Meet Emilia Bourland | OTR, ECHM, CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Emilia Bourland and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Emilia, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
As a healthcare provider, one of the most frustrating things is when people come in with illness or injury that you know was preventable. When I first began thinking about starting a business, it was driven by that frustration. I deeply wanted to start serving people at the community level… before they had an incident that required medical intervention.

Initially, I began by doing community based fall prevention and home modification. It’s an area that I had specialized training and experience in, and I knew it had great power to make positive long term impacts on health and well being. But, I ended up stumbling into what felt like an even more fraught situation: the inability of family and non-medical caregivers to access high quality, reliable information – Information that directly impacts the health and welfare of both people in the care relationship.

As a provider in several different levels of adult care, I had known there were obvious shortfalls in the way we provide education and support to family and non-medical caregivers. But when I was out in the community, engaging with people outside of the “medical model bubble” the need basically slapped me in the face.

Here was this enormous group of people who are tasked with ensuring the health and welfare of another human being…. and we give them basically no skills to do it. Really and truly, once someone is discharged from a provider’s care, there is basically NO way for them to continue to access training.

On the other hand, here I was: an experienced occupational therapist who had been working with and teaching caregivers in my practice for over a decade. Empowering these caregivers with the knowledge they needed quickly became more than a business idea. It became a responsibility. From the moment of that realization, I basically pivoted my whole business and began producing training content for on-demand learning. It allowed me to scale the number of caregivers (and care partners) I could help from a few a day, to thousands (maybe even someday millions).

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
There are a few things that set Higher Standards Caregiver Training apart. One is that our content is taught by occupational therapists! Businesses that use our training programs can be sure that their caregivers are receiving gold standard instruction in the real-life, practical care situations they find themselves in every day. Our training doesn’t pretend that they are providing care in perfect, text-book scenarios. Instead our courses acknowledge the messiness of real life situations, and teaches how to make the best possible care choices in the context of real life.

Another differentiator is the fact that our platform is designed to provide ongoing education and unlimited access for caregivers. That makes it easy for them to pursue professional development, get additional information, or address knowledge gaps right when they need it. It also allows them to review training and ask questions. The intention is to promote real learning and understanding, not simply check the box that training has been done. Plus, for the owners of the care organizations, it removes the headache of managing their employee enrollments or wondering if they are going to be charged more if they have a caregiver take a course. It’s a one and done enrollment process, and their monthly price stays the same up to 100 caregivers.

The other big differentiator is that we offer live virtual trainings for non-medical care organizations (all taught by occupational therapists).

Of course, family caregivers are also part of the mission, and we provide training courses for family caregivers, which are now hosted through WCN University. WCN University is a project I’ve spearheaded in partnership with Whole Care Network and Elder Care Solutions. We’re bringing together experts who serve family caregivers from multiple disciplines and backgrounds in order to have a “one-stop” shop of vetted and reliable family caregiver education and resources. Currently, our experts include a physician, physician assistant, occupational therapists, social workers, caregiver consultants, yoga instructors, and more (and will hopefully be bringing on a speech therapist, registered dietician, and pharmacist shortly!). This is a project that I am incredibly excited about.

Growing a business from nothing is not easy. Higher Standards Caregiver Training is and always will be a work in progress. For me, that realization was one of the most important things that has helped me to keep moving forward and enjoy the process. There have been good days. There have been hard days. There will be more good days. There will be more hard days. As long as the mission is worth it (and it is) I’ll keep going. I’ve learned to be flexible and open-minded, and that the best thing about business are the people who enrich your life along the way.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Wellll…. I live in Dallas, not LA, so I hope this is still relevant! If you’re in Dallas, be prepared to eat and eat well! Brunch is a way of life, and you should definitely check out Oddfellows for their beignets and coffee. Klyde Warran park is also a crowd pleaser, and is right across from the Dallas museum of Art and the Nasher Sculpture Center. If you have kids, you’ll want to visit the Dallas Zoo, and of course, you can check out professional football, basketball, hockey, or soccer games depending on the season!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are honestly so many people who have helped me, and who continue to help me move forward. My husband, Wesley Bourland, has been incredibly supportive of this journey. My decision to start a business meant that there were lots of changes in how our family and household functioned. Everyone has made sacrifices to allow me to pursue my passion, and I am deeply grateful that with every new challenge, my husband has always stood behind me 100%.

I’m also thankful for the example set by my father. Watching him start, run, and grow businesses for my whole life, I never thought I would also become an entrepreneur. It turned out I learned an incredible number of lessons from him about business, including the value of treating every person in an organization with generosity and respect. He has been my best cheerleader.

Frankly, I also got incredibly lucky that one of my best friends (he’s actually my children’s God Father) just so happens to be an incredible business mentor. Eric Soden is a co-founder of Capitalize Analytics, and he has offered me some of the best advice and useful information from day 1. He helped me to build an understanding of sales that I would be totally lost without, and has been instrumental in understanding and standing up for my own value. He also recommends the best business books. 🙂 (Speaking of, anyone who wants to start a business MUST read Traction by Gino Wickman.)

Last, a big shoutout is due to my friend Jen Ashy. When I was first putting my ideas for serving non-medical caregivers together, I had a lot of nay-sayers. Jen immediately saw what I was trying to do, understood the value, and told me to go for it. As a successful business woman who had grown and sold her own company, Jen’s support of the idea was crucial.

Website: www.higherstandardscaregivertraining.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/higherstandardscaregiver/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilia-bourland/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HigherStandardsCaregiverTraining

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIfN3ImKGD6pVyiVby86zlw