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.