Founders to Know: Allen Hager, Right at Home

After spending nearly a decade in hospital administration in both West Virginia and Nebraska, Allen Hager founded Right at Home* in Omaha in 1995. Serving as the chairman and chief executive officer of the in-home care brand, Hager has grown Right at Home to 383 total territories in operation, and another 17 in the process of opening. The company operates in 45 states and has 56 international offices servicing nine countries. In order to support the brand’s rapid expansion, 15 new corporate staff member positions were added to the system in 2014.

Due to its outstanding growth figures, Right at Home has been acknowledged in 2014 and 2015 by Franchise Times in its “Fast & Serious” list as one of the top 30 smartest-growing brands in the franchising industry and by Forbes Magazine as one of the best franchises to own.

What inspired you to open your business?

I had been working in healthcare administration for many years and my core job was to create a new business line for the organization. I worked on trying to find areas of need, new services, or ways that we could redesign services in our service area. One of the things that I kept seeing is surveys and we were really lacking. What I would hear is, “Gosh, it’s great, you’ve given my mom or my aunt this wonderful procedure, however, they’re in their late 80s and they live alone. What can we do?”

We didn’t have a solution for that. Over a period of time, I began looking at a service line for the hospital and came to the conclusion it just didn’t fit with hospital services. However, I realized that it was going to be an incredibly important service looking at the aging profile of the United States and the need for families in turmoil. It’s a massive industry, and that’s when I decided to leave and create Right at Home.

What challenges did you, as a founder and owner, face this past year?

We’re now a big franchise and we’re moving into the ranks of a more mature industry, so I’ve been faced with how do we continue to think big and entrepreneurially but still remain close to our customers and stay true to who we are. As you go on and expand, increase in size, scale, people and geography – it can create pressures on your systems and who you are as a company. I see my core job as founder to help us retain an entrepreneurial spirit but at the same time, make sure we have solid systems in place. It’s a perpetual balancing act.

What is your vision for your brand in 2015?

One thing we’re doing, and also finding out, is our key emphasis has been weighted on a B2B marketing approach and one of the things we’re seeing with social media and other changes and recognition of our category of service is we need to be more aggressive in building the brand to consumers – to the adult children of people that need this service. That’s one area that is going to continue to be very important to us. Another area is continued development and the inclusion of technology that might lower price points for care or enhance the kind of care we provide. Much like technologies like smart devices and iPads have really worked in the “work” world and the “play” world, it will continue to allow us to have a lot more tools in our availability to help seniors and families.

What do you know now that you wish you could have known when first opening your business?

One, I wish I had a deeper understanding of the process of fear and excitement as someone moves from working as an employee to working and owning their own business. That’s a dramatic thing, and I think it’s something that you have to experience to fully understand, but it’s a transition that every franchisee needs to go through to have a deeper appreciation for what a big move that was.

Having gone through it myself, and seeing people with different skill sets and backgrounds, I would have immediately instituted something we didn’t do before.

I think the other thing is I sweated a lot of small things. I’ve learned over the years that the most important thing, and we still have this as a cultural mandate at Right at Home, we need to focus on and make sure they’re right, which allows 10,000 small things to fall into place. It really helps in terms of how you prioritize. The most important commodity we have isn’t capital – it’s time and learning how to best use that time and energy. Training and support our franchisees has become my most important job; I would have put more emphasis on that a bit earlier.

Do you have any advice for failure or a misstep in business?

There have been many failures along the way and it is important to see failure as another step in the process toward success. Success is built upon an abundance of small failures; you have to have some level of risk in the learning process. A historical figure I have a deep appreciation for is Thomas Edison. He didn’t have 10,000 failures – they were all small steps toward his success in creating the light bulb.

What comes with pioneering something is a whole abundance of setbacks and challenges. Keeping a strong perspective that a setback doesn’t make you a failure – it just means that what you have to do is control your emotions, learn from them and apply them. I’ll often tell franchisees that I make 10,000 mistakes so that they don’t have to.