National Post

June 4, 2007

ENTREPRENEUR

John DeHart and Ken Sim each left Ontario for British Columbia, hoping to make a mark in the growing healthcare business. By coincidence, they each turned to the same business consultant, who brought the two together. The result is Nurse Next Door, an in-home care provider that continues to grow each year.

John DeHart, 34, and Ken Sim, 36, are patient, painstaking young men. Their motto could be: "Do it right the first time." When they launched their company, Nurse Next Door Professional Homecare Services, in 2001, what they had in mind was a new business that would be the proving ground for an eventual franchise operation that would span North America --and maybe even reach well beyond.

Doing it right was paramount. After all, who would spend $30,000 of their hard earned cash plus a 5% royalty on sales for rights to a business fraught with problems?

It has taken about six years but the dynamic pair has finally been able to start their expansion. Late last year, they awarded three franchises for Nurse Next Door to would-be entrepreneurs like themselves in Burnaby, New Westminster and Kamloops.

The operations will be modelled on their original Nurse Next Door, which retains the rights to B.C.'s Lower Mainland. The concept is simple; execution was anything but.

Nurse Next Door offers professional in-home health care, independent living support services and palliative care to anyone who needs it, although about 97% of their clients are either elderly or the children of aged parents. Clients may need help just two hours a day, perhaps to accompany them on a walk; they may need a certified care aide during daytime hours to prepare simple meals, keep track of medication and be a companion; they may need a round- the-clock registered nurse to provide palliative care.

Nurse Next Door can supply all those services at what many families would see as reasonable cost. Mr. Sim says most service can be had for between $19 and $25 an hour, although the services of registered nurses or other highly qualified professionals can cost significantly more than that.

That is how the money comes in. Currently, the original operation has about 1,000 health care professionals of various levels of qualification on its books. Many are recruited from local community colleges, which offer a six-month certified care aide course. Others are experienced professionals looking for part-time work.

"Recruiting was actually never a major problem," Mr. DeHart says.

On the simplest scale, money goes out through salaries. The company pays $11 to $14 an hour to health care aides and significantly more to registered nurses and those with advanced qualifications.

It is all of the things that happen in between that complicate the situation and have occupied much of the pair's time for the past six years.

"Scheduling is one of the biggest challenges you face in an operation like this," Mr. Sim says. "We knew from the start that if this was to succeed as a franchise operation, we would have to develop ways to make it a simple and smooth-running as possible for potential franchisees. That meant we would have to be responsible for scheduling, who goes where for what hours, what they were to do and whom they were going to do it for."

Back again to doing it right. The pair became so good at creating best practices they were invited to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Birth of Giants program, whose members represent the 60 best entrepreneurs in high-growth industries around the world.

One of them was the creation of a call centre, staffed round-the- clock, which handles all scheduling for the original company, the three new franchises now in the process of recruiting their own staff and any new franchises yet to come.

"All our franchisees have to focus on is three things," Mr. Sim says. "That includes sales, recruiting staff and customer relations."

The pair came to the idea of Nurses Next Door independently but on parallel tracks. Mr. DeHart had been a high-tech whiz kid involved in various start-ups. In 2001, he relocated from Toronto to Vancouver to join his future wife, who was a PhD student at the University of British Columbia, and began to look for his next project. Maybe something in health care, he thought.

Mr. Sim was an investment banker with CIBC World Markets. He, too, wanted his own company, again maybe in health care. He quit his job and left Toronto with his wife for his home town of Vancouver.

The draw of health care was its prodigious future. Canada's Baby Boom bulge is ageing, expected to live longer and have more accumulated wealth than any other generation. Eventually, many of them will need the services of companies such as Nurse Next Door to maintain an independent lifestyle.

What the pair shared in addition to a then-ill-defined goal was a common mentor -- Milton Wong, chairman of HSBC Asset Management Canada. When each of them approached him independently for advice, he brought them together as likely partners. Today, Mr. Wong is chairman of Nurse Next Door.

"Once we agreed on the idea, realizing its terrific potential, we both set about creating this company," Mr. DeHart says. Creating it on a shoestring, he adds. For the first few months, their office was Vancouver's Kerrisdale Starbucks and their only business investment was a pair of cellphones.

"We agreed not to take salaries until we broke even; that took about nine months," Mr. Sim adds.

Patience and hard work is now bringing rewards. The company will continue to expand in what Mr. Sim describes as concentric circles. Once those three new franchises are established and profitable, they will become the centre of another circle reaching out across British Columbia and the rest of Canada.

"That is not to say if the right franchise partner came to us tomorrow from Toronto and wanted to work with us we would refuse," Mr. DeHart says. Doing it right, however, includes being able to correctly accommodate the new clients they have taken on.

The two plan to have up to 12 Canadian franchises by the end of 2007 and a presence in 30 U.S. cities by 2011.

"Eventually, we will be a North American franchise operation," Mr. Sim says. "That was our goal right from the start."

NURSE NEXT DOOR:

Head office: Vancouver

Business sector: In-home health care

Market: British Columbia

Number of Employees: 1,000

Website: www.nursenextdoor.ca

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