William Tincup: 0:25

This is William Tincup, and you’re listening to the Use Case Podcast. Today, we have Lynn Onn from Urban Center. We’ll be learning all about the use case of the business case for why customers and prospects use. UrbanSitter. Lynn, would you do us a favor and introduce yourself?

Lynn Perkins: 0:40

Yes. Thank you for having me. I’m Lynn Perkins. I’m the CEO and co founder of UrbanSitter. We’re a service that helps families and care providers connect. We work with individuals and as a corporate benefit that teams can offer to their employees as well.

William Tincup: 0:58

I love it. I especially love the corporate side of it and seeing it as a benefit. Recently, uh, talked to somebody where they provide, they provide, uh, it’s cleaning. So basically what they do for a lot of their employees, all their employees, actually, it’s a benefit for all their employees is they have house cleaners. So twice, twice a month, house cleaners, you know, uh, come by and clean the house. Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah. I mean, when he told me that, I’m like, That’s just a really cool benefit. That’s actually a benefit. That’s something that I would use. It’s something that somebody would use. And I could see where people would use sitters as well. If people need to get away, not say getting away from their kids, but they need some time away and having someone Come in and, uh, take care of their kids. I

Lynn Perkins: 1:50

think that’d be great. Absolutely. And it’s not surprising to me when you talk to that company, um, that that benefit’s been well received because 40 percent of working parents that we surveyed do in fact say that juggling Work and home responsibilities is their top stressor and so whether that’s child care or pet care, housecleaning, you name it, those are, that definitely lines up with the data that I’ve seen as well.

William Tincup: 2:17

So, uh, how did you, how’d you come to start, uh, the company or? Co founder of the company.

Lynn Perkins: 2:23

I started it about 15 years ago with two co founders and we really wanted to address this stressful moment where a family needs to find somebody. Uh, originally it was just focused on children. Now we do more, but the stressful moment where families are looking to find somebody to take care of their child and particularly in a last minute situation. Um, which I think is why we’ve transitioned well to doing backup care for employers, but we really wanted to look at it and say, okay, can we leverage technology to create a safer way for families to connect? Can we leverage a lot of the interesting trends we were seeing online at the time? So peer to peer recommendations and online payment, can we take all of these trends that we’re seeing online and use them to actually take The fear and stress out of finding somebody to watch your child. And we’ve grown it. It’s now nationwide in the United States. And, um, we have hundreds of thousands of care providers and millions of families registered with our site.

William Tincup: 3:25

And so how do we, how do we, uh, vet the care providers? What do we do there?

Lynn Perkins: 3:30

We have three different ways that we think about vetting, and the very first is kind of the most basic that you would think of. So, every care provider on our platform has to go through a background check, both a national and a county level check. We also review every single profile that gets submitted, and that’s kind of what I consider So, that is the let’s make sure we’re dotting all of our I’s and crossing all of our T’s to make sure that we have well intended, um, good citizens who are looking to do this work. And then the next phase is really looking at, um, how the sitters and care providers are connected to other people on the platform. So, one of the things we do that’s really unique is if you come on and you are on the website and last minute you realize. Tomorrow’s the school holiday, and you and your partner both have a meeting. We show you how you’re connected to these different care providers. So you can see that three other parents from your preschool have used this provider, or five of your fellow colleagues, if you’re getting this as a benefit, have used this provider. And that’s really mimicking how people look for care in the offline world. Getting a recommendation from someone you trust is paramount, and so we’ve built that into the platform. And then the third way that we. that are providers as we display all of their statistics. So once they’ve been on the platform, we show you. Hey, this sitter’s average response time is under five minutes. Um, this sitter not only has 50 five star reviews, but she has 40 repeat families, and that repeat family badge is incredibly important. It shows that not only did someone feel comfortable having this person in their home the first time, but they’ve been invited back to work with that family a second, third, fourth time as well. And, and. And especially when you’re in a pinch and you don’t have a lot of time to make a decision, you look at all of these factors when you’re thinking about who you’re comfortable bringing into your home to take care of your kids, your pets, your parents, you name it.

William Tincup: 5:24

I love it. So, uh, how do we, how do we sign on, uh, companies? So obviously, uh, it would be seen as a corporate benefit. So you’re selling into, I’ll just say, oh, yeah, compensation.

Lynn Perkins: 5:37

Yeah, go ahead. Exactly. No, you’re right. You’re nailed it. We sell into, usually it’s, we work closely with HR teams and we like to start off by understanding what the employee’s needs are. So, we always recommend surveying employees as a start to find out, okay, are families and really looking for care for their children or is it they also want to use our elder companion care piece? And we look at what the need is at the company because. We’re really trying to work with the employer to make sure that we’re number one, reducing absenteeism. Something like 52 percent of working parents say that they miss 10 or more days a year due to care, um, gaps in care for their family members. So we try to address that and then we look at it and identify the best program that works for them. And we really recommend companies offering a care stipend on top of just access to our platform because the cost of care is incredibly high. Right. And if you can help to Offset that for your employees, you’ll have a much higher retention rate. You’ll see more people who leave to go on parental leave come back if this benefit exists. Um, it’s something staggering, like 77 percent of people who go on paternity leave come back to their employer when they offer a benefit. in the care space versus 57 percent if they don’t. So we really work to make sure that the program we’re putting in place for companies is addressing their top needs and then we’re helping them market it to make sure that employees know that at that point in need that this, this benefit exists.

William Tincup: 7:08

Do you see, or have you seen so far, uh, longer term kind of relationships with care providers being, uh, built over time?

Lynn Perkins: 7:16

Absolutely. Really, a family prefers to have the same provider more than one time, if, if that’s possible, because they get to know your child’s sleep schedule, or they understand if they’re helping with pets, which route to take on the walk with the dog, or if they’re doing errands with one of your elderly family members, you know, how to, how to best communicate with them. So, in most cases, parents are looking for A provider that can work with their family at that time in need, but ideally they’d like to build a relationship for a longer period of time. I

William Tincup: 7:48

love that. So how does, uh, how does the, uh, obviously it’s a benefit, so the corporate, uh, the corporation pays for it. Um, how do y’all, how do y’all work out kind of how the care providers get

Lynn Perkins: 8:00

paid? So the care providers get paid exactly what they post as their rate. So one of the things we found is that the best way to keep High quality, top notch care providers is to let them set their own rates, and they keep 100 percent of that, and that’s really important because we’re able to retain top care providers, um, as a result. So, for instance, in the child care space, we have a lot of early childhood education educators, people who are maybe getting their masters in that, and they have expertise in working with young children. We also have care providers who speak one or two other languages, and so if you’re looking for someone to take care of your children, and you’d like another language spoken in the home, or if you know that you have an elderly family member who needs help, and they feel more comfortable speaking in a language other than English, those care providers come on our platform, and they set their rate, and it’s usually kind of in line with their skills in the area. So if you’re somebody with a master’s, you’re obviously setting a higher rate than somebody who has less experience.

William Tincup: 9:06

Okay. So I’ve got two kids, but they’re a little bit older now, but I can remember a time in which, you know, it was hard to even think about having someone else outside of family. Uh, even that probably, uh, Like, what questions should, you know, parents ask of a, of a care provider, especially That first baby, first time that they’re going to let someone else take care of their child while they’re, you know, out on a date or whatever the, whatever the bid is, like what should they be to, not that, but just feel comfortable with the, cause they’re all vetted, like I get that, but like to feel comfortable with the, with the, uh, care

Lynn Perkins: 9:50

provider. Well, I think you want to know what that care provider specific experience is with your age child. So, this is a trickier category because somebody who is absolutely fantastic with six to ten year olds may have less experience with infants. And so, one of my favorite questions to ask when I’m even just looking personally for my family is to ask about what sort of things they like to do with children that are my children’s age. When my kids were infant, I like to ask about, you know, how do you, how do you think about an infant’s routine? Are you comfortable changing diapers? Have you gone through the bedtime process with young kids before? Just understanding, um, what their experience has been with my kids specific age range. I also love to ask a question about, um, Uh, I don’t want to say emergencies per se, because ideally we don’t want those to happen, but I do like to see how somebody would think about it. So I would say something like, under what circumstances would you call me or text me to let me know that something wasn’t going well? Or, you know, can you tell me about a time when you were working for a family and something on the job didn’t go the way you had planned? How did you handle it? And I think asking for those real world experiences really give you a good insight into how somebody would, would think or work. I also, if you have time, for instance, if you know your daycare center is going to be closed for two weeks and you have enough notice, I also highly recommend that families bring somebody into their home and get to see them in action with their child before they, they leave them for the first time. It’s both a good way for you to see how this person will interact with your child, but it’s also a great opportunity for you to give them all the tips that are going to make them successful. Things like, oh, when my child cries, this is his favorite lovey that he likes to have. Or, you know, we find that if we feed her and then put her down, she sleeps better. Giving them all of, you want to line them up for success as much as you also want to make sure that they’re the right fit for you so that you have the optimal outcome. Any

William Tincup: 11:51

different questions for care providers for the parents? Like, uh, things that you’d guide them to say, Hey, you know what? You should probably ask these things.

Lynn Perkins: 12:02

For, um, for parents who are looking No,

William Tincup: 12:04

for care for

Lynn Perkins: 12:05

care providers. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Oh, that is a great one. One of the things that in today’s age I think is really important to ask is, are you going to be working from home while I’m here? And that doesn’t That doesn’t change the way the provider is going to be in your home, but it’s a really nice heads up. And if, if the parent says, yes, I’m going to be here, but don’t worry. My kid is used to having me work from home. We have a policy that if I’m in my office with the door closed, she knows that, um, I’m not available. Just making sure that the care provider understands how you structure that working from home, because you can imagine it’s really tough as a care provider in someone’s home when they’re tempted to go run in and see their parent every five minutes. Um, And it’s just good to have that, that established. Um, I also, you know, I like for care providers to ask the family, are there any, any rules or any policies that you want me to follow? Um, just so that I think the more you can be upfront and clear communicating both sides of this relationship, it’s going to be more successful for both parties.

William Tincup: 13:03

I could easily ask you questions where this has gotten off the rails because just, you know, it’s life, people, of course it’s gotten off the rails, but. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll save that or actually I’ll just delete that. Um, things where it’s gone really, really well. So let’s do the positive side of things where, uh, a care provider has done something above and beyond or a parent, if you like, has, uh, has done something above and beyond for a care provider. I

Lynn Perkins: 13:32

mean, this is my favorite part, because there are so many great examples, and I think in terms of the feedback we get from families, when they are in that last minute crunch, whether it’s going to make sure they make it to a meeting in person when the child’s daycare is closed, or whether it’s going Oh my gosh, we both let this slip through the cracks and we found somebody last minute. When you can solve that last minute crisis and do it in a way where they leave a comment that says, Hey, not only did Sarah reply to our job post in two minutes, but she was absolutely outstanding. She understood our baby’s schedule and our baby was warming up to her before we left the house. When you get that kind of feedback, you just know that a special connection has been made and that’s, that’s really fulfilling on all, on all sides. I would say, you know, going above and beyond. I mean, we’ve had situations where child care providers who are nursing students have had to do, um, you know, save a child from choking, or they’ve come into a situation where, uh, you know, it’s a working mom, and the house is a mess, and she just can’t get caught up, and while the baby’s napping, the care provider does some extra work around the house, and that’s just, you know, that going above and beyond really sits well with parents and makes their life a lot easier. What do

William Tincup: 14:46

we do with, yeah, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, finish your thought.

Lynn Perkins: 14:49

Oh, no, and I was just gonna say on the, on the care provider side, one of the most touching things that we see are families really going above and beyond when they’ve worked with somebody on a repeat basis. So, we hear of things where, you know, this person has been someone’s nanny for a year and the nanny finds herself in a situation where she has to go visit a family member in another part of the country and then the parent will offer to help. Pay for part of the ticket or even, even better, we have so many care providers who are doing this as they’re transitioning into another phase of their life. Maybe they’re getting their master’s in something totally unrelated to child care or they’re doing this as they put a pause on their professional job search. And there are so many stories of families helping care providers get those leads to their next job, which are really touching.

William Tincup: 15:37

Oh, I love that. I love that. What about, mm, kids can be tricky. Like, I’ll just speak about my own. Uh, kids can be tricky, and so sometimes behaviors Uh, that maybe parents would, uh, allow, uh, I can see care providers going, yeah, that’s not, that’s not something we’ll do, et cetera, et cetera. So how do you, how do you sync up the expectations between three different parties, if you will, care providers, the kids or the people that are being provided for, and then the parents and kind of getting them all to synced up on, you know, not just expectations, but like, I’ll use McKinnon, I’ll use my kids as an example. My kids, both boys, they’re both, you know, 13 and 17, respectively, uh, can curse. Not explicit stuff, like, right, you know, but they can, they can say some things. I could see that being a bit off putting. To certain care providers, right? If they didn’t know in advance or if it just, just kind of came up, I could see them being thrown off by something like that. And I’m sure there’s other types of examples of this. Um, how do you sync up the expectations kind of, I mean, I can see care providers and parents kind of getting on the same page pretty quickly, but I can see kids. Being the x factor.

Lynn Perkins: 17:03

Absolutely. I wish you could see my face right now as somebody who has three boys that are in that same age range. I’m nodding vigorously along with your statement. Um, but, and you, you mentioned the way you asked the question was really interesting because I’d say that what you described is the most common situation where there’s probably a behavior that the parent allows. Right. And the care provider The behavior surfaces during the job and the care provider doesn’t know if this is a behavior that’s allowed or not.

William Tincup: 17:31

Well, kids push boundaries. I mean, that’s part of their

Lynn Perkins: 17:34

job, right? And they love to push boundaries with new, with new, new people in the home. Um, you know, I think for, for, I always, I don’t, I’ll speak personally first and then I’ll talk about what we see across the site, but, you know, personally, I always used to leave a note on my note to the care provider that said, if my kids are asking to do something that seems Um, like something that wouldn’t be allowed. Assume it’s not, or text me if you need to know. Um, so I’m, I hear you on that. And, and I think one of the things, especially if it’s a care provider you’re going to use over and over again, meeting with them up front and going through, hey, these are our basic policies with the kids, and even understanding like, Hey, when, when X, Y, Z kid does this and we don’t condone it, this is, this is how we handle it. Letting them know what your own behavior policies are so that it makes it easy. But, um, I mean, this happens to sitters all the time. They’re in a job and a behavior pops up and it’s not something that’s been discussed and on the fly, they have to figure out how to handle it. And I would say that, that most, uh, Sitters are pretty skilled in this, and they’ll usually either deflect the behavior and get the kid focused on something else, especially if it’s a younger child, where disciplining is less of an option, and a lot of times the Childless pushing buttons just to push buttons, deflecting them to do something else is, is one of the things that we see a lot, um, and anecdotally, we find out about this because we have a care provider, uh, community site where care providers will go on and actually ask each other, Hey, this just happened on a job. How would you handle it? And then they give each other advice. And so I always love to see what they’re coaching each other on. But I would say on the behavior front, um, if it’s something like a swear word or, um, Hey, he threw a toy, and I know he probably isn’t supposed to do that. Sitters are pretty well equipped to reign that behavior in and then redirect the child. But we do also have the ability for a I

William Tincup: 19:43

think you’re on mute.

Lynn Perkins: 19:53

Okay. Oh, no. I’m sorry. Did it go out there? It

William Tincup: 19:58

did, but it’s okay. Go ahead. Finish your thought.

Lynn Perkins: 20:01

Oh, yes. So we do allow, we do, we understand that sometimes there just is a, uh, uh, an alignment between the parent and the, and the sitter or the sitter and the child that doesn’t fit. And, and we allow both parties to determine that they don’t want to work together again, if that’s the case.

William Tincup: 20:17

I love that. And again, back to that, uh, my dad says that I can throw, you know, rocks at cars, you know, type of example. It’s like, you know what? Your dad’s not here right now, you know? Exactly. Exactly. We’ll sync that up later on, but, uh, no rock throwing. Um. Alright, let’s do some buy-side stuff for, for, for the audience. And this is more when, uh, when you’re first approaching the benefits providers, uh, the, the benefits managers, hr, et cetera, whoever’s gonna buy the service, uh, what questions if they’ve never bought a service like this, um, because it is unique. It’s actually really cool. How, what are the questions that they should be asking you? Whether

Lynn Perkins: 20:59

it’s my service or another one in the category, I think the very first thing that. So, what an HR person should do is really survey their employees and find out what are their biggest pain points. Is it finding last minute care for children? Is it paying for ongoing child care, in which case a reimbursement program, which, um, Is something we also offer should also be included. Is it that it’s really the combination of taking care of elderly relatives and pets and kids. So I would suggest to any HR team that you go out and survey your employees first to really understand. You know, what, what are the top concerns? Because you probably won’t be able to solve every employee’s care needs with one benefit. And so understanding like, how can we serve the bulk of, of our, um, of our employees? Because you really want, we don’t want someone just to buy our service and have it not be utilized. We want to see maximum utilization. So we would then go in and say, okay. Is it that you’re sensing on, on the HR side, are you seeing that employees are missing days because they’re finding gaps in their care? And if that’s the case, then we’ll talk about putting together a plan where they offer a subsidy and access to our platform. And we’ll educate employees on how to best find care in that last minute need and how to use that subsidy. Um, and oftentimes companies will want to also allow. Family employees to bring family members onto our platform. You mentioned it in the earlier in our conversation that for a lot of families Leaving their child with somebody they don’t know is really daunting and we know that a lot of care happens Through relatives and neighbors and other trusted Individuals, so we actually have a way that those people can come onto our platform their background checked just for To give the company some peace of mind as well, they go through the same process and then the parent or family member can, can use the benefit to pay for that care through this somebody that they already know. So we understand, and especially in more rural areas, that this is more common and we like to try to. Again, have like the highest utilization possible and so sometimes we’re looking at a package that combines using our platform and then doing a subsidy for care that’s either with a known care provider or off of our platform.

William Tincup: 23:30

We should have asked this earlier. There’s ratings, uh, obviously for care providers. Are there ratings for the parents?

Lynn Perkins: 23:37

There are, it’s, it’s, we don’t reach, we don’t let the care providers rate the children. I feel like that could go south very quickly. But we do ask, we ask every single care provider after they’ve been in the family’s home, did you feel safe in the home? Would you return to work for this family again? And the good news is that on both sides of the equation, both parties are generally very happy with the experience on, on either side. There are times though when something is just, somebody is just not the right fit for our platform. And it’s, and I think Parents would be surprised to learn that its family is actually more often than care providers. 100%. 100%. So, so we do, we do have a vetting process on the other side of the equation. It’s just a little less, it’s less of a star system and more of a safety, um, a safety protocol.

William Tincup: 24:26

Well, I can see that being more around expectations, you know, where they just have really incredible high expectations for, uh, a care provider. They’re almost unrealistic. You know what I’m saying? Like, like I can see them know what they’re never going to be happy with no matter who takes care of their child.

Lynn Perkins: 24:46

William, I wish I could tell you. I had no idea what you’re talking about, but yes, we see those. I mean, everything from, oh, the care provider, you know, calling kind of the emergency hotline to say that the care provider, um, put the fancy pot in the dishwasher to, um, you name it. I think the care provider brought it. an organic fruit into my home. I mean, we’ve seen it all. So, you know, I do agree that setting expectations up front, going back to what I said are my biggest tips, just making sure that both parties have equal understanding and expectations are set, I think, helps to avoid these kind of situations.

William Tincup: 25:22

The, uh, the technology itself, so, uh, when you demo or when you show people the technology, what do they, uh, what do they fall in love with on the buying side?

Lynn Perkins: 25:34

On the buying side, I think it’s a combination of the statistics of our fulfillment rates. We have very high fulfillment rates, and I think it’s that peace of mind when you see that in your, whether it’s your headquarters city or your satellite office city, that there are care providers on our platform who have. Repeat families and videos talking about their experience working with young kids. You see how much thought we’ve put into building a platform that highlights different traits of different care providers so that families can really hone in on the best fit for their families. So we’ve had HR teams come in and say, oh, you know, we have People with children with special needs, and we’ll be able to show them how they can filter for people with experience for these different, um, different situations, whether it’s a language or a special, a special need a family has, and when they can see that their employee would be serviced by the platform very well, um, I think that’s, that’s a nice, a nice moment where they recognize that, okay, this is gonna work for the bulk of our employees.

William Tincup: 26:38

Right. All right. Last thing is, is kind of your favorite story where you like to tell people, you know, again, you started a company, you’ve been doing it for a little while. It’s, it’s obviously super successful. What’s your, what’s your kind of your favorite story of maybe someone that was, I don’t want to say pessimistic or cynical, but maybe they just didn’t get it, but they took a, they took a chance and then all of a sudden, boom, you know, they can’t imagine life without it. You know, one of those types of things.

Lynn Perkins: 27:06

Well, I’ll tell you, this one is both an urban sitter story and kind of a personal one. I have, um, friends when I started the company years ago who said to me, Oh, this, what a brilliant idea. It’s great. You’re doing this. Oh, but I would never trust anybody that I found on the internet. And lo and behold, one day, one of these naysayers, um, found herself in a situation where she had a big work meeting. She was actually hosting a conference and she ended up in a childcare bind. And. Uh, used Urban Sitter and had not only a great experience, but a fabulous experience. She continued to use that care provider. So not only did she become a big advocate and, and back, backed off of her words of saying she would never use it. Um, but she actually became one of our angel investors in our early days. So I love to, to tell that story about how conceptually she loved the idea of the platform, but would never use it. And then the day it came through for her, she became, um, a convert.

William Tincup: 28:02

Uh, that’s probably the best story ever. Uh, someone who goes from naysayer to investor.

Lynn Perkins: 28:07

Boom. Well, and I did have a situation where I was at the park with my kids when they were young and I was kind of at my wits end. It had been a long period of time where I was by myself with them and a woman at the park leaned over to me and said, you know, next time your husband goes out of town, you should try this website called Urban Sitter. It’s really great.

William Tincup: 28:26

Tell me a little bit more about it. Yeah, great. Tell me, tell me more. How’d you learn about it by the way? Absolutely. Oh, that’s great. Lynn, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh, William, thanks

Lynn Perkins: 28:38

for having me. I really enjoyed it.

William Tincup: 28:39

Absolutely. Thanks everybody for listening. Until next time.