How To Care

To grow a business, or even just grow yourself, you have to start by believing you can grow. Having a mindset of abundance is really important to Nurse Next Door. It means you don’t obsess over numbers, and you don’t find reasons to cut back or avoid doing something. You look for what is possible, and how to make more things happen. Director of People and Culture, Kelly Quinn, joins us to talk about how to foster a culture of abundance, alongside president and CEO, Cathy Thorpe.

Bold Kindness is the philosophy at the core of Nurse Next Door’s culture. It encourages people to be high performers on their own terms. It's how Nurse Next Door achieves amazing growth and engaged team members. This is the first of four episodes exploring this groundbreaking way of generating their culture and developing people. The series will be completed with a book release in 2024. President and CEO, Cathy Thorpe, explains her Bold Kind approach in full, and we’re joined by Arif Abdulla, VP Global Franchise Development, who talks about his own journey with Bold Kindness, and how he struggled with it at first before embracing it and thriving.

Nurse Next Door is not just one business. “HeartQuarters,” in Vancouver, sits at the intersection of the brand and the small business owners who run Nurse Next Door franchises across three countries. Kiran Samran is one of those franchise owners. Nurse Next Door provides the flexibility for business owners like Kiran to run their own business with systems and support, all the while enjoying the things she loves to do. She works hard, but she also answers emails on the beach. Kiran is a big traveler, a parent and she even maintains a small CPA practice on the side. If you want to hear more about Kiran’s franchise journey with Nurse Next Door, especially if you’re interested in becoming a franchisee, check out this third part of our series exploring different areas of care at Nurse Next Door.

At the core of Nurse Next Door are our Caregivers, and John Steele exemplifies everything it means to embrace Caregiving as a Career. It’s about shifting the mindset of what that role of the Caregiver could be. Sarah, Cathy and John dig into the rewards of this work and what it takes to be a Caregiver. Find out how John uses skills gained in his sales career to provide Happier Aging, Nurse Next Door’s Care Philosophy in this first part of our series exploring different areas of care at Nurse Next Door.

Cathy Thorpe is all about getting the best out of the people at Nurse Next Door. To do that, she knows she has to give them her best in return. Kim Scott’s concept of “Radical Candor” is a big part of Cathy's leadership style, so we’re hearing what that means and what it’s like to bring your whole, messy self to work — both from Cathy, and from a member of her leadership team. People want to be high performers in this space, so how does leadership make sure that everyone from Cathy through to the Franchisees and Caregivers have that opportunity?

At Nurse Next Door, we’ve always thought getting older was something to be celebrated. We believe that by living Happier Aging, we can profoundly impact our own lives, and the lives of those around us. Happier Aging® is Nurse Next Door’s philosophy of care: for our clients, their families, our people and everyone we meet. It all comes down to our care approach, leadership and the people behind the scenes. In this series of conversations between Cathy Thorpe, CEO at Nurse Next Door, and Sarah Stockdale, we’ll learn about Cathy’s radically empathetic and bold approach to leadership, and how Nurse Next Door is changing how we—as a society—can help care for our elderly.