Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2012 | Page 10

Grow Market Lead

By Kerry Pipes

CEO
profile: Right Place, Right Time
Right at Home founder sees continued growth

A

s a hospital administrator,
Allen Hager had personally seen the anguish that
families faced when searching for safe, appropriate, quality home
care services for their family members
returning home.
“There was a gap between the transition of care that was needed and given
in the hospital and care that was needed
when the patient transitioned back home,”
says the 54-year old founder and CEO
of Right at Home. His desire to create
a healthcare resource to fill this gap led
him to launch the in-home senior care
and assistance company in 1995, based
in Omaha.
That “can do” attitude has been a part
of Hager’s makeup for a long time. The
West Virginia native’s first career followName: Allen Hager
Title: Founder, CEO
Company: Right at Home
Units: 243 units in 5 countries
Age: 54
Family: Wife Vivian, two daughters, 20
and 18
Years in franchising: 12
Years in current position: 12

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Franchiseupdate Iss u e II, 2 0 1 2

ing college was in state government. It’s
where he first was exposed to healthcare
and social programs. It’s also where he
learned that the wheels of government
turn slowly.
“I like to try to improve things and
make things better,” he says. “The longer
I was in government, the more I discovered I was more suited to the efficiencies
and directness of the business world.”
So he walked away from public service, earned an MBA, and went to work
in the private healthcare system, first
in West Virginia and then in Nebraska.
From 1986 to 1994, he poured himself
into healthcare administration. But by the
early 1990s, he had begun to consider the
plight of the elderly he saw discharged
from hospitals every day, returning home
with few, if any, resources available for
their homebound future.
“The whole healthcare world was
changing, and I began to study home
healthcare and how I could build a business model to address these growing
needs,” says Hager. He was so dedicated
to the cause that he became a certified
nursing assistant so he could enter the
front lines of home healthcare and really see what was going on. He was on a
quest for solutions. With the information
he collected, Hager put his plan into action and opened Right at Home in 1995.
He spent the next five years living and
breathing the daily management of the
company. He oversaw every aspect, from
hiring caregivers and making cold calls
to managing receivables and nurturing
its growth. It was not until later that he
realized franchising might be a good way
to expand his fledgling company.
“I saw the franchise model as providing a way to build scale, how it provided
local ownership and contact with clients,
and how people could get into this at a
relatively low cost,” he says. Hager sold
his first Right at Home franchise in 2000.
Today, with 243 franchisees in 5 coun-

tries (the U.S., Canada, U.K., Brazil, and
China), the company’s big strategic push
is international growth and expansion.
Hager says he’s excited to be taking Right
at Home’s services to other parts of the
world. “People are really the same all
over the world, and caring for the elderly
at home is not limited by boundaries or
borders,” he says.
Hager says a relationship-based culture
is one of the organization’s foundational
cornerstones. “It’s important to us to be
in close, open communication with our
franchisees and that we nurture this kind
of culture.” This two-way street allows
the corporate team to “distill all the good
ideas coming in from the franchisees
and make the best ideas work for our
company,” he says.
Another key to the company’s sustained growth has been its ability to
“create a nimble organization that can
adapt and change now and moving into
the future,” says Hager. “The franchise
system will grow if you award franchises
to business people with the right motivations, and then treat them as long-term,
individual business partners rather than
just another number.”
That strategy, a great executive staff
and infrastructure, and a growing need
for home-based healthcare in the U.S.
and abroad put Right at Home in the
right place at the right time.
Leadership
What is your role as founder an B4T