Sam Gopinathan, CEO, New Wave Home Care
Sam Gopinathan is CEO of New Wave Home Care in Pasadena, CA.

A few years ago, Sam Gopinathan — a mechanical engineer by training — never would have imagined he’d own a home care business. But when a tsunami struck his home country of India in 2004, killing over 16,000, it altered his perspective. 

Fast-forward to 2009. After losing his job, he drew on the experience of the tsunami to start New Wave Home Care in Pasadena, CA. Today, his 13-year-old nonmedical home care business has more than 250 caregivers and is closing in on 2 million hours of care. Recently, he wrote a book, Connecting Is Caring: Going Beyond the Call of Senior Care in the Silver Tsunami Era, to share knowledge he has gathered as a home care owner about retirement planning. He talked to McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse about the evolution of his career and home care field. 

McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse: Tell us your story about the tsunami in 2004. 

Gopinathan: I was visiting my home country, in India, and that’s when the tsunami happened. I ended up volunteering in food distribution to help a lot of people who were affected by the tsunami. I have a spiritual mother. She asked, what am I doing? I said I’m in food distribution. She looked really disappointed when I said it. So then one minute later, she looked at me and said, Son, you speak the local language, don’t you? Now that’s when the light bulb actually is going on in my brain. And the next day, when I went out, I started talking to [people affected] and I started connecting with them.

And that’s when I learned a very valuable lesson and the name of my book actually comes from what I learned. That lesson is communication is connecting and connecting is caring. It was very therapeutic for them to actually have a conversation with me and now serving the food became very secondary in nature.

McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse: How did this experience affect your decision to become a home care operator?

Gopinathan: Much later, in 2009 when, as you know, I was researching different businesses to get into, this part of the message had always stayed with me — that communicating and the caring aspect — and so everything fit very well for the home care business. And that’s how I got into this business, because you’re really caring. Definitely I get paid for doing what I do. But beyond that, you’re making a difference in somebody’s life.

McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse: How has the business changed since you started?

Gopinathan: When we started, hiring was not a difficult situation. It has changed 180 degrees right now. Good caregivers are really hard to come by. Fortunately, what we have going for us is a good reputation for the caregivers. We are known as an organization who treats our staff extremely well. And so we get a lot of referrals by our caregivers. I think they’re friends who are looking for a job or looking to change jobs. So almost about 60% to 70% of our new hires come from internal references. Then we have a recruiting team over here focused on recruiting caregivers. So the availability has changed completely. Fortunately, we’re able to staff all over new cases. We are able to rotate staff as necessary and things like that. So we are very lucky in that sense. But the shortage is extremely severe.

McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse: What are you aiming to tell people in your book?

Gopinathan: We’re all kind of driving towards the edge of a cliff, so to speak, when it comes to aging, when it comes to planning for aging and things like that. You know what resources are available? What to be careful about to avoid making some other mistakes? So, in writing, my primary objective was to throw open the curtains for [consumers] to see what the industry professionals get to see on an everyday basis and how they could benefit from my experience. 

McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse: Do you ever look back and say, geez, if I hadn’t gotten laid off in 2009, I’d be making a lot more money and doing what I was trained to do?

Gopinathan: Reflection on life is always something we all do, right? So I look back, but I look at me losing my job in 2009 as a blessing in disguise. Yes, money was good. Life was good. No complaints about that. But it [was] really about me and my family. Now, my family is much bigger. I look at myself as head of the family for about 500-plus people. And that really came to light during the COVID time because I was not taking care of just my immediate family. I was taking care of my clients. I was taking care of my clients’ family. My caregivers. Their family. That really hit home for me, you know, the purposeful life suddenly became a lot more bigger, a lot more purposeful. And so when I reflect on the last several years I’m very fortunate that I lost my job back in 2009 and I’m doing what I’m doing right now.

Editor’s note: Peer-to-Peer is a feature from McKnight’s Home Care Daily Pulse in which we talk to the leaders in home care, your peers, about their operational initiatives, efforts and ideas. If you think someone in home care would make a good subject for Peer-to-Peer, please email Liza Berger at [email protected].