Shaping Organizational Culture in Assisted Living: A Deep Dive

Transcript

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All right, so super excited to get into the importance of culture in businesses today and why it's so important for you to hire the right people inside of assisted living. This is something I hear from a lot of people that it's really important to do and they're scared of it. We're going to talk about that today. So, if you're interested, make sure you stick around for today's video. Hey friend, I'm Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living Investing. I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs

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launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives. I want to remind you to get over to the website assisted living investing.net. We got a bunch of free resources for you over there. And also stick around for the end of the video. I'm going to talk a little bit about our next roadmap challenge that will help you build your road map as you're trying to figure out how to get started in assisted living. If you want to learn more about that, go

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to roadmapchallenge.com or stick around till the end of the video. We'll chat about it a little bit more. With that, let's get into it. Welcome, Jacob. Excited to chat with you a little bit today. How's it going? >> Doing fantastic. Thanks so much for having me on. Excited to be here. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, tell me a little bit about what you do, like how you got into Higher Aligned, uh what you guys are building there, your background, and and how you got to where you're at today.

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And just give me a little background. >> My name is Jacob Crockett. I originally am from Minnesota. grew up being very entrepreneurial, you know, trying to make money in lots of ways because I I like to spend it as a teenager and, you know, love school. Started I studied statistics in college. Had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was just like, great, this can get me a job. I, you know, stuck with it, graduated, got a job, and rode really the data hype. Right now everybody talks about

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AI. Like I was doing AI before it was cool, you know, back when it was data science, then machine learning and now AI, but really always been on the side of how do we make this actually useful for people? Because a lot of of what's done in the data world is like, hey, can we hyper optimize something to make it crazy accurate and, you know, like do this, but then it's never used. And so it's like somebody once compared it to putting a a Lamborghini motor on a lawn mower that it's like, you know, you

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don't need something so overpowered. How about we just actually make it useful? And so I, you know, have spent most of my career figuring out how do we make data useful? On the side of that, I've started grad school a few times, never gotten far into it. Because of that, most of the teams I've been on are like all PhDs, you know, all these crazy smart people. And so I've leaned very much into kind of the more product business side of things and thinking how do we how do we use this and bring

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business value. So through a few different jobs that's what I was really doing and on the side I was you know managing well not on the side but in those jobs I was managing teams and it there started to emerge a pattern where some jobs I would love it and be so excited like stoked to be there love the people on my team and others I kind of dread it. It'd be like, you know, getting burnt out by things that used to be easier and and sometimes it was in the same job as things would shift. um

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an experience a year and a half two years ago where I was really misaligned with the team and what we're trying to do led me to realize hey um why don't I start to combine some of these worlds of you know we have tech and data and then really like leadership and culture and alignment on teams and there has to be a better way to orchestrate alignment and how do we help individuals right that that was my experience experience where I quit a job because I I did had different priorities than the

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people on my team. And when push came to shove, it was like great, I'm I'm not aligned here anymore. How can we create something to resolve that for individuals and for businesses as well to build teams that are more aligned on their culture and values, which I mean there's a ton of research out there. Teams do better, people do better, and it's just uh better overall. So, that was kind of a long answer, but >> yeah. No, that's really cool. I know like I I could feel where you're coming

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from. So my background is in analytics. I love working with data and things like that. Um but it is something that I have found the most important thing that I can do as an analyst is get it to tell the story that somebody wants it to tell and manipulating it and and seeing what's there because it is it you can get it to tell whatever story and and people find it so confusing. Um and so that resonates with me. but also the the whole part of being in different cultures and and the way that it feels.

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Like I've been in jobs before where it's just it the the people were great and it it was it was fun working there, but it always just felt weird and it it's like hard to explain what that's like. And so it's really cool that you got you're kind of blending some of that stuff together. That that's awesome. That's really cool. It's been really fun and rewarding to see um how it's changed not just companies and the way they've approached hiring and like the way

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they've approached being intentional about their culture, but it's even more exciting seeing like the individual stories, right? And I mean >> when there's data people, it's like great, you know, here's a story. Cool. I want to see some, you know, quantitative measurement to know like, well, is this actually reflective of the whole population or is it just this oneoff? So, it's been fun to like balance and juggle that where yeah, we look, we can see that this is working and you know,

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people want to work there more. People are more engaged and then also people who are like I've literally like I've never loved working at a job so much or like it's never been so easy for me to like show up and be engaged. And I think that's something like shifting a little bit into the lens of assisted living and what I do. That's something that I think >> is really hard to pinpoint because it is just the nature of of the job for caregivers specifically. It's very

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cyclical. It you go through people quickly and it's hard to build I think a culture and an atmosphere where people feel comfortable and engaged and that they'll stick around for. Do you have any like stories or experiences like that that you'd like to share on maybe something my audience can glean from and be like, "Oh, that's a way that I can kind of build that type of culture where I can keep people here in the facility." >> Yeah, I think first off it's recognizing, okay, what culture do you

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want to be built? Like what culture do you want to exist? And so culture is a big buzz word. You know, it's one of those that's like overabused and so people don't even know what it means anymore. Our working definition of it is that culture is the set of shared experiences, beliefs of a group of people. And so not one person gets to define that. You know, the owner of an assisted living facility can say, "Hey, here's what we want our culture to be." But if they're like, "Hey, you know, one

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of our core values is kindness." And then they scream at somebody and don't apologize when they mess up. like the culture has shifted and now like that's allowed whether or not they wanted it to be like or you know if one of their managers freaks out at somebody and then they don't stop it like it it's continually evolving and so getting really intentional about it and that can be scary but it's as simple as like hey you know what what do you want your employees to say about working here?

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What do you want somebody to say when they about you when they're talking about, you know, the family member who's going to move in there? Like what what do you want people to leave after they come and tour it? What do you want them to feel and think and say? That's really important to have some aspiration and then you're going to fall short always. Nobody reaches that. And that's the cool thing because you have something to work through and you're going to eb and flow towards that. And so really it's number

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one is get clear and accurate about where you're at and what you want. There's, you know, the best way to understand what culture is through stories. It's asking people, you know, hey, kind of behavioral interview type interview questions where it's like, hey, you know, tell me about a time you went above and beyond in your job. Like, tell me about a time you were proud to be a part of a team. And you know, like in the assisted living world, if everybody's like, "Yeah, well, we were

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really proud when we, you know, we rallied together and like filled a bunch of beds that were empty >> versus like, hey, we had somebody who like was really struggling or like a family member who was somebody who's struggling and like we comforted them and like resolved in this way." Those are two very different experiences. Neither of them are wrong, but you better be hiring the right people for those experiences because if you hire somebody who's more sales metric, revenue gen oriented

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into a, you know, more warm and fuzzy like mission driven organization, there's going to be clashes. Um, and so the more that you can get accurate on that, the better. And like there's right, it's sometimes it's hard for somebody who's embedded in the business. It's hard for the owner to sit down and be like, well, you know, how do you feel about this? Because people are like, well, they get to decide if they work there, you know, and so they're often having a third party is useful, but

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collecting the stories, getting accurate on it, right? You can like essentially you could send out a survey, pump it all into chat GPT, and be like, "Hey, describe my culture." It's going to do a pretty good job. Um, and then recognizing as you're growing one, like the way that things operate should align with that with the way that you want, right? If it's, you know, you want like appreciation and gratitude as one of your core values or something like you should probably spend time and you

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should probably having like an all hands meeting or like a newsletter where you're sending out like you know thanking people for things and then when you hire as well recognizing hey these are the things we're looking for and hiring based off of those values and behaviors and so and it's when you can do that it's magic like even the jobs are hard like it's hard >> emotionally numbing work. And when you can get people who align with that and more than just, you know, what sports team they're

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cheering for or like what their favorite food is, but instead like the deeper values of like, you know, hey, we're building something bigger than us or whatever. Um, it's amazing. You know, people are more resistant to burnout. They're more engaged. You know, there's higher levels of of teamwork and productivity. So, um, yeah, it's huge, especially in the assisted living industry where it's hard, right? It's hard to hire, it's hard to retain. >> So, like the people are it's the hardest

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part. And how do you do that? >> It doesn't make it easy, but you know, aligning around your values makes it much more doable. >> I love that. Yeah. One of the things that I found cuz I've gone through this process where I've either had bad culture or I've had experiences where staff like my administrators at my facilities have gotten burnt out and one of something that happened to us. It was the week before Christmas and one of my administrators she messaged me. She's

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from Hawaii and she messaged and said, "I'm leaving. I'm moving back to Hawaii." And it was like crap. What do I do now? At that point, I was shifting into entrepreneurial mode. How am I going to save this? But I came back to how am I going to hire people? And that scared the crap out of me when I was doing this initially cuz I had no idea what I was doing when I was getting started. But then we shifted and I've had to do this several times. And every time I go through it, something that I

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found is like you mentioned with stories, it's so important to get them to tell me stories about what's going on, what they've done, what they've experienced, how they've handled those situations, because it lets me see what type of culture they're going to build inside of my business. Are they going to communicate well with me? Are they going to react? How are they going to react when I tell them to do something? How are they going to react to families when something bad happens? And that can be

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really hard to do. Um, and kind of in that vein, I guess I I'm curious your thoughts on if you've got a bad culture uh inside of a facility, whatever's going on. We don't need to get into any specifics. Something bad's happening, people are burnt out, somebody's doing stuff they shouldn't be doing, whatever. What's the best way to change that culture? Is it like completely taking people out and inserting new people? Is there a way to shift it with the people that are already there? like what are

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your thoughts on that? >> That's a really good I mean all of these are like the million-dollar question, right? How do you like it can it can cost you a million dollars if you don't figure it out? >> Oh, absolutely. It's costly >> and so it's like not hypothetical anymore, which I love and hate because you know it adds there's big they're high stakes. I think that the first thing I'd say I don't really believe in good and bad culture. I believe in good

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like useful and not useful. >> That's cool. Because, >> you know, if you think of like Tesla is a great example of, you know, Elon Musk is like, I'm sleeping on the the warehouse, the manu the factory floor until we get this figured out. Um, if people are down to do that and they're like, "Yeah, we want to build the best electric car ever." And they're like all gung-ho. That's actually super useful. Whereas in other places that would be super toxic. >> Yeah. And so like Amazon, you know,

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cutting the bottom whatever percent of their company every single year, if you're into crazy high performance and, you know, being there for that is super useful. If not, it is super cutthroat and toxic. And so I think there's some things that just are never useful, like you know, screaming at your employees when they mess up. I don't think there's a world where that's useful. you can align around it and get people who are okay with it and it might be better off than if you had a bunch of

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people who didn't. Um, I think that's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say is in business it's really important to view the world the right way. When we look at hiring and people and like existing teams, it's really easy to slip into this scarcity mindset of like there's nobody else out there who could possibly do this. Even if this person's an absolute jerk, like and they're ruining our team, like they know how to do this job and I need to keep them.

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>> That's the important part. I just need bodies. I need warm bodies. Right. >> Yeah. Yeah. Right. Sometimes it's like, "Hey, I need a pulse." And it's funny. We have one of our customers, a massive group. They're not an assisted living facility. They have 90 different locations, you know, big personalities working at these locations. And when we started with them, that was a big part is they have a strong global culture, but they recognized that at the local

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levels, there were some leaders that they had allowed to stick around that were just ruining it for everybody there where they're like, you know, they do great, they hit their goals, but they're not helping the organization move in the direction that they want. And so they went through kind of this painful process of recognizing, hey, this person's actually like the cancer here. and you know they're doing great. It's gonna be pain. It's gonna be a painful couple of months, but we're gonna let

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them go and replace them with somebody who is more aligned with what we're doing. And so I think there's to get back to your question, I think there is a world where people when when you get accurate about where you're at and where you want to be, people have a way of making it very obvious if they want to get where you're going or not. M >> and then it becomes really easy to, you know, instead of come showing up to somebody being like, "Hey, look, like you're not a fit. It's, you know, it's

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so sad." And then being surprised and angry and sad and all that, it's like, "Hey, look, here's where we're going. Are you down for that?" Like, that's what this looks like. Are you committed to that, too? >> Yeah. >> And if they say they are, and then they don't act that way, it's like, "Hey, great." You know, you check in in 30 days and you're like, "Look, we're going to move on because like we don't want the same things." Um, and

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it's just speaking in that way starts to build the culture of like, hey, look, we're moving in a direction together. And it doesn't work to have people who aren't going in the same direction. >> Yeah. No, I think that's really good. And people will self- select out of the culture they don't feel comfortable with as well. What are your thoughts on So, I've dealt with this as a business owner. You do those things and people they want the paycheck as much as you want a warm body. And so they they're

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willing to be uncomfortable in this situation to the point that you finally end up having to let them go. And this again, you talked about scarcity mindset. There was a time as I was doing this, scarcity was I can't let people go or somebody's going to get let go and they're going to come after me that's going to, you know, they're going to try to sue me, unemployment, whatever types of things. Do you have any thoughts on that or experiences on how you can shift your mindset uh to being out of that scarcity

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mindset to more abundance focused? >> Yeah, that it's hard. It's hard to do. And I think that the one of the most effective ways of doing that is to recognize who you're surrounding yourself with and what you're consuming and then being very intentional about that. If you're constantly looking at, hey, you know, like the things that are scarce of, hey, it doesn't, you know, people are always late to work, I'm always dealing with all these problems, and you're so in your head and in your

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business, it's going to be hard to shift that mindset. If you show up to, you know, networking events, masterminds, the types of things where people who have achieved amazing things are talking and are all motivating each other and like elevating their vision. um it makes it much easier to start to think that way. And then I think also getting building relationships. One of the biggest things for me is recognizing that, you know, independent of the industry, the world is big enough for everybody to eat, you know, like and

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it's actually way easier to build a successful business when you are friends with other people who are in the same business. Um I one of my good friends owns a plumbing company and he started it after you know he'd worked at a couple others and he is like the he throws the most training events for other plumbing companies out there and is like the biggest cheerleader for everybody else because he's more interested on how do we elevate the industry because it will raise everybody. >> Awesome. And so share like, you know,

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exactly what you're doing, right? Like you're a business owner. You know, I'm sure somebody listens to your YouTube channel that like lives in a similar vicinity and like also is going after the same customers, >> but who cares because there's enough out there. Um, >> 100%. >> And the more you come together, the easier it is to be like, "Oh, wait. Nobody's actually my enemy. Oh, there's enough around. And hey, look, there's enough people that if you

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create the type of place where you know, whatever you want your culture to be, like there are values and people are aligned, people will come out of the woodwork, right? Like people will change careers to be a part of that. >> I love that. Yeah. I was talking with somebody on a podcast a few months ago and that we were talking about that exact same thing. the assisted living industry, especially smaller homes like this. It's so weird. People do not want to talk like they want to be siloed and

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it's something I'm trying to break. But I was talking with this guy. He had a assisted living in California and he had a memory care facility just down the block from him. And we were talking about building relationships and he's like, "I couldn't get anybody to work with me to collaborate or share ideas or whatever cuz you know they're going to steal my employees or my residents or whatever." and he's like, "We built this relationship and we passed multiple

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millions of dollars back and forth between each other because nobody else would do it and we just had this awesome relationship together." And I was like, "That is like that's where it's at." Doing the networking and and building just like the rising tide lifts all boats, right? It's it's just that same principle. And I love what your friends do in the plumbing industry. I think it's great. My accountant does the same thing. He trains other accountants on what he has learned through decades of

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experience working with the IRS and and and working through taxes. Like he does the exact same thing. And I think it's so beneficial when you have those things and build an industrywide culture and and it really can level yourself up. That Thanks for sharing that. It was great. >> Yeah. And I think the more you view um your employees as people like real people and dare I say you know peers the better because you're working with them they're working with you not for you because you know sure if you wanted like

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a set it and forget it kind of a thing where you know it just like operates and it's a factory and you have cogs and you don't care what their names are like you could do that and it can work >> if you can find people who are fine showing up and being a cog and not caring and like that's cool, you know, like that's not wrong. But if when you find people who want to build something with you, you know what across the board, but like recognizing, hey, look, we all change and grow, you know, you

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shouldn't hire somebody and try to pigeon hole them and like keep them stuck there because, you know, they're just going to come around. And if you can grow and develop people, that's how you win. And that's like the most fulfilling thing. People are the hardest part of business and they're the most fulfilling part of business. >> Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, it's so true because it is managing people is everybody has their own personality and trying to figure out how to manage that.

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It's so hard to figure out I can talk to this person this way but I can't do it this way with that person and group setting versus individual settings like those are always difficult but it it's also when you figure that out and you can build relationships man it's so rewarding to be able to do that. So that's a great one. I love that. Tell me, so I'm curious your perspective on this because we were talking before we hopped on about you've got a background. You're very entrepreneurial-minded and

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have loved that. Something I've struggled with as an entrepreneur is the idea of I'm much more visionary. So if you have read Gino Wickman's like the EOS system and stuff like that, >> I'm much more visionentric and I need operators and that's something I struggle with. I can do it a little. I've taken tests. I'm pretty close to being an operator, but I know people they most people are are one or the other and it's really hard to figure out how to pull that out and partner with or

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hire the person that is not who they are and to let go of the thing that they are not. So, I'm curious, what are your thoughts on how to find those people and how to build that into your business and and make it even more successful? Yeah, I think if you right, say you're going to hire somebody, just you post a job on Indeed, like you've written up bullet points of what you need them to do. Um, now most job seekers like by default are very scarcity minded. They're like, "Hey, I need money, so I

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need a job. I don't care." Like, you know, they're they have a relative the importance of what the job is changes based off of their desperation, but it's like great. you know, they're going to show up and if they get an interview, they're going to tell you pretty much whatever you want to hear or they're going to try to because they want the job. Um, just as much as we like try to, you know, if somebody's like, "Hey, Brandon, you know, here's this thing."

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And it's like really cool and exciting, but it's very much like an operator, you might be like, "Yeah, I can do that." You know, like, and try to convince yourself that you could. I think that one of the key things is recognizing how do you ask questions in the interview process >> that there's no right answer to but it's obvious when they align with what you need right where this the question you know tell me about a time you went above and beyond in your job here's a visionary answer

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well you know we were doing this thing and I saw that you know we had an opportunity to like use this new cool tech I read about or heard about on a podcast in our onboarding process to like make it a better experience and you know I shared the idea with somebody and they went and tried it out and they came back and loved it >> and like then we implemented it and you know had like a 5% increase in retention or something like >> that's kind of visionary looking towards the future a little more abstract where

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whereas like operators like hey >> I went above and beyond in my job because you know I noticed that like we were wasting I don't know half the light switches were being left on at night >> and it was you know like wasting electricity every day and I turned them off and you know that's that's a lame example but off the top of my head but like you get it right like the the classic example I use is you know above and beyond it's like cool I I worked extra hours to like meet a goal and it's

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like that's great that is very telling of what kind of person that is versus like opportunistic IC identifying visionary type things. And so I think knowing what kind of job you're you're what type of person you're trying to hire for and then being able to ask those questions and interpret that that's where the hard part is, you know, how do you interpret this? How do you know what you need versus not? And that's where it's important to like get accurate. You know, as much as everybody

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wants their like, you know, operations manager to be, you know, forward thinking and like visionary, you want somebody who's not going to rock the boat most of the time. >> Yeah. It was just like going to keep >> carry out my vision for me. >> Yeah. So, I mean, so you can go on vacation. >> Yeah. Exactly. Right. That's great. Yeah. I That's something I've I I'm still struggling with and trying to figure out. It It's taken me a long time. I think we've found that type of a

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person that can carry out the vision, be operational, focused, and uh helping us do that with our business. Which the other thing that it does for me is it frees me up to be from that scarcity mindset we've been talking about where it's like I just need to make sure this thing is profitable and like make sure that we're we're running numbers rather than now I'm in a state of mind where it's like okay what can we do to grow our portfolio? We've got somebody that can carry out the vision and really

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carry us to the next level. And that's something that I've always aspired to but I've never felt like we had the right people to get us there. And when you find that person, it it's amazing what it does to your your perspective, your paradigm of of the world that you're living in and where it can shift you and put you into the next phase. So, no, it's great. >> Yeah, I it it's similar, right? There's in business ownership, it's similar, especially when you have locations

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whether you know if you're running like Crumble Cookies versus like an assisted living facility, you know, Crumble Cookies are very different. What is similar is you can only run a couple without having a good team beneath you. >> And right they say in franchise world they're like look the one to three units is the hardest because you can do it by yourself like and you can be the one checking in all the managers whereas once you get bigger you have to have a team. And so it's right, it's similar in

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the assisted living world where like you can be the go-to person that gets called when you know there's an emergency for a couple, but as soon as you get bigger, you have to have your people in place. And so then it allows you to actually do that and to build a bit, you know what they it's kind of the cliche of like how do you work on your business, not in your business. >> Um, and you have to have the team to do it, but it also like takes a scale, right? You can't, you know, start an

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assisted living facility that's small and, you know, like like we were saying kind of these small six to eight beds and have, you know, like regional like director. >> Yeah. I I actually I haven't told you this and I don't know how much of my story you you've watched. I forced myself into doing that actually because I invested out of state. So I live in Utah. I I purchased my first one in Colorado and my second one in Idaho and our Colorado facility 10 12 hour drive or hour flight plus an hour drive. Idaho

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is four or five hours away and that when I when I was getting started I wanted to be in Utah and just things didn't work out at the time for me uh to do that. So, we invested out of state and it was uh just rapid. I've got to figure out how to put these people in the right place, which has I've fumbled a lot through that, but I've learned so much from that and finding and hiring the right people so that we can have the culture so they're putting things in place. That's where finding that that

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perfect person that makes me feel comfortable to expand out of state that that's beneficial because I've owned a franchise business where I intended to to hire people and it was 30 minutes away from my house and I I was there all day every day >> y >> doing all the things plus all the other stuff and it was hard. So yeah, you make a great point there. >> Yeah. No, that's cool. Yeah, I didn't know that. But, uh, yeah, it's I mean, you have to be intentional. I think when

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in owning a business, if you're not intentional, um, it's really easy for it to become a job instead of a business. >> Yeah, I agree. And that's something I I like to teach people is you've got to start off with your vision. Like, what do you want out of this? There's three hats that you can wear in an assisted living, at least from my perspective and and what you're trying to do when you're getting into assisted living. You can be an owner. You can be an operator, you

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can be an administrator. You could wear all three of those hats. It's totally fine if you want to do that. But if you want to just be an owner, then you've got to find other people that can wear the other hats for you. And if you try to wear all three of them all the time, you will get burnt out and it's not going to be a good experience for you. And if you put too big a hat or too heavy of a hat on somebody, they'll also get burnt out and they need to take their many hats and put them on on their

00:30:42 - 00:31:45
employees and really move it forward so you can run a successful business. I think so. >> Yeah. No, I I I like that. >> Yeah. So, I'm curious uh one more question and I want to talk to you a little bit about higher line. So, in smaller facilities like the ones that I'm talking about that I help people uh get started with is very different from these big businesses, you know, the one you're sharing your example about. >> What do you see? What's like some of the best advice that you could give to a

00:31:14 - 00:32:13
small business owner like that that just has 10 residents in it. You've got five to 10 employees. It's very small when setting building the culture, hiring, finding the right people, retaining those staff. Like what what's the some of the best advice you could give to people that are in that situation? Yeah, I think when your team is small, right, and you've started a business or you just bought a business, it's really easy to just let culture be whatever it is. And you know, if somebody's really

00:31:43 - 00:32:51
grounded and kind of an intentional person, that works okay. As soon as you get past like 8 to 10 employees, it you can't control it anymore, right? like your personal influence doesn't reach as far as you'd hope. And so, um, even if all you do is establish, okay, what do we care about? You know, what kind of a place do we want this? And the questions around like, you know, how do you want your residents to feel? How do you want their family members to feel? How do you want your employees to describe their

00:32:17 - 00:33:16
job to other people? writing that down just you know on a whiteboard on a piece of paper just like getting it out there and then connecting to that what behaviors are that and reinforce that and even if it's just like hey we're going to say thank you like anytime somebody does something like we're saying thank you right we're not assuming like we're going to be grateful >> that is so simple but getting it out there and creating a shared language around that even if it's like hey you

00:32:46 - 00:33:41
know we always say thank you or like you know this idea of like abundance versus scarcity which is kind of cliche because lots of people talk about this right but like getting that vocabulary out there >> because then you all start thinking in the same way. I'm a big believer you know there's all these different like >> personality tests and like lead like development tests and things you have like strengthfinder and like disk and you know all whatever the MyersBriggs all these different things. I think any

00:33:14 - 00:34:12
of those work great if everybody's speaking the same language. >> And so for a small business, if you can just create intentionally your culture by using language, you'll be in a much better place and right, you don't have to spend a ton of time on it. You know, if it's like cool, we're going to be grateful and that's one of your values. Like great, we say thank you all the time and maybe once a month you spotlight somebody who was like extra awesome. And it's so easy, but it's

00:33:43 - 00:34:37
really meaningful for both, you know, the like overall culture and also retention of employees. And, you know, the more you can help somebody feel like they're part of a team and have those shared beliefs and experiences, the better. >> I love that. That's great. Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. That's really good. Well, yeah. tell me a little bit more about what you guys what you're building uh what you're working on and I'd love to hear a little bit more about

00:34:10 - 00:35:12
what you guys are doing. >> Yeah, so I mean this whole conversation just kind of been a Trojan horse, right? where you know the alignment on teams is really important. When people feel like they're part of a team and they understand each other and they are you know aligned on things that are deeper than just like what sports team they cheer for or you know their favorite restaurant um or you know their favorite TV shows like it it changes the way that people work together. And so the way

00:34:41 - 00:35:35
that hierline works, right? We built a software that captures the culture on a team, right? You know, if if let's say, you know, Main Street Assisted Living was is going to be a customer, the way that they onboard is you have the owner or, you know, whoever's leading it and is involved go through and they put in what the aspirational culture is. You know, what are your values? What do you want this to look like? >> Yeah. >> And then you send out this link to everybody across the company who works

00:35:08 - 00:36:00
there. and they all go through what feels like a 10-minute conversation with ChachiBT. It's asking them these behavioral type questions and, you know, it's following up. If somebody's like gives a poor answer that's too short, it'll, you know, ask them for more. It'll empathize with them. And from that, we're able to sus out, okay, how what's the actual culture here? What do people value? You know, what's their deeper purpose? How do they work together? How do they treat people? How

00:35:34 - 00:36:28
do they prioritize their work? And then from that, we can do two things. The first is when you're growing um you have this baseline. You post your job on Indeed, whatever. You get people who apply. You send them an assessment link before you even look at their resume and you say, "Hey, the first step is to go through this." They go through a similar thing. They talk to chat for 10 minutes, share this stuff, and then they get an email that says, "Hey, we don't know if Main Street Assisted Living is going to

00:36:01 - 00:36:49
move forward with you, but it's important that you also have alignment with them. here's how good of a fit they are for you. And then Main Street Assisted Living can see, hey, here's how well they align on, you know, our culture, our values, and, you know, can they do the job, right? If you need a nurse, like they kind of have to be a nurse. You know, doesn't matter how hard how bad somebody pretends they're a nurse, they're not. >> Um, that's the first thing. The second

00:36:25 - 00:37:24
thing is you can see how well your team is living up to your core values, how well they align it. It essentially replaces the employee engagement surveys that people will have. And so it gives the leader, the manager superpowers because they have insight into how the team's feeling and living. And if you have multiple locations, right? I talked before about kind of a global culture and a local culture. >> You can do this and align across, you know, have a global aspirational culture and how each local culture is living up

00:36:55 - 00:37:56
to that. and they get insights to like hey here's what you can do to improve on your alignment around this and you know and work and we have teams take that every quarter and so it's been awesome right we're in a bunch of different industries in kind of the if we were to generalize like medical the you know healthc care field we've seen crazy increases in retention right we have multilocation businesses that are above 90% retention over a year with their employees which right is is nuts

00:37:25 - 00:38:22
And people love it. They're recognizing that, you know, when they start at a company and they feel like they're aligned, it makes a big difference from the get-go both ways. And so, yeah, that's what we're up to. And it's been really fun, right? We have a lot of small businesses using us. A couple that I mean, small is always relative, right? If you have six to eight beds, like you're pretty small. And there's some big dogs out there that if you were like, "Yeah, we have a hundred beds in

00:37:54 - 00:38:45
one location," they'd be like, "Oh, you're small." >> Exactly. Right. >> And so where they're like, you know, across multiple states and all these different things. And so, um, yeah, it it's been a blast. It's been really fun. And so, we're really hoping that we can be a positive influence to change the way that people think about people and hiring and culture to make it more intentional and to make it more meaningful. >> Yeah. Because in a world where, you

00:38:19 - 00:39:06
know, eventually, you know, robots are going to be cooking the food and, you know, like doing the cleaning and whatnot, and it's all going to, you know, it's probably a long time in the future. I I hope it's sooner for we'll see. >> Yeah. But, you know, like the human interactions and the relationships are going to be even more important. >> So, how do we lean into that? Because, you know, people aren't happy, you know, looking at their phone all day. They're

00:38:42 - 00:39:41
happy when they engage with others. >> Yeah, that's I 100% agree. Like I think there's a tipping point at some point people will love the convenience of AI and everything that's going to bring but they will crave the human interaction whether that's like in the world of assisted living just >> working with an individual and rather than a robot taking somebody's temperature like they they need to have that human connection uh and you know I think that's something that it's so

00:39:12 - 00:39:54
important. Um, so it sounds like you guys do more than just here's hiring, like set it and forget it. It's more ongoing relationship building with the the companies that you work with. >> That's awesome. >> Yeah. So, it kind of works both ways. If we if somebody's like, "Hey, I just really like I want to ensure that I'm hiring somebody who aligns with my team. Like I don't either I don't care or I don't have bandwidth to do the like ongoing stuff."

00:39:34 - 00:40:30
>> Yeah, >> that's great. You know, we serve them there. We have kind of a a one-off pricing model for them. Most of our customers recognize like, hey, I want my culture to be better. >> Yeah. >> I'm going to do that, too. >> Yeah. I think it's I mean, we use Gusto for our payroll. >> Yeah. >> And Gusto has builtin like little questions that you can do, questionnaires. They're really quick and brief and they rotate them on an annual basis. And we've started implementing

00:40:01 - 00:41:06
that which is good. Gives me a lot more insight than I ever had previously. But it's also largely yes and no questions. like I can only get so much out of it, right? So, um that's awesome. Where can people go to learn more about Higher Aligned and what you guys are doing? >> Yeah, so our website higher aligned halaligned.com or you can reach out to me. My email is Jacob Jacobalign.com or you can hit me up on LinkedIn. I spend way too much time there. Yeah. >> Yeah, we'll get contact info and stuff

00:40:34 - 00:41:22
and put it in the links below. So, awesome. Thanks, Jacob. It's been awesome learning about Higher Line, what you guys are doing, and and just talking about culture and the importance of building culture inside of your business. I think it's so important for us to do that as small business owners. And the more that you start doing that sooner than later, the more success you're going to have uh as you're trying to really build something that is successful and profitable and impactful

00:40:58 - 00:41:47
in the communities that you're trying to build. So, with that, want to thank Jacob again for for being on here with us. And at the start, I mentioned that I had a special uh offer for you guys. If you are interested, would love to have you in our next roadmap challenge. Uh if you go to roadmapchallenge.com, you can learn more about that. It's where we work together for a full week. What group coaching can help you out building your roadmap to help you launch your own assisted living business. Uh because at

00:41:23 - 00:42:08
assisted living investing, that's what I love to do is help you make progress in launching your assisted living business. Are you curious about assisted living? I help first-time assisted living entrepreneurs launch profitable, purpose-driven businesses, creating prosperity, purpose, and peace in their lives so that they can have the impact that they want to have in moving things forward and just impacting their community. I love coaching people. It's one of my favorite things to do. Go

00:41:45 - 00:42:26
check out roadmapchallenge.com and get over to assisted livinginvesting.net as well to get some of our resources over there. And remember, it doesn't take a lot, just a little bit. Just keep going step by step by step. And I promise you, if you do and you're consistent and persistent, you're going to be successful. Thanks for watching and have a great day. [Music]