InsideOut

Ron Tester is a serial entrepreneur and business consultant specializing in bootstrapping startups and small businesses. In the past 11 years he has created 3 businesses within the senior services industry (healthcare and related businesses). He has also consulted with a variety of startups and small businesses from opportunity evaluation through customer discovery/validation/creation and ultimately to company building. He has extensive, hands-on experience in business development and systematization, marketing, team development and customer service.

Typical clients include those who have an idea for a business but aren’t sure how to know whether they should commit the time, money and energy to pursue their idea and/or whether they can turn it into a viable, sustainable, profitable business. Other clients have already started their businesses and then realize they need a mentor, someone with the perspective and insight that only come from the experience of having done what they are attempting to do.

When starting his first company 11 years ago, Ron agonized over choosing the best strategy and tactics from an endless array of options, learning all he could about business development, human resources, finance, customer service and other things most entrepreneurs struggle with. Many days he wished he had someone to call, a guide with experience that could tell him what was critical and what was merely a distraction. He read countless books about every aspect of running a startup and small business. Eventually, he hired consultants to help him make his business better, to help him create something he dreamed about but didn’t know how to make happen. And the most expensive and disheartening lesson he learned was that the high-priced consultants didn’t know how, either.

The high-priced consultants were typically corporate consultants with fancy degrees, accustomed to floating in and out of businesses with huge budgets and little accountability. They could throw around jargon, argue for their exorbitant fees, and analyze the business on a granular level. But they couldn’t give Ron the practical advice, the straightforward steps he needed to make his business better. Instead, they would say things such as, “Hire better people” or “Get more input from your CPA.” And the reason they couldn’t tell him how to fix things is because they had never actually done it. They had great experience from pedigree firms, but they didn’t know how to do things like a bootstrapper. That is something which Ron learn from experience, if you want to know it visit http://www.predictablelaunch.com.

That is the secret of Ron’s success, as a business owner and as a consultant. He understands the world of the bootstrapper, the guy who may or may not have a line of credit at the local bank but isn’t being hotly pursued by venture capitalists or Wall Street tycoons seeking to take his business public. Ron’s ideal client is someone with a great idea and an impeccable work ethic, someone who understands that turning a dream into a profitable business is possible with a good idea, good advice, and a tremendous amount of hard work.

Ron Tester, PT, COS-C, is a physical therapist and the owner of Advanced RehabTrust Home Health, where he is the administrator and a practicing physical therapist. Ron became a physical therapist after seeing the tremendous life-changing difference that a physical therapist made in the life of one of his family members, and he was inspired to pursue physical therapy so he provides that same kind of life-changing care to others. As a physical therapist, he has worked in hospitals, outpatient clinics, and skilled nursing facilities, but he has especially loved the practical, one-on-one care that he can provides in the home setting. He also found that he gets to know his clients better and has a longer lasting impact on them and their health and well-being.

Unfortunately, with some of the changes in Medicare over the years, some of at home healthcare agencies that Ron worked for became more motivated by profits than patient care. Ultimately, he was inspired to start Advanced RehabTrust Home Health when one of the agencies that he was working for, a so-called “community-owned, not-for-profit agency,” decided that they would rather make more money by providing less care for one of their especially challenging patients than do what Ron argued was the right thing for the patient. It turns out that “not-for-profit” means that the bosses just wrote themselves big bonus checks at the end of the year and hence the agency had “no profit.” As a result, in 2001 Ron started his agency with a commitment to provide the kind of care that he would want his own mother to receive, and to always put people before profits.

Over the years, Advanced RehabTrust has established itself as one of the best home health agencies for patient care in North Texas. One of the main reasons is that through the years we have established ourselves as one of the best places for nurses and therapists to work and happy, highly-skilled clinicians provide better care. In an industry where clinician turnover is an ever-present problem, our clinicians stay with us and recruit their friends to join us because we understand that our work is not just a job but a calling. We continually reinforce the central and guiding principle of our agency which is that people come first. We have high standards of care and we don't compromise that care in order to achieve a bigger bottom line.

When people need help in their homes, they often don't realize what services they need and what they should be getting, and it's difficult for them to know if they are getting what they truly deserve. Therefore, it's up to the home health agency to honor the trust that they have been given by their patients and choose to do the right thing, even if the patients don’t know what the right thing is. At Advanced RehabTrust, it is the essence of who we are, who we hire, how we care and what we're passionate about. And we refuse to do any less for our patients.

Kala Art Institute provides a communal meeting place forartists from around the world who are offered the gift of time and space tofurther develop their unique visions in our West Berkeley studios. These talented artists form the creative corps of Kala’s Artists-In-Schools program,through which they share their expertise with K-12 students in Alameda County.