How a HealthTech COO Is Rebuilding In-Home Care

that want to also give outside care in home care to families and doctors and medical

“providers. There's a huge gap in what they can see that happens in the home.”

And so we're trying to do our best to bridge that gap between the provider and the home care setting. Both with data and then obviously a portal that the provider can look into. So we recently launched our B2B and have been piloting that and it's been successful. Veronica Bayes is a health care executive operator and advocate known for transforming complex organizations in challenging the status quo. She is the chief operating officer of

here with a national health tech company leading teams across product care delivery and operations. Their moms are dads or uncles and aunts. They're at home. They can't just pop out of bed anymore. They need someone to maybe help them get out of bed and and you're busy. You don't have the time to do that because you're also in the middle of your life. These people can go into the home and the beauty is they can set the hours

you set the hours as the consumer that you want. You and I are going to age too, right? And it's like the things you enjoy now don't go away. You're just physically less able to do them. We quite often forget our seniors. We think, oh, well, that's just going to go sit

“in the house down, right? I think we need to really remember that they're just trying to live”

their lives just like we lived our lives. And if it wasn't for them, there would be no us. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. (music) Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcast. I'm your host again, Jay Slangen, and we have the privilege to talk to some of the greatest entrepreneurs

from around the country from your disruptors to your tech entrepreneurs and experts in industries all over. And so, yes, we've got a beautiful guest today with us today and introduce yourself. What's your name? What's your business and where you from? Thank you very much for having me. My name is Veronica, and our office is actually in San Francisco and the financial district,

“and I am the chief operating officer of here with Inc. Here with Inc. And what's that all about?”

So here with is-- Sounds like a tattoo studio, but I don't think so. I don't see any tattoos. No did you actually not have any. So no, we're good there. No, it's actually it's a health tech

platform, and it is made for families to be able to find their care basically like a dating app.

It's in the exact same way. Helpers, which is our branded term for the caregivers, go on, and they get to post what they would like to do for their work. And then families, likewise, can go on and look for people that they want to care for their loved ones. You and I can look for care for our family members all at the touch of a few buttons on our phone. And the station might. So here with Inc. INC, not INK. Yeah, yeah, here with me. I was like, Inc.

Gen Prithers, Inc. tattoos. No, like here with you for home care. Perfect, perfect. So like a dating app. So it's like swiping? Yes, and they're scrolling. I will say not necessarily swiping, although that feature is set to come because we are a technology platform. Yes. And so yeah, they just scroll through. People post their photos. They can also have video intros. Really fun things. You know, much like when you're choosing someone to care for your loved one, you want to know as much about

them as possible. So if our health practitioners, right? Not health practitioners, but just in home caregivers. In home caregivers, yeah. So when you're inviting someone to your house, right, the local area, you kind of match them up. Okay, who's within, you know, five minutes, ten minutes, you know, whatever mileage radius, right? Correct. And then you're kind of, yeah, that makes perfect sense now. Okay, it's all, it's all getting clear now. Okay. Good, good. Yeah. So yeah, that sounds absolutely

incredible, right? And so they're listening to their skills of like, maybe I've taken care of

people with Alzheimer's or people in wheelchairs and kind of their past experiences, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And that's exactly what, you know, they're posting. Not only what their experience is, it experience is, but if they have anything specialized, we recently about a year ago, dived into the world of dialysis. In home dialysis is quickly growing, especially in those rural communities where families just simply can't get the care that they need because there's

no one around them. Yeah. And so this is a way for families to connect with people within the next five miles or ten miles, you know, and that has the experience that they're looking for. Gotcha. And so how do people find you? You know, let's say my mom or dad is getting old and

I find you? Yeah. So you can find us, I mean virtually anywhere where you know, you can type in

“www.herewith.com and you'll go to our website where on Instagram, I mean meta itself, Instagram,”

Facebook, all the social media, we're on Google, but again, and then obviously, always download it

on your web. But I guess more what I was trying to get to was what is the usual way that people will find caregivers, right? And then you have this kind of new way, right? Yeah. And like you're solving, it sounds like you're solving the problem of you wouldn't really get like a bunch of people to choose from, right? Maybe you would just, I'm thinking there would be a company that has a few people, right? So how are you, what's the problem that you're solving? Yeah. So the problem we're

solving right now is that the matching, the matching itself is different. Right now, if you call an agency, for instance, and you say, you know, my mother needs care, if you're in New York or you're in Miami and your mom is in New York, you're not going to be able to truly find out, you know, like you're not interviewing the person, you're not seeing them, you're hiring the organization to then hire someone. It would also happen that there's the delusion of wages,

the overhead of the agency has to come first, and then the wages for the helpers, which

are branded term for caregivers, the caregiver that comes to me, there's someone who's making, you know, not very much minimum wage, you're not paying minimum wage, you're paying a lot more. On our platform, the budget primarily goes to the helpers themselves, so the families are getting a higher budget for the person, and which would then equal obviously more quality care. And the way that it's happening is now you're on an app, and it's people in the

local community, people that you might not have thought of, like, your grocery store attendant who needs extra money, or we have a lot of RNs who actually use our platform, because, and again, they're not performing RN duties, they need extra money, because who can survive on one income right now, right? And so we have those people. And so you just get a lot of people who are able and willing, and they're right there in the same community, because again, it's all geographically

based. But do these people need special certifications to be able to be a caregiver in the home? No, no, there is no special certification that it is all non-medical, so we're not, you know, they might have licensure that they're using on their regular jobs, but when they come to us, it's really those things that truly need to be cared for. Dialysis itself is a specialty, however, they come on as care partners, who can then help that person be out home. And that is

usually done by a family member, but as you know, burnout is really high for family members providing care. So maybe this person is just helping them out with, I mean, they're getting old, they're maybe cooking, cleaning, or just keeping the family updated on how they are, right? Yeah, exactly. And the things, I mean, think about when you get out of the bed in the morning,

“everything that you need to do, and then you run out to work, right?”

Well, our elderly population and our loved ones, our moms, our dads, our uncles and aunts, they're at home, they can't just pop out of bed anymore. They need someone to maybe help them get out of bed, and you're busy, you don't have the time to do that because you're also in the middle of your life. And so yeah, these people can go into the home, and the beauty is they can set the hours, you set the hours as the consumer that you want. If you want someone there in the

morning to help with breakfast and help get them out to the library or whatever they'd like to do, you can. Oh, my, Barry. Yes. Bingo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all those things. And so, yeah, they're, you know,

that's just helping them, and then helping our seniors, no, not after, well, you never know,

depends. We do have some of our seniors that they use the service to go out to the casino, right? And they need someone to help take them there. So then they're looking for a caregiver who smokes and likes to gamble. Oh, right. There you go. Yeah, again. These are the hard rock cafe here, the seminars. Okay. Oh, or it's like, I don't know, I was, I was just getting in my head, you know, some of these like Instagram reels that pop up in your algorithm, right? Oh, these older women

or guys that are like dancing to these like younger kind of like songs, right? Oh, my God. It's so funny, right? So like half of them now are AI. But there are still, you know, some of the people talk trends. Exactly. Exactly. Right. So I was just again, you know, I'm going through your app. I help people with TikTok trends. You know, let's start a page, right? There you go. Yeah. And I mean,

“it's just has to remember that you and I are going to age two, right? And it's like the things you”

enjoy now don't go away. You're just physically less able to do them. So if somebody can help you live your life still, because I think that we quite often forget our seniors, we think, oh, well, that they're just going to go sit in a house down, read a book, right? Yeah. That's not the case. They just don't want to live life and they want to, they just maybe we can't drive themselves there. Or, and you're not going to put your gun, mother and a neighbor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would hope,

So she gets plugged in. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think I think we need to really remember that they're just trying to live their lives just like we lived our lives. And if it wasn't for them,

“there would be no us, right? And to give them back the quality of life. And that's what really,”

I think, having someone in your local community who can help you do that. And then that relationship

becomes their relationship. It's not a third party who then they have to call on office and say,

hey, it's so insoluble and they say, oh, sorry, they're with other customers. Yeah. We'll get you someone else. Um, and I will say that turnover itself is much lower, because this is a collaboration between the family member and the helper. Yeah. And therefore, they're, they're just happy. They're, this is something they both wanted. Yeah. And it works for them. So a bunch of questions come to mind, right? What was the most

difficult, like app development and software development is can be difficult, right? Great. You got creating the app, but then you have getting the users and keeping the users and having people like educating the users. I'm both sides of it. You've got the caregivers and

“you got the people looking for caregivers, right? What was the hardest part of your journey?”

I was at the most difficult, and it's still ongoing is is getting people accommated to the change, right? Some people are still, oh, well, how does that even work? What do you mean? What's an app?

Like just getting over that first hump of your dealing with users who have not had technology,

who haven't downloaded an app? Yes, and they haven't downloaded an app. And so I think learning who are you marketing to the young, their kids and then trying to help them. And that was the biggest learning curve because it was really built around marketing it to the grandmothers and the grandfathers when really we should be marketing to us because we're the ones deciding who's going to go in and care, who's going to help. And usually it's the kids that are like, I can't go home anymore.

I need someone to go there and they're probably also paying for it as well, right? Exactly. Or you're in the middle of work doing a podcast and you can't leave to go to grandma and have been going over it. And so, yeah, so that is, that's a part of it. And so people are age and I would say,

you know, 50 and down, they're downloading apps or doing that on a regular basis. So it's not foreign.

And I do believe that it is, it was early in its stage here with was for where we are technologically speaking, but I would say in the next 10 years that here with is the go-to and the norm. And agencies are going by the, by the way, said because they can't perform as quickly or as geographically sound as technology can. Yeah. So you're moving quick area. You've given them more options, right? You're given them photos, what they're into and everything. And then they get to,

so that brings me to another thing, right? What's the revenue model in this? And then how do you keep, like, are you taking, is there like a monthly subscription or are you taking a cut of that relationship, you know? And then if that's the case, how do you get them from not kind of forming a relationship off the app? Yeah. So one of the biggest things are, of course, that question is a little too fold, but one of them is helpers are paid weekly. Okay. So they're, you know, if you're like,

man, I've got to make a shamaniness. I'm not making ends meet. They are paid weekly. That's a benefit to them. For us, we only take 20% out of whatever wage it is that the family sets, because again, it's contingent on them. So if they say, you know, I'm gonna pay, I'm gonna pay $20 an hour, let's go $25. I'm gonna pay $25 an hour, and that's my budget. Well, that's great. We don't then say $25 an hour plus 20% a fee. We say, okay, we're gonna take the 20% out of that $25. So the

helper is gonna get $20 an hour and we're gonna keep five. Well, the five helps with is that we also hold the liability insurance, which most people don't know is a huge risk for families when you're allowing someone to come in and help. So we have liability, and we also have workers' combat families can opt into, which was actually a really big deal because most places don't. So if somebody gets hurt at your parent's home, they're not going after their homeowners insurance, and their

retirement, if there's a, you know, some form of lawsuit, heaven forbid, but they're able to still go get the care that they need to make sure they're well, and the families are protected, and they're assets. Gotcha. And then the caregiver also gets to put their profile up, get the testimonials,

“and all the other things that you get to offer them from the app, right? Correct. So I think that's a”

great deal. That's a great deal. That's a good system. Right. So what am I missing from this, right? What have been the highs? What have been the lows? And where are you guys at now? Yeah, I think there's, you know, there's been, there's been change in leadership over the last two years, and the development of the application, we use Tech Focus, who's our engineering side of the team. They're great. They're out of San Francisco, also Andy seeing as is their CEO,

what that business vision is because, of course, we have a vision on the business side, but sometimes it just doesn't translate over to the engineers. And that team has been very successful in helping the app grow, getting it going. And it is, it's web, iOS, Android, and mobile web. And so it was a

“lot that goes into that. Yeah, there is. Yeah. And so I think that that has been one of the biggest”

growth things that we've had aside from the business side. What we rolled out this year is a B2B side. We realized that not only are families themselves wanting care, but there's a lot of organizations that want to also give outside care in home care to families. And doctors and medical providers, there's a huge gap in what they can see that happens in the home. And when they see that patient wants them on their once every 90 days. Yeah. And so we're trying to do our best to bridge

that gap between the provider and the home care setting. Both with data and then obviously a portal that the provider can look into. So we recently launched our B2B and have been piloting that and it's been successful. Nice. What's the biggest market? Our biggest market. So we're nation-wide, but our biggest markets are California and Texas. Okay. Wow. Yeah, I'm sure our agencies even go in on there and saying, hey, we got to get on this. We got to list our caregivers.

So not necessarily listing their caregivers because they, you know, they wouldn't make funds out of that, but we do have B2B partners that use us for their, for their staffing. So and then, again, they like it because they cannot really look and see, is this person even have a skills instead of, you know, looking through a ton of resumes or taking a ton of interviews, they can do a video interview right from the application. It just sets up a Zoom for you.

And then we also have, you know, our customer service team that takes any escalation. So it's not just, oh, I'm stuck in this app. You can actually pick up the phone and you can call

on someone to help you. Amazing. So you've really made it so easy. I'm going to have to try and

use this. My mom is aging right now. And yeah, maybe I'm going to swipe through. Boston did two hours for free too. So we've got some promo codes. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Well, what's also, I asked him in what they're most excited about. You said you just launched your B2B, right? And it could be like, what's at the forefront of your industry or what you got cooking in the background, right? What's next for you and what do you excited about? We're really excited. I'm obviously on the

B2B side on the dialysis side. I do believe that this is, it is life changing for dialysis providers. We're having discussions now about policy changes. So the way in which home hemo dialysis is reimbursed from the providers that are, you know, for the pay or as excuse me for for inferences. So that these are things that can be reimbursed back. Instead of corporations or the doctors or

“the medical providers taking the bread at that financial burden. Yeah. I think that's what I'm”

most excited about is that here with is actually making a cultural change in the way that we're

received care. Amazing. Amazing. Yeah. If you can get, you know, corporations to say, hey,

we'll sponsor X amount of hours for your loved ones, right? That'd be a good benefit for work for that corporation, right? Right. And that's actually a really big deal too because that does happen is attendance based on somebody being a caregiver, whether you think about someone in their middle age, they're caregiving for their children and for their parents and themselves. And so there's a lot of attendance issues and companies that do offer that in some form of respite or caregiving,

they see less attendance issues, which we know is, you know, if you got a show up to work and that helps the corporation thrive, but if you're not able to be there in work or if you've, you've just stretched thin, that's short lived and into costs a lot every year for corporations. I just got a funny picture in my head when I'm older and I'm like, I'm swiping and I'm going through your app and I'm going to have like five people following me and I have like a whole crew of helpers.

I'm going to be like, hey, grab my camera. Bobby, roll up that driver of this car. I got to go

“out. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's for. Bring me on for adventure and then I'm going”

to have the cook. I'm going to have the adventures. I'm going to have it for all types of people.

Yeah. And the people in the effort truly amazing. Like I've just, you know, I've gotten to meet

or had the opportunity to meet some of our helpers. I've met the families. I'm obviously very involved on the B2B set as we're developing that, that they're just the lives and stories that we touch. Amazing. Yeah. You got to have a helper stock. Yeah. Yeah. Big concerts. All the helpers, right? Are there amazing stories? Okay. Yeah. Let's do it. Yeah. Let's do it. We're bringing them in. All right. Yeah. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you. Once again, what's the website?

The website is www.herewith.com. Okay. Herewith.com and yeah. You can find them on iOS, Android, you got the web app, you got it everywhere. Everywhere. We are everywhere. We're on all the social medias. We're, again, just download it from your app store. It's super simple. Go through there.

And then, how do they follow you if they want to connect on LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn. It's

“just Veronica Bias at LinkedIn.com. I believe. And that's all. Yeah. Just, it's Veronica, B.A. I. Z.”

I see me on there. And, yeah, thunder here with and it's out in San Francisco. Perfect. Perfect.

So, yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

“I finally got on your app. And then I was like, yeah, this is amazing idea. And I'm”

happy to hear that you guys are nationwide, helping a lot of people, not just helping the

elder people, but helping the families out there too. Absolutely. But it sounds incredible. So,

thank you so much. Congratulations on that. Thank you. And thank you guys for joining us here, too.

“If you want to hear all about her story from growth of, you know, the ups and downs of this crazy”

thing we call life and entrepreneurship, then yeah, tune in when her episode launch. That's software development, but also being a girl boss and doing it as a woman in power, then yeah, tune in. But thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Cheers, everyone. Bye.