Last week, I attended a networking event hosted by the Atlanta Senior Care Professional Network (ASCPN).
As part of the event, we were asked to sit at tables of about a dozen people—ideally with people we didn’t already know. Tommy, Kirk, and I split up and each joined a different table.
At my table, nearly everyone was from a home care agency. That alone wasn’t surprising given the audience, but what stood out immediately was how new those agencies were. Almost every person I spoke with had been operating for a year or less.
After the event, I compared notes with Tommy and Kirk. Different tables, same experience. A large number of brand-new agencies, all trying to get established at the same time.
That got me thinking.
Was this just a quirk of the event, or is something broader happening in the industry?
A Different Kind of Operator
One of the more interesting conversations I had was with Jonathan Lin, a new owner of a Butterfly Home Care franchise.
Jonathan doesn’t come from a traditional caregiving background. His experience is in areas like group dynamics and inventory analysis—fields that are certainly valuable, but not what most people would associate with running a home care agency.
And yet, he didn’t come across as someone trying to figure things out from scratch.
He talked about structured training, ongoing sessions, and having a clear “starter kit” for how to operate the business. Not just general guidance, but a defined way of working that he could follow and build from.
That detail matters more than it might seem at first glance.
Because Jonathan isn’t building a business from nothing.
He’s stepping into one that has already been defined.
From Training Employees to Training Owners
Most of the time, when process documentation comes up, the conversation tends to stay at the employee level.
It’s framed around onboarding, consistency, and reducing reliance on tribal knowledge so that work can be performed reliably by more than just a few key people.
All of that is valid, and all of it matters.
But what I saw at ASCPN was the same idea taken a step further.
These weren’t employees being onboarded into a role.
These were owners being onboarded into a business.
And they were able to do that because the business itself had been translated into something teachable—something that could be explained, followed, and repeated.
That’s a much higher standard.
It requires a level of clarity that goes beyond “we generally do things this way” and moves into “this is how this business operates.”
What a Franchise Actually Represents
When most people think about franchises, the focus usually lands on branding, marketing, or shared services.
Those elements are part of it, but they aren’t the foundation.
At its core, a franchise is a business that has been defined well enough to be replicated—not just in theory, but in practice, by someone who may not have prior experience in the industry.
That doesn’t guarantee success. There are still too many variables for that.
What it does provide is a clear starting point. The operator isn’t beginning from a blank page; they’re stepping into a structured system that has already been thought through.
That’s what Jonathan has access to.
And it’s what makes his situation easier to understand once you look at it through that lens.
Where This Breaks Down in Complex Organizations
The contrast becomes more apparent when you look at larger, more complex organizations—particularly those operating across multiple services, locations, and teams.
In those environments, the “way things get done” often evolves organically. Different locations develop their own habits. Teams solve problems in slightly different ways. Leadership carries a mental model of how the organization is supposed to operate, but that model isn’t always fully translated into something others can follow.
That works for a time, especially when experienced leaders are closely involved.
But as the organization grows, the gaps start to show.
New leaders interpret things differently.
Processes drift from one location to another.
Execution becomes inconsistent, even when the intent is aligned.
At that point, growth doesn’t just add scale—it adds variation.
The Extreme Case That Proves the Point
What I saw at ASCPN is, in many ways, an extreme version of the principle we talk about all the time.
If your processes are clear enough, you can onboard employees more effectively.
If your processes are exceptionally clear, you can onboard operators.
That doesn’t change the complexity of running the business, but it does change how someone enters into it. Instead of building their understanding from scattered conversations and past experience, they can start from a defined model of how the organization is meant to function.
That distinction matters more as the stakes increase.
Bringing It Back to the Organizations We Work With
For leaders of multi-site senior living organizations and complex mission-driven providers, the challenge isn’t starting from scratch. It’s aligning what already exists.
Multiple services.
Multiple locations.
Different teams, each doing important work.
Over time, those layers create a kind of operational gravity. Things settle into place, but not always in a way that’s consistent or intentional.
Growth adds to that complexity. New locations come online. New leaders step in. Expectations expand, but the underlying processes don’t always keep pace.
That’s where clarity becomes less of a “nice to have” and more of a requirement.
Not just for onboarding new employees, but for ensuring that the organization operates the way leadership intends across every location and every team.
Because without that clarity, each part of the organization starts to define the work in its own way.
And over time, those small differences compound.
A Simple Question Worth Asking
The experience at ASCPN didn’t introduce a new idea as much as it reinforced an existing one.
There’s a meaningful difference between a business that depends on the people who currently run it and a business that can be taught to someone new.
In a franchise, that shows up in the ability to onboard an owner.
In a complex organization, it shows up in whether leaders across locations can execute the business in a consistent way.
If someone stepped into one of your locations tomorrow, how much of what they need to know is already defined?
And how much would they have to figure out on their own?
If that question gives you pause, it may be worth taking a closer look at how clearly your operations are defined.
