Then and Now: Leading San Antonio in Home Care
In 2003, George and Laura McGuire started Griswold Home Care in San Antonio. Their goal has been simple, offer the best quality care for the lowest possible price. Over the years they have built an incredible reputation of being the leader in home care. The video does a great job highlighting where we started and where we are now.
Transcript:
George: The way I got started in Griswold Home Care was one day on a temporary duty trip while I was in the army. I read an article in Success magazine on Griswold Special Care. And I liked the environment and the values that Jean Griswold established in her company. And I specifically like the points that she made about providing caregivers a livable wage and providing an affordable option for people that needed home care. Griswold offered us the opportunity to work together as a family. But I also like the family environment that Griswold home care at the corporate level provided, like I said, it was established by Jean Griswold, not as necessarily a money making opportunity, but to fill a community need. And I feel like that network of franchisees continues today. I can reach out to people I’ve known for several years now, or even new owners and talk to them about what’s going on within their businesses.
Laura: I think one of the best parts of being in the Griswold Home Care family is a sense of community within offices, office directors, and sharing best practices. Talking about marketing ideas, all of it, there’s a lot of openness within the organization and a lot of support from headquarters. In the early days of working with Griswold Home Care, we didn’t have any name recognition here in San Antonio. We were the, actually the first Texas office to open as we developed clients. And I was able to get the feedback from them with our monthly case note calls. I could see how it was impacting our clients and our caregivers in a very positive way. And so that was very reinforcing to me as a business owner. And I found it more empowering and it motivated me to get out there and to continue marketing and bringing in more business because the more business I had, the more people I’d be able to help. I’ve enjoyed just the opportunity to see our office staff to grow individually and to see them be able to improve their finances with their homes and their families. But seeing them being able to go out into the community themselves to open cases and talk with families and do things that were maybe a little bit outside of their box originally. And I’ve enjoyed that personal growth of seeing them make an impact.
George: Like Laura says we’ve impacted numerous families over the years. And the one thing I like to think about, or I like to say is that we allow family to be family. So we allow family to be a daughter still, or a son or a grandson or a granddaughter, and not just a caregiver because those last few years are precious to families and their memories and the traditions that they hold. The advice I’d give to new franchisees that are researching, what business to get into is to come in with your eyes wide open. In other words, be sure you do the research out there. You need to have a goal that drives you and motivation will only go so far, but you have to have something that day in day out will drive you to get up, to get out, conduct the marketing that needs to be done, conduct the sales that needs to be done. I believe that franchisees that are successful are prepared to do that and to go out there and do the work that needs to be done.