How to Start an Elderly Transportation Business (part 1)

Hey You!

It's me again, Charles Lamson, Editor and Chief Writer of The Rant. If you're a regular reader, you may have noticed that I seemed to abruptly stop writing my proposal on how to start a home care business. Here's why. I got as far as I could go with it, for the time being. I didn't quit. I'm just taking a break from working on that, for now. The fact is, I have to go down to Jefferson City (Missouri's capitol and administrative center) to take a certification class before I submit my proposal. And I was feeling like the universe was wanting me to back off that project for a bit and think about things; take some time out to talk with other, more knowledgeable, people regarding this issue; get some help and see if I could get some advice about how to proceed. 

It put the brakes on things when I found out I had to go to Jefferson City to attend a class for certification. It's a two and a half hour drive. I don't have any way to get down there. But I'm resourceful, I can work something out. My gut was telling me on a very intuitive level not to give up on the plan, but back away from it for a bit. Let the universe have some time to work its magic and bring some aid and in the meantime go back and do some more work on my analysis of the awesome book Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources; a little thing I like to call Leading Human Resources: An Analysis. And so I did this in the last couple posts.

You may recall, the reason I wanted to start this home care business was personal. The agencies I was dealing with were really doing a bad job of finding good quality caregivers that would show up for work; and I rely on these services to stay in a community setting. So when they can't get people out here, I have to get on the phone and start hustling and get help from wherever I can; family, friends, neighbors. In other words, I'm forced to run my own little under-the-table home care business. So I figured since I'm already doing this, I might as well go the extra step and become licensed in the state of Missouri to be a Medicaid provider of home care services for seniors and disabled adults, and start my own legit home care business, and dominate my own little niche territory here in North St. Charles, Missouri.

As I mentioned above, on an intuitive level, it felt like I should back off on that plan a little bit and focus on finding another Medicaid provider of home heath care services that can send some workers over here to take the strain off family, friends, and neighbors. They are a good resource, but I don't want to overuse them, stress people out, and strain relationships, or be too much of a pain in the ass.

So, the last company I was with left me high and dry with no workers for like a week and a half. Here's what happened. About six to nine months back, I was using this service called Additional Home Care. They were very good at staffing people during the week, but not very good at finding people to help me out on Saturday and Sunday. So I thought instead of waiting for them to find someone, I would be proactive, and place an ad on Craigslist for a weekend person. In the past, I used Craigslist to find workers and it worked out well. And again, it worked out well. This lady answered the ad. I interviewed her, and things were good for about six to nine months. Then, for whatever reason, her performance got very bad and she ended up quitting. She had some sort of meltdown; nerves or whatever.

The person I had during the week was pretty reliable. She always showed up for work and on days that she did take off, she would always give me plenty of notice. And this company, Additional Home Care was always very good about keeping me staffed during the week. Even on days when Dependable Debbie (my weekday caregiver) needed to take off, they always found people to fill in. Even a few times when Debbie needed time off to recover from surgeries (She's getting older (in her mid-50s), so she's starting to break down, just a bit. It's a physically demanding job.), they could find people to fill in during the week. It's just hard to find people who want to work on the weekend.

So as fate would have it, One day, Debbie, my dependable weekday person, was out and about on the town. She was over by her house seeing her accountant about some kind of financial matter or another and she came across this guy in the parking lot. It turns out they had the same accountant, and they got to talking and she finds out that this guy had his own home care business called Therapeutic Authority and he said that they had weekend people. So he gave her his card and told her to tell me to give him a call so we could set up a meet and greet.

So I called him and he and his wife came to my place for a little meeting. His wife is a nurse and the owner of the company, and he acts as the account/sales manager of the business and handles all the office and administrative tasks, as well. So I decided to go with this company. Not only could they give me a weekend person, but they could give my dependable weekday person, Debbie, a nice little raise. And since they were a consumer directed services (CDS) company, legally, I was listed with the state and I.R.S. as the employer, so I was still free to hire and fire whomever I wanted as caregiver. As part of their business, they handle all the administrative tasks, so I just had to send whomever I chose to their office, so they could fill out all the paperwork and do the background checks and all that.

So everything worked out for about six months. The only problem was the weekend person didn't have a car, so she had to always borrow the owner's car, which worked out fine until the owner wanted her car back. And then, they just started not showing up and not even calling to let me know they wouldn't be showing up.

As luck would have it (bad luck), Debbie had to have surgery on her hand that week; some sort of nerve damage thing; and she was going to be out for six weeks. So I was going to have to find another company or some "undocumented" workers that could help out in the meantime. I have a small list of people I call in emergencies like this, and like I mentioned in an earlier post, I figured, "Well, heck! I do a pretty good job of thinking on my feet and getting help in here when I need it in emergency situations; better than a lot of these companies do for me." So that's when I decided to start my own home care business.

So, I called Bruce (the male half of the power couple that ran Therapeutic Authority) and told him I was going to have to go elsewhere. Then I called Additional Home Care and told them what was up and they said they had workers ready to take over, but that I had to call the state first and then they had to call Additional back to get everything squared away.

So it took like a week and a half (and a handful of pestering phone calls on my end) to get the state's ass moving. And, in the meantime I relied on undocumented workers to help me out. Then, finally, I guess I talked to the right person who worked for the state. They talked to Glenda, the owner of Additional Home Care, and the next day, they sent me out a person to cover the weekdays. Her name is Tonya; nice lady.

It turns out Tonya is an aspiring entrepreneur as well. So I shared with her my business idea about starting my own home care business, and she shared with me her business idea about starting an elderly transportation business. As we got to talking, we thought these two businesses would fit hand-in-glove.

It made even more sense in that a lot of planning and wait time had to go into the home care business. I still had to take the certification class, finish my proposal, and write a business plan to get start-up money. And then, after I submit my proposal for Medicaid provider enrollment with the Missouri Dept. of Health and Senior Services, there is a six month wait before the state can review it and get back to me. However, after talking with Tonya, I learned it takes a lot less work, time, and money to get started in the elderly transportation business. So, this would be a perfect thing to do in the meantime. And, she was looking for a partner who could sit around the office all day and do administrative tasks, while I was looking for a partner with transportation, who could help me do all the stuff out in the field; like get me to that four-hour certification class in Jefferson City that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. So it seems a perfect fit for now.

Tonya and I agreed we would both do some research over the weekend and talk more about it on Monday. She showed me a site to check out to get me started: The Best Home-Based Senior Service Businesses You Can Start On A Shoestring: How To Start An Elderly Transportation Business For Under $2,000 by Craig Wallin. And so I will be borrowing heavily from this website starting in the next post.

end