The Queen of Home Care: How Michele Ellis-Williams Built a Thriving Consultancy Empire
Part of a series | Women's History Month Series
Celebrate Women's History Month throughout 2024 with Michele Ellis-Williams, founder and CEO of Michele Lee Ellis Consulting (MLEC).
Michele Ellis-Williams' grandmother was a strong woman.
"I adored her. She was a huge part of my life and taught me a lot," Michele says. "I want every senior to be treated with dignity and respect like my family treated my grandmother. Spending summers with her gave me empathy and sympathy for my elders."
Michele is originally from the South Bronx, where she says she didn't have many role models.
"There wasn't a lot of opportunity," she adds. "There was a lot of diversity regarding different types of crime but not much diversity of role models or things that I could aspire to be."
Michele hadn't known it then, but her grandmother, Annie Mae Sparrow, had become one of her role models, and eventually, her influence would help Michele find her purpose.
Motherhood and early entrepreneurship
As a young mom, Michele worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA), developing a love for working with older adults. She later left the profession, seeking a different way to provide for herself and her family. She took a job at a telecommunications company, but layoffs forced her to find new work.
"I took a buyout from the company," she says. "I took some of that money and money from my 401(k) and purchased an interior design franchise."
Michele was good at interior design and had to support herself.
"I had no business experience," she says. "I had a gift to decorate. I had great success and eventually started my own firm, but I didn't love it. People always said I was good at it because I had a beautiful home and because I was talented."
She made the most of it. She stayed in the industry for years, enjoying the fruits of her labor with a nice house and expensive cars. But the end of her marriage put her on a different path.
"I went through a divorce and needed to regroup," Michele says. "When I left, I knew I needed to do something I loved."
Against legal and familial advice, she exited her marriage with virtually nothing, what she calls "ground zero." She gave up the house and the cars. She denied additional marital assets and dissolved her design firm. All these things carried with them the weight of self-betrayal and inauthenticity. Michele had been through enough; her career didn't bring her as much joy anymore, and she wanted this part of it to be finished. She wanted it to be over so she could begin her next chapter. Whatever she didn't love, whatever didn't bring her wholeness, whatever invoked her past relationship and the inauthentic life she'd lived, she said to those things, "Goodbye, good riddance and God bless."
A politician's mother
While healing from her divorce, Michele embarked on a journey of self-discovery. She returned to her roots, finding work as a CNA at a hospital, where she observed something that made her think of her grandmother.
"An older woman was being discharged," she says, "and her daughter, a politician, sent a driver, a man, to pick her up and dress her. I said, 'This isn't right to have this man dress her because her daughter is too busy. Where is the dignity?'"
This incident clashed with Michele's beliefs about reverence for older adults. It reminded her of the quality of care her grandmother received and how other older adults don't necessarily receive the same. She envisioned her grandmother in that hospital room, and it bothered her.
"I'm always thinking about my grandmother and how I'd want her to be treated," she says.
Finding purpose
That day at the hospital got Michele thinking. She spoke to her then-boyfriend, Robert, now her husband and business partner, about pivoting to home care, not as a CNA but as a business owner who could facilitate the care she believed older adults deserved.
"I told him I needed to quit my job to do it full-time," she says.
Her idea made sense. She'd combine her experiences as a CNA and entrepreneur with her passion for older adults and turn it into a thriving home care operation.
Robert agreed to absorb the household finances and to support Michele. Not long after, she founded her first home care business and, in doing so, discovered her purpose.
Sharing is caring
Michele's home care endeavor was a hit, but eventually, Michele noticed that online searchers interested in starting home care businesses were consuming her pay-per-click (PPC) marketing dollars.
"They were also calling my office," she says. "I thought, 'Let me try to solve this problem.'"
Enter "I Am Coach Michele," Michele's YouTube channel, where she shares her expertise as a HomeCarePreneur®. As of January 2024, her first video has received 29,000 views. Her video about how to start a nonmedical home care agency has received 221,000 views. Channelwide, her views are approaching 2 million, and her subscribership is nearly 40,000.
As interest in her expertise grew, Michele transitioned into full-time home-care business consulting. In 2016, she established Michele Lee Ellis Consulting (MLEC), becoming its founder, CEO and the "Queen of Home Care."
Michele's home care queendom
Today, MLEC is a successful consultancy, helping mainly medical professionals transition into nonmedical home care entrepreneurship. Most MLEC clients are women nurses, nurse practitioners and doctors looking to transition from bedside care, exhausted by their working conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic. Other MLEC clients have no medical experience but enjoy giving back to older adults, people with disabilities and others needing home care. Clients can take advantage of three pathways to success: VIP+, a selective option featuring one-on-one coaching with Michele; VIP Hybrid Gold 2.0, for those just starting and for licensed agency owners who are stuck; and Power Call, for anyone seeking a consult.
An empowering space for women
MLEC is more than a consultancy; it's an empowering space for women. Michele helps her women clients find balance in their personal and professional lives. She ranks it as their second most common barrier to success, the first being limiting beliefs.
"There are so many women who come in with limiting beliefs, self-esteem issues and issues with the amount of money they generate at first. Sometimes, they self-sabotage," she says. "Often, before we can get them to a place of revenue generation, we have to dissect the whole woman and tackle low self-esteem and impostor syndrome. That's why representation is so crucial in this industry. As a woman, I've done it. I've succeeded at it. I know what these women are going through."
Ultimately, Michele hopes MLEC will inspire women and help them prosper.
"I want them to feel empowered, to know they're enough and to walk in their authentic boldness," Michele says. "If we can help women accomplish those three things, it will change the world, even out the playing field and help future generations. That's what I would like."
The Queen of Home Care chooses ADP
Caring for Michele's clients is RUN Powered by ADP, a small-business payroll software solution.
"I've had terrible experiences with some of ADP's competitors and wouldn't do business with them or recommend them," Michele says. "I've had great experiences with ADP."
Michele and her ADP representative, Jennifer Brackett, had chemistry as soon as they met.
"It didn't take me long to realize how great of a fit Michele was for ADP's diverse markets program," Jennifer says. "The way her organization helps women entrepreneurs is like nothing I've seen before. By providing her tribe members with the resources it takes to run a successful home care business, Michele has become a beacon of integrity for the women around her. Through her partnership with us, her tribe members receive a lifetime discount on RUN's HR support and seamless payroll and tax filings. This partnership is simply perfect."
Discover ADP's solutions for diverse markets
Explore Michele's home care ecosystem:
- Michele Lee Ellis Consulting LLC [Business website]
- I Am Coach Michele [YouTube channel]
- iamcoachmichele [Instagram]
- Coach Michele [Facebook]
- Michele Lee Ellis Consulting LLC [LinkedIn]
