The Retention Playbook of a $32M Home Care Agency (Jen Kulig)

This episode is brought to you by the Home Care CPAs. Are you managing your bank account or is your bank account managing you? Too many home care leaders are struggling to manage healthy cash flow because of the lack of scalable billing and payroll processes. It's easy to overlook recurring money issues because you're focused on other important things. It's okay. It happens often in home care. But, if finances aren't your strength, taxes give you nightmares, managing your P&L keeps taking a back seat, or you just like a second opinion on how you are managing your books, I'd recommend you talk to the team at the Home Care CPAs. They focus solely on home care. They know the nuances of independent and franchise home care businesses. They work with startups to upward a $40 million businesses. They can help you in your business, think billing or payroll optimizations or on your business. Think margins, working capital or revenue streams. Having an experienced CPA starts out feeling like you have a financial analyst on your team. Then with time, you realize you have a new key strategic member of your team leading you to better operations and smarter growth. Dana, the director of the Home Care CPAs, recently helped owners and voicey grow their home care business from $20,000 to $2 million in annual revenue over four years. If you want to learn about getting tailored advice for your home care finances, go spend some time with the home care CPAs. You can find them directly at thehomecarecpas.com or find them listed on the show's website under sponsors. Don't prolong seeking out professional advice when it comes to your finances. Your bank account and your business will thank you. Welcome to the Home Care Strategy Lab. I'm your host, Miriam Alred. Today, we are in studio in Dallas, Texas. I am capitalizing on a bunch of home care leaders being in town. We are in studio. Today, I'm joined by Jen Koolig, the director of market operations at Tribute Home Care. Jen, welcome to Dallas and welcome to the studio. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. This is a first for you and kind of a first for both of us. I have been looking forward to this for weeks. Ever since we got a schedule, I have been waiting for this moment and now here we are actually doing it. Don't take this the wrong way, but a lot of people don't know a whole lot about tribute or about you. When I got connected with you, I thought, of course, I want to have you on the show and I want you to tell a little bit more about tribute story and what sets you guys apart and how you've grown so quickly. I think some people might know John Sneath a little bit, but you guys are little under wraps in the industry, so that's part of why I wanted to have you on. Let's start with just like a good old fashioned introduction of yourself, your background, your home care experience, and then leading up to kind of your role and your responsibilities with Tribute. Sure. So I fell into home care. I graduated from Wheat and College in Norton, Massachusetts with a degree in psychology and had no idea what I was going to do with it. And I ended up working for two years in an eating disorder residential home and found that unless I had some type of advanced degree, I wasn't going to be able to go very far there. So I started to apply to some other jobs that seemed interesting, that were kind of administrative in nature. A recruiting company reached out to me and they had been contracted by the first home care company I worked with and the first person who interviewed me was John Sneath back when I was in my early 20s, and I spent, so John was the president of that company. And I spent eight years there. He left about six, six and a half years into my tenure there. He really had a very specific vision for what he wanted home care to look like and wanted to go out on his own. So I followed him very closely, left about a year and a half later, went and worked for care management practice for two years, which was valuable in a lot of different ways. And then once tribute was kind of up and running in Massachusetts, I joined tribute. And I've been at tribute for nine and a half years, and I worked my way up to an executive director position, the first home care company, and then started in a kind of client solutions manager, like a case manager type position at tribute because that's all they needed at the time, and I really wanted to get in because I knew there was a lot of hope for tribute. And then one of the most exciting things that I did after a couple of years is think about how do we expand our service territory and kind of create a sister market. And so we had opened, our first office was in Baltimore, Maryland, and then tribute came two years later in 2016, 2015 I guess, and I really, we were really excited about the idea of how do we expand beyond these two kind of big cities, but maybe with a little less risk. And so one of the things that I did first after being a client solutions manager for a couple of years was to expand our service territory. And so we moved further west outside of Boston and opened up another office and really created it, thought of it as a separate market. And that was a real big success. And really being able to leverage the referral partners we had in the city and help them introduce us to people a little further out, higher caregivers that were further out, and really expand in a very organic way. And so from there I took over the state of Massachusetts and we expanded north and south as well and from the city and then my most recent position for the last couple of years has been to oversee all markets. And so now I am, I oversee all of Massachusetts and the operations of Massachusetts and then support our market directors in Chicago and Maryland. Give us a little bit of like day in the life. Director of market operations sounds stressful, sounds large, sounds like a lot is like in your purview. What are you thinking about and doing on like a day to day basis? I mean what I love about home care is there is no typical day and I'm sure you've heard that before but it really is true. I think you know some days it's you know focusing really on Massachusetts and now there's more layers than there were before so we have somebody that oversees our client solutions team. I myself used to manage the whole client solutions team. I don't do that anymore but I manage the manager of those folks. And you know there are crises that come up all the time. We work with pretty affluent families who spend a lot of money on our care and they have certain expectations and we've promised to deliver at a certain level and so we have to manage those things as they come up. There's a lot of strategic focus and really thinking big picture about where do we want to go, how do we get there, how do we implement change in really effective ways. We are constantly evolving and changing and so that's really exciting. I traveled to Chicago and Maryland probably every six to eight weeks or so on average to really support the teams there. I spend time in the field visiting caregivers and clients by myself and with colleagues. So it's a whole bunch of things but I think at the end of the day it's you know my focus is on how do we make sure that we give everything we possibly can to caregivers because if we do that well we will continue to succeed. That was awesome. That was really well said. And it's actually interesting where you started of someone of your size. It may seem like there's less fires. You've thought about processes and systems and no two days are ever the same but you would almost I would almost think that like you're there's less fires. There's more stability at an organization of your size but that's not necessarily the case. It's care and it's humans at the end of the day and there's always variables and there's always going to be fires. Yeah. I mean you can have a lot of operational consistency if this than that but I still hear new things happen every day. Like something happens with a client and you're like well that's a new one, not the first. So never ending firsts and home and that's what it feels like. Everyone I talk to you. You've been doing this for a long time. People that I've been doing it for 20, 30, 40 years no two days are the same. Which I just again think is interesting. It doesn't matter how long you've been in this business. There's always something new. You haven't actually seen it all. Tell us a little bit more about tribute. You're kind of highlighting where the headquarters are, locations, growth, all of that but just kind of like fill in again where it started. The kind of three major markets that you're in and just talk kind of broadly about like census numbers, revenue, payers, just to kind of people can kind of get the lay of the land of tribute. So we're all private pay other than if families have long-term care and then those policies will oftentimes kick in and we can support that but otherwise it's all private pay. So no Medicare, no Medicaid, no VA benefits none of that. We are about a 30 to 32 million dollar company at the moment. We have grown every single year. Usually out of 10 to 15 percent clips, some years, more, some years a little less. So seeing that growth trajectory continue to go up has been really exciting. Right now we service 14 to 15,000 hours a week of care between our three markets. Massachusetts is our biggest market. We're between 9,000 and 9,500 a week in Massachusetts, Maryland covers around 5,000 right now and Chicago's a really young emerging market, more like six to 700 hours a week. So all three markets are kind of in different stages. Obviously, Maryland and Massachusetts would be considered very established markets but also very different markets. And really our mission is to bring love, visit after visit for those who need care and the remarkable people who provide it. And I just think that really encompasses what we're truly all about. And growth is really exciting but it wouldn't be possible if we didn't have the caregivers in place and we hired carefully and it wouldn't be possible without a kind of growth mindset and the willingness to embrace change day in and day out. So this is what I want to focus on. So with every guest, I usually approach you and say, you know, where is your passion? What do you want to focus on? What do you want to talk about? And one of the things that you told me out of the gate was like a caregiver first mentality, caregiver first mindset, and what I want to focus on and what I want to hear you dissect is how do you do that at scale? You know, a $30, $32 million business, how do you hire, fire review, reward, recognize, retain caregivers at scale and keep that mentality at like the heart and center of everything you do? Because in my mind, a lot of home care agencies tell that they say that, but how do you actually practice what you preach and then how do you do that at scale? That's my question. Kind of the theme of the conversation today is like I want you to tell us how you guys are doing that as such a large organization. So I think we should just start with your hiring process, like what you think about, what you look for, the demographic of these caregivers, and then we'll just kind of like piece our way through. But let's start with basically unpacking your hiring process, how do you initially approach and think about hiring? Great. It's a loaded question. It is a loaded question. Hit by a bit, start wherever it feels natural. Yeah, hiring is essential to the success that we've had at Tribute. We only hire, and I guess I'll back up and say to that, I think there's a pretty significant misconception in the home care industry that home care is home care is home care. Caregivers bounce between agency to agency. You know, you may get lucky and get a great caregiver, but then the next day, not such a great caregiver. And I think that is the experience that families have with certain agencies, but that's really what we try to avoid at Tribute. And so how do we do that, right? So, we only hire one percent of caregivers who work at Tribute. So it's a slog to find what we would call a real Tribute caregiver. And one of the most critical pieces of our success is our recruiting department. So we have a head of talent acquisition, who then oversees our managers of recruiting. We have one in each state, and their whole job is to find those one percent, one percenters. And it also starts with customer service. As much as we are assessing their fit for us, we want to make sure that they can experience right out of the gate what it's going to feel like to be at Tribute. And so every single person who applies gets a response from us. Whether they're going to make it through the process or not, they're going to hear from us. So what that kind of high touch is all about. And then even at the very beginning stages of the applicant process, we give really clear instructions when somebody's applying around what we're looking for and what we'll ask details about not just their experience and what they can bring from a skill set perspective, but also what's your availability? Like the days that you want, like the nights, the days, things like that, but there's very clear instruction. And if they don't follow those instructions, they do not get passed through. They may be a great caregiver, but those little details matter. And so we do a phone screen. If they get past the applicant review, we do a phone screen with our recruiter. And then they decide whether they want to invite them for a first interview. And then if they get past the first interview, which is usually a half hour to 40 minutes, it's a lot of, it's not scripted, it's remote, it's remote. It's not scripted, and it's really, it's a lot of like situational type of questions. Really understanding what are their motivations, what kinds of situations have they been in before and how did they respond to them. At the end of the day, to us, it's, you know, experience is critical, but to us, it's not as critical as somebody who has grit, who has empathy, who has motivation to do this for the right reasons. So we've got to figure out how to get at that in the interview process, the phone screen on the interview process, and it reminds me of your psychology background. Yeah. I don't know if you're tapping into that or if you train your team to tap into that, but it's very much like a psychological, like how do you think about things? How are you going to approach certain situations? It's less so, can you do this? When are you available? Yeah. It's like, how do they think? Yeah. Yeah, and and do they come on time? Do they come prepared? How do they present themselves? Because that says a lot about whether someone's really committed and wants to be at tribute or is this just another job and they applied to 30 of them. And that's not to say we wouldn't hire somebody who applied to 30 jobs, but we want to dig to really understand what are their motivations and what about our ads specifically attracted them to apply and really understand the psychology of that for sure. And we've got, we've had a lot of iterations about how we hire and we've gone back and forth about, you know, maybe we're being too strict and 1% is really painful. I would love to sit here and say we hire 5%. We just keep coming back to, we cannot compromise on quality and what we feel is a tribute profile. If we're going to go out in the world and promise what we've promised to our clients, we just can't. And whenever we've kind of backed off a little bit or been a little bit more lenient, we've come to the same conclusion, which is, no, stop doing that. Let me jump in and ask a couple of questions before we keep going. I want to dive into each section of this. On kind of a tactical level, what platforms and channels are working well for you? Are you guys out on all of the kind of like traditional, indeed, social media on all those platforms? And are any one of those helping you get closer to the 1%, I know it's a volume game. It absolutely is a volume game and so you have to be everywhere. But are you finding a certain level of success with any one platform or with any one strategy? So the biggest success is word of mouth, 40% of our hires come from existing caregivers. And they are 10 to 15 times more likely to be hired than folks off of one of the job platforms. So as we grow, our word of mouth grows and that becomes really, really critical for us. When we pay a caregiver, an existing caregiver gets paid $700 any time they refer someone that is hired and they get paid the minute that that caregiver is oriented and hired. So people can refer as often as they want. They still know that we probably won't hire everyone they refer, but I think it motivates our caregivers a bit. And I think that they believe and have experienced what we give them that they want to spread that to others. So that is a critical piece to our recruiting. And then yes, indeed is probably the one we use the most. It's sifting through a lot of muck, yeah, it really is. But 1% is better than 0%. And then it's really just about how do we position ourselves in those ads and what is it that really attracts somebody to apply and we play around with that a lot. That's the title of the ad. What's the language, the body, what are different. We've tried different things at the onset about like do we, we have a salaried program, which I know we'll talk about in a bit, but do we try and hire caregivers into a salaried position or do we guarantee them 40 hours for four weeks and try to recruit them that way. And we've found that just going back to the basics is usually the best way. Because if people are attracted to something like, we'll guarantee pay for four weeks, they may be motivated by the wrong things. And so we tend to go back, we try, we'll continue to experiment and try new things, especially when we're in a state of needing caregivers more than other times. But word of mouth and that 1% off of indeed. And then we also have some really good relationships with some nursing programs and some CNA programs, the civilian Massachusetts that have a couple times a year as their classes are graduating, we'll go in and present, help do mock interviews and things like that and can usually get a couple of new hires from that. Okay. I might be putting on the spot with this, but if you go to ballpark, like your, your digital budget for recruiting any sense of what you're paying on like a weekly or a monthly basis on just online, specifically, because you, you do a lot of word of mouth, which is nice because that's, you know, obviously you pay out those bonuses, but it's, I think on average, we've probably spent a couple thousand dollars a month to post ads throughout our markets. It ebbs and flows. We decide, you know, there are some, you can do free postings, but then you get more muck a lot of times. And then we may say, you know what, we really need caregivers in this region of our Massachusetts territory, and so let's put $500 on that and make it more of a targeted ad. You can pay per clicks, there's lots of different ways that kind of, indeed, sets things up. I'm not involved in the kind of the behind the scenes detail of that as much, but we play around with where we spend our money depending on where we need caregivers and kind of what we're trying to promote. And that's the nice thing about online. It's like, you could just like turn the dial. We need to focus in this area, and we need more volume here. We can spend a little like, throw money in that direction, like, that's the game of online. It's like, you can kind of like, customize what you're doing and how much you're spending. Yeah. Two good questions about your referral program, because you said 40% come from word of mouth referrals. How do you keep that top of mind to your staff? Because a lot of times I see that it's like an intentional effort or an initiative for a quarter, and then it kind of fades away. And then you like, bring it back to light a year later, how do you keep it front and center like year over year? So it's something that your caregivers are thinking about all the time. Yes, so we mentioned it in orientation. We mentioned it in our monthly newsletters to caregivers. We have caregiver reflections every other month where we invite caregivers to comments. It's remote, but they come and kind of create a community and we talk about different things we'll mention it there. And some caregivers are more motivated by it than others. Some have a lot of family connections. Others, you know, happen to have a client in a community, like a senior living community, and kind of are like an ambassador for tribute and kind of spread the word amongst everyone that's working in that senior living community. But yeah, that's, we just, it's being consistent about it. We've gone back and forth about how much we pay when we pay it. We used to say that the caregiver had to be here for three months, kind of get through that 90 day period before we'd pay it out. And then we went back on that and said, you know, you know what, these caregivers worked hard to help us bring this caregiver and we should pay them upon hire. $700 rate. That was going to be my next question. Yeah. How did you establish that? It seems kind of like a random number. Yeah, it is. I think we started with a thousand. We've gone back and forth. And as our word of mouth has increased, obviously that expenses increased. So we're just trying to figure out how do we fit it into the budget appropriately and still make it feel like a motivating number. So yeah, it's a little bit random. And we've tried other things too, where we'll give a bigger bonus and then we'll also donate to a charity of the caregiver's choosing. So at certain times of the year, if things are particularly tight, then we may try and add like a creative edge to it. But we've been very consistent with $700 upon hire for a while now. Yeah. This is interesting. Explorative, you guys are in your approach to all of these things, but it's not scientific, but it's not. It's like something works for a period of time. Doesn't mean we're going to go down this path for a year over a year over a year. It's like, no, we need to continue to refine and look at all of these kind of like microchanges that we make in the recruiting process to see what sticks. I think that's absolutely right. One of our core values is to embrace challenges. And I think we are particularly good at that and you know, a challenge could be something feels stale or we're not hiring at the clip we wanted to or orientation isn't getting the reception that we had hoped it would get or it's not as engaging as we want it to be. We're going back to the drawing board and I think when we're faced, when we identify challenges in a creative way, we then create iterations of things and evolve. And I think that's one of the things Tribute does best. I like that word that you just said stale, like processes, we do things over and over for so long and everybody just feels that like kind of staleness and it's like, okay, let's actually lean in and shake things up and try something new. That just keeps the organization fresh, that keeps people excited, motivated, keeps you motivated every single day is just like, let's keep thinking about these processes. And also, how do you continue to collect information and data from everyone that's impacted by all of these things and use that to help drive your behavior, right? So, you know, we collect feedback from caregivers in so many different ways all the time and we use that, like literally use that to then help us decide what we need to do next. So orientations are going to get an example of that if somebody makes it to orientation. That's actually the last step of assessing a caregiver. They've been hired but there are times where we will not, we will term somebody after orientation because that is a really good way for us to spend a whole day with somebody and really assess whether, you know, what we thought they were through the hiring process is still what we think they are in orientation but also we have to think about how to run orientation in a way that will allow us the opportunity to really engage with the caregivers. It can't just be us sitting there communicating and throwing crap at them, you know, about tribute and how to operate at tribute, much of which they're not even going to retain. So we've got to think about how to really engage with them, how to make it a day that allows them to really feel tribute and allows us to really get to know them on a personal level. So that's just one example. Yeah. So let's keep going through the hiring process. You talked about like qualification, which I think was so important. You said a couple of things about there's a lot of like indicators in that qualification process. If they're not communicative, if they're not rescheduling, if they're not responding, it's like those are indicators of the type of hire that they're going to be and so being really dialed into the qualification process, I think is key. And then you talked a little bit about screening. So it's that remote call that's very conversational, that's very organic, that's not scripted. And now you're talking about orientation, what comes after the screening process? Interviews? One or two? So what is? One interview. And then it's not really a second interview, but they meet with our kind of an onboarding specialist. And she goes through all the kind of logistical paperwork and understanding their availability and just all those logistical things. But that's also an opportunity for assessing, for assessment of that caregiver again. And there are times where she will meet with somebody and say, nope, whether they don't come prepared with the documents that we've told them to come prepared with or they kind of don't treat her the same way that they treated the person who did the interviewing. But you know, the goal is to give really good consistency to the caregiver, the applicant through the process and we would expect the same from the applicant. And so once they get all, once they meet with Holly and do that piece, then we set them up with orientation. Okay. One question about the first interview is that remote or in-person? Remote. Remote as well. What's kind of the foundation of that interview, is it very personal, unscripted, organic? Yes. Sounds like it is. Give us a taste of how do your recruiters have that conversation? How do they really suss somebody out in that conversation? Yeah, I think it's learning their experience, like what experience do they really have in this space? But then going way beyond that. So it's really like this is where we get into understanding what soft skills they have. Somebody could have a lot of compassion, a lot of empathy, a lot of kindness. But we also want, and I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier too, but grit is something we talk about a lot because if you have grit, not only can you bring your empathy and your compassion to the job, but when you hit something that's really challenging, you're going to push through it or figure out how to solve the challenge or be confident enough to collaborate with somebody around. Here's what's happening and I need help. And so we give them a lot of situational scenarios to really understand how they would think through something. Is that how the interview goes, is you guys have scenarios that you read through or explain and then have them respond or do you ask them to give scenarios? So we give a lot of, our recruiters really can kind of drive that a little bit on their own and they, you know, we've got recruiters that I've been doing this for years. So I don't think there's not a script. I think they look at each individual and kind of figure out what I want to dig on here. We certainly ask some, you know, questions about, you know, dementia and tell us about a difficult situation because if someone says, you know, well, I called my supervisor and said, you know, I need to get out of here because the client's being combative, like to us, that's a little bit of a red flag because that doesn't show a lot of grit, but also, okay, so what's the next question we should ask to really understand, like, was it reasonable for that caregiver to ask to be replaced? Because sometimes it is. Or did they just kind of say, I'm giving up, I don't like this. And so the conversation really takes a direction based on how caregivers respond to the questions too. And sometimes we have to dig a little bit more to decide, yeah, probably not, or okay, that's an exception. So talk to me about another situation and really kind of assess it again. We really want to understand what the motivation of our caregivers are. That's tricky to do, but because like, I think grit is a really good example of that. How do you know if someone has grit, like, if someone asked me that, I'd be like, wow, how do I, how do I even think about that? But that's why in this interview, it's very, like, situational scenario based. Here's, you know, a scenario. How would you think about that? How would you approach that? I don't think you mentioned, it sounds like you only hire people with previous experience. We'd like them to have a little bit of experience, but when you say a little bit like half a year, yeah, like half a year to a year, a lot of caregivers come to us with many years of experience. But you can teach hard skills. You can't teach soft skills. So we're willing to invest in caregivers in the hard skill side if we need to. We have a whole process for that and assessing what they might need during orientation. But the soft skills is really what we're digging on more than anything in the interview process. And if somebody says, you know, like, I had a really challenging client who was resistant to care. And so I tried X, Y, and Z, and they identify, like, a strategy that they use, like, that's a really great sign. Like, that's, that shows someone who's got creativity, the grit, and the compassion. You have to have empathy to want to try to work through something with somebody. And if you're trying to seek out a way to work through that challenge, that's a good sign. So it's, you know, pretty early on in an interview, we can tell. You can feel it. Yeah, you can feel it. It's a feeling. Yeah, honestly, but I've heard that from a lot of recruiters. It's honestly kind of like a gut feeling. Yeah. You got it or they don't. And you can really feel that out. And then, and then the consistency of that, like through the whole hiring process where they like that in the phone screen and the interview and, you know, with our onboarding specialist and an orientation, you know, we want to see that consistency because someone can kind of turn it on for a little while. And then their true colors start to come out. So we want to have enough touch points to be able to hopefully make a hire that can truly be successful. Which begs the question, how long is this process typically over a few days, a week and a half or so? Okay. How do you feel about that? Does that feel like the sweet spot that you guys have landed on? Do you wish it was shorter? I do. But, we've talked a lot about ways to make it shorter and we just keep coming back to, if we want to hire the quality that we're promising to deliver. And we want to take our time and we want to give caregivers a really good experience. They don't want to be rushed necessarily. And so, and we need the right amount of time to truly assess whether they're right or not. And so all of these steps feel critical. We used to have a second interview and done by the manager of caregiver excellence, which I know we'll talk more about, but basically the person that would be managing the caregiver and they have different motivations, you know, like they're concerned at different angles. Exactly. And so, and the recruiters have been with us for a while now and we feel like we can trust them. And we've got a couple of other steps in the process to make sure that we feel confident in that applicant. And so about a year ago, we decided to cut that out. We've actually seen our 90 day turnover go down. So, yes, it hasn't hurt us. And a seven to ten day process, it's also indicative the caregiver looking at tribute. If you're trying to push them through a process in 24 to 48 hours, they feel like they're just like a pawn in a game, like oh, they need, you know, it's definitely a signal to the caregiver too. No, tribute is giving me the time and the place to get to know me and to meet me where I am and they're not just trying to put a body in a house and, and so I also, I'm sure that that resonates with the caregivers as well. Yeah. And we also never, ever hire to meet demand. So that is part of why we take the time we feel like we need to take because we're not trying to push a caregiver through to then fill a new client. I'm so curious about this. I asked most providers this, the demographic of your caregivers are, they're across the board, likely 18 to 75, that's what I hear, you know, that's, that's just common across the industry. But if you had to quantify maybe percentages above maybe 4550 and below 4550 from an age, from an age perspective, do you have a lot of older caregivers, do you have a lot of younger, is it kind of a 50-50 split? I don't know what the split is, but approximately. What you just summarized is exactly right, you know, that I would say, you know, a fair number of our caregivers are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Okay. You know, we've got some that are a little bit older, some of our living caregivers tend to be a little bit older, and that kind of makes sense because they're living with clients, so maybe they've, you know, they're done providing child care to their own families and they're kind of at a different stage in their life. But yeah, I would say the majority are in that kind of 30, 40, 50. Okay. And the reason I asked that too in this kind of like recruiting narrative is you're trying to build a recruiting process for such a vast audience. What a 18-year-old thinks, what a 40-year-old thinks, what a 65-year-old thinks, and how they process and how they want to be oriented and onboarded and interviewed, like there's some variation in that. And again, that's so unique to home care is the employment audience is so vast and so you're trying to piece together a process that makes sense for the majority. What I think that's the beauty of your process is it's so customized. It's so meeting the individual where they are. It's very tailored to them rather than just like checking the box. One of the things we try so hard to do is to avoid families having the roller coaster experience where they get like a great caregiver and then a not-so-great caregiver and then a great caregiver and a not-so-great caregiver. And so there's some consistency in what we look for, even if the profile of the person they age where they're from their demographics vary. There's some core elements to our caregivers that I say are pretty consistent across the board. That's where the grit and the empathy and that kindness and that motivation to build a real meaningful connection with the human being they're caring for, that we hope families feel no matter getting a 25-year-old caregiver or 70-year-old caregiver, that they'll still have that feeling that that person will leave them with that feeling when they walk out the door. They're tributey. I like that word that you guys use. They're tributey. They say that all the time. And the clients, the families, they feel that tributey. It's like, you know, people can feel that energy from the caregivers and they're not on the roller coaster that they so often get. Let's keep going through the recruiting process. We're kind of like oriented, we talked about the first interview, then the second interview with the onboarding specialist and then orientation. But you mentioned, at what point did they get the offer because it sounds like they have the offer before orientation? They get the offer after their rebo interview. And obviously it's contingent upon documentation and employment authorization and all those fun things. But yes, that's what they get the offer. And at what point did they get their first schedule? I know a lot of people feel strongly about like they have to leave here with their first schedule. Is that happened in the orientation? Because if we have, you know, if we've got the demand, they can get deployed right out of orientation. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I think that kind of carries us into it. We're going to talk about retention. Any other steps or things that you want to mention that follow orientation that are important? Oh. I mean, orientation itself is really important. We want to give them a really good experience. And were a lot of us are in the office that day, John Smith, who we've mentioned our CEO and founder, he is, he goes in and does a section in orientation every day or every orientation. We do orientations on Wednesdays every week. So he's engaged. Yes. Every caregiver. What motivated you to be here? How did you hear about tribute? What are you looking forward to? So he engages with each of them individually? And he will do remote for Maryland and Chicago. The office team does lunch with the caregivers. So we buy them lunch and then all sit at a table and just engage and talk about whatever. And so it's all just part of what tribute is trying to kind of get across to caregivers. Your family, we're here for you. We want to support you. We want you to get to know us. We want to get to know you. You're not alone out there in the world. We're all in it together. And so that's a really important final step for them before they fly off into our clients homes. Yeah, it sounds like a really personal experience. It's more so just lunch and community and John's presence of, we are here to support you. We're here to serve you. It just sounds very kind of relaxed. It's not so high pressure, structured. It's more of just come get to know us. We want you to just be excited to start working with us. Yeah, and we also, the other thing we do in orientation is competencies where we'll assess their skills, their hard skills so that we can determine where could they use a caregiver training to work with a more seasoned caregiver to learn something specific. If there are newer caregiver, you know, maybe identifying, okay, let's have them train with a caregiver for a couple of days before we deploy them on their own. They're new to home care and they never worked in home care, but they worked in a hospital or senior living, like let's give them a little taste of what home care is a little different. So we assess that as well and help really set them up for success. High level, how do you guys approach training? Is it primarily in person, hands on, is it more out in the fields, is it more online, or is it a hybrid of all three of those? Hybrid of all three. Okay. And any one of those that you focus more on or have found success with? No, I think we will give individuals whatever training they need to succeed with what they're managing at any given time. So like we do a dementia training for all caregivers upon hire, but dementia is not dementia, is not dementia. It manifests itself in so many different ways. And so when a caregiver goes into a home and is told this client has dementia, it may be completely different than another client they experience with dementia. And so we've got to be really strategic in giving them tools to succeed with that client. And so it's a constant learning opportunity. You can give these broad trainings and they're really important and I know a lot of agencies will tell like, oh, we do dementia training or we do hospice training or whatever. But and of course the basics are really critical, but it's also really critical that you give that ongoing support. And so it comes from our client solutions team, our case managers, it comes from the support they get from the managers of caregiver excellence, which we're going to talk about shortly. And then it comes from kind of formal trainings. And then it comes from their peers. You know, they, you know, we have caregivers, new caregivers that train with more seasoned caregivers and really learn the ropes. So it's a multi prong approach depending on what that caregiver needs. And we may have a seasoned caregiver who's been doing this for 20 years and they are dropped into a situation that they've never experienced before and they're going to need more hands-on support. And that's what we're all about. I'd imagine training is like a pillar for you as like a core part of like your identity as an organization. It sounds like. Yeah. And has that always been the case? Or do you feel like that was an evolution in and of itself of like it's become higher priority? Definitely an evolution. It's always been a priority, but thinking about it in the multi prong way is evolves constantly. And you know, really making sure that we hear from caregivers what they need to feel like they can succeed out there in the world in a private home. So listening a lot and identifying what they need and then being able to target that specifically to a certain initiative of some sort. Yeah. It's really evolved. And we've even done things like we'll use caracademy for like a base dementia training. But what's really cool about caracademy is that we can create our own content, make it more tributy and upload it and add it and enhance what caracademy is created. And so we do a lot of that. And our next initiative for, you know, 2026 is to have like a whole catalog of trainings that are maybe part caracademy designed, but also part tribute designed with our own team with our own caregivers so that caregivers can learn from other caregivers. And so we have a whole position, our senior manager of caregiver excellence. Her whole job is really about, you know, how to elevate that piece for caregivers. Keeping it top of mind, I think of back to like the referral program, you had to keep training top of mind because you do all this work to build out all of this custom training. And they're out in the field and they're busy and they've been doing this likely for years and years. And so they know a lot, but keeping training top of mind to your entire workforce of like there's always an option to learn more, to grow more specialized training like you want to help them be proactive when it comes to training. And there's so many reasons why training is so critical like to help a caregiver build their skillset, to impact a client in a really positive way, to retain caregivers. I mean, there's so many benefits for why there's a real ROI on training and the investment that we put into that. And so to us, it's worth every penny. Yeah, I guess the reason why I'm prodding, I do hear from some agencies that training is like a chore, it's like it's such a grind to get people to train and to want to be trained and to want to like upskill. That's why I think it has to be a part of your identity, it has to be front and center, it has to be going out in the newsletter, it just has to be a part of the conversation regularly to make sure it's like a proactive part of caregivers thinking. Let's transition to this retention stuff. I know you're teasing it, we've talked about it and it's like there's a lot of really good stuff in there. That was awesome overview of the hiring process. Let's talk about retention because you have deployed some really specific initiatives to focus on retention and we've got a few of them listed, which one should we start with the caregiver excellence department? Sure. You were actually just like citing that, so explain what that department is and what they do. So, yeah, so we have a caregiver excellence department. We have a department head. We have a senior manager of caregiver excellence and then we have seven manager of caregiver excellence, three in Massachusetts, three in Maryland and one in Chicago, and their whole job is to celebrate and support caregivers, literally. One of the things that we're going back to kind of how we evolve over time and kind of pivot or try new things, right now in Massachusetts, we've decided to kind of specialize our MCs. Prior to half a year ago, each of our MCs had third of our caregivers. And Massachusetts, we have about 225 caregivers, so third of that is 80, 75, 80, and they would really just kind of keep tabs on them and really support the heck out of them. What we've done in the last six months is said, let's have one MC who focuses just on the first 90 days, one MC who focuses on support and celebration, so celebratory initiatives, and then one that kind of supports technology and answering a lot of like kind of administrative type payroll and, you know, all those things. But we've really evolved with the MCE role, like one of the big pieces of the MCE role is focusing on retention and that first 90 days, as I'm sure you've heard before, is incredibly critical to someone's success, kind of make it, they can make it past 90 days, we can often keep them for quite a while. So one of the big initiatives that MCs had on their plate a number of years ago was what we called TAP, the Tribute Achievement Program, and we designed it. The thought initially was, okay, if caregivers meet certain performance metrics, being on time, wearing their uniform, logging in and out appropriately, like all these kind of administrative logistical things, but that really make a difference in the impact of the carrier providing, will give them a quarterly race, every single quarter they can keep getting a race. And what we found was that the really great performers continued to perform really great and get those increases, but the mediocre performers or the ones that were, you know, in the bottom 50% didn't really impact their behavior. And so it was a lot of work to administer it and to kind of have all these caregivers with different pay rates and give them these, you know, quarterly kind of performance reports around how they were doing, and it wasn't really impacting behavior. And so in the last year and a half or so, our senior manager of caregiver excellence Charlotte really took the time to research what motivates adult learners. And this is super interesting, by the way, keep going. And like what are the intrinsic motivators, what are the extrinsic motivators, like what really gets somebody to want to be better or to work towards something. And through that we created the RISE program. And so it's very heavily concentrated on the first 90 days, but then they're every six month check-ins or as needed check-ins. So the whole point of RISE is to say, look, we really want you to succeed here. And so we want to give you a ton of support up front. We're going to check in with you every week. We're going to be in the field seeing you more often in your first 90 days. We're going to answer all your questions. We're going to reinforce the things you learned in orientation that you probably forgot because you're learning so much information that day. It just really holds your hand. And then, you know, there's a point system tied to, you know, how they're doing. And they can go into the tribute store and purchase swag and things like that. Financially, a lot less expensive, but what we found is that it's really impacted motivation. And when caregivers feel that real support and feel really bought in to tribute right out of the gate, they're going to go out into the field and build those connections with other people because they have the ability to do that because they're so well supported. And so that's been really, really exciting. So as we transition to this, you know, all the caregiver excellence managers were all focused on the 90 days for their caregivers. And now we have one person in Massachusetts who focuses on all the 90 day caregivers in Massachusetts. And her whole job is to make sure that we can get those caregivers across the finish line. And it also allows us to get to know those caregivers on a more intimate level so that we can also weed them out faster if they weren't what we thought they were going to be. And so when you're focused on, you know, we hired 10 to 12 caregivers a month. If you're focused on 30-ish, 35 caregivers at a time, you get to know them pretty well and you can quickly identify where there's a concern. You can focus on that. You can invest. You can give them more training. And then they're either going to sink or swim. And if they sink, then we can get, we can term them a little faster and minimize the risk to our brand. And then we can invest and hope that if they swim, that they're going to be a real success story. And then of course, most of our caregivers do gray out of the gate and don't need a lot. But when they do, there's somebody there for them. So that's also a big part of the caregiver excellence role is just that 90 days. And before COVID, I think the industry average, you know, was maybe 60 or 65% turnover rate. For COVID, it's closer to 80%. We've been hovering around 50%. And we've seen a drop in our 90-day, last quarter, we actually got it to 15%. I think industry average is over 30, 35, 40. So it's working. And that's really exciting. And to be continued. Okay, a lot of specific questions around this. I think this is so interesting. It's just a quick question. Are you still progressing rewarding them for the administrative, check the box on, clocking in and out? Like all of those administrative tasks that you said, are you still rewarding them for those? Or did you do away with that? We did away. But we still track all of it. And it's still a conversation point when we do check-ins with caregivers in their first 90 days and then every six months thereafter. Because back to what you said, I think this is so interesting. There are people that are highly motivated, and there are people that are not self-motivated. And caregivers run the gamut on that spectrum. So this is what I interpreted from what you said. The people that are highly motivated, they love that type of stuff. They thrive in that, you know, this and that, you tell me what to do and I'll do it. And I love their recognition. I love the bonuses. But then the people that are mediocre at that type of stuff, it's not motivating to them. They don't care. They could, you know, care less whether or not that's in place. And it's like they kind of stay the course, you know. It sounds like you weren't saying the mediocre people, you were encouraging them to do this, but they weren't becoming highly motivated by this, like that's not how this works. It's like they kind of stay the course because it's like personally engrained in them. Yeah, and they do, to a certain extent, but I also think our goal is for them to be motivated by things that we offer them. So whether it's additional trainings or promotional opportunities or other things that maybe could have a financial implication to them, but maybe aren't as expensive as raising somebody's, you know, hourly wage every quarter. If you had to bucket into like a few, what motivates most of your workforce, what would you say? Like, is it the quarterly raise? Is it training? Is it something else? Like if you had to kind of bucket into like, I don't know, two, three, four, like what would you say is motivating most of these people? So I can't sit here and say that anything financial doesn't impact somebody, right? But I think that the support they get from tribute is really, really critical to their motivation. PTO is something we hear a lot about and something we do provide to caregivers is really important to them too because many of them work 60, 72 hours a week. We pay caregivers over time. We're happy to do that. And, you know, they can get burnt out. So if they can get two days of paid time off, that's a, that's, that's critical. So that's one we hear very often, PTO, please don't get rid of it. In Massachusetts, we're required to give sick time as well. In Maryland, we're not, but we've been starting to hear a lot of feedback from caregivers about like, oh, I'm sick and now I don't get paid. And so that's one of the initiatives we have on our docket for the next six months is to look at implementing sick paid leave for caregivers in Maryland. So yeah, and every year we do wage increases and we communicate those very transparently to caregivers around what that looks like, why we're doing it. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of things that can motivate somebody, right? Yeah, but back to, I think this is really interesting. When we think about what motivates caregivers, you know, nine times out of 10 people would say money, you know, they're motivated by money out of necessity and that's not wrong. But this is interesting to hear you talk about support, how, how far support goes in their motivation because they've likely been at other agencies and they haven't been taken care of and they haven't been supported and they haven't had someone that they can call when they need something, that goes such a long way to this demographic as well. And so I think that's like an underutilized, you know, lever if you will is just leaning into exceptional support and that becomes a motivator for these people. Absolutely. Critical. Super interesting. Yeah, I mean, support, it may sound cliche because a lot of people talk about supporting caregivers, but as I share with you all the initiatives that we do to really support them, I think it elevates it into something that is, you know, it's something that you can point your finger to. Tangible. Yes, that's very tangible. Yes, it's not ambiguous. Like, oh, we all have our good support. Right. You know, it's like a generic term, but it's like, here's how we do that. Yeah. And then our turnover speaks for itself. Our 90 day turnover is less than 15% like this is actually working. Yeah. So like we have, we call it the everyone out initiative at Tribute. So literally, we have 60 office employees across our markets from accounting to, you know, people that are client facing and not client facing, everyone has to go out and see caregivers and clients stay, stay connected to the front lines. And when caregivers see our director of accounting out in the field, like, what kind of message to this end, right? It's like, I think that's really quite cool and doing caregiver happiness surveys every year and really taking a pulse on like, are the assumptions we've made really true? Give us the, give us the real skinny, you know, and taking that feedback and doing things with it. And, you know, and so the more time that we spend with caregivers, the more that we invite them into the office, the more that they have the ear of John or myself or any other leader, frankly, anyone that they're touching or that touches them, the more they feel part of the organization. And home care, I think that's really critical because you're out by yourself, siloed, siloed. And we just, we're very purposeful in engaging in such a way where it takes that isolation away. I'm glad you highlighted that, get out program because a lot of times in an organization of your size, if a caregiver ever talked to a CEO, that CEO hasn't been out in the field for years, that, that CEO hasn't taught, you know, maybe another, twice a month, not twice a year, not once a year, you know, you're very connected and it just creates that level of like understanding and empathy that really goes a long way. The caregiver excellence department, you talked about like their, their focus being on like the first 90 days, do you have any sort of like mentorship program or what does it look like and maybe hierarchy or strategy after they exit that 90 day? So it depends on the caregiver. Some caregivers just want their work, want to have a real impact on the clients they're caring for and we check in with them as often as we need to. And then they're off, you know, doing their thing. And we engage with them at various times for various reasons. Other caregivers, you know, we provide a lot of opportunities. So we have a brand ambassador program where caregivers can apply to be a brand ambassador and that may mean that they support a new caregiver and do like an initial training. So that new caregiver will come and spend a day with them and kind of learn the ropes of like home care and maybe something specific that that client needs that they don't have that skill set for. We just started to implement a new program called caregiver partner where we've identified caregivers who are in senior living communities where we have four, five, six, seven clients. So there are a lot of caregivers that are in that community providing care to those clients. And that caregiver partner spending 10 or 12 hours a week, not as a manager of those caregivers, but as a partner. And really trying to connect, you know, their siloed work with each other. How are you doing? How are you feeling? What challenges are you faced with? And then for that caregiver partner to make sure are they in uniform? Are they representing tribute well, you know, are they, you know, what are the things that maybe they'd share with a fellow caregiver that they're, that they're too ashamed or worried or anxious to share with me or with, you know, their manager, whoever. And so that's something that we just started to pile it. But we're always thinking about new ways to just engage, you know, it's not just caregivers engaging with us in the office, but it's also how do we get caregivers to engage with each other? Yeah. And baking in that, those are additional layers of support. Yeah. Yeah, not just them calling the office, but yeah, how do they talk to another caregiver and feel that like direct support really intimately when they're out in the fields? Yes. The brand ambassador also, we have a brand ambassador meet with any new office associate that's hired. We have them come into the office and talk to the new office associate about what their experience has been to be a caregiver attribute and they spend an hour, whatever it is, whether it's a director hire or an administrative associate. And like how cool for a caregiver to be able to say, look, I get to represent part of what I do out there to a new office associate who will have some impact on me and some capacity. So yeah, just always thinking outside the box about how to engage caregivers in those types of ways. And just so much face time, everyone is like face time with everyone. Yeah. And caregiver excellence is really the glue that kind of makes all of that happen and coordinates those things and make sure that, you know, caregivers have those. Yeah. And it's not a once a year initiative, it's that we're doing this on a weekly basis. Right. We're prioritizing that face time. This leads me to your awards system program incentive, you know, whatever you call it, but you have a pretty robust awards program to recognize these caregivers as well. I'll talk a little bit about the evolution of, you know, that awards program and what it is today. So it's really evolved. Surprise. Like everything. We used to do yearly awards, annual awards. So we would do like a caregiver of the year award. We would do like most hours worked, most visits, you know, things like that. And we would go out as a team and deliver these awards to them out in the field. And that was really fun and exciting, but we felt like we were not celebrating enough caregivers. So then we said, okay, let's do what we call remarkable personified and let's do it quarterly. And let's have everyone nominate everyone, you know, that works, you know, our client solutions managers, our caregiver excellence, myself, you know, the whole operations team, scheduling partners. Let's have everyone nominate someone. And then from that, from that list of people, we'll choose one. And then, so we did that for like a year and then it doesn't feel like enough. Exactly. Like hundreds of caregivers. How do we get it down to one? Right. So now we invite like five to seven caregivers in on a quarterly basis. And they get a monetary stipend for the award. They get a pin that they get to wear on their uniform was just kind of symbolic, I think. And then they come in and they get to have a conversation with John and with some other leaders. And we sit around a roundtable and we just ask for their feedback. What's worked? What hasn't worked? What's made you successful here? What would you like to see different or changed that tribute? And that information drives so many of our decisions and and we also have them tell us like a meaningful story about, you know, a client that you've cared for in the last six months and how it's impacted you and just like bring it back home to like what what this is all about. Because you can get caught up in your own job and you're, you know, whatever that focuses. And when you are sitting across from a caregiver and they tell you a very specific story about the way they've connected with somebody and how they've honored humanity, it's just the coolest thing. And so so we want to give them that platform to do that. And so all six or seven come in at the same time. We pull them from their visits. We pay them for those 12 hours that they would have worked and just say come in and spend two hours with us. Have lunch. Let's have a conversation. Let us just recognize you. Let us just relish in what you do day in and day out. Yeah. And I think this is so powerful. It's quarterly and it's five to seven caregivers because I agree. I hear of a lot of agencies that do it annually and it's maybe one to three caregivers. But if you have a huge workforce, it's like, oh, I'm never going to achieve that. It's just like intangible to most of your employees, but this is like, I have an opportunity to achieve that. Yeah. That's so cool. It's so fun too. What else do we have here on retention programs? I know. We've kind of jumped around. We've hit a lot of these. Oh, my goodness. The one that I want to talk about is this salary position. Oh, yes. We haven't actually even talked about this. You all offer salary positions. Talk about how you structure that and how you think about that. So we call it Tribute Secure. And there's a 30 hour and a 40 hour program and caregivers can, so basically we guarantee them either 30 hours or 40 hours of work a week, even if we don't give them that amount of work. And it's, for caregivers, it can be a little bit complicated initially, but once we explain it and they're bought into it, it's a really exciting opportunity for them. About 20% of our caregivers across the company are on the program. And the whole idea is, I mean, they're prioritized first because if we don't get them that work and we have to pay that out, we call that TS Admin Time, Tribute Secure Admin Time, and that's a, you know, an expense to the company. We spend about 25 to 30,000 a quarter to make sure that those caregivers are getting paid when we've guaranteed them. It's a great retention tool. And it kind of takes away the lack of certainty in home care. You know, you may have 70 hours a week for months and months and then all of a sudden you lose a client and you're down to 30 hours. And luckily, we have enough demand where we can fill them back up pretty quickly, typically. But sometimes it could take a week or two or maybe even a little longer every once in a while. And they can sit there and know that they're still going to get paid. And so it's a budget line item that we've decided is worth investing in and they have to give us, you know, set days and times that they're available, that they can work under. And then it becomes our job to make sure that we get them work within those days and time. So usually they work 12 hour visits, either three or four days a week. So if it's a 30 hour program, usually you're working 36 and if you're on the 40 hour, you're working at least 48, you can work more than that. And do you pay overtime for more than that? Yes. All as if it were hourly, you structure overtime the same? Yes. So we allow our caregivers to work within reason as much overtime as they want. We have a lot of caregivers who work six, 12 hour days a week. We do not carry that expense onto family. So again, that's something we've decided to invest in. It allows us to retain caregivers. It prevents caregivers from feeling that they have to work for multiple agencies because they can get the hours they need at one place. And I might have missed it. Who qualifies for this or how do you decide how do you decide who's the right fit for this? So we do a couple of different things. We share the program with caregivers in orientation. And if they step forward and say, oh, this is something that I'm really interested in, we'll talk to them more about it. And if we feel we can afford it, we will put them on the program right away. It's a really good, so caregivers, you know, sometimes caregivers are with us for a couple of years. And then, you know, their life circumstances are such where they're like, oh, yeah, I can do that now. Because they have to give up a little bit more flexibility, you know, we, they have to say yes more, you know, they, you know, their times where we're guaranteeing them pay, but they also have to guarantee us their availability. So some people are really attracted to that and other people are not. And so sometimes it's right upon hire. Sometimes, you know, we kind of get them through the 90 days and we identify that they would be a great person. Because it's also somebody that we want to be able to send pretty much anywhere. Because we're paying, you know, to salary them and the minute that there's opportunity to get them work, we want to be able to send them someplace. We want them to be pretty skilled, but we've opened it up a little bit more and we've taken more risk with it because we want people. If they want the opportunity, we want to be able to give it to them. And it's a really, really great tool for our emerging markets. So Chicago, you know, where demand is not as consistent. And you're, you know, it's the chicken and the egg. How many caregivers, how much demand? And sometimes caregivers are sitting for longer periods of time. So instead of having a revolving door where we lose caregivers because they're not getting work and then we have to hire more rapidly. When work comes in, we just let them set and we pay them. And so it's going to really, it's, you know, it's a budget line on them. There's a financial cost to it. But for us, it's less expensive than losing those caregivers and having to hire again. Okay. Really well said. Because my first thought is, oh, why wouldn't everyone do this? But you're so right. That's not the nature of home care. They're schedules. Life circumstances, it's constantly ebbing and flowing. And so this doesn't make sense for everyone. But it does make sense for a lot of people. And it's a differentiator. Like you said, in an emerging market, Chicago, it's like you can offer this to people, even mention it maybe in your recruiting efforts or mention it in orientation. And some people, it's a huge attractive, you know, incentive opportunity for them. And so it draws people in. But if it's the right fit. Exactly. Okay. I'm glad we hit on that. Yeah, I don't hear a lot about, like, salaried positions and how you all are thinking about it is really unique. And it will probably continue to evolve and adapt as you put more people through that. I think we hit on most of the retention programs that I wanted to hit on. Can you think of anything else that I'm missing? We talked about training, career paths, promotional opportunities. You just mentioned some, you know, our caregiver partners, brand ambassadors, brand ambassadors. Right now, seven, I believe seven of our office associates were also caregivers, about 10% of our workforce. So we're always thinking about ways to also, you know, a lot of our caregivers from other countries in particular had pretty significant careers, whether they were nurses or psychologists or worked in a hospital setting or some accountants, I mean, business people. So any opportunity that we can leverage some of that kind of previous life, you know, skills and experience, we want to. And so whenever a position in the company opens up, we let caregivers know about it just like we let our office team and external folks know about it. And so anyone is welcome to apply just like anyone else. And it's been fun to bring in some caregivers into the office team too and see them thrive in that setting. And even just offering up the opportunity, you know, they feel like I have a chance to upskill to become, you know, someone in the office talked to a lot of owners about this. It's not a right fit for everyone. But even just offering up that opportunity so they can start to think and shape their own career path. A lot of these people are just limited by their own thinking. And so showing them a path, showing them opportunities, teaming them up for that. They can decide for themselves whether or not it's a good opportunity. Yeah. Jen, I've had you in the hot seat for a long time and you are awesome, like you are just killing it. So we could keep going, but I know we're about at time here. Let's just talk a little bit about these last couple of questions. Your personal take on the workforce in general. Does this keep you up at night? When you hear the numbers that so many people are turning 65 every day, how worried are you about the workforce and about where home care is headed? Is it stress and fear or is it excitement and opportunity or is it depend on the day? How do you think about this? I think it's mostly excitement and opportunity. I think if we continue to stay the course and do what we keep doing well at Tribute, I have high hopes that we can continue to recruit pretty successfully. And I think our retention will continue to get better and better. I think a lot of home care companies kind of dismiss retention and it's just kind of what it is, what it is and let it be its thing. And we just focus on continuing to hire, hire, hire. That's not really our mentality. If you want to retain caregivers because cost less, we trust them. When they've been with us a long time, they can give us a lot of really great information to help us evolve. They become part of that fabric. So I'm a little worried about the current administration and kind of their take on immigration for sure and kind of what that will mean for even our existing caregivers or current caregivers that are currently working legally, but we can't control that and I think we just have to continue to advocate the healthcare industry at large for why immigrants are so critical to this industry. And I think the more that we grow and the more that we get, buy in from our caregivers to keep referring other caregivers, I think we'll be okay. We'll be okay. Yeah, and self-sustaining and continue to focus on everything that we've talked about. If you just continue to hone in on that and refine that, it's like, you almost can't lose. I mean, of course, it's going to continue to get harder and harder to find caregivers because the need is greater and greater. We also have to continue to be relentless focus on doing right by the caregivers in that caregiver mindset because the more that we do that, the more that we'll attract caregivers. And it may mean that we have to take market share, like competition, right? But if we're doing things the best way, then we may have more success at attracting caregivers than our competitor down the street. And that may be an unpopular thing to say, but it's reality. We've got to stay on top of that so that we continue to be a place that caregivers really want to be. Last question. You tease a little bit of thinking about 2026, kind of the next 12 to 18 months. Any initiatives or programs or kind of in this vein of recruitment and retention, anything that you're thinking about or planning in the next 12 to 18 months that you can share? I mean, what's most critical is that pretty much everything we're focused on has to do with caregivers. I mean, our relationship development manager, Colin and Massachusetts, he's been with us for about three years. So sales guy, he said to me, pretty early on in his tenure at Tribute, I'm motivated by getting caregivers work. So he's going out and developing all these referral relationships. But at the end of the day, of course, that's going to help Tribute grow, but it's also going to help caregivers keep getting the work that they want, consistent demand. And so I just think like somebody like sales also impacts caregivers directly. So we're constantly thinking about things. The caregiver partner position, I mentioned, implementing AI initiatives, particularly in scheduling to make that more seamless to make sure caregivers have the hours they want. We track all of that. There's so much data that we track. But one of the things we track is how many hours caregivers are working and what their desired hours are and how do we bridge that gap utilization? Yeah. And right now our utilization is at 95 percent. We're doing great. But it ebbs and flows all the time. And how do we make sure, how do we understand when a caregiver is not working? How do we make sure to prioritize them above the caregiver that's already got 60 hours? You know, just all those variables in AI is going to help with that a lot. We're going to look at the PTO program, maybe make it a little richer. And we've gone back and forth because we used to offer one day of PTO for every year you've been with us. So at your five-year anniversary, you'd get five days of PTO plus in a cruel amount. And it became a little bit unpredictable for us to budget. So we went back on that and it's really about the number of hours you work and how much you accrue. But I think we went back a little too far. And so now we've got to figure out what that happy medium and where do we start and how do we budget appropriately for it. But it is something we hear really often from caregivers. No, and I just think I think the other big takeaway here is that it's really critical that we continue to try new things and just embrace that part of our culture. Because the more that we try new things, the more that we will see opportunities to move forward. And so I think there's a lot of experimentation. We have some, Galipe is our director of strategic analysis and project management. So he's constantly leading task forces and pulling people from all different parts of the company to kind of brainstorm ways to do things differently and reimagine how we operate. And I think we have to continue to embrace that as a culture in order to really elevate the caregiver experience. Shout out to Galipe. He's the one that put tribute on my radar, so I'm glad you just mentioned him. Jen, you blown me away. I had high hopes and expectations for this and you have absolutely delivered. So thank you so much for being here in Dallas, for joining me in the lab and for just bringing the energy and bringing the heat and bringing the prescriptiveness. This is always what I look for and I feel like we got so tactical and technical and prescriptive in this episode. So just grateful and for everything that you've delivered today and I want people to connect with you. I want people to connect with tribute. There's so much to learn from your organization and so I will encourage everybody to reach out to Jen, to reach out to tribute and make yourself known to them and learn from them. And I think this is your first podcast, but probably not your last. And so thank you for being my first, absolutely, to be continued and more where this came from. So we'll go ahead and wrap here. Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you.