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Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 198 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: Scaling Care With Heart. And I have the absolute honour and
Joanne Lockwood: privilege to welcome Amrit Dhaliwal. Amrit is a
Joanne Lockwood: dynamic entrepreneur and CEO transforming the
Joanne Lockwood: UK home care through a purpose led franchising model that blends
Joanne Lockwood: innovation, quality and social impact.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Amrit to describe his superpower, he said that it is turning
Joanne Lockwood: traditional sectors into scalable purpose led ventures.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Amrit, welcome to the show. Hi, Jo, thank you for
Amrit Dhaliwal: having me here. Great to be on the show. Absolute pleasure. We were just
Joanne Lockwood: chatting away in the green room about my own experience in
Joanne Lockwood: social care care homes and so
Joanne Lockwood: through parents and parents in law. So I'm sure we've got lots to
Joanne Lockwood: talk about. So. And you're based in London, is
Joanne Lockwood: that right? I am, that's right, yes. Wow. Fantastic. It's
Joanne Lockwood: nice to have someone in the same time zone for a change. There we go.
Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah. Makes a change for you, I think you were saying. Yeah, it does. And
Joanne Lockwood: we probably share in the same rain cloud at the moment. It's absolutely
Joanne Lockwood: pouting down here and I think it probably must be all over the country right
Joanne Lockwood: now. Yeah, absolutely. So, Amrit,
Joanne Lockwood: you are, by the sounds of it, a sea, a serial
Joanne Lockwood: entrepreneur and getting involved with many, many, many different startups
Joanne Lockwood: and models. So what got you into the home
Joanne Lockwood: care business and what is your. With
Joanne Lockwood: a heart, if you like, what's your passion for this? I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think, like most good things in my life, Jo, this was
Amrit Dhaliwal: also my wife's idea.
Amrit Dhaliwal: So we're sitting in a Cafe in 2012 and
Amrit Dhaliwal: I was like, trisha, I've got lots to give and I don't know who wants
Amrit Dhaliwal: it. You know, I was in restaurants and catering businesses at
Amrit Dhaliwal: the time and I was working long hours and so on and the return was
Amrit Dhaliwal: fine. But when I think about the time and the emotional
Amrit Dhaliwal: investment, the financial reward just wasn't really there
Amrit Dhaliwal: comparatively. And my wife's a dentist, her family's been in nursing
Amrit Dhaliwal: homes for the last 30 odd years and she said heavy thought about domiciliary
Amrit Dhaliwal: care and I was about 25 or 26 at the time and I,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, said what you would expect any 25 year old to say, which
Amrit Dhaliwal: was, what the hell is that? You know. And the next thing I know
Amrit Dhaliwal: I'm speaking to all the different franchises around the country. I bought a home care
Amrit Dhaliwal: franchise within, you know, 60 days of this
Amrit Dhaliwal: conversation. I'm then running my care businesses and
Amrit Dhaliwal: then going out to Oxfordshire for my doing that,
Amrit Dhaliwal: driving three hours to Richmond where my restaurants were and so
Amrit Dhaliwal: on. And this is 2012 in September I signed the contract. In
Amrit Dhaliwal: November I got my care Quality Commission registration and In I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: 2013, sort of February, I took my first client on and it was
Amrit Dhaliwal: around March or April 2013 that I realised that
Amrit Dhaliwal: this was it, this was what I needed to do for the next 20 years.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I needed to fix home care, fix franchising
Amrit Dhaliwal: and both of those things in the home care space in the UK were a
Amrit Dhaliwal: bit archaic and I thought there's got to be other people like me that
Amrit Dhaliwal: want to run businesses and scale them and just
Amrit Dhaliwal: don't know how. And I felt like the market was set up very much for
Amrit Dhaliwal: people that were from the sector and I really
Amrit Dhaliwal: wasn't. I still see myself as very much a home care
Amrit Dhaliwal: outsider, but working from within. And I've set
Amrit Dhaliwal: up Wolfinch with that in mind for entrepreneurs that want to get
Amrit Dhaliwal: involved in the sector but want more of a plug and play model and to
Amrit Dhaliwal: help them scale. That's often the way though, isn't it?
Joanne Lockwood: Many businesses are the founder is the inventor, the
Joanne Lockwood: idea person, the creator of something.
Joanne Lockwood: But sometimes the better businesses are run by people who are one step
Joanne Lockwood: backwards. They're not driving from their passion of the solution,
Joanne Lockwood: they're driving from their passion of the business itself. To create a
Joanne Lockwood: sustainable business model that serves its customers
Joanne Lockwood: looks at all the dynamics. Whereas the inventor mindset is too focused
Joanne Lockwood: on the product sometimes. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's kind of
Amrit Dhaliwal: both end, you know, for me the problem I was trying to solve
Amrit Dhaliwal: was something else. It wasn't that I had been actually
Amrit Dhaliwal: really conveniently at that time, my grandfather, my late
Amrit Dhaliwal: grandfather had come over from India from Punjab he'd lived in
Amrit Dhaliwal: a village that my families lived in for many generations and
Amrit Dhaliwal: there is no care. You, you, you take care of your elderly and so
Amrit Dhaliwal: on. But as, as it happens,
Amrit Dhaliwal: all of the kids have moved away in Canada,
Amrit Dhaliwal: America, the UK and so on, all in search for a better life.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And so, you know, my grandfather fly over here and
Amrit Dhaliwal: he spent a couple of years with us. Now that time I really got a
Amrit Dhaliwal: firsthand experience on what it felt like to have
Amrit Dhaliwal: elderly people living with you and how you can
Amrit Dhaliwal: support them and how you need to keep people independent but still keep,
Amrit Dhaliwal: keep.
Amrit Dhaliwal: It's kind of a blend between independence and, and giving
Amrit Dhaliwal: somebody that support. And I think that's the hard part. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: I really sort of saw that firsthand and then I went into sort of
Amrit Dhaliwal: thinking, well, okay, you're right, great. So I can see there's a need for this.
Amrit Dhaliwal: So I become a franchisee myself to try and fix that need.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And then as a franchisee I saw, well, here's a different problem. You know, the
Amrit Dhaliwal: problem is actually in the systems and in how archaic the whole
Amrit Dhaliwal: model is. So then I went off to fix that problem and actually
Amrit Dhaliwal: that I thought was the longer term problem because actually the mission piece
Amrit Dhaliwal: is finding more people like me that want to do that
Amrit Dhaliwal: or more people like me back in 2012 that want to do that now. You
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, when I look at it, I think in last five years I probably could
Amrit Dhaliwal: have earned a lot more money being a home care provider and just scaling my
Amrit Dhaliwal: own home care businesses. But I can make a lot more impact being the
Amrit Dhaliwal: CEO of Wolf Inch and scaling it through franchising and going
Amrit Dhaliwal: nationwide. That's interesting. Yeah. So you, you
Joanne Lockwood: have the passion, but you also have the entrepreneurial skills, as you say, to, to
Joanne Lockwood: franchise it out, to have a wider impact. So you said,
Joanne Lockwood: well, to paraphrase you, the home care system is broken
Joanne Lockwood: or was broken and has been broken. What were the key things in there that
Joanne Lockwood: you identified that needed fixing right now that
Joanne Lockwood: you tackled? There's a multitude of things.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I actually wrote a book that came out earlier this year and all the
Amrit Dhaliwal: proceeds go to the care workers charity. It's called Time to Thrive,
Amrit Dhaliwal: the Home Care Revolution. And in that I set out
Amrit Dhaliwal: a 12 step model. But I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: anyone within the sector understands the way that the sector is
Amrit Dhaliwal: funded is problematic. So, you know, the
Amrit Dhaliwal: government's really kind of left us to our own devices. We get paid
Amrit Dhaliwal: through local authority contracts, a rate that is not sustainable
Amrit Dhaliwal: and is not reasonable. You know, we can't run
Amrit Dhaliwal: sustainable businesses from that and therefore, and I saw this back in
Amrit Dhaliwal: 2012 and I thought, well, okay, the whole market's running after these governments contracts,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I'm going to run in the other direction and focus on building a private business,
Amrit Dhaliwal: self funded business, which I did, went from zero to a million
Amrit Dhaliwal: in that few years and really built this very kind of sustainable
Amrit Dhaliwal: margins led business which allowed me to provide a better quality
Amrit Dhaliwal: service because I could hire staff that were
Amrit Dhaliwal: calmer, it was more sustainable, I paid them very well and
Amrit Dhaliwal: so on and we were able to spend that time training them.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And then if I think about that today, I mean, that problem still
Amrit Dhaliwal: remains in a different way today. And then for me, I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: a lot of it comes down to the way that the market is branded. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think, well, okay, the NHS is not branded the way home care is branded.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And if I think about the campaigns that have been done for
Amrit Dhaliwal: nurses, we think about a nurse and think, wow, that
Amrit Dhaliwal: is a really professional role and it's really
Amrit Dhaliwal: supportive. But we think about care workers and there's almost
Amrit Dhaliwal: a level of embarrassment saying, well, I'm a care worker and that is
Amrit Dhaliwal: unbelievable to me. I think, you know, it's work that I couldn't do.
Amrit Dhaliwal: It's amazing work that I think is
Amrit Dhaliwal: so important. And if we think about the lockdown and Covid and
Amrit Dhaliwal: so on, I mean, care workers that kept the country spinning, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: the wheels would have fallen off. But I feel like we as a
Amrit Dhaliwal: country do not do enough to kind of help rebrand that.
Amrit Dhaliwal: So part of my mission is rebranding the role of the care worker,
Amrit Dhaliwal: professionalising it, really dressing it up and putting it out there. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: then, you know, I'm 38 and so when I talk
Amrit Dhaliwal: to my friends about being in home care, they're like, what the hell is that?
Amrit Dhaliwal: Come on, you know, that's so cool. And so on. And they're all in finance
Amrit Dhaliwal: and this and that and all of the sexy stuff. But the way
Amrit Dhaliwal: I sort of see it, I think, well, okay, well why can we not
Amrit Dhaliwal: rebrand the role of the entrepreneur within this sector? This
Amrit Dhaliwal: sector is operated due to and
Amrit Dhaliwal: by entrepreneurs. It is not led by the government.
Amrit Dhaliwal: On the whole, you know, it is very much entrepreneurs that are
Amrit Dhaliwal: in the sector driving it and creating change. And so I kind
Amrit Dhaliwal: of think, well, you know, when we're in the age of your Gary Vees
Amrit Dhaliwal: and your Alex Amozies and, you know, your Cody Sanchez is, you
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, entrepreneurialism is cool, but home care
Amrit Dhaliwal: isn't yet. And so what can we do about that? And I And then that
Amrit Dhaliwal: will attract really interesting talent from different sectors who will come with their
Amrit Dhaliwal: own thinking and help redefine home care,
Amrit Dhaliwal: which, you know, happens to be the
Amrit Dhaliwal: wolf inches strap line. Because I really do believe that, I think that you can
Amrit Dhaliwal: truly do that through, through the power of franchising. Because
Amrit Dhaliwal: people like yourself might wake up one morning, think, gosh, you know, this would be
Amrit Dhaliwal: an interesting thing to do and you come with your own skill set. Bring that
Amrit Dhaliwal: here. I think, well, okay, gosh, how do we, how do we then? You know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I've got a friend of mine that's creative and,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and, and he's been paramount in, in helping morph my
Amrit Dhaliwal: thinking in how the brand looks and feels and so on. And, and
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's just different people that can impact along the way in very different
Amrit Dhaliwal: ways. Yeah, I mean I'm currently, I
Joanne Lockwood: suppose indirectly through parents, a procurer of
Joanne Lockwood: domiciliary or residential care.
Joanne Lockwood: And you're right, we've noticed that it's frustrating,
Joanne Lockwood: very frustrating, especially when you're dealing with local authority.
Joanne Lockwood: You have the interviews, they tell you, yes, you can qualify for
Joanne Lockwood: 15 minutes a day or half an hour a day. And this is what we've
Joanne Lockwood: contracted with the provider to provide. Then we
Joanne Lockwood: found it very frustrating and that the provider turns up
Joanne Lockwood: intermittently, different times, there's no stability there.
Joanne Lockwood: Elderly father in law wants a breakfast roughly at breakfast time
Joanne Lockwood: and when someone turns up at 11, he's in the mood for
Joanne Lockwood: lunch and he's had to make his own breakfast. And that defeats the whole object
Joanne Lockwood: of the care because we didn't want him walking around his property with a zimmer
Joanne Lockwood: frame, potentially tripping over or falling or knocking something or having
Joanne Lockwood: to bend down. And so we found the actual provision
Joanne Lockwood: of service to be very variable. And whether that's because it's a local authority
Joanne Lockwood: funded scheme or whether we, because I believe we now have the right
Joanne Lockwood: to opt out of this local government and take the funding
Joanne Lockwood: and do your own procurement, which we didn't opt to do. We opted to keep
Joanne Lockwood: it through the local government at this time. But we probably end up going
Joanne Lockwood: through the same provider anyway. And it's, it's very frustrating
Joanne Lockwood: as a, at this side of the fence trying to
Joanne Lockwood: liaise the companies who are doing their best. Absolutely doing their best,
Joanne Lockwood: juggling multiple balls, I'm sure, and people who care
Joanne Lockwood: deeply to get it right. But from a
Joanne Lockwood: customer perspective it's not quite there yet.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And I think a lot of that comes down to the way that the government
Amrit Dhaliwal: buys care. And so, you know, One of
Amrit Dhaliwal: my sort of big pieces has been really moving away from that. And I think,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, when we, on the whole, when we work with the local authority or
Amrit Dhaliwal: government, we work with them in the capacity of kind of direct payments. That
Amrit Dhaliwal: personal budget that you're referring to now,
Amrit Dhaliwal: where we don't have that, we tend to work with private
Amrit Dhaliwal: pay. And it means that both yourself as a procurer and
Amrit Dhaliwal: us as a provider have control in the situation. And there's no
Amrit Dhaliwal: third party that's not there. You single action. That should be
Amrit Dhaliwal: 15 minutes. Gosh, what can you do in 15 minutes? You know, that
Amrit Dhaliwal: should be illegal as far as I'm concerned.
Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, you can't go into someone's property and do anything in
Amrit Dhaliwal: 15 minutes, apart from cheque that they are there and okay,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and then it's time to put your coat on and leave and it's just, it's
Amrit Dhaliwal: not feasible. I mean, you know, also when you think about that, you think,
Amrit Dhaliwal: well, how much is that care worker being paid to go to that 15 minute
Amrit Dhaliwal: visit? Then they're driving there, they're driving back, you know, the time, the
Amrit Dhaliwal: mileage and all that. It's unreasonable in my opinion, to ask them
Amrit Dhaliwal: to do that. You know, unless someone lives in some sort of
Amrit Dhaliwal: housing colony and there's, you know, five houses there and you're going back
Amrit Dhaliwal: door to door or whatever and it's, you know, 30 seconds between
Amrit Dhaliwal: houses. Okay. You know, but the reality of that situation
Amrit Dhaliwal: is how disruptive for that elderly person at home
Amrit Dhaliwal: thinking, you know, maybe they've got dementia, maybe they've got other,
Amrit Dhaliwal: other sort of situations going on. And I think someone's rushing in, rushing
Amrit Dhaliwal: out maybe. And also you cannot blame the care worker
Amrit Dhaliwal: because they're trying to fit in all of these things. You can't even blame the
Amrit Dhaliwal: provider. They're trying to keep a sustainable business, to keep the care workers going,
Amrit Dhaliwal: keeping clients healthy and so on. And you know, but the way that the work
Amrit Dhaliwal: is contracted is problematic, I think.
Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah, as providers, I think, you know, really we, we need to march with our
Amrit Dhaliwal: vote with our feet and just march away from that, that, that local
Amrit Dhaliwal: authority work unless it is fairly commissioned.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I was a trustee of a charity in Portsmouth
Joanne Lockwood: seven or eight years ago and we, we as a charity provided domiciliary care.
Joanne Lockwood: I remember we ended up having to walk away from contracts because they just weren't
Joanne Lockwood: viable. You, you couldn't deliver and they were trying to bid 15 minute
Joanne Lockwood: contracts almost at minimum wage at the time.
Joanne Lockwood: And that doesn't give any Scope for travel, doesn't give any scope for time off,
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't give any scope for training or anything else,
Joanne Lockwood: or personal, other personal needs. And it was just
Joanne Lockwood: unsustainable. Providers were losing money
Joanne Lockwood: on every visit, on every contract, and they just thought. Well, and that's so reasonable,
Amrit Dhaliwal: right? As a provider, you are also an entrepreneur.
Amrit Dhaliwal: You might have shareholders responsibility to them as well,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, both to provide a really good quality service,
Amrit Dhaliwal: pay your staff really well, but also to enjoy dividends. As
Amrit Dhaliwal: a. As a shareholder, I think there's nothing wrong or inappropriate in
Amrit Dhaliwal: that. You know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's a way that the system is all kind of curated. I think it's really
Amrit Dhaliwal: important to have everyone in that system should win. You
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, the carer should win, the client should win, the entrepreneur
Amrit Dhaliwal: behind the service should win, you know, the community should win.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And as a result, the greater economy will win. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think, you know, if we think about it from the abundance
Amrit Dhaliwal: model, I think there's. There's a lot to be said there. I actually have my
Amrit Dhaliwal: own podcast called Walking With Wolf Inch and the
Amrit Dhaliwal: episode's not out yet, but it will be by the time this episode's out.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I had an interview with Professor Martin Green
Amrit Dhaliwal: and a really interesting gentleman. He's the CEO of
Amrit Dhaliwal: the Care Care England and he talks
Amrit Dhaliwal: in that episode about how the NHS is funded. And actually, if
Amrit Dhaliwal: we took a portion of that funding, gave it to the social care sector
Amrit Dhaliwal: as a. Social care providers would be able to
Amrit Dhaliwal: reduce the amount of burden that is
Amrit Dhaliwal: levied onto the nhs. And actually we're talking about about a tiny
Amrit Dhaliwal: proportion of that, that, that funding, but it's just not there,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, because actually home care or care doesn't win votes, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and that's fundamentally where we're at. I think you said it
Joanne Lockwood: earlier about the. It's not seen as a glamorous thing, is it?
Joanne Lockwood: Nurses and hospitals somehow are vote winners and they're seen as
Joanne Lockwood: glamorous. Well, they've been rebranded. So, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: 10 or 15 years ago, I remember there's this wonderful campaign around the
Amrit Dhaliwal: NHS and nurses. It's wonderful. You know, if you think about
Amrit Dhaliwal: all of the sort of civil type services, you know, the army and so on
Amrit Dhaliwal: and the raf. I mean, you see adverts on tv. Where is that for social
Amrit Dhaliwal: care? You know, we are the reason that people are kept
Amrit Dhaliwal: at home or out of hospital and, you know, a bed at hospital.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think the last count was. I think this number is. Has. Has gone up.
Amrit Dhaliwal: It certainly will by the time this episode's out but it's over £800 a
Amrit Dhaliwal: night, you know, and you think gosh, you know that is a phenomenal amount
Amrit Dhaliwal: of, of, of investment
Amrit Dhaliwal: from the, the taxpayers money. And, and I think.
Amrit Dhaliwal: But we're able to remedy that. And also most
Amrit Dhaliwal: people don't want to be in hospital. They, they, you know, most people want to
Amrit Dhaliwal: be at home. Yeah, that's for sure.
Joanne Lockwood: Certainly all of my parents, parents in law, I've
Joanne Lockwood: wanted to stay at home as long as possible but it gets to a point
Joanne Lockwood: where you just can't do it. You haven't got the accessible property,
Joanne Lockwood: there's no, there's no help to make it accessible in some cases
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't need to be huge amounts but you know getting a hospital bed in there
Joanne Lockwood: or, or getting some other way or the toilets
Joanne Lockwood: upstairs, the kitchen's downstairs. Where do you put somebody? There's, there's no stair
Joanne Lockwood: lift or anything else in the, in the property. It's complicated. And
Joanne Lockwood: I look at what happened with my father in law beginning of this year.
Joanne Lockwood: He had a fall, not his first fall. He
Joanne Lockwood: probably clumsy, he was trying to use a rollator instead of a
Joanne Lockwood: Zimmer frame type model. He probably tipped it, it fell
Joanne Lockwood: and it ends up in a pile on the floor, walking
Joanne Lockwood: frame on top of him, two broken ribs and it took
Joanne Lockwood: until the care visit later that day to find him and end up in
Joanne Lockwood: hospital potentially they thought he was going to end up on
Joanne Lockwood: palliative care and end of life but he managed to do an
Joanne Lockwood: azimuth and pull it around and it got better. But I look at the time
Joanne Lockwood: that my wife was off work with that, at the worry that we had as
Joanne Lockwood: a family, the time I had to take off work. So we're self employed but
Joanne Lockwood: both of us and she couldn't earn, she couldn't deliver the business. Then you
Joanne Lockwood: think about all the time invested in the actual hospitalisation
Joanne Lockwood: of my father in law for that 10 days, 15
Joanne Lockwood: days and then having to
Joanne Lockwood: off board him out of hospital, onboarding back into domiciliary care. That
Joanne Lockwood: whole process, the number of people involved in that, how do you have proper care
Joanne Lockwood: at the beginning then that would have cut out all of this
Joanne Lockwood: anguish and time from the working
Joanne Lockwood: generation and the hospitalisation and the care he
Joanne Lockwood: needed. So you're right, the prevention in that scenario would have been a better investment.
Amrit Dhaliwal: Yeah. And I think this is where my mind is really at with
Amrit Dhaliwal: the way that we're scaling Wolf Inch. It's really focusing on prevention,
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's focusing on where we ought to be focusing As a community,
Amrit Dhaliwal: as a nation? And I think really that for me is all part
Amrit Dhaliwal: of creating, creating a solution because we all know the problem and certainly
Amrit Dhaliwal: if you're within the sector, you know what the problems are and we can sit
Amrit Dhaliwal: and we can talk for an hour about all of the problems that are there,
Amrit Dhaliwal: which is vast, or we can actually start taking some action
Amrit Dhaliwal: and saying, well, okay, what am I doing differently as a provider? Am I charging
Amrit Dhaliwal: enough so I can pay my staff enough? Am I. So is the local authority
Amrit Dhaliwal: paying me? If they're not, am I going to focus on private
Amrit Dhaliwal: pay work? And, and how do I then start to create
Amrit Dhaliwal: a business out of private pay work? And actually, is
Amrit Dhaliwal: there a franchise model I can get involved in? Are there coaches or what
Amrit Dhaliwal: have you? How do I actually scale that to ensure that that business is
Amrit Dhaliwal: sustainable? And I think that's it really. I mean, I'm
Amrit Dhaliwal: very process driven and focused on
Amrit Dhaliwal: results and I think it really serves itself well within,
Amrit Dhaliwal: within the domiciliary care market, is there a
Amrit Dhaliwal: challenge. On the supply side of the talent
Joanne Lockwood: of the resources, the care workers? Is there a challenge
Joanne Lockwood: getting people to steer as
Joanne Lockwood: a worthy profession to invest in, or are we
Joanne Lockwood: still struggling to get the resourcing? I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: there's a few different challenges. Certainly, as we currently
Amrit Dhaliwal: speak, there's been changes within the way that you're getting
Amrit Dhaliwal: staff from abroad and that's problematic because that really alleviated
Amrit Dhaliwal: a lot of the issues that we had in the market. It creates an increase
Amrit Dhaliwal: in supply. So you've got that problem, then you've
Amrit Dhaliwal: got problem on a more local market. But for
Amrit Dhaliwal: me, and again, maybe I'm too simplistic, but
Amrit Dhaliwal: for me, I think often the problem is a lack of activity problem. And I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think if you're able to get out there enough and you are making enough
Amrit Dhaliwal: phone calls and you speak to enough people, you will
Amrit Dhaliwal: get a member of staff and you sort of look at
Amrit Dhaliwal: a kind of sort of two to one ratio when
Amrit Dhaliwal: you're, when you're looking at clients to care workers, invariably, and
Amrit Dhaliwal: actually that works. Right, so you don't need lots of carers
Amrit Dhaliwal: to make a successful home care business. You know, a successful
Amrit Dhaliwal: home care business might look like about a million pounds in revenue with you
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, maybe 40 odd clients and
Amrit Dhaliwal: maybe you know, sort of 25 care workers. So it's not a
Amrit Dhaliwal: huge, we're not talking huge numbers of people, but then I think the
Amrit Dhaliwal: focus needs to be very much on retention of those people. So,
Amrit Dhaliwal: yes, you know, my first home care business was Oxfordshire, so Very
Amrit Dhaliwal: affluent area. And you know, I realised really early
Amrit Dhaliwal: doors I'm not going to get tens of people applying to
Amrit Dhaliwal: my job every day. And I spoke to a colleague of mine within
Amrit Dhaliwal: the sector from a different brand and said, oh, so you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: what are you doing? How are you getting staff? I mean he was sort of
Amrit Dhaliwal: five years ahead of me and said, well I spent about this is back
Amrit Dhaliwal: in 2013 he was spending 1500 pounds a month on indeed adverts and
Amrit Dhaliwal: the gosh, I don't have 1500 pounds a month for a start.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And second of all, you know, he's getting 10 people in but then
Amrit Dhaliwal: losing nine and then having a net growth of one. I was like this is,
Amrit Dhaliwal: this has got to be something, something else. And I was talking to
Amrit Dhaliwal: multiple other providers and everyone's in a similar situation,
Amrit Dhaliwal: different version of. And I thought, well
Amrit Dhaliwal: okay, now what? And then I sort of went back to the office and I
Amrit Dhaliwal: remember looking at my, my team. So
Amrit Dhaliwal: what is our difference? How do we change this? Because I don't have
Amrit Dhaliwal: 1500 pounds a month and I don't want to grow by a net of
Amrit Dhaliwal: one people. So how do I change this? Okay,
Amrit Dhaliwal: so I'm doing all of this activity so we're going to get really focused
Amrit Dhaliwal: on who we're hiring and we're going to say no a lot, which is actually
Amrit Dhaliwal: unheard of within sector. And so we're going to say no to people that we've
Amrit Dhaliwal: think don't want to do this are not people I would hire from my own
Amrit Dhaliwal: parents. And we're just going to say no to
Amrit Dhaliwal: basically 50% of the applicants that come. And so we're going to get super
Amrit Dhaliwal: focused on who do we want and what is the purpose of
Amrit Dhaliwal: getting this, taking this job,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, and I really thought about that and I started doing
Amrit Dhaliwal: value based recruitment and so that really helped. So that
Amrit Dhaliwal: one thing alone made me get the right
Amrit Dhaliwal: place. And so the right care workers were coming
Amrit Dhaliwal: in and they were sticking around longer just automatically
Amrit Dhaliwal: because they wanted to be there. So I didn't have that churn just from that
Amrit Dhaliwal: one after. And then I thought okay, well now, so I've got care workers
Amrit Dhaliwal: here, I'm not go. There's, there's an even,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, further reduce the supply. So now they've
Amrit Dhaliwal: become even more like gold dust to me. So now what? And I thought well
Amrit Dhaliwal: okay, so, so now I need to, there's not lots of them. I need to
Amrit Dhaliwal: get to know these people, every member of
Amrit Dhaliwal: staff, you know, the dog's name and who's got chickens and how many kids
Amrit Dhaliwal: have they got and what's their names? And, you know, they've just run a marathon
Amrit Dhaliwal: doing X, you know, oh, someone's working in a mini field factory. Great.
Amrit Dhaliwal: You get to know people and then you start to understand
Amrit Dhaliwal: what motivates people. What is it? Is it money? Is
Amrit Dhaliwal: it purpose? Is it the fact that they want to be at little Timmy's football
Amrit Dhaliwal: match on a Wednesday afternoon? Every Wednesday. Great. You know, let's get to know
Amrit Dhaliwal: these people. Because actually, if I was a consultant
Amrit Dhaliwal: and I had a client that was generating £50,000 a year for
Amrit Dhaliwal: me, I'd be falling over myself. I would be sending them
Amrit Dhaliwal: birthday cards for their children's birthdays, for goodness sakes. A
Amrit Dhaliwal: care worker who's generating the same for a business. We're like, oh,
Amrit Dhaliwal: whatever. Sarah's gone, Samantha's come in.
Amrit Dhaliwal: We just don't have that thinking there. And so I
Amrit Dhaliwal: flipped that thinking and I said this to my core team
Amrit Dhaliwal: in the office. You think I'm paying your salary? You are dead wrong.
Amrit Dhaliwal: It's the coward. They are driving the
Amrit Dhaliwal: whole thing. So how do we keep them going? How do we keep them
Amrit Dhaliwal: in this business? And then it was thinking, well, how do I increase
Amrit Dhaliwal: the supply? And that comes down to simple. Let's get out there.
Amrit Dhaliwal: Let's, you know, let's do the press ups. And if we're not doing the press
Amrit Dhaliwal: ups and then complaining about, I'm not getting care workers in,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I don't buy that. You know, I think it all comes down to, right, let's
Amrit Dhaliwal: do more work, work. Let's change your work. Let's tinker with it. Let's drive the
Amrit Dhaliwal: data. You know, I did this. That didn't really work. Is it
Amrit Dhaliwal: because the system open or is it a volume problem? And
Amrit Dhaliwal: invariably it's a volume problem. You know, I had a, a friend of mine
Amrit Dhaliwal: in the sector, he said, oh, well, I sent out 300 leaflets and nothing came
Amrit Dhaliwal: back through it. And I thought, okay, cool.
Amrit Dhaliwal: So. And then what'd you do, you know, all that work, Nothing. I was, okay,
Amrit Dhaliwal: so have you, have you tried sending out 3,000 leaflets? And so he
Amrit Dhaliwal: sent out 3,000 leaflets and he got something back from it. I was like, great,
Amrit Dhaliwal: so now what happened if you send out 3,000 leaflets every day, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: for example, and yes, and there's a budget issue and whatever, but actually.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And then what happens if I'm doing that every day, but then I'm also,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, asking those people that coming in or for their
Amrit Dhaliwal: referrals and then know six months later I'm speaking to said
Amrit Dhaliwal: careworks, I've been working with me and I think they're wonderful. Hey, who else do
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know that is like you, that is your friend as a value set that
Amrit Dhaliwal: can work for us. And all of a sudden you'll keep growing
Amrit Dhaliwal: by one, two, five people. And if you can
Amrit Dhaliwal: retain those people, you will develop
Amrit Dhaliwal: a sustained scalable business but also you'll do
Amrit Dhaliwal: something really magical which is upskilling that same
Amrit Dhaliwal: person. Now what you find with businesses with a lot of churn
Amrit Dhaliwal: is that they never, they've never got anyone around to upskill them. You know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: they can't teach them the next thing and the next thing with medication and the
Amrit Dhaliwal: whatever else it might be. But if you've got somebody that is
Amrit Dhaliwal: sticking around for a five year period or you can really say
Amrit Dhaliwal: hey look, you know, I've got this next course and we're doing this thing on
Amrit Dhaliwal: ossipro and their diabetes and then so on and then so forth
Amrit Dhaliwal: and all of a sudden five years later you've got this wowzers care worker
Amrit Dhaliwal: that is just phenomenal. And they
Amrit Dhaliwal: can talk to a tissue viability nurse for you and they can talk to district
Amrit Dhaliwal: nurses and they can have these really meaningful conversations that
Amrit Dhaliwal: historically have all been reserved for management
Amrit Dhaliwal: staff. And my thinking is flipping that on its head. It's thinking
Amrit Dhaliwal: why can we not give the care workers some of the most
Amrit Dhaliwal: responsible work within the business? Because they are the ones that are out there the
Amrit Dhaliwal: whole time. You know, the only thing stopping us is
Amrit Dhaliwal: upskilling them. Yeah. I go back to
Joanne Lockwood: when I was a trustee of this local charity providing dogma care. The
Joanne Lockwood: training, the compliance, the CQC regulations,
Joanne Lockwood: so much so that we, this, this charity even started its own
Joanne Lockwood: training business, E Learning company because it was
Joanne Lockwood: cheaper to build its own E Learning platform to train its staff and then
Joanne Lockwood: sell it to other training care providers than it was to
Joanne Lockwood: sort of outsource somebody else. Because you know, you haven't, you've got, you
Joanne Lockwood: know, you need people trained in stoma care, you need people trained in being
Joanne Lockwood: able to give a certain type of injection or diabetes or whatever it may be,
Joanne Lockwood: foot care, all these other type things. So you need people who are a
Joanne Lockwood: multifaceted rounded professionals and I
Joanne Lockwood: think that's what we probably forget. We think home care is just
Joanne Lockwood: incontinence or feeding or cleaning.
Joanne Lockwood: It's the whole load of specialisms there that you have to be
Joanne Lockwood: a nurse in a package really, don't you? You have to be able to provide
Joanne Lockwood: all the things that you would get if you're in a hospital bed
Joanne Lockwood: in the community, wherever possible. Absolutely.
Joanne Lockwood: So factoring that into your care package
Joanne Lockwood: and whatever the local government is giving you is really tricky. As
Joanne Lockwood: you say, you're trying to change how you're funded by
Joanne Lockwood: looking at the private sector, looking at different partnerships. So
Joanne Lockwood: that's the challenge you're facing now, isn't it?
Joanne Lockwood: Higher net worth individuals who are looking at premium care homes or
Joanne Lockwood: premium at home services. Yeah. And I think as time
Amrit Dhaliwal: goes on, so many people fall into that bracket
Amrit Dhaliwal: and it might be somebody that was historically kind of
Amrit Dhaliwal: didn't quite fall into that bracket because the thresholds have changed over time
Amrit Dhaliwal: or property prices have gone up and so on. And so all of a sudden
Amrit Dhaliwal: so many people fall into that bracket. So actually, and I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: that'll only happen more and more over time and, and it's then about
Amrit Dhaliwal: saying, well, what is the, you know, most sustainable way of doing this
Amrit Dhaliwal: and what is the most fair way of doing this? You know, you've got to
Amrit Dhaliwal: think, well, okay, how do I sustainably and fairly turn a profit? And
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think that's what it really, it's really thinking about
Amrit Dhaliwal: everybody in that kind of circle winning.
Joanne Lockwood: My mother's come to terms with having spent, well
Joanne Lockwood: two years of paying for care homes for my father in excess of
Joanne Lockwood: £120,000, I think, in care care home costs.
Joanne Lockwood: She's decided to invest £120,000 in her house
Joanne Lockwood: to make it accessible. So she's building wet rooms, she's building a downstairs,
Joanne Lockwood: she's even planning out where her bed could go in the living room, remodelling
Joanne Lockwood: the downstairs so that she can now foresee herself staying at home
Joanne Lockwood: for as long as physically possible with domiciliary care. Rather than having
Joanne Lockwood: to ship herself off to a care home, sell her property to
Joanne Lockwood: finance it, whatever she can. Now, hopefully the plan is for her to stay there
Joanne Lockwood: till the right to the very end. And I think if people started
Joanne Lockwood: thinking about that in their 60s, 70s and 80s, about how can they
Joanne Lockwood: create a sustainable home environment for them and not be
Joanne Lockwood: reliant on care homes and they can keep the asset in their property as well,
Joanne Lockwood: all that, maybe we need to educate the
Joanne Lockwood: population as well on how to fund these things. I think there's a lot of
Amrit Dhaliwal: work that needs to be done there. I think there's probably also, we're probably at
Amrit Dhaliwal: a point in time where there's more products that are needed.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And one of the things I talk about in my book is about,
Amrit Dhaliwal: well, okay, are there insurance products that could be product provided to
Amrit Dhaliwal: people from this, from, you know, that are going through this? I mean, there's
Amrit Dhaliwal: already kind of equity products with
Amrit Dhaliwal: lenders that I've come across in the past and so on and we've seen
Amrit Dhaliwal: some clients utilising and so forth, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: but what else is there that would help kind of pull that
Amrit Dhaliwal: plaster off and help us really just move forward from this.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And providing better training and support for
Joanne Lockwood: relatives. And that's one thing we learned as,
Joanne Lockwood: as, as children of elderly parents is that we were
Joanne Lockwood: woefully unprepared for what, what was expected of us
Joanne Lockwood: and we needed educating. You know, I, I said at the time
Joanne Lockwood: to the, anyone who would listen that
Joanne Lockwood: when you're having a baby, you kind of, you're in this club. Everyone, everyone knows
Joanne Lockwood: what having a baby means. You know, you've got antenatal clients, you got lots of
Joanne Lockwood: parenting books, you've got all these little things, you've got these little clubs and Facebook
Joanne Lockwood: groups, but nobody has this kind of what it means to be a
Joanne Lockwood: sandwich generation in your 60s trying to hold a
Joanne Lockwood: living deal with your children who are in their 30s and
Joanne Lockwood: then suddenly your parents become children again. Yes.
Joanne Lockwood: And you've got all this navigating this care system,
Joanne Lockwood: navigating the terminology, getting through to people, having
Joanne Lockwood: conversations with medical professionals who seem keen to treat the
Joanne Lockwood: physical but not capable of treating holistically the mental
Joanne Lockwood: and the well being side. It's almost like your ribs are
Joanne Lockwood: fixed now, off you go, there's no more deal with it.
Joanne Lockwood: So it's education for the relatives that is
Joanne Lockwood: also needed and I think destigmatizing the
Joanne Lockwood: profession, professionalising it and also
Joanne Lockwood: making it a career
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity for many people. Then as a child, as someone who's
Joanne Lockwood: in care, then I wouldn't feel the stigma either and my employer wouldn't know the
Joanne Lockwood: stigma. And it's accepted that I'm going to need that flexibility
Joanne Lockwood: and time. And people see that being a carer as something
Joanne Lockwood: more than just fitting it in. You get maternity
Joanne Lockwood: leave, you get paternity leave. Why can't I have care leave? Yeah, yeah,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think, I think that's absolute here. I mean, you know, and actually
Amrit Dhaliwal: one of the opening gambits in my book is exactly that. You know, if I've
Amrit Dhaliwal: got a PA then that's something to be proud of.
Amrit Dhaliwal: If I've got a nanny, that's, that's okay. But if I've got a care worker,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, that's something to be Embarrassed about. And I think that that
Amrit Dhaliwal: thinking just needs morphing because actually more and more people are living with
Amrit Dhaliwal: that, dealing with that and then thinking about a tool,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, just a toolkit that you, Jo and, and your partner can
Amrit Dhaliwal: live with. Or I think, well, okay, how do I navigate
Amrit Dhaliwal: this whole very complex thing where, yeah, we, you know, you very
Amrit Dhaliwal: much are in that sandwich generation of I've got
Amrit Dhaliwal: both ends popping off and, and how do I fix that? How do
Amrit Dhaliwal: I, you know, cope with that also emotionally, how do you cope with that? That,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, because the pressure is, is immense as well.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And it's not just elderly, it's people of all
Joanne Lockwood: stages of life. I, I'm, I'm also mindful of this because my, my wife had
Joanne Lockwood: a total knee replacement two weeks ago and
Joanne Lockwood: she got sent home, no care package. You know, she, under the Equality
Joanne Lockwood: Act 2010, she doesn't even qualify as disabled because it's to be qualified that
Joanne Lockwood: you have to have a disability that lasts more than a year. So having a
Joanne Lockwood: knee replacement so she doesn't get any help with parking spaces or
Joanne Lockwood: anything else, she has to deal with that.
Joanne Lockwood: Crutches and zimmer frames and walking frames, whatever it may be, without any
Joanne Lockwood: provision. And so there was no offer of
Joanne Lockwood: someone to help her. I would have to drive her to the
Joanne Lockwood: local surgery to have the wounds dressed and changed. Something could have been
Joanne Lockwood: done in the community. Need to occupy hospital time to have that.
Joanne Lockwood: So again, it's not just elderly people here, it's people of all
Joanne Lockwood: ages who are going through having a need for dominance care, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? Yeah, yeah. And that's it. And that's one of the
Amrit Dhaliwal: reasons, actually I've recently partnered with the Royal Osteoporosis
Amrit Dhaliwal: Society and so I'm one of their business
Amrit Dhaliwal: ambassadors. And it's really interesting because actually, again,
Amrit Dhaliwal: we don't really talk about it as a sector
Amrit Dhaliwal: that's kind of so early doors that we're not talking about it.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And I think, gosh, if I think about the demographic of my staffing
Amrit Dhaliwal: team, they will all be dealing with this. If not now,
Amrit Dhaliwal: then shortly. A very big percentage of my
Amrit Dhaliwal: team will be dealing with that care workers and management and so on.
Amrit Dhaliwal: If I think about that work end client, they will be dealing with
Amrit Dhaliwal: osteoporosis and, and, and it's really then saying, well,
Amrit Dhaliwal: okay, so what, what can we do? Are we teaching our care workers enough? Are
Amrit Dhaliwal: we partnering up enough? Are we talking about it enough? And so we're trying to
Amrit Dhaliwal: raise money for them and and, and really work with them directly. So I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's, it's really interesting the way we, where we look at that.
Joanne Lockwood: We've just started talking more openly about menopause
Joanne Lockwood: and the impact of HRT and which obviously
Joanne Lockwood: has a huge impact osteoporosis as well, certainly in women. But
Joanne Lockwood: I guess it must also occur to men of a certain
Joanne Lockwood: age as well where their bone density is reducing. Absolutely,
Amrit Dhaliwal: yeah. And maybe more, more money has been spent on elderly women right
Joanne Lockwood: now because it's kind of linked to menopause and hrt, whereas elderly men
Joanne Lockwood: are probably. There's no, there's no, there's no programme there, is there?
Joanne Lockwood: People that. No. And I think, well, also there's a bit of re education that's
Amrit Dhaliwal: needed from an earlier age. So, you know, I've got both of my parents who
Amrit Dhaliwal: are in their early 70s, you know, lifting weights and,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and really building that kind of muscle mass now to, to help that deterioration
Amrit Dhaliwal: and increase bone density and work through all the supplements and so on.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And it's really, it's really talking to people at much earlier age and
Amrit Dhaliwal: stage when they're fitter, healthy and so on, say well, you know, what are we
Amrit Dhaliwal: doing to increase bone density, increase muscle mass? You know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: when we're talking about your, your father or father in law that had the fall,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, it's, it's really then saying, well, okay, have I really worked on, in
Amrit Dhaliwal: the early years on my quads, my glutes and really kind of made that strong
Amrit Dhaliwal: enough because I know that after a certain age or you know, even
Amrit Dhaliwal: after the age of like 40, the deterioration is going to increase,
Amrit Dhaliwal: the muscle mass is going to decrease and so I'm left in a much kind
Amrit Dhaliwal: of weaker position. And so if you think about how you want to be
Amrit Dhaliwal: able to live in your 80s and 90s, you know, pick up the grandkids, play
Amrit Dhaliwal: golf, tie your shoelaces, whatever that might look like, it's then saying, well,
Amrit Dhaliwal: how much muscle mass do I need for that? And then how
Amrit Dhaliwal: much deterioration am I going to have? Well, this is how much muscle mass I
Amrit Dhaliwal: then need to build from where I am today. And it's, it's really kind
Amrit Dhaliwal: of thinking about things in a much more scientific way. Things like getting
Amrit Dhaliwal: benchmark bloodstone. You know, I've started getting into that myself now doing
Amrit Dhaliwal: like, you know, selection bloods and so on, say well okay, here's my
Amrit Dhaliwal: benchmark number. So I'm not looking at it in my 40s, 50s,
Amrit Dhaliwal: 60s, and then saying, well, I don't Know what these numbers mean? Are they up,
Amrit Dhaliwal: down, sideways, what are they? But, you know, getting a kind of a
Amrit Dhaliwal: selection of things done earlier at any stage, really.
Amrit Dhaliwal: The thing is really interesting because as you get older, you've got
Amrit Dhaliwal: things to then pitch that against and really think about that. You know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think. I think we. There's this great guy called
Amrit Dhaliwal: Peter Attia who talks about health in a really interesting
Amrit Dhaliwal: way, and he talks about health, you know, 1.0,
Amrit Dhaliwal: where it was bloodletting in the mediaeval times, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: 2.0, which is kind of what we're in. Yeah, during,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, so. So you've got an issue. I'm giving you some medication,
Amrit Dhaliwal: but we're moving into that medication 3.0, which is,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, Wellness and Health 3.0, where we're talking about
Amrit Dhaliwal: prevention in a real way. You know, we talk of
Amrit Dhaliwal: prevention today, but the two things are not
Amrit Dhaliwal: mirrored in terms of the way that it's
Amrit Dhaliwal: delivered. Health is delivered to us and cares and supports are
Amrit Dhaliwal: delivered to us from medical professionals and so on as well. It's really then
Amrit Dhaliwal: thinking about getting all of that information together. I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's closer to it in the States than it is here because
Amrit Dhaliwal: there's a much more kind of privatised system around health and I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: that makes the data flow better.
Amrit Dhaliwal: And also there's a appetite for that kind of information,
Amrit Dhaliwal: which I think there's probably work to be done in the UK
Amrit Dhaliwal: at the moment which hopefully will be part of that change.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I'm probably biassed because I had, I suppose, a bit of a
Joanne Lockwood: life epiphany about three or four years ago, so I've just turned 60 this
Joanne Lockwood: year and I realised at the age of 57ish,
Joanne Lockwood: that if I wanted to stay active into my 70s,
Joanne Lockwood: I couldn't wait until I was 67. I had to do it at 57, at
Joanne Lockwood: least I should have done it at 47, but. So I gave up
Joanne Lockwood: drinking, lost a lot of weight and joined the gym,
Joanne Lockwood: go to classes now, but I'm quite data driven. I've got my Apple watch,
Joanne Lockwood: I've got my nutrition calculator, food
Joanne Lockwood: diary. So I'm much more conscious about
Joanne Lockwood: my own health and well being through data points. I guess the younger
Joanne Lockwood: generation that's coming up is used to having wearables,
Joanne Lockwood: these technology devices. So that generation, yeah, the coming generation will be
Joanne Lockwood: much more acutely aware of the metrics. I'm also
Joanne Lockwood: fortunate that I do get regular bloods through my GP
Joanne Lockwood: for various things I've had going on in my life, I get regular
Joanne Lockwood: blood tests every six months. So I've been quite fortunate things like that have
Joanne Lockwood: happened. But you're right, if you haven't got that benchmark, you don't know what
Joanne Lockwood: your user needs are. Your baseline lymphocyte counts, all these kind of
Joanne Lockwood: things. Even your hormone levels, when it changes, you don't know if it's,
Joanne Lockwood: if it's up or down. You just know that it's different for you or you
Joanne Lockwood: got nothing to go on. So I think, yeah, going back to the point you
Joanne Lockwood: made at the beginning was the prevention side. This Health
Joanne Lockwood: 3.0 is all about prevention, investment in the future. And that's
Joanne Lockwood: got to start in our teens, isn't it? Truly, I mean, we just
Amrit Dhaliwal: need to think about it. I think, you know, also just changing the way that
Amrit Dhaliwal: we're educating ourselves. But, you know, I've, I've always been into lifting
Amrit Dhaliwal: weights and so on. And when I was younger, it was all about the vanity
Amrit Dhaliwal: and just being a big beefcake. But actually
Amrit Dhaliwal: as I've got older, it's really, it's less, far less about the vanity
Amrit Dhaliwal: and much more practical and thinking, well, I started
Amrit Dhaliwal: in this year, really. I've been personal training quite a lot
Amrit Dhaliwal: and I just feel just so much stronger
Amrit Dhaliwal: as well. Just for you, going up and down so stairs and you're standing
Amrit Dhaliwal: up without using anything, you just think, gosh, yeah, you know, this is, this is
Amrit Dhaliwal: what I want my strength for as I get old, basic stuff.
Amrit Dhaliwal: You know, I just want to be able to hold my kids for
Amrit Dhaliwal: longer and walk with them further and, you know, all of that
Amrit Dhaliwal: practical strength. And I think as I get older, what does that look like
Amrit Dhaliwal: for me? You know, what, how do I want to live and what am I
Amrit Dhaliwal: doing today to think about that? And so, you know, things like
Amrit Dhaliwal: weight reduction, so on. I mean, I've been on a bit of a journey myself,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, bit more to go. But I think again, all of these things,
Amrit Dhaliwal: it takes off the burden on your ankles and your knees and so on. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: it's just, you know, as long as you can safely healthy do that.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think this is, there's a lot there that as we get
Amrit Dhaliwal: older, it will really help create a much more thriving
Amrit Dhaliwal: stage of our life. Yeah, but I think at the moment
Joanne Lockwood: it has to be my epiphany. It's not a, a cultural
Joanne Lockwood: thing, that it's evolving. Maybe, maybe we'll be talking
Joanne Lockwood: about it more, but it took a personal epiphany. So, you know, I
Joanne Lockwood: bought an E bike because I realised that I had. I had a manual pedal
Joanne Lockwood: bike and I was locked in between two hills so I could go along the
Joanne Lockwood: bottom. But as soon as it got bumpy, I couldn't get up the side. So
Joanne Lockwood: I bought an E bike and suddenly my world expanded. I can now do 25,
Joanne Lockwood: 30 miles on a Sunday morning, whereas before I was doing
Joanne Lockwood: a couple hundred yards because I was blocked in the gym.
Joanne Lockwood: Personal trainer classes do that. And I
Joanne Lockwood: mentioned at the beginning we've just got a puppy and I've. I look, look at
Joanne Lockwood: the rings on my watch and having the puppy. I'm stat. I'm
Joanne Lockwood: doing my stand count before lunchtime now because I'm getting up and
Joanne Lockwood: doing this, I'm more active. I don't lie in bed anymore, I've
Joanne Lockwood: got to get up, take for a walk and feed all that stuff. All of
Joanne Lockwood: a sudden just having a puppy has created this whole new
Joanne Lockwood: fitness requirement just to be active. So I've been very
Joanne Lockwood: mindful around standing from a chair without support. So I always,
Joanne Lockwood: when I get off the sofa now, when I get off a chair now, I'm
Joanne Lockwood: always trying to kind of do this without support, just use
Joanne Lockwood: momentum and. And I judge that as a real progress step, that I can
Joanne Lockwood: still do that. And so, yeah, I think you're right. We have to take personal
Joanne Lockwood: responsibility and maybe
Joanne Lockwood: part of your business model, and I don't know if this is what you're thinking,
Joanne Lockwood: is to try and bring people on that journey with you. So you're coming into
Joanne Lockwood: that. Yeah, really it is. I mean, so we have, around
Amrit Dhaliwal: the country we do something called Thrive Clubs, which are free
Amrit Dhaliwal: clubs and donations go to the Royal Osteoporosis Society in
Amrit Dhaliwal: Renbury and where people can drop in and I'll do something
Amrit Dhaliwal: active, whether it's, you know, yoga or Pilates or
Amrit Dhaliwal: chair exercises. I mean, heck, in some places we even do
Amrit Dhaliwal: art and so on. So just kind of creative as well, because it's not all
Amrit Dhaliwal: just physical. But I think really thinking about that and
Amrit Dhaliwal: saying, well, what are we doing and taking to the community and actually are we
Amrit Dhaliwal: starting that journey with people much earlier and really bring them on that
Amrit Dhaliwal: journey much earlier and then going on a, on a, on a much longer trajectory
Amrit Dhaliwal: with them. Is society changing? I mean, I look back at my
Joanne Lockwood: generation and we were probably the cause of the
Joanne Lockwood: McDonald's problem. You know, as parents, McDonald's just launching the
Joanne Lockwood: Happy Meal. So we were probably of that
Joanne Lockwood: generation that started causing that obesity crisis in our kids.
Joanne Lockwood: Have we got to the end of that phase. And we're now looking at a
Joanne Lockwood: better or we still
Joanne Lockwood: propagating this. Yeah, I mean, you know, from
Amrit Dhaliwal: things I've read, you know, articles and studies
Amrit Dhaliwal: have been done with economists and so on, and also from my own personal
Amrit Dhaliwal: experiences with the sort of Gen
Amrit Dhaliwal: Z's or zeds or whatever they're called, the, the next lot that are coming
Amrit Dhaliwal: up, I note that they are far more health conscious, they
Amrit Dhaliwal: drink less, they don't binge drink in the way that was normal,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, 10 or 20 years ago. They exercise
Amrit Dhaliwal: more, far more kind of sort of
Amrit Dhaliwal: aware of their health. And you think things
Amrit Dhaliwal: like these AG1s and all these kind of supplements and so on, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: there's a, there's a much bigger kind of appetite for things like that. So I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think that there is a lot of that happening. I think that we are
Amrit Dhaliwal: finding that things are morphing and changing. It will take
Amrit Dhaliwal: time. It will take. A generation, I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think, but it requires all of us to carry on doing the work.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I'm one of the millions who are using Mounjaro
Joanne Lockwood: as a partner in my, in my
Joanne Lockwood: weight loss journey. And I see it as a partnership because it's not, it's not,
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't do all this on its own. You've got to, you've got to want to
Joanne Lockwood: do it and you've got to meet it halfway because if you don't put the
Joanne Lockwood: effort in with it, it has no effect. But
Joanne Lockwood: that's really woken a lot of the population up. That's become almost
Joanne Lockwood: accessible to many. Obviously there's still a premium price,
Joanne Lockwood: but that is really getting people thinking about, actually, I can now do this.
Joanne Lockwood: It's like having a little coach on your shoulder going, you can do this, you
Joanne Lockwood: can do this. You're paying 250 quid a month for me, you better make it
Joanne Lockwood: worth it. I think it's in my mind, I think I don't want to keep
Joanne Lockwood: eating the pizza and paying 250 quid for weight loss injection.
Joanne Lockwood: So there's a whole new generation now thinking I want to take personal responsibility for
Joanne Lockwood: my weight. And they're now buying into it. But there's still stigma around
Joanne Lockwood: having help, isn't there? It's like, yeah, I mean, but again,
Amrit Dhaliwal: I think that is changing so quickly. You know, I, I think
Amrit Dhaliwal: certainly in the people that I know, I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think I, I know a lot of people that are using,
Amrit Dhaliwal: you know, medication or whatever it might be. And also I think that
Amrit Dhaliwal: there was this wonderful article in the Economist earlier this
Amrit Dhaliwal: year. It was like a six page spread and it was talking about
Amrit Dhaliwal: weight loss, drugs and, and I, I thought it was really interesting because
Amrit Dhaliwal: the way that they had positioned it was, was to say that over the next
Amrit Dhaliwal: 20 years it will really change and it will be
Amrit Dhaliwal: seen as more like
Amrit Dhaliwal: diabetes or a curable issue as
Amrit Dhaliwal: opposed to the way that it seems socially today. I
Joanne Lockwood: think that's laziness and lack of discipline and yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: very not true actually. Yeah, and it's just, it's just the way, way that we
Amrit Dhaliwal: position it socially and I think that, you know, it's just not true
Amrit Dhaliwal: actually. And, and I, I really kind of
Amrit Dhaliwal: look at that and I think that's really interesting to think how
Amrit Dhaliwal: drug like that will change society. And I think, well
Amrit Dhaliwal: that's one of many changes that will happen, you know, and, and,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and I, I just think that if we all just take
Amrit Dhaliwal: our little bit and we, you know, focus on our sphere
Amrit Dhaliwal: of influence, we can really make monumental change in how we think
Amrit Dhaliwal: about ageing and how we think about wellness and how we think about
Amrit Dhaliwal: being older. I mean, in many ways you think, gosh,
Amrit Dhaliwal: if you focus on that health trajectory, you
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, you are at a stage in your life where
Amrit Dhaliwal: you've worked, you've, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: accumulated whatever you're going to accumulate, you've got a house or whatever it might be,
Amrit Dhaliwal: be and you know, if, and if you are fortunate enough to do so and
Amrit Dhaliwal: actually you're able to live a much more
Amrit Dhaliwal: kind of full life than you might in your 20s and 30s because you're in
Amrit Dhaliwal: that building stage and you've got young kids and so on and so forth. And
Amrit Dhaliwal: so it's a really wonderful stage of life. But I think it's about repositioning the
Amrit Dhaliwal: way we look at it. And so I'm really interested in
Amrit Dhaliwal: how we think about ageing in a young uk.
Joanne Lockwood: I read somewhere and I can't remember the exact age, but something, I think it's
Joanne Lockwood: something like the first person to live to 150 years
Joanne Lockwood: old has already been born or just been born and you
Joanne Lockwood: think, so the new generation, there'll be an expectation
Joanne Lockwood: by definition that you will live into your 120s at some point.
Joanne Lockwood: But what we don't want to do is live to 120 and not be
Joanne Lockwood: fit into our 110s because
Joanne Lockwood: what we can't have is 2/3 of the population being
Joanne Lockwood: over 50, over 60, living in care or needing
Joanne Lockwood: domiciliary care with the other third trying to pay for that.
Joanne Lockwood: So we need to change our
Joanne Lockwood: fitness and Our capability. So that adjusts with our lifespan at the
Joanne Lockwood: moment. Yeah, I mean, I think we need to really change the conversation
Amrit Dhaliwal: from lifespan to healthspan. Well, okay, how long
Amrit Dhaliwal: am I healthy for? How long am I mobile and fit for and so on?
Amrit Dhaliwal: And actually, you know, that, that, that health span
Amrit Dhaliwal: is, you know, because we talk a lot about lifespan, don't we? And as a
Amrit Dhaliwal: community and I think really it's kind of morphing the conversation and saying, well, you
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, how long am I independent and happy in,
Amrit Dhaliwal: in who I am for? You know, and it's, and really asking those sort of
Amrit Dhaliwal: hard questions. Questions. Early doors, I think. Yeah, I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: we've gone past the, the era of golden handshake
Joanne Lockwood: pensions where people can retire at 50 and, you know, the next
Joanne Lockwood: generation and Gen X is like me and
Joanne Lockwood: boomers, like, like people around me, we're gonna have to keep working to our
Joanne Lockwood: mid-70s. You know, we don't, we, we don't have the, the wherewithal now. The
Joanne Lockwood: pension age is going to go up. Even, you know, I, I could I afford
Joanne Lockwood: to retire at 67? Probably not. So I need to be fit and active enough
Joanne Lockwood: to earn some kind of living to supplement any pension I have
Joanne Lockwood: into my 70s. And that number's going to go up by five
Joanne Lockwood: years every 10 years or whatever it may be. So we're going to need people
Joanne Lockwood: working to their 80s. Workplaces are going to be accommodating now of multiple generations in
Joanne Lockwood: the workplace, multiple fitness levels and multiple capability
Joanne Lockwood: levels and we as a society can't keep
Joanne Lockwood: ignoring that. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah. The NHS can't cope with it. Well, this is it and I think we
Amrit Dhaliwal: really need to think about it and think, well, what is, you know, I talked
Amrit Dhaliwal: to my nephew who's in his early 20s, said, well, you've got 50 years of
Amrit Dhaliwal: work, you know, so, so really, you know, think about all the different incarnations you're
Amrit Dhaliwal: going to have. Whatever it is that you're doing today is probably not going to
Amrit Dhaliwal: be what you're doing in 20 years time and then another 20 from there, you
Amrit Dhaliwal: know, and, and that's, it's also then at his stage, it's thinking
Amrit Dhaliwal: about the wealth span that will feed into the health span and that will feed
Amrit Dhaliwal: into the lifespan. And, you know, it's really, it's really thinking about that
Amrit Dhaliwal: whole, whole journey, I think, and much, very much like a journey, you know,
Amrit Dhaliwal: and I think really kind of mapping it, planning it and thinking about it, which
Amrit Dhaliwal: is not something that is comfortable to do, but I think we ought to.
Joanne Lockwood: But there's been an expectation that people are relying on the state
Joanne Lockwood: to do that for them, haven't they? That's been the kind of. I suppose it
Joanne Lockwood: came out of World War I, World War II, that sort of mentality where
Joanne Lockwood: the state started looking after, you know, the NHS was formed, pension,
Joanne Lockwood: retirement, all these concepts started evolving. If
Joanne Lockwood: you go back in time, back in history, people didn't retire,
Joanne Lockwood: they just passed away at work or
Joanne Lockwood: they became very infirm very quickly and they weren't expected to live much more than
Joanne Lockwood: a couple of years after retirement. Yeah, and that's, that's it. It's very
Amrit Dhaliwal: true. Especially as the people who were in that zone
Joanne Lockwood: were probably working class, lower middle class,
Joanne Lockwood: probably doing manual labour, probably working in
Joanne Lockwood: advance, that were toxic and they were developing conditions. You know, health
Joanne Lockwood: is probably for the benefit of the wealthy and the, the privileged few, wasn't it?
Amrit Dhaliwal: Yes, very much so, yeah. And yeah, we now have an expectation
Joanne Lockwood: as a society that health and well being and wealth span, as you said, and
Joanne Lockwood: health span should be the right of every person,
Joanne Lockwood: regardless of financial status. Absolutely. I
Amrit Dhaliwal: think, and you know, hopefully we will work to
Amrit Dhaliwal: omit that two tier system that has formed in the uk.
Joanne Lockwood: Amit has been a fascinating conversation. I mean, we've gone off a
Joanne Lockwood: franchising and domiciliary care into sort of blue skying
Joanne Lockwood: around health and well being, into our, into our hundreds. I've
Joanne Lockwood: really enjoyed it. How can people get hold of you and find out more? You
Joanne Lockwood: know, maybe you're a budding franchisee listening to this,
Joanne Lockwood: Jo. I've really enjoyed myself too as well, thank you very much. So we're very
Amrit Dhaliwal: easy to get hold of. So I'm Amrit Dallywell. I've got my book which is
Amrit Dhaliwal: called the Time to Thrive Home Care Revolution, which you can find
Amrit Dhaliwal: on Amazon. I have a podcast which is called Walking With Wolf Inches. All
Amrit Dhaliwal: the, on all the podcast platforms on my
Amrit Dhaliwal: Instagram, which is Amrit Wolfinch and LinkedIn,
Amrit Dhaliwal: which is Amrit Dallywell and then the website which is
Amrit Dhaliwal: www.wolfinchfranchising.com.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. This is all in the UK at the moment. You're not, you're not going
Joanne Lockwood: into Europe yet. Currently in the UK and you know, let's see what
Amrit Dhaliwal: happens in the future. So throughout the uk.
Amrit Dhaliwal: We're currently throughout the uk, yes. Yeah. So the furthest north is
Amrit Dhaliwal: Edinburgh and the furthest south I think is Southampton. Oh, wow.
Joanne Lockwood: I'm in Portsmouth. So. Yeah, just around the corner. Yeah. Not far. Yes. Yeah, not
Joanne Lockwood: far. So if you're, if you're in the west country or you're in
Joanne Lockwood: the tail end of Kent, maybe there's an opportunity there to franchise.
Amrit Dhaliwal: I mean, we have, you know, we've got a
Amrit Dhaliwal: wonderful journey to go on. I think we'll probably have about 40
Amrit Dhaliwal: locations by the end of this year, but we probably divide the country into
Amrit Dhaliwal: 200. So there's a lovely kind of 10 year journey to
Amrit Dhaliwal: go on and we're always looking for the right
Amrit Dhaliwal: people to go on that journey with us. We say no a lot, but again,
Amrit Dhaliwal: for the same reasons, we're looking at retention, we're looking at the
Amrit Dhaliwal: right people and we're trying to build a values led business.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, I'm never going to disagree with that statement. Absolutely fantastic, Amrit, thank you so
Joanne Lockwood: much. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
Joanne Lockwood: my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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