E24_ Networking is dead - Launch of AgingHere Slack group
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Alex: [00:00:00] Okay, we are back. 

Amy: Oh my god, are we back? I keep saying that. We're back. We're back! Today is so different, Alex. Why is today so different? We have a whole plan that is not our usual plan for our podcasts. We're interviewing each other about ourselves. 

Alex: Well, it's more than that. Yeah, it's true. Networking is dead.

Oh, the last. Why is networking 

Amy: dead? Okay, networking is dead. So the whole point of today's podcast is to basically take whatever tweet that Alex saw 15 minutes before this podcast and dissect it. So networking is dead. [00:01:00] Why is networking dead? It's because it's about relationships. Today's episode is about something that has been very close to my heart.

And I. It's so weird. Cause I've been like adjacent to networking and all of our conversations. It's about how to make money in Medicare and how does Medicare work, but in actuality, everything that I have done up until this point is about figuring out how I fit into the senior and aging space. And the number of people that have come to me after a period of time as if I'm some like genius at this, which I'm not, but how do I break into a new space?

This has been probably a hundred people have come to me and said, Hey, I'm new in town. I just bought a franchise. I just, I'm thinking I might want to be a geriatric care manager, or I am a geriatric care manager. How do I get more clients? All of this is actually about relationship making, and it's about creating a Rolodex.

And I think that [00:02:00] that's one of the things we've never really talked about is like we give like skills and how to do this and how does this work in Medicare, but none of it is about. The essentials of actually existing in a community of people who are all primarily and completely focused on serving the seniors in their community.

Alex: Yeah, and I would add on. It's not just about creating your Rolodex, but how do you create value? With those people on your Rolodex, and we have some, I think, some really interesting kind of insights and suggestions there and a very interesting announcement. So keep 

Amy: going. Yeah. And if anytime you want to throw that interesting announcement in there, Alex, you just interrupt me.

Alex: We got to keep you on your toes. So good. Okay. We'll break in because you broke in. You were an ER doctor. And then a couple of years later, suddenly you're running the biggest house calls program for the for seniors in the D. C. area. So yeah, do it. What was the so 

Amy: so? Interestingly enough, [00:03:00] I think, you know, I always talk to Alex about.

Things that I think make for a good business person or how to run a business in a very complicated place. And one of those is how to, you're going to have to, I don't know, Alex, it's like beeping and beeping and beeping. We're gonna have to cut this out. I'm sorry. No, no, 

Alex: keep going. Yeah. I just, I just, is that you 

Amy: or me?

I don't know. Okay. So one of the things that I have always talked to Alex about is about what I think are some of the value propositions for starting a business. And one of them I've always said is being willing to fill out paperwork. It's about tenacity and it's about finding side doors and side doors are not just about like sneaking around and like cutting corners.

That's not what it is. It's about relationship building. It's not about having a business card in my hand about a home care agency that I really like or a hospice that I really like to work with or a home care [00:04:00] agency. It's about actually the value of that person and how we can reduce friction together because there's a lot of friction in the home care and aging space.

And how do we make sure that those relationships have value that they can come back to me, give me feedback. I can come back to them and give them feedback and how we can all see how we can grow together because it's a complicated space. Like when I was a physician, I was billing Medicare. So my payment source was from over here, but I knew where to go to get somebody who does Reiki or somebody that will read your dad a newspaper or somebody that can bring physical therapy into the house or somebody that can put a, you know, a grab bar in a, in a bathroom.

So all of these different kinds of relationships made friction very minimal in my, in my practice. And one of the things when I've found is. When people come into the space and keep in mind, there's 300 just home care agencies alone in just Montgomery County, where I'm sitting right now. Imagine, [00:05:00] how do you, how do you get started?

How do you get that first client? How do you get that first person in your door? What are the relationships you need to make and then foster in a community that may have otherwise been only business cards and all of that type of thing. So this is what I want today's episode to be about. It's about figuring out how to create network, create community and create relationships that matter in an ego free way, because if I give to you, ego free, ego free, ego free, holding everything close to you is, is not going to necessarily benefit anybody, you know, I'm not going to tell you how I did that.

That's not good. I don't want to tell you how I did something. The more, what we're already doing is so incredibly hard. Sharing a little bit here and sharing a little bit. There only rises us all. That's been my sensibility about all 

Alex: of this. Okay. So, but let's get into the degree. How do [00:06:00] people start? 

Amy: So that's a great question.

And you are now the 101st person to ask me that question. So I think curiosity and intellectual. Curiosity. I think that's really the key is intellectual curiosity about how the system works is probably the number one thing. And so how do you get there? How do you get the knowledge base and meet the people who can then fulfill that intellectual curiosity in almost every single metropolitan area?

And I have Google search. That's not just my lone little corner of the world. There are I mean, Senior groups, either through the county or through private like business networking groups, you got to get involved with that. You got to start to meet the people, but it's not just meeting them. It's about creating the relationships there, 

Alex: right?

Amy: So the nitty gritty of getting started is really about making those relationships and getting involved in the community groups that are out there, but not just collecting the business cards. It's about [00:07:00] actually following up.

Like any good salesperson would, even if you are a skilled professional, you have to behave like somebody who wants to be a part of a community. How can I help? How can I serve? Can I give you education? So those are the types of relationship building that has to happen. The problem is, is that it takes so much time to build a Rolodex, build those relationships, and it takes so much time to In an old fashioned way.

I mean, this is not 1980. We're in 2023. And I think this is one of the things that has continued to strike me is that it took me about 10 years to make relationships with people. And so when I look at a new entry into a market, the friction and the barrier to entry into, let's say Montgomery County or the DC metro area in a new senior serving or aging in place sort of business model, it would take you.

Five to 10 years to really get to be the size that you want to get to. Is there a way that we can bypass that and start having shared rolodexes, [00:08:00] shared relationships, having people meet people more quickly. And how could we do that? And that has been sort of what you and I have been developing is trying to say, wow, like I've got all these folks who come to me, Alex being the hundred and first one to say, how do I get started?

And I think that we have a solution to that. 

Alex: Yeah, most people who are in this situation, they don't have 5 to 10 years. They have a couple months and they got to get traction, right? And so what, what Amy and I have done having seen this problem and turning it into an opportunity for the community is to say, okay there's a way to solve this.

That's already working in other industries, and we should just do it for the senior serving professional world and the idea is actually quite simple. And that is that we have created a slack group for all the senior serving [00:09:00] professionals across the country to join and it we're launching this under the aging here.

Brands, so if you go to, by the time this episode is published, if you go to aging here dot com, not only do we have the newsletter that we've been publishing for several months, twice a week, but now we are launching our paid community for exclusively for senior serving professionals, folks who are in the elder care, especially in the aging in place space.

To come together and to learn and share and connect and most importantly, I think to help provide value to each other. Because as Amy was saying, when you provide value to other people, that's how you create meaningful relationships. And it's really hard to do that. When you just have somebody's cell phone number, right?

But when you're in a chat community and you can post questions and [00:10:00] people can help answer those questions as a group you can instantly represent your brand and communicate to your community. What sort of special value you bring to them. 

Amy: Right. I want to, I want to add one thing to that, which is I want to.

Expand the definition of what a senior serving or aging in place professional is. I like to call them stakeholders because I think Alex, as we are in 2023 and AI and all sorts of other health tech is becoming so important. The stakeholders. Is expanding the number of people who might be considered to be professionals in this space is actually expanding to people who have devices that they want to look at things that they want to try in people's homes.

Things they want to sell to people that can keep people safe in their homes for years on end without having to go into any sort of. You know, a residence that is exclusively facility of some sort. So I think we have. A real opportunity to bring [00:11:00] lots of just what might otherwise been seen as disparate types of people all together to learn, connect, create relationships that are valuable, not just to grow your individual practice or your individual company or your individual franchise, but to actually expand the whole thinking about aging in place.

It's not ending. There's 62 million family caregivers. Who might also be able to benefit from some of this. So we are all about expansive thinking and people who are stakeholders in this, it's just going to kind of go on and on. 

Alex: Yeah, it's actually interesting. We look at the subscribers to our newsletter at aging here.

com and the types of folks we have is very broad. So we have. Attorneys who do elder care law. We have accountants, we have realtors who focus on the aging space. Obviously there's all sorts of clinicians mental health all sorts of PT, [00:12:00] OT, home health, speech therapists, care managers discharge planners from hospitals.

There are so many stakeholders in this space and the We, we want to help people accelerate that, not only the development of their Rolodex, but the ability to create value for the connections that they make. 'cause we know that's the, that's the fastest way to succeed in this industry. 

Amy: There is no doubt in my mind that one of the things.

And I'm not good at everything, but one of the things that I really like to do is I like to connect to people, and I think that, you know, as we were actually having a launch party, and if you are listening to this, and it's already passed, we'll invite you to the next one, but one of the things that's really exciting about Having a launch party is I really felt like I could dive pretty deep and wide because over the past 10 to 15 years since I've been doing this, I've connected to people in every one of those spaces.

Because in order to do a really good job, you have to have a [00:13:00] really high level perspective on what you're going to do. If you own a home care agency, you still need to know how do I get a bed into the house for my You have to like know that and not send somebody on a wild goose chase. You need to know who to ask and you need to be able to do it seamlessly and easily as opposed to sort of racking your brain and asking tons of questions and not knowing.

I think you bring tremendous value to your clients by having a really high level perspective on how the system. Works. Yeah, we want systems 

Alex: experts. Right? So now if there's if you have a question, like, how do I get a bed for this client of mine in this specific geography instead of texting the four people, you know, you can put it in the chat group in slack in the appropriate channel and and get a lot higher fidelity responses from from people who can help you.

Right? And vice versa. So, you know, So you [00:14:00] know, in mathematics, they the network effect increases exponentially with the more connections, the more nodes you have in a network, right? So if you are able to all of a sudden go from having, you know, 10 to 20 people in your Rolodex to 100 to 200, that's exponentially greater, like power in the network that you 

Amy: have.

Yeah, I am. Actually, it's funny because when I think about the meetings that I take that are outside of my regular duties and the ones that I really enjoy taking, it often is. To talk to people who may consider to be themselves, to be newbies in a community. They've heard, Hey, you got to go talk to Dr.

Shipman. She like knows everybody and she, you can talk to her and she's going to know who to go for this and who to go for that. I have no ego in this game. I, anybody who's ever sat with me, I like literally, I'm like, call this person in that person. This is how this thing works. This is how this thing works.

Cause I believe the rising [00:15:00] of one is actually about the rising of all. And I would much rather this whole industry be there to support. What is clearly a growing population. Some people have money. Some people will have no money. And how do we take care of everybody so that we don't see terrible things happening to people who are older and we can give people good quality of life.

I mean, it all starts off with like, I am a clinician. It all feels so very, very good. But I also understand like there's gotta be efficiencies and how to get stuff done, cannot seem like it's going to take ages and ages to do so. I think 

Alex: about go ahead. Tell me about slack because some I'm sure a lot of our listeners have slack.

It's one of the most common business applications out there, but I'm sure many have also have not. So absolutely talk to me about your personal 

Amy: experience with sure. Sure. So my personal experience with slack, which is basically an app that you can download. It's sort of a, Yeah. Texting platform on [00:16:00] steroids, and it's about community building.

So I have joined other paid slack groups and have created value relationships with people that are ego free and all about learning. And it has been a pleasure to become part of those groups because I feel like I'm like, Hey, Talking to friends and learning about what they do for a living. It's like a new way of relationship building.

That's, I'm not going to say it's like dating or anything like that, but it's about knowledge and, and, and relationship building. How about you, Alex? Have you ever had a experience on Slack? Are you part of Slack groups? A 

Alex: ton as you know, cause I'm an early adopter and I love like new technology that actually does something really, really well.

And What I love about Slack is that they actually make chatting with teams of people, like really, really fun. You know, when I was at Optum, I was forced to use Teams. And I can't tell you how much I, I hate that application. And even though like, like [00:17:00] fundamentally, it's the same thing. There's like group channels and there's individual channels of conversation, but it's not fun, right?

Where at Slack, it's fun and you can, you, and you show, you you, it's just, it just feels so much better. And you, you, you. You upvote each other's messages and you help each other out and you can share funny pictures. But most importantly, it just makes it fun and easy to really connect with folks. And it's also secure.

You know, I was talking to the chief medical officer. Of Leidos, one of the largest federal contractors just the other day, and he told me slack is the only chat platform as, as, as, like, these government military contractors that they're allowed to use because it is that secure. So, I don't know.

That's what he told me. I'm sure they use teams, 

Amy: but I'm gonna, I'm just gonna kind of. Catapult from there for just a 2nd, because I do think that, you know, as we as we develop our slack channel, our slack channels and our slack instance, [00:18:00] we are going to find ourselves in a position where not only are people going to be able to communicate with each other, but.

In the future, they're going to be able to communicate with each other HIPAA compliantly. I think we are in a place right now where people do not know the value of security that are in the senior serving and aging community. It is a, it is probably one of the scariest things for me to talk to people who have quite Clients and they're just sharing their clients data and information just sort of haphazardly on email and on just texting SMS and this type of thing.

I think understanding the value of what is personal information and the fines are not insignificant 10, 000 bucks per. So I think this has just got to become sort of front and center for this group as 

Alex: well. Yeah, eventually it's just to be clear. Yeah, clients is not a day one feature that we are rolling out.

But that is something that we're looking into for. [00:19:00] Absolutely. 

Amy: So I think 1, I think 1 of the take home messages that I want to sort of. Nail here is that I understand that when somebody is entering into a new market, be they a new franchise owner, they have a new idea. They have a new practice that they want to open getting started.

Is just full of barriers, barrier, barrier, barrier, barrier. How do I meet this person? I'm never free on the day that that group meets, whatever it might be. This is like instant, instant joint aging here. And you will instantly be like, Hey, I'm out here. I'm going to introduce myself. I'm Betty Sue. I just started a physical therapy practice.

I'm Betty Sue. I just started a home care agency. I'm Betty Sue. I'm an elder care attorney. I'm Betty Sue and you, we will probably see an enormous expansion and what those nodes are doing to connect and we are so excited. We actually, I'm just going to say this. We actually started this as a [00:20:00] beta test a while ago and in that very small beta test, I saw two or three companies actually get formed.

In 30 people. Yeah, maybe 15 people. So this is a huge value proposition for anybody that's in the aging space for any startups that want to start connecting to people who are in specific types of industries within that space. And we want to see, we just want to see everybody get connected to each other.

Ego free. Yeah. 

Alex: So anyways, we're super excited about that. Aging here. com give us feedback at info at aging here. com. And I think what, what Amy and I were just discussing before recording this episode was that we really want to help folks accelerate their businesses in the aging space. So we're not just talking about stuff for the fun of it.

We love building stuff and especially helping others build and grow and expand. So reach out to us [00:21:00] if there's more that we can do to help. Please tell us. 

Amy: Absolutely. Thanks guys. Bye. Bye.