IAM524- Visionary Focused on Improving Quality of Care

Since 1985 David has focused on improving the quality of care for thousands of seniors and disabled persons. David is highly respected as a visionary and authority in the field of home care. Prior to starting Careshyft, David co-founded Companion Connection Senior Care, a National Membership Organization. This membership organization is dedicated to teaching others how to start their own non-medical home care companies and begin filling the great demand for these services. The Road to Success, Vol. 2 – Co-Authored by David Goodman. David also co-founded and grew Expert Home Care into one of New Jersey’s most successful home care agencies with an emphasis on live-in care.

• CEO Hack: (1) Being laser-focused (2) Keeping a spreadsheet of ideas
• CEO Nugget: Work hard, there's no overnight success
• CEO Defined: Taking responsibility fulltime

Website: https://www.careshyft.com/

https://www.careshyft.com/franchise/

Twitter: @Careshyft
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/careshyft/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgoodman4/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have David Goodman of Careshyft. David, it's awesome to have you on the show.

David Goodman 0:39

A pleasure to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem. Pleasure is definitely all mine. What I want to do is just read a little bit more about David so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. David is the president of Careshyft. Since 1985 David has focused on improving the quality of care for thousands of seniors and disabled persons. David is highly respected as a visionary and authority in the field of home care.

Prior to starting Careshyft, David co-founded Companion Connection Senior Care, a National Membership Organization. This membership organization is dedicated to teaching others how to start their own non-medical home care companies and begin filling the great demand for these services. The Road to Success, Vol. 2 – Co-Authored by David Goodman. David also co-founded and grew Expert Home Care into one of New Jersey’s most successful home care agencies with an emphasis on live-in care. David, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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David Goodman 1:32

Yeah, yes.

Gresham Harkless 1:33

Absolutely. Well, great to have you on the show. I wanted to kick everything off and just hear a little bit more about your CEO story, your background, and what led you to start your business.

David Goodman 1:42

Yeah, great. Well, so I guess, how did I get into this industry? Back, I've been doing this now, since I was 23 years old. Now quite a bit older. I've been doing it for over 30 years. When I had just gotten out of college, I was driving home from work one night. So when I got out of school, I had a degree but I needed to, I want to go to chiropractic school. I went back to school during the day, I took the needed digital courses, which were at that time organic chemistry and physics.

I was working at night in the service industry and one night when I was driving home from work, unfortunately, I was hit by a drunk driver. What happened then was I was really not able to work doing service. So I took a job during the day, and I went to school at night. The job that I took was with a home health care company and I learned the ropes. I really enjoyed helping people and I thought, hey, what, I think I'll try doing this on my own. That's how I got into the homecare business. The rest, I guess you could say is history.

Gresham Harkless 2:49

Yeah, absolutely. I'm super sorry to obviously hear that happened. But it sounds like you were able to get the best out of that experience and be able to see the industry and decide that you wanted to work within that industry.

David Goodman 3:02

Yes, I mean, I've fully recovered. So that's good news. I'm very healthy. But yeah, that was something back then, so many years ago, but it was very life-changing.

Gresham Harkless 3:13

Yeah definitely sounds like that. So let me ask you this, Do you already have those entrepreneurial tendencies? Or did you already realize you're just looking for an industry to be in?

David Goodman 3:25

No, actually, that's an interesting question I was always an entrepreneur. To be honest with you, when I was five years old, I was selling I would make candles and I would push toward my mom, and sell candles. The neighborhood knew me as the candle guy. Later on, I like would to deliver bagels and newspapers. I was always looking for an entrepreneurial angle, I think it was always built that way. Home healthcare just sort of was a perfect industry for me, because it allowed me to help people to make a difference in their lives and to use the skill sets that I had my educational skill set, so it worked out really well.

Gresham Harkless 4:03

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. I think a lot of times when people found stuff or found like ventures a lot of times, they've done stuff in the past and then they're starting something else but I think it sounds like with you, whenever you get to have that mission-driven focus as well to where you're able to generate and create a business and have a successful business, but at the same time, you're able to help support so many others, then I think that's really where you read that reach that next level.

David Goodman 4:32

Yeah, we really have made a difference in the lives of many, I mean, not just the people receiving care but the caregivers that have provided it to families that have come in to have the services of our different folks around the country. We continue to make a difference we're very fully committed to it.

Gresham Harkless 4:47

Nice, I appreciate that. I know you touched on a little bit and I did as well can you take us through a little bit more about Careshyft exactly how it works and what exactly you guys do?

David Goodman 4:56

Yeah, so Careshyft, with a Y so it's C a r e s h y f t, is a national franchise organisation. What we do is help folks who want to get into this type of business in their local community who want to provide homecare services. In years, they can become a franchise and be part of the care shift brands, our folks help individuals to get this care, and we help them with the licensing process, really the supply side, as you probably already know, there's enormous demand for home care services in America and that continues to grow because the aging of the baby boomers. Being able to provide that care is important.

As this continues to happen, what we're seeing is the supply issue, how do we get the caregivers, qualified caregivers to be able to provide those services? That's like the point of our name Careshyft, because it's really talking to the supply side of the equation, the demand side of the equation of the equation is enormous and it's going to continue to be used for quite a long time. It's all about solving the shift part of the equation, the supply part of the equation, which I think we've done very, very well. I think it's one of the unique differences with a Careshyft franchise.

Gresham Harkless 6:13

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I think a lot of times we forget as you said, like making sure you have the right and qualified people that are actually there. Because like you said their demand is there. There's an aging population that's living longer. So it's going to be there. It's just a matter of making sure that you have the right people there. So that's why I love what you've been able to build and create.

David Goodman 6:33

Thank you. Yeah, it's been an honor.

Gresham Harkless 6:35

Absolutely. You probably already touched on this as well to your secret sauce, and it can be for you personally, or for your organization. But do you feel like that shift is what sets you apart and makes you unique in your organization?

David Goodman 6:47

Well, I think there's a couple. Yeah, so that's one of them. Right, just focusing on the supply side. I think that's usually important because that's how demand will be met. But I also think it's the pain itself. We kind of refer to ourselves as a dream team and the reason for that is because the team that comprises CareShyft has over nearly 100 years of expertise. We've been in the industry a long time, we're successful guys with our own homecare agency, then successfully building a national membership organization throughout the United States, and now successfully building a Careshyft franchise brand.

I think obviously when somebody enters the franchise arena or the support arena, they want to make sure that the folks that we're working with have the expertise to really make a difference and get the job done. I think that's what we have at Careshyft. A lot of times with other franchises, somebody may have had that at one time, but they're no longer really part of the integration with unit owners and that's not the case with us.

Gresham Harkless 7:44

It makes sense. A lot of times people that are looking for franchises to own or to even be a part of, a lot of times you want to make sure that you are getting that I guess, knowledge and information and that the agency organization is abreast of changes and the evolution of the industries because all industries are evolving, you just want to make sure that you are partnering with the right organization.

David Goodman 8:09

Yeah, and I think you want to work with an expert who has been in your shoes, right? So they've been in the field that they built their own homecare agency and have helped others to do it. I mean, that really makes the difference. It's really nice to work with great people. But if they're theory people, and they haven't spent a day in your shoes would like to go out and do sales and recruit caregivers and all the different things that go into building a successful homecare agency, I'm not sure there'll be as effective as a team like ours that has a frontline experience and it's going to work with you directly.

Gresham Harkless 8:41

Yeah, absolutely. Because you definitely understand because you've been in the shoes that they've been in. So it's important to understand that and get that perspective. So I appreciate that and I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app or book or habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

David Goodman 9:01

I totally believe in being laser-focused. One of the terms I know you made reference to my co-authoring book Road to Success, I do co-author but the author of that book is the other co-author Jack Canfield. Jack Canfield is the writer of Chicken Soup for the Soul. He's a pretty famous writer. I think one of the things that we agree upon is this sort of idea of entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder. So it's this idea that an entrepreneur, right wakes up every day, probably every night, with five or six great ideas. Hey, just a great idea. Would that be a great idea and we love it. That's a fantastic thing. But I think the one takeaway for me is if you're going to be successful, you really have to be laser-focused. While you may have many great ideas as an entrepreneur, maybe they're all achievable.

Only one is truly achievable at one time, so I would just tell you to focus on that core piece like in our Careshyft, the core piece is providing great caregivers to seniors and communities across America. You have to focus on that until you actually build out that entire piece to reach your goals and there are a lot of goals. There might be financial goals and goals of helping a certain amount of people and making a difference in your community, all those different goals. That's what you should make first before you take out that piece of paper, or that spreadsheet and look at some of your other ideas and build those. I would highly encourage people to really just laser focus, and it will make a huge difference for you.

Gresham Harkless 10:30

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Yeah, definitely, before you get that whiteboard out, and you start writing out all those great ideas, and different streams that we're going to have, it's important to reach that have that focus until we reach the success and do you have like, any things that you have been able to do to to make sure that you are focusing, because as you talked about as an entrepreneur, it's always ideas and once you see when you start to see a bunch of them, do you have you found that you've been able to kind of do something that to make sure that you are able to stay focused towards that goal?

David Goodman 10:59

Yeah, so I mean, one of my habits is I keep a punch list. I keep a spreadsheet of all the things that I want to accomplish as it relates to my core mission, I don't keep any other entrepreneurial ideas there. That really is my compass by teamwork. That's what I look at every day. That's what I focus on. That allows me to stay core focus and as I have other ideas, they live somewhere else. I have just in my mind, not to work with that, really to just focus on that core piece and the punch line, I call it the punch list. I think it's kind of everybody can relate to that if anyone has done any renovations in their house, to the punch list. It's really true, right? Like, if you tried to contractor out of your house, the only way to do that is to have a punch list. I think it applies the same in business.

Gresham Harkless 11:44

Yeah, absolutely call the punch list there, honey-do lists as they call it, too. So if you've made sure that you're getting that one thing done, you're not going to move on to anything else until that is reached. So I definitely appreciate that. Now I would ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

David Goodman 12:09

Okay, so if I could hop into a time machine, what would I tell the younger self about how to get where I'm trying to go?

Gresham Harkless 12:15

Yeah, anything related to business? What would you tell yourself?

David Goodman 12:17

Yeah, yeah, I would say, work hard, know that there's no overnight success. It's, I think that's a very common thing now, right? There are a lot of younger folks that want to get into starting their own business and that's great, right? But I think nothing comes easy, you're going to have to work hard for it, you're going to have to have goals and objectives, different phases. I like to work on that. I think that's one of the things I've learned, which is nothing, when you add something, it doesn't have to be Phase Five, right, there's Phase One, Phase Two, phase 20. So you're gonna do these things in phases.

If you look at most businesses, how they integrate the integration phase, and they may not even think of that are being a second phase, but they know there will be because technology catches up with it. I think that is very valuable, but you have to stay focused, and you have to be willing to work hard. I think in the beginning really hard and that may last for a few years. I would also say one other thing and this is a piece of advice that somebody gave me. I really just saved it and referred to it many times, which is success often happens on one, people quit on the one-yard line. That's where the success where you say to yourself, why would anybody quit on the one-yard line? It's because they don't know they are on the one-yard line. So stay with it. It's important.

Gresham Harkless 13:34

Yeah, you're absolutely right. As you said, if you kind of have that mission or goal, it's hard to not reach success, if you never give up and you don't keep going. As you said, it's hard to make sure and know where you are. But if you have that mentality that you're gonna keep going no matter, what it is to get to where you're gonna go, then it's definitely hard to not be successful.

David Goodman 13:55

Yeah, just stay organized, stay focused, stay organized, and it'll be a lot easier to understand where you are playing field and that will lead to success.

Gresham Harkless 14:05

Absolutely, I definitely appreciate those nuggets. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So David, what does being a CEO mean to you?

David Goodman 14:17

CEO means that I think we're number one is the buck stops with you. So there are no excuses. You really have to take responsibility for all the actions of your team. I think it's important for a great CEO, to manage a team to really have relationships with people to understand the depth of those relationships, everybody's different, and you want to coordinate that. I think it's, I'm not afraid to say that a CEO job is 24/7. It doesn't mean that you certainly have time for your family and important things in your life, but I think you have to be connected to your team. You have to be connected to your core mission and you have to be available. And I think for myself, I very much enjoyed it.

Gresham Harkless 15:04

Yeah, absolutely. With, being a CEO, there's an incredible amount of responsibility. So you have to have that 24/7 mentality and mindset, because you are helping support people on the team, obviously, like investors you might have, obviously team members and clients and customers. So having an understanding like that is very important because you understand how much responsibility you have. I appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more, David. What I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can tell our readers and listeners, then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out everything you're doing at CareShyft and all the other things we're working on.

David Goodman 15:41

Great. Well, I mean, certainly, folks are welcome to email me at david@careshyft.com, that's c a r e s h y f t .com. You're welcome to look at our site. There's a lot of great information there, www.careshyft again c a r e s h y f t .com and it certainly can call us as well the phone numbers 888-597-7639

Gresham Harkless 16:12

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, David. We will have those links and information in the show notes as well so that everybody can follow up with you. But I appreciate you appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 16:22

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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