Encore Tampa Bay is providing a monthly blog post that features people in our community who are living their Encore Career. This week we look at a great example of a social entrepreneur!
MONICA STYNCHULA- DOVETAIL CARE
Monica Stynchula is the CEO and founder of Dovetail Care, Inc. Dovetail is a start-up with a mission to foster conversation, communication and engagement offering Reunion CareTM, a personal information management web and mobile applications to enterprise healthcare providers that they, in turn, provide to their customers and their families determined to keep their members safe and independent. She started our interview by acknowledging that Boomers are absolutely a “cause-based generation” and she has definitely found her cause!
Monica’s path prior to Dovetail
Monica started off her career as a medical social worker and soon she realized that the needs of her patients will always outweigh the resources. She earned a Master in Social Work and Master in Public Health. She worked in different roles in the healthcare world – hospitals, home health, health education, community based services and insurance company.
Monica homeschooled her two boys; an extremely rewarding experience that required a lot of “retooling”! Getting back into the workforce, she recognized the opportunity to understand the future of healthcare by training in Health Information Technology Workforce Retraining Program under the Affordable Care Act. She focused on learning everything possible about electronic medical records earning two certificates within a year, Health Information Technology Professional (HIT PRO) and Certified Professional in Health Information Management Systems (CPHIMS).
Life Changing Event
In 2010, Monica’s father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. This was a life-changing event for her in many ways. Her father got the best of care – and the electronic health record system worked flawlessly…inside the system, but the minute he left the hospital things were disastrous. There was very little coordination or tracking of his health care needs. At this point, Monica knew that there had to be a better way to help patients manage their own healthcare. She wanted to create a technology solution to empower patients to self-manage their health and not depend on the fragmented system of doctors, hospitals or medical professionals. This idea became her passion!
In 2012, she began drafting her model in a three-ring binder to outline her concept that allows patients to coordinate, communicate and plan their health care journey. Her next step was to hire technology companies to set up the wireframe and specifications. There were many 20-hour days of working on the actual business model. When asked if there were times she wanted to quit, her answer came quickly: “when you feel passionate about something, you put your head down and keep working.” Today Monica has three published websites and more under development; DovetailCare, ReunionCare and Dovetail Autism.
Monica emphasized that finding the right people at each stage of the entrepreneurial process was critical to her success. Monica’s “experts” taught her success factors such as how to make an effective pitch, how to create the right infrastructure and systems to launch and run this new online resource system.
Words of Advice for Boomer Entrepreneurs
I asked Monica what other key advice she would offer other boomer entrepreneurs.
- Don’t be afraid to make mistakes- mistakes are opportunities for learning.
- Start mapping it out.
- Start talking to people. Make sure you are working on the real problem. Listen to them and keep digging.
- Make sure you have a good support system. (This is long hard work- Monica was grateful for the support she received from family.)
- If you have the drive and focus to truly believe in your cause or product, anything is possible!
- Make sure you have the resources necessary to get started.
Monica’s story is truly inspirational. This is a great example of how a Baby Boomer capitalizes on her lifelong knowledge and experience, combined with her passion for making a difference/ solving a problem and the zeal for learning new skills. Her focus is not only on making a profit, but making a difference! We can all learn from Monica’s experiences as we may consider this path for ourselves.
