More Than Just a Business: The Human Impact of In-Home Care Franchising with Jeff Vavricek
Duration: 28m 47s
Description:
During a recent Tuesday Talk, VP of Franchise Development Jen Cheney had a chance to catch up with Right at Home CFO Jeff Vavricek. As the head of finance for our constantly growing network of home care franchises, Jeff has a full plate that includes some pretty big time responsibilities like budgeting, forecasting, and IT governance. As CFO, Jeff realizes the impact of in-home care. Right at Home is more than just a business to him.
Fresh off his 15th anniversary with Right at Home, Jeff’s enthusiasm is undiminished by time. “I absolutely love it here,” he says. “It’s just a great organization. I love everything I do here.”
Jeff’s background made him a great fit for the important work he does with Right at Home. But his arrival here still marked a major career transition. “I came from banking and actually liked it,” he says, “or I thought I did, until I got here. This is just so much more.”
But what exactly makes it so much more?
An Industry That Changes Lives
Jeff explains that he spent his banking days dealing with credit cards and mortgages. He calls the work kind of boring in retrospect, at least relative to the impactful work that he gets to do with Right at Home.
“It’s the service that we provide to people,” says Jeff. “The care that we provide, the lives we change, and the stories we hear from franchisees.”
Jeff notes that Right at Home is “a great company from a feel-good standpoint.” It’s also a proven business model in an industry with tremendous promise and potential. As Jeff explains, home care is a “great industry and a growing industry. There are so many opportunities. So I just really feel lucky to be part of it.”
Demographics and Demand
Jeff is absolutely correct. In-home care is a rapidly growing field. The Baby Boomer generation is the single largest cohort ever to enter retirement. This represents an enormous part of the population with growing health care needs and greater desire than previous generations to receive much of this care in the home.
Jeff acknowledges that this demographic trend places a lot of pressure on home care franchisees to onboard caring, compassionate, and qualified caregivers.
“Caregivers are the face of the business,” says Jeff. “So without those caregivers, without people to do the work, you’re not going to be able to get the revenue, and you’re not going to have a good, strong business.”
This is where the amazing Right at Home support structure comes into play. Jeff explains that Right at Home coaches work closely with franchisees to identify, recruit, and train caregivers. Coaches help franchisees answer key questions like “How do we get stronger applicants through the door? How can we help you do a better job with retention? How do we increase the quality of the caregiver so that the service you’re providing is top-notch?”
“We’ll teach you all this when you come in for our training,” says Jeff. “How to network, how to be the face of your business, and how to establish your own brand.”
Coaching Toward Success
Of course, anybody who owns a franchise in the Right at Home network knows that this powerful support structure goes well beyond the startup stage. Jeff notes that Right at Home coaches are continually engaging franchisees. “Actually,” says Jeff, “they’re on the road a lot, visiting locations.”
During these routine visits, coaches will provide franchisees with important metrics for success, a few new goals, and even a little bit of homework. “They have good, productive meetings,” says Jeff. “They meet the staff. And they come away with an understanding of what’s working and what’s not working.”
In the simplest terms, says Jeff, “the franchisees are independently owned and operated, but we’re here to support you.”
Group Participation
For veteran franchisees who are seeking an even higher level of engagement with the Right at Home network, Jeff highlights Performance Groups. He explains that a performance group is “kind of a mini board of directors” made up of your fellow franchisees.
Performance groups meet three or four times a year, almost always with the support of a Right at Home coach. During these meetings, franchisees “can hold each other accountable and look at each other’s numbers…And these performance groups can really help you see where there are strengths and opportunities in your business.”
Ultimately, Jeff says, “a big focus of the performance groups is, ‘How we can help you, as a franchisee, get better by the best bottom line–profitability.’”
The Tech Tools
The amazing personal support that franchisees receive from Right at Home is also backed by a powerful set of resources, including leading-edge financial tools. Jeff highlights the RightFocus Dashboard. “Every franchisee has their own dashboard,” says Jeff, where they can view all sorts of critical data about their business including “how many applicants they had last week, how many leads they had last week, what the revenue was last week, how their revenue is tracking with the goals that they established earlier in the year.”
But this dashboard comes with more than just data. Jeff explains that “we’re always working with franchisees to establish what their new revenue and growth goals are for the following year. So we map it out weekly, and we keep track of that in this dashboard using lots of different little metrics.”
The dashboard uses a system of red, green, and yellow lights to help franchisees track their progress around certain metrics. This system, says Jeff, makes it easy for franchisees to log onto their dashboard and say, “Here are the things we need to work on to make the business stronger.”
Crunching the Numbers
As the CFO, it goes without saying that Jeff is kind of a math guy. So he offers some valuable insight on how to crunch the numbers.
“Step number one is to get a feel for what the competition is charging.”
From there, he says, you can begin to calculate your gross margin–which is the percentage of money you get to keep from your sales after covering costs like caregiver salary, marketing expenses, and administrative supplies. The sweet spot, says Jeff, is a 40% gross margin.
Don’t let the number crunching make you anxious, though.
“We will walk you through how to calculate a gross margin,” says Jeff. And if the numbers don’t add up?
“If we put your numbers in there and you don’t have a 40% gross margin, we’re going to say, ‘Okay, you need to go back to the top and start over. What needs to change? Are you paying too much to the caregivers? Are you not charging enough?’”
Jeff underscores the importance of keeping close track of these figures, especially in the first year of operation. But he also stresses that your Right at Home support system will be in your corner to help along the way.
A Culture Of Collaboration
Jeff advises doing your due diligence before becoming a franchisee.
“Feel good about the company,” he says. “Feel good about the culture. Talk to other franchisees. Ask them about the coaches. Ask them about the performance groups. Ask other franchises about how we perform as a network.”
Most franchisees find that this network is uniquely powerful, that the Right at Home support system is built on personal relationships, and that being a part of this system is extremely rewarding.
Again, though, Jeff stresses the importance of doing your research first.
“This is just a great business. It really is. But it’s a lot of work…Do the homework that you need to do to make a good decision, because we want you to make a really good decision and feel good about it.”
NEXT SCHEDULED TALK:
August 26, 2025 at 2 pm CST
Executive Update with Right at Home CEO Margaret Haynes
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