← The Feminine Edge
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- [00:05]
Amy Vodrick
What does it take to lead your vision? To disrupt the status quo, to change the game and create a world where everyone can thrive? Well, if you're a woman, founder and change maker who's daring to use your ideas, voice and strengths for impact, then this show is for you. Each week the Feminine Edge explores how founders are reimagining solutions to big problems, tackling systemic barriers, and charting a bold course for a better future. In unfiltered, genuine conversations and deep dive learning sessions, we explore what it takes to advance your vision in your business, to create a ripple of impact in your life, your community, family and the world. I'm Amy Vodrick, the creator and the host of the Feminine Edge Podcast. I'm on a mission to help visionary, disruptive founders in the health and social sectors who are reinventing systems to improve health and well being through their businesses. I'm the founder and CEO of Inside Edge, a woman's leadership coach, an author and the mom of four. Join me each week for interviews with fascinating mission driven entrepreneurs and strategic, actionable learning sessions that will help you lead your business with feminine power, presence and impact.
- [01:34]
Welcome back to the Feminine Edge. It's Amy and I'm so happy you're here. It's a Friday, it's foggy, it was like raining, snowing, freezing rain the last 24 hours. I don't even know what it's doing out there right now, but I'm warm and cozy here recording this for you. And this is an interview that I had with Cheny Xia who is the CEO and co founder of Got Care. Got Care is a health tech company that is transforming how in home health care is delivered across Canada. She's an impact entrepreneur, experience, designer and technologist. So I first learned about Got Care and Chenni through the Corrales community, formerly CEO and I was really intrigued by this. You know I have a deep passion for health care and anything related to innovation in health and healthcare and women leading these innovations and change projects. And so I was just really intrigued and curious to learn more about Got Care about Cheni and her work. So I attended a TEDx Toronto adventure that Cheni spoke at and she just captured my attention because she talked about our relationship with care and caregiving and this event, it was small group conversation which I love and each person had the opportunity to share what they were reflecting around their experiences and insights about caring, caring for ourselves, caring for others, caring for the planet. And this was the first TEDx adventure I had been to and I really had no idea what to expect. It was just such a good session and I do recommend them, they're good sessions. But this one really had me more intrigued to learn more about Cheni and Got Care and so I invited her to come on the podcast. So you're going to hear lots about Chenni and Got Care in this interview and her pathway to Got Care and what she really cares about and around caregiving. But importantly, I want to share a little bit about her path because there's some details we don't get into in the interview and I think it's helpful that you know this. So Cheney's path to CEO included previous leadership roles at multiple innovation design consultancies for the last decade before focusing and putting all her attention on one big hairy challenge, which is creating a more equitable healthcare system. You know, in this interview she really invites us to look at the broader challenges we face as a society. And in her perspective, and I would have to say I agree, and I think anyone working in healthcare would, would recognize this perspective as something that may be true for you, is that we currently our economy doesn't value care work in the same way that we value revenue generating work. And we see this every day.
- [04:24]
And it's evident in the mass exodus
- [04:26]
of professionals from healthcare who are looking for work where they can do their best work and feel valued in doing it. And so how we value caregiving work across the spectrum of healthcare is going to be an ongoing issue in it needs to be a present conversation for us because it's very evident that it's really at the heart of this breakdown that we're seeing today. So in the interview we explore the shifts that are occurring in caregiving, the move that we see as a trend away from relationship based care models to a very transactional model of care. And that's not, by the way, the desire of the healthcare professionals. That's the structure and processes of the system that's driving that and then the questions and the opportunity to bring care and relationship back into focus. We also talk about her learning edges as she is a CEO now and this is a new role and she has a team and she's building a culture with intention with care, a very generative culture, and she and her team are cultivating one where care and relationships actually matter as much internally as well as in their service delivery model. So beyond her role at Got Care, Cheney also believes in contributing to her community and she does this consistently. I've seen evidence of this on social media, et cetera. And she mentions and coaches design students At Humber College in 2021, she was also appointed to the task force in Ontario on women in the economy and working to break down barriers in a post Covid economy. That's work that really is interesting to me. So I can't wait to hear more about that in the future from Cheni. And previously she co founded the Prosper Lab which was Toronto's first skills accelerator for people living in poverty. How cool is that? Cheni's projects, as you can imagine, have won numerous awards. I can't wait to see what she does next. Just enjoy this conversation. She's just full of light and love and care and insights and innovation and wow, it was awesome.
- [06:35]
So enjoy. Welcome Cheni, I'm so happy to have you on the show today on the Feminine Ed Show. I know my listeners are going to get so much value from whatever you share with us today. It's been such a pleasure to be a part of a couple of conversations with you. I was in your TEDx adventure and that was, you know, a really wonderful conversation about care and our relationship with care. And you know, the insights people shared were tremendous. And then of course through the Corrales community, previously known as sheo. Being a part of that community, I think is where I first came to know you. So welcome to the Feminine Edge.
- [07:24]
Cheni Xia
Thank you for having me. I'm so grateful to be here.
- [07:26]
Amy Vodrick
I'm so happy to have you. So I've done my, my sort of research to find out a little bit about you, but I'd love to share with the listeners. I'd love you to tell them a little bit about got care, but how you got to got care because that's an interesting story. I think I heard it on, I think I saw you on Creative mornings.
- [07:46]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, maybe I'll start with who I am and how this all started and then we'll get to where we are now. So I grew up with a single mom who worked all sorts of jobs and some of them included taking care of other people. And really the broader challenge that we are facing as a society, from my lens, is that we currently don't value care work the same way that we value revenue generating work. And therefore the people who perform care work typically get paid less, you know, have unstable careers, there's not a lot of room for promotion or growth or it's just you're, you're, you're in it because you really care about people and you really want to help others and you feel, you know, people say there's like a calling that they feel towards that type of work or there's something within yourself that draws you to that. And I always, I always felt like actually what we need is we just need, we need more care work in this world. Like if you look around you, you know, whether it's in the context of caring for your neighbor, now families are living further apart or caring for you and our planet, like in general, we actually just need more, more people spending more time providing care. Yeah. And it's kind of just all around us. So I've always had that observation and in my past life, I was a consultant for a consortium of three of Canada's largest community care providers. And we were trying to, we were, I was essentially contracted to be a part of their sort of like makeshift innovation team. And that's where I worked with my now co founders as well. And we were trying to figure out, okay, how can we deliver home care in a new way for a new audience. And when we did that work for a year, year and a half, we realized that as you know, and I'm sure as many of your listeners know, making a change within the health care system that actually changes how service is delivered is so hard. Status quo is so, so heavy. It's so complicated. There are so many players involved to just make something happen. You know, in hindsight, even making that change happen within one organization was a large ask to try to do it within a consortium. We were literally setting us, our, setting ourselves up to fail. And, and yeah, and you know, we did a lot of research, we did a ton of co creation where we invited patients, families, care providers, people on the phone lines, like everyone into one room. And we just gave ourselves permission to dream together. And you know, it was so moving. Like it, like there was a crying and hugging and this was before COVID all over the place. And yet when we retreat back into our desks, you know, despite how energized and emotionally connected we feel, we feel stuck because they're isn't. But that change is really hard to make. And so we basically gracefully fired ourselves. And that's when we decided to start Docker. And so really what we said was, okay, well if it's too hard for the system to make this change inside of itself, then why don't we create it outside of the system so that the system can point to it and say, yeah, we can do that. Because I think that sometimes when we want to make change and when we want to create a change, we need to be able to point to something to say, hey, that's an alternative that we can do. And whether it's corral, it's kind of same thing. It's a alternative you can point at and say, we could do that. It works. It services many, many people. Clearly it can work. I think that that was what the original impetus was, was around how do we show just, how do we show that there is a different way that we can do that? And so now at Got Care, we are a national home care provider. We provide care to people who have disabilities, people who are recovering from accidents, people who are elderly, people who just need a little bit more help in their home. And yeah, we do that now coast to coast. We have over 25,000 frontline care workers who are registered to be a part of our network. And yeah, we proudly pay all of our frontline a real living wage. The lowest that we pay is $23 an hour. And for us, that's not enough. We're continually trying to make that better. And one of the ways that we can do this is through a lot of technological innovation as well. So. So, you know, I like to say a lot of the technological innovation are things that already exist in the realm of convenience. So if you think of, like, all the convenience factors that technology has brought us, it's really just about reapplying that to healthcare, you know, so, yeah, so whether that is, for example, we use machine learning and AI to match patients to the perfect care worker, or we use GPS validation to ensure that someone is where they say they are. All things that we use hundreds and hundreds of times already in other contexts, but now just really apply to healthcare. But then the other part of it is also just choosing to pay people better. Because if you look at, you know, why particular community care isn't working, it's because we have a supply issue. There just fundamentally aren't enough workers for the amount of demand that's out there. So.
- [13:52]
Amy Vodrick
Yeah, so, okay, so could you give us an example or a story of how Got Care actually works? Because I imagine as a listener first hearing about Got Care, there's probably some questions about, okay, machine learning. What do you mean? I don't understand. How do you make it work better and pay a living wage?
- [14:10]
Cheni Xia
So I'll give you an example.
- [14:12]
Amy Vodrick
Thank you.
- [14:12]
Cheni Xia
This is the person who comes to mind. We had a person who lives in a suburb. He was in a wheelchair
- [14:22]
Amy Vodrick
and
- [14:25]
Cheni Xia
he was discharged from the hospital and it had been about a month since he had received a shower because he could not get access to services. Oh, my. His social worker ended up hearing about us through the grapevine somehow and referred his file to us. Oh, and this was over Christmas, by the way. This was for context, this was over Christmas holidays. And our system, within 30 minutes was able to find him a care worker who lived within a five minute drive to his home and was able to provide him a shower the next day.
- [15:09]
Amy Vodrick
Wow.
- [15:10]
Cheni Xia
So one, if you think about traditionally how that's done, right, first of all, you get the file, you're like, okay, well who's in my roster? How can I figure out who's available? Is there this complicated thing I have to do? Like, on average it takes most providers a week to figure out even how to deliver services and then maybe another week before they can even start that delivery. But what's nice is what I really love about this technology is it allows us. So we have people on the phone lines as well. But what that means is they're not spending their time on the phone trying to figure out which care worker is the best suited, who's available. They're on the phones working with the client themselves, saying, hey, tell me, tell me about what good looks like for you. They're on the phone with a social worker saying, okay, you know, help me understand, you know, the backdrop and what other. Who else is involved in this care? Like, we're able to, to really, it allows us to really be a lot more proactive and strategic around how we deliver that care because we're not just, we're not just scrambling to try to find a care worker. Like, we're able to really allow ourselves to think beyond that, which is what allows us to provide that personalized level of care. Which means you need someone who speaks the same language as you. No problem, we got you. You need someone who understands. Like we had a person who called, who was indigenous and she said, I really need someone who just, it's not going to be a problem. I'm like, yep, no problem. We can definitely get that sorted. And so those are the things, types of things that we can therefore then la are on because we're not just strictly focused on trying to get a body in a place.
- [17:05]
Amy Vodrick
Exactly. That's what I was just going to say. You're not just matching a gap with a body which to be honest, as a care provider, it doesn't work for the care provider at all because it doesn't take care of what they care about. They're suddenly shoved in to a situation without necessarily having any understanding of who they're going to care for and whether they're the best person. Person to take care of that person.
- [17:28]
Cheni Xia
Exactly. Like some, somewhere along the way we've, you know, we've moved away from this relationship based care model to a very transactional based care model. And what we're trying to do is we're just trying to move us back into a relationship based care model. Right. Like it's, it's not an uber ride like you can, it's not just like, oh, 15 minutes, okay, I'm done. Like, care is something that is happening to you regularly. It's not just this one time transaction that's happening. So yeah, it's really around. Well, if you can figure out the right relationship for this particular client or family, you're actually saving yourself time in the long run. It's like a constant band aid every single week.
- [18:14]
Amy Vodrick
Totally. And the band aid falls off a lot. I guess what I'm thinking too is, and of course I'm thinking bigger around the whole healthcare system because I think you're, as you said, you've created something that's working and it's working well for both providers and the people you serve. So it is something to point to, to look at, to say, how can we. And you talk about, I'm kind of jumping here, but you talk about undesigned to redesign. And you know, as soon as I started following you and getting to understand got care a little bit better, I started thinking about, well, this is what I've often said when I'm working with students or healthcare professionals is this system just needs to kind of untangle itself and start again. What I'm hearing though, is one of the challenges we have in the broader system and in home care in particular, is you enter into the caring profession. So I'm a nurse by background. I was a nurse practicing for 20 years. You enter in because you care, you really care and you want to help and you want to make a difference. And then the system, and the system is people and structures and processes, like we created the system, it starts to pull that out of you and it breeds a mood of resignation and sometimes even resentment because you can't provide the care you want to provide. So are you seeing. And I'm sure the answer is yes, but I'm going to have you talk about it. Are you seeing a shift in, in how your, your providers, your, your caregivers show up to begin at got Care and then how they, they sort of re engage with their care?
- [19:58]
Cheni Xia
I mean, listen, like, we literally just brought on someone to our team who was making $17 an hour and is now making 23. Like the difference of, of $6 an hour is massive when you're used to 17. And so for, you know, I would say. So we. Okay, so let's back up a little bit. So you talked about undesigning the system, right. And I think that in order for us to help sort of unburden people from the weight of the system, we need to change a part of the system. And we need to, we need to be very strategic about how we're intervening. You can't change the whole system. Like, the thing also needs to run. You're, you know, you're flying an airplane. You need an airplane to keep flying.
- [20:46]
Amy Vodrick
Yeah, exactly.
- [20:47]
Cheni Xia
And so, and so for us, the thing that we wanted to change was we wanted to change how much these people got paid.
- [20:56]
Amy Vodrick
Okay.
- [20:57]
Cheni Xia
We, we said we're gonna. One thing that. And, and, and you know, people ask me, like, how do you make that change? You just do it. Like, you, you don't, you don't have to, you don't have to do anything crazy here. You literally just say, okay, I'm going to log into my HR platform, whatever it is. There's a, there's a field that says minimum pay, and I'm going to change that number. And then once I make this change, I'm going to then make the rest of the business work around this change. And I have to. That's it. Like, that's literally it.
- [21:33]
Amy Vodrick
And that's it.
- [21:34]
Cheni Xia
Right? Like, and by choosing and personally committing to do that, everything else, if you, if you. Sounds a little woo, but it's like, if you, if you believe that this is the change that needs to happen in order to unlock other types of change, then just ways of working will come up, new processes will just come up because you've made this decision to. And therefore other parts of your business have to change. But it's for the sake of sustainability. It's for the sake of being able to serve more people. It's for the sake of preventing burnout on your staff. Like, it's for all of the right reasons. And as long as you know that, like, you really, really believe that in your core as an, as a leader, then yeah, you'll just make the rest of the pieces work. And it's hard work for sure. Like, it's not small amount of work. And that's where for us, a lot of this technology came in. But we made it work because we just, at the day one, we decided this is table stakes for us. Like, we are Changing this no matter what. So let's start here.
- [22:46]
Amy Vodrick
Okay, so two things. One, I'm hearing your commitment to your career and your care was to create a living wage for the care providers. Is that what I'm hearing? That was, like, the thing.
- [23:00]
Cheni Xia
I think for us, it was more like, if we can't change this, everything else will be a band aid.
- [23:05]
Amy Vodrick
Okay.
- [23:06]
Cheni Xia
Right. And I think regardless. So I'm just speaking in the context of home care, but you could look at this in any sort of sector within healthcare and you can say, okay, within this sector, if I can't change blank, then everything else is mute. Everything else is a band aid. Everything else is temporary. There's always one or two things that fit into that blank, and it's different. Like, what that blank is. Is different for every sector, but there's always that. And so I always think it's like, actually, I feel like in order for change to happen, sort of the leader behind the thing almost needs to have some type of personal journey, like the hero's journey, where you come out of that and you say, nope, I'm doing it, and no matter what.
- [23:51]
Amy Vodrick
No matter what. And things are just gonna start to show up that I need when I declare that that's the direction I'm going and that's what I'm doing.
- [23:58]
Cheni Xia
Exactly, yeah.
- [23:59]
Amy Vodrick
Pick one thing, right? Pick one thing, Begin with one thing. Don't try to change the whole system. I think that's, you know, that actually really helps because it feels so big.
- [24:09]
Cheni Xia
And pick one thing that you can easily change. Like, how much you pay people is something you can easily change. You can just do it. Okay, so I have to ask because
- [24:20]
Amy Vodrick
I know there's people listening, going, how? Like, how do you know? So what were some of the. Did God care have any challenges in the beginning? Getting going? Like, let's talk a little bit about the hero's journey, Firowen's journey.
- [24:32]
Cheni Xia
It's a lot about, you know, I mean, there's lots there, right? It's like abundance, scarcity, you know, all connecting into a. I mean, this is the feminine edge, right? So, yes, you know, I feel like I can express. It's like connecting to, you know, whether you call it a greater sense of purpose, universality, divine, feminine, like, literally whatever words you want to put in there,
- [24:56]
Amy Vodrick
all of those work, all of those words.
- [24:58]
Cheni Xia
But you're really just connecting to that, right? Yes, you're connecting to this, like, deeper humanity around. Well, our world's pretty messed up. And yes, I am going to make one thing Happen. This is the thing that I can, I within my control can do right now. And so for me that was we can create a home care company and we can pay people more and we can figure out all the other pieces. But until we do that, we can't fix the supply crisis. We can't. Like, and the numbers are there. Like for me, the conviction came from the numbers. I'll give you some examples. So right now you have in Ontario they're called personal support workers. In B.C. they're called home health aides, your pick on acronym. But basically home care workers, they last on average right now about three months after they graduate and then they quit. Pre Covid there was evidence to show that there was a reducing number of these workers that were actually even working in this field. Also, if you look at the service rates, for example, pre Covid we're delivering about as a sector 9.5 out of 10 visits. Now we hover between 4 to 6 depending on where you live and what your postal code is.
- [26:07]
Amy Vodrick
Like.
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Cheni Xia
There's just so much evidence around you that if this doesn't change, it's not going to work. So it's like, how can I give myself the permission, the courage and the will to be able to do this thing, which is not a small thing.
- [26:31]
Amy Vodrick
No, it's not.
- [26:32]
I mean, I wish, I wish the listeners could see you because you're just sort of very lit up right now as you get into this with us. What were some of the challenges in the beginning?
- [26:42]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, I mean, I think at the personal level. Right. Like to start, it's a very, for me, it's around. It was my way of healing through my trauma. Like in the beginning, how I told my story around just, you know, growing up and watching my mom in her circumstance and feeling very powerless around that. Like for me this was a part of my own healing journey. And the moment I made that connection, the courage came. Like it just, it just showed up. It just showed up. Right. And. But that's not like a small thing to like. It's, it's that it. I mean, I can say that now but like it was in this was, it was a rough tumble ride there. And also of course, like just getting a startup going is not an easy thing either. Right. Like getting from 0 to 1 is also not for the faint of heart for sure. So definitely, you know, lots of challenges. But at the same time, I think because we were very clear about what intervention we were making, we found other people who believed in what we were doing. So that consortium that I was working on. Right. With my co founders. Actually, a couple of those executives ended up becoming angel investors in Dogcare because they saw it like they were there for the journey, and they were like, yeah, you need to do this. And similarly, our initial investors, they were all just people who were like, yeah, you just need to do this. And I think that, you know, when you find that thing and you're committed to changing that thing, and, you know, it makes sense because you've been on the ground, you've heard the stories, you've seen the statistics, like, you just know. And therefore, other people also know. And when you can find those people, they're there. They're just grateful that you're trying to do it this way. And. And they're here to show up. And I remember, you know, when. When we were fundraising last year, it was, you know, fundraising is always so challenging. Right. Get this. Okay, so, so, so for context, we raised $1.2 million in about three months. Okay. But the first month and a half, first month and a half, let's just say very little was happening. And I found this one investor who agreed to come on, and I asked them, I said, I'm just curious, what about this? What about what we're doing made you say yes? And they said, well, frankly, it's because you're paying a living wage. I'm like, what? Because this entire time, up until this point, we were framing it as, we have the largest network of home care workers across the country. We have all of this technology that can increase efficiency. Like, I was using all of that language, right?
- [29:47]
Amy Vodrick
Yeah.
- [29:48]
Cheni Xia
And the moment that I came back to, you know, why we're here, what change it is that we're truly trying to make and how we believe that if we don't change this, nothing else will change. The moment we came back to that, and it was, for me, also more authentic to express as well. It's funny, like, we just found the right people. And so I would literally go into investor meetings saying, hey, you know, I'm just want to let you know, we are a social impact organization. This is the return you can expect. Yes, we are paying up to 30% more than what others pay, and this is what we're all about. And then people could self select and they could say, yeah, you know, I'm into that, or, no, I'm not. But everyone. But you're tapping into this humanity of it because you can ask questions like, have you had someone who needed home care before? And likely they're like, yeah, my own parent or my grandparents. And then there's that tapping that happens into that, their humanity. And they say, you know what? We aren't a part of it. I can't make this doesn't match what we're doing, but you need to talk to this person. And then it just started happening.
- [30:58]
Amy Vodrick
So you really, really listened to that one investor who reconnected you back with your essential purpose in this venture and then just started talking about that and that drew the right people to you.
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Cheni Xia
Exactly.
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Amy Vodrick
I mean, that's a really slim summary, but it goes back to what you're saying around purpose and the divine feminine, if you will. And I don't have a definition other than my own sensing of that, but that connection. And I want to move us from here then to empathy and caring and the relationship we have with care, because I think that's part of this, if I'm listening in correctly, is that your care to create a workforce that gets a living wage was the driver, was the way you deepened your commitment, was the way you got the listening for new investors. And so from that care, you've also had conversations around the relationship with care and empathy, because I've heard some of this in some of your other conversations, and I would love if we could just shift a little bit in that
- [32:02]
direction and share with your listeners. What's the thread you're learning around care?
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Caregiving our relationship with care.
- [32:10]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's a lot of. It is. There's a lot of conditioning that we are undoing. Right. That allows us to be able to be empathetic to not only others, but also to ourselves and our own pain. And I think that by being able to truly listen into that, then it feels more like you're guided from action to action to action, as opposed to, you know, forcing or like it's not like a forcing of a movement, it's like a really, like a. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Is the next thing. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Like it's a following. Yeah.
- [33:03]
Amy Vodrick
The more ease, I guess even though I, and I, and I don't want to underplay that. It's all just simple and easy peasy. I do think, listening to you, that you're talking about some call it flow, but just being. But connecting to your care and allowing that to lead.
- [33:20]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, for sure. Right. But. But there's all those saboteurs inside of ourselves that get in the way of that. And so, yeah, so I think that, you know, first it starts, always starts with having empathy for ourselves and Our and our inner child and like our like our like our most raw self. Right. And then from there, once we have empathy for that, then it makes it much easier for us to express that to others. Beautiful.
- [33:45]
Amy Vodrick
And thank you for that. And I'm curious, I'm just going to ask this question too because it just popped into my head is what's it been like to transition from founder to now like a CEO of a rapidly growing company who has I'm sure a leadership team and new learnings there. How's that going?
- [34:05]
Cheni Xia
Well, so my last, I think my talking about feeling led into things or flow. Right? Yeah, yeah. I have a new thing that I'm working on now as I've transitioned into this role. So last March. Wow, crazy. What is time. I think last March, maybe the March before. Last March I was voluntold to be CEO and one of the things that like now, you know, so since a year ago we've like doubled our internal team. There's all, you know, suddenly we have like mid management and all this stuff and that we didn't have before. And for me one of the things that you know, continuing to listen to that source that I'm now working on is what I'm calling or what is being called servant leadership. So servant leadership is around helping others find the answers themselves for how they solve a problem as opposed to you giving direction all the time. So for me what that means is I still set like if there's like a compass, you still set the overall direction but you don't set the how. And what that means is you're allowing people to, to self direct not only how they solve problems but also you're allowing them to self direct their own careers. And it just provides everyone on the team a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their work as well. Right. Or more agency or more control. I always have resonated with the style of leadership, but I've never seen it at the top of a company. I've only seen it at like a director level level or manager level. I've never actually seen it at the C suite level personally. And so I was really curious about experimenting with that. And so I've been working with MJ who's a coach at Coralis as well as a couple other external supporters as well. We have an advisory board. Our chair has a. He really believes in authentic leadership and has also been helping me figure out what that looks like for me right now. It feels now we're at this point in our company where when you're an early founder. It's like you are the company. But I feel like now we've moved past that and so my focus has been less around, okay, how do we keep this company alive? And now more into how do I foster the right environment for our team to really lead this company to where it needs to be? Yeah. So that's the latest.
- [36:56]
Amy Vodrick
You know, what a beautiful transition for you to be able to now sort of take back and hold the wider view for those who are stepping up to lead in the company without grabbing onto them and putting them in a certain direction. You're allowing them to trust their skill, but also their care and their commitment to make this company grow. So you must have brought on some really wonderful people.
- [37:19]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, for sure. And what we've learned is that it's not for everyone. Right. Like, so what that means is that in this type of style there's a lot more ambiguity. You need a certain type of person as well to show up in this way. It's kind of like your business is not everyone to everything. Similarly, you know, your jobs aren't everything to everyone either. Right. You have to. You serve a certain type of audience. So it's the same thing. Right.
- [37:45]
Amy Vodrick
And so you're having lots of conversations to help them navigate.
- [37:49]
Cheni Xia
Yeah. And setting up structures. Right. So, for example, looking at things like, well, how do we redesign our daily meetings? How do we redesign how we do check ins in general? I would say it feels more like a coaching based leadership style as opposed to a chain and command based leadership style.
- [38:09]
Amy Vodrick
Beautiful. And so you're undesigning to redesign the leadership too.
- [38:13]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, because I think that it just makes sense. It just makes sense for us. It's all around how do we give care workers more stability in their life? How do we make this a job that they actually love? How do we give patients and families a more personalized care experience where they feel like they're in the driver's seat of their own care? I mean, it would be inauthentic for us to not do the same internally.
- [38:42]
Amy Vodrick
Yeah, yeah. The fact that you've been explicit about it. Right. That you've pulled it up to say we're going to do this, this differently and sharing it here too. Thank you. I think that it's really another place for learning for us as listeners to your story, to say, how can we undesign not only in a picking one thing in a care delivery sector, but also in how we approach it as leaders. Yeah.
- [39:07]
Cheni Xia
I love that.
- [39:08]
Amy Vodrick
So what's next for Got care or Healthcare. Do you have ambitions?
- [39:14]
Cheni Xia
Yeah, I mean right now what we're our, our core focus of our company is definitely to just deliver on healthcare benefits. Like that's, that's our core focus. It's not changing. But one of the things that we're exploring right now is, well, how do we sort of expand the scope that of what type of care can happen in the home? Because what we've proved to be true is that when you have care or what. What the data shows, not just through us, but what the data broadly shows is that care often is cheaper to occur in the home. Now Covid has shown us that, surprise, surprise, we can have virtual care as well, where you have experts who can dial in into a situation as well. We've demonstrated that is true. And also when we talk about things like access to care, a lot of the people that we serve at GotCare, they live in rural communities, often 100 km from the hospital. So we just want to also look at, well, how do we improve access to that level of care as well. So for us it's around. Our next chapter is around how do we expand what type of care can be done in the home for the sake of convenience, but also for the sake of access. And then also the other lens on it is the fact that right now we do need a new way to approach care because what, like half of our Ministry of Health spend is on the last year of someone's life? Right? Like, yeah, come on. So I think from an economic standpoint, we also need to sort of reimagine how that can look like as well maybe perhaps institutional care. You know, don't get me wrong, like definitely there is always a need for institutional care, but maybe it's not the one size fits all kind of approach that will work in our future. Right? Like institutional care will always be a hub of health care in every community. But what would it look like for us to move especially more acute type care needs into the home?
- [41:35]
Amy Vodrick
Yeah, I love this. I actually got goosebumps thinking about it because there's such a need for reinvention. I know we're almost at time and I have so many more questions, but I'll just have to have you back. You've had such a journey, a heroine's journey, and I would love you to share with the listeners whatever you want to highlight from our conversation as gems of wisdom or, or what we didn't hit for the founder or the leader who's trying to transform healthcare internally and just feeling that weight of the status Quo. It can feel like a bunch of chains around your ankle.
- [42:14]
Cheni Xia
Yep. How can you create a sanctuary for yourself? And sometimes that's not going to be inside your role. Sometimes it might be outside of the company, sometimes it might be a different physical space. But like, how can you create a sanctuary for yourself to recharge in what is. Whatever it is that you're trying to do? So, for example, for me, what that looks like is it looks like my community involvement outside of God care, because, for example, I host a community event just for my own community. And it's that connection to the people who are all doing the same things that I do like. So as an example, I host retreats for women leaders who are looking to make change in their organization. And often there's a social lens to it. And there's four or five of us and we meet before COVID we met every quarter. Now we meet every half year or so and we just run a retreat where we go to an off site and we just really connect with one another and we work through, you know, we have a space where we can work through. Okay, what is it that we need to let go of? What's really working? How do we invite new perspectives that aren't even in our sector into our minds? And I really love that container for myself because it's a. It's a. It's a sanctuary where I can just like, like, it's like I'm not blocked. I'm just allowing whatever it is that I'm dreaming to just have space to grow. So that's what it looks like for me. But what a sanctuary could look like, I think is very, very different for every person. Just thinking through what that could be. And again, it doesn't have to be people with people in your workplace. It doesn't even have to be at your work. Or it could be. Or it could also literally be a room at your work too. Right. Like it could be anywhere. But I think, I think that sanctuary is important for our own re. Energization.
- [44:17]
Amy Vodrick
I love that and I also love how you've. You're talking about the community piece. So there's sanctuary where we just need peace and quiet on our own to just reflect and think and be in our own self.
- [44:31]
But then there's the energy that you're
- [44:33]
talking about that you get from curating, being with, nurturing community, and I love that. As a closing message to the listeners, thank you so much and thank you for joining. Joining us.
- [44:46]
Cheni Xia
No worries.
- [45:01]
Amy Vodrick
If you enjoyed this episode, then head over to InsideEdge CA and subscribe to join my community. When you subscribe, you'll receive Instagram insights, practices and learning gems from my work with women founders and change makers. You can connect with us on Instagram, amylower, Inside Edge and on LinkedIn. We love to hear from our listeners. The Feminine Edge podcast is created by Amy Vodrick and produced by Daniel Berman and the POD post
- [45:37]
Cheni Xia
Sam.