Dignity, Independence, and Reimagining Modern Elder Care (with Bob Roth of Cypress Home Care Solutions)
In this episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain sits down with Bob Roth, co-founder and managing partner of Cypress Home Care Solutions, to explore the urgent realities of America’s aging population and how compassionate caregiving, family values, and modern innovation help seniors remain independent in their own homes.
Bob’s journey into elder care began with deep family roots and a life-altering medical crisis. His family’s entrepreneurial legacy dates back to 1919, when his grandfather immigrated from Russia and started a butter and egg business on the cobblestone streets of Baltimore that eventually grew into a full-line food distributorship acquired by Sysco. Bob built an impressive career in corporate consumer packaged goods, directing trade marketing and sales for major brands like Quaker Oats, Gatorade, and Dole Foods. However, after his mother suffered a massive heart attack at age 48 in 1985—spending 18 days in a coma and receiving one of the nation’s first automatic implantable defibrillators—his family experienced firsthand the overwhelming demands placed on family caregivers. Relocating to Arizona, the Roth family founded Cypress Home Care Solutions in 1994, well before home care franchises emerged. Bob joined full-time in 2003, spending the past 23 years transforming the company into a nationally recognized beacon of ethics, trust, and forward-thinking senior care.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The “Silver Tsunami” and Solo Aging: The staggering demographic shift underway as the 65-plus population doubles and the 85-plus population quadruples over the next two decades, coupled with the fact that one-third of seniors are now “solo aging” without local family or a spouse nearby.
- Bridging the 280-Mile Gap: Why the average adult child lives roughly 280 miles away from their aging parents, and how professional in-home caregivers act as surrogate family members—providing an essential extra pair of eyes, ears, and hands for activities of daily living like bathing, mobility, and companionship.
- AI and Ambient Monitoring in the Home: How Cypress leverages back-office AI and machine learning to cut administrative friction, allowing care coordinators to visit clients two to three times more frequently, while deploying in-home ambient sensors to predict, prevent, and protect seniors from medical emergencies before they happen.
- The Financial Reality of Long-Term Care: Why relying on Medicare to cover in-home assistance or assisted living is a dangerous myth, the reality of round-the-clock home care costing upwards of $30,000 a month, and the urgent need to protect vulnerable seniors against widespread financial exploitation and scams.
- “Motion is the Lotion” and Time Capital: Bob’s reflections on recovering from spinal disc surgery, why our time capital is the only currency we truly control, and how daily movement, exercise, and a proactive mindset distinguish healthy aging from decline.
- Building Unshakeable Trust: Why winning the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for Business Ethics underscores the sanctity of entering a client’s home, alongside moving tributes to extraordinary clients like Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein and the touching story of the caregiver who became a dining buddy and confidant for Bob’s own father.
- Guarding the Stands at Bethany Beach: A surprising look back at Bob’s college summers working as a beach lifeguard in Delaware, where mandatory 8:30 a.m. workouts and morning chats with visiting senators and rear admirals first sparked his love for hearing the rich life stories of older generations.
Family members navigating elder care decisions, healthcare innovators, and business leaders seeking lessons on building an enduring, values-driven service brand will find this conversation deeply moving, eye-opening, and practical.
Listen to the full episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour podcast to hear Bob’s inspiring insights on family resilience, active aging, and the future of compassionate care.
Full Transcript
Announcer 0:03
Welcome to the Knoodle Founders Hour, where we go founder to founder with host Rosaria Cain. Today, our special guest is Bob Roth, founder of Cypress Home Care Solutions, a non-medical home care business focused on seniors. Please welcome Bob Roth.
Rosaria Cain 0:21
Welcome to Knoodle Founders Hour, Bob. We’re so happy to have you,
Bob Roth 0:24
Rosaria. It’s so great to see you. I haven’t seen you in probably close to 14 or 15 years.
Rosaria Cain 0:30
I know.
Bob Roth 0:30
And you don’t age at all yet.
Rosaria Cain 0:32
And neither do you.
Bob Roth 0:33
Well, thank you.
Rosaria Cain 0:33
Neither do you. And you’re in the aging business. For those who don’t know, Bob Roth, he is the co-founder and managing partner of Cypress Home Care Services, and we are happy to have him. He helps people in their homes age in a beautiful way.
Bob Roth 0:49
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 0:49
So give us your elevator speech. Perhaps I didn’t say that right.
Bob Roth 0:52
Well, look, everybody wants to stay at home. And we should give everyone that right to do so. And you know the aging continuum is one that takes very different turns and twists for every individual, but there comes a point in time when you know that independence is something that you don’t or no longer have, and you’re not able to do what we refer to as activities of daily living. So, what we do at Cypress Home Care Solutions is we enable older adults to remain independent in their home by assisting them with those activities of daily living by giving them the care that they so desperately need. So we provide caregivers, and those caregivers go into the home and they help with bathing, they help with getting people up in the morning. If someone needs some assistance with toileting, we can do that as well. But we do more than that. We are an extra pair of hands. We’re an extra pair of feet. We’re an extra pair of eyes and ears. We’re kind of like a surrogate son and daughter that can’t be there to really help their loved ones through the aging continuum, through the aging journey, give them that independence. So it can be just a couple hours a day. It can be 24/7. But you know, Rosaria, we have a population that is aging at such a rapid rate. When you really sit down and you think about in the next two decades…
Rosaria Cain 2:17
Baby boomers.
Bob Roth 2:18
The 65 year old population is going to double in two decades, and in two decades, the 85-year-old population is going to closely expand by 4x. We don’t have enough people behind us, so we don’t have families that live together. 1/3 of our population, 65 and older is solo aging. So having solo agers out there and not having people that be able to assist them in their activities of daily living is exactly what we do.
Rosaria Cain 2:53
Now solo aging is individuals by themselves who don’t have a life mate, a partner, or family in the home.
Bob Roth 3:01
Right.
Rosaria Cain 3:01
Okay.
Bob Roth 3:02
We have done some research with the trade association that I was a part of, and I still am. I was on their board with the National Association of Aging. We have determined that the average distance for an adult child from a parent is about 280 miles, so that’s the biggest challenge we run into. If people do have children, they don’t live in the same community, especially here in Phoenix.
Bob Roth 3:33
Their children aren’t here.
Rosaria Cain 3:35
Right.
Bob Roth 3:36
And a lot of people like me who raised their children here, who chose not to be desert dwellers.
Rosaria Cain 3:41
Right.
Bob Roth 3:41
Moved out of here. That’s the challenge. Technology and transportation has allowed that nuclear family that we all experienced growing up in the ’60s and the people that grew up in the ’50s and even in the ’60s and ’70s doesn’t exist anymore. People don’t live in the same neighborhoods. Like my mother grew up in a neighborhood where her cousins lived on the block next door, and her aunties and uncles were right around the corner. So families were always there to care for people, and I believe that we owe it to this generation. And I’m talking about the silent and the greatest, and now boomers like us.
Rosaria Cain 4:22
We’re head on into.
Bob Roth 4:24
We owe them.
Rosaria Cain 4:26
Because boomers start in 1949, correct?
Bob Roth 4:29
46.
Rosaria Cain 4:30
Well, there’s some.
Bob Roth 4:30
46 to 1964.
Rosaria Cain 4:35
I’m in there.
Bob Roth 4:36
I catch them
Rosaria Cain 4:36
Towards the end. Yeah, I’m towards the end. We’re both towards the end.
Bob Roth 4:39
Detail end. But I mean, listen, Rosaria, to care for those that once cared for us is the greatest honor. And if you are an adult child and you’re listening to this, do what you can if you can help mom and dad be able to stay at home. And if you can’t be there and you can’t have other family members there, you should engage a professional home care agency like Cypress Home Care Solutions that employs their caregivers, trains their caregivers. They actually coordinate those caregivers. So if a caregiver doesn’t show up, they make sure that there is care, so that your mom and dad can stay at home. Because ultimately, isn’t that what we all want? We want to be able to stay at home.
Rosaria Cain 5:20
Yes. Now.
Bob Roth 5:21
Now it’s a long elevator. I just wanted to let you know that’s what we do.
Rosaria Cain 5:25
It’s beautiful. Let me ask you this: We’re kind of in a tug, a tug of war with generations, right? Because we have people that are our families. I lost my mother about 12 years ago, somewhere in there, and also I have kids that are adult children, and I’m on. Let me put it this way: I’m over 60, way over 60. Well, not way over 60. All right, I’m 65. I’ll fess up.
Bob Roth 5:53
And you know what? Next year I get to be 65.
Rosaria Cain 5:56
All right, there you go. We’re right there.
Bob Roth 5:58
So now 64 and you know what?
Rosaria Cain 6:01
And I feel great.
Bob Roth 6:02
It’s a privilege.
Rosaria Cain 6:03
Do you feel great?
Bob Roth 6:04
Oh yeah. Are you kidding me? We’re smarter. We’re wiser. I mean, this population has a lot to offer.
Rosaria Cain 6:10
Now let’s talk about baby boomers for a second. They’re the ones that keep their youth and they take it with them. I mean, that’s why Styx is still performing for God’s sakes.
Bob Roth 6:19
Styx.
Rosaria Cain 6:20
And Rolling Stones.
Bob Roth 6:21
Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger.
Bob Roth 6:22
I know. I mean, come on, Keith Richards.
Rosaria Cain 6:25
I can’t even believe he didn’t die of something.
Bob Roth 6:28
Yeah, I mean, the guy looks like he was just involved.
Rosaria Cain 6:31
He’s looked for that way for 20 years.
Bob Roth 6:33
I know he’s got more lines on his face.
Rosaria Cain 6:35
He does.
Bob Roth 6:36
The math does.
Rosaria Cain 6:37
Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. How is it different caring for baby boomers who really don’t leave their youth behind? They take it with them.
Bob Roth 6:48
You know, I will tell you that is what we’re seeing more of today. We’re seeing more baby boomers than ever.
Rosaria Cain 6:57
I bet.
Bob Roth 6:57
Because we’re getting to that generation. I mean, 46. Okay, so if you do the math, these are people that are turning 80 this year. So that’s the oldest of the baby boomers are turning 80.
Rosaria Cain 7:10
Right.
Bob Roth 7:10
At first and foremost, tech they get, they understand technology.
Rosaria Cain 7:16
They were a little late to the table.
Bob Roth 7:17
No, they’re a little late to the table. But I have clients that are texting me and texting my caregivers, you know, where the last generation wasn’t. So texts adapt, right? So technology, they really understand. I think your comment about the fact that they are more geared to anti aging and they’re looking to preserve and take care of themselves. I think you know, for me, and it’s hard to say this. And maybe I’m defining people too simplistically, but when people have a terminal diagnosis, they either go one or two ways. One, they go really angry at the world and really talk about how shortchanged they were, and they’re just mad as hell and they can’t take it anymore. And then there are others that really are at peace, and I think I’m finding more people that are of that generation that were trying to anti-age. You know, I I think I may find if I did a census poll, I would probably find that they would be more angry. Not at peace, because they’ve been fighting to stay young, and there were things that were outside of their control, and you know whether it be a cancer diagnosis or a neurological disease that they were diagnosed with, it’s hard. It’s hard on anybody, Rosaria. But I think to your point. I think the boomer generation has one taken care of themselves far better.
Rosaria Cain 8:47
Exercise is a thing.
Bob Roth 8:48
You admitted that you’re 65 years old. You look amazing, and when you sit down and you think about mom and your grandmother at 65, they were really old.
Rosaria Cain 8:59
I know. I can’t believe I’m that old. I have that same thought every day. But I exercise.
Bob Roth 9:05
You’re eating better. You’re exercising. We know how important sleep is, so we’re doing all those things to live our best lives. So, I think that’s really important for us to do it. I don’t have the data really support it, but I think that a lot of boomers that do get bad diagnoses, they handle the end or the diagnosis really much differently. I think the previous generation was more accepting of it and more at peace with it.
Rosaria Cain 9:38
Well, I think aging meant something different to them. It’s what you have in your head, right? And I think a lot. And I think we were talking about this a little before we started taping. I really think aging is a choice. I don’t think you necessarily have to age. I mean, you naturally get older, but so much of it develops in your mind. You are as young as you think. And you can’t do the things if you think you can’t do it. You can’t do it, and that’s why always maintaining your sense of curiosity and always looking at new things differently, and always-and this is big for me-always exercise. Always do what you can do, even if it’s walking. Do what you can do. I mean, how many times a week do you exercise?
Bob Roth 10:22
Not enough.
Rosaria Cain 10:23
Oh come on!
Bob Roth 10:23
Well, I just came off herniating my disc.
Rosaria Cain 10:26
Oh, okay. Well, that’s gonna slow you down.
Bob Roth 10:29
I had surgery on May the 5th, so Cinco de Mayo. You may have been drinking margaritas. I was having a little something stronger than margaritas to be able to get through that surgery.
Rosaria Cain 10:39
I bet you were.
Bob Roth 10:40
But, it humbled me, and it made me realize where I am in my season of life, and it’s really given me pause. And we were talking about this before is that really the only currency that you and I can control is our time capital, and we can choose to decay or grow. Okay, so we can decay by doing nothing, or we can grow by going and doing things and walking, running, lifting weights, doing yoga, doing Pilates. All of those things afford us the opportunity to grow. And what does that do? Moving causes inflammation. Inflammation causes rebuild and muscle builds and all those things and it hurts don’t get me wrong but when you get through it you feel really good. There was a path I was on before my herniated disc before I dealt with that back surgery where I was doing yoga almost every day at six a.m. and I’m going to tell you by seven a.m. I checked off that box. I had my first win of the day, and I’m ready for the day. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t love doing it.
Rosaria Cain 11:52
Oh, see, but I love doing that.
Bob Roth 11:53
But I love the feeling after the euphoria afters. It’s like a high that I’ve never really felt before, and I love trying to get that high, but getting up.
Rosaria Cain 12:04
I get up at 4:30 every morning.
Bob Roth 12:06
I get up at 4:45. I have a yellow lab.
Rosaria Cain 12:08
Yeah. Is she still around?
Bob Roth 12:11
Well, I have a second.
Rosaria Cain 12:12
Oh.
Bob Roth 12:13
Lacy, you remember this?
Rosaria Cain 12:15
Oh yes.
Bob Roth 12:15
Lacy.
Rosaria Cain 12:16
She was like the mascot of your office.
Bob Roth 12:19
She was a pet therapy dog.
Rosaria Cain 12:21
She was. I remember that.
Bob Roth 12:22
She was amazing.
Rosaria Cain 12:23
And now you have a second.
Bob Roth 12:24
Now I have Ruby, and Ruby is a pandemic puppy, but Ruby’s like this morning at about I’m going to say 4:45.
Rosaria Cain 12:33
She knows the clock.
Bob Roth 12:34
Well, she doesn’t get up on the bed. We don’t have our dogs get up, but she puts her muzzle right up next to me, and and boom, boom, boom, boom! Her tail’s going, and and she’s trying to get my attention. Every once in a while, she’ll hit me with that nose that’s cold and wet. I’m like, okay. And as much as I think I’m doing it for her, she’s doing it for me.
Rosaria Cain 12:55
Yeah.
Bob Roth 12:56
And this morning we got three miles in, and that’s my win of the day. I’ve not done yoga. I’ve gotten back to yoga, but I’m walking the dog and moving, and movement is the solution. It’s motion is the lotion. All those sayings are so important.
Rosaria Cain 13:13
Yep.
Bob Roth 13:13
But I want to go back to saying you can either decay, or you can cause inflammation to rebuild, and I think that’s what you and I have chosen to do, and that’s why we are aging very differently than the last generation and the generation before.
Rosaria Cain 13:27
You know, it’s interesting. I think in a lot of ways, this that segment of the generation is all about exercise. Some of our younger counterparts are not as into exercise, and perhaps it’s because they’re in their careers and they’re doing all of those things, but it seems like a different mindset coming up. How can we teach them these positive attributes? How can we pass that on, or is it just a different generation and a different day and a different time.
Bob Roth 14:02
Rosaria, I got to tell you, I mean, I’m really challenged with this generation. I really am. I think that COVID had just such a great impact on them, and not in a very positive way. You know, we talked about this before we got on the show, and you know, I see the world that has become very transactional, and you know we’re human and we’re meant to be relational. You know, we’re meant to have interpersonal encounters, whether it be with friends, whether it be in business relationships, whether it be with family. I mean, those are meaningful, and texting, and WhatsApp, and all the social media outlets out there. That’s all one way. It’s a monolog. It’s not a dialog.
Rosaria Cain 14:53
Well, there’s no personality to it either.
Bob Roth 14:55
There’s not, and everybody is a a what would you call? Like a armchair or, you know, keyboard quarterback, you know, and you can say things in a message that you would never say to somebody in person. And you know what? I think we have to get back to being relational. And I think too many people are burning up too much time on those screens. And I’m looking at my phone, and for those that are listening and watching, don’t look at your phone so often, and take a news diet. Just don’t.
Rosaria Cain 15:28
Oh, I need to go on a news diet.
Bob Roth 15:30
On CNN on all day, and don’t get all those feeds. Live in the moment. Be with the ones you love. I got to tell you, my surgeon. A big shout out to Dr. Luis Tumialán. He’s the one that operated on me. He’s with the Barrow Spine Group over Honor Health. I said to him, I said, you know, my back doesn’t hurt, but a couple other things hurt. And I told him what hurt, and he said, it hurts to get old. Just get face it. It just hurts to get old, and and we have to realize that. I mean, we’re not young anymore. We have to be accepting where we’re at. You know, it’s a privilege to age, and the fact is that this generation coming up to answer your question, they need to understand that motion is a lotion. You need to move. You need to be active. I will tell you, I’m a girl dad, and I’m really fascinated. I think women are far more active than men, and you know they’re doing Pilates, they’re doing yoga, they’re actually lifting weights. You know, there’s a lot of great information there for women today about women’s health that didn’t exist when you and I were growing.
Rosaria Cain 16:36
Right.
Bob Roth 16:37
They’re studying everything from hearts. They’re studying everything. Everything about a woman’s body isn’t exactly the same as a man’s, and it’s amazing how many women are taking health very seriously, and we see it every day, and it’s nice to see. I’m not so sure the men are doing the same. I’m not really sure because I think they may be spending way too much time on computers.
Rosaria Cain 17:02
That’s true, and I think men tend. Well, from studies I’ve read, men tend to be lonelier as they get older because they don’t have as much of a support system. They don’t have as many friends around them, so it’s different.
Bob Roth 17:15
Have a really deep conversation because I listen. I listen to podcasts a lot, and I can’t remember the exact podcast, but men are choosing not to have relationships with women. They’re choosing careers. They’re they’re you know I’ll say porn and pornography is probably the highest level ever. It’s being consumed at such high rates, and you know people aren’t really wanting to have relationships. Go on dates.
Rosaria Cain 17:45
Well, they have dates with ChatGPT now.
Bob Roth 17:47
Well, yeah. So I mean that’s a problem.
Rosaria Cain 17:50
I think it is a problem.
Bob Roth 17:51
And it’s a problem when we sit down and think about humanity and what it’s going to look like 50 years from now. Guess what, Rosaria? The bicentennial was over 50 years ago. Do you remember it? I remember it very well. I can’t believe that the country is now 50 years older. And what’s it going to look like 50 years from now?
Rosaria Cain 18:12
It’s a great question.
Bob Roth 18:12
What is it going to look like? I mean, it’s you know, and 2076. How different is it going to be from 2026.
Rosaria Cain 18:21
There’s a lot of there’s a lot of it depends.
Bob Roth 18:23
We have to first of all, we have to care for those that once cared for us and do it in a better way. I gave you the data points, so we owe it to this generation to be able to provide some way to keep some semblance of independence. Because you and I will go fighting, kicking and screaming, going to assisted living. You’re going to go from this house, my house that I’ve lived in for 32 years, it’s nearly 4,000 square feet, into a room about the size of this podcast studio. I’m not going to take that very, very well. Let’s put it that way.
Rosaria Cain 18:58
Well, you’re not going to let that happen.
Bob Roth 19:00
Well, but just imagine if you were.
Rosaria Cain 19:02
Yeah.
Bob Roth 19:03
And the mindset that comes along with that is that you’re taking one more step to discharging to heaven, and that’s a very sobering moment. And that’s why you know a lot of these people live through a lot of anxiety and depression because they’re not really getting the support, so we we have to do a better job as a community. We have to do a better job as a government. We have to figure out how we can keep people home, because I really believe that home needs to be the center of care, and we can do that.
Rosaria Cain 19:34
And that’s the problem you solve, basically. And people that do what you do, that’s the problem Cypress Home care solution solves.
Bob Roth 19:41
Exactly, and what we do is not only provide the care. We have expanded it so we can provide other ways to keep people in the home and using technology and innovation. And one of them is ambient monitors. If people can’t be here all the time, if we have monitors in the home. The whole goal is to be able to predict and prevent and protect that individual from having a medical event from happening. Because if a medical event happens, they’re going to go into the hospital again, ambulance, and then a hospital, and more than likely they may not be coming back home. They may be going to skilled nursing facility or rehab. We want to prevent that, and I think we have an opportunity to do so. And we need organizations to step up.
Bob Roth 20:31
I have an opportunity to serve on the board of directors for AllThrive 365, which used to be a foundation for senior living. It’s a social service organization right here in the community, and they do amazing work. They have about a 40 to 45 million dollar budget. All of it is funded through grants and federal funding, and certainly philanthropy. And we have a big event coming up next Thursday. This is what we need. We need the community to coalesce. They do adult day care. They help homebound adults or older people. They provide care for the caregiver and give them caregiving skills. They do weatherization. They do low income housing. Those are the people that we need to help lift up and give them the resources to be able to take care of our community, and the government needs to step up too. I mean, Medicare. Newsflash: If you’re expecting your safety net to be our government to pay for senior living or pay for in-home supportive care, like what Cypress does, it’s not happening. There are four ways that you pay for senior living, or you pay for in-home care, and that is private funds. It’s VA benefits, it’s long-term care insurance, or Medicaid. That’s it. Those are the options. And by the way, Rosaria, God forbid, if you were on 24/7 care with a professional home care agency like mine, 24/7, it would cost you about $30,000 a month, $360,000 a year with after tax dollars. The average American doesn’t even have anything close to that, so it’s a wake up call, and we need to be able to take care of them. And it is really incumbent upon this next generation to be able to help us. And how are you feeling about that?
Rosaria Cain 22:21
How are you feeling about that generation?
Bob Roth 22:23
Not really good.
Rosaria Cain 22:23
Me neither.
Bob Roth 22:24
Not really good. I mean, look, I’m in the space, and you know, I don’t know if you bought long term care insurance, but I did. I bought two policies. I mean, because I know how expensive this is, but the average person didn’t, and they have to wind down their estate. They have to sell their homes. People do you know crazy things like reverse mortgages, and I’m not saying that’s crazy, but I’m saying if you look at any of those things, consult with your professional, talk to your accountants, talk to your attorneys before you sign any document to make sure that your best interests are being followed. But I mean, there are lots of people that are out there looking to exploit seniors, and that’s a travesty. And you and I get these text messages, we get these emails. They look like they’re real. Oh, you won this. Click on here.
Rosaria Cain 23:15
Yeah, fishing.
Bob Roth 23:15
Your credit card was just compromised. You got to hit this button. Seniors fall for that. Billions of dollars are taken from seniors in exploitation. It’s sad. It really is. We have to figure out how.
Rosaria Cain 23:32
Well, that’s sobering. Moving right along. Tell me about the story of how you founded Cypress.
Bob Roth 23:40
Well, I think one of the things that really attracted me to Knoodle and to you, Rosaria, is that I come from the consumer product goods world. I grew up in the food service industry, so my roots start when my grandfather immigrated here from Russia in 1912. Started a butter and egg business on this cobble streets of Baltimore in 1919. You know that’s where you know our family roots are. And my father married my mom, and my mom was in that business. That was her dad and her uncle that started it. My dad got into the business and grew it to a full line food service distributorship. And I grew up in that business. We sold the business in 1986 to Sysco and, in 1985, the year before, my mother had a massive heart attack, and it was so bad that she was in the hospital for two months, 18 days in a drug-induced coma at the age of 48 in 1985, and she came out a very different person. She lost about two thirds of usage of her heart; only 1/3 of it was working. She had one of the very first AICDs, and that’s an automatic implantable cardio defibrillator, where the defibrillator was in her abdomen with leads that went up to her heart. Now they’re just inserted like they are pacemakers today. But that’s what she had. That the device was about the size of a deck of playing cards. But that saved her life, and she lived for nearly 18 years following that. I want to tell our listeners and viewers that in 1985 there was no such thing as assisted living. You and I grew up in that era. We were experiencing population explosion. Those suburbs were being built, new schools, churches, synagogues, rooftops. You know it. Everyone migrated outside of the cities, and we were worried about population explosion. We were worried about using up all the resources. I gave you a lot of data points before, but the one point I didn’t give you is that right now our population is at 345 million Americans, and in order to sustain our population, every child rearing female needs to have 2.1 kids.
Rosaria Cain 26:04
Right. Birth rate.
Bob Roth 26:05
We’re at 1.58 and declining, and a lot has changed. So assisted living didn’t exist, in home supportive care didn’t exist. Mom and dad moved here in 1987. Cisco wanted my father to run the operation here, and he took over the operation here. It was a better climate for my mom. My brothers and I were visiting here, and in 1994 and 95, we decided to move here. We thought it would be really good to be here with mom. Phoenix and Scottsdale are a great place to live, so why not come here? And we came here and stood up a home care company to help other families. See, we knew how hard caregiving was. Being a family caregiver is really hard risk. There’s 63 million Americans out there that are sacrificing every single day to care for those that they love, and more than half of them are in that sandwich generation where they’re raising kids and they’re taking care of a loved one. So it’s really hard work, and you know we didn’t have home care companies back then to help us, and they were just beginning to emerge. And we said we could stand one of these up. It was before the first franchise even started. Home Instead didn’t even start yet.
Rosaria Cain 27:26
You were before your time.
Bob Roth 27:28
We were before our time. We stood it up in ’94, and we’ve been making difference in people’s lives. But the one thing that we didn’t realize because we’re from back east, and I described earlier that my mother lived in a neighborhood where her aunts and uncles and cousins lived.
Bob Roth 27:45
Here in Arizona, very different from back east. So there wasn’t really family to give respite. Don’t get me wrong, there is just not to the degree that there was back east. And so we’re providing a lot of full care for families that aren’t here, and we’ve been doing it now for 32 years, and it’s been a labor of love. It’s like what Mark Twain said: if you love what you do, then you never work a day in your life, and it’s been really gratifying to be able to help these families through the journeys. And each one of them is very different. Each client is like a snowflake, but each journey to a dementia journey, a Parkinson’s journey, an Alzheimer’s journey, an ALS journey is very different. I mean, we’ve had ALS patients that go fast, and we’ve got some that go slow. It’s a very different journey for everyone. And going back to the really deep conversations we had earlier, talking about people that are leaving this world angry versus at peace. Those are all very different too.
Rosaria Cain 28:49
I bet. So you founded the company.
Bob Roth 28:52
We founded the company. We, my brother Joe, ran it for 10 years. I’m a consumer product goods guy.
Rosaria Cain 28:58
Right.
Bob Roth 28:59
Thank you. We’re come full circle. This is what gravity.
Rosaria Cain 29:01
That’s great. Yeah.
Bob Roth 29:02
Me to you. You know, squirrel. Okay, worked for companies like Quaker Oats. Gatorade was part of Quaker. I worked in sales. I worked in trade marketing. I worked in brand management. Really loved that side of the business. Grew up in the food service business went to work in the manufacturing side. I passed up on a number of opportunities to move again. I did a stint in Chicago. That’s where Quaker is, and I ended up being back in Baltimore as a regional manager for Gatorade in the cold channel, and they wanted me to move back to Chicago in order to become a director. That’s kind of the progression that you went in these big manufacturing companies. And I didn’t want to go back to Chicago. I had a family now, and you know I didn’t want to live in the suburbs. But when I lived there in 1985, it was a lot of fun because I lived in the city. You know, it’s like after they won Super Bowl.
Rosaria Cain 30:00
Right.
Bob Roth 30:01
It was.
Rosaria Cain 30:02
Chiago is a lovely city.
Bob Roth 30:03
It is. But I, knowing that I had a child, and I would have been like all my other Quaker colleagues and lived in Wheaton or Naperville or you know somewhere you know Buffalo Grove, but wasn’t going to live in the city and and I’d have to take the choo choo train, and that was not appealing to me, so I ended up going to work for Dole Foods, and they hired me as a director of their trade marketing on the all other channels, not grocery, and responsible for their product line. And it was a great experience. They hired me because of my beverage background, because Dole had a whole line of juices and juice drinks, and two years later, we sold the business to Seagram’s Tropicana. They offered me a lateral move to go to Bradenton, Florida, and I said thanks, but no thanks. I hired my successor; they paid me out, a very nice salary, and I moved here to be closer to mom. I was doing some consulting before I joined the company, but my brother left the company in 2003, and that’s when I came aboard. I joined in 2003, and I’ve been here now through 23 years. It’s crazy. It goes by fast.
Rosaria Cain 31:16
It does go by fast.
Bob Roth 31:17
But I I love every minute, and what I’ve tried to create here with Cypress is a culture of innovation, and really one of the things I talk about every day-I talk about it from the lectern when I’m talking to people in my trade or on the podcast or even writing about-is that if you stay static in this space, and if you stay static in yours too, especially in these times, you’re going to be obsolete.
Rosaria Cain 31:41
Right.
Bob Roth 31:42
So we’re reimagining home care all the time. I talked about ambient monitoring. We do fall prevention testing. We do a number of different things to really keep people active and keep them in the home. We’ve embraced technology using AI and machine learning on all the back office stuff that we do, it’s remarkable how much time capital we are saving because those tasks can be done by machines. But going back to what you and I were talking about earlier, we cannot be transactional in our encounters with our caregivers, our clients, our clients’ families, those are very relational and human experiences, and that’s something that because we’re using and embracing AI, we’re able to have more encounters with our families and more encounters with our clients. Our care coordinators are seeing our clients at two to 3x more times than they were previously, which is really exciting because we get to be there, we get to see the changes in conditions, and we get to prevent and protect the clients that we.
Rosaria Cain 32:54
And that’s a privilege. Let me ask you this: Do you think you were born an entrepreneur? Did you always wanted to do that, or did you develop one because of circumstances like your mom and your family?
Bob Roth 33:05
It’s a good question. I I think a lot of it, and I think people that would be watching and listening to this can probably relate to it. I played athletics all my life, and I think that experience. You take risks, and I was our quarterback when I played rec football and high school football. I played lacrosse. Being in that role, especially as a leader as a quarterback, you’ve got other people that are counting on you. You’re the one. You’re the one that’s calling the plays. You’re the one that you know is touching the ball second after the center is talking touching it. And and where that goes is ultimately in your hands. So that I think gave me the rooting to be a leader, and the training that I got in the the the consumer products world, working for Quaker and Gatorade and Dole, I think really positioned me to be in that entrepreneurial role. Look, risk taking is not easy. I mean, look, you have a practice here that’s been around for 27 years.
Rosaria Cain 34:23
27.
Bob Roth 34:25
I use the word static versus dynamic. You, I’ve watched you grow. You’ve had a change. If you operated the way you did 12 years ago, 13 years from, when I saw you last.
Rosaria Cain 34:37
Yeah, I think back then I was thinking digital will pass. Well, and look at what happened. Became the thing.
Bob Roth 34:47
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 34:47
And it’s still innovating every day.
Bob Roth 34:50
We could have a whole side conversation talking about these algorithms and how all this stuff follows us and any conversation you and I are having about a product or a service. I can guarantee you, at some point today, if you go out to one of the social media sites, it’s going to show up on your feed. It’s they’re all listening.
Rosaria Cain 35:12
Keywords.
Bob Roth 35:13
It’s all following us. It’s a whole different world.
Rosaria Cain 35:17
So with that background, do you have any role models that really propelled you through to where you are today, or mentors?
Bob Roth 35:27
I will tell you, there’s one in my industry that I just admire and and what he’s created, and that’s Mark Baiata, and Bayata Home Care. It started as a family business, and he created just something really, really special on the East Coast. And yeah, I watched him grow, and you know, he became a friend, and he’s since exited. And it’s interesting how he exited because, Mark’s biggest concern was family businesses when you look as it passes generations, the first pass from the first to the second, has more than a two thirds likelihood that it’s going to succeed. I forget the number, but it’s like the 70 percentile. But when it goes to the next generation, it drops precipitously, and it is scary on what can happen. And he built this thing, and you know he’s so passionate about it. And I’ll never forget having a discussion with him, literally almost 20 years ago. And he ended up doing it, like six or seven years ago now. So it was like really, 13 years later, that he ended up doing it, but he described what Hershey did with their Hershey business, and what they did was they formed a not-for-profit, and he created a not-for-profit so he could live in perpetuity that his baby would continue on, and just the way he looked at the business and the way he looked at people certainly something I admire and I respect. I haven’t really given it a whole lot of thought in terms of any one individual, but I come around so many people in our space that are just they’re givers, and they’re people that are in my space and they’re consultants that are my space, that I know that if I’m wrangling with something or just curious, that I can pick up the phone, send a message to them, and ask them if I could pick up the phone and call them, or maybe you know set up some kind of a Teams or a Zoom meeting, or maybe meet up. I think that’s really been beneficial to me as an entrepreneur. It can be very lonely, and you need your peeps with you. So I don’t have any just one, but I have several people that I kind of bounce things off of, especially as we evolve.
Rosaria Cain 37:56
Well, with all that marketing background, and I didn’t realize to the extent you had that. It’s really impressive. How does it propel you with your marketing? How do you approach it?
Bob Roth 38:05
Well, I approach it first with the message. It’s always built from the message up, and you have to make sure that your message is relatable to the audience that you’re talking to. So messaging can be very different to in my space to somebody that is a let’s call it a social worker discharge planner to someone that is a wealth advisor and a trust officer. So the way you message and you deliver that brand and the way you are going to market is it’s an imperative, so you have to work on your messaging, and and messaging is everything. And I think it starts from there. And once you build that message, then you can build around that. You can build the creative that helps you deliver that message. Whether it be a visual, whether it be a video, or whatever that you know will help you, or help that consumer have it stick and create that stickiness. Because at the end of the day, with over 700 home care companies in just this marketplace, we want it to be the power of recall, right? And if your message is right.
Rosaria Cain 39:20
Want to be under consideration.
Bob Roth 39:21
Yeah, the message. If your message is compelling enough, you want it to promote that recall. So I think it all boils down to how you message your product or your service.
Rosaria Cain 39:31
Well, what’s your message?
Bob Roth 39:33
My message is one. You know, 32 years. I think the best message for me is the awards are things that I never sought, but the recognition is really powerful. We’ve won a lot of awards, and the one that I think is most compelling for me is the Better Business Bureau Torch Award for business ethics. Because we are in a community that does not require regulation, and I just want to go on record, I’m not a regulation person, but at the same time, we owe it to this vulnerable population that we protect them. The Better Business Bureau is the biggest one out there.
Rosaria Cain 40:18
Sure.
Bob Roth 40:19
We’ve won it twice, and we’re a finalist, and we’ll know this November if we win a third time. So my message is it’s about trust, and you have to make sure that when that care recipient, your loved one or the one you have referred, opens up that door, they open their life to that caregiver, and they’re a vulnerable adult. So you need to make sure that you have established that trust. So I share with you the fact that you know we’ve received these awards, have not sought them, but it’s helped us to establish the trust. You, my friend, helped me build years ago this video library of testimonials, and they still exist on our page. and And you mentioned the Holocaust survivor, and she’s a front center.
Bob Roth 41:12
And for our listeners she always didn’t mind me saying that she was a client, and that be Gerda Weisman Klein, and she is an accomplished artist. Her story is now not only published, but it was turned into a movie. She’s won an Academy Award. She’s won a Presidential Medal of Honor. She created a not-for-profit called Citizenship Counts. She loves this country. She did. She she passed a few years back, but it’s testimonials from her and some of the others that really help really deliver that message. So, my message to people is it’s about trust, and trust is something you just don’t get. You have to earn it, and I can tell you till the cows come home why you should trust me. But talk to the people that have received care from an established agency like mine or someone else’s, and also talk to someone that’s receiving it today. I think that’s really important. I mean, because I go back to when that care recipient opens out the door, they open up their life, and my caregivers and caregivers in general get very personal with our clients beyond just personal care. They get involved in their lives, and they understand the family dynamics. They understand that person and who they are. Look, my father, in the last year, year and a half of his life, received care from my home care agency, and I love my dad. And it’s going to be four years in November since he left me and left us. And I will tell you, he had some extraordinary caregivers, and there was this one guy, Bryant. Big shout out to you. He was my dad’s caregiver. He was a nursing student, just a great guy. And the two of them were thick as thieves. And you know, look, my dad, you know, was a diabetic, became a brittle diabetic in his final year, year and a half. And the two of them would go to these. Let’s put it this way: they go to these restaurants where he’d be eating foods that he should not be eating, being a diabetic. So big shout out to you, Bryant. You would go to Fleming’s for Tomahawk Tuesdays, Capital Grill on Thursdays, you know, he had his places that he went to, and at first I was not happy about it, but then I became more accepting of the fact that he became my dad’s buddy, and matter of fact, I mean the two of them shared so much that I almost I’m still to this day jealous because I think he got to spend some really quality time with my dad, and my dad probably shared things with him that he probably didn’t feel as comfortable sharing with me.
Rosaria Cain 44:10
You’re probably enforcing the rules.
Bob Roth 44:13
Yeah, I was lax on the rules after I realized I didn’t want to inhibit him from really enjoying life, and that’s what he really wanted. I mean, in this last week of life, we went to the ice cream store and and we had ice cream. We should at least make it as comfortable as possible. And really, the caregivers are really that make the difference. So, you know, that caregiver that relationship is one that I love hearing about when somebody has finally passed on, and the feedback that they get from the family is just nothing but rave reviews about the caregiver and what they did for their loved one and their family.
Rosaria Cain 44:54
Feeling of pride.
Bob Roth 44:55
That I mean, it really is a such a noble profession and is one that just gives you such great satisfaction that you can help people, and that’s what I love most about the job.
Rosaria Cain 45:06
Well, tell me one thing that would surprise people about you.
Bob Roth 45:10
I don’t know if a lot of people know this. I lifeguarded on the beach, so I spent two and a half summers, and it wasn’t like you know the TV show.
Rosaria Cain 45:28
You were very popular, though. I imagine.
Bob Roth 45:29
Well, I really liked the ocean. I liked the beach, and I liked just that that summer feeling. You work hard during the school year, and it’s just a great way to take the load off. But I will tell you, we were talking about exercising. Back in those days, we drank a little bit of beer.
Rosaria Cain 45:52
Uh huh. I imagine.
Bob Roth 45:54
We stayed up really late. But one thing that was mandatory was workouts. We had to be on the stand by 10, and we weren’t off till five, okay. But we had to report to the lifeguard house at 8:30, and we had workouts for one hour. And I’m telling you, as much as we hated the workouts, kind of like me going to yoga. I don’t love it, but I love the feeling after. That was the only way we could stay up on the stands all day. Was working out because you had to sweat out all the beer and the stuff that you were doing the night before, right? But it was incredible. And then when the reason why it was also incredible was the fact that the place I guarded at was Sea Colony in Bethany Beach, Delaware, and the people that were living in those condominiums were people of means in the Washington, Baltimore area. So I got a chance to meet senators. I got a chance to meet rear admirals. I got a chance to meet really cool people. I mean, it’s amazing who comes up to walk up to you to talk on the stands. And I know a lot of people say it’s the girls, but it was these guys. They would come up in the morning after workouts, and I’d have these great conversations about the lives they lived. And I think that may have been my entree into doing what I do today. And I think the greatest privilege is not only to care for those that once cared for us, but every one of my clients is like a good book. They’ve lived incredible stories, or they have incredible stories about the lives they’ve lived, and I just so much enjoy hearing those stories. And like I said, they’re the ones that built the communities that we live in today. They’re the ones that have created the economies that we have today. They lived through a lot. A lot of them were the post depression and even pre depression babies, and they got a lot to offer.
Rosaria Cain 47:48
And on that note, I can’t think of a better way to close this out. I’m so glad you came by Bob.
Bob Roth 47:55
It’s been great to see you.
Rosaria Cain 47:56
A pleasure.
Bob Roth 47:56
Thank you for having me.
Rosaria Cain 47:58
I appreciate all your thoughts. Thank you.
Bob Roth 48:00
You bet.