Her Story
About Eva
I started my journey in home care in 2004 as a caregiver, inspired by my experience taking care of my grandmother and other elderly people. As a single mom with three small children, I had a passion for helping the elderly but struggled financially at times. I took a break to do home daycare for three and a half years to stay with my kids, then returned to home care in 2008 and haven't looked back since. I worked my way up through every single position - caregiver, on-call manager, administrative assistant, scheduler, care advisor - learning the business from the ground up. My mentor Candace Flesher believed in me and taught me everything I needed to know to become an administrator and eventually a business owner. When a friend approached me about becoming administrator for a new home care business, I took the opportunity, and later became part owner when the original owner sold to my friend. We ran that company together until selling it about a year ago to Avenues Home Care. Now I serve as area manager for their New Braunfels branch, overseeing operations, putting out fires, and doing community marketing to bring awareness to our name change from AA Cares to Avenues. I'm out in the community at churches, the civic center, senior centers, home health and hospice agencies, building relationships because that's what this business is really about. I never imagined when I got my medical assistant certification back in 1992 that I'd end up here, making more than most nurses do, but I'm proud of what I've achieved by never giving up.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Eva
01What do you attribute your success to?
I really have to contribute all of my success to my mentor, Candace Flesher, and the fact that she believed in me, which propelled me to believe in myself. My friend who also worked with us said that Candace taught us everything we needed to know to be an administrator or an owner of our own company. She believed in us and taught us from the ground up. I started off as a caregiver all the way up to an administrator, and that doesn't happen very often. The fact that I didn't give up, even on days where scheduling was hard and I had 42 clients to schedule and every day I was like 'I'm gonna quit,' but I didn't. I became a really good scheduler, but I also had to become compassionate and build relationships with the families and the caregivers. You can staff all day long, but if you don't have that relationship, there's no trust, and that works both sides. It's a relationship business, and you have to build relationships with both clients and caregivers.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Protect your reputation like it's currency. This one just came up for me yesterday. In this industry, I'm not a marketer - I build relationships. I am passionate about this business and helping the seniors in the community and surrounding community that I'm in. I don't want my name on anything if there's anything negative about it, anything negative about the company. We only take our reputation with us, no matter what company you work for.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Commitment. Be committed. Be consistent, and let your yes be yes, and your no be no. I believe as women, sometimes we have a difficult time setting boundaries with coworkers and bosses. In this type of industry, you have to have compassion. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. But you have to be authentic to yourself and compassionate to others. In the workplace, you have to have boundaries and be authentic. Client-wise, customer-wise, that's where the 'people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care' comes in.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Trust, honesty, and authenticity are most important to me. I'm a Christian, so being faith-based is really important to me. I have to be aligned - my values and the company's values need to be aligned, because if I don't feel like they are, then that's not the right fit for me. I stayed with the same company for 12 years until we sold, because their values aligned with mine. That's really important to me.
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