Friendly Faces Senior Care is proof that a home care company doesn’t need to be a large franchise network in order to see continuous growth.

In the market that Friendly Faces Senior Care serves, the Houston, Texas-based provider has succeeded in becoming a recognizable brand.

“We became known across town as — we are mostly ladies — the ladies in pink,” Friendly Faces Senior Care CEO Qiana James said, referencing the company’s uniform and visual branding.

The company has also set itself apart by specializing in delivering home-based care to patients living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Currently, roughly 6.7 million people in the U.S. are living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

James appeared on the latest episode of Home Health Care News’ Disrupt podcast, where she discussed how Friendly Faces Senior Care came to focus on Alzheimer’s and dementia, the importance of creating a memorable visual brand and all of the new business opportunities the company plans to zero-in on this year.

Below is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

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HHCN: Can you talk about how Friendly Faces Senior Care came to specialize in delivering care to patients living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.

For me, it’s very personal and that was because of my own experience with my father, who had Alzheimer’s for a very long time. When I got in the industry, I noticed that there were so many clients that were dealing with the same type of condition. That’s why I came to specialize in working with clients that have Alzheimer’s and dementia. It just came from a place of really knowing and understanding it from a personal level, because of my father having it for so many years, and all of the different challenges that we faced in trying to care for him to the best of our ability.

A lot of techniques, and things, that I learned with caring for my own father, I’ve been able to bring into my agency for my caregivers to do with our clients, and then also to be able to guide and counsel our family caregivers.

What are some of the biggest challenges to delivering care to this population of seniors, and how has Friendly Faces Senior Care navigated these challenges?

The biggest challenge is that this is not a cheap service. This is very expensive, and so many seniors, for the most part, need this service, but just a small amount can actually afford to pay out of pocket.

When you look at it with the baby boomers, we’re going to have a big wave of more people that need our services and the cost of labor continues to rise. We’ve got a big problem on our hands. So many people need care, but they can’t afford it. To me, that’s the biggest challenge we have in our industry.

In 2023, Friendly Faces Senior Care made it on the Inc 5000 list. I interviewed you around that time, and you said your company’s branding and marketing really helped to move the needle when it came to growth. Can you talk about that?

My favorite part of the business is being able to really dive into the branding and the marketing because that’s where my very core strength is.

I had been in sales for 12 years, and went on to start an agency. I love branding and marketing. I was able to take that knowledge and love of branding and marketing and put it immediately into my agency. It wasn’t something that someone had to teach me, or it wasn’t something that someone had to tell me to do. From the beginning of building my agency, branding and marketing was very key and at the top of the list of things that I had to do. When it came to moving the needle [as far as] growth, it did.

When you are an independent agency, you have limited funds, and you’re competing with big franchises who pull their money together. They have lots of funds when it comes to advertising and in branding, and they do a really great job of that. It was imperative that I focus on branding and marketing, to really set myself as a difference among other agencies. It’s something that to this day, I still get a lot of comments about how we’ve marketed and branded the company.

At the time, you talked about how some of the big brands that we are all familiar with have a recognizable visual component. Can you talk about what that looks like at your company?

If you go to Arizona or another state, you’re not going to know Friendly Faces, but if you go to Houston, for a good part of the area, you’re going to know [the agency]. One of the main things that people know us for is pink.

When I sat down and brainstormed, what am I going to even call this company, I just had a bunch of words on a [Microsoft] Word document. I started thinking about, what do I see myself as? That’s how I came up with the name Friendly Faces because I felt like that described who I was as a person, and then I’m very girly. I love girly things. I love pink, and that’s how I came to really focus on the pink.

I felt like that’s a strong way to brand and it’s not just like your baby pink, it’s fuchsia. I think fuchsia is such a very strong, powerful and feminine color, and it’s a memorable color. And so as far as my branding goes, we always wear pink. We always wear our fuchsia. We became known across town — as we are mostly ladies — “the ladies in pink.” That’s the main thing we’re known for.

Also, with our name being Friendly Faces, we also became known … for being especially friendly. That was a requirement. When I interview any potential sales manager, they have to have a great smile, and a friendly persona, and that’s what we’re known for.

As the cost of delivering care has increased, client retention has been top priority for home care leaders. How has this impacted your business? Have you been able to maintain current prices, and what’s been the current strategy around client retention?

I’m happy that we retain a lot of our clients. Of course, in this industry, you have a lot of clients that are only on for a certain amount of time. We may get them in the last stages of their life. You get some clients that come on and it’s really only a temporary solution until maybe they move into a different place, or a different setting. For those that really are trying to maintain their independence, and they’re utilizing home care in order to do that, we’re able to retain a lot of those clients.

As far as cost, every single agency that I know had to significantly increase their rates. It’s something that I’ve never seen happen in this industry at such a fast pace, as we saw happen since COVID, and that’s directly because the cost of labor across the country has increased. That is something we had to do as well.

I was afraid, because I was one of those companies that never would go through and raise my rate. I had clients that had been on service for years, and never had a price increase, but we had a strategy. We talked to them, we sent out letters, and surprisingly, we only lost one client. I thought we would lose a lot more, but everybody understood what is going on in the economy, and so everyone was kind of expecting it.

Are there any untapped business opportunities in home care that you believe not enough providers are engaging in? Any plans to lean into any of these opportunities. If so, how?

That’s exactly what my 2025 is about — getting into some of these untapped markets or areas that I don’t see a lot of non-medical agencies concentrating on, one being care management,

I’m starting to see some tiptoeing around care management. That is something that we are expanding into in 2025, and then also medical staffing. There’s only a few agencies, and usually they are one of the franchises, that even touch medical staffing. They really kind of parallel in a lot of ways. We started a whole medical staffing division in 2025.

Lastly, I would say private-pay nursing. That’s probably the biggest need that we have in our industry because it goes hand in hand with that non-medical care. Only a few agencies are actually doing private-pay nursing. It takes higher credential people, in order to run a private-pay nursing agency, and it’s a higher liability, but it is something that is so needed with our clients.

One challenge that remains top of mind for providers is recruitment and retention. A couple years ago, at a conference you spoke on a panel that touched on the importance of understanding what attracts employees and what leads to dissatisfaction. What have you learned about this over the years, and how have you applied it to Friendly Faces Senior Care?

I really am happy that at such a small stage [of the company], I immediately started going to conferences. It was the conferences, and the teachers at the conferences, that really taught me to look out for things I didn’t know I needed to.

One of the biggest things that’s been so helpful for us has been to do these employee surveys, and we do them on a monthly basis. There’s a main company that we use, but there’s other companies that do it as well, and we track what those employees are saying. You can have first hand knowledge of what’s making your employees satisfied or dissatisfied. That has taught us a lot. Two of the main things that we always hear consistently from caregiver to caregiver … is they always want more training and to feel more appreciated. Taking that knowledge is something that has helped us to really kind of fine tune things at Friendly Faces.

I’m happy to say we do have a new initiative we’re working on this year that we’re about to roll out. We call it the friendly book, and it’s going to mirror something like a Facebook, but an internal one. This is just another way in which our employees want them to feel connected to us, and we want to engage them. Then we will also have ways in which to incentivize them as well.

What has been the impact on your recruitment and retention efforts? Do you have any numbers you can share?

When we’re recruiting, there’s different ways in which we’re doing that, not just your traditional, ‘let’s go on Indeed.’ Because of this, we have a lot of caregivers. It’s very diverse when it comes to caregivers. We got young caregivers that are students going to college, or they’re nursing students. I think our oldest caregiver is in their 80s. We have a lot of caregivers that for years, have come on and come off, as their circumstances changed. Maybe they’re able to pick up additional part-time work for six months, and then their circumstances change and they can’t. We have a lot of them that come back to us.

Right now, we’re sitting at almost 400 caregivers. There are some of our caregivers that we have had for up to eight, almost 10 years. I think that’s a really good sign when you have your caregivers and they’re sticking around. We’re an agency, just like everyone else. You’re always going to lose caregivers. That’s just the norm in our industry, but I’m happy that we have so many caregivers that have actually been with us for years.

What new ways do you plan to achieve growth this year?

I’m very excited about 2025 because there’s so many new things that we are working on. As an entrepreneur at heart, that’s something that we just thrive on. We have a new system called Carry AI, and that’s a virtual caregiving system. You’ll start seeing this pop up. A lot of people are starting to adopt some type of virtual care giving system. Our goal is to try and help that senior to live as independent as possible for as long as possible.

In about three months, we will be licensed for the new CNA school that we’re opening. We have so much in the works for 2025. I’m so very excited.

What are some of your long-term goals and short-term goals for Friendly Faces Senior Care?

From a short-term perspective, continue to fine tune my processes and my procedures. That’s number one, we’ve done a great job, but we still have work to do. Also, from a short-term perspective, continue to expand across Houston markets. I have about four offices, and I want to expand to about maybe three or four more offices.

From a long-term perspective, my goal is to become the number one provider of home care services in the state of Texas.

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