Leading With Trust: CEO brings a People-First Approach to A Place At Home

Name: Mike Boyer
Title: CEO
Company: A Place At Home/Dovida North America, Inc.
Domestic Franchise Units: 77
Domestic Company Owned Units: 3
International Company Owned Units: 71
International Franchise Units: 22
Age: 50
Years in franchising: 12
Years in current position: 1

When global home care provider Dovida acquired A Place At Home earlier this year, it secured Mike Boyer to lead its North American busi-ness.

Boyer became CEO of Dovida North America following the acquisition, bringing decades of leadership experience in multiple sectors, including senior care franchising. Before joining Dovida, he spent seven years with Home Instead as chief operating officer, leading a $1 billion business with more than 500 offices in 12 countries.

Today, Boyer is focused on helping A Place At Home build on the foundation established by founders Dustin Distefano and Jerod Evanich. Rather than reinventing the 77-unit (domestic franchise units) system, his goal is to strengthen it through better marketing, training, franchise support, and disciplined execution.

“I’m more interested in being clear, building trust, and acting with integrity than I am in being impressive,” he says.

Boyer believes leadership is about helping others succeed. He sees his role as supporting the caregivers, franchisees, and local teams who deliver care every day. His goal is to remove obstacles so that team members can focus on serving clients and their families.

He says he values honest communication and believes trust is earned through consistency, not titles. He gives his leadership team the autonomy to make decisions while holding everyone, including himself, to high standards.

As Dovida expands into its seventh international market and its first in North America, Boyer is focused on building a scalable organization committed to quality care, strong local franchisees, and meaningful relationships with the families the brand serves.

LEADERSHIP

What is your role as CEO? The real work happens in homes. It’s delivered by caregivers and local teams. My role is to serve and enable them. Listen closely, remove obstacles, and build the conditions that enable consistently great care for our clients.

How has Covid-19 affected the way you have led your brand? Covid forced us to lead with more transparency and humility than ever before. We were all learning on the fly, and we didn’t always have the answers. My approach was to own that and focus on communication and clarity.

Describe your leadership style. I try to stay deeply self-aware about what I’m bringing into a room: my energy, my blind spots, my ego. A leader who isn’t honest with themself about those things becomes a liability. I don’t get it right all the time. But I do try.

What has inspired your leadership style? Before being ready to be a CEO, I had to look at the gap between the leader I thought I was and the leader I actually was. I’ve been influenced by several years of working with modern thinkers focused on embodied, grounded leadership. Real strength is about depth and presence.

What is your biggest leadership challenge? First, moving fast without losing thoughtfulness. Second, merging two companies and cultures (Dovida and A Place At Home) without flattening either one. And, lastly, staying rigorous about my own development because the moment I stop doing that work, it shows up everywhere else.

How do you transmit your culture from your office to frontline employees? I know we can’t do it through speeches and memos. We have to drive it through consistency: whom we hire, how we handle tough situations, how we show up when things go wrong (or right). We invest heavily in field visits and franchisee touchpoints. Culture lives within people, not in documents or speeches.

How can a CEO help their CMO develop and grow? The best thing I can do for my CMO is make sure they understand where the business is going and trust them to figure out how marketing helps us get there.

Where is the best place to prepare for leadership: an MBA school or OTJ? I studied political science and history, not business. I started at the bottom in a job that paid $22,000 a year. Many of the skills that matter most in the workplace can’t be taught in a classroom. I can teach someone to read a P&L. But you can’t MBA your way through a disagreement with a franchise owner at 11 p.m. on a Friday.

Are tough decisions best taken by one person? How do you make tough decisions? The thinking should be collaborative with the right people in the room. I listen to the data and inputs, and then I trust my gut.

Do you want to be liked or respected? I want people to genuinely enjoy working with me. But when it comes to the hard calls, I need the team to trust my judgment, and that requires earning their respect first.

Advice to CEO wannabes: First, start at the bottom. No shortcut replaces that. Second, take jobs early in life that teach you to think critically and creatively. Third, find the best leaders you can and get close to them. Your leadership will largely become a composite of the people you surround yourself with personally and professionally. Lastly, practice meditation.

MANAGEMENT

Describe your management style. I set high expectations for myself first and my team. I give my team real autonomy and stay informed and available. I try hard not to micromanage, but I like to understand the details. My job is leading, not managing.

What does your management team look like? Smart, driven, creative, and in it for the right reasons. We’re as comfortable crashing the whiteboard as we are having a beer.

How does your management team help you lead? By keeping me focused, informed, and humble, and they have full license to do so.

Favorite management gurus: Do you read management books? I don’t do gurus. I’ve seen too many poison teams by eroding original thinking and creating psychological dependence.

What makes you say, “Yes, now that’s why I do what I do!”? When clients tell us how our care changed their lives. Or I hear a franchisee who built their business into a multi-million-dollar asset. Or a team member moves from caregiver to general manager.

OPERATIONS

What trends are you seeing with consumer spending habits in your stores? Families are making careful decisions when it comes to home care. They want to know how our service will improve their loved one’s quality of life and whether they can trust us. Consumers place great value onconsistency, transparency, and compassion. In home care, the quality of the relationship matters more than just about anything.

How is the economy driving consumer behavior in your system? Families are more deliberate about how they purchase care. They are putting a premium on clear communication, dependable, high-quality service, and a strong local reputation and care delivery team.

What are you expecting from your market in the next 12 months? Demand for home care will continue to grow as more families look for ways to help aging loved ones remain safely and independently at home. Providers need to attract great caregivers, deliver quality care, and earn trust at the local level. There will still be pressure around labor and affordability, but the strongest operators are positioned for meaningful growth.

Are your franchisees bullish or bearish about growth and adding additional units? Bullish on growth but thoughtful about how they pursue it. Many see real opportunity to expand into adjacent territories or add locations. Our strongest operators understand that growth only works with the right leadership, caregiver teams, key players, and operating practices.

Are commodity/supply costs any cause for concern in your system? Home care is fundamentally a people-driven business. Our primary cost pressures are caregiver wages and availability. We view that as manageable through disciplined pricing, strong recruiting and reten-tion, and better scheduling.

In what ways are political/global issues impacting the market and your brand? We are seeing change in the growing policy attention being given to aging, caregiver workforce shortages, affordability, and home-based care. That increased focus is encouraging and reflects the essential role the home care industry will play in the years ahead.

TECHNOLOGY

How much influence does your IT department have on your brand? Technology supports our brand but does not define it. Our brand is built on people, trust, and human relationships.

How have your company’s tech tools changed over the past five years? They have become more integrated and more useful. The goal is simple: less administrative work, better visibility, and faster support for our teams.

How does technology influence your decisions? It gives us better information and helps us respond more quickly. But data does not replace judgment, local knowledge, or listening to people.

Are you using AI? How? Yes, mostly to reduce repetitive administrative work and help teams move faster. We are not building an AI-led care mod-el. We are doubling down on human connection.

How do you measure your ROI on technology investments? By whether it saves time, reduces friction, and helps our human teams serve clients better. If it adds complexity or takes away the human touch, it’s a fail.

How did/do you create a culture where use of technology advancements is welcome and used? Start with a real problem and introduce tech-nology only when it clearly improves the work and service delivery.

PERSONAL

What time do you like to be at your desk? Between 7 and 8 a.m.

Exercise in the morning? Wine with lunch? Yes. Only while on vacation.

Do you socialize with your team after work/outside the office? Yeah, it’s important. It’s not always easy because it means less time with my fam-ily. But real connection outside the office matters deeply.

Last two books read: No Boundary by Ken Wilber and Inside Mercedes F1 by Matt Whyman.

What technology do you take on the road? Laptop. Phone. Earbuds. Power bank.

How do you relax/balance life and work? I’ve spent 30 years in demanding environments. For too long, the work side thrived while the life bit suffered. Today, I try to find a balance that helps me show up as a better leader and a better person.

Favorite vacation destination(s): Anyplace deep in the mountains or on the ocean. Preferably accessible only by foot or boat. No cell phone service is a plus.

Favorite occasions to send employees notes: Milestones. Work anniversaries. When they’re wearing a cool pair of sneakers. When something they said makes me laugh or think differently.

Favorite company product/service: I’m captivated by Patagonia and its founder, Yvon Chouinard. Iconoclastic, unapologetic, and obsessed with quality and customer service.

BOTTOM LINE

What are your long-term goals for the company? I want us to build the largest, most trusted home care company in North America. That means creating great local businesses, meaningful careers for caregivers and key players, and a company families can rely on at a vulnerable time in their lives. Growth matters, but how you build something matters just as much as what you build.

How has the economy changed your goals for your company? Not a bit, other than as a reminder to always stay disciplined and focused.

Where can capital be found these days? Capital is available for strong concepts that are built on sound fundamentals. It matters more than ever that investors and underwriters can be confident in our leadership team.

How do you measure success? I look at whether clients and families trust us, whether caregivers feel valued, whether our local businesses are healthy and growing, and whether my team is inspired and focused. If all of that is happening, performance tends to follow.

What has been your greatest success? I’m not sure success works that way. The things that matter most are rarely a single moment or achieve-ment. They are the cumulative result of decisions and relationships that unfold over time. I try to reflect on whether the people and organizations I have touched are better off because I was there. Isn’t that what really matters?

Any regrets? Only the years I spent focused on regrets. Life is short. Regret and uncertainty can consume it, or we can choose to live.

What can we expect from your company in the next 12 to 18 months? You will see us grow, but you will also see us strengthen the foundation beneath that growth. We will invest in our local leaders, support franchisees more effectively, create better opportunities for caregivers, and make it easier for families to receive dependable care at home.