Shelly Sun - CEO/Founder of Brightstar Care - visit here website - https://www.brightstarfranchising.com/

Buy Shelly's Book - Grow Smart, Risk Less: A Low-Capital Path to Multiplying Your Business Through Franchising

https://a.co/d/8ZxFCIP

Want to explore franchising? Schedule a coffee with me: https://yourfranchisecoach.com/book-with-me-page893224

Purchase my book, Your Amazing Itty Bitty™ Considering a Franchise Book: 15 Key Steps to Find Your Perfect-Match Franchise

Click the link: https://a.co/d/c5nXsof

It's the Cliff Notes of franchising. Enjoy

Fri, Apr 14, 2023 8:45AM • 39:57

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

#franchisees, #franchise, #franchising, #brand, #care, #homes, scale, #franchisor, #franchising #franchisebusiness #senior, #caregivers, lead, shelly sun, company

Shelly Sun, CEO of Brightstar Care

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

franchisees, franchise, people, franchising, brand, care, pandemic, homes, scale, franchisor, pay, work, book, started, grow, senior, caregivers, lead, shelly sun, company

SPEAKERS

Phyllis Pieri

00:00

Phyllis Pieri, a franchise expert with over 40 years in the industry, who is here to help you unleash your franchise dreams. Join Phyllis on fierce females in franchising. The podcast dedicated to showcasing the power and success of women in franchising, as she interviews badass female founders with inspiring stories, chatting with savvy franchisees about their franchising journeys, and bringing in industry experts to share their top tips for franchise success. Franchising may be the best kept secret in town, but we're here to spill the beans and show you the endless possibilities that franchising has to offer. So, if you're ready to take charge, kick some franchise butt and become the ultimate franchise queen. Then tune into fierce females in franchising, and let's get started. Hi, how are you?

Oops, welcome everybody, Phyllis Pieri here and I am super excited. I need to put your banner up so that we can have your name over here. I don't know why I didn't do that. But I'm super excited to have Shelly sun with me today. And Shelley is the CEO I'm gonna read her bio. Shelly son is the founder and CEO of bright star Group Holdings Inc, the parent company of Brightstar care Brightstar Senior Living and Brightstar care homes. Brightstar care provides medical and non medical home health care and medical staffing services. Shelly founded Brightstar care in 2002 in the Chicago Chicagoland area from the ground up and expanded it through franchising in 2005. Today, Brightstar care has more than 365 franchised and corporate owned locations nationwide wide, while employing 15,000 caregivers and 5700 registered nurses who oversee the care and safety of each individual client. From day one Shelley Brightstar care has existed to provide senior and those in need of homecare services with the full continuum of care. On the franchise front, we achieved a number of prestigious accolades this year. For the 13th consecutive year, we made the entrepreneur franchise 500 list and the Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America list, which according to Inc, we have a three year revenue growth of 89%. We also ranked on Franchise Business Review top franchise list the franchise times top 400 List of 2022 and we're named a Top Women centered business by global franchise magazine. Shelley Welcome to my show, I am so excited that you are

02:52

here. So glad to be here. So good to see you again, Phyllis.

Oh, it's so much fun. And I don't know why our names aren't appearing. But oh, well, we'll just we'll just get going anyway, doesn't matter, I'm gonna go ahead and put your the name of the URL for your company here so that people will be able to find your website. So Shelly, one of the goals I have for my show, there you are. One of the shows the goals I have, for my show is to hear your founder story because I think founder stories are really powerful. So if you'd be so kind to share your founder story with us, I would love to hear it. And I know that it has a lot of heart.

03:35

Normally, women are able to do these kinds of things, where

07:39

Yep. Oh, that's fantastic. You know, it's so interesting, I often say to clients, that everything you've done to this point brings you to where you are today. And you get to use all of that experience. So tell them a little bit more about because you have a very strong financial background. And that's one of the things that I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel that that's one of the areas, one of your great strengths is really being all about the numbers, because I remember going to a discovery day at your office. And we were talking and you were talking about your vision, because you always had a big vision about where you wanted the company to go. And the thing that I loved and the thing I always remembered is you said my franchise owners are going to make so much money that they're going to need tax shelter. And I know that that was the one of the reasons that you went have expanded, which we will talk about, but share with the audience where your financial background really has played a strong component in the success of your business, I believe.

08:54

Yeah, I think my I think background and you know, holding people accountable through key performance indicators. To me, that's kind of the heart of franchising, because we need to help our franchisees understand what are the critical few key performance indicators that if they focus on and do well at they'll have a successful and thriving business. And then they need to be able to take that down to what are the few measurements that they measure each of their key team members. And if they're doing those things, they'll be hiring enough personnel, they'll be delivering a great customer experience will be delivering great clinical outcomes. And so and the whole business model works and so that background, I think my background in finance has helped me I often hear a lot of women founders have difficulty raising capital or procuring debt. And I think the fact that I could speak the same language as our bankers, yes, as we've evolved, has allowed me to be able to tap into this capital that we've needed because I still own 100% of my equity. So being able to tap into debt financing as we've needed to invest to grow and scale has been really helpful to have that financial background so I am a CPA by background on, you know, accounting kind of jobs up and through probably my mid to late 20s. And then I started progressing into more leadership because I had a natural talent and developing people hired by my leadership, I could get the most out of them, I could drill it down to a critical few what they needed to do to be successful. And I had no problem having the difficult conversations when they weren't delivering, to tell them how they weren't delivering what they needed to do to improve and coach them up. And then if it wasn't going to fit to help them out of a bad situation or a bad situation and help them exit. So I think that that leadership, those leadership roles at scale, what were equally beneficial thinking about the scale of a franchise brand, you know, I had managed hundreds of people in the roles I was in before becoming a franchisor and Azores have never operationally managed that size and scale. And so I think it's knowing the numbers, knowing the metrics and making sure you're, you're scaling the infrastructure, and have the capital to do it, while you're scaling the number of units and the revenue, right, because oftentimes, the units come first, and you don't have the revenue to pay for infrastructure. And so it's kind of a leap of faith, to make sure if you're going to sell it, you need to be able to support it, which means you're gonna put the infrastructure in before you're rolling royalties grow to the point where that makes sense. And so the first four years of franchising, typically our franchisor is building the right infrastructure to give the right level of support, they're upside down. And so it's years five, and thereafter, that that starts to make sense. And so I think I do to your point, think that the financial background and know and feeling comfortable about numbers and key performance indicators has helped me a lot in scaling and leading our business.

Mm hmm. I think so too. And I know you've written a book, and I have your book, and I don't, so I have a leaky wall. And I'm having construction done. So my, I don't have your book in front of me. I'm very embarrassed to tell you that. Because I want you to tell our audience the name of your book, so they can go get it if they're thinking about franchising their business. Yeah. Which is one of the ways I help people I would love and I always recommend your book, I'd love for them to, you know, consider buying it because it and I love the reason you you wrote it. So why don't you share with their audience why you decided to write the book.

12:19

Okay, that makes really good sense. And, you know, as you know, lots of people are turning their businesses into franchising. And, you know, the reason that I am having this podcast and the reason I call it fierce females is that I really believe that women in this country are understood, they don't get it. They don't understand what the wonderful things that franchising offers. And I want to get out to more women to have them take a look at franchising and realize it's a really great way for them to have a new future and to have a new life and not feel like they're stuck in corporate America. So, um, what would you say is one of the most rewarding moments that you've had over the years?

13:56

You know, it's interesting, because I, you know, when the pandemic kit, I had moved to California because I became a Grammy. And so I was living down here and my kids were actually with me at the time during the pandemic, which, you know, people were struggling and I was, you know, having fun playing with my grandbaby and working too. But I got active in my local community here and Mission Viejo, by the way, you have a great franchise owner here in Mission Viejo, I was looking up Brightstar. And of course, she popped right up or whatever. But anyway, I was watching, you know, I was on the Zoom meetings or Zoom chamber meetings, and I was watching these people scrambling, trying to figure out how to, how to navigate and how to do everything. And I looked at all these people and all I could think to myself was, I'm sorry, you're not a franchise, because you'd have other people that would really care and want to help you. And I know that our industry absolutely worked 24/7 to help all of their owners and everybody do the very best that they could. Absolutely. So I think that I know, in my experience having been in the industry for 40 years, and doing the consulting part for 20. I know that statistically when people typically think franchising, they think food, and yet most people, one don't qualify for food, or it when they look at what food really means it's not really what they want to do. So that's another reason why I'm on this quest in this mission to open people's eyes to why they really should be considering franchising as more of an opportunity. Finally, let's talk a little bit about your senior care facilities that you have now.

18:00

yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's really brilliant. I know. So how's the franchisee the ideal candidate has that changed at all? I know, I always when I do consultations, I always talk to people about the senior, you know, the senior space. And, and typically, I know I learned from you, it's finding someone who's had the experience that really like you wanted wants to make a difference and offer that to other people is that still typically what you what people are drawn to,

22:10

That's fantastic. I love that. Yeah, I care for I'm the executor for a friend of mine from the state of Washington. She has nobody she has no family, nothing. And so I'm her executor and, and she's in a group home. And so you know, I love that franchising, right, so I call him I, I placed Rob Young in Oasis, senior. You know what, I'm drawing a total blank anyway, it's a franchise that where they help people find a place to live, so I place him in the franchise, and then I call him up and say, I need your services. And he was able to find a lovely home for my friend to stay in. And yeah, and it says, like a six bed place, and it's just a little home. And, you know, she's She doesn't do anything, she has dementia. So she just kind of, she's withering away. And it's very sad, but at least I know she's in a very safe place. So Oh, thank you. Anyway, so I'm gonna run a banner here real quick on your book, so that people know the name of it. Let me make it. There. There we go. And so I hope you will all go to Amazon. So I want you to go to Amazon and I want you to buy Shelley's book. But I also want you to go to Amazon to buy my little book. So I decided it's literally an itty bitty book. It's paragraphs of bullet points. And the reason I wrote it is that I wanted to have something that people could get like a an overall idea of what franchising is all about. So I think it does a really good job of just it's truly the cliffnotes of franchising.

28:53

Do I get an autographed copy fellas?

Of course you do. And I anyway, so I wanted to show that and let's see, I wanted to ask you one other question. Oh, so tell me about one of your successful female owners because I would love to have her one of them on my show so that women can get another idea of what it's like to be a franchisee.

29:22

We have so many we have nearly 50% of our franchisees or 50% or more more owned women. So that's that's pretty amazing. That is pretty amazing. We've got a female in Southern California so not probably not too far from you, Karen arabe who's really amazing and growing and expanding and looking at multiple brands, looking at multiple territories. I probably could give you a long list. We've got a long list of really amazing female franchisees. Caroline Moore is one of our franchisees in Idaho. That was the she came aiming toward our bright star, senior living large community had access to our operations manuals for Brightstar. Senior Living. And she took that, you know, even ahead of the pandemic and said, I'd like to use this intellectual property, but would you allow me to do something that's a smaller scale like eight to 10 rooms, which is what became our care homes. And so we did an addendum to her franchise agreement, because otherwise she wouldn't have been able to, because we have a non compete for anything that's serving seniors, regardless of setting. And so we said, Sure, we'll let you you know, pilot that and so we did an addendum to her franchise agreement. And she now as I believe six homes open and operate in maybe another two under construction or development. And so yeah, very cool. And now she started going to help helped us like do visits there, when we do our discovery day and pops in for the training class for the those that are kind of joining the Brightstar care care homes brand. And so that's really cool to see kind of the innovation, taking something that was ours, yes, adapting it to something that would fit what she could invest in, because my starchier living is like a six to $8 million investment. Yep, price or care homes is like a million 2,000,005. If you own the real estate, and probably three to 400,000, if you don't own the real estate, so became much more approachable. And so kind of great collaboration, our initial intellectual property, our help with marketing, the Brightstar care brand kind of helps fill the communities because we're known and, you know, advertising in all markets across the country, but a great collaboration of allowing for some innovation that has made the overall brand and, and Family of Brands stronger.

Wonderful. Well, you know, that's the thing I love about it, you know, keep saying I love about franchising. But again, here's an opportunity, there's two things that came out of that that I thought about one is Shelly, I love the fact that you live in a world of abundance and not of scarcity. So you didn't get afraid when she came to you and wanted to do that, instead, you embraced it so that living in abundance, and also that we know that some of the best ideas come from franchise owners. So it's being I think people get the idea that if they get into a franchise, they're gonna have their hands tied behind their back. And that's not the case at all.

32:18

It's not but we still need to have consistency across the brand. And I talk to a lot of franchisors right now, that, you know, franchisees were a little bit more autonomous, going through the pandemic conferences didn't occur, became a little bit more like the wild wild west than you would want your brands to be. And so I think a lot of franchisors and us included are kind of getting back to a compliance consistency initiative to make sure our customers can count on a consistent experience in all markets. And so you want to, I think there's a balance between having high standards for consistency, but enabling some innovation in a defined structure of piloting. And I think that's where you can live in abundance while still protecting me the franchisor millions and millions of millions of dollars of intellectual property, I can't reach as you go rogue. No, but I need to, I need to keep them within and like what's the structure where I can let them pile it within something that works for them and works for me? And if it's really successful, how do you enable that to go across the entire brand? And if it's not, should it continue with that one franchisee? Or get shut down? And what are the pre agreements to that, but I try to enable, but I want it come in within my brand, I'd rather be it be within my brand than outside of brand.

So what does the future hold for Brightstar? Do you have other things in the pipeline that you're developing? Or are you pretty satisfied with the three legs that you look like never

33:49

satisfied? You've known me for so long, I'm never satisfied. I'm happy. But I'm not satisfied. I think there's always more good we could be doing and that that motivates me. I think healthcare is changing a lot right now. And I think things are moving in terms of reimbursement, you know, more is going to be reimbursed based on the outcomes that are achieved and improving health care versus just being paid an hourly rate, regardless of how well you do and how satisfied customers are and what outcomes they have, have received. And so I think for us, we're buying back a good portion of our franchisees right now. Are you really Yeah, we interesting. Yeah. So about 18 months ago, we had three company on stores, we now have over 30. So we're about 10% of revenues and our company owned, I think we'll get to 15 to 20%. So we'll still always be majority franchise, but I think it's enabling us in like seven different states, because it's difficult to just say we're only in the Midwest and some franchisees in Florida or California or Arizona whatever don't think we know and understand their business. And as we want to do pilots on value based care we're we're willing to not be paid as much upfront and get some incentives on the back end. And we believe that's where it's going, we need to put our balance sheet at risk, learn it, fine tune it before we can roll it out to franchisees and I wouldn't have the size and scale to do those partnerships, and be expecting franchisees to do it on their balance sheet. So we are doing it on hours, and with 30 locations and this number, it's, it gives us an ability to do that, try out new technology, try out new marketing, try out new, you know, value based care kind of reimbursements. All of those things are things that we are working on, that kind of gets me excited for the future, because I do think Medicare Advantage will be a bigger part of our payer mix. I do think we'll be paid more on the results we get versus the hours we deliver. And we need to be the example for that and learn fine tune and then roll it out to our franchisees but we're going to have to have our franchisees do those things, but I need to show him how an upside what's the downside. So company owned is part of a strategy to ultimately better our franchisees, but we're heavily involved in it on a company on store level right now, in two years. I hope we're rolling out value based care and Medicare Advantage at scale to our franchisees

nice so will those companies stores be geographically around the country so that you

36:21

Sure. That makes sense. Fantastic. Well, Shelly, this has been so much fun. It's so great to see you. I wish I could hug you. Virtual hug? Yes. You have to let me know if you come to California. I will. Absolutely. I would love to see you. I noticed your marketing people are in California, so maybe you have to go to their office. Anyway, but thank you very much, Kelly. I so appreciate everything you've done and everything that you continue to do. And I look forward to hopefully seeing you maybe at next year's convention, who I hope so. All right. Thank you so much. I'm gonna put on our little outro music. And away we'll go. So you see here. Here we go.

39:10

Thanks for listening to fierce females in franchising. We hope you feel inspired by the stories and insights shared by our amazing female franchise founders and franchisees. Don't forget to tune in next week for another episode filled with valuable advice, motivation, and a good dose of fun. And if you're ready to take the leap and explore franchising for yourself, head to our website for more information and resources. Remember, franchising is the best kept secret in town, and we're here to help you unlock it's endless possibilities. So stay fierce, stay curious, and keep crushing those goals.