Doing It Right with Leadership
In the second part of her “Doing It Right” series on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast, industry veteran Ginny Kenyon returns to talk about leadership — not as a title, but as a responsibility. Ginny, who Ken Accardi describes as worthy of the “Home Care Hall of Fame,” shares her hard-earned wisdom on what it truly means to lead a successful and compassionate home care organization.
Ginny begins by drawing a sharp contrast between being a "boss" and being a true leader. A boss, she says, issues orders and expects obedience. A leader, on the other hand, embraces their role as the “chief responsible person.” Leaders serve their teams by ensuring that staff have both the tools and the knowledge they need to succeed. Leadership is not about power; it’s about service.
Your Most Important Customer: Your Team
One of the most powerful takeaways from Ginny’s message is that employees are your most important
customer. Quoting her former CEO Lloyd Hill of Kimberly Quality Care, she explains that a business has three sets of customers: those who refer patients, the clients and families, and your internal team. Take care of your staff first, she says, and everything else will follow.
Ginny shares how she put this philosophy into practice, starting with something as simple — but meaningful — as giving business cards to her certified nursing assistants. It made them feel proud and professional, and it had a ripple effect: they began handing out cards in grocery store checkout lines, excited to represent their organization.
She also responded to staff needs thoughtfully, even investing in expensive equipment like Quazant machines to help with care delivery — but only after aligning with financial goals to make it sustainable. Her message: empower your team, and they will grow your business.
From $1.2M to $5.3M: How Listening Fueled Explosive Growth
Ginny’s approach was not theoretical — it was transformational. When she took over a small $1.2 million agency, she focused on listening to her field and office staff, responding to their needs, and recognizing their contributions. In just 18 months, the agency grew to $5.3 million in revenue, with a vastly expanded staff across nursing, aides, and therapy.
Recognition played a big role. She implemented monthly all-staff meetings, honored work anniversaries with pins and lab coats, and celebrated client praise publicly. These practices built loyalty, reduced conflict, and created a culture where staff felt seen, valued, and empowered.
Serving Referral Sources Like VIPs
Ginny extended her leadership principles to those outside her agency — especially referral sources. Drawing from her time with CEO Lloyd Hill, she recognized referral partners as key customers and sought to make their jobs easier. Instead of requiring discharge planners to make lengthy calls to set up home care, she assigned a senior nurse as a dedicated liaison. Equipped with a pager (this was pre-cellphone!), this nurse responded quickly, handled all discharge logistics, and even ensured referrals were sent to competitors when necessary.
This approach built trust, responsiveness, and goodwill. Within six months, all 12 local nursing homes and three area hospitals were referring exclusively to Ginny’s agency.
Your Competition is Not Your Enemy
Ginny closes with an important leadership insight: treat your competitors as colleagues. By fostering collaboration and mutual respect — even ensuring that clients discharged from hospitals returned to their original agencies — she built trust across the community. That integrity paid off not only in referrals but in reputation.
She recalls a moment at a conference when a peer joked that Ginny had “taken all her business.” Ginny’s response? “It was ours all along. We just took it back.” Their relationship remained friendly — a testament to Ginny’s belief that professional growth should lift the entire industry.
What Makes a Great Leader in Home Care
In Ginny’s view, leadership in home care is not about hierarchy. It’s about ownership, empathy, and service. Leaders must:
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Listen to staff and act on their input
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Equip employees with tools and knowledge
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Recognize achievements in meaningful ways
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Build strong relationships with referral partners
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Collaborate with peers, even competitors
When you take care of the people who do the work — your caregivers, office staff, and partners — they take care of your clients. And when that happens, your business will thrive.
Looking Ahead: Recruiting and Retention
This episode is the second in a three-part series. Episode one focused on doing right by the patient, and episode three will explore best practices for recruiting and retaining top talent — a must-listen for anyone facing today’s workforce challenges in home care.
Until then, Ginny leaves us with this thought: “Remember, you’re not the boss. You’re the chief responsible person. Take that to heart and watch your business grow.”
Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars is produced and sponsored by Ankota - If you provide services that enable older or disabled people to continue living at home , Ankota can provide you the software to successfully run your agency. Visit us at https://www.ankota.com.
Transcript
If there was a home care hall of fame, just like the rock and roll hall of fame, well, Ginny Kenyon would be in it. We have her back on the podcast today for the second part of her doing it right series. And today she's going to talk about doing it right with your leadership. Enjoy. Welcome to the home care heroes and day service stars podcast. If you provide services to keep older or disabled people living at home, then this podcast is for you. Now here's your host, Ken Accardi.
00:29
Well, Hi! .We're back here at Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars, and we actually have our second in a three-part series with Virginia Canyon, Ginny Canyon. Ginny is really a home care and home health rock star who has run agencies, led teams, and been a very exceptional consultant. And actually, if you are watching this on YouTube, for example, and you can see Ginny.
00:54
You're going to guess a certain age for Ginny and you're going to be a little wrong. She's a little bit older than she looks. She actually reached out to me and said she wanted to do a series that, you know, lets her pay some things forward to the industry and share some of the great lessons that she learned. So the first video and the first podcast episode that you heard, or if you didn't hear it was doing it right by your client or doing it right by your patient. And it's really worth listening to because all the examples.
01:24
there are about really finding out what will improve your patient's quality of life and gearing your services around that. And it's very, very powerful, but I'm not going to go back on that. We're going to move on today to episode two, which is doing it right with your leadership. With that, let me once again reintroduce Ginny. How are you today? I'm good. I'm great. All right. Well, you look fantastic and we're going to jump right into this.
01:53
One thing I'd like to start with is, what would you say is the difference between a leader and a boss? Well, a leader is someone who understands what their responsibilities are. Unfortunately, too many times when I've worked with people who had the title of boss, executive director, you name it, that high level, they thought they were the boss.
02:20
They were the ones who told everybody what to do and by God, they better follow it or there would be consequences. All models therein. But the difference is that's not really who you are. You're the chief responsible person is really who you are. I don't care what your title is. Forget the title, but just know this. You want to be successful. Know that your job is to be of service to
02:48
everybody who works for you, your job is to make sure that they have what they need in terms of material things and knowledge to be successful. And years ago, I had a very wonderful CEO who sent us, we didn't have video like this. We didn't have cell phones. This was that long ago. And we didn't, so he sent videos and every month we got a video from him, from Lloyd.
03:16
And one that sticks out that I really resonated with and put into practice, he said, you have three sets of customers. You have the people who refer to you. You have the clients and the families themselves, and then you have each other. And the most important customer you have is each other. Take care of them and they'll take care of your business. So I thought, wow.
03:45
I'm responsible. So I met with my therapist, they wanted we're strong machines, which were horribly expensive, but they were better than the ultrasound, because it could go over bony prominences. I did a B john machine is that like for like a pain relief kind of thing? Or what is that? Yes, that was for like ultrasound, it relieves the muscle cramps in it, it helps the problem with the ultrasound, they couldn't go over say a hip bone, where
04:15
So the Cuisants could do that, but they were expensive. And I said, all right, I will get those for you, but we have to drive our private duty site because this was cost-based for Medicare at the time. I had no money there that I could fit that into. So we did a plan to really drive our private duty site. So I would have discretionary money to invest in their machines.
04:45
Oh, incredible. yeah, so here, I So first of all, I mean, you've unpacked a lot already. I you've talked about I love what you said that you're the chief responsible person. That means, you know, that you are the buck stops here. You're not a finger pointer. You're not. was their fault. It's like you're in charge. You just got to get it done. And I also love the second big point you made is that, you know, you've lived based on a previous leader, Lloyd. What's Lloyd's last name again? Neil.
05:14
Lloyd Hill, he was the CEO of Kimberly Quality Care, dynamic man. All right. And he basically said, hey, you you really have, uh, you know, three constituents or whatever that you're responsible to, the people who are referring to you, the clients and their families, and then each other, and that the most important is each other. So I think that's a lot. And, and that type of thing. I, grew up in my career, I would say at GE and
05:42
This is a little while ago as well, because the CEO was a very prominent CEO named Jack Welch. Oh, yeah. And he was very good CEO. he said, you know, like, and he also talked a lot about a leader versus a boss or a leader versus a manager. And he said, you know, the job of leaders is to, is to provide resources and, and, you know, and essentially get out of the way, you know, that kind of thing. And, um, and really, you know, so think that there's a corollary there that.
06:12
a leader is only as effective as the people on their team and the people are only going to be as effective as you are able to make them and equipping them with the right resources. So it's interesting, a Qizhong machine is something that they wanted, right? And that's something that they could use to really go for better patient client satisfaction. So that's incredible.
06:38
You you also, I think you mentioned that at some point your aides said that they wanted business cards. So tell us that story. Well, I met with all of the different disciplines separately so I could just hear their request. And when I talked to the aides, I said, all right, what do you need for me to be more successful out in the field with your clients? I expected, you know, different kinds of things. They also had stethoscopes, but that isn't what they asked for. They said,
07:07
We'd like business cards. I said, done. I mean, they were $5 for a box of a hundred at that time. And I had, I think I had 15 CNAs at the time. The exciting thing was they were so excited about having their business cards. One of the nurses came in one day and said, do you know the, the aides are in the aisles or in the checkout lanes at Safeway passing out their business cards? I said, how wonderful.
07:37
They're so happy and so proud to work for us. They're passing out their business cards. And that was the truth. The thing about listening and hearing and empowering your staff, giving them what they need to be successful out there. It took 18 months. I took over that branch. was a little tiny $1.2 million branch. We were small.
08:03
I think I only had five nurses at the time and three aides and one physical therapist. 18 months later, we had 15 nurses, 23 aides, and nine therapists. And my business went from 1.2 to 5.3 million in that 18-month period. I did not do that. The staff did that. You take care of your staff and they take care of everything else.
08:31
I also met with all my office staff and boy did I get a list from them. But I provided what they asked for and they were much more productive. They were happier. And that side effect is when I got changed, when I was moved over to the Seattle Everett branch to oversee them because they were failing, I had staff in my office crying because they didn't want me to go. They...
09:00
That told me that I'd listened and they felt important. And I tried to make sure that everybody who worked with me felt important about their job because every job's important. I don't care what it is. If one of them drops the ball, then it has an effect all the way through the organization. The other thing I found is when we did that, I had far fewer conflicts between staff.
09:28
And next time I'm going to talk about hiring, but I learned a lot about listening to people and what they need and empowering them to do their job. And boy, did they do it. The accolades for staff just poured in and we had staff, all staff meeting every month, the private duty side, as well as the Medicare side and the infusion side. And we started out, I think with maybe 20 people who would come.
09:57
I finally had to rent the hall over in the hotel across the road from us because we were having over 200 of the staff. We had 350 staff by then. And we presented their tenure awards. I had a little star pin I gave them for six months and they got a jacket, lab coat with their name on it for a year. And I can't remember what five and 10 years, but
10:27
We did our tenure awards, we did our birthday, and the last thing we did was read letters of praise that came from clients. And we'd bring the staff member up and we'd read all the letters that we'd gotten about them. It was powerful, and it really encouraged them to go out and really do really good care of their patients and to listen to what their patients wanted and what was important to them. So remember, you're not the boss.
10:57
You're chief responsible person and you're responsible to everybody who works for you. Take it to heart and watch your business grow. I love that. So let's go back to the, mean, you grew this agency from a 1.2 million to 5.3 million in 18 months, which is, know, astronomical growth by anybody's estimation, including the
11:21
on a percentage basis, the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley would say, oh, this one's a rocket ship. So this is what we want to jump on in a business where it's about managing people and delivering to people. It's almost unheard of. So my question here is that by taking care of the staff, we've gotten some inklings into how it helped you grow. So first of all, you had staff, they were proud of their jobs.
11:50
know, telling, were literally handing out their business cards and getting more business that way. But, you you did mention that, you know, your three customers, one of them is the people who refer to you. And that sort of thing. you know, so do have any good stories on, you know, kind of cultivating and working with your referral sources in that aspect of, you know, the leadership piece? Yes. Oh yeah. did. Lloyd sent out it.
12:20
another video tape that said, branch directors, you're responsible to be out there meeting and greeting the people in your community, especially those that gave you referrals to make sure that you are providing the best service to them that you can because you're, they're a customer. They're a customer. So I met with every single in the nursing homes, we had 12 of them. met with the administrator and the discharge planners to find out.
12:49
what was important to them in terms of a discharge. And they said, we really want someone who will respond when we call and say, we have a discharge that's gonna need home health. And we need to be able to call and make that quick rather than be on the phone for 15 or 20 minutes going over. And the same from the hospital discharge planners. And I, so I heard all that after a fourth or fifth time and I...
13:19
that, well, what can I do to help them there? Because I understand their time is valuable. 20 minutes, 30 minutes on the phone trying to give a referral is not what they want to be doing with their time. They want to be spending it with the patients on the floor, finding out what they need, what they want. So I told one of my senior nurses, asked her if she'd be a coordinator for us. I gave her a pager.
13:47
And then I went around to all of the nursing home, just the rest of them, as well as the previous ones. And I said, this is her name, this is her pager. You page her, she will come immediately and do all the discharge planning for that patient coming home. And even if it's another home health agency, we will make sure they get back to the home health agency that they want. said, would that work? Within six months, I had all 12.
14:16
And I had all three hospitals referring only to us because all they had to do was page and she would come in and take care of everything, including charting and the chart that the discharge has been fulfilled. It has gone to this agency. The DME has been ordered. She took care of everything. So all the discharge planners had to do was call us. It was a win win win for all of us. And yeah, that's one of the reasons we grew.
14:46
Yeah, incredible. yeah, in that case, it sounds like, mean, you were their trusted advisor, you were taking work off their plate and you were getting it done correctly. So between all that, I mean, even I guess, if let's say that, you know, geographically, it was better for them to refer to somebody else, you know, or whatever, whatever the case may be. mean, it was just worth it from your side to make that investment to be like, okay, well,
15:12
we'll take care of your discharges because we're certainly going to get our fair share. We're to get more than our fair share because we're your trusted team and your trusted advisor. You know, but like you said, I mean, even if it's like, oh, you these guys are not really in our sweet spot geographically. And I have, you know, I know somebody over at ABC agency who I think would be better that you took care of that as well. Incredible. All right. Well, I love it. So,
15:39
So where else do want to go next? And, know, because I know that there's, other things that you wanted to maybe share, is this, are those kind of your key messages for today? It's the key message for today. Just remember that you do have customers and they're more than just the patients you're taking care of. And the reason we agreed to send referrals over to other agencies, I remember what it was like as a nurse in the field. I've, I had an ownership of my patients and they trusted me. So.
16:09
Because of that experience, I wanted to make sure if they had a trusted nurse or therapist over at that other agency and they wanted that person back, we made sure. And I did know the key people in the other agencies. When we called, I had one that said, well, we're really full right now. So I called her boss, who I knew. And I said, this patient really wants so-and-so back. Can you please?
16:38
make sure you take the referral. know you're full, but they really want you back. And she said, absolutely, we'll make sure. That's how you take care of them. That's customer service all the way around. My job was to make sure that whoever they were working with, they got it. So yeah, they were competition, but my colleagues out there knew that if they had a regular client that went in the hospital and I was doing the discharge for that particular entity,
17:08
that patient, that client would come back to them. So there was a trust there between us. Your competition isn't your enemy. Sometimes they're your best colleagues. So that's how you build that relationship. Yeah, they were a competition. And about three years later, one of the, the leader of one of the big agencies was at a conference with me and she said,
17:35
you've taken all my business down there and so and so and I said, oh, Patty, no, that's not what happened. It was our business all along. We just took it back. She laughed and I laughed and we were, but we were good friends. so build your relationships with your colleagues out there, even though they're your competition, there's so much you can learn from each other. And we did at conference, we always shared what we were learning. And we had luncheon.
18:05
found out what was going on with each other. It was nice to know we weren't the only ones dredging along in the tunnels along with everybody else. It's always nice to know you have colleagues out there. So that's another learning point about being a lead. A leader does that. Yeah, well, we actually, it's been a while now, but we've had a guy named Cameron Nasser on the podcast. Cameron, Silicon Valley area. He ran a home care agency called
18:35
Nuva Care, and they were actually listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the US, I think in Forbes. And actually one of the big things that he shared as well is that he joined a consortium where he would meet the leaders of other agencies on a regular basis and they would have referral relationships between them. would learn from one another and that those agencies all.
19:02
grew and thrived. I think that hearing it from you, hearing it from Cameron, it's the right thing. All right, but hey, we'll wrap up episode two for now. And so again, my big takeaways are that, first of all, episode one was all about taking care of your patients and doing that right. And episode two, I loved what we heard about really taking care of your staff because they're your most important customer. love how we...
19:30
how we put that in perspective. And then we also talked about, you know, taking care of our referral sources and gave some great examples there. So just as a preview, episode number three, Ginny said it herself is going to be about recruiting and retention best practices. And I know that that's a favorite subject for pretty much everyone in the industry, because that's our biggest challenge. And I'd say at least almost half of the episodes of this podcast has something to do with recruiting and retention. So I'm looking forward to.
19:59
episode number three and getting Ginny's take on it. And for now we'll say thank you to Ginny and thank you to everybody for joining Home Care Heroes today. Thank you, Ken.
Thanks for joining us today on the Home Care Heroes and Day Service Stars podcast produced by Ankota. You can listen to back episodes by visiting 4HomeCareHeroes.com. That's the number 4, then the words HomeCareHeroes.com.
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