is Tim Evankovich. He is the CEO of Oasis Senior Advisors, a company based in Columbia, Maryland, that strives to simplify the search for senior care by providing knowledgeable resources and compassionate guidance. Under Tim’s leadership, Oasis studies each family’s needs to reduce the time and stress involved in finding alternative living options. Now, Tim has over 20 years of experience in the franchise business model, having previously served as president of the cleaning authority. He is also known for building a new brand in an ever-evolving industry and was elected to the International Franchise Association Board of Directors. His passion for helping seniors and their families underscores the core mission of Oasis Senior Advisors, which offers tailored, no-cost services.

And I’m going to repeat that in case you missed it. The services they provide to older adults and their families are completely free of charge. They have been recognized for supporting thousands of clients with warmth and integrity, and Tim believes in creating a supportive environment where people can feel confident about the choices they make. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad 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 innovative programs. Now, results vary for each company, and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, Tim Evankovich of Oasis Senior Advisors. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Tim Evankovich : Happy to be here, Anthony. Thank you so much for having me.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, so before we talk about Oasis, Tim, I want to lay the groundwork here for your larger experience in the franchising world. You co-founded the cleaning authority, a home cleaning service, which started without the franchising model attached to it, and then later transitioned to this model in 1994. What inspired you to make that shift?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, awesome question, because our initial thought in growing our business as a cleaning service, my partner and I, Steve Robinson, decided that we’re going to kind of do the Starbucks model. You know, we’ll open branch offices, put a manager in place, and kind of expand exponentially that way. And what we found with that was the challenges of just having a manager in there, not having skin in the game, so to speak, and the individual business would grow to a certain level and then just kind of stagnate, because again, that manager didn’t have ownership, didn’t take necessarily enough pride in the work that they were doing to continue to build it. And that’s really what precipitated us looking at franchising, the franchise model. And we knew certainly it was a franchise business opportunity, because there are already a multitude of cleaning services in the business of franchising.

Mary Mades, Molly Mades, Tha Made, May Brigade, the list goes on and on. And so that’s kind of where we backed up and retold in about 94, 93, 94, to decide, as opposed to putting managers in place, let’s put franchisees that have ownership. And we felt that, you know, if we did it the initial way, the Starbucks side would be a big player in a little pawn, but with franchising, we can be a bigger player and a bigger pawn. So that, again, really precipitated us starting the franchising effort.

Anthony Codispoti : So there are other brands in the space that were already following this model. It was kind of a proof of concept for you guys. And you were seeing that it’s kind of hard to get that amount of care and attention to detail at the local level when you’re hiring managers. So you thought, let’s go this ownership model, because we’ll get much better performance from them. So when you switch to this model, did you see immediate demand for the franchise offering or was there something that maybe eventually helped to accelerate that growth?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, that’s interesting. You know, having not franchised anything prior to that, my partner and I thought, oh, we hang our shingle out there, we start franchising, and they will just beat down our door to become franchisees. That’s how it works, right? Look at McDonald’s Subway.

I mean, people can’t wait to become franchisees of those. Well, I promise you, it does not work that way. You have no credibility in the marketplace.

You have no clout, so to speak. And so we grew very slowly. I think the first year we picked up, I don’t know, six franchises, the next year we did 12. I mean, we slowly built some momentum.

Anthony Codispoti : But before you kind of get to the future part, how, how were you finding those early franchises?

Tim Evankovich : Um, beg, borrow and steal from, we did some franchise shows across the country that were somewhat helpful. But really what, what helped put us on the map were the franchise consultants, the brokers.

We got into a couple of those groups early on by the, by 97, 98. And that’s kind of a third party endorsement saying, Hey, candidate, we see what you’re looking for. This opportunity may be the right fit for you. So that’s, that’s really what helped propel our growth.

Anthony Codispoti : And I see here in 2003 that you, and you had one other person at the time and you managed to close 54 franchise deals in a single year. I mean, that’s essentially one per week. What was that experience like? How did, how did the two of you manage such incredible growth?

Tim Evankovich : It was a crazy year to say the least. And we had gotten some great momentum with, as I mentioned, some of those broker groups and just got in a vein of a few of them that really liked our concept. And so it was, it was a whirlwind.

It really was. And, you know, when you’re, when you’re doing 54 deals, one a week, basically, that means you’re talking to probably four or 500 candidates to get to that level. You know, some of the conversations don’t last, but, you know, 15, 20 minutes, but, you know, some people you take all the way through the process, and then they don’t say yes. But so yeah, it was, you know, it was a solid 15, 16 hour days, five days a week for, for, for that full year.

Anthony Codispoti : So the franchise consultants that are kind of giving you guys this credibility boost and making intros for you, what was it specifically about what you guys were doing that they liked as opposed to the other cleaning services that were also franchising?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, that’s a great point, Anthony, because we felt if we were coming into this marketplace with already being crowded, we had cleaning process was unique, designed and developed by the actual, the original owner. But also we were the only one to have our own software, a software that would help manage the daily operations of the cleaning business with scheduling, which is the biggest challenge of people and houses and, and that kind of balancing act that you have there. So that was a huge one.

Anthony Codispoti : What was it that was unique about your cleaning process?

Tim Evankovich : Well, I would imagine every franchise cleaning business thinks they have the best one. I think what was unique in not just so much the process, but also how we paid our employees. We were one of, if not the only that paid hourly to our employees for time in the house. Most others would pay a percentage or a flat fee for per house, which the cleaners quickly realized the faster they go, the more money they make.

Conversely with us, the longer they’re in the house, the more money they make. So it tended to give a much higher quality clean, kept our customers happier, less turnover of customer and less turnover employee.

Anthony Codispoti : Interesting. I don’t like that, especially from a customer point of view. I mean, I would like the cleaners to be in and out as quickly as possible. But the biggest reason that I’m having them come in the first place is I want the place clean. Yeah. And so how do you align everybody’s incentives?

And that’s a great way to do it. So then after about 25 years, you decided to step away from the cleaning authority. What led to that decision? Had you know it was the right time?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, my partner and I both thought after 25 years, it was time. We love the business. And, you know, what I loved about the business more than anything was the gratification I got from the employee side, not just our support team within the cleaning authority, but the franchisees and then also their employees, right, giving them a great opportunity, a great work environment, kind of bringing them in, building them up and sending them out.

So that I really enjoyed. But after 25 years, everything gets a little bit tired. I think our brains got a little bit tired with new ideas and new energy. And we thought it was just a great time to to transition.

Anthony Codispoti : So how did the Oasis Senior Advisors opportunity come about?

Tim Evankovich : So you don’t see the correlation between toilets and seniors?

Anthony Codispoti : Well, seniors use them, but I don’t know. Yeah, I’m sure there was something else that took place here.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah. And in the last few years of the cleaning authority, my partner and I started also a little incubator company called Fran Forward, where we thought we could help young, fledgling franchise organizations build and grow, build infrastructure and kind of get them off in the right track. And from that, we met a couple from Michigan, and they were doing this concept.

They had an in-home care company, but they were kind of doing this model of Oasis on the side. And they thought, you know, we think it has legs. And so they came and visited with us. And we love the concept. You know, we thought, well, this is fantastic. Not only is it hugely gratifying, but it’s got a very philanthropic feel to it because all we do is help people.

Right. So my partner and I loved it. Well, they ended up not using us right away. They went away and tried to do it on their own and came back a year later and said, help. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know how to make this work. Would you be interested in buying us? And literally, my partner and I could not jump across the table fast enough to shake their hand.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay. So was the business at that time, what it currently is today, you were helping advise families and seniors about different options that were available to them?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, I think the core business, that’s what it was, right? Helping families and seniors through a difficult and challenging time. But now with, you know, when we took it over, we changed the name obviously and start building our software. You know, we’re very technologically driven. We figure if the technology is out there to help not only our corporate entity, but our franchisees grow and build at a better rate, stronger. That’s the way we need to go. And we have a huge robust software platform that helps our franchisees manage every aspect of their business.

Anthony Codispoti : Say more about the tech because you also mentioned this with the cleaning service and we didn’t really talk, we talked about what you were doing. It was different sort of in the compensation model, but not how tech really comes into play to be like a competitive advantage for you guys.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, you know, you can always find off the shelf software packages, you know, Salesforce and things like that, that they can help you in your business. But nothing ever seems to do everything you need it to do specifically for your, so we build our own from the ground up from scratch. And really what it does, it’s a full management system for our franchisees. It’s called Oasis IQ. And, you know, over the course of gosh now, 12, 13 years, 14 years of putting the software together, it really manages so many aspects of their business from the scheduling, from, you know, the biggest piece is helping navigate the senior to the right assisted living.

It actually does a comparison. We have all of the communities assisted living, member care in our system, and it will help match that senior to the appropriate one based on their needs, their activities, their daily living, their needs, location, where they want to live, all of that. So that’s one of the biggest pieces for our franchisees and aiding them and running their business.

Anthony Codispoti : So it helped me understand. I’m fortunate that I haven’t had to go through this process with either of my parents yet. Why is this such a cumbersome process? Can I just go to Google and look for different options and visit these places and sort of figure it out on my own?

Tim Evankovich : Certainly, you can, but you’re going to have less hair than I have when you’re done. So it is daunting to say the least because if you just think about any city, you know, where you are in Ohio, you know, there are hundreds of assisted living memory care communities within a 40-50 mile radius. And so not all of them will accept certain care levels.

Not all of them are appropriate for the seniors’ needs. And so that legwork that you’re googling through, you have to do all that. And again, that’s the huge advantage of our advisors, where they know all the communities. They know what level of care they provide. They know which ones are very good, which ones are okay, and which ones we probably want to avoid. And so we cut through all of that process for you, always giving our seniors and their families choices, at least ideally three or four choices, of these are the communities that best fit your senior. And then, being very personalized, we’re actually going to go tour with those families in the communities, kind of being their advocate of, you know, what are the pros and cons, pluses and minuses of each of these, letting them make that final decision of what’s going to be right for their senior. Interesting.

Anthony Codispoti : And we mentioned this in the intro, I like to better understand, you’re not charging the seniors or their families for your services. So how does that work? How do you guys make money?

Tim Evankovich : So great question. So correct, our services are free to the family and senior. What we have are agreements in place with the communities, assisted living, memory care, independent living, that say, if we bring you a senior and they place in your community, you’re going to pay us a one time referral fee for that placement.

Anthony Codispoti : Does that end up making the stay or the service more expensive?

Tim Evankovich : It does not, has no impact to the family whatsoever. Because what we’re doing, we usually get a percentage of one month’s room and care cost. That’s how our franchisees get paid and make their money. And it’s a pretty high fee. The average right now is probably around $4,000 per placement.

Anthony Codispoti : And this works out obviously well for the facility because those are fees that they would have spent, you know, trying to run Facebook ads or radio ads or market in other ways.

Tim Evankovich : And so this is another cost-efficient fee. Exactly. It’s kind of a loss of uniform to some extent. Yes, you’ve got a loved one who’s in this position. Why not reach out to you guys? Like, you know, it’s not costing me anything.

I’m going to learn a whole lot from the experts and find, you know, sort of the best options that are in my area. Absolutely. Why not? Like you said, it doesn’t cost you dying. And we’ve got the expertise to really walk them and hold their hand through this whole process, making sure they have a good experience, making sure we find that next perfect living environment for their mom or dad.

Anthony Codispoti : Can you think of maybe a specific story where you guys were, you know, able to help somebody? Because I think anytime we can hear sort of specifics like that, it really helps us sort of wrap our heads around the impact that you’re having.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we’ve got hundreds of stories. So it was tough to center in on one, but, you know, a situation that is not uncommon, unfortunately, where a sister is taking care of her brother, who is early onset dementia. So his memory isn’t where it needs to be. And he’s not able to do normal activities of daily living, showering, whatever it may be. And she’s the sole caregiver.

And after a while now, she’s just kind of at her wit’s end and can’t take care of her brother anymore. However, he hasn’t been clinically diagnosed yet with dementia. So memory care communities won’t take him as a resident.

So they won’t take him. So she goes to the hospital and tries to check into the ER, but with nothing physically wrong with them, they won’t admit him either. So this poor caregiver is just kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place of, what do I do? I can’t care for my brother.

They won’t take him here. So what happens is fortunately, they got in touch with one of our advisors. And so the advisor went out and did all the legwork to find a community that had assisted living and a memory care side as well, that agreed that said, yes, we’ll take him into assisted living to start. And then once he gets diagnosed and we had that in place, then we can transition him into the memory care unit. But they were allowing him kind of to be part of the memory care unit while he was there. And without that, advisor helping them, again, that poor caregiver has nowhere to turn. So a prime example of what our advisors can do to help these families through really difficult and challenging times.

Anthony Codispoti : What a frustrating situation you just described there. So when you talked about meeting with the founders of Oasis Senior Advisors, you and your partner couldn’t jump across the table fast enough, I think was your words, when they offered to sell it to you. You guys, you had built very successfully your own franchise with the cleaning authority. You had been consulting with other franchise operations. So you guys, you sort of knew what to look for in terms of this could work, this couldn’t work. What specifically had you so excited about this particular model?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, great question. And I think it was what we really fell in love with was the idea of how many families and seniors were going to be able to help, right?

Not personally, but through our franchise system. And that was just so gratifying to know that we’re actually going to do something that is going to give back to make a difference in people’s lives. Long term, and seeing where it is now after 10, 11 years or so, the amount of seniors and families that we help on a daily, monthly, annual basis is staggering. And it just is such a great feel good franchise. So yeah, that’s that’s one of the reasons we couldn’t shake their hand fast enough.

Anthony Codispoti : So did you kind of follow the same playbook from the cleaning authority in terms of how to scale? You had the relationships with these franchise advisors and that was sort of the big unlock?

Tim Evankovich : Yep, absolutely. And unfortunately, because of our track record track record in the past and how we build a successful franchise, we had some some good legs going into it with those brokers. They knew what we’d done in the past. And so that certainly helped propel our growth at a much, much more rapid pace.

Anthony Codispoti : Was that scaling and that growth pretty smooth sailing or was there a bump in the road along the way that you guys had to figure out?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, I’d be lying if I say there weren’t always bumps in the road. There were, you know, when we first started scaling the model, you know, we had an idea of what that franchisee would look like, you know, who was our ideal candidate. And over the course of the first few years, that really changed dramatically to who we were looking for, right? It had to be somebody that certainly loved people wanted to have that opportunity to give back and make a difference in people’s lives had to be personable. And so that caring type, empathetic person is who we found out really did well in business and had a good business sense as well.

Anthony Codispoti : So then you sold Oasis about two and a half years ago, but you’re still involved today?

Tim Evankovich : I am, I am there. They were kind enough to kind of keep me on and and let me consult on a few things. I still run a couple or on a couple committees. Our franchisee advisory council and we have a culture club within both organizations. And, you know, that’s one of the things that I’m proudest of was the culture that we’ve built, not just at the cleaning authority, but especially here at Oasis. And so I want to make sure whether we’re purchased by somebody or running it ourselves, that that culture remains strong within the system itself.

Anthony Codispoti : How many locations are there today?

Tim Evankovich : We’re at 159 locations in some like 42 or 44 states. 96 individual franchises, some of them have multiple territories at this point.

Anthony Codispoti : I’m going to guess at least one of the appealing things about this particular company style or what it is you guys, the franchise opportunity is what I want to call it, is the fact that it’s low capital, low overhead to get started, right? You don’t need a big facility. You don’t need an office space. You don’t need to build out. Am I right? And what else is there that that’s so appealing?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, 100% accurate. We’re what’s considered a lower investment opportunity. We’re somewhere between 90 and 120,000 somewhere in there all in. But to your point, yeah, they work out of their home, especially initially, some will eventually get an office when they’re scaling their staff in two, three, four, five people or so. But for the most part, for the first year or two, working out of their home, so overhead’s very low. And until you start bringing on employees to really start scaling the business, it’s pretty straightforward.

Anthony Codispoti : So you’re spending some time still working with some committees. How many hours are you kind of working with the business? How many hours is sort of in this semi-retirement phase? How are you kind of splitting your time?

Tim Evankovich : Well, you got to be careful answering that question, not knowing who’s going to listen to this, especially, you know, my leadership team and stuff. So right now, I’m averaging a couple hours a day working on my committees and also, you know, an hour or so, a couple hours a week with the International Franchise Association Board of Directors, working with them to benefit franchising and continue to educate and help people learn and understand the franchise model.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, you were recently elected to the International Franchise Association Board. Why was that something you were interested in? And what does the work look like there? What are you guys doing?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, it’s kind of a consulting gig as well. But, you know, I’m a firm believer that as you’ve been blessed, it’s important to give back. And franchising has done so much for me and my family for, gosh, 35 years or so. I thought this was a great opportunity to do just that, to give back, to help people get into franchising or learn and understand, educate people. I did a lot of franchise development. So I do speak for the IFA, occasionally, on franchise development and building successful franchise organizations. And how do you do that? How do you build that infrastructure? And I love doing stuff like that. I love the opportunity to give back.

Anthony Codispoti : So what kinds of organizations are in the IFA? Are they like senior care, home care? Is it sort of, you know, I think of franchising, I think of like McDonald’s and Subway or the big guys in there too?

Tim Evankovich : They are, yeah. It’s franchising as a whole. So the IFA is really made up of three components. Franchisors like Oasis and multitudes of others. I think IFA has a couple thousand or so franchise organizations that are part of their group. But also franchisees, they started bringing those in 20 years ago or so. So franchisees, but also the suppliers, right? The suppliers of the franchise systems from software companies, from PEO companies and everything in between, software companies, insurance companies, everything that a franchise or may need and franchisee as well in their running business. So that’s kind of what the IFA is made up of.

Anthony Codispoti : So for people listening that might be interested in learning more about the franchise opportunity at Oasis, where did they go?

Tim Evankovich : Website, probably the best, thecleaningauthority.com. Very easy to find us. We got a great team.

Anthony Codispoti : You did say cleaningauthority.com.

Tim Evankovich : I think it’s a little slip there. That was too many years there. Yeah. Oasis, OasisSeniorAdvisors.com. Apologies. Yes. So I got an amazing team. The development team, Jim Stumpf, runs that and a great group of individuals that really, very selective of who we bring in just because they can sign a check and fog them here does not mean they’re going to be Oasis franchisees. Very stringent process to get through because we really do want people that are a good fit, a good fit for us and we’re a good fit for them.

So yeah, OasisSeniorAdvisors.com, the best way to reach out to it. And so obviously there’s a financial component that they have to qualify for, but you mentioned earlier that people who are sort of on the more caring and compassionate side of the spectrum are a good fit. Like how do you go about sussing that out?

Tim Evankovich : We do use some tools for predictive index. It’s one of them. We’ll run them through a course of tests and stuff to kind of get an understanding of where they’re coming from. That can be very helpful. But truthfully, it’s being with them on the phone and spending hours with them on the phone, understanding who they are, what their desire is, what are their attributes, so to speak, that would feel would make a good fit for Oasis. And that’s really the best. It’s human contact and really working with them for hours on the phone.

Anthony Codispoti : Are there particular career paths that you’ve seen that are sort of a common denominator in the folks that end up being a good fit for you?

Tim Evankovich : Not really. And I alluded to, when we first started, we knew exactly who we wanted as a franchisee, but we have everything from housewives to doctors, people that are doctors that come in.

We have a bunch of nurses that have come through our process that are fantastic. And everything in between. So there’s not necessarily a pattern or a specific background that says, this is going to make a great franchisee. It really starts with a heart for us.

Anthony Codispoti : You said you’ve got over 100 locations already, 40 some states. Are there particular geographies that are wide open or locked off, like somebody’s listening like, oh, I’m here. I wonder if there’s an opportunity.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, it’s kind of the nature of the beast is as you get larger our size of almost 160. We do. We’re sold out in a handful of states. Maryland just about sold out in Ohio and some of those others, but you know, still have a lot of space in California, a lot of space in Texas, New York. So yeah, we still have hundreds of territories still available, but so only only a few are all sold out. I guess they are.

Anthony Codispoti : Are there any states that are sort of locked out for, I don’t know, any regulatory reasons?

Tim Evankovich : Just right now, just one, Nevada, negates us from doing business in Nevada. We hope that changes on down the road when they see that all we do is help people, not trying to take advantage of anybody. So hopefully that change. We’re right now just Nevada.

Anthony Codispoti : So I want to talk a bit about some of the nonprofit causes that you’re involved with, Tim. And we’ve got the Alzheimer’s Association, Cystic Fibrosis. There’s other children’s charities. What, why, why is this work so important to you?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, I think it goes back to that opportunity to give back and, you know, franchising and life has blessed me very, very well. And I think that’s important to use some of those, some of your abilities, whether it be financial or your business background or acumen that can help in those situations. But I think it is. I think we’re, we as a human race need to do more and be able to do more with those that really need our help when you can. And yeah, Alzheimer’s Association, we do that company-wide specifically and last year alone, we participated in, I don’t know, 50 or 60 walk in Alzheimer’s across the country, raising almost $75,000 for Alzheimer’s.

So that, that’s a big one. Cystic Fibrosis, they’ve come such a long way in the 15, 20 years that I’ve been helping support that in getting so many cures for CF, which is fantastic. And then the children’s charities. This is, this is an easy one for me because it’s, it’s all centered around wine. So, and the wine industry with the Naples Winter Wine Fest and out here in Napa for the Vintner Barrel Auction and stuff, all of those benefiting children’s charities across the country and in those local markets. So I really have a fine tune to that as well.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, I had to plead ignorance on cystic fibrosis. Can you explain what that is and then some of the advancements that you’ve seen in the 20 years that you’ve been working with the association?

Tim Evankovich : So CF is, for the most part, there are a couple of different ones, but the main one is it’s a lung infection basically, where it builds up mucus within the lungs and it’s just impossible to get it out basically in a layman’s terms. And so what the advancements have been is these new drugs that have been coming down the pike have just been life changing, to say the least. I don’t remember the names off the top of my head, but in the last four or five years, I think we’ve got a handle on almost 90% of the different types of cystic fibrosis and helping them with cures and advancement to that level. So it’s amazing of what has happened and to be able to watch that transition over the years has been fantastic.

Anthony Codispoti : Is this a viral or a bacterial thing or is it coming in both forms? Both forms, yeah.

Tim Evankovich : The viral is the tough one. Yeah, fascinating.

Anthony Codispoti : Tim, I’d like to shift gears here for a second and talk about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome. Maybe it’s something personal, maybe it’s professional. Can you kind of open up, give us a view into that? Tell us what you learned and how you got through it.

Tim Evankovich : Be happy to and this is kind of an easy one, but it’s the hardest one. And we had this pandemic thing called COVID a few years back. I think everybody would remember that and it was to say the least, crushing for oasis. Because of the pandemic, we were not able to go about our normal course of business. Our model was all about getting into hospitals, getting into skilled nursing, getting into communities, getting into assistive living and we were locked out. And so we couldn’t go and do our normal course of business as we had planned.

So it was like I said, kind of crushing to some extent. What do we do? Because the family still needed our help. They were still transitioning out of hospitals into assistive living, but there was nobody there to be able to walk them through as we had done in the past. And I got to give great kudos to our franchisees and our support team that figured it out, that changed the business model to allow us to continue to do business.

And within eight, 10 months of the beginning of the pandemic, we were back to pre-pandemic numbers. And again, it’s a credit to those folks for figuring out ways to do business when we were locked out of everywhere. And we were doing things like our franchisee were passing iPads through a window.

At an assistive living to be able to show a family the inside of the community. So it was challenging time to say the least, but we got through it with flying colors. And I’ll tell you, there were a few months there when, and I just wasn’t sure how we were going to make it. And again, credit to those, my support team and my franchisees got it figured out, changed our model, and got us back up in operational.

Anthony Codispoti : I appreciate you sharing that, Tim. I could tell obviously there’s a lot of emotion behind that and brings up a lot of really hard times. Not only for the families, for the seniors, but for you and the Oasis team. And you guys had built this incredible company providing an amazing service. You had a lot of really good momentum.

A lot of people whose livelihoods depended on this, right? And it felt like in the blink of an eye that could all disappear. You gave a lot of credit to your team for being able to sort of figure out what the new model looked like in a relatively short period of time. You mentioned passing the iPad through the window. So you could show some imagery of what was there. What were some of the other key foundational changes that you guys made?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, you know, we came up with a great marketing scheme during this time as well. One call, many solutions. And from that, really it was educating the hospitals and you know, our lead sources basically, educating them to say, we’re still here. We’re still able to do the work and help the families. And that was the biggest, I think, motivator for our franchisees, helping the lead sources say, we’re still here and can help you, can still help the families. It’s different, but we can still do it.

And that was, I think, the biggest understanding to do that is, you know, one call, many solutions, just call us and we can help with a multitude of issues that that family and senior are going through right now.

Anthony Codispoti : Probably doing like a lot more like virtual walkthroughs and zoom calls and that kind of a thing.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, we all got very proficient in zoom. That’s for darn sure. It could be that you had to, you know, we weren’t meeting necessarily families face to face, we’re zoom calling with them, we’re showing them videos of communities that folks have sent us and what have you. It helped us build a huge video library of so many communities across the country to at least show families what the community looks like. You can’t walk through it. And then we also had the challenge of, you know, quarantine when a when a senior went into a community, they were quarantined for 14 days, couldn’t leave their room. And so, you know, the family’s going, Oh, gosh, what are we, we can’t see mom or dad for two weeks or it was, it was, it was nuts.

Anthony Codispoti : So and hard on the resident too, right? Because that’s the time that they want to become acclimated and familiar with their surroundings and kind of meet their neighbors. And that, you know, that that’s a couple of weeks of a really hard transition.

Yeah. And what’s really impressive about what you said is, you know, not only did you guys kind of figure out a new model, but with it was in less than a year, you were back to pre pandemic levels of sales and being able to help a number of seniors. When did you guys see sort of things come back to normal in terms of what you could do with your process?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, it was, you know, and it varied by state. And it really did. New York was on lockdown much longer than in California, much longer than any other states in the US. So some of our franchisees were really almost back to normal in eight, 10 months, we’re still wearing masks, but at least, you know, the with the vaccines that came through, you know, that certainly helped if you were vaccinated, we had to show proof of vaccination, we’re then allowed in. It was a slow process, but it was, you know, some states were six, eight months. Some of the other states were a year, maybe a little bit longer until we could get back to doing our normal routine.

Anthony Codispoti : Do you still lean on some of the new processes that you guys had to come up with during COVID or was it more of, Hey, when we can get back to in person stuff, that’s the better way we’re going to go back to the old way of doing things.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, it’s a great, great point. Yeah, there are certainly some things I talked about the video library that we now have for a lot of our communities. That’s something that is still utilized today. And also it helped us revamp some pieces of our software Oasis IQ to meet some of those challenges that if you can’t meet a family face to face, and if you can’t, you know, go, you know, we also have a digital side as well for Oasis, where even though we may not have a franchisee in some part of the country, we can still help them.

You know, we have, we have advisors that can work with them over the phone and still direct, because again, we have relationships with thousands of communities all over the US that we can still help place even though we physically aren’t in that area.

Anthony Codispoti : Tim, how would you describe your superpower?

Tim Evankovich : People, I think, I think that’s, I know, not necessarily call it a superpower, but I do love people. I love being around people. I like helping people. As I mentioned many times, giving back, making a difference in people’s lives, whether we’re bringing on a new franchisee, changing their life, whether we’re helping a senior and family. But I think, you know, when you talk about the secret of, you know, my business acumen or whatever, it’s really following the golden rule, you know, just treat people the way you want to be treated. You know, it’s not tough to do it in business. Just be kind and do the right thing. It’s not tough, but, you know, good things tend to happen, and it’s, you know, help, I think, make me successful. And just treating people right. Just do the right thing.

Anthony Codispoti : It’s clear that’s really important to you. There was some more emotion that came up there. What’s behind that, Tim?

Tim Evankovich : So I kind of wear my emotions on my sleeve sometimes, obviously. But it is, you know, and it’s so frustrating sometimes to see organizations or companies that lose sight of the main focus of people, you know, and what that means, how they got to where they are, because it was on the shoulders and backs of other people sometimes. There’s no way I get to where I am without my amazing team. They’re just, they’re special people. And they just, they have built me up and I’m just so blessed to be in the chair I’m in.

Anthony Codispoti : I get the sense now, your heart is just overflowing with gratitude. I think that I’m understanding that’s sort of the big emotion that’s coming up.

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, 100%. It’s, I’m so grateful for what I have been allowed to do and blessed to do through this life of franchising and through business. And, you know, to me, again, it’s all about the people and, you know, a lot of people help me get here.

Anthony Codispoti : In my experience, oftentimes, like attracts like. And so when you put that sort of energy and people understand that part of your personality out there, you’re going to, you know, draw people to you that have similar values. And I think that just enriches the entire life experience and working experience in this case.

So 100%. Tip of the hat to you for that. Tim, if you had to recommend a resource to our listeners, something that’s been helpful for you, a book, a course, a podcast, something that’s helped you grow as a person, grow as a business leader, what would it be?

Tim Evankovich : It’s a great question. I’ll give you a couple. And, you know, one of the most iconic books I think ever written, Dale Carnegie’s, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I mean, it goes back to my whole nature, I think to some extent. It’s still a fantastic, fantastic book. And then if you’re looking at the franchise side of what I think a friend of mine put out, Rick Bisio, a book called The Educated Franchisee, a fabulous book, helping people understand whether they’re right for franchising or not. Those are two fabulous books. And I also love, you know, the Spencer book, You Know, Who Moved My Cheese. That’s a great, great people book as well.

Anthony Codispoti : What do you get out of that one?

Tim Evankovich : Who Moved My Cheese? Again, business is all relationship driven, right? And that book specifically, I think, helps you understand how important relationships are in everything you do, especially in the business world. And the better you can build those relationships and relate to people, the stronger you’re going to be.

Anthony Codispoti : How about any particular daily practices that either help you get started in your day or keep you on track, keep you centered as you’re going?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, a couple things. Very religiously based. And so I do try to read some Bible every day. I try to meditate on a regular basis. I do Pilates, as my wife likes to chuckle. But yeah, I think just starting your day with 15, 20 minutes of just thought, right? Just let the day begin, whether you’re meditating or reading something. I think that’s just a great way to start and center your day of just take some time to breathe and, you know, before you kick off your day.

Anthony Codispoti : Why does your wife chuckle at the Pilates?

Tim Evankovich : Well, she’s an instructor. And if you’d seen me on a reformer, you’d chuckle too.

Anthony Codispoti : But anyway, she at least gave you an A for effort. She does. She does. Tim, curious if this rings true for you. In my life, sometimes I look back at something that I consider to be a mistake in the moment. A slip up, man, I wish I had that to do over again. I beat myself up over it. But then as I get further along in life, I look back at that moment with some gratitude and appreciation because while I didn’t understand it in the moment, I was learning a really valuable lesson or it helped to kind of push my life in a little bit of a different direction. Do you have any moments like that that you can think of?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, there’s certainly a couple. And the first thing that comes to my mind is ways of things I could have done better is, you know, some longer term employees that it was time to cut ties with. And I’m certainly looking back now could have handled that so much better in that transition.

And I kind of kicked myself. But to your point, then I go back and I said, that was a great learning opportunity for me as well to do that. So yeah, there are certainly relationships that I wish I would have handled better. You know, hindsight’s always 2020, but it was great learning experience of how not to do that in the future and to really understand, you know, a better tactic.

Anthony Codispoti : Can you add a little more specificity, maybe something that you would have done differently if you had it to do over again?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, I think I would have hired differently initially for Oasis. I think it would have kind of beefed up my upper management team more quickly. I’m not trying to do so much on my own. I think, you know, I think we could have grown more rapidly and a little stronger had I done that early on. So again, a mistake, but learned from that and did bring on some some great higher level leadership later on and made a huge difference in Oasis for sure.

Anthony Codispoti : So from your decades of experience of building teams, Tim, I’m curious to hear what you found that’s helped you both from a recruiting and retention standpoint?

Tim Evankovich : I think patience more than anything else, you know, you have a need in your organization and sometimes we’re just kind of, you got to fill that spot, you got to hire quick or whatever.

And I think that’s just the wrong attitude to have. And the patience, I think I’ve learned that over the years of just make sure it’s the right fit of that next person you’re going to bring in because it’s going to have an impact not just on your support team, but the people they’re supporting, right, the franchisees or whomever. And so that patience piece is sometimes so difficult to learn. And that certainly I think for me was something over the years kind of got better at.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s the best decision you’ve ever made for your business, Tim?

Tim Evankovich : Bringing on my president, John Benbrook, and my chief operations person, C.C. Children, that has helped put Oasis where it is today.

Anthony Codispoti : A lot of gratitude there again, I can tell. You’re swimming in it. I appreciate you showing up and sharing that. That’s awesome. What do you think the future of Oasis looks like? Where’s it going?

Tim Evankovich : Well, I think it’s huge. And of course, I’m extremely biased, but, you know, I was bought two and a half years ago by a company called Silver Assist. And I’ll tell you, you’ve heard so many horror stories of companies coming in and changing this and changing that.

And I’ll tell you, they have been true to their word. Silver Assist, what I loved about it and why I decided to partner with them was their philosophy, right? They want to be the go-to company for seniors and their families, not just for Oasis, but we’ve got a multitude of services that we provide from financial concierge services to moving to whatever that senior may need. We have that all under one roof and can direct them, even if it may not be a company that is under the roof, we can at least give them direction as to where they can turn. We have aid and attendance to help military families find more funds for that.

And so when you ask the question, what does Oasis hold in the future? Because of the relationship we have with Silver Assist and what they’re doing in the senior space itself, it’s just staggering. And it’s very exciting to see what we’re doing. I mean, we are literally empowering people to navigate the complex realities of aging. And that’s…

Anthony Codispoti : It’s a big deal. I mean…

Tim Evankovich : Scott, I think that’s what it really is. I mentioned before, I’ve been in the fortunate position of not having to yet help either one of my parents navigate this, but certainly watch grandparents go through some of this. Grandmother in particular, who played a big part in helping to raise me. And these are people that there’s a special place in our hearts for and to watch them needs that extra help and not understand there are the people that helped us. No question.

And now it’s our turn and we don’t know what to do because we haven’t been through this before. And so to be able to have access to somebody like Oasis, that’s a big deal. It’s a huge leverage point that can really help us to help those that we love. Yeah.

The feedback we get from our families and seniors of how our advisors help them through this process is it’s the mountainous of the great feedback we get and the kudos and never received a bad review on Google ever. So… What? Yeah. That’s not possible. All we do is help people.

Anthony Codispoti : There’s a lot of angry people out there that… You wore blue and they don’t like the color blue so they’re leaving you a bad review. That’s quite a streak. I actually… I almost don’t believe what I heard. I want you to repeat it.

Tim Evankovich : So just as I say that, there’ll be a Google review when it pops up that says, Oasis did this. But it’s true. I mean, if it’s not 100%, it’s 99.9% positive Google reviews because all we’re trying to do is help and there’s no cost. So if we can’t help them, which is rare, they’re not hurt in any way.

Anthony Codispoti : And they’ve learned something along the way.

Tim Evankovich : At least you’ve been able to provide them with some education. We’re going to educate a nothing else for sure. Wow. That’s impressive.

Anthony Codispoti : You’ve talked before about the big emphasis on tech, both for cleaning authority as well as senior advisors. What, if anything, are you guys doing with AI?

Tim Evankovich : Presently. Yeah. We have a whole section within Silver Assist that is really focusing on what that can do for our business. And I’ve seen it. We have a senior leadership. And so we go through some of the things that they’re working on. And it’s just mind-boggling of what that’s going to be able to do. You know, I’ve already talked to the extent of my technology, so I can’t go much deeper. But we are, we’re working on that on a daily basis of how it can help, not just our franchisees, but really help our seniors through some of this process through AI. And it’s amazing stuff of what’s going on.

Anthony Codispoti : You know, I’m going to sort of connect some dots here because in talking with some other folks, you know, there’s a lot of excitement around being able to use it to not only, well, really to make the job that your advisors are doing more efficient so that they can help more people and that they can provide them with greater level of assistance face to face.

You know, I don’t know if there’s a lot of sort of forms that get filled out typically in your line of work. But what I’m hearing from other folks is this reduces the time sort of somebody spends sort of, you know, behind the computer and more time that they can spend face to face with somebody really adding value there.

Tim Evankovich : It will. And how it’s going to impact us kind of specifically is in that, is in that matching idea, you know, our software matches now. But just imagine adding an AI to that with that component of then helping us match the senior on a, on an exponential level.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. What’s something that you wish more people knew about your industry, Tim? That we’re here.

Tim Evankovich : You know, first and foremost, you know, you mentioned it earlier, Anthony, of, you know, I could just go on to Google and let my fingers do the walking. And so many still do that. And that’s the biggest challenge we have of, you know, most people don’t realize we’re here and can help for free. And so that certainly is still our biggest challenge of getting our name out there. To say we can help you through this process. You don’t have to do it alone.

Anthony Codispoti : What’s something you do for fun outside of work?

Tim Evankovich : I play tennis. I love being on a tennis court and getting a great workout. And I’m an Ena file. I do love wine and learning about wine. And I just, I just think it’s fascinating. So those are my two big, my two big hobbies. I love it.

Anthony Codispoti : Just one more question for you, Tim. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First, for all the listeners today, take a moment, just pause for a second. Go ahead and hit the follow button on your favorite podcast app. We’ve had a great conversation here with today from, with Tim Ivankovich from Oasis Senior Advisors. I want you to get more wonderful content like this. Tim, I also want to let people know either the best way to get in touch with you directly to follow your story or that of the company. What would that be?

Tim Evankovich : Yeah, I’m easy to find. Not just our website, but me personally, Tim, at oasissenioradvisors.com. So I’m happy to talk with anybody on franchising or Oasis or kind of be an open book. I’ve got a little extra time on my hands right now. So always happy to, to, to, to, again, work with people and give back a little bit.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s generous. So last question for you, Tim. You and I, we reconnect in a year and you’re really excited. You’re celebrating something big. What’s that thing you’re celebrating one year from now?

Tim Evankovich : I gotta believe it’s going to be the success of Oasis and with, with the hat of silver assist on top of us. You know, the sky’s the limit of where this place is going to go. And it excites me every day of what we’re going to.

Anthony Codispoti : There’s that guy. That’s pretty good. I love it. And do you see it being a situation where, you know, some of these different entities under the, what was it called? Silver, silver assist, silver assist under the silver assist umbrella are going to like send referrals back and forth to each other. Could you see like some of these, like just sort of getting woven in together where, you know, Oasis is now directly offering some of the services that’s, you know, under the silver assist umbrella. Do you have any sense of how that’ll play out yet? Absolutely.

Tim Evankovich : We’re doing it already, you know, with our financial concierge services and with aid and attendance will cross refer. We have a real estate portion as well within our group can help, you know, sell a home, buy a home, whatever through that process. So yeah, and cross referring is going to be a huge piece of that. Excellent.

Anthony Codispoti : Well, Tim Avankovic from Oasis Senior Advisors, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Tim Evankovich : Pleasure was all mine, Anthony. Thank you so much for having me on and sorry I wear my emotions on my sleeve too often.

Anthony Codispoti : That is never something you should apologize for here. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.