Dale Corpus A lot of home care owners are hearing about artificial intelligence, but they're also wondering, will AI eliminate jobs? Will it actually solve something, or will it simply become one more complicated piece of software for the owner and staff to manage? Today, we're getting an agency owner's perspective on how to approach AI without creating more chaos.
Dale Corpus Welcome to home care Multiplier. I'm Dale Corpus, founder of Simplify Senior Transitions. Home Care Multiplier features practical conversations designed to help home care agency owners grow stronger, scale smarter, and build more valuable businesses. Some episodes are solo conversations where I break down a particular business challenge. In others, I bring in agency owners and industry specialists to share what they're learning from inside the home care industry. Today, I'm joined by Nicole Freeman, owner of FirstLight Home Care of Alameda. Nicole has grown her agency while actively exploring how technology and AI can address real operational challenges in home care. We're focusing today on what home care agency owners should consider before introducing AI into their businesses and how to make sure technology solves problems instead of creating new ones. Nicole, welcome to Home Care Multiplier. How are you?
Nicole Freeman Good. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be sharing some more perspective on this topic. It's really exciting.
Dale Corpus well, I'm excited to have you, too. And especially because you could approach this from the perspective of someone who's actively operating a home care agency, not, you know, someone just a founder or a tech person talking about AI from the outside. So let's start with what was actually happening inside your business. actually before we do that, Nicole, before we get into the AI talk, for people who are meeting you for the first time, can you give us a quick intro to FirstLight Homecare of Alameda? Talk about where you're based. Some people may not even know where Alameda is. How long you've owned the agency and the communities you serve?
Nicole Freeman Yeah, absolutely. So, as Dale mentioned, I am the owner of FirstLight home care of Alameda. And Alameda is a small island that's next to what we call like our big brother big sister Oakland and San Francisco. And it's a very tight-knit community. I grew up here. My parents live here. My grandparents also live here. And it's a place where I call home. And so, we serve all of Alameda County. and we serve a wide variety of folks. We also serve veterans in Alameda County as well. And we are a home care agency that helps seniors stay safe in their home and age in place independently as well as they can in their home with some assistance if we can.
Dale Corpus And when did you start the agency again?
Nicole Freeman Oh, good. Okay. So, I started about three years ago, early 2024. so it's been almost three years now. Yeah. And it's flown by. You know, this provides very helpful context because again, you're approaching this conversation as someone who's actively operating in an agency and dealing with these challenges firsthand. So now before you started exploring AI, what operational problems were creating the most friction inside your agency?
Nicole Freeman Yeah, I would say it was twofold. So, one on the recruiting side, being able to find qualified caregivers that were ready to work, had all of the credentials that they need in California because in California, we are a very heavy compliant state. So, there's a lot of things that caregivers need to have before they even start day one with the client. So, recruiting, finding the right talent was one area that we struggled with and I think a lot of home care owners across the United States, but specifically California, struggle with that. The second piece was once you get going, once you start to scale, once you start to grow your business and get your name out there, what happens behind the scenes, right? There's more paperwork, more data entry, more steps to follow, more process that needs to be in place. And while I felt like I had good process, there were things inherently that I think were in the business that AI and technology I felt has been able to help relieve some of that pressure. So I would say one of the things was paper. We used to do a lot on paper and scan them into systems. AI and technology has helped us to streamline some of that which we may get into later, but there's a lot of paper in home care and I think a lot of people can attest to this. This is I don't know if it's like a right of passage or things just are done that way, but that's how I was taught and I think a lot of us are taught that way to just paper. This is how it's done. This is comfortable. this is a safe path and it gets done but it just takes so much time and there's still error in that too.
Dale Corpus Yeah. And so once you recognize those problems you know I guess the next question was whether AI could generally help or just create another system to manage. so what made you what made you believe AI could solve a real business problem instead of becoming just another piece of software that almost would be like a task that you have to learn and also teach our staff? Yeah, AI has been something that's been around for a long time. I think it's just now getting a foothold in home care specifically. And my husband actually started using AI in his business. He has a martial arts business and started talking about AI years before I even started testing it in my own agency. And I had seen the trajectory of AI and how it was getting better and better and better. every single month we talked about it. We were impressed by how it was working within his agency or in his company rather and how he was using it and it was helping to alleviate some of the things that were causing bottlenecks in his business. So I thought if it could work for that industry, why can't it work for mine when there are so many things that could be systematized and more automated with AI? And so that was how I started to think through like this is something that could work. this is something that could have a beneficial impact. It was more about how do I even get started? What does that even look like?
Dale Corpus You know, followup question I have for you is was there maybe even a particular result or early moment that made you think, okay, this could actually be useful. I'm talking about AI.
Nicole Freeman Yeah. I think when I first realized AI could be helpful was I started to see other companies talking about AI but in other industries and how they were resolving paperwork issues, duplication of data entry, helping people automate tasks that normally someone had to do manually like answer a phone. Could AI do that? Absolutely. Those so those were things that I was seeing in the industry happening and in other places like companies were coming out. So, I was just seeing a lot of this online, a lot of different promotions about it, and with any new technology, you're always wary like, are people just making things up to sell something, right? Or is it just a fad? Is it something that's just going to go away and disappear tomorrow? So, there are always fears about that. And I think for me, it was just, hey, we can either keep doing things the way they are, or we can take a chance and see if it can improve things. There's a chance we'll fail, too. But I was willing to just take that chance.
Dale Corpus Yeah. And I know you had a really unique opportunity because you weren't simply just handed a finished AI platform. You helped test and shape one around the realities of your agency and what it needed. And since you had that opportunity to test and shape an AI platform regarding some true needs, like what did that experience teach you about what home care technology needs to understand, especially about recruiting, scheduling, caregiver callouts, and maybe compliance.
Nicole Freeman Yeah. So, being able to test it out myself firsthand, one, I realized just how much work all of us actually do in home care, all of the functions. And I wanted to sit in that seat of my recruiter, sit in the seat of my care coordinator and be able to test the functions and say, "Okay, this is how long it's taking this person to do this task. Let me see what I can do with AI. How much time can I take off their plate so that they can go do other high-V value tasks?" And so being able to test it in my agency, I think, was so important to be able to see the actual workflows. There were times too where I was asking myself, why do we do this in the process? Do we even need this? And AI helped surface that because it forced us to look at all of our process and all of our workflows and to question why we even do that this way and then think about how can AI help us do better or automate some of the things that my team doesn't have to necessarily do when it comes to paperwork, when it comes to checking boxes, filling out forms, right? Those are things that you don't necessarily have to have someone human in the office do. It frees them up to do other things.
Dale Corpus Yeah. And so this also now leads me to the practical question owners need to answer before they select any platform. What should a home care agency owner evaluate before bringing AI into the business? And which processes do you think they should address first?
Nicole Freeman Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's different for every owner depending on where they are in their growth. For me, I knew that recruiting was a big one. We had actually already been using another agency. We had outsourced that already to someone else because my team was already so busy with everything else. And I wanted them to stay focused on the customer experience, the in-person communication with caregivers and clients. And recruiting is very numbers driven. It's volume. You're posting ads. You're contacting people and trying to get them in the door, screening them. document collection and so I had already outsourced that and so I knew that was something hey if we're already outsourcing this how much more could we save in terms of money as well the bottom line matters for all business owners but if we brought that inhouse with AI how much faster could we make that process recruiters were taking about one to two weeks at times to get a candidate in the door
Nicole Freeman when we tested out AI it dramatically reduced that time to hire brought people in the door qualif qualified candidates within 24 hours at times. That was a big area for us. I would say deep important area.
Dale Corpus Yeah. Can I ask you this? Were you surprised at the results?
Nicole Freeman I was. I didn't expect it to be that fast. I was expecting maybe a couple days from job post to candidate in the door. But when I tried it out myself and actually worked through the process, it was just exponentially faster because AI doesn't sleep.
Nicole Freeman Our AI recruiter doesn't take breaks. It does. and she's able to reach to a caregiver at any time and make it available for them when they're ready to talk to us and make it on their schedule, which is hard to do.
Dale Corpus Okay. Now, for an owner who is interested in AI but feels overwhelmed or skeptical, what's one small practical step you would recommend taking?
Nicole Freeman I would say do your research. Research is always good, but don't research too. There's only so much information that you're going to get by researching. You can do some basic research. Talk to other home care owners who are using the product. And if they have similarities in how they run their business, similar to you, give it a try. There's no harm in giving things a try. If you fail, that's part of entrepreneurship. So, it's part of the job we signed up for anyway. But the sooner you fail and learn these lessons, the sooner you can get your team working on something great. And to be able to get them to a place where AI is just part of their workflow and exponentially get them to a place where they can go meet caregivers, they can go talk to clients more, referral sources more. That's where you want to get them to.
Dale Corpus Yeah, that's great food for thought. Thank you for that. And Nicole, before we wrap up, I want to switch gears and try something fun that I may do from time to time with guests, and I'm calling it multiplier rapid fire. I'll give you three quick questions and you just give me the first response that comes to mind. Okay, you ready?
Nicole Freeman Oh, yes, I am. I think.
Dale Corpus Okay, here we go. Will AI take jobs away from people in home care?
Nicole Freeman I believe it will not. And I know that's a hot take. I know that the consensus and narrative out there is that it will. I don't think it will. I think that there is enough work to do in home care. I've seen it. There is so much work. There is always work to be done in home care. Whether we have AI helping or different folks helping in the office or the owners jumping in, there is plenty to go around. To me, it's about refocusing the team. What I've heard from other home care owners is that it helps their team one breathe a little because we all deserve that in home care. This is a 247 business, helps the team get some of their time back, two focus on the higher value activities, which I think is really important.
Dale Corpus Next question. What is one responsibility a home care agency owner should never completely automate?
Nicole Freeman That's a good one. I think it's culture. Building the culture of your team. You cannot automate that. And if you could, you shouldn't. I think an owner part of their special sauce or their DNA filters down to their team and that filters out to your clients that filters out to your caregivers. So, I would recommend focusing whatever time you get back from AI, focus your attention on how you build that the best culture you can build inside your company.
Dale Corpus Last one, finish this sentence. AI should help a home care owner spend less time on blank and more time in blank.
Nicole Freeman Less time on data entry and more time on retention. And that could be caregiver retention, client retention, your staff retention, all that.
Dale Corpus Okay. Yeah. So, thank you for that. My biggest takeaway is that the right place to begin is not with the question where can I add AI. It's like what recurring problem is consuming our time, slowing down the staff, slowing down the team and preventing us from serving our clients and caregivers as effectively we should. says once the problem is clear like an owner can evaluate whether an AI workflow or a better process or a combination of those things is the right solution and I think the purpose of technology should not you know necessarily it shouldn't remove the human side of home care it should help the people inside the agency spend less time managing preventable administrative friction and more time leading communicating and delivering quality care so you know Nicole you know thank you for being our first guest us on home care Multiplier and for sharing an actual agency owner's perspective and before we close, where should people go if they want to connect with you or learn more about what you're doing?
Nicole Freeman Yeah, so I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So, please find me on LinkedIn. I love to connect with other owners. I love to connect with other people in the industry, senior care industry, other business owners and entrepreneurs here in the Bay Area or nationwide. I'm all about just sharing learnings. I'm a pretty open book. I'm transparent and I know I've grown from lots of folks that have connected with me on LinkedIn. So, please find me there.
Dale Corpus Okay, cool. And then we'll include that LinkedIn information in the description box below. Thanks again, Nicole.
