Seth Sternberg on giving caregivers back their dignity

What this conversation is about

Seth Sternberg co-founded Meebo, a social platform acquired by Google, before taking on one of healthcare's most overlooked problems. As co-founder and CEO of Honor Technology, which owns the Home Instead brand, he works to help older adults age at home on their own terms.

This conversation is personal for Glenn Llopis too. He is part of the sandwich generation, caring for his own family and for his mother. He lost his father to Alzheimer's, and his mother has been recovering from a stroke and, most recently, a broken hip. Together they explore the caregiving crisis, the professionals who deliver care, and what employers are missing about the employees quietly carrying it.

The edit

Before Honor built anything, its founders interviewed about 50 caregivers. What they heard was nearly heartbreaking: professionals who felt treated poorly by their industry, called unskilled, sent into unfamiliar homes without knowing what was behind the door, and hit with sudden pay cuts when a client moved into a facility. Glenn described what Honor set out to restore:

"We're going to give them back their dignity that they lost years ago in this industry" — Glenn Llopis · 00:30:28

Families edit the picture too. Sternberg has found that adult children often don't know what their parents really need, because parents hide it from them. So Honor does its first consultation in the home, with the older adult.

How he claimed his purpose

In his mid-twenties, Sternberg went through what he calls an existential crisis about why he exists. Having already built a successful company, he realized that money and titles weren't what drove him:

"The thing that would keep me going and pushing through hard things was if I knew that the stuff I was working on would truly help other people." — Seth Sternberg · 00:03:47

The idea for Honor came from a small moment. His mother picked him up at the airport and was driving slower than she used to. When he asked why, she said driving was just harder than it used to be. That made him wonder what the next five or ten years would bring, and led his team to focus on helping people age in place.

The same respect for people shaped how Honor treats its workforce:

"That's actually why we started calling them Care Pros. They want to be Care pros. They are professionals. Let's call them what they want to be" — Seth Sternberg · 00:28:34

What leaders and organizations can take from it

Home care is so personal that it resisted the software that helped other industries scale, and Sternberg says the business nearly had to shut down. What changed, he says, was AI, which can learn why one pairing of client and caregiver works while another doesn't:

"And that's because AI can handle, why does Mrs. Smith love Janet, but Mrs. Jones doesn't." — Seth Sternberg · 00:17:45

Honor uses that ability to match Care Pros with the kinds of jobs, schedules and locations they actually want, which he says makes their work more fulfilling and their care better:

"We call it Care for the Care Pro, so that we can then create better care." — Seth Sternberg · 00:25:49

He also has advice for employers. Many employees care for aging parents while raising children, and he believes it quietly affects their focus and whether they stay:

"Just like I've built kind of probably some kind of benefit around childcare, I would build some kind of benefit around parent care, right?" — Seth Sternberg · 00:34:23

• Personalize for the worker, not only the customer. Treating frontline employees as professionals and matching them to work that fits them improves the service.
• Use AI where standard software falls short. Highly personal services can scale when technology learns what each person needs.
• Support the sandwich generation. Parent-care benefits, such as help with short-term respite care, can help employees stay focused and stay on.

How this conversation connects to Glenn's methodology

Glenn's body of work comes down to one idea: without agency and without knowing the rooms where you belong, you can't have the conviction to reinvent yourself on purpose, or the strong identity that guides how you live and lead. Sternberg built a company around both halves.

• Agency (the Individual). Choosing work that truly helps people, and using the freedom that success brings to take risks for impact rather than money.
• The rooms (the Environment). A workplace where caregivers are called what they are, professionals, and placed in jobs that fit them.
• Conviction and reinvention on purpose. Starting again after success, and staying with a hard problem when the business nearly failed.
• Identity that guides how he lives and leads. Helping older adults keep their dignity and stay in the home that is most their own.

See the body of work behind the method →