How FirstLight Home Care CEO Jeff Bevis Is Winning in the Senior Care Segment

Since 2009, FirstLight Home Care has been making a name for itself in both its segment and the franchising industry as a whole. Throughout the years, the brand has been praised for its outstanding service and has received recognition from many prestigious publications. Most recently, FirstLight landed a spot on the Inc. 5000 List for the fifth consecutive year in a row; was placed on the Franchise Times’ Top 200+ list for 2019; was named No. 3 on Forbes' 2019 'Best Franchises to Buy' list in the low investment category; and even ranked as No. 30 on The 200 Best Franchises to Buy in 2019 from the Franchise Business Review—an especially validating feat given that the rankings are determined by franchisee feedback. Finally, just last month, FirstLight CEO Jeff Bevis was given a round of applause from the Cincinnati Business Courier for his leadership success. 

But FirstLight is about more than just the impressive accolades it has earned throughout the years and that make it stand apart from its competition. To this day, Bevis has a grand total of 37 years of franchising experience under his belt, with six companies in five industries––quite the skill set when it comes to experience related to in-home care for seniors. 

“I come from an entrepreneurial family,” said Bevis. “My mother and father were both franchisees, my grandfather was an entrepreneur and my uncles all owned their own businesses. In my franchising career, I’ve always been known as the ‘fix-it’ guy. I liked to go in and fix broken brands, culture and training––it’s what I really enjoy.”

Bevis began his journey with the world of franchising when he started working for Budget Car Rental, and in Bevis’s words, “it was kind of a baptism by fire into the franchising world.” From there, Bevis worked for another franchise system, Thrifty Car Rental, and then moved on to a position at Thrift Airport Parking before transitioning into a role with Comfort Keepers, another in-home senior care brand. The experience was significant for Bevis.

“When I was at Comfort Keepers, the combination of caregiving and focusing on seniors’ needs really came into alignment,” said Bevis. “I really enjoyed my five-plus years working at Comfort Keepers. I thought that was the perfect place for me––I thoroughly enjoyed the franchise environment, but I especially enjoyed helping seniors.”

Comfort Keepers wasn’t his first foray into care, however. When Bevis was 15, he and his mother cared for his great grandmother while she aged. He also cared for his grandfather and grandmother for a few years and most recently, he and his wife cared for his wife’s parents who lived with them for eight years. While some may consider care of the elderly an imposition, Bevis considers it his passion.

“I’ve always had a heart for seniors,” said Bevis. “I’ve been around a lot of seniors in my upbringing.”

In 2003, Comfort Keepers was acquired by a small private equity firm and brought Bevis onboard to help grow the brand before it was sold in 2007. He then worked as an international consultant with Interiors by Decorating Den for a year––but Bevis had an itch to get back into the homecare industry. Bevis had always wanted to begin a business with his son, Devin. As he was looking at business opportunities for the two of them to explore, Bevis had an idea.

“I was looking for in-home care companies to do acquisitions and turnarounds for and I thought, ‘What if we could do this from the start and not fix anything?’” said Bevis. “I had a lot of learnings and best practices to prepare me to open my own business. So with that, my son and I co-founded FirstLight in December of 2009.”

After building the brand from within and focusing on FirstLight’s infrastructure, systems and supply relationships, the brand began franchising in late 2010. And ever since then, the brand has been differentiating itself.

For example, in the senior home care industry, there tends to be a higher caregiver turnover––the number in 2019 rose to 82%, a 15% increase over the previous year and the highest the industry has ever seen it. This might be concerning for other brands in the space—but not for FirstLight. 

“We’re one of the only companies that majors client satisfaction in every office, every quarter,” said Bevis. “We also major caregiver retention and caregiver turnover in every office, every month. In order for us to be the service leader in the industry and be established as that, we had to have the metrics to back that up. Fortunately for us, we do.”

Undoubtedly, FirstLight’s industry-bucking high caregiver retention and low caregiver turnover is all thanks to the brand’s Culture of Care promise, which is FirstLight’s commitment to service excellence, personal growth and accountability. Bevis believes that a major differentiator between FirstLight and other senior care companies is this precise care-first approach to service.

“We’re always emphasizing our Culture of Care in every office, not ast a tagline, but as a very real component to everything we do,” said Bevis.

To further ensure FirstLight continues to experience low caregiver turnover, Bevis is a big believer in putting his caregivers and employees through rigorous training before their first day on the job. According to Bevis, there are other senior care companies in the industry who don’t properly prepare their employees before their first day and often pair them with clients that may not be the perfect match. Unlike such organizations, FirstLight’s client-caregiver matching process allows caregivers to excel and their clients to thrive.

“If you were hired today in the senior care industry, you would be given a client’s name, address and time to show up at the client’s home,” said Bevis. “There’s very little preparation and training––you basically walk in cold. At FirstLight, we go through an extensive caregiver matching process to understand what each client needs and what the caregiver’s strengths are and that goes a long way in reducing turnover because we aren’t throwing caregivers into client scenarios where they won’t thrive. That’s why caregivers leave—because companies aren’t paying attention to the caregivers’ strengths and weaknesses.”

FirstLight is disrupting industry norms by more than just its unique client-caregiver matching process. With the rise of third party-payers—an entity that pays medical claims on behalf of the insured—Bevis says, “if you’re not interested in those third party programs or technology, you’re going to be the outside looking in.” 

“Third-party payers are growing drastically,” said Bevis. “We want to stay very adept on the technology side to leverage those opportunities.”

FirstLight also prides itself on serving a very diverse client base. The brand has an array of clients who are seniors, along with those recuperating, people with disabilities, veterans and busy families. The senior care company is shifting its focus to specific niches, such as those with brain health, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and to the population of clients with disabilities. With this new focus, FirstLight is able to expand its reach and help more of those who are in need.

“We’re making sure we stay nimble and evolving as the industry changes,” said Bevis. “We’re shifting focus to pockets or niches whereby we can offer additional services that are more disease-specific. We continue to position ourselves to go into different directions and client bases so as to be constantly expanding the bounds of our Circle of Care.”

While FirstLight has now passed several impressive milestones throughout the past 10 years, Bevis has no plans of slowing down. In the next three years, he hopes to double the brand in size. With the help of FirstLight’s franchise development team, Bevis is confident the brand will reach the impressive benchmark.

“We want to get back on more aggressive network growth through franchise development,” said Bevis. “On the horizon, our big goals are to double in size both our client and caregiver pools; expand our brain health and dementia care offering; and to continue to enhance our technology platform.”

If there’s one thing that Bevis is proud of in his role as CEO, it’s the strong relationships that he has built with FirstLight’s franchisees and employees. When Bevis looks at the wall of franchisee photos in his office, he’s reminded of how far the brand has come and feels excited to build more relationships and attract more franchisees to FirstLight.

“I’ve always taken the hands-on approach to franchisee relationships,” said Bevis. “As employees here, we see the franchisees as being our customers. I try really hard to build that same culture across the employee base. If we do that really well, and put the Circle of Care at the heart of everything we do, that is all in direct service to our clients.”