The U.S. has long suffered from a shortage of qualified direct care workers, a problem exacerbated by the country’s aging population. Nigerian-immigrant Helen Adeosun, a former practicing caregiver, thought someone should do something about that. Her solution was to build CareAcademy, a digital-first business that would empower senior home care professionals to build businesses of their own in the home care industry, pairing online training with easy-to-use technology. Before the onset of COVID-19, Helen’s education and upskilling platform had already emboldened many caregivers to both pursue continuous education for themselves and to improve the quality of care for their patients. After the pandemic struck, her business used a host of digital tools and created a range of in-demand digital content that helped CareAcademy become a rallying point for health-focused small businesses and workers across the country.

Helen and her team have long made use of the full range of G Suite tools. CareAcademy also uses Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track keywords that are driving web traffic and Google Ads to reach those who are using them. Her company uses HubSpot as a central marketing suite and feeds many other tools through it. For example, the paid search through Google Ads as well as website traffic mapping via Hotjar — along with digital tools like Drift, which allows the company to facilitate conversations with both existing and prospective customer bases — are integrated directly into CareAcademy’s CRM.

Because Helen’s team already functioned on a quasi-remote basis, CareAcademy was able to make a seamless shift when COVID-19 struck. The company leaned even harder into remote connectivity tools like Google Meet and Slack as Helen turned to her secret weapon: Google Calendar. “Since there were no water cooler conversations happening, you had to be much more intentional about facilitating the conversations you needed to have,” Helen recalls, “and the effective time management that my Google Calendar gave me was critical to that.”

Helen’s team started reaching out to customers to see what they needed in this moment of crisis. The company determined there was an opportunity to create new classes and content that could give both health-care workers and patients a greater sense of security. Within a week, her team began distributing free class content via its website for professionals as well as the general public about how to address the virus. The effort was a near-instant success and the site quickly began racking up tens of thousands of views.

CareAcademy also began posting a weekly webinar series aimed at small businesses. These “fireside chats,” as Helen calls them, featured digital roundtables and virtual interviews with legal, medical, and other experts on a range of issues. The data she was seeing from Google Analytics paired with survey information from tools such as Google Forms and Survey Monkey told her this was exactly what her customers wanted — and, as a result, CareAcademy found itself at the center of the direct health-care community.

The business is able to survive and thrive during the pandemic thanks to its strong focus on digital connectivity. But, from Helen’s perspective, what the company was able to do for small health-care businesses nationwide and the patients those companies serve is most important. “I’m proud of our role as a high-growth startup helping drive the creation and success of small businesses across the country overall,” Helen says, “but I’m especially proud of how our digitally-driven company was able to step up and provide resources that help others save lives.”