WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.240 --> 00:00:00.560 Foreign. 2 00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:11.320 Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary 3 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:15.200 for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, 4 00:00:15.200 --> 00:00:18.720 your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of 5 00:00:18.720 --> 00:00:22.640 inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. 6 00:00:23.120 --> 00:00:27.040 Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone 7 00:00:27.040 --> 00:00:30.760 not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. 8 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:35.200 Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge 9 00:00:35.200 --> 00:00:38.760 the status quo and share storeys that resonate 10 00:00:38.760 --> 00:00:42.480 deep within. Ready to dive in? Whether you're 11 00:00:42.480 --> 00:00:46.400 sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's 12 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:50.360 connect, reflect and inspire action together. 13 00:00:51.080 --> 00:00:54.870 Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out 14 00:00:54.870 --> 00:00:58.670 to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk 15 00:00:59.070 --> 00:01:02.590 to share your insights or to join me on the show. 16 00:01:03.470 --> 00:01:07.230 So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to 17 00:01:07.230 --> 00:01:10.830 ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. 18 00:01:15.710 --> 00:01:19.470 And today is episode 198 with the title 19 00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:24.280 Scaling Care With Heart. And I have the absolute honour and 20 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:27.960 privilege to welcome Amrit Dhaliwal. Amrit is a 21 00:01:27.960 --> 00:01:31.880 dynamic entrepreneur and CEO transforming the 22 00:01:32.600 --> 00:01:36.520 UK home care through a purpose led franchising model that blends 23 00:01:36.520 --> 00:01:40.120 innovation, quality and social impact. 24 00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:44.800 When I asked Amrit to describe his superpower, he said that it is turning 25 00:01:44.800 --> 00:01:48.530 traditional sectors into scalable purpose led ventures. 26 00:01:49.330 --> 00:01:53.250 Hello, Amrit, welcome to the show. Hi, Jo, thank you for 27 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:57.010 having me here. Great to be on the show. Absolute pleasure. We were just 28 00:01:57.010 --> 00:02:00.850 chatting away in the green room about my own experience in 29 00:02:02.210 --> 00:02:05.570 social care care homes and so 30 00:02:05.890 --> 00:02:09.890 through parents and parents in law. So I'm sure we've got lots to 31 00:02:09.890 --> 00:02:13.780 talk about. So. And you're based in London, is 32 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:17.740 that right? I am, that's right, yes. Wow. Fantastic. It's 33 00:02:17.740 --> 00:02:20.980 nice to have someone in the same time zone for a change. There we go. 34 00:02:20.980 --> 00:02:24.820 Yeah. Makes a change for you, I think you were saying. Yeah, it does. And 35 00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:28.740 we probably share in the same rain cloud at the moment. It's absolutely 36 00:02:28.740 --> 00:02:31.700 pouting down here and I think it probably must be all over the country right 37 00:02:31.700 --> 00:02:35.100 now. Yeah, absolutely. So, Amrit, 38 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:39.040 you are, by the sounds of it, a sea, a serial 39 00:02:39.040 --> 00:02:43.000 entrepreneur and getting involved with many, many, many different startups 40 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:46.960 and models. So what got you into the home 41 00:02:46.960 --> 00:02:50.920 care business and what is your. With 42 00:02:50.920 --> 00:02:54.920 a heart, if you like, what's your passion for this? I 43 00:02:54.920 --> 00:02:58.320 think, like most good things in my life, Jo, this was 44 00:02:58.560 --> 00:03:00.400 also my wife's idea. 45 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:06.350 So we're sitting in a Cafe in 2012 and 46 00:03:06.350 --> 00:03:09.630 I was like, trisha, I've got lots to give and I don't know who wants 47 00:03:09.630 --> 00:03:13.630 it. You know, I was in restaurants and catering businesses at 48 00:03:13.630 --> 00:03:17.630 the time and I was working long hours and so on and the return was 49 00:03:17.630 --> 00:03:21.550 fine. But when I think about the time and the emotional 50 00:03:21.550 --> 00:03:24.750 investment, the financial reward just wasn't really there 51 00:03:24.750 --> 00:03:28.710 comparatively. And my wife's a dentist, her family's been in nursing 52 00:03:28.710 --> 00:03:32.590 homes for the last 30 odd years and she said heavy thought about domiciliary 53 00:03:32.590 --> 00:03:36.510 care and I was about 25 or 26 at the time and I, 54 00:03:36.670 --> 00:03:40.670 you know, said what you would expect any 25 year old to say, which 55 00:03:40.670 --> 00:03:44.510 was, what the hell is that? You know. And the next thing I know 56 00:03:44.510 --> 00:03:48.310 I'm speaking to all the different franchises around the country. I bought a home care 57 00:03:48.310 --> 00:03:52.110 franchise within, you know, 60 days of this 58 00:03:52.110 --> 00:03:56.030 conversation. I'm then running my care businesses and 59 00:03:56.910 --> 00:04:00.110 then going out to Oxfordshire for my doing that, 60 00:04:00.830 --> 00:04:04.790 driving three hours to Richmond where my restaurants were and so 61 00:04:04.790 --> 00:04:08.550 on. And this is 2012 in September I signed the contract. In 62 00:04:08.550 --> 00:04:12.270 November I got my care Quality Commission registration and In I think 63 00:04:12.510 --> 00:04:16.470 2013, sort of February, I took my first client on and it was 64 00:04:16.470 --> 00:04:20.270 around March or April 2013 that I realised that 65 00:04:20.270 --> 00:04:23.830 this was it, this was what I needed to do for the next 20 years. 66 00:04:23.830 --> 00:04:27.710 I needed to fix home care, fix franchising 67 00:04:27.950 --> 00:04:31.850 and both of those things in the home care space in the UK were a 68 00:04:31.850 --> 00:04:35.770 bit archaic and I thought there's got to be other people like me that 69 00:04:35.770 --> 00:04:39.650 want to run businesses and scale them and just 70 00:04:39.650 --> 00:04:43.090 don't know how. And I felt like the market was set up very much for 71 00:04:43.090 --> 00:04:46.770 people that were from the sector and I really 72 00:04:46.770 --> 00:04:50.290 wasn't. I still see myself as very much a home care 73 00:04:50.290 --> 00:04:54.210 outsider, but working from within. And I've set 74 00:04:54.210 --> 00:04:58.210 up Wolfinch with that in mind for entrepreneurs that want to get 75 00:04:58.210 --> 00:05:01.470 involved in the sector but want more of a plug and play model and to 76 00:05:01.470 --> 00:05:04.950 help them scale. That's often the way though, isn't it? 77 00:05:06.070 --> 00:05:09.270 Many businesses are the founder is the inventor, the 78 00:05:09.910 --> 00:05:12.630 idea person, the creator of something. 79 00:05:13.750 --> 00:05:17.710 But sometimes the better businesses are run by people who are one step 80 00:05:17.710 --> 00:05:21.510 backwards. They're not driving from their passion of the solution, 81 00:05:21.510 --> 00:05:25.310 they're driving from their passion of the business itself. To create a 82 00:05:25.310 --> 00:05:28.900 sustainable business model that serves its customers 83 00:05:28.980 --> 00:05:32.980 looks at all the dynamics. Whereas the inventor mindset is too focused 84 00:05:32.980 --> 00:05:36.860 on the product sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's kind of 85 00:05:36.860 --> 00:05:40.580 both end, you know, for me the problem I was trying to solve 86 00:05:40.580 --> 00:05:44.380 was something else. It wasn't that I had been actually 87 00:05:44.380 --> 00:05:48.140 really conveniently at that time, my grandfather, my late 88 00:05:48.140 --> 00:05:52.100 grandfather had come over from India from Punjab he'd lived in 89 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:56.230 a village that my families lived in for many generations and 90 00:05:57.190 --> 00:06:00.990 there is no care. You, you, you take care of your elderly and so 91 00:06:00.990 --> 00:06:04.950 on. But as, as it happens, 92 00:06:05.190 --> 00:06:08.790 all of the kids have moved away in Canada, 93 00:06:08.870 --> 00:06:12.150 America, the UK and so on, all in search for a better life. 94 00:06:12.950 --> 00:06:16.870 And so, you know, my grandfather fly over here and 95 00:06:16.870 --> 00:06:19.990 he spent a couple of years with us. Now that time I really got a 96 00:06:20.070 --> 00:06:23.780 firsthand experience on what it felt like to have 97 00:06:23.780 --> 00:06:27.580 elderly people living with you and how you can 98 00:06:27.580 --> 00:06:31.260 support them and how you need to keep people independent but still keep, 99 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:31.820 keep. 100 00:06:35.100 --> 00:06:39.060 It's kind of a blend between independence and, and giving 101 00:06:39.060 --> 00:06:42.940 somebody that support. And I think that's the hard part. And 102 00:06:42.940 --> 00:06:46.780 I really sort of saw that firsthand and then I went into sort of 103 00:06:46.780 --> 00:06:50.380 thinking, well, okay, you're right, great. So I can see there's a need for this. 104 00:06:50.860 --> 00:06:54.780 So I become a franchisee myself to try and fix that need. 105 00:06:54.940 --> 00:06:58.740 And then as a franchisee I saw, well, here's a different problem. You know, the 106 00:06:58.740 --> 00:07:02.540 problem is actually in the systems and in how archaic the whole 107 00:07:02.540 --> 00:07:06.380 model is. So then I went off to fix that problem and actually 108 00:07:06.459 --> 00:07:10.300 that I thought was the longer term problem because actually the mission piece 109 00:07:10.620 --> 00:07:14.460 is finding more people like me that want to do that 110 00:07:14.460 --> 00:07:18.260 or more people like me back in 2012 that want to do that now. You 111 00:07:18.260 --> 00:07:21.620 know, when I look at it, I think in last five years I probably could 112 00:07:21.620 --> 00:07:25.400 have earned a lot more money being a home care provider and just scaling my 113 00:07:25.400 --> 00:07:29.320 own home care businesses. But I can make a lot more impact being the 114 00:07:29.320 --> 00:07:32.800 CEO of Wolf Inch and scaling it through franchising and going 115 00:07:32.800 --> 00:07:36.800 nationwide. That's interesting. Yeah. So you, you 116 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:40.800 have the passion, but you also have the entrepreneurial skills, as you say, to, to 117 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:44.200 franchise it out, to have a wider impact. So you said, 118 00:07:45.720 --> 00:07:48.600 well, to paraphrase you, the home care system is broken 119 00:07:49.570 --> 00:07:53.530 or was broken and has been broken. What were the key things in there that 120 00:07:53.530 --> 00:07:57.410 you identified that needed fixing right now that 121 00:07:57.410 --> 00:08:01.250 you tackled? There's a multitude of things. 122 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:05.050 I actually wrote a book that came out earlier this year and all the 123 00:08:05.050 --> 00:08:09.010 proceeds go to the care workers charity. It's called Time to Thrive, 124 00:08:09.010 --> 00:08:11.810 the Home Care Revolution. And in that I set out 125 00:08:13.250 --> 00:08:16.210 a 12 step model. But I think 126 00:08:18.290 --> 00:08:21.890 anyone within the sector understands the way that the sector is 127 00:08:21.890 --> 00:08:25.530 funded is problematic. So, you know, the 128 00:08:25.530 --> 00:08:29.090 government's really kind of left us to our own devices. We get paid 129 00:08:29.810 --> 00:08:33.570 through local authority contracts, a rate that is not sustainable 130 00:08:33.570 --> 00:08:37.530 and is not reasonable. You know, we can't run 131 00:08:37.530 --> 00:08:41.210 sustainable businesses from that and therefore, and I saw this back in 132 00:08:41.210 --> 00:08:45.080 2012 and I thought, well, okay, the whole market's running after these governments contracts, 133 00:08:45.080 --> 00:08:48.880 I'm going to run in the other direction and focus on building a private business, 134 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:53.320 self funded business, which I did, went from zero to a million 135 00:08:53.320 --> 00:08:57.280 in that few years and really built this very kind of sustainable 136 00:08:57.280 --> 00:09:00.960 margins led business which allowed me to provide a better quality 137 00:09:01.520 --> 00:09:04.960 service because I could hire staff that were 138 00:09:05.120 --> 00:09:09.040 calmer, it was more sustainable, I paid them very well and 139 00:09:09.040 --> 00:09:12.240 so on and we were able to spend that time training them. 140 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:17.000 And then if I think about that today, I mean, that problem still 141 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:21.000 remains in a different way today. And then for me, I think 142 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:24.440 a lot of it comes down to the way that the market is branded. And 143 00:09:24.440 --> 00:09:27.800 I think, well, okay, the NHS is not branded the way home care is branded. 144 00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:31.480 And if I think about the campaigns that have been done for 145 00:09:31.480 --> 00:09:35.320 nurses, we think about a nurse and think, wow, that 146 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:38.800 is a really professional role and it's really 147 00:09:38.800 --> 00:09:42.650 supportive. But we think about care workers and there's almost 148 00:09:43.370 --> 00:09:46.650 a level of embarrassment saying, well, I'm a care worker and that is 149 00:09:46.650 --> 00:09:50.570 unbelievable to me. I think, you know, it's work that I couldn't do. 150 00:09:51.130 --> 00:09:54.730 It's amazing work that I think is 151 00:09:55.369 --> 00:09:59.250 so important. And if we think about the lockdown and Covid and 152 00:09:59.250 --> 00:10:03.210 so on, I mean, care workers that kept the country spinning, you know, 153 00:10:03.610 --> 00:10:07.530 the wheels would have fallen off. But I feel like we as a 154 00:10:07.690 --> 00:10:11.420 country do not do enough to kind of help rebrand that. 155 00:10:11.580 --> 00:10:15.380 So part of my mission is rebranding the role of the care worker, 156 00:10:15.380 --> 00:10:19.380 professionalising it, really dressing it up and putting it out there. And 157 00:10:19.380 --> 00:10:23.260 then, you know, I'm 38 and so when I talk 158 00:10:23.260 --> 00:10:27.020 to my friends about being in home care, they're like, what the hell is that? 159 00:10:27.020 --> 00:10:29.820 Come on, you know, that's so cool. And so on. And they're all in finance 160 00:10:29.820 --> 00:10:33.700 and this and that and all of the sexy stuff. But the way 161 00:10:33.700 --> 00:10:36.780 I sort of see it, I think, well, okay, well why can we not 162 00:10:37.570 --> 00:10:41.490 rebrand the role of the entrepreneur within this sector? This 163 00:10:41.890 --> 00:10:45.850 sector is operated due to and 164 00:10:45.850 --> 00:10:49.810 by entrepreneurs. It is not led by the government. 165 00:10:50.370 --> 00:10:54.290 On the whole, you know, it is very much entrepreneurs that are 166 00:10:54.290 --> 00:10:58.290 in the sector driving it and creating change. And so I kind 167 00:10:58.290 --> 00:11:02.210 of think, well, you know, when we're in the age of your Gary Vees 168 00:11:02.210 --> 00:11:06.090 and your Alex Amozies and, you know, your Cody Sanchez is, you 169 00:11:06.090 --> 00:11:09.790 know, entrepreneurialism is cool, but home care 170 00:11:09.790 --> 00:11:13.790 isn't yet. And so what can we do about that? And I And then that 171 00:11:13.790 --> 00:11:17.710 will attract really interesting talent from different sectors who will come with their 172 00:11:17.710 --> 00:11:21.670 own thinking and help redefine home care, 173 00:11:21.750 --> 00:11:24.070 which, you know, happens to be the 174 00:11:25.670 --> 00:11:29.670 wolf inches strap line. Because I really do believe that, I think that you can 175 00:11:29.750 --> 00:11:32.870 truly do that through, through the power of franchising. Because 176 00:11:33.670 --> 00:11:36.950 people like yourself might wake up one morning, think, gosh, you know, this would be 177 00:11:36.950 --> 00:11:39.920 an interesting thing to do and you come with your own skill set. Bring that 178 00:11:39.920 --> 00:11:43.200 here. I think, well, okay, gosh, how do we, how do we then? You know, 179 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:46.560 I've got a friend of mine that's creative and, 180 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:51.040 and, and he's been paramount in, in helping morph my 181 00:11:51.040 --> 00:11:54.920 thinking in how the brand looks and feels and so on. And, and 182 00:11:54.920 --> 00:11:58.880 it's just different people that can impact along the way in very different 183 00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:02.760 ways. Yeah, I mean I'm currently, I 184 00:12:02.760 --> 00:12:06.370 suppose indirectly through parents, a procurer of 185 00:12:06.370 --> 00:12:08.930 domiciliary or residential care. 186 00:12:10.370 --> 00:12:13.810 And you're right, we've noticed that it's frustrating, 187 00:12:14.210 --> 00:12:17.890 very frustrating, especially when you're dealing with local authority. 188 00:12:18.450 --> 00:12:22.129 You have the interviews, they tell you, yes, you can qualify for 189 00:12:22.930 --> 00:12:25.610 15 minutes a day or half an hour a day. And this is what we've 190 00:12:25.610 --> 00:12:29.530 contracted with the provider to provide. Then we 191 00:12:29.530 --> 00:12:33.260 found it very frustrating and that the provider turns up 192 00:12:33.260 --> 00:12:35.980 intermittently, different times, there's no stability there. 193 00:12:37.020 --> 00:12:40.540 Elderly father in law wants a breakfast roughly at breakfast time 194 00:12:40.780 --> 00:12:44.660 and when someone turns up at 11, he's in the mood for 195 00:12:44.660 --> 00:12:48.060 lunch and he's had to make his own breakfast. And that defeats the whole object 196 00:12:48.060 --> 00:12:51.740 of the care because we didn't want him walking around his property with a zimmer 197 00:12:51.740 --> 00:12:55.620 frame, potentially tripping over or falling or knocking something or having 198 00:12:55.620 --> 00:12:59.430 to bend down. And so we found the actual provision 199 00:12:59.430 --> 00:13:03.390 of service to be very variable. And whether that's because it's a local authority 200 00:13:03.390 --> 00:13:06.950 funded scheme or whether we, because I believe we now have the right 201 00:13:07.590 --> 00:13:11.590 to opt out of this local government and take the funding 202 00:13:12.150 --> 00:13:15.990 and do your own procurement, which we didn't opt to do. We opted to keep 203 00:13:15.990 --> 00:13:19.870 it through the local government at this time. But we probably end up going 204 00:13:19.870 --> 00:13:23.830 through the same provider anyway. And it's, it's very frustrating 205 00:13:23.830 --> 00:13:27.550 as a, at this side of the fence trying to 206 00:13:27.550 --> 00:13:31.310 liaise the companies who are doing their best. Absolutely doing their best, 207 00:13:31.310 --> 00:13:35.230 juggling multiple balls, I'm sure, and people who care 208 00:13:35.230 --> 00:13:38.470 deeply to get it right. But from a 209 00:13:38.870 --> 00:13:42.150 customer perspective it's not quite there yet. 210 00:13:43.110 --> 00:13:45.990 And I think a lot of that comes down to the way that the government 211 00:13:46.070 --> 00:13:50.050 buys care. And so, you know, One of 212 00:13:50.050 --> 00:13:53.330 my sort of big pieces has been really moving away from that. And I think, 213 00:13:53.330 --> 00:13:57.010 you know, when we, on the whole, when we work with the local authority or 214 00:13:57.010 --> 00:14:00.850 government, we work with them in the capacity of kind of direct payments. That 215 00:14:00.850 --> 00:14:04.330 personal budget that you're referring to now, 216 00:14:04.890 --> 00:14:08.890 where we don't have that, we tend to work with private 217 00:14:08.890 --> 00:14:12.850 pay. And it means that both yourself as a procurer and 218 00:14:12.850 --> 00:14:16.730 us as a provider have control in the situation. And there's no 219 00:14:16.730 --> 00:14:20.640 third party that's not there. You single action. That should be 220 00:14:20.640 --> 00:14:24.520 15 minutes. Gosh, what can you do in 15 minutes? You know, that 221 00:14:24.520 --> 00:14:28.360 should be illegal as far as I'm concerned. 222 00:14:28.360 --> 00:14:32.360 You know, you can't go into someone's property and do anything in 223 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:35.800 15 minutes, apart from cheque that they are there and okay, 224 00:14:36.120 --> 00:14:39.920 and then it's time to put your coat on and leave and it's just, it's 225 00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:43.760 not feasible. I mean, you know, also when you think about that, you think, 226 00:14:43.760 --> 00:14:46.900 well, how much is that care worker being paid to go to that 15 minute 227 00:14:47.210 --> 00:14:50.890 visit? Then they're driving there, they're driving back, you know, the time, the 228 00:14:50.890 --> 00:14:54.770 mileage and all that. It's unreasonable in my opinion, to ask them 229 00:14:54.770 --> 00:14:58.370 to do that. You know, unless someone lives in some sort of 230 00:14:58.370 --> 00:15:02.370 housing colony and there's, you know, five houses there and you're going back 231 00:15:02.370 --> 00:15:06.090 door to door or whatever and it's, you know, 30 seconds between 232 00:15:06.090 --> 00:15:10.050 houses. Okay. You know, but the reality of that situation 233 00:15:10.050 --> 00:15:13.370 is how disruptive for that elderly person at home 234 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:17.840 thinking, you know, maybe they've got dementia, maybe they've got other, 235 00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:21.720 other sort of situations going on. And I think someone's rushing in, rushing 236 00:15:21.720 --> 00:15:25.560 out maybe. And also you cannot blame the care worker 237 00:15:25.560 --> 00:15:28.760 because they're trying to fit in all of these things. You can't even blame the 238 00:15:28.760 --> 00:15:32.280 provider. They're trying to keep a sustainable business, to keep the care workers going, 239 00:15:32.280 --> 00:15:36.200 keeping clients healthy and so on. And you know, but the way that the work 240 00:15:36.200 --> 00:15:39.760 is contracted is problematic, I think. 241 00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:44.000 Yeah, as providers, I think, you know, really we, we need to march with our 242 00:15:44.080 --> 00:15:48.080 vote with our feet and just march away from that, that, that local 243 00:15:48.080 --> 00:15:51.360 authority work unless it is fairly commissioned. 244 00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:55.120 Yeah. I was a trustee of a charity in Portsmouth 245 00:15:56.160 --> 00:15:59.520 seven or eight years ago and we, we as a charity provided domiciliary care. 246 00:15:59.920 --> 00:16:03.640 I remember we ended up having to walk away from contracts because they just weren't 247 00:16:03.640 --> 00:16:07.340 viable. You, you couldn't deliver and they were trying to bid 15 minute 248 00:16:07.340 --> 00:16:11.060 contracts almost at minimum wage at the time. 249 00:16:11.700 --> 00:16:15.500 And that doesn't give any Scope for travel, doesn't give any scope for time off, 250 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:19.500 doesn't give any scope for training or anything else, 251 00:16:19.500 --> 00:16:23.180 or personal, other personal needs. And it was just 252 00:16:23.180 --> 00:16:26.820 unsustainable. Providers were losing money 253 00:16:27.060 --> 00:16:30.620 on every visit, on every contract, and they just thought. Well, and that's so reasonable, 254 00:16:30.620 --> 00:16:34.620 right? As a provider, you are also an entrepreneur. 255 00:16:34.620 --> 00:16:38.260 You might have shareholders responsibility to them as well, 256 00:16:38.420 --> 00:16:42.020 you know, both to provide a really good quality service, 257 00:16:42.660 --> 00:16:46.620 pay your staff really well, but also to enjoy dividends. As 258 00:16:46.620 --> 00:16:50.500 a. As a shareholder, I think there's nothing wrong or inappropriate in 259 00:16:50.500 --> 00:16:51.780 that. You know, 260 00:16:55.060 --> 00:16:58.820 it's a way that the system is all kind of curated. I think it's really 261 00:16:58.820 --> 00:17:02.610 important to have everyone in that system should win. You 262 00:17:02.610 --> 00:17:06.530 know, the carer should win, the client should win, the entrepreneur 263 00:17:06.530 --> 00:17:10.450 behind the service should win, you know, the community should win. 264 00:17:10.610 --> 00:17:14.450 And as a result, the greater economy will win. And 265 00:17:14.530 --> 00:17:18.250 I think, you know, if we think about it from the abundance 266 00:17:18.250 --> 00:17:21.850 model, I think there's. There's a lot to be said there. I actually have my 267 00:17:21.850 --> 00:17:25.770 own podcast called Walking With Wolf Inch and the 268 00:17:25.770 --> 00:17:28.850 episode's not out yet, but it will be by the time this episode's out. 269 00:17:29.730 --> 00:17:33.300 I had an interview with Professor Martin Green 270 00:17:33.940 --> 00:17:37.940 and a really interesting gentleman. He's the CEO of 271 00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:41.620 the Care Care England and he talks 272 00:17:41.700 --> 00:17:45.660 in that episode about how the NHS is funded. And actually, if 273 00:17:45.660 --> 00:17:49.540 we took a portion of that funding, gave it to the social care sector 274 00:17:49.940 --> 00:17:52.900 as a. Social care providers would be able to 275 00:17:53.380 --> 00:17:57.260 reduce the amount of burden that is 276 00:17:57.260 --> 00:18:00.760 levied onto the nhs. And actually we're talking about about a tiny 277 00:18:00.760 --> 00:18:04.600 proportion of that, that, that funding, but it's just not there, 278 00:18:04.600 --> 00:18:08.520 you know, because actually home care or care doesn't win votes, you know, 279 00:18:09.400 --> 00:18:13.280 and that's fundamentally where we're at. I think you said it 280 00:18:13.280 --> 00:18:17.000 earlier about the. It's not seen as a glamorous thing, is it? 281 00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:20.560 Nurses and hospitals somehow are vote winners and they're seen as 282 00:18:20.560 --> 00:18:24.400 glamorous. Well, they've been rebranded. So, you know, 283 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:27.960 10 or 15 years ago, I remember there's this wonderful campaign around the 284 00:18:27.960 --> 00:18:31.810 NHS and nurses. It's wonderful. You know, if you think about 285 00:18:33.010 --> 00:18:36.890 all of the sort of civil type services, you know, the army and so on 286 00:18:36.890 --> 00:18:40.650 and the raf. I mean, you see adverts on tv. Where is that for social 287 00:18:40.650 --> 00:18:44.570 care? You know, we are the reason that people are kept 288 00:18:44.570 --> 00:18:48.530 at home or out of hospital and, you know, a bed at hospital. 289 00:18:48.610 --> 00:18:52.570 I think the last count was. I think this number is. Has. Has gone up. 290 00:18:52.570 --> 00:18:56.370 It certainly will by the time this episode's out but it's over £800 a 291 00:18:56.370 --> 00:19:00.150 night, you know, and you think gosh, you know that is a phenomenal amount 292 00:19:00.150 --> 00:19:02.470 of, of, of investment 293 00:19:03.990 --> 00:19:07.910 from the, the taxpayers money. And, and I think. 294 00:19:08.070 --> 00:19:11.830 But we're able to remedy that. And also most 295 00:19:11.830 --> 00:19:15.750 people don't want to be in hospital. They, they, you know, most people want to 296 00:19:15.750 --> 00:19:19.190 be at home. Yeah, that's for sure. 297 00:19:19.350 --> 00:19:23.140 Certainly all of my parents, parents in law, I've 298 00:19:23.140 --> 00:19:25.780 wanted to stay at home as long as possible but it gets to a point 299 00:19:25.780 --> 00:19:29.340 where you just can't do it. You haven't got the accessible property, 300 00:19:29.500 --> 00:19:32.860 there's no, there's no help to make it accessible in some cases 301 00:19:33.180 --> 00:19:36.860 doesn't need to be huge amounts but you know getting a hospital bed in there 302 00:19:36.860 --> 00:19:40.460 or, or getting some other way or the toilets 303 00:19:40.460 --> 00:19:44.380 upstairs, the kitchen's downstairs. Where do you put somebody? There's, there's no stair 304 00:19:44.380 --> 00:19:47.500 lift or anything else in the, in the property. It's complicated. And 305 00:19:48.380 --> 00:19:52.230 I look at what happened with my father in law beginning of this year. 306 00:19:52.710 --> 00:19:55.510 He had a fall, not his first fall. He 307 00:19:57.510 --> 00:20:01.470 probably clumsy, he was trying to use a rollator instead of a 308 00:20:01.470 --> 00:20:05.229 Zimmer frame type model. He probably tipped it, it fell 309 00:20:05.229 --> 00:20:08.990 and it ends up in a pile on the floor, walking 310 00:20:08.990 --> 00:20:12.950 frame on top of him, two broken ribs and it took 311 00:20:13.190 --> 00:20:17.170 until the care visit later that day to find him and end up in 312 00:20:17.170 --> 00:20:20.890 hospital potentially they thought he was going to end up on 313 00:20:20.890 --> 00:20:24.450 palliative care and end of life but he managed to do an 314 00:20:24.450 --> 00:20:28.330 azimuth and pull it around and it got better. But I look at the time 315 00:20:28.330 --> 00:20:31.890 that my wife was off work with that, at the worry that we had as 316 00:20:31.890 --> 00:20:35.650 a family, the time I had to take off work. So we're self employed but 317 00:20:35.650 --> 00:20:39.650 both of us and she couldn't earn, she couldn't deliver the business. Then you 318 00:20:39.650 --> 00:20:43.220 think about all the time invested in the actual hospitalisation 319 00:20:43.780 --> 00:20:47.620 of my father in law for that 10 days, 15 320 00:20:47.620 --> 00:20:50.100 days and then having to 321 00:20:51.540 --> 00:20:55.340 off board him out of hospital, onboarding back into domiciliary care. That 322 00:20:55.340 --> 00:20:58.660 whole process, the number of people involved in that, how do you have proper care 323 00:20:58.660 --> 00:21:02.340 at the beginning then that would have cut out all of this 324 00:21:02.980 --> 00:21:06.820 anguish and time from the working 325 00:21:06.820 --> 00:21:10.810 generation and the hospitalisation and the care he 326 00:21:10.810 --> 00:21:14.770 needed. So you're right, the prevention in that scenario would have been a better investment. 327 00:21:15.970 --> 00:21:19.170 Yeah. And I think this is where my mind is really at with 328 00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:24.130 the way that we're scaling Wolf Inch. It's really focusing on prevention, 329 00:21:24.290 --> 00:21:28.290 it's focusing on where we ought to be focusing As a community, 330 00:21:29.330 --> 00:21:33.250 as a nation? And I think really that for me is all part 331 00:21:33.250 --> 00:21:37.160 of creating, creating a solution because we all know the problem and certainly 332 00:21:37.160 --> 00:21:40.840 if you're within the sector, you know what the problems are and we can sit 333 00:21:40.840 --> 00:21:43.680 and we can talk for an hour about all of the problems that are there, 334 00:21:43.680 --> 00:21:47.680 which is vast, or we can actually start taking some action 335 00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:51.640 and saying, well, okay, what am I doing differently as a provider? Am I charging 336 00:21:51.640 --> 00:21:55.200 enough so I can pay my staff enough? Am I. So is the local authority 337 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:59.120 paying me? If they're not, am I going to focus on private 338 00:21:59.120 --> 00:22:02.900 pay work? And, and how do I then start to create 339 00:22:02.900 --> 00:22:06.740 a business out of private pay work? And actually, is 340 00:22:06.740 --> 00:22:10.740 there a franchise model I can get involved in? Are there coaches or what 341 00:22:10.740 --> 00:22:14.740 have you? How do I actually scale that to ensure that that business is 342 00:22:14.740 --> 00:22:18.620 sustainable? And I think that's it really. I mean, I'm 343 00:22:18.620 --> 00:22:22.580 very process driven and focused on 344 00:22:22.580 --> 00:22:26.340 results and I think it really serves itself well within, 345 00:22:26.870 --> 00:22:30.750 within the domiciliary care market, is there a 346 00:22:30.750 --> 00:22:34.710 challenge. On the supply side of the talent 347 00:22:34.710 --> 00:22:38.470 of the resources, the care workers? Is there a challenge 348 00:22:38.470 --> 00:22:40.550 getting people to steer as 349 00:22:42.230 --> 00:22:46.110 a worthy profession to invest in, or are we 350 00:22:46.110 --> 00:22:49.270 still struggling to get the resourcing? I think 351 00:22:49.830 --> 00:22:53.670 there's a few different challenges. Certainly, as we currently 352 00:22:53.670 --> 00:22:57.450 speak, there's been changes within the way that you're getting 353 00:22:57.450 --> 00:23:01.330 staff from abroad and that's problematic because that really alleviated 354 00:23:01.330 --> 00:23:05.130 a lot of the issues that we had in the market. It creates an increase 355 00:23:05.130 --> 00:23:09.010 in supply. So you've got that problem, then you've 356 00:23:09.010 --> 00:23:12.810 got problem on a more local market. But for 357 00:23:12.810 --> 00:23:16.530 me, and again, maybe I'm too simplistic, but 358 00:23:16.690 --> 00:23:20.430 for me, I think often the problem is a lack of activity problem. And I 359 00:23:20.430 --> 00:23:24.430 think if you're able to get out there enough and you are making enough 360 00:23:24.430 --> 00:23:27.870 phone calls and you speak to enough people, you will 361 00:23:28.190 --> 00:23:32.070 get a member of staff and you sort of look at 362 00:23:32.070 --> 00:23:36.030 a kind of sort of two to one ratio when 363 00:23:36.030 --> 00:23:40.030 you're, when you're looking at clients to care workers, invariably, and 364 00:23:40.590 --> 00:23:44.550 actually that works. Right, so you don't need lots of carers 365 00:23:44.550 --> 00:23:48.160 to make a successful home care business. You know, a successful 366 00:23:48.480 --> 00:23:52.360 home care business might look like about a million pounds in revenue with you 367 00:23:52.360 --> 00:23:56.160 know, maybe 40 odd clients and 368 00:23:56.240 --> 00:24:00.080 maybe you know, sort of 25 care workers. So it's not a 369 00:24:00.080 --> 00:24:03.840 huge, we're not talking huge numbers of people, but then I think the 370 00:24:03.840 --> 00:24:07.760 focus needs to be very much on retention of those people. So, 371 00:24:07.920 --> 00:24:11.680 yes, you know, my first home care business was Oxfordshire, so Very 372 00:24:11.680 --> 00:24:15.620 affluent area. And you know, I realised really early 373 00:24:15.620 --> 00:24:19.580 doors I'm not going to get tens of people applying to 374 00:24:19.580 --> 00:24:23.540 my job every day. And I spoke to a colleague of mine within 375 00:24:23.540 --> 00:24:27.540 the sector from a different brand and said, oh, so you know, 376 00:24:28.260 --> 00:24:31.420 what are you doing? How are you getting staff? I mean he was sort of 377 00:24:31.420 --> 00:24:35.420 five years ahead of me and said, well I spent about this is back 378 00:24:35.420 --> 00:24:39.340 in 2013 he was spending 1500 pounds a month on indeed adverts and 379 00:24:39.340 --> 00:24:43.000 the gosh, I don't have 1500 pounds a month for a start. 380 00:24:43.480 --> 00:24:47.440 And second of all, you know, he's getting 10 people in but then 381 00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:50.840 losing nine and then having a net growth of one. I was like this is, 382 00:24:50.840 --> 00:24:54.280 this has got to be something, something else. And I was talking to 383 00:24:54.680 --> 00:24:58.280 multiple other providers and everyone's in a similar situation, 384 00:24:58.440 --> 00:25:01.240 different version of. And I thought, well 385 00:25:01.960 --> 00:25:05.680 okay, now what? And then I sort of went back to the office and I 386 00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:09.060 remember looking at my, my team. So 387 00:25:10.740 --> 00:25:14.460 what is our difference? How do we change this? Because I don't have 388 00:25:14.460 --> 00:25:18.220 1500 pounds a month and I don't want to grow by a net of 389 00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:22.140 one people. So how do I change this? Okay, 390 00:25:22.140 --> 00:25:26.020 so I'm doing all of this activity so we're going to get really focused 391 00:25:26.020 --> 00:25:29.100 on who we're hiring and we're going to say no a lot, which is actually 392 00:25:29.100 --> 00:25:33.040 unheard of within sector. And so we're going to say no to people that we've 393 00:25:33.190 --> 00:25:36.990 think don't want to do this are not people I would hire from my own 394 00:25:36.990 --> 00:25:40.230 parents. And we're just going to say no to 395 00:25:40.950 --> 00:25:44.550 basically 50% of the applicants that come. And so we're going to get super 396 00:25:44.550 --> 00:25:47.990 focused on who do we want and what is the purpose of 397 00:25:49.510 --> 00:25:51.910 getting this, taking this job, 398 00:25:53.430 --> 00:25:57.110 you know, and I really thought about that and I started doing 399 00:25:57.190 --> 00:26:00.640 value based recruitment and so that really helped. So that 400 00:26:00.880 --> 00:26:04.400 one thing alone made me get the right 401 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:09.200