All right, my friends, so first and foremost, I want you all to know that on Tuesday, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, I’m going to be leading a webinar on how you can still make 2020 your best year yet. So if you haven’t registered for that webinar, make sure you do that right now.
https://homecaremarketing.lpages.co/cinco-de-mayo-webinar/
And my reason for this webinar, and this is my home, by the way, I’m in my home office. I’m in New Jersey. New Jersey is one of the hardest-hit states in the United States with the COVID-19 crisis. We have over 100,000 active cases, and so this lockdown has greatly affected me and my business and so I’ve been running everything remotely from my home office here. And so I welcome you into my home for these next couple of episodes of A Drink With The Hurricane until I get back to my office.
But the reason why I’m mentioning this, and the biggest mistake that home care companies are making is because Home Care Pulse, which is the industry authority on collecting data and research for all things home care related, did a survey that they started about eight weeks ago on how the COVID-19 crisis and pandemic has affected your business. And the graphic that you see on the screen right now, shows sales and marketing and more than 20% of home care business owners right now, that’s one in five, have made it a decision that they are not going to market their home care business.
And history will tell you that is the biggest mistake you can make during, and forget a pandemic, because the pandemic is its own thing. But from the economic standpoint, where right now the economy of the world has kinda come to a halt, or a screeching stop, or a slowing down period, every time we’ve hit a recession, every time there’s been a depression, every time the economy goes down, the companies that stop marketing go out of business.
I remember back in 2009 when my home care company was operating during a recession, and 2009 was very similar to now where almost 20% of the population was unemployed and the housing market burst and all these other different, the industries are just going under, people couldn’t get jobs, no matter how experienced they were, what degree they had. It was very, very difficult. We still grew during that time. And not only did we grow, we actually grew by a double-digit percentage every single year 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and even in 2011, the year we eventually sold the company to SeniorBridge.
Now, the reason why I mentioned that is because all during that period, we continued to market. We marketed even harder. We put more money and effort into marketing to get the sales and the inquiries and the revenue that we needed to grow. Look at Target, look at Walmart, huge multibillion-dollar companies, if you look at the economics that took place during that time that I just mentioned, they doubled their marketing budget. And just like every other business that was hurting, so were the advertising companies. So that double the budget means they spent twice as much money, but they also were getting more bang for their buck. They were getting like twice as much air time. So if you remember back 10 years ago, 11 years ago now, if you remember back to then, every commercial was Target, Walmart, certain car companies, like these companies that survived, and even now dare I say they thrived during the recession, they did so because they increased their marketing budget.
So if you are not marketing, here’s what’s going to happen in your organization. You’re maintaining your clients, right? So as you’re maintaining your clients, great, but as your clients get healthier, they discontinue services, as your patients who have families who are laid off are taking care of them they decrease services, as your clients, unfortunately, and this is life, pass away, your clients decrease the services until there are no clients and because there’s no new clients coming in, that’s it, you’re out.
Now this is the reason why I’m talking about this is because, again, I have this webinar coming up on May 5th. You have to be there if you’re not marketing. If you are marketing, you have to be there because even though the economy has tanked, something that I can share with you, the majority of my clients who I’ve been working with have seen an uptake in the type of referrals and the number of referrals that they’ve received and their businesses are growing.
The one thing I remember specifically about my business during this recession 10 years ago, was that health care doesn’t care what the economy is doing, strokes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, hip replacements, unintentional falls, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, COPD, you name, diabetes, all of these conditions, they don’t care what is going on in the economy, they still happen and there are still millions of people that need help. We have to actively go out there and find them.
Now, there’s many ways you can do so. You can do things virtually, you can drop off food, you can sponsor activities remotely, you could do lunch learns and networking events, all remotely online. People are being more creative now than I have ever seen before, and it’s a beautiful thing. You can do this though, and so if you want help, because this is a three to five-minute video, if you want help, you be on that webinar, be there live because on that webinar, I’m going to give away a $250 prize to every single attendee who’s there live with me. So this is a big deal, I’ve never given away what I’m gonna give up.
And I’m doing this for you because I wanna help you have your best year ever. I wanna help you grow your business because it’s a scary time to be in business, but we can overcome. We are health care. We are in this together. So register for that webinar, and I will see you then. I love you all. God bless and stay safe my friends. Cheers.
