J. Mark Baiada, in business to help people
As a youngster, J. Mark Baiada thought about becoming a priest, until, he said, "I discovered girls." By the time Baiada graduated from Rutgers University, he had a different plan - to start a business.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JZFSEITDC5G4VLWQA3DMDFKZMY.jpg)
As a youngster, J. Mark Baiada thought about becoming a priest, until, he said, "I discovered girls."
By the time Baiada graduated from Rutgers University, he had a different plan - to start a business.
On Saturday, his business, Bayada Home Health Care Inc., turns 40. Baiada, now 67, heads a company with 23,000 employees and about a billion dollars in revenue.
On Jan. 17, 1975, when the company opened its doors in a modest office on Walnut Street, Baiada was 27.
Question: How did you start?
Answer: I was always entrepreneurial, even at a young age. I did paper routes, shoveled snow. I sold cards door-to-door. [After college,] I didn't feel I was ready. I didn't have any money. I had college debt. I didn't feel competent to run a business. So I worked for two major companies as a marketing researcher.
Q: Your first job paid $10,400 a year and you managed to save up $16,000 over five years to start your business. Any tips on saving money?
A: Not spending it. I wouldn't go to McDonald's. My first apartment was $75 a month - third floor of a house with a space heater. The car was a Volkswagen. I was living in Connecticut. I didn't have a coat. I wanted to save the money. When you are sacrificing for a goal, every time you go out in the cold, you say, "What are you doing this for? Because I'm going to have a business one day." It reminds you of what's happening.
Q: What else did you do?
A: I went to night school. I read annual reports incessantly . . . to understand how business worked, why businesses failed.
Q: Why this business?
A: One, it had to help others, since I had wanted to be a priest. I remember saying to myself: "You can give me a casino or a tobacco company. I don't really want it." I'm not against those things. It's just not my life's work. Two, I had to be able to get in it for $16,000. And three, I want something reproducible that I can see coast-to-coast. I should pick a field where the demand for the service is growing long-term.
Q: At first you considered early-childhood education, but decided it was too complicated and expensive.
A: I ran across home health care and it clicked. Low cost of entry. It's a people business. I did the research: the [growing] number of elderly, the number of elderly wanting to stay home, women going back to work, and the dispersion of the extended family. Who's going to take care of Mom?
Q: What has changed?
A: A third of our work is high-tech pediatrics. That business didn't even exist when we started. People are doing things at home that weren't done before - feeding tubes, ventilators.
Q: What are some obstacles to your business?
A: The biggest threat would be reimbursement. The government and insurance companies all say that home health care is necessary and important and actually saves money. But they don't reimburse as such.
Q: What's the impact?
A: Our biggest problem is people. How do we get compassionate, excellent, and reliable people? If you call for someone in your family, I want to send the right person to you. That's always been a challenge.
Q: It's tough, isn't it, because some home health jobs don't pay well.
A: I'd love to [pay more]. But we're reimbursement-bound. Different states pay differently. In the states where they pay higher, the aides make more.
J. MARK BAIADA
Title: President
Home: Moorestown
Family: Wife, Ann; children, Jackie Kirchhoff, a nurse, 38; David, 38; Kelli Marans, 36; Janice Lovequist, 35, Christin Gregory, 30.
Diplomas: Holy Cross High School, Rutgers University, undergraduate and master's degrees in business, economics.
CEO's special task: To fix the toilet in company headquarters. "I had to get a new flapper and a ball. I'm not going to pay a plumber $50 or $100 to fix that."
Reliability resolution for 2014: To reply to all e-mails within 24 hours. EndText
BAYADA HOME HEALTH CARE
Where: Moorestown.
Ownership: For-profit, founded Jan. 17, 1975.
To celebrate: Company-wide party, webcast on Wednesday in all locations.
Business: Providing nursing, rehabilitative, therapeutic, hospice, and assistive home care services for children, adults, and seniors.
Employees: 23,000, including more than 19,000 health-care professionals, in 290 offices in 21 states; 7,000 locally.
2014 revenues: $1 billion.
EndText
MORE ONLINE
Bayada founder J. Mark Baiada on next-generation leadership: www.philly.com/jobbing
EndText
215-854-2769 @JaneVonBergen