As CEO of Academy on Demand, a healthcare training company, Laura Oldaker builds on her expertise in senior care to anticipate change and capitalize on problem-solving. She speaks with Elian and Juleyka about concentric diversification as a growth strategy, and explains how her focus on innovation helped her company thrive through the pandemic.
Our listener story features a Latina entrepreneur growing her coaching and consulting company, Paragon Solstice during the COVID-19 pandemic and emerging stronger on the other side.
This episode was supported by our LBAN Alumni Founding Sponsors Windrose Vision , VND and Fig Factor Media.
Elian Savodivker:
Hello, and welcome to Scaled: The Latino Business Story.
I'm Elian Savodivker, director of engagement at LBAN, the Latino Business Action Network
Lantigua: And I'm Juleyka Lantigua, SLEI-Ed alum, go cohort 10, and the founder and CEO of LWC Studios.
Savodivker: On this show, we talk to Latino business leaders who have grown their companies to $1 million or more in annual gross revenue. Our guests share their stories and business insights with us, and together we explore the state of Latino entrepreneurship and unpack the world-class research coming out of LBAN.
Lantigua: Our guests today is Laura Oldaker from the Oldaker Group and the Academy for Caregiving Excellence.
She's a SLEI-Ed alum like me, and she and her team are taking on the senior caregiving industry.
Savodivker: Juleyka, when I first met Laura during the SLEI-Ed scaling program, I could immediately tell that she has this hunger for learning, and it wasn't surprising that she focused so much of her business on training and workforce development as she started to grow the company out.
Lantigua: And that is so smart, especially following the great recession, especially following how many people have really evaluated whether the work that they're doing is fulfilling them. So, so smart.
And she's also doing it in an industry that is desperate for reinvention, so I just appreciated so much of what she had to share with us, specifically how candid she was about her own journey and how in recognizing opportunities, she might have missed some, she took advantage of many of them, but each one turned out to be an important lesson that ultimately helped her grow her company.
Savodivker: Okay. Here's our conversation with Laura Oldaker.
Laura Oldaker: I'm so excited to be here. My name is Laura Oldaker. I am the CEO of Academy on Demand and a couple of other companies that I'll share about a little bit through the conversation.
Lantigua: I want to ask you this, you went into an industry which we now recognize is booming and is actually experiencing a shortage of workers, which is the adult care industry. And through the pandemic, the world got to see how vital these services to this population, in particular, are.
How did you get into adult care industry, and then how did you expand outward?
Oldaker: When I was 16, 17, I started out as a caregiver and as a nursing assistant. I could make a little money and pay to go to college. I was undocumented, so I couldn't receive any financial assistance, so caregiving it was for me.
And I did it throughout my whole life. I really loved it.
And so later in life, back in 2008, after I had gotten out of media communications...
If I go back to tell you my whole story, I've had 12 different careers. Entrepreneurship is my very last career and the one that I'm sticking with.
Lantigua: You found yourself, finally.
Oldaker: I found it. Yes.
So my husband and I were doing property investments and we were flippers, like the flippers that you see on TV. We were buying properties, fixing them up and flipping them. And then the 2008 market crash came. We lost everything. We had properties that totaled up to almost $4 million, and pretty much overnight, when the market crashed, we lost everything.
So I had a friend who called me, she was a caregiver, and said, "Hey, I know that you need a job and I have a job for you. Do you want to do caregiving again?" And I said, "Absolutely."
I took a job as a caregiver. My husband took a job as a construction worker, but when I came back into the industry, many years later, I realized that there was such a need.
I don't know if you guys remember, this is back in 2008 when the news were reporting in the next three years, all of the baby boomers are going to start to reach retirement age, and...
Lantigua: 10 million a year are retiring.
Oldaker: Exactly. So I saw that as an opportunity because it was something that I loved and I saw how it was being done at the time, which to me was unacceptable.
And so I thought I could do it better. We can start a company that actually has a heart that can do a good job, and so that's how my business, By Your Side Senior Care was born.
It was a home care agency. We hired caregivers, trained them, and then we sent them to care for older adults in their home.
Many years later, we started to notice that everybody in the industry was struggling to find employees, so we thought, "Okay, let's hire individuals," that we were at the grocery line, and we'd see somebody who had a really good personality. We'd give them our business cards and say, "Hey. Do you like to take care of people around you? You could be good for this job."
And so we got this workforce that didn't have the skills that have the heart and we trained them and gave them the skills. I just remember, "Think outside the box. Where's the pain? Where's the opportunity," and we came up with Academy for Caregiving Excellence, which was a school that trains caregivers for our competitors.
Savodivker: You're bringing up what's called concentric diversification. So can you tell us a little bit more about what that is?
Oldaker: Yes. The term concentric diversification is basically where you stay in your industry, but then you diversify, meaning you look for other opportunities within your industry that feed off each other.
The interesting thing is that I had no idea. I didn't know that term even existed because what we did is we just were looking at where the need was, and as we continued to do that exercise, which is where's the pain, where's the opportunity, we expanded to other programs in healthcare, nursing assistant phlebotomy. So the academy was then a feeder of employees By Your Side Senior Care.
We sold our company, By Your Side, in 2018, but then now we have this healthcare workforce that people need.
And we also launched Above All Health Services and we partner with another Latina woman business owner, and we are executing. Now we have a state contract to provide vaccinations to the state of Arizona.
We also expanded and we opened an assisted living facility. Compared to all the other assisted living facilities in Arizona, which there's over 2,500 of them, we never struggle to find staff because we have the academy, so we have a feeder. It's the perfect symbiotic relationship between our businesses.
Savodivker: It seems entrepreneurship comes to you naturally. Your phone must be ringing nonstop with staffing shortages and this rising need. But I want to talk about on the funding side, because it seems like everything's coming together, but I'm sure at the beginning, there were some issues getting funding.
Can you talk to us a little bit about what that was? What was the personal risk that you had to put in? Who came in to help you really boost the company when it was needed?
Oldaker: When we first started the original business, there was no funding. Remember, we had just lost everything. Our credit was trashed. We had nothing. Unfortunately, you can't go to the banks when you don't have a solid credit history, and we had just lost all these properties.
So we actually started the company with one employee, which was me, and one client. And so we basically expanded from that.
When we got another client, then we hired another employee so it was really, we financed it.
We took my husband's... Justin is his name, by the way. We took my husband's paycheck from his construction company and we used it to pay payroll for our employees at the company. So all of it was financed by us.
My first loan that I received, probably a year after we started, and it was by a CDFI that finally said, "Okay, I know you're a startup and you have a year of experience. I can lend you something like $8,000."
But we took the $8,000, and we put it into marketing. We felt that was the best place to put it, into marketing so we could grow. And as we hired more people, we just kept growing.
And when we sold the company in 2018, we had 75 employees. And so we grew it to...
Lantigua: Wow. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Stop the presses.
I know that this is just history to you, but let's just do a quick recap.
Ladies and gentlemen, we went from employee number one, Laura, to paying the next employee out of Justin's paycheck from his construction job, to an exit where we sold the company with 75 employees.
Come on, people. Give this woman around applause.
All right. So, Laura I want to pick up on something really smart that you said, which is you get this $8,000 loan and you have to make a decision about how to spend those limited funds and you put it into marketing. Can you talk through, strategically, when you had limited finances, how did you prioritize where to spend the finances that you did have?
Oldaker: Thank you for asking that question because it's something that is not talked about very often. I actually have a little bit of experience in media sales.
When I was in media, I had a good understanding of the impact that marketing has on your business, the right marketing, when you know exactly where to put your advertising dollars. So I had that background and I understood that business owners cut marketing first, which is in my opinion, the worst thing to do, because then how are you going to make the sales to get back on your feet?
So marketing is the one thing where you should double down. When sales are low or money is tied, invest in marketing because you're still getting the phone to ring. And that's the most important thing. Marketing and sales are the lifeblood of the organization. Without that, there's no organization. How do you pay your bills?
Savodivker: When we look at something that happened just over two years ago, which is this pandemic, COVID-19. Obviously, for the industry that you're in, very affected. Can you tell us the challenges there? What did you have to overcome during that tough time?
Oldaker: So one of the things that we're really proud of now, in retrospect, right before the pandemic hit... So we're always asking the question of what could we be doing better? How can we innovate? So right before the pandemic, we took all of our classes and we turned them into a hybrid program. We still required people to be here because that's a state requirement, but everything was online. So they'd come in, they'd log onto the computer and they would take the course practically at their pace.
That took our passing rates from the low eighties to 96%, almost overnight. It was just insane. I want to say it was late 2019 when we did this, then the pandemic hit all the schools had to close their doors because they weren't ready. We never had to close. We never had to skip a beat because everything was all ready. All we had to do is push a button and we're online.
Lantigua: Can you talk a little bit about some other decisions that now in hindsight, you're thinking, "Oh, shouldn't have done that. Should have done that. Shouldn't have turned that down." And then what the lesson was for you in terms of what you want your business to be moving forward.
Oldaker: Yeah. I actually can think of exactly when that happened. My friend with a vaccination contract called me. I want to say it was in 2021.
Early 2021, she had received the contract and she said, "Hey, do you want to partner?" And I said, "Sure, let's look into it."
And it would've caused me an investment of something like $25,000, but I was too scared because there was no guarantees. And I said, "I don't know if I should do it," and we turned it down.
So I will tell you...
Lantigua: And now your friend's a millionaire.
Oldaker: My friend made almost $5 million in less than a year, just with this little contract. So I could have had a piece of that pie.
So when my friend came back at the beginning of 2022 and said, "Hey, let's talk about this again. Do you want to partner?" And I said, "Yes, I do. How much do you need?”
Savodivker: Yeah. It's a pretty clear lesson there.
Oldaker: I have to tell you, I did kick myself in the butt a little bit last year when I said no, and I thought, "Well, it's just part of being an entrepreneur." There's also the balance of you can't be afraid to take the step, but there's also you do have to examine things cautiously to make sure that this is a good fit for you.
Lantigua: When I talk to people who are starting out, I always say, "You have to understand that every offer is not an opportunity, so it is your responsibility to evaluate whether this is just an offer, which is flat, two dimensional or whether this is an opportunity that can grow unto itself."
When you get a second chance though, you have to jump at the second chance.
Let me ask you the other questions that I want to know about, which is you are now working with state entities, because you have to get licensing, because there's curriculum that needs to be approved, can you talk about whether this is something you would encourage other Latino businesses to pursue? For people who have a long term strategy for their business, is going that route where you're licensing from authorities, from the state, from the federal government, or subcontracting to other friends who get contracts like you also did, is this something that you would encourage other Latinos to do?
Oldaker: Absolutely. There is an opportunity, but what I would say is you have to know as an entrepreneur, what you enjoy because you have to show up every single day.
I'll give you an example. I don't love working with state agencies. I don't love all the having to make sure that compliance is being met. And sometimes, when you work with the government, it's just not the easiest thing. So there are great opportunities there. There is opportunity for growth, but ideally for me, I want to be more of a free spirit. And the direction in which we're moving is away from courses that have the state compliance or that are regulated by government entities, to courses that are more on a nationwide basis so that we can expand.
So my answer to you is do what you love and what sits well with you, because there are opportunities. If you just sit there and think about what you love to do, what's your personality like. And now, that doesn't mean that you have to do everything, but then you'll have to bring people that are really good at what you're bad at. But still, you are the leader of your organization. So if you hate, like me, dealing with compliance and government entities, don't go into a company that has that, because ultimately, you're the leader and the buck stops with you.
Savodivker: So, Laura, obviously you're doing great work. What is the future expansion?
Oldaker: We are expanding. We've been in Arizona since we launched in 2015, and so launching outside of Arizona, on a national platform is our number one goal that we're working toward right now.
And then number two, we're working on a project that is going to provide a solution for employers who are desperately shorthanded, who have the shortages. We have the staff, we have the students, the graduates, and we're working on creating a solution to be able to at least relieve some of that pain that the employers are suffering.
And we're working on partnering with other LBAN graduates.
Savodivker: That's what it's all about, right?
Oldaker: Yeah.
Savodivker: I want to talk exactly about that. What was your experience with LBAN? How has that impacted your journey as an entrepreneur?
Oldaker: What the program has done for us as an organization is it's like a PhD in entrepreneurship. I don't even want to say a master's. It's way above that. And really in a very short period of time. So you have to cram all this information. It's not easy, you guys. You have to make sure that you set aside the time and then Leon is going to be on you. You can't miss a day because he's going to send you that email. He's going to be like, "Where is your homework?"
Lantigua: Oh, you got that email too?
Oldaker: Yes, I did.
Lantigua: I got that email. I definitely got that email.
Oldaker: It's a commitment. It's a commitment to yourself in your company. But the network of individuals that are part of the alumni is just invaluable.
Savodivker: We absolutely enjoyed, one, having you on this podcast, but two, also having you be a part of the LBAN program and being an alumni with all the work that you do.
Lantigua: Hear, hear.
Savodivker: So thank you so much, Laura for sharing your story with us.
Oldaker: Thank you for the invitation. It was such a pleasure to be here, you guys, and I had so much fun.
Lantigua: You're amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for representing women like me and just being kick ass.
Thank you.
Oldaker: Oh, thank you for that.
Savodivker: Juleyka, Laura is absolutely amazing.
Lantigua: Yeah.
Savodivker: What a journey. What a journey in lessons that she talked about.
Lantigua: Listen, when she talked about losing a $4 million real estate portfolio, I had to hold myself because I don't know how you come back from that and then build again. That to me is such a testament to the spirit of, "We don't know what quitting is. We just know how to take a rest, regroup, reassess, and then move on."
I get asked that question all the time about, "Well, how did you decide to do this?" And it sounds really simplistic, but I am an immigrant. Everything in front of me is possibility, and I also accept that sometimes I'm going to fall flat on my face and I have to sit down. I have to take care of my wounds, but I'm still capable of moving forward.
And her story for me, really, really exemplifies that ethos.
Savodivker: Absolutely. No, absolutely. To come back stronger, to take the lessons she learned and to do it without that initial support. She talked about it. She lost everything and decided, "Hey, I'm going to create my own thing and I'm going to pay it with whatever I can, however I can," and then built it to what she built. And it just seems challenge after challenge. She's just overcoming that and building this amazing company that now is ready to go. National is ready to go to new heights than she's ever been before.
Lantigua: Yeah. So I am totally going to start saying that my company has also taken advantage of concentric diversification. I have to practice saying that because I'm going to fumble it, but we have identified all of these needs in our industry and we continue to try and fill those needs. I just didn't know that there was a word for it.
Savodivker: Well, I have my next icebreaker when I go to an event for entrepreneurs. So I just look at them and I say, "So what's your concentric diversification story?"
Lantigua: And they're all going to look at you like you have three heads, but once you explain it, I bet you, half the room has a story. I bet you.
Savodivker: Absolutely, yeah.
Lantigua: I bet you. Yeah.
Savodivker: It's absolutely amazing the work that Laura has done, the way that she's been able to diversify her business, take new opportunities and learning from some things that maybe she didn't take that she should have, but she's looking at how does she diversify her business and how does she create more opportunities for herself and her employees, which I think is absolutely phenomenal.
Lantigua: Thank you so much to those of you who responded to our call for your business stories. We loved getting them and here's one of our favorites.
Emily: Hi, my name is Emily Rentaz, owner and founder of Paragon Solstice Incorporated, a coaching and consulting company dedicated to serving individuals, businesses, and organizations along transition, transformation, and integration. And I also maintain a private practice in mental health services and training in New York.
Why I started my business as a Latina, it was very important for me to build my own legacy for myself and my family and what they came to this country for.
Growing a business during a pandemic has not been easy. It was very difficult to understand such a volatile market while I was still learning. With that experience, I feel more confident than ever to really ride out any type of volatility in the future. You have to remember why you are doing what you're doing. And remaining very humble and grateful for every opportunity of the journey.
Lantigua: To share your business story with us, record a detailed voice memo and email it to our producer, Virginia. She's at virginia@lwcstudios.com
This episode was supported by our LBAN Alumni Founding Sponsors Windrose Vision, VND and Fig Factor Media. Scaled: The Latino Business Story is produced by LWC Studios for LBAN. Virginia Lora is our producer. Kojin Tashiro and Elizabeth Nakano are our mixer. Kojin Tashiro did our sound design. Paulina Velasco is managing producer. To learn more about the work and research LBAN is doing and our Business Scaling Program at Stanford, please visit LBAN.us, that’s l-b-a-n [dot] us. Thanks for listening. I’m Juleyka Lantigua.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka and Elian Savodivker, hosts. “Turning Pain Into Opportunity During the Pandemic.” Scaled: The Latino Business Story, LWC Studios., November 21, 2022. LBAN.us/scaled.