PAGA: The Scariest Four-Letter Word for California Employers

Account Executive Raysan Benito sits down with employment law attorney Bob King and breaks down how PAGA works, why it has become one of the most feared compliance challenges for home care agencies, and the practical steps business owners can take to reduce their exposure and protect their organizations.

Raysan Benito: You're listening to Rancho Mesa StudioOne™ podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. I'm your host today, Raysan Benito, account executive with the Human Services Group. My guest today is Bob King, someone who has spent over 20 years in the trenches of employment law, helping agencies avoid very expensive mistakes. From Georgetown to the University of Chicago to founding Legally Nanny, Bob has built a career defending agencies against wage and hour claims, audits, and of course, PAGA. If there's a compliance issue that can take a business down, he's probably seen it and fixed it. Bob, welcome to the show.

Bob King: Well, Raysan, thank you very much. Beautiful day for a podcast. I am elated to be here. I got the presentation that we're going to talk about, and I am excited to be with you. And let me just start by giving my little introduction to Raysan. This man, he puts the Energizer Bunny to shame. He's relentless, absolutely relentless in the best way possible. I got to know Raysan because he kept messaging me, and he just wouldn't stop. And he was really nice about it, though. And I just had to meet with this guy. And I did. I will say to you, in all honesty, you are one of the most optimistic people. Not only optimistic, but just downright, you sort of have this warmth about you. And you're one of the most kind-hearted souls I think I've met in this business in almost three decades of doing this. So it's my pleasure to be with you. And I'm glad I responded to your messages. And I appreciate what I will call the professional persistence. So thank you very much.

RB: I am also elated to be connecting with you and to be talking about a four-letter word, as you put it. So this was your title. It was the four-letter word that scares businesses. So let's talk about even just the title alone. So what I'd love to do is just break down first. We're going to be talking about PAGA. That's the depth of our conversation here. But as we're talking about PAGA, I'd love to learn a little bit more about it and then why you wanted to call this podcast the scary four-letter word. So let's break down PAGA and then why you decided to name it that.

BK: Sure, yeah. I mean, it is. It's truly the scariest four-letter word or four-letter acronym, I suppose, that a California business is ever going to encounter. And why? Because in the state of California, if you do one thing wrong, Raysan, you've done 10 things wrong. And if you've done one thing wrong, you've probably done it wrong for all of your employees across your entire company. And so when you do that, you have a $10 mistake that becomes a $50,000 mistake. And by the way, that's chump change compared to what most PAGA claims are.

So to answer your question, PAGA is the California Private Attorneys General Act, PAGA. What does it mean? It means if a plaintiff's employer, I'm sorry, plaintiff's lawyer can find one of your employees, just one, where you've done something wrong, then that employee can represent all of your employees and they can sue you on behalf of all of your employees. So that's what you're looking at. And that's why it's scary because it's not a one-off. It's a company-wide problem.

RB: Okay, so I understand now why this four-letter acronym is a scary word because it is one of those where, by my understanding, these employees can represent the state of California or they act, almost deputize is some words that I've heard with regard to that. And so what you're saying is let's talk about an agency, right? So let's say that these agencies, they have over 50 caregivers, let's call it on the roster. So just one of those can represent all 50 of them. And if I'm understanding you correctly, that 50 would be a multiplier. So just the one $10 becomes exponential from that.

BK: You got it. And the way California works is they stack penalties. So here's my best example. Say you pay an employee multiple rates of pay in the same work week. You're supposed to do a blended rate of those two to figure out what the overtime is and what the paid sick leave is. Well, if you don't do that, then you may have underpaid that employee, okay? And even if the damages are $1.12, here's what else you've done. The pay stub is wrong. OK, and by the way, because the pay stub has the running total for the rest of the year, it'll be wrong for the rest of the year. And there's a per pay stub penalty. OK, so that's four thousand dollars. OK, just in pay stub penalties. And wait, if that employee is no longer with you, you have to pay. Well, first of all, when you when an employee ends their employment, you have to pay them all wages. owed at the time of the termination. Well, guess what? You underpaid that employee by $1.12. So technically, you didn't pay that employee all the wages owed. So that means you owe the waiting time penalty of 30 days of pay.

And I once had a home care agency owner say, oh my gosh, you mean I owe a month's pay? And I'm like, oh my gosh, it's worse than that. You owe 30 days of pay, right? So take whatever they earned in a day and multiply it by 30 plus the pay stub penalties, plus the actual damages, plus the PAGA penalties, okay, which is $100 for the first infraction, $200 for all subsequent infractions, plus 10% interest on whatever's owed, and the kicker, just for good measure, plaintiff's attorney's fees. So there you have it. So, and that's for one. Now multiply that by everybody this happened to. Okay. And go back a year. Oh and go back a year that's the other thing see race on it used to be that you used to have a class action which would scare the living daylights out of people but a class action is a very formalized sort of proceeding that you have to go through a variety of court hearings and meet a number of measures to do that etc. etc. They still exist classes I defend classes all the time but a PAGA is sort of like a lazy man's class action because all you need to do for PAGA is send a letter to the state and wait. You wait 65 days and then you can file a lawsuit because the state's not going to investigate. And that lawsuit says, hi, I represent everybody going back one year. Here are all my claims. Boom.

RB: OK, so now I'm actually going to go off script just a little bit here because I really want to understand this. I want to understand this because when, yeah, I had, well, I did send you the flow beforehand and I just went, okay, this is kind of it. But as you're talking, I'm going, okay, I'm making all these different connections because when I think about how the time that you've spent, these decades of time that you've spent working with agencies around PAGA I'm curious to know, let's talk about almost PAGA at its inception and your initial understanding of it when you were just a brand new bright-eyed bushy-tailed attorney and then when and then sort of the rise of it and where we're at now and I you know bonus points as well if you could maybe even speak to COVID because I'm sure that that had a factor in it as well. But kind of walk me through the life cycle because then it's 2004 is when it is when it…

BK: Yeah early 2000s I’ve been practicing a lot longer than PAGA’s been around I’ll have you know but…

RB: Oh wow okay, I didn’t mean to date you, so let's talk about that when it was first enacted your initial impression of it and then this rise and then sort of where we're at today with it.

BK: Sure, so when it was first enacted, I don't really think most people paid attention because you always had class action lawsuits. But then to defeat that, you would have employers roll out arbitration agreements. And so if you're an employee and you have an arbitration agreement and you say, ha, I'm going to sue you and I'm suing you with a class action, I would stuff that arbitration agreement back in your face and say, mm-mm, you can't represent everybody. You can represent you in arbitration. And it stops the class action, right? And now, sure, they can do serial arbitrations one after the other, but that's a lot of work. Plaintiff's lawyers aren't interested in that. But then along comes PAGA. And arbitration agreements aren't that helpful against PAGA. That's the God's honest truth because now you can have something what's known as a headless PAGA claim where the employee simply just doesn't have any individual claims but represents all of your employees anyway. It's crazy. And arbitration agreements are not as effective against that. You can't stop that. PAGA became the plaintiff's bar solution to arbitration agreements stopping class actions. That's the issue you have, right? And that's why it became so lethal. And it's much easier. As I said, there's all these requirements to a class action. You have to prove that your representative is typical, that there is enough members of the class, all of these criteria that don't exist in PAGA. PAGA is, you know what you need for PAGA? An envelope and a stamp. And you mail that letter to the state. And once you've done that, you count 65 days and you can file a lawsuit. And that's all you need.

RB: Let's go to the letter and the envelope. One of the slides that you had was you've got mail or you got mail. So walk me through what that means exactly, I suppose, from the plaintiff's side and then your experience and best practices as it pertains to this letter and how to prepare for it.

BK: Sure. So listen, home care agency owners, you get a lot of mail. Totally get it. But I'll tell you, you've seen ostriches and they put their heads in the sand. Ostriches get eaten when they do that, okay? If you think that the best course of action is you get a letter and you ignore it, that's not good. OK, because now with the reforms with PAGA, you can do a PAGA audit when you get notice of a lawsuit. In fact, you can do that PAGA audit even before the lawsuit, which is even better. We'll talk about that. But in a worst case scenario, if you get a letter that says you're being sued or they're going to file a PAGA claim, the first thing you should do is do a PAGA audit to figure out what the problems are and correct them if you can. And that will substantially decrease the penalties. But you've only got. 60 days. 60 days to do that audit. So I beg of you, if you get something in the mail, the first thing you want to do is call your insurance broker to see if you have coverage for this.

If you don't, the second thing you want to do is call a lawyer so you can get started on a PAGA audit. And then that lawyer can oftentimes call the plaintiff's counsel and see if we can work out a deal before they actually file the lawsuit. So that interim time is absolutely critical. Sometimes you can make PAGA cases go away entirely. If you've already been sued and somebody files suit, you can make that second one go away when you call the plaintiff's counsel and explain what's going on. Or sometimes you can just call the plaintiff's counsel and say, we have a tiny company and no money. There's no merit to this. Can we talk about an individual settlement? If you can short circuit this before they actually file that lawsuit, Hallelujah. Because once they file it, the only way it's getting dismissed is with the court's approval. And that's a process. So that's why it's imperative.

And sometimes you won't even get the PAGA letter Raysan. You'll just get a letter that says, I want documents from this employee. Every plaintiff's lawyer says this. I want their personnel file, their time and payroll records, yada yada. You have 21 days. 21 days for the time and payroll records. You have 30 days for the personnel file. Here's the deal. If you don't provide that, that in and of itself is liability. And it's a clear signal to plaintiff's counsel that you're either scared or disorganized or both. So if you get mail, open it, respond to it, deal with it. That's the best way to go.

RB: There's two, well, there's three routes I want to take now after hearing this.

BK: Talking to me is like drinking out of a fire hose.

RB: Oh, I'm here for it. I'm totally here for it. And I'm just going, all right, okay. So because now my brain is going on all these different directions. So what I want to hear then is a couple of aspects of it. So one, I want to step into agency owner's shoes. Ask you, okay, well, what if they say that we're fine and there's no issues, we feel like we're compliant. And then I almost want to segue because we had talked about going into this PAGA audit, what that is, what it looks like. So what would you say to the business owner that goes, we're fine, pretty sure we're up to date, we're compliant with regard to these wage and hours, I feel like everything's buttoned up. How would you respond to an agency owner that feels that they're confident in that place?

BK: This is an agency owner who's done the PAGA audit or who hasn't done the PAGA audit?

RB: Has not.

BK: Okay. So I am not a gambling man. I work too hard for my money to try and bet it away. But if I were, I would tell you, I would bet the farm that if you haven't done a PAGA audit, you are not in compliance. There's almost no way. And I'll tell you because California law is just so Byzantine.

Like, here's my best example, okay? And I know we're going to get into the depths of the subject matter, but I just have to give you this example because it's so classic. In California, we have paid sick leave. Everybody understands that. Raysan, if you make $20 an hour and you call out sick, you would expect to be paid $20 an hour. And in most cases, you would be. But if during that work week, you were paid different rates of pay, or maybe you got a bonus because you took a last minute shift. Well, those things need to go into a blended rate. And so if you worked one shift for maybe four hours. and you were paid $21.17 for that shift, right? Or not 17, but say $21 for that shift for just four hours. You worked 36 hours at 20 bucks. Cool, cool, right? And you call out sick and you should get 20 bucks? No, because the law says those four hours, you have to blend that $21 rate with that $20 rate. And so your paid sick leave wage might be $20.68 or whatever the math works out to be. You're not going to know that. you're going to just pay; the normal person would pay whatever you would normally earn. But that's not what the law requires. And if you didn't do that, it's wrong. And you got a problem, right? And that's a classic example of, or I will say the word split shift penalty, and it'll be like a deer in headlights. Half the people in the audience won't know what that is. And that's fine. Why would you? It's preposterously complicated. But it's another thing that trips agencies.

Or here's some fun ones. The current mileage reimbursement rate is 72.5 cents per mile. 72.5. Not 72, not 75, okay? Not 67 as it was in years past. It's 72.5. Again, I had a client just the other day that, oh, we were just reimbursing at last year's rate. Never changed it. Or reimbursing at 72 cents. Close enough is not the law. It's not correct. You got a problem.

RB: 72.5. I want to just reiterate that for mileage reimbursement.

BK: For 2026, yes. 72.5 in 2026.

RB: Make note of that, please, agency owners.

Okay, so let's go to the audit. Yes. The PAGA audit. Yep. What does it entail and why is it important?

BK: Sure. So the PAGA audit is going to go through all your payroll practices. Okay. And by the way, you don't have to use me. There's lots of people who can walk you through a PAGA audit, but it is, and there's no set format necessarily. What I did was I looked back on all my years of defending home care agencies and PAGA cases. I looked at all the claims and then I created a checklist. It's a Word document. And it simply says, okay. Item one, minimum wage. The current California minimum wage is $16.90. Take a survey of 10 to 20% of your employees in the last one year. Verify that you're paying at least minimum wage, $16.90. Unless you're in one of these 20 some odd, 30 some odd jurisdictions that are local and have their own minimum wages. Here's the list. Verify that you're paying the local minimum wage, right? And that's how you go. And you start going there. It covers a wide variety of issues from minimum wage, overtime, the personal attendant exemption, travel time, meal and rest periods, you name it, final pay, what your pay stub looks like. It's a multi-page checklist. And you're going to take that 10 to 20% sample going back one year, and you're going to verify each of these items for each of these employees in the sample.

And then once you're done, okay, and by the way, you do all this. I don't do this. There's no reason to pay me to do this. I will review your findings with you, okay? And we'll see if there are problems or not. And if there are, do you want to correct them or not? Like, how do you deal with employees who no longer work for you? Do you want to open up that Pandora's box by sending them a check for $6.47? Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. I don't know. Is it one employee? Is it 100? I don't know. So we walk through your findings and determine, can we correct these things? Because the more things you can correct, the fewer bases they have to sue you for. But some people don't want to correct. They only want to do it on a going forward basis. Cool. I always say to people, I'm your lawyer. I'm not your priest. I'm not your rabbi. I don't judge. I just tell you what the law is, and I tell you what I would do.

That's another problem with most lawyers. They will just tell you what the law is. I'm not a law professor, okay? I stand in the home care agency owner's shoes. I will always tell you what I would do if it were my agency. And by the way, I am frugal as all get out, and I expect the same in my clients. So I look at a dollar reason for what we're doing, okay? But that's the PAGA Audit.

So you go through it, you work with somebody to verify your findings, and then you decide if you're going to correct or not. And once you've done that, and if you correct and you get everybody, okay, then you can considerably lower your penalties. If you decide not to correct, then at least you know what your liability is going into the lawsuit.

RB: So there's a self-assessment. And as they have that self-assessment, go through that checklist. They'll review it with you. And then you'll share with them based on the findings, perhaps some coaching or thumbs up, you're doing just fine.

BK: Yeah. I mean, after we review the findings, the first question is, is there anything wrong? If there is, do we correct it? Do we correct it previously? And then how do we correct it on a going forward basis? Okay. And then if we have problems, that also allows us to say, okay, this is what this case looks like. Like maybe it's not all of our employees. Maybe it's just a subset who worked overtime. OK, well, that's cool. At least I can then pick up the phone and say to plaintiff's counsel, hey, you know, this 500-person company, you actually have a PAGA class of 43 employees because most of them don't work overtime. So that's so it's a much smaller case. So can we talk about a settlement of this much smaller case that probably isn't as interesting to you? Right. And then you give them all the data to show what you're doing. And you see.

RB: I want to talk about pay. Because when I think about agencies, there's a broad stroke that I'll make when I think of a team with an agency. You obviously have the owner. You'll typically have marketers, so business development people. You'll obviously have caregivers, and then you'll have admin and staff. I remember when you had done a talk previously, you were talking about salary versus hourly and then you were talking about the benefits of salary can you speak to that a little bit as it pertains to pay rate of pay?

BK: Sure so look here's the deal, by default every single employee is non-exempt meaning they're hourly they only qualify to be exempt meaning salaried if they meet certain criteria both in their job duties as well as in their pay OK. So it's not like you can just decide, oh, you know what? You want to be hourly? Cool. You, caregiver can be hourly. No, you can't, because as a matter of law, their job duties don't qualify to be salaried. Their caregivers are always, always non-exempt.

Your office employees like they'll often say, well. Sally's my head of HR. She's really great. And, you know, she's exempt. We pay her $50,000 a year. And I have to break to him that Sally's not exempt because that's not the required salary. The required salary is take whatever the state minimum wage is, double it, multiply it by 40, multiply it by 52. You're north of 70grand. OK, that's what you're that is what the required salary is. And by the way, you can't just say, OK, fine, we're going to pay salary, we're going to pay Sally 75 grand. Therefore, she's. No, we have to look at what Sally does, okay? And there are two buckets to qualify for the exemption in the home care world, okay?

The first is the executive exemption. You have to supervise two or more employees. They have to actually be employees. They're not independent contractors, okay? Authority to hire and fire or your recommendation is giving great weight to hire and fire. You're doing primarily exempt duties, okay? And you're exercising discretion and independent judgment, okay? That's the first one. That's executive exemption, okay?

The second one is the administrative exemption, and that's where you're a specialist in a certain area, okay? So you might be a specialist in HR or accounting or whatever, but you can have care managers because they have a siloed set of skills. You're a specialist with specialized training and knowledge who works under only general supervision. Okay. So that's a lot of like the care managers, the client intake people, you can, they can be exempt depending on how you structure their role.

But here's where you lose the exemption. You have to be primarily engaged in exempt duties. Okay. So if all of a sudden you've got somebody who works half time in the office and half time as a caregiver, that person is never going to be exempt because you're blowing it. Okay. So please, I know we all like to mix and match. Everybody does. Don't do it. Do not because you're going to lose that exemption it's going to be the worst of all worlds so if you have somebody who's exempt please keep them exempt and I, the last thing the and what you're referencing is on call if PAGA is the scariest four-letter acronym “on call” is the scariest phrase for a home care agency owner please if you can staff exempt employees on call. Because trying to deal with hourly employees on call with their hours and the meal and rest periods and the overtime and everything else is a disaster. If you can staff an exempt employee on call, you're paying them for all the hours they have in the day and night. So don't worry about it. Just staff them if you can.

RB: It's helpful. Just to reiterate, exempt employees on call, that would be the best practice. If possible.

I want to talk about fear and the scariness of PAGA. When I think about fear, I think about there's three sort of responses that I've heard. There's the fight, there's the flight, and freeze. When people talk about PAGA and the fear around it. So when I think about the action that needs to be taken for agency owners, call it three helpful takeaways that they should do right now after listening to this podcast that would be most helpful.

What I heard you say was the audit, really important. I would also say assess the nature of work of your exempt and non-exempt employees. And I'd also say that open your mail. That sounds very, very simple. Those are some helpful takeaways for me. But what would you say? For someone who just sees this phrase and they go, I don't know what to do, almost paralyzed with fear or, oh my gosh, I want to jump all over this. How would you respond?

BK: Sure. So, well, I want to throw a softball back to you. Another thing every agency owner should think about is their insurance coverage. I'm serious on this, right? I mean, here's the thing. Employee Practices Liability Insurance, EPLI. is something every agency owner should consider. I'm not saying it's right for everybody, but I am saying you ought to look at it. But the other thing is, if you look at EPLI, you also should consider whether you're just getting insurance for the basics, like retaliation, harassment, discrimination, wrongful termination, or do you want to purchase a wage an hour rider, which would cover you for the stuff we're talking about.

I had a client just last week said, oh, I have EPLI coverage. Well, it was just the basics. It didn't cover wage an hour. And that was a problem. Now, EPLI coverage is expensive. OK, so you have to weigh the risks versus the reward. I don't care where you come out on that, but I do want you to think about it. So that's the first thing.

The second is there is you're right. It is a fight or flight sort of reflex. I will have some agency owners that are absolutely furious and they will. They're not going to talk to me. They're going to pick the phone up and call plaintiff's counsel directly and give them a piece of their mind. Nothing good can come of that. Nothing. Because all you're doing is you're giving them free discovery. They're going to ask you questions. You're going to come off like a lunatic. And if you irritate them, a lot of this is personal. If they don't like you, they're going to go after you harder. And that's the thing. I read an interesting blog post the other day, and it was an attorney saying, my clients get so mad because I'm friendly with opposing counsel. Guess what? Being friendly with opposing counsel, or at least being professional with opposing counsel, as opposed to being this belligerent jerk, it gets you so much farther down the road. Why? Because these cases don't go to trial. They're too expensive. They're too risky. They settle. Who do you want to settle with? Who do you want to work with? Somebody who treats you with respect, even if they disagree with you? I'll take a smart plaintiff's lawyer every day of the week than a dumb, stubborn lawyer, okay? Being aggressive is not being effective necessarily, okay? I am aggressive, but not in a disrespectful way. You have to be able to cut a deal.

And look, I play on the heartstrings of these plaintiff's lawyers. That's a hard thing to do, okay? They are not the most charitable people necessarily, okay? But I always like to explain, look, You're not suing Google or Amazon, okay? You're suing literally a mom and pop business or a one franchisee office who helps seniors and disabled people stay at home, okay? We have a limited ability to raise rates. These people do good work. Can we reach some sort of an accommodation here? Okay? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If they've had a parent or a grandparent who's gone through home care, sometimes it works, right? But the point is, you can't be all fire and brimstone with people because it's not going to be helpful in what you're doing. Aggressive, sure. Like, I always pick up the phone at the beginning and call a planner's counsel and say, these are the areas where I think you're right. They damn near fall out of their chair when I say that, okay? But it's true. And why do I do that? Because If we have liability, it establishes my credibility, okay? And it also gives them a little bit to hook onto. Like, if you shut the door and tell them you're going away with nothing, that's a harder sell than, look, I think 90% of your claims are bunk, but you got us on the mileage reimbursement. So can we reach some sort of deal on that?

Because here's the deal. These firms are sharks. They want the massive cases. They want the eight-figure settlements. So if I'm talking about a settlement that's ten thousand dollars, they don't want to deal with that. They'll take the ten and move on. Right. So if I can show them why it's only ten, you can go a long way with that.

RB: That's helpful. A couple more questions as I'm looking to land the plane. One is it's personal when I think about this, because as I speak with agency owners as well. You know, we've been talking about some scary stuff, candidly, but I think about a conversation I had with an agency owner that said, I am not sure if I want to continue this, continue in my agency with all of this PAGA and lawsuits and class actions. What encouragement would you give to the agency owner that just is nervous or scared of these types of lawsuits?

BK: I would say, okay, look, I'm a brass tacks sort of guy. So I would look at it from, sure, there's risks, but there's also rewards, right? Anybody who's been anywhere near home care has heard about the silver tsunami and the baby boomers are getting older and the market's there. There's a massive need, right? If you develop an agency that works and you and your people care, there's great money to be made.

But there are risks. OK, there are risks. So how do you mitigate the risks? Well, you work with an attorney and I'm not a shill for attorneys. I really want to specify that. But you work with an attorney. It's like you do it once, do it right. And then don't worry about it again. So set up your agency correctly. Make sure you're in compliance with the laws. Make sure all the settings on your payroll software are correct. OK, I hand to God, that's at least five to 10 percent of the errors are because somebody checked the wrong box on a payroll software. It's not the software's fault you just checked the wrong box well that's a problem. So what I would say to you is mitigate the risks make sure you're setting it up correctly, do an audit at least every couple years just to make sure because it's amazing I have agency owners all the time say I don't understand we changed payroll companies and something changed and now all of a sudden we're not doing this right. So just please do an audit every at least couple years to make sure things are still going correctly. Consider insurance. And the last thing is, and I know it sounds ridiculous, but it is the absolute truth. Treat your employees well. Happy employees don't sue. They just don't. They don't.

And oh, one more thing I'll tell you. You talked about fear. I use this example all the time. It's a morbid example, but. It's, in my experience, absolutely the best example I can give. Getting sued in a class action or a PAGA case is like getting diagnosed with cancer. It just is. It can be fatal. You could die. Your agency could go out of business. More often than not, you pay attention to it, you're diligent, you get on it, you deal with it, and it goes away. And it's in your rearview mirror. I have been a lawyer for 28 years. I've had one, literally one, agency go out of business who got sued in that entire time. They also had

embezzlement and a whole bunch of other wacky things going on. So they were one foot in the grave anyway. But other than that, every single client who's been sued lives to fight another day. So I can give you that hope as well, that if I were a betting man, I would tell you that just because you're sued, it's fine. By the way, it's sort of like getting some contagious disease. Once you're sued, you're highly unlikely to be sued again because you've got liability going back. And then until when the court approves it. So in that time, if you don't correct the errors that got you sued in the first place, shame on you. Chances are you have. And once you have and you've been sued, by the way, if you've been sued with PAGA, here's the thing. People don't sue you again because the presumption either is that there's no merit or there's no money left. So they leave you alone. Not always, but usually it's a good indicator.

RB: I knew this conversation would not disappoint. And you certainly delivered, Bob King. So as I'm looking to land the plane, I love to add, this is something I thoroughly enjoy doing, is just adding a human element to this. You're going to be speaking at CAHSAH as we're recording this podcast. And then you'll be also HCAOA, is that right? Is that what the acronym is?

BK: Home Care Association of America. I speak there most years and I speak at their California events too. I'm on podcasts. I spend no money on marketing and advertising. I just speak and write about home care legal issues constantly. And that's another thing, too. I don't write newsletters. I don't have time to write them. You don't have time to read them. You want to get all the legal updates, follow us on our social media, okay? Like, literally, just this week, we posted July 1st. Coming up, minimum wages, local minimum wage. State minimum wage goes up January 1. July 1, half a dozen municipalities have minimum wages that go up, plus health care minimum wage goes up. Check it. We've got the stats for you right there on our socials.

RB: Love it. So being the premier attorney for agencies, I want to add a human element to it. So I have a sort of an off the cuff question, but I love to add it just to learn a little bit more about you. But what is one hobby or interest that your professional network would be surprised by?

BK: I don't know if it's a surprise because we actually, I always post about personal stuff on our business pages. It humanizes it, right? Like my son went to home care agency conferences, my daughter went to nanny agency conferences, and they've seen them grow up through the years, and it's kind of cool.

Here's my passion outside of work. I'm a points and miles hobbyist. I travel, but I refer to myself as destination agnostic. I don't know where I'm going. I go where the deals are. OK, so here's my pro tip for everybody out there who's interested in travel. OK, go to Google Flights. If you don't know what Google Flights is, go to Google Flights. It's a free service. And here's what I do. I say, LAX, leave the destination blank. Fill in all the filters. I want no more than one stop. I want business class. I want no more than this budget. You know, I want to lay over no more than four hours, whatever. Leave it blank. It will then give you the globe, okay? And it will show you where the deals are, right? Maybe you want to go to Casablanca. Maybe you want to go to Seoul. Who knows, right? But we've had some of the most outstanding trips because I sort of went where the deals were. And that's what I would encourage you to do. And also be flexible on your dates. But I love travel. I learned so much from it and you know but you and I’ve talked about this my father passed away when I was young and you never know how long you got so you got to make the most of it. And we always travel with our you know as a family or sometimes like one of us will take a kid somewhere and that's fun too just a one-on-one sort of parent kid thing and my kids are adults now and they remember all this stuff and they remembered a heck of a lot more than like whatever was under the Christmas tree they like the experiences and they travel now too which is really kind of cool. And they're taking after the old man and they're using points and miles. So, you know, I actually do that for Christmas sometimes. I give them a stash of points and miles and say, make the most of it. And, you know, we'll see where they go. So it's great.

RB: Love it. Always the educator. How can people get a hold of you, Bob?

BK: Sure. It's just it's Legally Nanny. And we started because 23 years ago we hired a nanny for my daughter and I was determined to do it legally. And I couldn't find anybody who knew all the ins and outs of taxes and law and home care. And then we started having people call us and saying, I don't need a nanny, I need a caregiver. And now we represent literally thousands of home care agencies nationwide, nanny agencies, and family employers. We're LegallyNanny.com. Find us Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, X, whatever. But it's just Legally Nanny.

And listen, I'll say this. I always close with this because I'm serious. I love what I do. Most lawyers are grumpy. I'm in a good mood. I'm an evangelist, right? And I'm in a good mood because here's the thing. Home care agencies do noble work. They help people maintain their independence and their dignity. And that's a really, really gratifying thing. And I get to be a tiny part of that. But I get to be a part of that. And that motivates me on a daily basis. And it's fun.

And you're good at what you do because you care. And you can tell it. And I guess that's how I'd leave it. Like recognizes like, I guess. And I'm honored to be with you today. And I'm grateful that you decided to have me on your podcast.

And if we can help you or your clients, I'd be glad to do it.

RB: What a gift. Thank you, Bob King. I appreciate it.

Thank you for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at RanchoMesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Cash in the Bank Is Not Profit: What Home Care Owners Need to Know About Margins

Account Executive Raysan Benito sits down with Dana Charumbira, CPA and founder of Home Care CPAs, to explore how home care leaders can use financial insights to drive smarter decisions and sustainable growth. They break down key concepts like gross margin, automation, and financial clarity, offering practical ways to turn numbers into meaningful strategies for scaling a business.

Raysan Benito: You're listening to Rancho Mesa's StudioOne™ Podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. My guest today is Dana Charumbira, a CPA, MBA, and business leader behind Home Care CPAs, who brings a unique blend of corporate and international experience to the home care industry. With a passion for conscious business and social impact, Dana combines analytical expertise with a deep belief in human connection to help leaders scale in a meaningful and sustainable way.

Dana, welcome to the show.

Dana Charumbira: Thanks, Raysan, and thank you for that great introduction. I sound so professional and put together. I love it.

RB: Well, you are so professional and put together. You're very well known. I would have even added that you are going to be a conference speaker at CAHSAH as well. And we, I, yeah, there's so many, I get the list could go on, but I at least wanted to make sure that I had that locked in. So welcome to the show.

Dana, I appreciate you being available. You survived tax season. I think I want to jump into that. There's a little bit of a path I'd like to go on, but you survived tax season, so well done on that. How is that for you?

DC: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, we made it. It was, you know, each year we get better and better. Each year has its nuances. We support a lot of like the business returns. So once we get through that March deadline, there's a little bit of a sigh of relief. And then there's a couple of, you know, April 15th deadlines that we really support. But

Our team was really good this year about being proactive in Q4 prior quarter, just to kind of make sure we had a good start to 2026 to get filings done. So not too many sleepless nights. Yeah, and shout out to the team, shout out to the clients too that worked with us to make sure we got everything that we needed.

RB: Yeah, that is absolutely crucial. Having that team of people to work alongside you and then having your clients bringing things in a timely manner. I know that challenge all too well. So I am glad that it went well for you. You know, I was thinking about this beforehand. I'll jump into the problem and some of the solutions that we have, but it was so interesting to me because when I was preparing for this podcast.

I asked a couple of business owners about their profit and loss statement and how often they review it. So I talked to one business owner and I said, how often are you looking at your P&L? And their response was, almost never. My accountant. That's my accountant's job. My accountant does that. And so I want to address some of the, I want to address that statement, but I also want to address some of the individuals that may be listening. What I'm really excited from our conversation from yesterday and preparing for this was that I really believe that there's going to be something for everyone. So you can have the startup, home care agency that's learning as they're going and they have a heart to serve, but they're not entirely sure how financials fit into it or how to leverage it. And then you have people who are scaling and then some of the more legacy agencies that are there. But I want to camp a little bit on that phrase and I'd love to hear your perspective on it. When someone says, I don't usually look at my P&L, that's the accountant's job.

DC: Yeah, so there is. I think first, let's say just acknowledge that home care is, you know, a business or an industry that pulls people in a lot of directions. So home care agency owners or home care leadership vault has a lot on their plate at all times. And even if they're not actively doing something, they're probably thinking about their business and, you know, maybe it's marketing, maybe it's recruitment, maybe it's a shift that needs to be staffed. So I think a lot of the times, you know, the accounting piece of it, because it's not so in your face every day does kind of fall into that list of like, I'm going to engage with it when I'm filing my taxes and it becomes more of this like passive, I say compliance based activity and that it's just something that needs to get done when you're filing your taxes at the end of the year. And so I don't think that's an uncommon approach or sort of, you know, comment that we do here. And sometimes it's just easier to manage your business from your bank account. So like if you have the money to make payroll and there's some leftover to, you know, pay whatever else you need to like workers comp and rent and utilities, you know, sometimes that can feel like that's enough.

And it can be scary because you know if that number on the bottom isn't where you want it to be, sometimes not engaging with it or just like hoping it's going to get better might feel safer. But really it's just kind of kicking that can down the road a little bit for like that inevitable day that comes when there isn't the cash in the bank or that number just really starts to become zero or negative. So yeah, that's not an uncommon, you know, starting point. But and even, I mean, I would say that's agencies of all size. And there's a lot of different ways you can look at your numbers that aren't looking at your profit and loss, which we, you know, we encourage. But for us, the profit and loss really brings everything together. And for me, it really tells the story of the business and you can see like operational decisions that the business is making and how they play out in the financials

RB: I agree. And it's interesting that you bring that up because as we work with home care agencies as well, you're talking to these CEOs or owners or what have you, and they're going, listen, I've got an intake to do. I probably have to do some type of marketing.

There's networking that needs to be done. I also need to look at operations. Also, we're constantly hiring, so I have to do that as well. And interestingly enough, I was talking to another owner and they were going, I'm also HR, so I'm handling that as well. To your point, I think it's helpful for us to just take a beat and go, okay, well, we acknowledge a lot of the aspects of actually leading a home care agency and the difficult conversation that needs to be had around the profit and loss statement. It can be daunting. It can be scary. I think of the quote by Tim Ferriss, right, where he says that your success, and I think it's Tim Ferriss, and he says, your success in life is predicated upon how you can have difficult conversations.

Now, I think about that phrasing in with others, but as I was preparing for this podcast, I was thinking, oh my gosh, well, I think it's difficult conversations even with yourself and using the profit and loss statement as a guide, really, not as a guide, but as a helpful barometer to have that conversation. It's a conversation starter and it sounds like for you and your organization, you really act more as a guide to help people look at that story and be able to have that conversation. I'm wondering, because you had a phrase that resonated with me when we talked about this, and I'm hoping you can elaborate on it. What do you mean when you say that many agency owners feel like if they can make payroll and have money in the bank, then that's all they need to do when it comes to the profit and loss statement?

DC: I think it's really just probably one of the... When you're being pulled in a bunch of different directions, like you just described, it's probably one of the easiest, like most accessible way to like gauge the financial success of the business because you can open your banking app on your phone and say like, hey, there's this many dollars left over after payroll came out. Like, okay, that's where I need to be right now.

And that's, that is, I mean, looking at that cash balance and also, you know, not to get into the accounting vault weeds, but sometimes the profit and loss isn't telling you that cash story as well. So there's like different, there's the cash aspect of it, then there's like the profitability aspect of it, but understanding like how those work together. You know, really take some of that fear of the unknown away and I would say the more you engage with it, the more that it becomes familiar and easier to look at the profit and loss. And then going back to...Just, you know, thinking about like a home care agency owner, a lot of the times that is like their livelihood. So their personal and their professional like success and wealth are like very closely intertwined. And so the performance of that business oftentimes like can impact lifestyle.

And I think as part of that, there's this feeling around like the books, as people will say, of like pride or like, I don't want maybe something to be seen that, you know, is happening or, you know, just this guarded feeling towards it, which is completely understandable. And I always say that we're accountants, but we and we were like strategic partners and we lead strategy sessions with our clients. But sometimes it feels like we become therapists because we're seeing like things that are going on in those books that like family members might not even know about. So there's balancing like, yes, there's the business aspect of things and like responsibly we should be looking at, you know, the financial statements. But then there's also like that personal piece of it that we have to tap into and understand like, this person did this, this and this to get to this place right now in terms of like financial success. And so we need to like appreciate that, understand it. And then like, how do we help guide them, as you said, you know, to continue to grow and build on that success.

RB: That's so good. I'm thinking already in my brain, I'm going, oh my gosh, we need to make another podcast on personal stories around and how they're crafted through the profit and loss statement. That's actually what I thought of when I thought of a P&L. I go in, okay, sure, there's numbers and that can be daunting, but really, it's a story.

It is a story and thankfully you have individuals like yourself that are able to hold people's stories well. Not what I was originally intending to talk about, but so glad that we went to that, we went down that way because what I, if I was to go back to the path that I was thinking of originally, I think the word I want to go back to is clarity. That's what I have found with our conversation together is really for you, Dana Charumbira, is you are looking to provide clarity. And it's interesting you bring up some of the differences, right? You were talking about cash and then income and some of the differences between that.

And I want to get into the meat potatoes of it, which is a phrase that may be, you know, that may not be as noticed, but is absolutely important, which is gross margin. I mean, if you were to stand on a soapbox and from some of the interactions that we've had, I'm almost sure that that is one of the soapboxes that you're going to stand on and really let people know about is the correlation between gross margin and the fact that it is truly the driver for everything. So can you explain a little bit more about that and why this is a hill for you and why it's so important to you?

DC: Yeah, so kind of just to reinforce the reason I find it to be so important is we looked at profitability. So like bottom line return on sales, which is just a measure of like income relative to your revenue, which is a lot of the times like a measure of success, you know, after you've paid all your bills. And so the higher the return on sales, the better the business is doing.

And one of the drivers of higher return on sales was a higher gross margin, which makes sense because that's like a bulk of home care, right? It's the people that are delivering the care. And so the more that we can improve our gross margin, the more that we have to cover our overhead costs and grow the business or, you know, do it, what needs to be done to improve the bottom line.

And so we focus heavily on gross margin as the industry does, and I'll just define it quickly just to kind of make sure we're on the same page with how we think about it, which is pretty in line with industry standards. So it's caregiver wage, the employer tax on that, which we assume to be 7.5 to 10, sometimes 11% depending on the state, and then your workers' compensation associated with that wage that's being paid.

There's like other minor things that'll flow through there. So like if there's supplies or, you know, merchant fees that you're paying, but the bulk of it is like that caregiver wage and the associated cost for delivering care. And so focusing on getting that, we like to see that 40 to 45%, which is usually you're taking your caregiver wage and doubling it as like your sort of starting point for what you're charging clients. And again, that varies based on like the tax and your workers' compensation rate that you have in there as well. But really starting to, you know, track that over time, because you can do like a snapshot of it and say like, here's where we're at right now.

And that's fine, but like really we start to look at that over time and then understand like what's driving that, the levers behind it, so that the agencies can like make more informed decisions.

I can give a couple of examples that I think help bring that to life a little bit, just because it kind of, I think sometimes accounting sounds very theoretical, but then when you like bring it into practice or like how a business owner would use that information. So when I'm looking at a gross margin, I'm thinking, okay, in home care, really, there's a few drivers, which, and I don't want to oversimplify it, but you have your volume of hours, you have your price per hour on like your income side.

And that's typically what makes up your revenue fluctuation. And then on the cost side, you have your caregiver wage as the main driver, because everything else is really a function of that. So we oftentimes track like what's the average price per hour you're charging clients and what's the average pay rate per hour you're charging or you're paying your caregivers.

And I would say there's actually a lot of meaningful conversation around both. But what I find what we uncover more is like on the pay rate per hour is when we present an average pay rate and we don't layer on like, it's not just the total loaded cost with the employer tax and the workers comp. It's purely just like, here's on average what you pay a caregiver per hour in this time period that we're looking at. We get pushback a lot from owners. They're like, no, you're telling me my average is $22.50. Our starting point is $21 an hour. That's what we pay our caregivers. And it's like, well, let's take a look at the data.

Okay, well, we went into overtime. So, you know, overtime was 10% of total cost, and we can only pass on 5% of that.

Another big one is there'll be call-offs, especially with the caregiver shortage and like just, or if you're going up in hours, you don't have the caregiver bench to fill those. You're going into overtime or you're paying staff incentives. So you say, hey, there's a call-off, there's a last minute shift that came up because we onboarded a new client. We're going to pay 50 cents more an hour than our, you know, $21 standard.

All these things add up. And so when an owner steps back and they're like, oh my goodness, I thought we were paying $21, we're paying $21.50. It has this impact on my gross margin. And that's when you can start to have conversations with like your scheduling team and, hey, help me understand, like, what are we doing to fill these shifts? You know, how are we going about it? Maybe the scheduler has a favorite caregiver that they're going to, and that person's already in overtime. So then they're making incentive on top of that overtime.

So you're starting to understand like your employees' habits. How do you coach them? How do you improve what they're doing? Not like it's right or wrong because scheduling is a tough job in home care, but just guiding them and saying like, here, if we did this instead, you know, this would have this impact and here's how you're contributing to the company as well. Same thing on the recruiting side of like the caregiver bench isn't there. You can bring that recruiter into that and say like, here's the number of caregivers that we want to bring on in this period. So that's where I mean, like it starts to tell a story and it starts to help that business owner feel like confident in some of the conversations that they're having, because it's not just from like a theory that they have. So that's one example on like the price per or the pay rate per hour side. Price per hour, I would say is a little bit like.

I do think everyone's trying to improve that and push that up as much as possible, but the agencies that are more strategic about it will say like, okay, we know we have to bring our caregiver rates up by this much based on merit or based on the current labor market. What do we need to look at in terms of like incoming price per hour for clients? Or how do we bring up like our current client's price per hour to make sure we're protecting our margin? So that, yes, I will go on for a long time about gross margin, but those are just some like examples that are relatable around like how an agency owner, when they start to kind of understand and get comfortable with those numbers, can, you know, start to make informed decisions and have conversations with their staff.

RB: I want to go back to a concept and I appreciate you sharing that. And you had mentioned when it comes to caregiver rates and how it relates to that double amount. So I was hoping you can elaborate a little bit more on bill rate versus caregiver pay rate, and then and how those two relate.

DC: Yeah, that's a great question. So gross margin is typically like a percent, so it's 40 to 45 percent as a target. And then your gross profit is the difference between your price per hour that you're charging your client and the pay rate per hour that you're charging your, that you're paying your caregiver.

If you basically take that pay rate and double it, so you're saying like, well, I'm paying my caregiver, let's use a simple example, $20 an hour, and I'm going to bill then $40 an hour. When you load on the employer tax and the workers' comp, then you typically will hit that 40 to 45% of like that gross margin target on obviously, the higher that price per hour can be, the more like comfort you have with, you know, some of the pay rate. But I think sometimes we also run into you know, if there's a really good reimbursement rate with like the VA pays really well, sometimes people are like, well, we're paying our caregivers more because we're getting paid more. And I caregivers do very meaningful work and there's, you know, I definitely think that there's a conversation around that. But it's also the question is like, you don't want to pass all of that on to your labor cost. Do you want to, you know, see if you can use that to maybe offset like a 24-7 case that you might not be able to double that rate because sometimes the volume of hours makes up for that lower gross profit or gross margin that you might see.

RB: Okay, that's really helpful to consider that. And that percentage is also really, it's very tangible as well. And I think you're taking something from the theoretical, ethereal, accounting vault, intimidating to going, okay, let's shoot for 40 to 45 percent. And that's very,

It's very realistic. Not necessarily realistic, but being able to go, okay, I can see this now. This is a helpful target or goal for me to have. I want to move on to another topic that also seemed to, you really seemed, for lack of a better phrase, you seemed really stoked on this type of topic, which was, you know, I'd go, okay, so gross margin, that is, that's Dana soapbox, but then the other idea, and I suppose they connect, but it's this idea of automation and systems. And so I'm hoping because I think at times we use these buzzwords, right? Like a circle back kind of situation. You're going, all right, come on. Let's start making these things a little bit more, again, tangible, going from the ethereal theoretical to something very practical. But when we had spoken about this, preparing for this podcast, you said, okay, well, one of the topics that was really important to you was that automation and systems set in place. So can you explain that and how they correlate with gross margin or in general?

DC: Yeah, and I love that you're talking about this because there's such, like you're saying, buzzword right now is like AI, and so like AI and automation, like all these things happening, and like they're going to take over all these jobs, which maybe, I don't know, but so I, and I do think about them separately. So like, hey, there's AI and then there's automation, and we try to really, when we first start working with agencies, focus heavily on the automation between their client management system and their accounting software. We pretty much work exclusively in QuickBooks Online because everything talks to it. And then their payroll software and QuickBooks Online. And that sounds like so basic. And I would say maybe 60% of the time there is some connection already between the client management system and the accounting software, but it's not configured in a way that gives that agency like the data that it wants on the accounting side. And what I mean by that is they see like their revenue coming in, but they, if they're working with different payer sources, they might not know that, you know, 50% is private pay, 30% is VA and 20% is other. And so I'll get to why that's relevant when we talk more about like how that plays in with financial reporting. Payroll is like the bigger one and I just think that's because it can feel so...overwhelming. Like if you look at a payroll software configuration to the accounting software, it's called like general ledger interface, which like, I mean, that just sounds like confusing when you think about it, right?

RB: All right, sweet. Yeah, exactly.

DC: And so, and then they start asking you like for your chart of accounts and like, where do you want these things to go? And you know, it's like, I'm not an accountant, I'm a home care agency owner. So wherever you think they should go. And that's even if the payroll software hand holds their way through this. So oftentimes that's a very underutilized feature, but so critical. The reason that these are critical for us, like underlying sort of structures and foundations because that's how we get information to our clients very timely. So one of the kind of jumping back to the opening question or like the opening kind of conversation we were having around, you know, I don't look at my P&L. Well, oftentimes that's because people don't have it done for like 3 months after the month's done. So you're like, hey, I don't care what happened in January, I'm in April, I'm almost in May.

And so if we can click a button and get that information into the accounting software, like we're able to turn around financial statements in a time period that makes sense for that owner to like really look at and say like, okay, I know that this happened two, three weeks ago, I can still do something about it today. So that's why those like automation pieces are important. And then going back to like looping in, you know, why is that client management software information coming into the accounting vault software and like a structured way?

So we'll look a lot at, you know, like what is your payer source mix over time and what are the reimbursement rates or prices that you're charging. So like if you're working with the VA, typically the reimbursement rate is at the private pay level or higher. You have the private pay segment and then maybe you have some sort of Medicaid or another reimbursement source.

And so when we start to look at like the shift or the difference month on month of what revenue is coming from those payer sources, we can track like, okay, your price per hour is going in this direction because the revenue is coming from these different sources. And that's how we know like why gross margin is going one way or the other. So I think of it as this like layering of like foundational, just like getting the data into the accounting software. Okay, let's get it organized and in a timely manner and then the top is like, let's actually have, you know, numbers that an agency owner can look at that aren't just, you know, numbers on a profit and loss. It's like, hey, because you signed on this contract, it did this to your price per hour and therefore like your gross margin went up or down by this percent. You're making this much more money this month because of it. So sounds super simple to like connect the systems, but getting that done can like unlock this whole new level of like timely reporting.

RB: You're absolutely right. So you're right that it is simple, but at the same time, I want to go back even further and you were talking about stories, right? And this goes back to the story and appreciate professionals like you that are able to hold stories well in that way and just find ways to make those connections.

As we're sort of landing the plane here, one of the things I absolutely love to do is just, and it sounds like you and I both resonate with connection and human connection. And so a question I like to ask my guests to add a human element to it is, what is something hobby interests that your professional network would be surprised that you are interested in right now.

DC: Probably a surprise that I don't talk about often is I do, well, I'll say do because I'm getting back into it. I have a three-year-old, so I kind of got off this for a little while, but endurance road cycling. So I've done like very long endurance rd cycles, predominantly when I was living abroad. So I've done three major races a year, for like a series of a few years. So that was like, for me, a very like therapeutic being on that bike outside is just like an incredible experience. Cycling in a race with like a group is very cool just to see everyone like working together and just like the mental perseverance that you have to have when it's like wind in your face.

You're like, why is the wind coming at me right now? Who put this wind gust right here? Is this cycle over yet? But like you persevere through it and that feeling afterwards is just like so amazing. And just being on a bike is like so much fun. I always say that.

I couldn't, I jokingly say, because I swam and played water polo when I was younger, I can't do land sports, like I'm not good at running, but like being on a bike is just like such a fun activity for me, and I just find a lot of enjoyment from those long cycles.

RB: Love it. When you're saying long distance, in my mind, I'm like 20 miles is really long. So what, oh, you're laughing. Oh, okay. Sounds good. Like, okay, but what's the distance that you've gone that would be considered long?

DC: Yeah. So this, no, no, that's like a, that's probably for me right now that is a long ride, but we, so there it was in kilometers because it was overseas. So like the longest one was like 110 kilometers and I'm trying to think that's probably like 70 miles maybe if you divide I think yeah.

RB: Yeah, that's not, okay. Yeah, my legs would cramp and I would need a lot of those little Gatorade gels.

DC: Yeah, those help.

RB:  Gosh, well, thank you so much for, you know, it's so interesting. I was thinking, okay, accounting. I'm in the same boat. I'm going, oh my gosh, accounting. It's so theoretical. How can I even, make this practical or tangible, and then you said stories, and you really tied it all in together very well, and I feel like I could talk to you for much longer about many different things. My brain is making all sorts of connections and different ideas for another time. But gosh, I appreciate you taking the time, Dana.

If people want to connect with you or get a hold of you somehow, what's the best way for people to reach out?

DC: Yeah, so our website is thehomecarecpas.com. I'm dana@thehomecarecpas.com on email. But there's, we're on LinkedIn. We're very active and very visible. So really out there. Yeah, for sure. Happy to have chats. We love talking to new like owners and hearing what's going on in their agency and how we can help. So just really open to conversations.

And I will be at CAHSAH, so I'll be in the desert in Palm Springs, end of June.

RB: Perfect. Be sure to say hi to Dana at CAHSAH. Dana, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

And thank you everyone for tuning in to our latest episode produced by StudioOne. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share this episode and subscribe. For more insights like this, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.