While many in thehealthcare industrywent into survivalmode, I saw anopportunity.
they were discharged from the hospital. He visited them intheir personal homes and assisted living communities whenhe noticed that many of them were being discharged intoplaces that didn’t match their care needs.Witnessing this, he had an idea of a service which couldhelp families match their care options with their appropriatecare needs. “Families for decades were used to using realestate agents to find a new house. I was convinced thatfinding care for their parents was much more important. Ifounded my first company called Preferred Assistance.Fifteen years later it morphed into the current largest SeniorPlacement franchise system in the nation, calledCarePatrol,” Chuck stated.He and his wife, Becky refined their business model withformalized systems and began franchising in 2009. In 2014,they acquired their biggest competitor and doubled thesystem in the same year. And the rest was history.CarePatrol was acquired by a large private equity firm in2018, Bongiovanni stayed on two-and-a-half years beforehe moved on to Majestic Residences. Before he franchisedCarePatrol, he seriously considered creating a franchisesystem for residential care homes. However, at the time,there wasn’t enough residential care homes in the countryfor it to make sense. After he stepped down at CarePatrol hefollowed his passion to franchise the residential care homeindustry.The residential assisted living home industry is primed forsuccess in franchising because there is an established andgrowing market with a built-in demand, the industry isextremely fragmented, it is unorganized with substandardmarketing practices, behind in technology which canimprove care and in desperate need of general office andbackend management.When you put this all together you have a natural recipe forsuccess for franchising, scaling, and branding. The onlyproblem was that Chuck had no experience in operating ahome. The universe conspired to help him realize his dreamand he met his business partner, late Gene Guarino and therest of the Majestic Residences’ team.Gene was a well-known leader and fixture in the residentialcare home industry. He founded Residential AssistedLiving Academy (RALA), a “school” that has taughtthousands of people how to open their own residential carehome.Between Gene’s expertise in the operations of these homes,and Chuck’s experience and expertise in franchising, theduo believed they created something that will have apermanent mark in the assisted living industry. So, in themiddle of the COVID-19 pandemic, they took the leap andfounded Majestic Residences Franchise Systems, LLC.Braving the PandemicThe entire world came to a standstill with the advent of theglobal pandemic. Those who took the risk of thinking out ofthe box, not only survived but thrived. And Chuck didexactly that.It’s only natural to see all the negatives that life throws atyou. COVID-19 wasn’t just a curve ball, it was a curve ball,fast ball and a knuckle ball combined. While many in thehealthcare industry went into survival mode, he saw anopportunity. he knew that many small residential carehomes wouldn’t make it through the pandemic due tonegative consumer’s perceptions.The biggest challenge for him, however, was starting acompany in an industry where the consumer was too afraidto purchase their services. While nursing homes and largeassisted living communities took the biggest publicrelations hits, small residential assisted living homes didvery well at controlling the virus. There were very limitedfatalities compared to the others.However, due to industry fragmentation and the lack of thepower of branding, many of these individual “mom andpop” businesses couldn’t get the message out to the publicabout how truly safe their homes were.He knew that many of them would feel alone and on anisland during the pandemic, wanting to be part of a biggersupport system after it was over. “Our franchised homesgaining higher occupancies during COVID then they hadprior to the pandemic,” shared Chuck.Technology to Ease CareChuck believes in the power of technology in the healthcarespace. Companies in the healthcare space must invest innew technology and be prepared to adopt a fail-fastbusiness model to realize the technological breakthroughsthey need to stay ahead of their competitors.Companies need to think outside-the-box and take the riskof implementing technologies like virtual reality and
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