Ep:36: Building Systems for Success: How Nobility Cares Went From $3K to a Multi-Million Dollar Agency

Miriam Allred (00:08):

Welcome to Vision | The Care Leaders’ Podcast. I’m Miriam Allred with Home Care Pulse. My guest today is Clint Nobles, the Founder and Operational Methodologist of Home Care Ops. Clint, welcome to the show!

Clint Nobles (00:21):

Thank you so much, Miriam! I really appreciate being on here. I love the Vision podcast and I’m so honored to be a part of it.

Miriam Allred (00:28):

Yeah. It’s great to have you on here. Today, we’re really going to talk about your bread and butter. This is the topic that you own in this space, and I’m so excited.

Clint Nobles (00:38):

Me too. I am like, you sent me over the list of questions and we were talking about topics. I was like, it’s going to be systems. It’s going to systems. I was so excited about it.

Miriam Allred (00:48):

Yes. There’s I just, when I hear the word system now, I really think of you and your voice and you talking about systems.

Clint Nobles (00:56):

Well, thank you very much. That’s a tremendous compliment coming from you. So I appreciate that.

Miriam Allred (01:02):

So let’s just open it up. Why, why do you love systems? What’s your background in, you know, just this idea of everything is a system?

Clint Nobles (01:11):

You know, systems to me means so much more than just the mechanics of something. And I, you know, you, you said earlier, you know, you, you said I’m an operational methodologist and, and that’s kind of a fancy way of saying a systems guy. That’s, that’s really what that is. But systems to me means generational success. Now, Miriam, we hear a lot about generational wealth from coaches and consultants. You hear people all the time say, Oh, I’m going to make generational wealth. But if you’ll notice I said generational success, and that’s a very important difference. See it isn’t about making enough money for my kids’ kids to live on for me. No, ma’am see what it really is, is I want to create systems and operational structures that will allow success to be achieved long after I’m gone. See, I want my kids, kids to know how to succeed and then go out and do it.

Clint Nobles (02:16):

I don’t want them just to live off the success of the wealth that I had accumulated and, and really systems have been a part of my thought process from as early as I can remember. I remember my dad and mom have this picture of when I was younger and I was probably around 10 years old or so. And the only thing in the picture was this pair of blue Jean pants that were closed pen hanging from the top bunk of my sister and I’s bunk bed. And underneath them was these pair of shoes with socks already in the shoes. And I remember asking my dad, you know, w what is this, why do you have this picture? He’s like, well, it’s funny because you are trying to come with a more efficient way to get dressed in the mornings. And so you had, you had devised this plan on it. I don’t know what you were going to do if you’re going to jump into the pants or not. But, and so it was, it was funny to me because all these years later, right, I still kind of have the same mentality. There has to be a more efficient way to do this. It might not be at my best system ever, but when it comes down to it, it really is about understanding how to make repeatable success.

Miriam Allred (03:30):

Oh my goodness. I love it. The imagery of what the story you just shared is incredible. And I love what you were saying about generational success that we want to set our future up for success, not necessarily wealth, and they are very different. So I’m glad you made that distinction and brought that up. And in home care in every industry systems are key and generate that longterm success. So let’s talk about how you even build the systems that you’re referring to. I want to talk about, you know, operational systems in a home care agency, a system that builds that trust, that establishes that authority, or generates that engagement. Talk to me about, you know, what are some of the structures of these systems that you’re referring to?

Clint Nobles (04:16):

When you talk about how to build a system, it really comes down to consistency. And this is what Jess and I realized, because, you know, just like the listeners out there right now, you know, we’re in the trenches right now, we own and operate a home care agency across multiple States. And we do that right now. You know, we obviously, we, I founded home care ops for, you know, to help agency owners understand how to run their businesses better, more efficiently, and to really be able to end owner exhaustion and operator burnout. But when we were building these systems in our own home care agency, it really comes down to consistency. And this is something that a lot of times we say quickly, and we might not really let it sink in, but see, you can have the most incredible system ever devised, just look back to the pants, but you can have the most incredible system ever devised, but it’s only as successful once.

Clint Nobles (05:23):

Then it’s really not a help to you. Right. Remember I said, you know, repeatable success, something that I coach our action leaders on is that success that is not repeatable is simply a win. You know, you’ve just won that one, but it’s about having that repeatable success. And what it really is, is not getting bogged down in the mechanics of a system. When we say operations, right. If we played a word game right now, and I was like, okay, really, I’m going to say more. And you tell me something, it’d be like operations more than likely most people out there. If they play this word game, they would say a task. They would say scheduling, they would say accounting. But see, this is what is so special about understanding operations. And that is realizing that operations or this systems mentality. It’s not about just the mechanics or the daily task of what we’re doing.

Clint Nobles (06:25):

It’s actually the experience. And that that’s really incredible because to see real change or incredible results, or even breakthrough to that next million dollar revenue cap that you’re trying to bust through, we have to evaluate and really elevate our mindset into something that I call the master operator mindset. Instead of seeing our, instead of seeing our growth as something that takes one step at a time, boom, one on top of the other, we understand that it actually works like gears. One area fitting into the next, just like the nodes on a gear that actually operates so many more things around. And that’s what, when I deal with my master operators in my mentorship program and all of that, that’s really what we focus on is elevating that mindset to that master operator mentality. So as you’re, as the listeners here are trying to get into their systems and, and everybody, you know, that probably sounds like the most boring conversation ever is like, Hey, we’re going to talk about systems today, but in reality, what you’re talking about, if you’re talking about client onboarding, you’re talking about the spirit that that client has from the beginning to retention.

Clint Nobles (07:55):

That’s why it’s so important to understand. It’s not about the moment or the task. It’s entirely about the overall experience that is being had.

Miriam Allred (08:05):

Talk to me about when you and Jess come, maybe give us an example of how you created and then implemented a system between you and Jessica at Nobility, you know, whether it was in recruitment or your finance section, or, you know, kind of just high level walk through what one system, you know, looks like.

Clint Nobles (08:24):

Right. And you said we had 20 minutes, right. High level here. All right. So what I mean by understanding like this experience models. So let’s take, for example, recruiting recruiting is a hot topic right now with everyone. You know, when Jess and I were creating what we call our smart hire program, and we were really putting this in play within our business, one of the ways that we really broke down the system was something that I’ll call, I call it touch points, right? Or engagement points. And we can get into those more later. But what we understood was that in building the system, if we were recruiting somebody, or if we were attracting applicants, what are the ways in which we are engaging or directly connecting with these people? So we started looking at, and it’s like, well, man, you know, obviously the job ads one, but how about when they call in, what’s a way that we can create a repeatable system here that gives engagement that lets them know who we are as a company.

Clint Nobles (09:33):

You know, that, that it does the three end results that we want, which is build trust, establish authority and generate engagement. What can we do? So we built in automations for text messaging. We built in automations for email delivery. And as we started breaking the system down, step-by-step we realized that there was so many opportunities and this really bores something that we call a post ops party. And any of our action leaders know this well, because we have a post-ops party all the time in our actual leader experience membership. But this really come from what Jessica and I do in our business. When just like earlier, I said, you know, operations or systems sounds so boring. Nobody thinks of it. Oh yeah, let’s have a party. But in reality, we created this post-ops party that everybody can do. And it only takes 30 minutes. You literally can create a system structure for your business and in 30 minutes and I’ll give it to you real quick, super quick.

Clint Nobles (10:44):

You start out with your favorite Sharpie and a pack of sticky notes. Then you put on your favorite music, you know, whatever that may be. I’m a big 80s fan. So you stick on some, you know, Credence. Whatever you love. And we go in and start for 20 minute for 30, or yeah, for 20 minutes you take and just write down every system, you can think of everything in your business that has an experience to it. Let’s talk about clients, Oh, we got a new lead in, what do we do with that? We have somebody on the phone. We have somebody in an email, we have this, a referral partner and you start listing out everything you can think of popping it off, like popcorn for 20 minutes. Then turn the music to a different style, take a breather for a second and then take the next 10 minutes and start organizing those by category. This one’s for client, this one’s for employee. This one’s for lead. And by the time you’re done, you’ll have an outline of your entire operational structure for, for what you just covered. Now, it’s time to fill holes. Now doesn’t that sound a lot more fun than setting down with the laptop or a paper and a room full of people who don’t want to be there.

Miriam Allred (12:06):

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it all boils down to what you brought up in the beginning. Consistency. You want the experience to be personal. You want it to be special, but you want it to be consistent across the board with all of your caregivers. You know, you want that onboarding experience to look and feel the same for that consistency on your behalf and for them and same with the clients. So I just, I just wanted to reiterate that con that concept of consistency, because it needs to reflect in all of these systems. Absolutely. Right. And I love what you’re saying about, you know, this process that any business can go through. One of my next questions was going to be, you know, how do you, what do you recommend for an agency that needs to evolve or recreate or adapt their current systems? And any business can do that under these parameters that you’ve just set because a lot of people listening in today may say, Hey, you know, I’ve already got my systems in place, but you know, I don’t think it ever hurts to reevaluate your systems. And that’s probably what you’re doing with a lot of businesses, if I’m not mistaken.

Clint Nobles (13:05):

Yeah, exactly. And you actually bring up something here that there is a real near dear topic to me because you said something that gives us a perfect opportunity to talk about dinosaurs. So no I’m serious. I really I’m serious. See the question you talked about, you said, you know, what would you recommend for agencies that need to, to evolve? And the reality is, and this is something that I teach to our, you know, our master operators and in our action leaders is the reality is agencies that evolve will find themselves facing the same fate as dinosaurs. See how I did that. See, I brought that back around and you thought I wouldn’t, but if we, as owners and operators want to create generational success, there’s that word again? Right. We need to focus on adaptation or adaption rather than evolving, because remember words are important.

Clint Nobles (14:13):

I mean, I literally was the kid that read the dictionary growing up. Now, granted, I didn’t have a lot of friends to take up my time on the weekends, but that dictionary was awesome. And I really words are so important and evolution by its very nature is chaos. It’s, you know, if any result of evolution is born of chance. So when I’m teaching my master operators about this concept, you know, we need to base our decisions on our end results skill and known variables. Owners need learn to take action instead of reacting and leave evolution to those things that are willing to become extinct.

Miriam Allred (15:00):

And if there’s anything that we’ve learned over the last 14 months, I think it is adaption, but I think we’ve still got a ways to go. And this process that you’ve just outlined, you know, it will never hurt your business to go through that, that process just reassessing or, you know, adapting and figuring out what systems you can continue to simplify and improve on

Clint Nobles (15:25):

It. It’s, it’s incredible. And it’s something that Jessica and I do to this day in our business, right? So, you know, we, we quarterly go through this post-ops party, but we don’t just do it alone. We bring our team in and you know, we’ll bring our care leads and our care managers in and, you know, we’ll have the office staff involved in it and we really make a celebration out of it because everybody is involved in the solution. Then everybody’s going to be a part of their wanting, they have buy into it. And that’s something that a lot of times as owners, when we’re dealing with these systems, we come at it from this boss mentality. And, and this is really in my opinion. And Jessica’s not here to kick me, to make me quit talking about this. So I get to talk about it for a second.

Clint Nobles (16:17):

This is something that really internally is a struggle for me because we in home care have in really in, in any leadership, we feel like the only way to really establish authority. And you were asking earlier about, you know, how do you build trust, establish already when we’re trying to establish authority, we often times do not realize what a star authority we really should be establishing because we look at it from this boss mentality and, and we see accountability as a weapon. We see it as a danger sign that warns our employees when they aren’t meeting their standards and all, when I come and check on them on this and they haven’t got it done, they’re going to know I’m busy, right? I mean, who out there, you know, in the vision land here has not come at a situation thinking, all right. So I’m going to tell them to do this and here in a week or two, when I follow up on this or they’re going to see that I’m real serious, cause I know they’re not going to get it done.

Clint Nobles (17:20):

And we use accountability like a weapon. And we think about it as aggressive. And this is something this goes back to that master operator mindset that I was talking about earlier, because it really is about elevating our thinking to realize that accountability, this authority that we’re talking about, this accountability is not aggressive. It’s supportive. Accountability is always supportive. See accountability. Isn’t there to keep people in line instead it’s there to help support and empower them to be successful and achieve greatness. If we want to build a system that truly works, then we have to elevate our thinking and realize that establishing authority is not about being the boss. It’s about establishing the authority of the people. We are empowering to be successful and achieve greatness. A lot of times in business, when we want to establish authority, we drop the hammer. But really what we need to do is figure out what we can put in place that will consistently, right.

Clint Nobles (18:35):

We’re going back to that word. Words are important that will consistently produce a feeling and result of us, empowering our people and letting them know. We look, we are giving you the authority to be trained, to be you know, skilled in your position to be able to make quick and adaptive thinking decisions. We do this because we are your leader, right? We’re not a boss. And that to me is, is really one of the big things in home care, especially in building these systems because when we take it back to our teens and we have this perfectly laid out plan and our team goes, you know what? I think that clothespins going to hurt when I jumped through those pants. And we’re like, well, no, no, this is a perfect plan here. You know, they’re like, no, no, that, that clothespins definitely going to hurt. But when we bring it to our team and they have all these things about it, the reason is because we’re using it like a hammer, like a boss, we’re not including them in it and showing how we are establishing their authority along with ours.

Miriam Allred (19:44):

I’m so glad you brought it full circle there. I think the difference is involving them in the decision-making involving them in that process so that their voice is heard throughout the entire process. And you’re not just bringing it to them at the end and saying, Hey, look, this is what we’re going to do. It’s no, they’ve been involved every step of the way. And so everyone’s got that buy in and everyone’s on board. And then that authority will feel differently. Like you were using the word empowerment. It won’t feel like this hammer of authority. It will feel like, wow, we’re supported. We’re empowered to do our job to the best of our ability. And I, and I love that. I, yeah, just kind of in closing, I just got a couple more minutes. If you’ve got one or two experiences you could share from other agencies that you’ve worked with, that have adapted or implemented this, this process and what that’s resulted in for them, could you share, you know, maybe a couple of examples?

Clint Nobles (20:35):

Oh, absolutely. I love stories. Stories are what lights, my fire. You know, I, when I get up in the morning, we have action leaders that, you know, send us videos and saying, man, this is really happening in our business. I love it. And of course, first off our own agency, you know, Jessica and I’s own home care agency, you know, when we really dug down into it and started putting all of these together, it really lessen Jessica’s burden because when she started the agency, it was all about, you know, being exhausted, being burnout. And I can’t tell you back then the last time we had a meal together that wasn’t just a collection of calls, you know, putting out fires or covering shifts. And at the time every owner I spoke to in, in home care kinda just talked about it. Well, that’s the way home care has done, you know, but you know, how can this be more efficient?

Clint Nobles (21:35):

How can we do this better, more consistently? And it come down to taking action. And, and that’s a phrase that we say all the time in the actual leader experience show taking action works. It works, it works. It works because we really started focusing on creating these consistent systems that build trust, establish authority and generate engagement. And, you know, we saw incredible results and turned a $3,000 startup into a multi-million dollar agency. And then, you know, recruiting and retention is an incredible area of opportunity. And we’re seeing our, you know, master operators in our action leaders that are using the smart hire program and really installing simple repeatable systems. They’re seeing, you know, 40, 50 applicants come in a week in some cases and one of the most impactful. And, and I’ll, I’ll do this really quick cause I know we’re coming up to an end here and I was born with like 10,000 extra words.

Clint Nobles (22:37):

Like I come out with like 10,000 X words. So I’m doing my best. One of the most impactful systems that we teach is something called a pre-care assessment. And this is part of our action leader experience. And this is something that we did in our own agency. And we have seen an incredible really revolutionizing moment for agencies in their margins and bottom lines because this pre-care assessment allows them to really get a commitment and see a yes before they ever assess. And recently in one of our monthly group coaching calls in the actual leader experience, you know one of our actually, or said, you know, they’ve been putting this pre-care assessment into their client onboarding and her conversion rate had hit 95%, 95%. That’s why we say taking action works. It works. It works. It works.

Miriam Allred (23:39):

Taking action – my last question is going to be, you know, what are two specific action items that providers can take away from today’s conversation? What, what would it boil down to, this whole conversation?

Clint Nobles (23:51):

Oh my Lord. All right, gentlemen, start your engines. All right. So understand your end results. Number one, understand your end result. Now that might not be a term that everybody’s familiar with. Our master operators are very familiar with it because it’s, it’s kind of like my mantra, understand your end result. And what I mean by an end result is that final unmovable outcome that must occur then whether it is weekly, quarterly, annual, whatever that end result is then base your decisions on what objectives and goals that will help you arrive at that end result. That goes back to what I talked about of, you know taking action versus reaction and understanding our end result will help us do that. What’s that final unmovable thing that has to happen in your business. And then secondly, become a member of our free online community on Facebook. It’s called the Home Care Operators Community and I know you are very familiar with that. You’re very active in it and we appreciate that so much, but it really is. It’s an unbelievable group of over 2,700, we’re almost at 2,800 agency owners and operators that support encourage, empower each other to be successful and achieve greatness. And you know, you can, you can find it on our website, go to homecareops.com, click the link on the front page. It says visit group. And it’ll, it’ll take you right there

Miriam Allred (25:25):

And you won’t regret it. It is a very active, very engaged community. And if you’re looking for industry friends, if you’re looking for consolation, whatever you’re looking for, you’ll find it in that group. It it’s incredible Clint. It has been a pleasure. It has been a jam packed 25 minutes here, and I’m just taking notes and writing down all these concepts. But thank you so much for being a thought leader in the industry around systems. We cannot emphasize it enough, but I think the way you break it down and simplify it, it feels digestible. And I think, you know, our industry is headed in this direction of really mastering the system so that we can elevate the level of care we can elevate the caregiver experience. Everything will come from, you know, just establishing these systems early on in our businesses. So thank you so much for joining me today. It’s been a pleasure.

Clint Nobles (26:12):

Oh, thank you, Miriam. I really appreciate being on your cast here and on the Vision podcast. Home Care Pulse is an incredible partner of ours and we thank you for everything that y’all do. It really is wonderful.

Miriam Allred (26:26):

Thanks for listening to this episode of Vision. If you like, what you heard, jump over to our website, homecarepulse.com to listen to more episodes of Vision or peruse our loaded resource library with articles, eBooks, worksheets, and more free resources. Thanks again and we’ll see you next time!