Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Ramzi Daklouche: Good afternoon. This is Greater Perimeter Business RadioX. This episode of Greater Perimeter Business RadioX is brought to you by V.R. Business Sales of Atlanta. Your trusted partner business transitions. Whether you are planning your exit, preparing for growth, or seeking the right buyer. V.R. provides expert guidance with transparency and strategy to help you close the right deal at the right time. Learn more at Vrbas World.com. I’m your host Ramzi Daklouche. Today, I’m honored to be joined by Chartney, founder and owner of Blair Care Health. Yes. Her last name actually is Blair. Blair Care is a home health agency that delivers high quality, compassionate care to individuals and the comfort of their homes. With a strong background in nursing and a passion for improving healthcare accessibility. Chartney has built an organization rooted in clinical excellence, patient dignity, and professional care. You can learn more about her work at www.blaircarehealth.com. How you doing tonight?

Chartney Blair: I’m good. How are you?

Ramzi Daklouche: Glad to have you. Thank you very much for for joining us today. So tell me, you know, uh, when young girls or young girls, young boys, young boys, they don’t get up and say, you know what? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to take care of the elderly when I’m when I get older. Right? Usually they want to be an actor or actress or something like that. So what, uh, how did you get to this position?

Chartney Blair: Um, so when I was younger, I thought I wanted to be a superstar. And then it went to a doctor, transitioned to college. I was working a lot of dead end jobs, and I went and got a certificate for certified nursing assistant, and I ended up loving that job, but there was no potential for growth. Um, I worked in a lot of nursing homes and hospitals, and I knew that I wanted to have my own business in healthcare, but I wanted to do it my way. So that was like the start of Blair care.

Ramzi Daklouche: Wow. That’s incredible. And how long have you been doing this?

Chartney Blair: Um, I’ve been within this business for over five years, but I’ve been in the health care field for almost over a decade.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh, incredible. Fantastic. What is the biggest challenge facing the home health industry today?

Chartney Blair: I would say fighting for your clients to get the hours that they need. Um, a lot of times they might give your clients 4 to 6 hours when they really need to be 24 hour care. So just trying to get those hours through the insurance companies to to care for your clients.

Ramzi Daklouche: And it really does matter a lot what insurance they have, right? Yes it does. Not all insurance is made equal.

Chartney Blair: Absolutely, absolutely. Some of the reimbursement rates are really low with different insurance companies.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. And what does that mean? They don’t give me enough hours needed.

Chartney Blair: They don’t give them enough hours or they don’t pay the providers enough.

Ramzi Daklouche: Really?

Chartney Blair: Yes.

Ramzi Daklouche: So do you have a lot of private as well or mostly insurance?

Chartney Blair: It’s mixed. So it’s private. We just got certified last year through Medicaid. So we’ve been getting a lot of Medicaid clients. But it’s really mixed with our company.

Ramzi Daklouche: Does Medicaid pay the best? Typically.

Chartney Blair: No.

Ramzi Daklouche: It depends on what field. Other fields that pay well. Some fields don’t pay. How do you ensure your patients receive high quality personalized care? Because it’s very important. Right. Like if I’m going to trust you with my loved one, my mom, my dad, whatever. How do you make sure, like what separates you from the rest?

Chartney Blair: So we start with our employees. We make sure that they’re trained properly because that’s important. We make sure that that if they don’t have experience, they get on the field training before they even start. And then we once we send those out to the families, we make sure that the clients are happy with us. We check in periodically. We don’t just leave them, you know, to fight. So we make sure we’re checking in with the family members, the loved ones, and we make sure it’s a good fit for both of them.

Ramzi Daklouche: That’s actually a good, uh, segue. Good fit. Do you have, like, some caregivers that do better with, uh, you know, the sex of the person or the age or the need? How does it work?

Chartney Blair: Absolutely. So we have, um, a lot of older women. They don’t want men. Rightfully so. So a lot of times we match them with female caregivers. And we just had a caregiver the other day that, um, we just hired. She was Korean, so we’re going to match her with a Korean family. So we try to make sure we match as close to perfect, if not perfect.

Ramzi Daklouche: That’s awesome because especially in the Atlanta metro, where we are so diverse, having diversity on your team is very, very important. Good. Good point. Very good. So segue from here on repeat customer and on uh, on. You know what I’d love to do with every guest that I have is because we all are small business owners, right? Every now and then I talk to, you know, a huge entrepreneur that has, uh, you know, big company, large company. But mostly, you know, it’s a small business owners and we all are working towards the same thing, right? How do we not work? How do we get that next customer? Where do we find referrals? Who is our referral partners? Tell me, kind of like what you do because it’s very important to kind of, you know, you’ve been in it for now for a while. So other listeners may just starting the business saying, you know what, I’d like to start a business. I have no idea how to start this. I was working for corporate America for years. Right. And I they think that they have all the answers. But once you kind of put that jacket on, take that jacket off and put the jacket of entrepreneur, you know, it’s a completely different world. So what kind of advice do you have for new business owners?

Chartney Blair: First I would say try multiple things and see what works for me. We did lunch and learns those are really good. Um, and sometimes you have to do groundwork. You have to actually get out in the community, pass out fliers, go to health fairs, do health fairs. You have to. Home health is a, um, relationship based business.

Ramzi Daklouche: So how about for business in general? Anybody starting a new business? Yeah.

Chartney Blair: Boots on the ground, passing out fliers. Um, going in, having a script, not just going into offices and businesses, thinking that you’re going to sell them something. Actually going in and building those relationships with them. Um, networking, joining networking groups like BNI, like the Chamber of Commerce, those have been the biggest, biggest game changers for me.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Because they’re not just referrals and this is not how it works. Really. I mean, they can help you grow. You meet a lot of great people that do different things, and they can help you grow in your business. So I agree with you. And, um, I love what you said about make sure you have a script. Don’t go expecting, oh, or I’m going to go make a sale. Yeah. Try to figure out a reason why you’re going to help that person first. Right.

Chartney Blair: And then it’s give and take too. You can’t expect someone to just help you out. How are you going to help them as well? So you don’t want to go into somewhere trying to sell something. Sell, you know, sounding like a telemarketer. So yeah, it’s important.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. And for anybody going from corporate to small business owner or, you know, entrepreneur, uh, check your ego because you may have had a big title chief or VP or whatever. Check that ego at the door. Because once you have your own, nobody cares.

Chartney Blair: Nobody cares.

Ramzi Daklouche: Nobody cares what you did before.

Chartney Blair: Nobody cares until you make it.

Ramzi Daklouche: That’s right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know guys that, you know, they say, oh, I used to be VP for whatever. And I had 100 people working for me and HR and all this stuff. And now they have, you know, junk removal and, uh, they really if you’re not humble, you never. There’s a lot of money in it. Yeah, but you got to be humble to do the work you need to do. Right. And you gotta understand one day you’re going to be board the board room, next day you’re going to be mopping the floor. So you got to be able to do it. All right.

Chartney Blair: It’s a very humbling.

Ramzi Daklouche: So how do you work. Very important. Right. Because we all go do networking events and you know, talk about a lot how important it is. And, you know, I preach about it because I really believe it’s very, very important. But how about referrals. How do you work on referrals. Like besides showing up at a BNI meeting or, you know, Chamber of Commerce women’s event or, you know, lunch and learn or dine and wine or whatever it is, all this stuff, you know, everything has a has something that rhymes in it, right? Um, how do you work on referrals?

Chartney Blair: So.

Ramzi Daklouche: Like, how do you target people that you think, you know what, I think I can help them or they can help me. How does it work?

Chartney Blair: I just talk. That was my biggest thing at first. I don’t know if I was scared to talk or I just wouldn’t talk a lot about my business. And one day, I was at a nail salon, and I talked to a veteran, and his daughter was sitting there, and we ended up gaining a client. I just talk about my, you know, you don’t want to come out talking about your business. You want to build up a rapport with them at first and then. Okay, by the way, I have a home health business. So yeah, you just friendly conversation. It gets you so far. Just talking about your business, building up that conversation.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. I interviewed a very dynamic guy two weeks ago here. And he is a partner in a big company, big company. And I said, so what do you do? He said, everywhere I go I wear a branded shirt.

Chartney Blair: Smart.

Ramzi Daklouche: Everywhere I go, I wear brand. I don’t leave the house without it.

Chartney Blair: You know what’s so funny about that? When I first started off in my business, I would go to my office and sweats, hoodies, and then I realized if somebody how how are they going to know about my business if I’m not wearing my shirt? So now I wear my shirt a lot too, and people would just stop you. I have my business on my car. What do you do? They curious to know what you do. And it opens up the conversation and starts the conversation.

Ramzi Daklouche: Exactly right. I think it’s very important. And, you know, it’s funny you said that I was listening to a podcast, somebody I follow who’s followed by millions of people. Right. And, uh, this came up, this whole thing about, you know, what? People start their business and they get comfortable. Oh, I’m going to take time off. I want to be in sweats. Exactly what he said. Right. And then the funny thing is that. But you were working for somebody who doesn’t care about you at all. And you, you were you showing up to work every day to an office. And now that you have your own business, you got to work your ass off. You shut up in sweats or staying at home saying, you know what? Today I’m tired. I don’t feel like going to the office. Gotta get disciplined. If you’re working that hard for somebody, you got to work much harder for yourself to get the things you need to do and never get too big to think I got enough or I’m too good for this. You just have to continue to do what you do.

Chartney Blair: Yes, you have to wake up every day like it’s the first day.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, because you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, especially in small business, because 1 or 2 sales, 1 or 2 clients can really mess up everything you have, right? Can mess up your balance sheet, can mess up your profit and loss statement and all that stuff. So. Very good. So what do you need? What do you want to leave the audience with? Like what? What is it that you want to tell them? How do they reach out to you. And I tell you from knowing you personally, I think the incredible person. First of all.

Chartney Blair: Thank you.

Ramzi Daklouche: So, uh, but if people want to reach, what’s the best way to reach you?

Chartney Blair: So you can reach us at our website, WW. Or you can give us a call at our office (770) 239-1770. And even if you’re not sure if you need, um, home health benefits, just still give us a call and reach out to us. We may be able to service you so. And you know, I just want to leave with home health can be an overwhelming thing. Um, because you have a loved one that’s healthy at first, and now they’re going to need a little extra care. We promise to make this process as easy as possible because we know you’re overwhelmed. So reach out to us anytime.

Ramzi Daklouche: And these. Let’s talk about. The elderly are so important. They’re a blessing to us. So please take care of them. Chani, thank you for joining us today and sharing your insights. For anyone listening who wants to learn more about the incredible work Blair Care Health is doing, or if you’re looking for compassionate and professional home health provider, visit health.com. And if you’re a business owner thinking about selling or simply curious about your options, I’d be happy to help. You can reach me at Ramzi Daklouche at Business Sales Atlanta, visit us at Vrbas Worldcom. Learn more about how we help small businesses transition successfully shortly. Again, thank you very much. I appreciate the time.