My feeling is that you can't perform at a high level in private duty without both.  If your executive team doesn't feel passionate about helping people, your company won't survive for long.  Additionally, if your executive team doesn't have a strong foundation in business management, it'll be difficult to thrive as well.

In this issue we would like to take a look at five lessons from completely unrelated industries that drive home some core business concepts.

The soft drink industry teaches us about branding.  Ask the question, "Coke or Pepsi?", and many people have a distinct opinion.  Cola is extremely similar regardless of which bottle delivers it.  Many consumers would be hard-pressed to identify their favorite brand by taste alone.  Create brand recognition for your company using slogans, colors, and logos.

From the cereal industry we learn about packaging.  Breakfast cereal would be much less popular today if it weren't for Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam.  Because of packaging we are willing to pay three bucks a box for ground corn.  Create a package and identity for your services to differentiate you from your competitors.

Starbucks Coffee gets us to pay $6.00 for something that costs $.50 at McDonald's, and is usually available free in the break room.  How do they do it?  They make us feel like our cup of coffee was customized just for us!  Use customization to meet their needs and you will create customer loyalty.

Two very different industries teach us about the importance of quality.  The automotive industry and the healthcare industry in America are fiercely driven by the perception of quality. 

Did you know that General Motors makes a minivan sold exclusively in Asia for approximately $4,000? The body of this minivan is constructed out of an aluminum alloy.  Because of its weight is also gets approximately 35-45 miles to the gallon.  They determined that this incredibly economical vehicle would never sell in America because of quality and safety concerns.

The county I lived in, Berks County, Pennsylvania, ran a newspaper article a few years ago about how the county of 300,000 had seven CAT scan machines.  Two of the machines were at the largest hospital, two other hospitals have one each, a rehab facility has one and two outpatient imaging centers each own one.  Each of these machines cost several hundred thousand dollars, and the only ones that were in near constant use were at the outpatient centers.  Each of the hospitals felt they had to own a CAT scan to be competitive.  Ironically, the entire province of Ontario had only seven CAT scan machines at that time, six of them in Toronto.  In America we complain about health care costs, yet our impressions of quality drive the market in which redundancy is the norm, and profits must be earned at multiple levels.

If you're still using the "any warm body" approach to caregiver recruitment, selection and retention, you will lose in the marketplace, eventually.  American consumers demand quality and are willing to pay for it.

Finally, a lesson from the "dot com" industry.  Be profitable.  During the Internet boom the survivors were the companies with solid business models aimed at profits.  Google, Yahoo, America Online and eBay all were profitable before the public offerings.  Today these companies are the strongest in their industry.  Hundreds of others were not profitable before their public offerings, only a handful, such as Amazon, have thrived.  Pay attention to your numbers.  Having a sound business model with profits in mind that keeps expenses in check is critical to success.  Strategic decisions about growth are inhibited every day by not having good quality data.  While most of this data is financial, there are other critical measures to your success.  Pay attention to your numbers.

Become a student of business in general, and your business will continue to grow from the lessons you learn outside of private duty.