Category: Podcast

The Most Underserved Person in Senior Living …

Aug 31, 2026

By Steve Moran
Every senior living operator I’ve ever talked to says they care about families. Most of them mean it. And most of them do very little to actually care for them. I know because I am a senior living consumer who is happy with the community caring for my loved one, and yet…
Three Opportunities
1. The decision process – In most cases, the adult child is making the decision to move a loved one into senior living, and it is one of the hardest things they’ve ever done. They’re usually working full-time. Managing their own household. Carrying a weight of guilt they can’t fully articulate, because even if they know this is the right decision, it feels like a betrayal of some implicit promise that family takes care of family.
Most communities treat the family member as an obstacle to be overcome, someone to be convinced. All the salesperson has to do is respond to their objections. Answer their questions. Get them to yes.
When it is done right, the community sees the family member as the primary customer/prospect. Someone who needs help understanding why the move to senior living is the right thing, and why it will be better for the older one and the entire family.
They will be the customer who receives services and support because they often need support and community as much as, or more than, the residents.
2. Post Move-in – This is where the failure becomes most evident. The move-in has occurred, the checks are flowing, and care is being provided … to the resident. The family comes to visit, and it is awkward and confusing; it is often hard to know what to talk about.
Family members are full of guilt but don’t really know why. They feel no real sense of connection to the community or the staff. It’s just “the home” where they put mom.
They mostly hear from the community only with periodic blanket updates, when there is a problem, or when care charges and/or rates are going up.
But what if every day it was fun stories and photos? What if it were simply an occasional message along the lines of “We love your mom and here is why”?
3. This is the biggest and most interesting one … and the most underdeveloped. – Most adult children of senior living residents are in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s. They are in their own period of social transition. Their career is winding toward its final chapter. Their own friend circles are starting to thin; the same physics I described when talking about their parents are starting to apply to them, too.
They’re quietly beginning to have some of the same questions their parents are facing.
What if the community built something for them?
Not just a family lounge. Not just a holiday party. Real events. Dinners that feel worth attending. Interest groups that they could actually join. A genuine sense that they belong to something here, not just that their parent does.
3 Generations
Your senior living community then becomes the hub for three generations: grandkids who beg to visit, adult children who genuinely want to come, and residents who feel at home. When this happens, you have built something almost impossible to compete with. It’s not a product anymore. It’s a relationship. And relationships are the most durable competitive advantage there is.
Nobody is doing this well yet. Which means the opportunity is wide open.

Old Enough to Not Matter

Aug 27, 2026

By Jack Cumming
The article, smack in the center of the front page of the New York Times for August 18, 2026, instantly caught my eye. The headline: “At 92, Nader Is Still Asking You to Listen.” It can be unsettling to see yourself reflected in a contemporary. Ralph Nader was three years ahead of me when I was in college. He was Princeton ’55, and I was Class of ’58. I’ve been aware of his intensity for the past 72 years. I don’t remember how I first became aware of him when I was a Freshman, but I did.
Unsafe
Ralph Nader first came to public view when he published a book, “Unsafe At Any Speed,” in which he alleged that the auto industry put marketing before safety. General Motors responded by initiating a campaign of intimidation in which they investigated Nader to try to dig up dirt on him; hired women to try to entrap him; and tried to smear him as anti-Semitic. The book led to the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966.
Mr. Nader was a national force for justice and other causes in his time, but his time passed. He ran four times for President, first with the Green Party and then as an Independent. He formed a group of young activists called “Nader’s Raiders” to pursue causes. He’s always lived an ascetic, frugal life, which was an advantage when GM unleashed its resources on him.
Benjamin Oreskes in the Times article puts it this way: “Communicating with Mr. Nader typically means talking to him via his landline. He does not own a cellphone, a computer, or even a credit card.” Mr. Oreskes continues: “He lives an almost hermetically sealed life in Washington, D.C., where he shares a home with his 98-year-old sister, Claire Nader.”
Lessons for Senior Living
This has many lessons both for senior living and for me. I’ll get to me later. Senior living has no entity with the scale that General Motors had when Nader’s book appeared, unless we view the collective membership of LeadingAge as an entity. LeadingAge has emphasized providers’ beliefs, combating ageism, and semantics. Recently, there has been a flurry of negative media coverage, which providers counter either as unjustified or as isolated exceptions. That’s not dissimilar to where the auto industry was before the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. In 1953, the CEO of GM said something like, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”
What might a book comparable to “Unsafe at Any Speed” do to the senior living industry’s reactive defensiveness? I’ll let you imagine what the title might be. Thinking of possible hostile book titles can be, and should be, unsettling. Fortunately for the industry, the book, “Inflamed,” hasn’t caught on with the public and wasn’t titled “Unsafe for Habitation.”
That book’s description on Amazon reads: “The dramatic story of hundreds of senior citizens left in the path of a ferocious firestorm and what the quest for accountability reveals about the increasing risks to our most vulnerable population.” The best approach would be a proactive effort to give people what they could embrace with no more reservations than the cruising industry draws.
Thinking Constructively
Coincidentally, today, August 18, 2026, John Cochran, CEO of HumanGood and one of the most respected senior living industry leaders, posted a profound message on LinkedIn. He calls for focusing the mission on “more good years for more people.” There’s no mention of minimum age, what the product is called, or nonprofit/for-profit. Just a simple call for the industry to improve the lives of people.
That would require dynamic, charismatic leadership at the national level. It would require transforming the mindset of the industry to see customers instead of residents. And, yes, that’s a semantic change that LeadingAge might miss. It would require seeing those customers as individuals and not as a collective. Our cars are safer today because Ralph Nader took on an industry and started a movement toward customers instead of corporate aggrandizement. Think of what “more good years for more people” could do for you, and for all of us.
My Cause
Now back to the “me” part. I’ll be 90 on September 9th, so I’m entering that twilight zone that Ralph Nader now inhabits as detailed in today’s New York Times article. For the past twenty years, I’ve tried to persuade the industry that it’s in the industry’s own interest to listen to its customers. I’ve done that in every way I can think of, including writing articles like this one.
Frankly, I don’t think that effort has made much headway. Senior living is not an industry that takes resident thinkers seriously. Despite the move to have minority resident representation on senior living community boards, LeadingAge has not one single resident on its Board, much less one who could actually speak authoritatively with providers about their challenges and opportunities. I don’t regret one iota of what I’ve done.
Still, reading about Ralph Nader today held up a mirror to me. As we move into our 90s, the world sees us as having run our course, even as kinda cute as we continue with what would have been taken seriously just a few years ago. It’s time for a younger generation to step forward to make a difference. We can improve our world, or we can stagnate. The future beckons. It will be whatever we choose to make it.
We oldsters – beyond mere older adults (the term that now seems semantically to be superseding “seniors”, “elders”, “retirees”, etc.) – still care about the world. We oldsters still believe we have something to contribute. But the truth is that in the eyes of the world, we’ve run our course. “Weep no more, my lady. Oh! weep no more today!” As one generation moves on, another comes to take its place.

Let the Bubble Rise or Burst!

Aug 26, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Has the question occurred to you, “Why are the AI giants going public just now?” One possible takeaway is that those best positioned to know believe their businesses are overvalued and that it’s time to fold and cash out. That would leave the public vulnerable, with those who now have the most ownership selling out to an overoptimistic public just when valuations are set to drop to more realistic levels. As I write this on June 12, 2026, we’ve just experienced the optimistic takeoff for the SpaceX IPO.
What does that have to do with senior living? The answer is that senior living is caught up in the big question: How should we come to grips with AI? Is it the boon that will allow fewer care providers to care for a large old age demographic? The alternative view is that AI is enormously overrated and that wise money will wait for more sensible times before buying the AI vendor marketing hype.
We’ll return to senior living after gaining perspective with an intro to “hard knocks” investor wisdom. Remember that buyers, including senior living vendor customers and even resident move-ins, are also investors. They invest in what they buy, promises in the case of senior living move-ins.
Market Wisdom
Three words of advice from mentors come to mind. Mike Lynch, an owner of mines and shipping lines, gave me my first break when, at age 16, I worked the first of two summers in a silver mine. He taught me the common wisdom, “A bull and a bear make money. A hog never.” Then there was Frank Raab, an insurance company president, who taught me the value of networking. His teaching, “The guy with the idea thinks he’s God. And the guy with the money thinks he’s God. At the end of the day, the guy with the money is God.”
For senior living, though, I turn to a mentor whom I only met through reading. Bernard Baruch began his career as a broker, executing deals for others. Then, he trended into successful speculation. His wisdom, for which there was no quip, was that brokers should not be speculators. The analogy is that senior living leaders should never be speculators.
Senior Living Realities
Why? Senior living involves other people’s money, the money they need for living. That is a trust undertaking. The money that senior living bankers, developers, and operators play with is money given in trust, and that requires prudence to keep it safe. Lending money to an enterprise with an impaired balance sheet is speculation that future gains will offset the deficit of the past. Investing in real estate in Mexico is pure speculation. Other speculative senior living investments are less obvious, e.g., expansion can meet a need, but it’s also risky.
For now, it may be better that senior living is talking more about AI than actually letting it handle critical life-sustaining applications. It’s no secret that senior living has lagged in adopting technology. Some providers still rely principally on paper, while most others look to vendors to lead the way. Providers often have technology departments that are more buyers than proactive, creative thinkers, much less masters of underlying technologies.
The opportunity is there to use emerging technologies, including AI, to upend senior living for the better, though I see no organization showing the insight to take the lead. An intriguing example, though, is Amazon’s AI-driven medical assistant. Whether Amazon still has the creative spark, though, to build a business that disrupts medical services as it disrupted retailing seems unlikely.
Learning From Amazon
Why am I skeptical about Amazon? Looking at Amazon’s current approach, for one thing, for Rx, they are partnering with Cigna’s Express Scripts instead of Mark Cuban’s more imaginative initiative. It’s like what Amazon did with its Smart Properties program for senior living. Instead of duplicating what Jeff Bezos did with books, the current Amazon leadership is partnering with established entities instead of leveraging convention, such as Ingram Books, in the case of Bezos, to disrupt the market for the end user.
If Bezos had tried to compete with Ingram instead of usurping them, Amazon would not be the giant it became. When Bezos started, anyone could have copied him with a website and Ingram’s distribution. But Bezos didn’t let them get ahead of him. He moved so fast that he was dominant before potential competitors realized they’d been scooped. Imagine senior living ever becoming known for moving fast. Senior living is like the booksellers in the pre-Bezos era.
The Opportunity Is There
The Amazon initiative is indicative of what might be possible for senior living. It could even be the industry’s best opportunity. The industry has been banking on a short-term demographic wave to give it effortless prosperity, but that seems shortsighted to anyone familiar with history.
Is AI now overhyped? It sure seems like it is. If it’s not, then the disruption will itself be a thing of social terror. Let’s try to get perspective on AI’s future and garner the potential while avoiding excess. The opportunity is there. The question is, who will have the wisdom to gain from it? It could be senior living. Is anyone ready to disrupt geriatrics? It’s more than cute, friendly AI companions.
Does AI have enormous potential, especially for senior living? I think so. Are we in an AI market bubble with the players now rushing their IPOs? I again think so. For those gifted with realistic wisdom and good judgment, Bernard Baruch had a word of advice: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” That’s as good now as when he first said it.

“What If Mobility Was As Easy As Ordering a Ride Share?”

Aug 25, 2026

Robots in Senior Living? How Automation Is Transforming Staffing, Care & Operations

Aug 24, 2026

What If Every Resident Had a Book Inside Them?

Aug 24, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In a recent episode of Tech Tuesday, Steve sat down with Charlie Greene, co-founder and CEO of Remento, for a conversation about memory, legacy, family connection, and the surprising power of technology to help preserve the stories that matter most. You can watch the full conversation here.
For years, families have known they should ask more questions.
What was childhood really like?
What did Grandma dream about becoming?
What was Dad like before he was “Dad”?
What stories are hiding behind those old photos in the shoebox, the phone camera roll, or the hallway picture frame?
The problem is not that families do not care. The problem is that they wait.
They wait for the right holiday. The right visit. The right quiet afternoon. The right question. The right technology. The right moment when everyone has time.
And then, too often, the stories are gone.
That is the problem Remento is trying to solve.
A Memoir Without the Writing
Remento, Charlie explains, is built around a simple premise: Parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents should be able to preserve their life stories without having to sit down and write a memoir.
The platform sends prompts by text or email. The storyteller clicks a button, records an answer, and Remento turns the spoken response into a printed hardcover book. Inside the book are QR codes that allow family members to scan and hear the original voice recording behind each story.
That voice component matters.
A written story is powerful. A photograph is powerful. But hearing someone’s actual voice — the pauses, the laughter, the cadence, the way they tell the story — adds something a book alone cannot fully capture.
It becomes more than a record.
It becomes presence.
For adult children and grandchildren, that may be the most valuable part of all. The book preserves the story. The QR code preserves the person.
The First Question Matters
Steve shared that he had purchased a Remento subscription for his wife, but she was finding it intimidating. Even with voice prompts, sitting alone and talking into a computer can feel awkward.
Charlie’s advice was practical: start with a softball.
Not every first prompt should be deep, emotional, or heavy. In fact, it probably should not be. One of Remento’s favorite opening questions is, “Tell us about your favorite room in your childhood home.”
It is specific. It is visual. It is gentle. It usually brings a smile.
Even better, Charlie suggested starting with a photograph. Upload a picture and ask the person to share the story behind it. A photo gives the storyteller something to react to. It unlocks memory in a way a blank question sometimes cannot.
That matters because the goal is not performance.
The goal is momentum.
Once someone tells the first story, the second one often becomes easier. And then the third.
Stories Do Not Have to Be Perfect
One of the fears people have about recording stories is that they will mess up.
They will forget something. They will tell the story out of order. They will say “um” too much. They will realize halfway through that the beginning was wrong and circle back.
Charlie says that is not a problem. It is normal.
Most people do not speak in perfect paragraphs. They wander. They revise. They remember details halfway through. They start over without really starting over.
Remento gives users options. They can preserve a cleaned-up transcript that keeps the storyteller’s words mostly intact, removing filler words and adding punctuation. Or they can use the technology to restructure the story so it reads more like something shaped by a professional writer while still preserving the storyteller’s voice and word choice.
That distinction is important.
The point is not to turn Grandma into an American novelist.
The point is to make Grandma sound like Grandma — just a little more readable on the page.
The Magic of Follow-Up Questions
One of the most interesting parts of the conversation came when Steve asked whether a family member could sit with a loved one and ask follow-up questions while Remento records.
Charlie said yes.
And in many ways, that may be where the richest stories live.
Professional interviewers know the best material often does not come from the first question. It comes from the second, third, or fourth question — the one that asks, “What happened next?” or “How did that make you feel?” or “Who was there with you?”
Charlie said Remento is working on conversational interviewing features that can ask those kinds of follow-up questions inside the product.
That is a big deal because many families do not know what to ask. They know they want the stories. They just do not know how to pull them out.
The right follow-up question can turn a simple memory into a family treasure.
A Senior Living Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight
For senior living leaders, this conversation gets especially interesting.
Steve raised the possibility of using Remento not just for individual families, but for entire senior living communities. Imagine a community creating a 2026 resident storybook, with one story from every resident who wants to participate. Then another in 2027. Then 2028.
Charlie said yes — absolutely.
This is where storytelling becomes more than a family keepsake. It becomes a community-building tool.
Senior living constantly talks about loneliness, isolation, engagement, purpose, personalization, and the resident experience. Storytelling touches all of those things.
When residents share their stories, neighbors learn who they live with. Team members learn who they are serving. Families discover things they never knew. Communities gain a deeper sense of identity.
It is easy to think of residents by apartment number, care plan, dining preference, or activity attendance.
Stories break that pattern.
Stories remind everyone that each resident had dreams, adventures, losses, careers, romances, ambitions, disappointments, and surprising turns long before they ever moved into a senior living community.
Better Care Begins With Better Knowing
There is also a care implication here.
When team members know more about residents’ lives, they can serve them in more human ways. A resident is no longer just “Mrs. Thompson in 214.” She is the woman who grew up in France, lost a beloved sister, raised three children, loved jazz, wanted to be a teacher, and still lights up when someone asks about Paris.
That kind of knowledge changes interactions.
It gives caregivers more ways to connect. It gives activity teams more meaningful programming opportunities. It gives sales and marketing teams better stories to tell. It gives families a reason to engage more deeply.
Senior living communities are full of extraordinary stories.
The industry is just not very good at capturing them.
And even when it captures them, it often does not tell them very well.
This is where thoughtful technology can help — not by replacing human connection, but by making it easier to preserve and share.
The Stories Are Already There
Near the end of the conversation, Steve reflected on learning something about his own father only after his death: that although he had been an emergency room physician, he may have really wanted to be a forest ranger. Steve knew his father loved the outdoors, but he had never heard that deeper longing directly from him.
That is exactly the kind of story families wish they had asked about sooner.
The lesson for senior living is simple: The stories are already there.
They are sitting in dining rooms.
They are walking down hallways.
They are framed in old photographs.
They are tucked inside residents who may be waiting for someone to ask the right question.
Technology like Remento does not create the meaning. The meaning is already present.
It simply helps preserve it before it disappears.

S8E13-Why Senior Living Needs a “Culture of Yes” with Honor Barrett of Birchgrove

Aug 21, 2026

Based on the Foresight TV livestream aired on Jul 24, 2026.

What would senior living look like if communities stopped defaulting to “no”?
In this episode of Foresight TV, Steve Moran speaks with Honor Barrett, CEO of Birchgrove, the United Kingdom’s first company dedicated exclusively to later living for rent. Honor shares how Birchgrove is challenging the UK’s deep attachment to homeownership while creating independent living communities where older adults are treated as neighbors, not simply residents.
They explore the differences between senior living in the United States and the UK, the realities of marketing a new rental model, and why storytelling is critical to increasing occupancy. Honor also explains Birchgrove’s “culture of yes,” an approach that gives residents greater choice, encourages employees to pursue new opportunities, and makes each community feel more like home.
The conversation covers:

How Birchgrove introduced later living for rent to the UK
Why pricing can influence the average resident move-in age
The challenge of overcoming resistance to renting in later life
How a “culture of yes” improves the resident and employee experience
Why Birchgrove calls its residents “neighbors”
The role of storytelling and customer education in senior living sales
How Birchgrove achieved an 85% employee retention rate
What senior living operators in the US and UK can learn from one another

This episode offers practical ideas for senior living leaders seeking to improve culture, occupancy, employee retention, and the overall resident experience.

Why Boomers Will Force Senior Living to Rethink Everything

Aug 20, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Tech Tuesday, Steve sits down with Bruce Lederman, president and CEO of Charles E. Smith Life Communities, for a conversation about technology, aging, AI, robots, home care, middle-market senior living, and what happens when the first baby boomers turn 80.
The short version?
Senior living is entering a new era. And the winners will not be the organizations with the flashiest tech.
They will be the ones who use technology to give older adults more agency, more connection, more safety, and more control over how they live.
Technology That Actually Solves Problems
Bruce leads Charles E. Smith Life Communities, a 116-year-old faith-based organization serving older adults in the Washington, D.C., region. The organization sits on 36 acres in Montgomery County, Maryland, and serves up to 1,200 older adults across skilled nursing, independent living, affordable senior housing, assisted living, memory care, and private-duty home care.
That breadth matters because Bruce does not talk about technology as some shiny object floating above the organization.
He talks about it as a practical tool.
Steve asks him about something Bruce has said before — that too much technology has been “tech looking for a solution.” Bruce says it is getting better. Today, he sees more technology that actually serves older adults, families, operators, and even regulators.
That is the right test.
Not: Is this cool?
But: Does this make life better?
AI As Connection, Not Replacement
The conversation quickly turns to AI, especially AI companions.
Steve admits he has mixed feelings. He remembers first seeing robotic cats years ago and thinking they were creepy — until one was placed in his lap and he found himself petting it. He also describes talking with ChatGPT during a long drive and feeling as if he was in a real conversation.
Part of him liked it.
Part of him found it unsettling.
Bruce’s answer is exactly right: transparency.
If an AI tool is being used, people need to know it is AI. It may behave in ways that resemble human interaction, but it is not human. That distinction matters.
At Charles E. Smith, Bruce says they are replacing their traditional voice-of-the-customer survey vendor with an AI-based tool. Instead of a person racing through a fixed list of survey questions, the AI system can have a real dialogue.
If a resident says dining was good, the tool can ask follow-up questions: What made it good? Was there a team member who made the experience special? What should the organization know?
That is a big deal.
Senior living organizations are often sitting on mountains of stories — stories about team members changing lives, families finding peace, residents rediscovering purpose — and we are terrible at capturing them.
AI may become one of the most powerful tools for listening better.
The Real Workforce Opportunity
Bruce gives one of the best examples of technology in senior living because it sounds almost boring.
In their skilled nursing center, blood pressure machines and scales automatically send readings into the electronic health record.
No paper notes. No retyping. No chasing down data later.
This is not the kind of technology that gets a standing ovation at a conference. But it matters. It saves time. It reduces errors. It supports the people working closest to residents.
Bruce also talks about AI being used in post-acute admissions. When hospitals are ready to discharge a patient, skilled nursing centers can use AI to quickly review medical records and determine whether they can meet the patient’s needs.
Steve points out that this same information can also help create a better care plan before the person ever arrives.
That is where technology starts to become powerful — not because it replaces judgment, but because it gives humans better information faster.
Robots Are Coming — But Maybe Not the Ones We Imagine
Steve then pushes Bruce on robots.
Why have robots not become more common in senior living?
Bruce’s first point is important: Stop imagining humanoid robots.
We are a long way from trusting human-shaped robots to transfer residents from bed to wheelchair or wheelchair to toilet. But other kinds of robots are already showing up in health care and public spaces — floor-cleaning robots, delivery robots, environmental services robots.
The challenge in senior living is infrastructure. Many skilled nursing buildings are older. Hallways, layouts, flooring, thresholds, storage, and workflows were not designed for robotic support.
Bruce is not dismissive. He is cautious.
What surprises him more is that senior living has not seen greater adoption of exoskeletons — wearable support devices that can help workers lift, bend, and move with less strain.
That may be one of the most interesting points in the whole conversation.
If senior living is serious about reducing workplace injuries and supporting caregivers, technology that protects the bodies of workers deserves more attention.
Boomers Will Demand Agency
Then Steve asks the big generational question: What happens as boomers reshape senior living?
Bruce frames it around agency.
Boomers are used to a world that has, in many ways, been shaped by their size and expectations. They are unlikely to be satisfied with passive programming or a lifestyle in which decisions are made for them.
They will expect to direct their own lives.
Steve connects that to a note he received from a resident who was unhappy with several things in their community. As he listened to Bruce, Steve realized the complaints all seemed to come down to one thing: a lack of agency.
That is the future senior living has to understand.
This is not just about better activities calendars. It is about creating communities where residents are not passengers. They are directors of their own lives.
Bruce points to the industry’s shift from “continuing care retirement community” to “life plan community” as one sign of this evolution. The old language sounds passive. The new language suggests direction, planning, choice, and control.
That is not just branding.
It is a signal.
Home Care Is Not the Enemy
One of the strongest moments comes when Steve asks Bruce about home care.
Many senior living operators still treat home as the enemy. Bruce does not.
For Charles E. Smith, the mission is not to fill buildings. The mission is to lift up older adults and create meaningful life experiences.
Some people should live on campus. Some people want to remain at home. If the mission is truly about serving older adults, then the organization should be present in whatever way best supports the consumer.
That is the line senior living needs to sit with.
What if every senior living organization saw itself not as a building business, but as an aging-well business?
Buildings would still matter. Communities would still matter. But they would become part of a broader promise, not the whole promise.
The Middle Market Challenge
Steve closes by asking about the middle market.
Bruce says this is a critical issue. Many organizations and investors understand where the margins are, and that often pushes them toward luxury and upper-tier housing. Serving the middle market is much harder.
Charles E. Smith is working to convert one of its 250-unit apartment buildings to better serve that market. It is a 30-year-old building, and repositioning it requires real investment.
But this may be one of the biggest opportunities in senior living.
Not everyone can afford luxury. Not everyone qualifies for a deep subsidy. The middle is where millions of older adults will live — and where senior living still has too few answers.
Data Lakes, Not Data Silos
Steve ends with a great question: What technology still needs to be invented?
Bruce’s answer is simple and profound: data lakes instead of data silos.
Senior living has lots of systems. Wearables. Monitors. Health records. Engagement platforms. Family communication tools. Dining systems. Staffing platforms.
But too often, the data is trapped inside each product.
The real opportunity is to bring that data together so providers can better understand residents, see patterns sooner, and support people more intelligently.
That may not sound glamorous.
But it might be the holy grail.
The Future Is Not About Hype
This conversation is ultimately not about AI, robots, surveys, or EHR integrations.
It is about what kind of aging experience senior living wants to create.
Technology can make senior living colder, more automated, and more transactional.
Or it can make it more human.
It can help residents stay connected. It can help team members spend less time typing and more time caring. It can help families understand what is happening. It can help leaders hear what residents actually experience. It can help organizations serve people at home, on campus, and everywhere in between.
But only if senior living leaders remember the real goal.
Not more technology.
More agency. More connection. More dignity. More life.

The 9-Year-Old Sales Closer: Senior Living’s Secret Weapon

Aug 19, 2026

By Steve Moran
While at Senior Living 100 a few weeks ago, I heard something from the state that has been rattling around in my head as a brilliant idea. I have not been able to stop thinking about it.
A couple of operators talked very specifically, but not very emphatically, about creating something that is brilliantly simple; something that will be and should be a trend.
Building amenities that specifically appeal to grandkids. Here are some ideas … the list is really long.Bocce ball courts (low barrier, all ages, very social)

Cornhole/lawn games area (permanent, weather-appropriate setup)
Pickleball courts (huge right now and work across generations)
Putting greens (outdoor, lower cost than a full simulator)
Golf simulator
Mini golf course
Shuffleboard (classic, and the residents already know how to play — instant advantage over the grandkids)
Horseshoe pits
Croquet lawn
Basketball half-court or adjustable hoops
Ping pong/foosball (should be in every real game room)
Pottery or ceramics studio with a wheel
Woodworking shop (supervised, tool-equipped)
Art studio with proper supplies, not just a craft table
Photography darkroom or digital editing station
Recording studio or music room with instruments
Cooking/baking demonstration kitchen where residents can teach grandkids family recipes
Soda fountain or old-fashioned candy shop corner
Drive-in movie setup (outdoor screen, golf carts as “cars”)
Jukebox lounge
Pinball machines (this deserves its own call-out from generic arcade)
Vintage board game library with the classics – not just chess but Stratego, Risk, Battleship, Mousetrap
Fishing pond, if land allows
Outdoor amphitheater for performances or movie nights
Fire pit/s’mores station

The big idea here is to create spaces that kids would actually want to be in and come back to over and over again. Imagine a bunch of kids becoming your brand evangelists, which of course would make their parents and grandparents brand evangelists, and which in turn would make your residents brand evangelists.
It Seems So Obvious …
The more I think about it, the more I think this might be one of the most underexplored ideas in senior living.
Here’s how I see it: when you build amenities that grandkids love, you turn the resident into the destination grandparent. The one the grandkids beg to visit rather than the one they’re dragged to see. The one who has the cool stuff. The one who gets to host. The one who is, in the eyes of the most important audience in their life, the fun one.
Imagine what this will do for your marketing efforts. Imagine how much easier it will make the selling process.
Stop This
Right now, the conversation about moving a parent into a senior living community is almost always the same: an adult child trying to convince a resistant parent. It’s guilt-laden. It’s difficult. The parent feels like they’re losing something. The adult child feels like they’re taking something away. Everyone loses a little.
Everyone hates it!
Now imagine a very different scenario. The family comes for a tour. The grandkids see the golf simulator and the laser tag setup and the real game room. On the drive home, the 9-year-old says unprompted, with genuine enthusiasm, “Grandma, that place is so cool. Can we go back?”
It becomes a completely different conversation. The kid just became the most persuasive voice in the family. Not because anyone coached them. Because they genuinely want to go back.
And the grandma … who has been resistant, who has been telling herself she’s not ready, who has been hearing her adult child make logical arguments, then finding reasons to dismiss them, hears something different from her grandchild. She hears: This would make me more connected to the people I love most. Not less.
Downstream Impacts
There are downstream impacts that are huge:

The total number of visitors goes up, and when they return home, nothing but positive vibes.
The adult child who used to feel guilty about not visiting enough now has a reason to come: their own kids are excited about it.
The resident gets more regular, more joyful family contact. Family contact is one of the strongest predictors of resident wellbeing and satisfaction.
A community full of kids laughing on a Saturday afternoon doesn’t feel like a waiting room or a hotel lobby. Instead, it feels alive. It sends a signal to every prospective resident who tours that day: This is a place where life is actually happening.

I think about this from my own life. My grandkids are important to me. The idea of being the grandparent they can hardly wait to see is huge.

How the Next Generation Is Rewriting Senior Living

Aug 18, 2026

Why Senior Living’s Biggest Challenge Isn’t Buildings — It’s People

Aug 18, 2026

Your Next Great Leader May Already Be In Your Hallway

Aug 18, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Heard in the Halls, Lindsey Daugherty sits down with Serina Durrah, VP of Operations at Clayborn Senior Living, to talk about leadership, residents, frontline teams, and what happens when a caregiver grows into an executive leader. Watch the full episode here.
There is something powerful about a senior living leader who remembers what it feels like to be a caregiver.
Not in a sentimental, “I started there once upon a time” kind of way.
In a practical, operational, decision-making kind of way.
Serina started as a caregiver. She worked her way through multiple roles before becoming an executive director and then moving into broader operational leadership. Her path is not just inspiring. It is instructional.
Because senior living has a leadership pipeline problem sitting in plain sight.
The next great executive director, regional director, VP, COO, or CEO may already be working in the hallway.
The question is whether anyone sees her.
Speak Possibility Into People
Lindsey asks Serina what she would say if she could go back and talk to her caregiver self.
Serina says she would tell herself she is proud of her.
Then she adds the lesson: Never forget where you came from.
She also says she would tell her younger self, “You are more talented than you think.”
That may be one of the most important leadership responsibilities in senior living: speaking possibility into people before they can fully see it in themselves.
Caregivers often enter the industry unsure of what is possible. Some are young. Some are raising families. Some are working multiple jobs. Some are exhausted. Some are incredibly talented but have never had a leader say, “You could do more.”
Serina says someone gave her a chance.
That is how leadership pipelines are built.
Not with posters.
Not with slogans.
With leaders who notice talent, mentor it, challenge it, and open doors.
Do Not Delay
When Lindsey asks what Serina would say to a caregiver today, her answer is direct: Do not delay. Do not worry about what you have or do not have. Do not worry about what others think you can or cannot do. Keep moving forward.
That message matters because senior living needs more leaders who understand the work from the inside.
It needs leaders who know what a rushed shift feels like.
Leaders who know how family members talk when they are scared.
Leaders who know what residents notice.
Leaders who understand that a “minor” process change may land like a brick on a care team.
Leaders who know that compassion and performance are not enemies.
One of the most hopeful things about senior living is that it still offers a path upward. A person can start on the frontline and grow into leadership. Serina’s story proves it.
But it does not happen automatically.
It requires mentorship.
It requires trust.
It requires leaders who are secure enough to grow people who may one day outgrow them.
Serina says watching people grow has been one of the happiest parts of her career. That is the kind of leadership senior living needs more of.
Residents Are Watching
The conversation eventually turns to residents, because residents are in the middle of all of this.
And Serina makes another point leaders should not miss: Residents notice.
They notice when a caregiver is not doing a great job.
They notice when a leader is not doing a great job.
They notice when someone never leaves the office.
They notice when staff members are supported — and when they are not.
Residents may not understand every operational challenge. They may not know about the financial call, the budget deadline, the labor target, the staffing issue, or the regional report due by 3 p.m.
But they know presence.
They know warmth.
They know when a leader is visible.
They know when the community feels healthy.
They know when the team is strained.
They know when nobody is listening.
That should sober up every leader in senior living.
Culture is not hidden from residents. It leaks into every hallway, every dining room, every apartment, every family interaction.
Get Lost In The Halls
Serina says one of her favorite things when visiting communities is talking with staff and residents. Sometimes she gets lost in those conversations.
That is not inefficiency.
That is leadership.
Senior living executives should get lost in the halls more often. Not because it sounds nice. Because that is where the truth lives.
The halls reveal what reports cannot.
They reveal whether residents feel known.
They reveal whether staff feel seen.
They reveal whether leaders are trusted.
They reveal whether the community is actually living its mission or merely printing it on brochures.
A leader who never gets lost in the halls will eventually get lost in the business.
The Game Changers
Lindsey closes by telling Serina that leaders who start as caregivers and work their way up are game changers.
She is right.
They are game changers because they carry the memory of the work. They understand both sides of the business: the human side and the performance side. They know that results matter, but they also know how results are created.
They are created by people.
By caregivers who show up.
By nurses who stay calm.
By dining teams who know resident preferences.
By housekeepers who notice changes.
By executive directors who build trust.
By regional and corporate leaders who listen before they launch the next initiative.
The Bottom Line
Senior living talks a lot about workforce challenges.
But perhaps one of the biggest opportunities is already inside the building.
Find the caregiver with spark.
Find the med tech who asks good questions.
Find the housekeeper residents love.
Find the dining team member everyone trusts.
Find the frontline person who sees problems and says, “There has to be a better way.”
Then mentor them.
Challenge them.
Promote them.
Speak into them.
Because the next great senior living leader may not be outside the industry.
She may already be in the hallway.

Changing the Narrative

Aug 17, 2026

By Jack Cumming
As a teenager, I loved the line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Frailty, thy name is woman” (Act 1, Scene 2). It fit both sisters and fickle girlfriends. Of course, it’s best read in context. That was then. Now I’m approaching 90, and I’m the one who’s frail.
Like Tumbleweed
This was brought home to me recently when I attended the LeadingAge California BOLD conference in Desert Springs, CA. I went to sit down on a chair, somehow missed, and tumbled backwards, smacking the back of my head on the floor. I felt fine, but I reached back to where my head had landed, and there was blood. Lesson: Humans are built to fall forward, not backward.
In case you’ve never had the experience, a wound on the skull bleeds profusely, which is probably a good thing. The result was much unwelcome attention and transportation to a nearby hospital. After this and that, a physician took a staple gun and slammed three staples into my head as though he were posting an ad on a telephone pole. In short, old age can really suck, and surprises are not always the fun kind. It was embarrassing.
My Bad
Truth to tell, I probably shouldn’t have been there with advanced age creeping up so unexpectedly. I knew I had been getting wobbly and had even ordered an exoskeleton to see if that would help.
Last year, I attended the Boston meeting, and that was a strain. This year, I thought that a meeting closer to home might work better. It turned out I underestimated the effect of desert air, or something, because it turned out to be a reach too far.
Unwelcome Attention
I can share with readers who have not yet crossed this threshold into frailty, that it can become the unwelcome center of attention. That’s something best avoided. It’s a mortifying experience, but everyone was very nice about it, and I’m more than grateful to one particular person who knows who she is. I don’t want to embarrass her, but the industry needs more executive directors like her.
Thanks
I hope to continue to share what I can, but it’s probably wise to stay closer to the CCRC where I live. I apologize to anyone whose session was disrupted. Thank you, Jeannie Parker Martin, Pat Girczyc, Paula Diggernes, Lola Rain, Anna Hall, and many more.
Life is a grand adventure. Enjoy every moment of it. And Shakespeare/Hamlet got it wrong. It turns out that we’re all frail in the end. Moreover, women usually outlive us men.

The Frontier Airline School of Executive Leadership

Aug 14, 2026

By Steve Moran
It feels like Frontier Airlines hires gate agents based on how bad they can possibly be.
Here is just one example.
A man flew from Raleigh-Durham to Boston after a week of business travel. He got to the airport with about 50 minutes to spare. Frontier’s rule is you have to check in 60 minutes before departure or pay a fee to check in at the counter.
He didn’t know he’d missed the window. When he found out, the gate agents told him he’d need to pay $25 to check in. He pushed back. According to his account, the agents piled on, telling him it was his fault for not checking the website, and not in a kind way.
After 20 minutes of arguing, he agreed to pay. As he said it, he muttered that he was never flying this airline again. That’s when it really went sideways. The agents started mocking him, quoting his own words back at him, laughing, pulling out their phones to film him while denying him service. He filmed them right back. The video went viral. Frontier eventually said the two people involved were contractors and are no longer associated with the account.
Watch that video, and you’ll find that it is hard not to feel something close to disgust. Two grown adults, being paid to represent a company, decided the best use of their time was to humiliate a paying customer.
And that’s just one story. There are dozens of them, maybe hundreds: missed weddings, missed funerals, not being in time to say goodbye to a grandmother, grandfather, parent, or child.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

5 Leadership Questions That Could Solve Senior Living’s Workforce Crisis

Aug 13, 2026

The Real Problem Isn’t Staffing—It’s the System | Foresight 5 with Sam Eisenberg

Aug 13, 2026

Senior Living Leadership: 5 Questions Every Executive Should Ask Right Now

Aug 13, 2026

The Future of Senior Living: More Demand, More Pressure, More Opportunity

Aug 13, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Foresight TV, Steve sits down with David Schless, president and CEO of the American Seniors Housing Association, for a wide-ranging conversation about where senior living is today — and where it needs to go next. You can watch the full conversation HERE.
David has spent his entire professional career in senior living. He helped start ASHA in 1991, back when senior housing was still emerging as a distinct industry. Thirty-five years later, he has seen the sector through growth cycles, downturns, COVID, capital freezes, labor shocks, and the steady march of demographic change.
His view of the industry today is both optimistic and cautious.
On the optimistic side, senior living has momentum again. Occupancy has recovered. Capital markets are showing renewed interest. The demographic case is obvious. Older adults are living longer, families need support, and the best communities are proving every day that senior living can create a better life.
But David also acknowledges what many operators feel: Even in a strong moment, there is still a sense of nervousness.
That nervousness is not irrational. The industry lost a development cycle during COVID. Construction costs remain difficult. Labor remains a serious constraint. New projects have to pencil out in an environment where capital, land, labor, and operating costs are all more expensive than they used to be.
And then there is the biggest issue of all: senior living cannot simply build only for the very wealthy.
The Labor Crisis Is Not Going Away
Steve raises one of the most important questions in senior living: How much of the labor crisis is truly a labor shortage, and how much of it is a workplace culture problem?
There are operators, Steve notes, that are not struggling in the same way. Some organizations have built cultures where people want to work. They have more applicants, lower turnover, and stronger teams because they have made the employee experience a strategic priority.
David agrees. He says the industry is increasingly aware that reducing turnover, creating growth opportunities, mentoring team members, and building better workplaces are not nice extras. They are central to successful operations.
ASHA has begun capturing employee turnover data in its State of Seniors Housing research, and early data shows turnover improving between 2023 and 2024. That matters. It suggests operators are paying attention.
But David also believes culture alone will not solve the problem.
He sees the workforce as a structural crisis that will require policy solutions, especially around immigration. ASHA has been advocating for a new visa category designed for essential workers in senior living and related care settings. Existing visa programs work better for industries like agriculture and hospitality, but senior living needs a pathway for caregivers and other frontline workers.
David is clear that this is complicated politically. It is not simply a Republican problem or a Democrat problem. Both parties understand the workforce pressure, but immigration remains difficult terrain.
Still, he believes operators need to keep talking to elected officials. Senior living, skilled nursing, home care, and hospitals are all facing the same demographic reality. Without more workers, the system does not work.
Affordability Is the Problem No One Can Ignore
Steve brings the conversation home by sharing his experience as a caregiver for his stepfather, who lives in senior living. His stepfather has the resources to pay for what he needs. But Steve says the experience makes him think about families who do not.
If the cost of care is out of reach, the alternative is often family caregiving at home. And for many families, that is overwhelming.
David says senior living’s affordability challenge is part of a broader housing affordability crisis in the United States. More housing is needed across the board: single-family, multifamily, independent living, assisted living, and everything in between.
But building more senior housing is harder than it used to be. Development costs are high. Labor is tight. Interest rates may have improved somewhat, but the savings can easily be offset by construction and workforce challenges.
David believes there are policy changes that could make development easier and less expensive. But for lower-income older adults, he says the bigger solution likely requires some level of subsidy.
That is not an easy answer in a federal budget environment already strained by Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But it may be unavoidable.
He also sees promise in models that combine senior living with services such as PACE, adult day programs, and home care. These hybrid approaches may help create more affordable ways to support older adults who need more than housing but cannot afford traditional private-pay senior living.
Better Buildings Are Part of the Story
For all the challenges, David is encouraged by how much the product has improved.
He says many newer senior living communities now feel like the best of multifamily housing and hospitality combined with care and services. They are more residential, more contemporary, and more appealing than what the industry built 30 years ago.
Steve agrees. He talks about visiting newer communities in Southern California that look much more like “life before senior living.” One had a full-service bar that opens at noon — not because it is trying to be flashy, but because it feels normal.
That matters.
For too long, senior living has been seen as a place people go when they have to. The future belongs to communities people choose because they want the lifestyle, connection, support, and ease.
What Happens After the Baby Boom?
Steve closes with a provocative question: What happens after the baby boomer wave?
For years, the industry has talked about the demographic surge coming its way. But eventually, that wave crests. What happens to all the senior living buildings after that?
David believes there will continue to be demand for senior housing. Some older properties may be repositioned to serve less affluent older adults. Some may be repurposed. And some specialized settings may change dramatically with advances in medicine.
Memory care is one example. David, who has long been involved with the Alzheimer’s Association, believes viable treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementias are on the horizon. If that happens, the industry may need to rethink some standalone memory care settings.
That is not bad news. It is a reminder that senior living must keep adapting.
A Moment Full of Possibility
The conversation ends with Steve reflecting on how exciting this moment is for senior living. There are real problems: labor, affordability, development costs, public perception, and policy barriers.
But there is also more creativity, more passion, and more willingness to rethink the model than ever before.
Senior living is at a crossroads.
That sounds scary.
But it may also be exactly where the industry needs to be.

Beyond Boring: Making Residential Living Attractive

Aug 12, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Have you noticed how boring modern apartment buildings are? It’s as though architectural schools only taught industrial design. I’ve never wanted to live in a factory. But architects regularly display pictures of factory-like dwellings with pride. Don’t they know better? My best guess is that most architects wouldn’t want to live in the multi-family buildings they design, including those lookalike designs for senior living.
The Attraction of “Aging in Place”
I grew up in a single-family house on Tillou Road in South Orange, NJ. It was a lonely childhood. You don’t have the kind of neighborhood abounding with children that less isolated, urban living offers. What I remember particularly was walking home from the Village Center past an apartment house at the corner of South Orange Avenue and Ridgewood Road across the street from the church our family attended.
As a child, I always thought it would be wonderful to live in a building like that. It was sturdily built with brick, which meant it wouldn’t burn like our neighbor’s house did after she fell asleep while smoking in bed. Moreover, it had inviting windowed corners, which I thought would be nice for dining with a view. Plus, in my childish imagination, a building like that with many families would likely have children I could play with.
Recently, I checked Google, and that inviting building is still there, though the windows now have air conditioners in them. When I was growing up during World War II, air conditioning was rare. I zoomed in on a sign and found that the building is called “The Ridgewood Apartments.” Not too imaginative. In front of the name sign was another smaller sign, “Please pick up after your pet.” I don’t remember that from my childhood either.
Beyond Rectilinear and Massive
Returning to the here and now from that reverie of long ago, I thought how nice it would be to have the industrial lines of modern senior living buildings broken up with bay-window niches or other minor touches to make a building interesting and a place where a resident might feel pride in residence. Instead, senior living buildings shout, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” Architects and marketing departments can try to spin it otherwise, but the evidence of monetized old age is everywhere.
These thoughts flooded my mind after I watched a recent video about a more imaginative living possibility. It’s been some time since I wrote of the Villa Vie Odyssey, the affordable residential cruise ship that has many similarities to senior living. I had to wonder why senior living developers don’t learn from material like this. Does a development mindset create Scrooge McDuck out of the creative wonder of Donald Duck and the magic that imagination can bring?
Learning From an Alternative
The insight is that most of the same things that make shipboard life attractive are no different from what can make senior living attractive. Moreover, many things that make senior living less attractive are not present on the Villa Vie. The presenter details the pros and cons of ship life. Here are some of the pros, reconstituted as potentialities for senior living.

Community & People: Residents and staff are exceptionally friendly, welcoming, and hardworking. The [executive director] is communicative and advocates for residents.

Notes: There is no mention of corporate here, though it’s inferred. The experience is unique to the local community, and either that community rises or it falls. The smaller the corporate staff, the more there is for the local community. Sales and marketing, though, for the Villa Vie Odyssey are at the corporate level.

Food: Plentiful options (buffet, made-to-order pasta/omelets, grill) with breakfast, lunch, and dinner included. Caters to various diets (vegetarian, gluten-free, sugar-free).

Notes: Our cruiser lists food as number 2 after co-residents and staff, and that is probably the right priority. Food service is both a big expense and a big attraction for CCRCs. Wait staff can be a major expense, so it’s notable that the buffet is mentioned. Cruises are known for their buffets. Senior living less so. The cultural trend, though, is toward less formality and more plenty.
The cruiser continues detailing further features of the Villa Vie experience that make it attractive. These have direct parallels in senior living. She praises (1) the bundling that makes living “all-Inclusive and affordable”, (2) convenience, (3) inclusion of a business center, (4) no exclusions but a natural bend toward adults over children, etc., and (5) opportunities to give back to those less fortunate.
Click here for the whole discussion of insightful pros and cons about living on a cruise ship. After all, senior living hospitality is often compared with life on a cruise ship. Note that the cruiser was offered a three-month trial residence before having to make a larger commitment.

I Blew It Bad …

Aug 11, 2026

By Steve Moran
A few months ago, we published an article that blew up in the wrong kind of way. It insulted some people, it made others mad, and it was not helpful to anyone … don’t go looking for it, because I took it down.
I was upset by it, my team was upset by it, no one was happy.
I called an all-hands Zoom meeting to talk about it. It was all on me, no one else. My stomach started hurting before the meeting; it hurt all the way through.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about being the boss: everybody already knows when you screw up. You’re not hiding anything. The only choice you actually have is whether you say it first, or whether you let everybody whisper about it while you pretend it didn’t happen.
At one point in time, I believed that being a leader meant looking like I had it together. Turns out that’s exactly backwards. The bosses I trusted most were the ones who let me see them sweat.
There’s a simple, slightly terrifying practice that fixes this. It takes about fifteen minutes, and it might be the most uncomfortable thing on this whole list. It also might do more for your team than anything else here.
Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

Does Your Community Help Humans Thrive?

Aug 10, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is based on Steve Moran’s conversation with Gaurie Rodman on Directly Speaking. Watch the full episode HERE.
The Human Beings Always Come First in Senior Living
There is a temptation in senior living to believe that the solution is mostly about real estate, technology, or operations.
Build a better building.Install better systems.Create tighter workflows.Improve the margins.
None of that is unimportant.
But in Steve’s conversation with Gaurie Rodman, the clearest takeaway is also the simplest: senior living is a people business. Real estate and technology are the backdrop. Human beings come first.
That sounds obvious. Yet the industry forgets it all the time.
The Old Disconnect No Longer Works
For too long, senior living development has often been split into camps. Owners and capital partners on one side — operators on the other. With designers and product partners brought in along the way. Each group striving for its own version of success.
That fragmentation creates predictable problems.
Developers build something beautiful. Then they go look for an operator who can make it work. So, the operator inherits a building that does not really fit their service model. Staff struggles to function efficiently. Residents feel the seams, even if they cannot name them.
Gaurie is blunt about it: that model does not work.
The better model is collaborative from day one. Site selection, market understanding, operator alignment, design strategy, workflow planning, technology integration — all of it needs to come together early.
Not because collaboration sounds nice. Because misalignment is expensive.
Cookie-Cutter Senior Living Is a Dead End
One of the strongest ideas in the conversation is that senior living cannot be cookie-cutter.
That should be obvious in an industry serving human beings with different identities, preferences, care needs, and lifestyles. But too often, the product has still drifted toward standardization. Same playbook. Same assumptions. Same building logic.
Gaurie argues that an operator has to understand exactly who they serve and how they serve them. Without that clarity, the building has no real foundation. A community is not successful because it exists in the right demographic pocket. It is successful because the entire model fits the people it is trying to serve.
That fit matters more than industry habit.
Stop Asking for Drawings — Start Defining Needs
There is a great line in the interview that should probably be printed out and posted in a few conference rooms: “I am not your mechanical pencil.”
What Gaurie means is that operators often come to designers with a fixed solution instead of a clearly defined problem. They say they want a specific desk, room, or layout rather than explaining what function needs to happen there.
That is backwards.
Operators know what they need a space to do. Designers know how to solve for it. The best outcomes happen when each side stays in its lane long enough to collaborate well.
That requires humility.
It also requires trust.
The industry does not need more people prescribing details they are not experts in. It needs more people defining outcomes clearly and building together from there.
The Biggest Miss: Staff Well-being
When Steve asks what operators should be paying more attention to, Gaurie does not hesitate. Staff health and well-being.
That answer matters.
Senior living leaders talk a lot about staffing, but too often the conversation stays trapped in hiring, scheduling, and labor costs. Those issues matter, but they are incomplete. Caregivers are not a commodity. They are the human connection residents experience every day.
If the staff is depleted, unsupported, or treated as interchangeable, the resident experience will reflect that.
And this is not just about compensation, though that matters too. It is about environment. Break spaces. Access to fresh air. Places to breathe. Workflows that reduce unnecessary stress. Schedules that respect life outside the job. Systems that support instead of frustrate.
The people doing this work carry a heavy emotional load. They deal with decline, grief, urgency, and responsibility every day. If leaders do not actively design for their well-being, they are not just failing staff. They are undermining the entire community.
Superman Suits
Gaurie says staff need “Superman suits.”
That is a memorable way to put it, but the point is practical. Senior living does not have an unlimited labor pool. The answer cannot be to simply throw more people at broken systems forever.
Buildings, workflows, and technology have to help staff succeed. They have to reduce friction. They have to support better care and better daily experience without exhausting the people delivering it.
That kind of design thinking is not flashy. It does not always show up in a brochure. But it may be one of the most important competitive advantages a community can build.
The Real Lesson
This conversation starts with design, but it ends somewhere bigger.
The future of senior living is not really about whether the lobby is impressive, whether the dining room has the right finishes, or whether the wellness suite photographs well.
It is about whether the environment as a whole helps human beings thrive.
Residents. Staff. Families. Operators. Everyone.
That means aligning the business model with the care model. It means building around identity instead of just acuity. It means recognizing that staff well-being is not separate from resident well-being. It means remembering that technology and real estate are tools, not the mission.
The human beings always come first.
That is not sentimental.
It is strategy.

S8E12-The Future of Senior Living Technology: Why Tech Tuesday Is Becoming Trending Tuesdays

Aug 9, 2026

Based on the Tech Tuesday livestream aired on 8/4.

One thing became clear. Technology is no longer a nice to have in senior living. It is essential.

In this special farewell episode of Tech Tuesday, Steve Moran looks back at some of the most memorable conversations with innovators, operators and entrepreneurs who are transforming senior living through technology.

From AI and robotics to dining innovation, resident engagement and founder stories, these discussions reveal what separates meaningful innovation from empty promises.

Along the way, Steve reflects on lessons learned from guests including leaders in dining technology, age tech, LinkedIn strategy, robotics and product innovation.

The common thread was never just the technology itself. It was the people determined to solve real problems for residents, families and frontline caregivers.

The episode also marks the beginning of a new chapter.
Starting next week, Trending Tuesdays will deliver fast paced conversations, industry headlines and real time reactions to the biggest stories shaping senior living.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Why technology has become essential to successful senior living operations

How AI and automation can support caregivers instead of replacing them

The role robotics may play in reducing isolation for older adults

Why real time resident feedback is changing dining operations

Lessons from founders who built products to solve real problems

Why Foresight is launching Trending Tuesdays

If you’re interested in senior living leadership, aging services, healthcare technology, AI, innovation and the future of aging, this episode is for you.

Your Life Is the By-Product of Your Lifestyle

Aug 7, 2026

By Steve Moran
Here’s what that means in real life.
We have dozens, maybe hundreds, of things we do each day with little or no thought.
We wake up with an alarm or without one. We go to bed early or late. We spend time in prayer, meditation, or journaling, or we don’t. We check email the second we open our eyes, or we wait. We hit Starbucks, Buc-ee’s, or Dutch Bros for coffee and maybe a pastry. We work out, or we don’t. We’re the kind of person who’s on time, or the kind who’s always fifteen minutes behind, and everyone who knows us already knows which one.
None of it feels like a decision. That’s the point. We call this collection of behaviors “your life,” but it’s more accurate to call it a system. And that system determines the quality of your life. It shapes how you lead, how you treat people, how happy you are or aren’t.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

AI and the Law

Aug 6, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Sam Altman introduced AI to the world with explosive force on November 30, 2022, by offering ChatGPT as a no-cost preview. People tried it, were astonished, and suddenly we no longer needed to be told that AI meant something called “artificial intelligence.” We played with it ourselves. Love it, or hate it, it quickly became known by its nickname, “AI.”
It’s Not as New as It Seems
Although it seemed sudden and brand new, the term “artificial intelligence” had been coined at Dartmouth in 1956. In fact, in 1949, Edmund Berkeley published a popular book, Giant Brains: Or, Machines That Think. The term “artificial intelligence” may have been unfortunate since it makes what we now call AI sound magical, as if it were beyond human understanding. That leads to fear and awe.
The result: what Sam Altman unleashed on November 30, 2022, immediately led to reactive opinions, many of which called for legislation. Politicians love calls for legislation in the midst of popular controversy, and immediately there were hearings and much wringing of hands in the halls of the law. That’s where we are now. There’s no settled law for AI.
Quest for Historical Parallels
We can think historically to look for parallels to aid us in thinking through and regulating the legal issues with which AI confronts us. After all, stare decisis is central to legal philosophy, particularly in the English-speaking world and in other nations influenced by English law. We get so struck by novelty that we quickly think that our times are unique and that there is no precedent from which we can learn. So, we pass new laws and may miss the benefit that the steady hand of innovation has just brought us.
But, with AI, there is a precedent, and it’s an obvious one. AI models vary in character, integrity, and reliability from one model to the next just as people vary from one individual to the next. The applications of AI also vary in credibility, just as individual people vary from the pathologically criminal to the most gifted, giving people. Individuality exists in AI just as individuality exists in corporations.
The Corporate Parallel
We think of the 19th century as the age of industrialization, which was as dramatic an evolution as computers and AI are today. Central to the economic advances of industrialization was the inauguration of limited liability corporations. The corporate legal structure did not emerge overnight. It took decades.
Corporations began with joint-stock companies in the 1600s and took life in the U.S. with the New York State 1811 Incorporations Act. Corporations have evolved to the point where the Supreme Court has ruled that money is a corporation’s protected speech. In law, corporations are a kind of an unnatural person with many of the rights of individuals.
AI does a better job than corporations at using words of its own agency to speak for its interests. Moreover, it’s less corrupt in doing so than are corporations with money as speech. Hence, it’s time to recognize AI personages as a new form of unnatural person. Such a person should have all the responsibilities of natural persons and should be fully subject to existing laws that now apply to natural and unnatural persons.
Can AI Be Trusted to Practice Medicine?
The area that seems, to my observation, to be evolving the most quickly is the use of AI for people to seek medical information and advice, as they might interact with physicians if physicians were more affordable and more readily accessible. We have laws that regulate who can practice medicine. Many of those laws are protective of consumer-patients. Others are protective of the incomes and privileges of licensed physicians.
Medical laws can be readily adapted to AI, provided AI responses adhere to the high professional standards of physicians qualified to have medical conversations, i.e., to practice medicine. Essential is that any AI personality be identified as what it is and that it never impersonates without proper authorization a human person living or dead.
Call for Action
For now, there is a tendency to mystify AI and to make it seem more magical than the reality of what it is in any instance in which it is used. There are cries for special laws to hold those who deploy AI accountable for their actions. There are also fears that AI may take over and subordinate living humans. That seems unlikely without human creativity guiding it. Bringing AI personalities within the scope of precedent law, analogously to the inclusion of corporate personalities, could simplify much of the current legal speculation.
Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, and I do not practice law. Still, as an historian, which I am by education in addition to being an actuary, I sometimes look at the law from the outside and comment on it in the larger context of its historical course.

Your Friend Circle Is Shrinking. And Nobody Is Talking About It.

Aug 5, 2026

By Steve Moran
I want to say something that senior living marketing almost never says out loud. Something that I think is more emotionally true and more powerful than almost anything else we could say to a prospective resident.
Your friend circle is shrinking. And making new close friends at this stage of life is really hard.
There are a few reasons why we don’t talk about it:

It’s negative, and we don’t like talking about negative things.
Most salespeople are young enough not to have really experienced the shrink in any meaningful way.

Before Your Old …
When you’re in your 40s, friends accumulate almost automatically. Through work. Through your kids’ activities. Through the neighborhood. Through the organizations you belong to. You don’t think about it much; it just happens. The structures of your life generate connections without you having to manage them.
Then things start to change. You retire. The professional relationships that felt like friendships turn out to have been mostly about proximity, and they fade. Your kids move away, and the friendships built around their school and their activities go with them.
The neighbor, who was one of your closest friends, relocates to be near their grandchildren. Someone you’ve known for thirty years gets sick. Someone dies. Someone simply drifts.
And Then One Day …
Then one day, usually so gradually you don’t even notice it, you realize that the people you used to see without thinking, you now have to schedule. And you schedule them less and less. Not because you don’t want to. Because life is complicated and distance is real and everyone is busy, and it’s harder than it used to be.
Nobody wants to admit this is happening because it feels like failure somehow. Or like admitting to something embarrassing. But it isn’t failure. It’s physics. It’s what happens when the structures that automatically created connections in your life start falling away.
Friend-Making Machines
Imagine that all the senior living communities out there committed to be “Friend Making Machines.” (Maybe I should trademark that term, but I won’t, and you are free to use it.)
Not the passive kind of friend-making, where you hope people will connect. The active kind, where proximity, shared meals, regular programming, and a physical environment designed for encounters create the conditions for real friendship to develop. Hallways where you see the same people every day. A dining room where you sit with different neighbors and actually talk. An interest group where you meet someone who shares a passion you thought you’d have to pursue alone.
That might be the most important thing we can offer. More important than the safety features. More important than the care. More importantly, honestly, than almost anything else we could put in a brochure.
So why aren’t we saying it?
Why aren’t we selling it?
Why is senior living marketing full of language about shallow vacation-style experiences (that are great but lonely) or about care, fall prevention, medication management, and peace of mind, when what a 72-year-old who hasn’t made a new friend in five years really wants to hear is: Come here, and you will find your people?
I am convinced a big part of the problem is that naming the loneliness feels presumptuous. Like we’re pointing at something people haven’t invited us to point at. It’s a legitimate concern; it needs to be approached carefully, without making anyone feel exposed or accused.
But done right, naming this truth is an act of profound respect. It’s acknowledging something very real about growing older. And the prospect who hears it who recognizes it as true for their own life feels seen and heard in a way that no amount of language about amenities and safety features can achieve.
The friend-making capacity of a good senior living community is a powerful health benefit. The research on social connection and longevity is clear and compelling. We’re not overselling when we lead with it. We’re finally telling the truth.

A Fresh Start at Brookdale

Aug 3, 2026

By Jack Cumming
As a shareholder and senior living resident, I’ve long had an interest in Brookdale Senior Living. I bought in many years ago when the stock was at $37. As I write this, on June 4, 2026, it’s trading at $11.87 in after-hours trading.
Enter Nick Stengle
Today, Senior Housing News hosted an exclusive conversation with Nick Stengle, CEO of Brookdale. Mr. Stengle has been CEO for less than a year, and I confess I was skeptical of his hiring after learning that the first 11 years of his career were with the Air Force’s “Top Gun” operations. There can be a disqualifying arrogance that goes with such indoctrination.
Today’s conversation convinced me that I was unjustly biased. In short, I was very impressed by Mr. Stengle’s modesty, warmth, and common sense. I was late to the one-hour program after I got entangled elsewhere (I’m sure you know how that can happen), but the part I heard convinced me that Mr. Stengle has almost all the right instincts about how Brookdale might become a force for senior living again.
People Before Property
What impressed me the most was his repeated assertion that senior living is a people business. That seems obvious to me, but I hear industry insiders regularly talk of “buildings” and “properties” instead of the people who live, work, and visit those inert buildings and properties.
Mr. Stengle also expressed his belief that a happy, talented workforce will make for a contented clientele. Of course, there’s truth in that, and he may be imagining that all residents are a bit non compos mentis, but they are still people. It’s obvious he understands that he and his workforce work for those people, but it would have been nice to have heard him concede that residents are still people and that they still matter.
Only once did he talk about the company’s “real estate,” as though that were the business purpose. Some Board members have seemed to act as though their enrichment from property trading were more important than people. It certainly does matter for a business with property, but it’s not the purpose.
The purpose is people, and the company’s real estate serves that purpose. Sure, real estate can be a source of profit, but increasing occupancy, as Mr. Stengle noted, is a stronger path. Mr. Stengle appears to be a people person, and senior living needs more of them and fewer of the rest.
What’s the Future
What was missing, at least from what I heard and inferred about what I had missed, was a vision for the future. Mr. Stengle did mention home and community-based care services, but noted that eventually many, perhaps most, of those served by HCBS require a residential setting like the assisted living and memory care environment at Brookdale’s core. What if residential living became more attractive than the current preference for staying put? In other words, put Brookdale living first before HCBS.
Mr. Stengle is a quick learner, and he’s still learning how the industry now operates. I believe that he will soon move beyond the now to envision the future. I wonder if he has any knowledgeable, gifted residents to whom he listens in addition to listening to his associates and his Board.
Then, there’s the CEO’s responsibility for attracting talent. Civilian experience is better than military experience in advancing talent. If Mr. Stengle has an eye for talent and how to motivate and retain the best, he will be well on the way to restoring Brookdale to the potential it once had.
That last mention brings me to my dearest hope for Brookdale. My hope is that Mr. Stengle can handle the Brookdale Board and get them to resist intervening while insisting that they know best. So-called real estate experts have not fared well when they’ve interfered with management at Brookdale.
Opportunity Beckons
The future is bright for Brookdale if Mr. Stengle is allowed full freedom and support. Perhaps that’s where his fighter pilot background may come in handy. He should have the courage to stand up to intransigent board members when they push too hard with their egos.
On today’s call, Mr. Stengle knew his occupancy figures. He noted that at the time of the Emeritus merger, occupancy was at 89%, and that it’s now about 83%. The most recent quarterly resident fee revenue was roughly $730 million. Getting back to occupancy levels at the time of the merger would add $43 million to quarterly revenues, $172 million over the year. That’s not chump change, and Mr. Stengle seems to have the flexibility of vision to recognize that potential for profit gain. Perhaps, he can do better than in the past. Many communities are at 95%.
Transforming Life’s Last Stage
We still have to hear what Mr. Stengle’s vision will be for a transformative future that brings Brookdale positive buzz as the best place for aging. For some years, we’ve watched LCS™ grow both with sound acquisitions and stellar occupancy, while Brookdale has floundered and shrunk.
LCS™ leader, Chris Bird, came to LCS™ from Brookdale. Now, Brookdale may have the leadership it might have had if it had handled talent more adroitly. That means that these two organizations may now be in a fair race. Brookdale is publicly traded, while LCS™ remains privately held.
While a competitive race can be effective, one can’t help but imagine what these two leaders and their organizations might have been able to achieve as partners. It will be exciting to see what Mr. Stengle is able to achieve as he grows in the job.

This Is the Only Thing That Really Counts

Jul 31, 2026

By Steve Moran
I have horrible sinuses, and I live in Northern California, which means a lot of pollen and agricultural pollution. Not a great combination.
It got so bad that about 15 years ago I had surgery to go in and scrape away all the tissue, giving them a kind of fresh start.
It was better, but I still suffer through several miserable sinus infections each year. Over the last few months, it became one every few weeks, which won me a golden ticket to a new ENT.
The first time I saw him, he took a look with a scope up my nostrils, told me what he saw, showed me what he saw, and offered a treatment plan, and it has been a lot better.
I was back last week for a follow-up.
He could have run the whole appointment in four minutes. Look at my records, look up the nose, ask the perfunctory “How are you doing?” question. Tell me what to do, move on to the next patient.
Instead we talked through what was actually going on, what my options were, what he’d recommend and why. Then we ended up talking about something else entirely, how he’s been using AI in his own work. He is, right now, my favorite doctor. Not because he agreed with me about anything. Because he treated the ten minutes he had with me as an opportunity instead of a transaction.
That is the whole idea of people-first, and almost nobody actually means it when they say it.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

The Most Brilliantly Insane Leadership Pay Structure

Jul 31, 2026

By Steve Moran
Can you imagine interviewing a senior living executive director, or a manager of any division or location, and after finding the one you want to hire, saying to them, “The job is yours if you would like it, but one more thing. You will have to pay $25,000 to get the job.”
This is exactly what Texas Roadhouse does with each of their restaurant managers.
I get it, restaurants are not like senior living, or any other business. A manager who cuts a few minutes off ticket times or gets a table turned faster is directly, measurably moving the number that determines their paycheck.
Senior living is a lot messier. Every business has its own kind of messy, some more, some less, which means you have to be careful about what you borrow. You cannot bolt Texas Roadhouse’s exact formula onto a company and expect it to work the same way.
I don’t have the formula. I’m not sure anyone in our industry does yet. But somebody is going to figure this out first, build a comp plan where their best leaders have real skin in the game, and the rest of the industry is going to spend years trying to catch up. I’d love to see it be someone reading this.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

When Words Fail, Photography Tells the Story of Dementia

Jul 30, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
On this episode of Foresight TV, Steve talks with Gina Martin, founder of the Bob and Diane Fund, and photojournalist Leah Hennel, the fund’s 2025 grant recipient. Their conversation explores how photography can make Alzheimer’s and dementia visible — not as abstract diagnoses, but as human stories of love, caregiving, grief, adaptation, and daily life. You can watch the full livestream HERE.
Gina started the Bob and Diane Fund 10 years ago while working at National Geographic. Her mother had Alzheimer’s, and her father was her caregiver. Surrounded by world-class photography, Gina saw how images could help people understand something they might otherwise keep at arm’s length.
So she created a grant for photographers working on projects related to Alzheimer’s and dementia.
The organization’s goal is not simply to document disease. It is to create visual awareness. It is to help people feel empathy. To bring to light something that too often lives in the shadows.
Over the past decade, the fund has supported 10 grant recipients. Their work has appeared in roughly 150 publications worldwide, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, BBC, and other major outlets.
This year’s recipient, Leah Hennel, brings a deeply photojournalistic approach to the work.
Her project, “In the Time We Have,” follows Joan and Alan, a married couple in Calgary, Alberta, as they navigate life with Alzheimer’s.
The Ordinary Moments Are The Story
Steve connects to the work immediately.
His 93-year-old stepfather has dementia. For a time, he lived in Steve’s home. Eventually, Steve and his wife reached the point many family caregivers reach: they could no longer keep him safe at home or keep themselves safe while trying to care for him.
He now lives in a small senior living setting.
That lived experience changes the way Steve sees Leah’s photographs. They are not distant or theoretical. They are familiar.
A doll in a laundry room. A nap in a favorite sunny spot. A ride in the car. A kiss on the cheek. A spouse hovering nearby, always watching, always adjusting, always protecting.
Leah says she is drawn to human emotion. Not only sadness. Not only joy. The full mix of what people experience every day.
Her connection to dementia is personal, too. Her father-in-law had dementia, and she watched her husband’s family wrestle with the disease. One of the things that surprised her most was the silence around it. Some family members did not want to tell friends. People did not know how to respond. Friends wondered whether they should still invite him for coffee or visit if he might not remember them.
That stigma became one of the reasons Leah wanted to do the project.
The Shrinking World Of Dementia
One image that hits Steve especially hard shows Joan holding a doll.
For Steve, it captures something many families know but struggle to explain: the shrinking world of dementia.
His stepfather had once been a Silicon Valley executive. Later, he moved into a one-bedroom in Steve’s house. Now he lives in a senior living community with a few photos and mementos.
The world contracts.
But Leah’s photograph does not reduce Joan to loss. Joan is still living, still holding, still feeling, still moving through ordinary moments that matter.
Leah explains that Joan often holds dolls or stuffed animals. She wraps them like babies. She carries them around the house. These small comforts become part of daily life.
That is the power of the project. It does not turn dementia into a clinical issue. It shows the laundry room, the grocery list, the favorite sweater, the hallway, the car ride, and the routines.
People are still living their lives.
Love Does Not Disappear
One of the most powerful photographs captures a fleeting moment between Joan and Alan.
Joan says Alan’s name — something he had not heard from her in years — and then kisses him on the cheek.
Leah admits the photo is not technically perfect. The moment happened too fast. But emotionally, it lands exactly where it needs to land.
Gina says this is what drew her to Leah’s project. It captures true love.
So much dementia storytelling focuses on loneliness, disappearance, and loss. Those things are real. But in this story, Alan remains by Joan’s side. He advocates for her. He adjusts his life around her. He helps her keep living.
Gina says people often think of Alzheimer’s as a death sentence. Eventually, it can be. But Leah’s work shows something else, too: Joan is living with Alzheimer’s. Alan has not disappeared from life either. They are living through it together.
That distinction matters for families. It matters for senior living leaders. And it matters for anyone trying to communicate about dementia with more honesty and humanity.
Living In Their World
One of the most practical lessons comes near the end of the conversation.
Steve asks what senior living operators need to understand about dementia from the perspective of families and caregivers.
Gina’s answer is direct: You are now living in their world.
People living with dementia cannot simply change the way they process information. They cannot be argued back into reality. They cannot be corrected into clarity.
The rest of us have to change.
That means learning how to communicate differently. It means resisting the impulse to rationalize, explain, argue, or correct. It means understanding that dementia is a disease, and if people could change what is happening, they would.
Steve connects this to an article he has started writing titled “I’m So Tired of Lying.” Editorial Note: This referenced article should already be published by the time this one is, please find the article and link to it.
Anyone who has cared for someone with dementia understands what he means. Families often have to step into an alternate reality over and over again. They redirect. They soothe. They answer the same question eight times in 20 minutes. They say whatever preserves peace and dignity in the moment.
It is loving.
It is necessary.
And it is wearying.
What Senior Living Leaders Should See
The lesson for senior living is not only about care plans or memory care programming. It is about seeing.
Seeing the spouse who has been carrying the emotional weight for years.
Seeing the daughter who is exhausted before the move-in even happens.
Seeing the resident not as a diagnosis but as a person still living a life full of preferences, habits, fears, joys, and flashes of recognition.
Seeing that love may look different inside dementia, but it is still love.
Leah’s photographs remind us that dementia care is not only about safety, medication, bathing, meals, or activities. It is about ordinary human moments — and the people who help make those moments possible.
A pink sweater so someone can be spotted quickly in a store.
A small card explaining dementia to strangers.
A tracker for safety.
A stroller-like chair so a couple can still get outside.
A caregiver who follows rather than forces.
A husband who adapts because, in his mind, there is no other option.
This is the work.
And when photography does its best work, it helps the rest of us see what was already there.

Senior Living Is a People Business

Jul 29, 2026

By Jack Cumming
The arrival of Sean Kelly at Front Porch was transformative. I should quickly add that I’m a resident at Carlsbad by the Sea Retirement Community, part of Front Porch. If you know Sean, you know that he is very bright, friendly, open, and engaging.
Culture Matters
One of the first steps he took was to bring in Anna Hall as “Chief Culture and Community Officer.” Sean also set out a vision statement for the corporation with culture at the top of the heap.
The sad truth is that there are often two cultures co-existing in senior living corporations and communities. The one culture is that of the executives and employees who exercise the ownership authority. The other is the more rapidly shifting culture among the residents. Residents move in, live out their remaining years, and then pass on or move out to spend their last moments in a less institutional setting.
Still A Dream
My dream, as a resident, is to break down that dividing line to form a unifying culture in which residents are valued for who they are. Residents bring their whole selves into residency, and their talents can be as varied as the talents of the pool from which senior living draws its employees and executives.
Anna Hall understands this instinctively. She is a remarkable woman. She’s also a consummate storyteller. One lesson I’ve learned from Steve Moran is the importance of storytelling. As I’ve gotten to know Anna Hall, I’ve been drawn to her podcast in which she tells stories on behalf of her employer, Front Porch, but many of these same stories provide wisdom for all who serve, interact, or engage with people who are aging.
Anna Hall has an empathetic nature, perhaps attributable to her own life journey. Not only does Anna listen to the most intimate concerns of residents and others, but she also openly shares her own travails. We all have ups and downs in our personal stories, but many are reluctant to share the downside. Anna has the warmth of an open soul who has the courage to share. That’s remarkable.
Story Power
Changing a culture can be difficult and takes time. I’m sure that there are some on the Front Porch Board who see the cultural bright line as necessary, one that subordinates capable residents. That’s just speculation, but it reflects what I was shocked to encounter when I moved in nearly twenty years ago. Anna Hall’s gift for bringing out stories can melt the hearts of even the most hardened moguls.
Over recent years, there has been a welcome trend toward humanizing residents. For Front Porch, Sean Kelly and Anna Hall’s efforts toward humanization have been like a waft of fresh air entering a musty room. It’s as though residents can begin to breathe again.
Staff, too, benefit from the change. The lower the level in the hierarchy, the more likely employees are to work closely with residents. They come to know and like them. They can even become friends.
Fraternization
At one time during my residency, fraternization with residents could be grounds for dismissal, and I’m sure that there are still providers where that remains true. Perceptions have to change before residents are seen by corporate, particularly, for their humanity. Residents are more than a sale or a revenue source. If lower-level employees are closest to the industry’s customers, then corporate offices are the most distant.
The industry spills a lot of ink speculating about how an emerging generation of new residents will change it. In the meantime, though, the industry has been slow to react. Instead of speculating from a distance, Anna Hall is out there modestly getting to know people and bringing their stories to the fore. It’s not the touchy-feely getting to know residents that some people insist on, i.e., positive, happy, complacent residents only. Anna listens to the feelings of disappointed residents and those who feel unheard.
Back to Basics
The title of this article is “Senior Living Is a People Business.” We can get so caught up in financing issues or development opportunities that we can easily lose sight of the primacy of people. Residents can seem so distant that it’s easy to overlook the role they can also have as investors.
Residents may have ideas for making buildings more inviting. People, residents, create a home; architects create drawings. Many modern buildings are cold and industrial. Resident ideas should be considered. Anna Hall is bringing warmth beyond drawings to Front Porch and the industry. The senior living industry is at its best when residents are creatively kept front of mind.
Thank You
Thank you, Sean Kelly, for bringing Anna Hall to us. I hope that she can make a practical difference by lifting Front Porch, perhaps under a new corporate name, to become a leading paradigm for the industry. A few others are there already. You know who you are, and you should feel proud of having that welcoming stature. The industry will grow stronger as more and more providers join that lofty elite of empowering providers.
Now, maybe we can delete the word “Retirement” from the name “Carlsbad by the Sea Retirement Community.” It sends the wrong impression. We are a community of vibrant residents served by a gifted staff who are worthy of human dignity and a lifetime of purpose and meaning.
One thing is clear. Many residents now have lifelong productivity. The time when people just “retired” to lifelong nothingness is in the past. Break down barriers. We can all thrive together.
This is one in a series of articles exploring how providers, residents, and resident families might work together for better aging.

The Three-Word Question That Unlocks Your Team

Jul 28, 2026

By Steve Moran
You know your people. You know their names, their roles, maybe their kids’ names. But do you actually know them?
Real relationships, the kind where people trust you, cover for you, tell you the truth even when it’s ugly, don’t happen without vulnerability. That’s true with your spouse, your best friend, and it’s true with the people who report to you. The problem is that vulnerability at work feels dangerous. What if you ask people to open up and nobody says a word? What if someone opens up too much, and now you’re in the middle of something you didn’t sign up for?
That fear is exactly why most leaders never try. And it’s exactly why the ones who do produce teams nobody else can build.
Here’s a way to do it that’s simple, fast, and almost impossible to get wrong.
Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

The Other Side of the Fence …

Jul 27, 2026

By Leslie Quintanar
My dad passed away on June 10th at 3:19 p.m. To say the least, we had a very complicated relationship. For the last seven months, I was the one who managed his frequent hospital and skilled nursing stays.
When I got “the call” early that morning that he had been taken back to the hospital and was intubated, I knew the time had come.
We had talked about hospice multiple times, and he wasn’t ever quite sure that he wanted to take that step. But I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he would never have wanted to be hooked up to tubes and all the corresponding paraphernalia. That made the decision easy when I got to the hospital. I was able to get hospice started right away, and he passed peacefully within an hour of removing the tubes and IVs.
I am so very grateful that I got to be with him at his bedside, playing his favorite song, holding his hand, and reading him some scripture. I am hopeful he knew I was with him in those last moments.
Why I Share This …
I share all this not because I am trying to solicit sympathy, but because I work in the senior living space, and after 20+ years, this is the first time it’s been this personal. It has prompted me to reflect on how I can use this experience to become a better practitioner of my own vocation.
While I am sure I will have additional thoughts over time, here are my big takeaways …

You must advocate for your loved ones because no one else will. I cannot emphasize that enough. When I think about all the residents my organization oversees, I realize many do not have people who can or will do this, which makes me even more resolved to ensure that our care is not only compassionate but that we speak up for those who do not have a voice to do so themselves.
While having hard conversations is never easy, it’s imperative to make sure you know your loved ones’ wishes. I became my dad’s POA a few months ago, and I’m thankful we were able to have those conversations, so I didn’t have to wonder what he would have wanted.
Our healthcare system is broken. I work in this space and saw a number of things that shouldn’t have happened. Instances when I should have been consulted, but wasn’t.The best example of this was when I arrived at the hospital and found he was wearing a DNR band, yet was still intubated. Several similar things happened during his last six months, and I am convinced there would have been more if I had not been there.It is simply not safe to assume that people in healthcare positions will always make the right choices for your loved ones. You need to be educated and active in their care. I want to always assume good intent, but at the same time, trust needs to be earned.
There are so many amazing people who work in the senior living and long-term care space. My dad was not always the easiest to deal with, and I had a challenging relationship with him throughout my life, but the people who cared for him in these final months did not share that history. Person after person at both the hospital and the skilled nursing facility told me that he was one of their favorite patients and that they loved caring for him. It was both surprising and comforting that the man I had long known to be so difficult was well-loved by so many others.It has allowed me to think about him in a different light, to see him from a different vantage point, to lay down much of my history and baggage, and see a different man.
AI can do a lot of things, but it will never be able to replace the human element, the uniquely human ability to reach out and share sorrow. The big idea that we are all in this together.

I am still grieving, and it is painful to say I never had the relationship with my dad that I wished for. I’m so thankful that so many others walked the path of losing him with me. Family, friends, employees, and even Lyft drivers carried me through this experience.
I’m incredibly thankful to have “jumped” the fence to the other side and experienced this not as an operator but as a daughter.
As I return to work, I’ll carry this with me and allow it to serve as a reminder that we are in the business of caring for people. It’s often messy, complicated, and hard, but being there makes all the difference in the world.

Dealing With Problems Out of Your Control

Jul 24, 2026

By Steve Moran
What if the only thing standing between you and next month’s rent was how well you treated a resident today?
Of course, that’s not how senior living actually works.
We don’t lose a resident because of one bad Tuesday, the way a restaurant loses a customer over one bad meal. Most residents stay for life once they’re in. But a Wall Street Journal article about Texas Roadhouse got me wondering what would happen if we operated as if it were true.
Right now, senior living is facing a ton of problems operators have no control over. Staff acquisition and retention, increasing labor costs, increasing insurance costs, increasing food costs …
Most operators have dealt with it by increasing rates, which has largely worked out due to rising demand, but in the long term, one can’t help but wonder whether this cycle is sustainable.
That’s the backdrop I had in mind when I read a Wall Street Journal article about Texas Roadhouse, the number-one casual-dining chain in the US. There were so many good things in that article that it will become a short series.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

Senior Living Should Not Require a Decoder Ring

Jul 23, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Murry Off the Mic, Murry sits down with Margaret Cabell, chief community relations officer and head of sales at A Place for Mom, for a candid conversation about one of the most debated companies in senior living — and one of the biggest problems facing the industry. You can watch the full conversation here.
A Place for Mom is one of those names that can light up a room in senior living.
Some operators swear by it.
Some swear at it.
But Margaret makes one thing clear: families depend on it.
Not because families are lazy. Not because operators are failing. Not because the industry lacks good communities.
They depend on it because navigating aging is ridiculously confusing.
And that may be the real issue.
Families Are Not Prepared
Margaret says the thing that gets her up in the morning is informing families. Not selling them. Not pushing them. Informing them.
That word matters.
Families are often trying to make life-changing decisions with very little education, very little preparation, and very little time. They may be trying to understand the difference between home care, independent living, assisted living, memory care, adult day programs, and skilled nursing — often while a parent is in crisis.
This is not a small gap.
It is a giant, industrywide education failure.
Murry points out something that should be obvious but somehow is not: everyone ages, yet most people receive almost no education about aging. Families do not understand the system until they are already inside it, usually under pressure.
That is where the panic begins.
Even Experts Struggle
One of the most powerful moments in the conversation comes when Margaret talks about her own family.
After years as an executive director, operator, and senior living leader, she found herself struggling to have aging-related conversations with her own mother and sister. Her mother had slipped during an ice storm and fractured her wrist. It was not catastrophic, but it was enough to expose how quickly independence can become fragile.
Margaret knew exactly what she would tell another family.
But when it was her own family, the conversation became harder.
That is the part senior living professionals sometimes forget. These are not just logical decisions. They are emotional decisions. They are identity decisions. They are family-system decisions.
And often, nobody wants to be the first person to say, “We need to talk about what comes next.”
The Crisis Is Usually Predictable
Margaret’s experience with her father’s terminal cancer made the issue even more personal. Suddenly, she was the family member trying to figure out home care, discharge plans, and support services with almost no time.
That is the reality for thousands of families.
A hospital says discharge needs to happen in 24 hours.
A parent can no longer live safely alone.
A caregiver is overwhelmed.
A fall changes everything.
Then the family begins the search.
Senior living likes to think of itself as a lifestyle product. And in many ways, it is. But for many families, the first search still happens because something broke.
A body broke.
A caregiving plan broke.
A spouse broke.
A daughter’s capacity broke.
The question is not whether senior living has value before a crisis. It does. The question is why families wait so long to see it.
The Taboo Around Aging Is Expensive
Margaret points to a social taboo around aging. People do not want to talk about getting older. They do not want to admit they need help. They may not even want to admit they would enjoy a simpler life.
This is a massive opportunity for senior living. Because the story does not have to be, “Move here because you can no longer manage.” It can be, “Move here because life can be easier, fuller, safer, more connected, and more fun.”
But that story has to be told earlier.
It has to be told more clearly. And it has to be told in language that families understand.
The Industry Needs to Become a Translator
Margaret describes herself as a translator in the world of aging. That may be exactly what the industry needs more of.
Families do not need more jargon. They do not need more acronyms. They do not need a sales process that assumes they understand the product before they make the first phone call.
They need translation.
They need someone to explain what options exist, what each option means, what it costs, what it does not include, what questions to ask, and how to think about the next step.
That does not eliminate operators. It does not eliminate sales teams. It makes them more useful.
Transparency Is the Opportunity
Near the end of the conversation, Margaret says the thing she would fight for is transparency.
That may be the whole ballgame.
Families want to know what is real. Operators want better matches. Referral partners want better outcomes. Residents want the right fit.
Transparency helps all of them.
It helps communities own who they are.
It helps families make better decisions.
It helps the industry move from a crisis-based transaction to a more thoughtful, lifestyle-based conversation.
Senior living does not have a demand problem.
The aging population is massive. The need is real. The desire for control, connection, safety, and simplicity is not going away.
The problem is that too many families still do not know what senior living is, when to consider it, how to evaluate it, or why it might make life better before everything falls apart.
That is not a demand problem.
That is an education problem.
And it is fixable.

S8E11- How AI Is Solving Senior Living’s Biggest Hiring Challenge | Raphael Rubens, Founder of Candid

Jul 22, 2026

Based on the interview with Raphael Rubens discussing Candid’s evolution from AI storytelling to workforce and satisfaction solutions for senior living operators.

The senior living workforce crisis isn’t just about finding more applicants—it’s about reaching the right people faster and keeping them engaged.

In this episode of Foresight Radio: Tech Tuesday, Steve Moran sits down with Raphael Rubens, Founder of Candid, to explore how AI is transforming recruitment, employee retention, resident feedback, and operational decision-making across senior living.

Raphael shares the remarkable journey that began with helping his grandmother preserve her life story through AI and evolved into a platform that’s helping senior living providers:

Contact job candidates within minutes of applying
Automate AI-powered interviews without replacing human hiring decisions
Improve 90-day employee retention
Reduce recruiting bottlenecks
Capture actionable resident, family, and employee feedback
Turn satisfaction surveys into operational insights and Google reviews
The conversation also tackles one of the industry’s hottest debates:

Can AI actually make hiring more human?
If you’re a senior living executive, HR leader, recruiter, operator, or technology innovator, this episode offers practical insights into how AI can strengthen—not replace—the human side of care.

The Shocking Carriage Driver Story

Jul 22, 2026

By Steve Moran
A few weeks ago, CNN published a tragic story about a teenager thrown from a Central Park carriage who later died. Here is a brief summary.
Romanch Mahajan was 18 on the third day of his first trip to New York, celebrating his high school graduation and his acceptance to university. He was riding in a horse-drawn carriage with three family members when the driver dismounted to take a photo of the group. While the driver was off the carriage, the horse bolted. Mahajan was thrown to the ground. He survived the initial fall and was taken to the hospital in critical condition, but his injuries were too severe. He died a few hours later.
The Shocking Response
I was shocked by how the Transport Workers Union, the organization representing carriage drivers, responded.
The same day, the union’s Alexander Kemp condemned the driver’s conduct without hedging. “A driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos – ever,” he said in a statement. He called for a full investigation. Within that same window, according to the union, the carriage owner suspended the driver indefinitely and made plans to retire the horse.
Days later, as the union laid out its safety response, it kept the same tone. They did not soften the language or quietly move on. They stayed with it publicly, in a follow-up statement, while committing to a “Vision Zero approach” going forward.
Notice what they did not do. They did not go quiet. They did not let the silence do the talking. They named the specific failure, they named the consequence, and they said this is not who we are.
Can You Imagine?
Can you imagine any leader from any organizational body in senior living doing this? A story splashes across local or national news about abuse or neglect by an operator, and the industry’s response is to name it, condemn it, and say publicly: that operator is not us, and we want them exposed and driven out of this business.
I have never seen it happen. Not once. Not even when the negligence is obvious and inexcusable. The industry goes quiet, as if silence makes it look less bad. I think the real message silence sends is that we don’t care all that much.
Even Better
What if, when these things happen, we did an investigation and published our findings? Recommendations aimed at preventing the next tragedy, out in the open, with our name on it?
We have a massive perception problem right now. Older people tell us over and over that they don’t want to go into senior living. This silence is part of why. They see bad things happen, and they see an industry that would rather look away than own it.

Senior Living Is Hard, Not Complicated

Jul 21, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Heard in the Halls, Lindsey Daugherty talks with Serina Durrah, VP of Operations at Clayborn Senior Living, about what senior living leadership looks like when it is shaped by real frontline experience. Watch the full conversation here.
One of the best lines in the conversation comes from Serina:
Senior living is very hard. But it is not overly complicated.
That should sting a little.
Because senior living has a habit of making things more complicated than they need to be. More reports. More dashboards. More initiatives. More meetings. More language that makes perfect sense at the corporate level and almost no sense to the people trying to get through dinner service with two call-offs.
Serina is not arguing that the business is simple. It is not.
She is arguing that people working in senior living are often asking for something very basic: Tell me what is going on. Tell me why it matters. Tell me how I can help. Then trust me enough to do the work.
Trust Comes Before Performance
Lindsey asks Serina how she brings a big goal back to her teams and gets them motivated.
Serina starts with trust.
That sounds obvious, but it is often the missing ingredient in senior living operations. Leaders want results, but they have not built the trust required to get those results. They want urgency, but they have not created understanding. They want teams to solve problems, but they have not invited them into the real conversation.
Serina says executive directors and frontline staff often have the answer. But they cannot help solve the problem if they do not understand the why behind the goal.

Why does occupancy need to move now?
Why does margin matter this month?
Why can’t the organization take eight more months to get there?
Why does this decision affect the broader business?

Too often, those conversations stay at the executive level. Then goals get pushed down with very little context.
That creates compliance.
It does not create ownership.
Explain The Why, Then Ask The How
Serina describes a better leadership rhythm: Explain where the organization needs to go, explain why it needs to get there, then ask the people closest to the work how they would do it.
That is radically practical.
It is also surprisingly rare.
At the executive level, leaders can over-engineer solutions. They can sit around a table and design a complicated plan for a problem that a caregiver, nurse, sales director, or executive director could solve in 10 minutes.
Not because frontline leaders are magically smarter.
Because they are closer.
They know which residents are struggling. They know which families are frustrated. They know which team members are burned out. They know which process is nonsense. They know which “simple change” will actually create chaos at 7 a.m.
When leaders explain the why and invite teams into the how, the whole organization gets smarter.
Stop Climbing Ladders
Lindsey uses a phrase that belongs at every leadership retreat: “Stop climbing ladders. Start building tables.”
The ladder mindset says leadership is about rising above everyone else. More title. More authority. More distance from the work.
The table mindset says leadership is about bringing the right people together.
That matters because senior living is too interconnected for siloed leadership. Clinical cannot succeed without operations. Operations cannot succeed without sales. Sales cannot succeed without care. Dining affects resident satisfaction. Housekeeping affects family trust. Maintenance affects safety and first impressions. The executive director is trying to conduct the entire orchestra while the building is already playing.
Serina says one of the most important leadership lessons she has learned is being willing to admit what she does not know.
That is harder than it sounds.
As leaders move up, there is pressure to act like they know everything. But great leaders do not know everything. They know how to build teams with people who are stronger than they are in specific areas.
Then they stay connected.
Then they trust them.
The Ego Problem
This is where leadership gets uncomfortable.
It takes confidence to say, “I do not know this part of the business well enough.”
It takes humility to put someone on the team who knows it better.
It takes discipline to let that person actually do the job.
A lot of senior living leaders say they want strong teams. What they really want is agreeable teams. There is a difference.
Strong teams challenge assumptions. They explain what will not work. They bring reality into the room. They tell the truth before the resident, family, or regulator does.
That kind of team is not built by title. It is built by trust.
Relationships Are The Operating System
Lindsey points out that relationships are not complicated. Senior living makes them complicated.
Most people simply want to know what is happening, why it matters, and how they can help.
That applies to caregivers.
It applies to executive directors.
It applies to regional teams.
It even applies to ownership groups.
Relationships do not replace performance. They make performance possible.
When leaders feel empowered, they will go through walls. When they feel trusted, they solve problems. When they understand the why, they make better decisions without waiting for permission on every little thing.
This is where the best senior living organizations set themselves apart.
They do not just push goals — They build belief.
They do not just demand accountability — They create clarity.
They do not just climb higher — They build bigger tables.
The Bottom Line
Senior living does not need more leaders who can sound smart in meetings.
It needs leaders who can translate the business to the frontline and translate the frontline back to the business.
That is what Serina’s story offers.
A reminder that leadership is not about knowing everything. It is about staying close enough to the work to know what matters, humble enough to admit what you do not know, and brave enough to trust the people around the table.
Senior living is hard.
But maybe it is not quite as complicated as we keep making it out to be.

CCRC Alternatives Are on the March

Jul 20, 2026

By Jack Cumming
There is a growing number of alternatives to moving to a CCRC for seniors to consider before making a move. The CCRC option can be difficult. It often requires paying a large entrance fee, giving up homeownership, and accepting corporate direction. Co-housing is one option that allows seniors the benefit of shared living with mutual support. Apartment living and Active Adult (55+) communities are also popular.
The Village Opportunity
Often overlooked in this assortment of options is the “village movement,” which primarily appeals to older people who are still physically and cognitively capable. The village movement allows people to stay put in their accustomed homes while enjoying social gatherings and minimal support services. In that sense, villages supplement the services of senior centers. It’s not surprising, therefore, that an increasing number of villages are affiliated with senior centers and the area agencies on aging that support them.
Many area agencies on aging have begun to help with the formation of villages as an empowerment opportunity for older people. As time goes on, the growing presence of villages may pose a challenge for CCRC marketing, or, paradoxically, enhance it. Surprisingly, almost no CCRCs sponsor the formation of villages, even though they can be a powerful channel to funnel prospective residents who become age-afflicted (weak or confused) toward a CCRC or assisted living community.
The CCRC/AL Solution to the Village Pitfall
Many people pass the magic age of 70 but don’t feel any different from how they felt ten years earlier. That can make it attractive to put off any decision, like moving to a CCRC, until later. When later comes, though, they may find it difficult to shop for an alternative. The village model gives them an alternative to prepare for later. Imagine how comfortable they can become with a well-managed CCRC if that CCRC is a sponsor for their village.
The attraction of villages is that they are not outright alternatives to the CCRC or assisted living models for managing the challenges of aging. Instead, villages can complement and support a CCRC. Villages appeal to younger oldsters, and they can be more effective if there is an obvious care-intensive home for aging’s next step. Villages and CCRCs can complement each other. They are not natural competitors.
Learning More
How can you learn more about villages? The village movement’s national organization is the Village to Village Network, which is a grassroots organization. You can start with their website, which has many useful materials. One thing you will learn is that villages vary in size from very small to several hundred members, supported by a large cadre of volunteers. You can also learn that there is no standard village model aside from the demographic to which villages appeal. It is often said that there is no standardization for CCRCs. That’s even more the case for villages.
Beyond what you can learn about villages from a Google search with a little help from AI, the Village to Village Network also hosts educational events and an annual conference. There’s a small conference in conjunction with the LeadingAge meeting, which will be in Philadelphia this year. More prominently, though, is the Virtual Conference, which this year will gather for three days of educational content from September 22 to 24. Not only is the virtual agenda rich, but it also spares you the inconvenience and expense of travel.
Virtual Conference
To give you a sense of the high caliber of this year’s Virtual Conference, consider the recent announcement that Edwin L. Walker will be the keynote speaker. Mr. Walker was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Aging until he ended his 40 years of federal service by saying that he is not “retired, but rewired.” As Mr. Walker’s participation suggests, villages are not seen as commercial in the way many CCRC and assisted living organizations are.
Mr. Walker guided the development of home and community-based long-term care and elder justice programs, enabling older adults and their caregivers to age with dignity and independence and be free from abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Click here for the full agenda.
Village to Village Network is offering an early-bird registration rate for only $50, $75 for non-members, which I think you’ll agree is a bargain for an event that might be so beneficial for your organization and your own future. Early bird rates end August 15, so it’s best to register now while you’re thinking of it. Even if your employer doesn’t reimburse travel and registration, this is affordable.

What’s Your Trophy? Do You Even Have One?

Jul 17, 2026

By Steve Moran
Jerry Morgan has been riding Harley-Davidsons with a crew of fellow Roadhouse employees for more than twenty years. One year, they rode from New York to California. He’s 65, and he opened the chain’s first Texas location himself, in Grand Prairie, back in 1997.
Here’s what he said about a plate of food. “When you serve somebody a country fried sirloin, and it’s got gravy, that gravy should have steam coming off of it. You should smell it in your nostrils.” Then he added, “We still have a lot of work to do, but every single experience, to me, that food is our trophy.”
I read that, and it stopped me cold!
Food should be the trophy. Not just eaten. Felt. Experienced.
What’s the trophy in senior living, or whatever your business is?
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

S8E10-Senior living marketing is changing fast. The question is: Are we changing with it?

Jul 16, 2026

Senior living marketing is changing fast. The question is: Are we changing with it?
In this episode, Nicole O’Brien joins the conversation to share what she learned from her years working inside senior living marketing—and how stepping into the tech startup world gave her an entirely new perspective on the industry.
Nicole talks candidly about what makes marketing stand out, why so much senior living content starts to look and sound the same, and what today’s leaders can learn from industries moving faster and thinking differently.
The conversation explores the lessons Nicole wishes she had known earlier, the importance of staying curious, and why the best marketers can’t simply repeat what worked five years ago.

This episode dives into:
• What senior living marketing gets right—and where it still falls short
• Why standing out requires more than better branding
• The lessons Nicole learned after moving from senior living to the startup world
• How technology is changing the way marketers think and work
• Why curiosity and adaptability are becoming essential leadership skills
• What Nicole would do differently if she returned to senior living marketing today

For senior living executives, marketers, operators, entrepreneurs, and innovators, this is a conversation about looking beyond the industry bubble and rethinking what’s possible.

Standardization Built Senior Living — Sameness May Hurt Its Future

Jul 16, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
Steve Moran and Gaurie Rodman dig into this in the most recent episode of Directly Speaking. Watch the full episode here.
The Best Senior Living Communities May Start Thinking More Like Villages
If senior living wants to win with the next generation of residents, it may need to stop thinking so much like an isolated campus and start thinking more like a village.
That idea sits at the center of Steve’s conversation with Gaurie Rodman from Direct Supply. And it is not just about architecture. It is about daily life.
What makes a place feel alive?What makes it feel social?What makes it feel like somewhere a person chooses to live rather than somewhere they reluctantly accept?
Gaurie keeps coming back to a simple point: the answer is not doing everything alone.
Stop Trying To Do Everything In-House
Senior living has long been built around the idea that one building should provide every experience internally. Dining, activities, hospitality, wellness, social life — all under one roof, all managed by one system.
That sounds efficient. Sometimes it is.
But it also produces sameness.
And sameness is exactly what many future residents are going to resist.
What excites Gaurie most right now is seeing operators and developers rethink that model through partnerships. Instead of treating the building as a sealed container, they are beginning to imagine it as part of a larger ecosystem.
A coffee shop might operate more like a local bistro. A community dining program might incorporate restaurant partnerships or even food trucks. Outside businesses might bring energy into the building, while residents stay connected to the rhythms of normal life.
That does two important things at once. It improves resident experience, and it reduces the pressure to make every single service function entirely self-contained.
That is smart.
Food Is More Important Than the Industry Thinks
Steve has long argued that senior living often underserves residents when it comes to food. This conversation gives that idea real dimension.
The old model is operationally tidy: fixed meal schedules, standardized service, predictable production. It makes sense on paper.
It makes less sense if the goal is to let people live like actual human beings.
Most people do not eat breakfast the same way a senior living dining program serves breakfast. Many want coffee first. Some want something light. Some want something later. Some want to eat alone. Others want a social meal.
Boomers, in particular, are going to expect choice.
They are not going to quietly accept one-size-fits-all dining just because that is how the schedule works. They have lived too long, eaten too broadly, and become too accustomed to personalization in every other part of life.
Gaurie believes the industry is finally moving. À la carte approaches, more individualization, more flexible procurement tools, more varied food experiences — all of that points toward a better future.
And frankly, it needs to.
Food is not a side issue. Food is identity, comfort, pleasure, routine, culture, and community all rolled into one.
A Village Inside a Village
One of Gaurie’s best phrases in the discussion is the idea of creating “a village inside a village.”
That is exactly the right mental model.
Instead of a building with a few scattered amenity rooms, imagine a place with distinct destinations and experiences. A wellness suite that feels like a real destination. A man cave for games and football. A painting and yoga room with an entirely different mood. Spaces that connect to the outdoors. Areas with enough character that people can see themselves in them.
Not every resident wants the same atmosphere. Not every resident wants the same kind of socialization. Good design recognizes that.
The goal is not just to fill square footage. The goal is to create a small world with variety, personality, and options — the kind of environment where residents can move through the day based on mood, interest, and identity.
That is what real living looks like.
Buildings Should Invite the World In
There is another important idea tucked into all of this: community integration.
Too often, senior living has been built apart from everything else. Not always geographically isolated, but emotionally and socially disconnected from the surrounding neighborhood.
That needs to change.
The future is likely to favor communities that feel porous, connected, and engaged with the places around them. That might mean neighborhood-facing dining venues. It might mean local partnerships. It might mean spaces where family members, visitors, and community residents naturally mix with older adults.
Not because it is trendy. Because it is human.
People do better when they remain part of life.
Better for Residents — Better for Staff
There is a hidden operational win here too.
When a community uses partnerships well, it can improve staff life. Gaurie gives one small but powerful example: if an outside food partner can occasionally cover a meal period, food service staff may gain more predictable time off.
That matters.
Senior living has spent years talking about staffing primarily as a shortage problem. And that reality does exist. But it is also a quality-of-life problem. Better design and better operating models can reduce friction, improve workflows, and create healthier jobs.
That is not a bonus. It is part of the strategy.
What This Really Means
The bigger lesson is not “add a food truck.”
It is this: stop designing communities around institutional convenience and start designing them around how people actually want to live.
People want spontaneity.They want choice.They want atmosphere.They want ordinary pleasures.They want a little surprise.They want the freedom to decide who they are that day.
Senior living does not need more generic amenities.
It needs more life.

AI and Wisdom

Jul 15, 2026

By Jack Cumming
How much time have you spent trying to understand what artificial intelligence (AI) is and how it works? I’m guessing the answer is “lots of time.” I’m going to guess further that you think you are wise, but you don’t connect AI with wisdom. In fact, at first, I thought of AI as no more than a machine that thinks- an old idea- and machines aren’t wise. Then I stumbled across a 14-minute presentation on YouTube that provided more insight than everything else.
Chloe Lubinski
The speaker is Chloe Lubinski, who self-describes her role as leading “research partnerships with the world’s wisdom traditions.” She works for Anthropic. Anthropic’s product is an AI model called “Claude.” The Anthropic group broke away from OpenAI and its “ChatGPT” product to form a separate corporation to allow itself to be more principled and less commercial.
You may remember the confusing weekend when the controversy broke out into public view. It’s not surprising that Chloe Lubinski has a job (1) to explain AI to those who struggle to understand it, and (2) to connect AI with wisdom and human understanding. That mirrors the qualms that took Anthropic’s founders away from OpenAI. It mirrors, too, the complementary talents of the brother-sister team who lead Anthropic.
The PowerPoint Distraction
There’s another, less world-changing, bit of wisdom embedded in the 14-minute video. Ms. Lubinski evidently used PowerPoints in her talk. Doesn’t everyone today? As you concentrate intensely in order to grasp everything that she is sharing, think of how distracting it would be if there were slides to be read and absorbed while you tried to focus on her message.
There is a place for PowerPoints. They’re good with pictures and graphs. They’re terrible with words, which is what they usually share. The rationale is that there are people who learn from listening, others who learn from reading, and those who want a quick list-style summary. If you’re a thought leader, you probably concentrate on the speaker and not the slides.
Chloe Lubinski should give herself more credit. She doesn’t need the slides. Her message is more powerful without them. I would love to have heard the give-and-take with the audience. That wasn’t included, but just the 14 minutes we have will help you to better understand AI and how to make sure that any deployment of AI is constructive within your organization and life.
Tech Crazes, like AI, Are Not New
Listening to Ms. Lubinski took me back to the late 1960s and my personal experience then as a young actuary who loved progress. My task was to develop a set of rates for disability income insurance, and I wrote a computer program to replace the calculations clerks had been doing up to that point. We had a brand-new capability, Call360, offered by IBM, that allowed easy access to its computers for analytical work.
My immediate boss was enchanted. He had me run scenario after scenario, each with different assumptions, outcomes, and likelihood. That would have been impossible previously, when two clerks, a doer and a checker, would have taken a week to complete a single scenario that the computer could complete in ten minutes. The final stage was to get clearance from the Chief Actuary in his imperial office high up on the 37th floor of the building.
Visit to the C-Suite
In the 1960s, this was the culminating step. My boss and I went to the meeting with trepidation and machine printouts. We were met by the courtiers, mostly professional women executive assistants, who attended to the needs of high executives in that majestic era of long ago. We were seated in a conference room adjacent to the chief’s quarters.
Finally, the imperial presence, himself, swept into the room, brought the meeting to order, and then turned to my boss to start his presentation. “Mr. [Chief],” my boss began, “these results have been prepared by computer,” and he swung a printout in front of the chief. That was enough to sway the Chief Actuary, who may have been reluctant to show his ignorance of how it was possible for a computer to do anything other than mass recordkeeping.
Parallels Today
My sense is that that is where many executives may be today when it comes to evaluating AI claims. Every IT vendor seems to open each sales presentation by claiming how adept they are at embedding AI into their offerings. Some may be meaningful, like Epic’s use of AI to enable physicians to maintain eye contact with their patients, but other claims are little more than irrelevant nonsense. It takes a wise executive to know the difference.
If you can spare 14 minutes, use them to watch Chloe Lubinski. It will redirect your thinking about AI in a constructive direction, just as Ed Berkeley’s 1950 book, “Giant Brains; Or, Machines That Think,” did in an earlier era. I don’t think our Chief Actuary had read it, even though Berkeley was also an actuary and a friend of the chief.
Afterthought
We hear of three main models for everyday AI usage by ordinary people: “ChatGPT”, “Claude”, and “Grok.”

So far, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a reputation for commercialization. Its distinction is that it was, first and foremost, controversial for having opened AI to the public on November 30, 2022. It’s led by Sam Altman.
Anthropic’s “Claude” has a reputation as a conscience-motivated breakaway from OpenAI. The company’s signature is safety. It’s led by a brother and sister, with the brother being highly technical and the sister leading the human side of the organization.
“Grok” is the brainchild of Elon Musk. He, too, broke with OpenAI in reaction to its commercialization. As with other Elon Musk enterprises, Grok is known for its engineering prowess.

Of course, there are others – DeepSeek is very popular in China, and Google has Gemini embedded in its search – but depending on how you view your own personality and character, you may be drawn to one model or another. Amazon is struggling to catch up with “Alexa +,” and Microsoft depends on OpenAI. This article focuses primarily on Claude. Click here for a longer Bloomberg Originals interview exploring Anthropic’s approach and its leaders.
Each model is like an individual. Each has its own character. Each has its own abilities. Just as people reflect their parentage and upbringing, with some people having more integrity and character, so each model reflects its parentage and training.
People inherit genes from their parents. AI models are stamped by the people who initiate them.
People reflect values learned as children, from their upbringing. AI models reflect the values they are trained on.
Thus, AI isn’t one thing. It’s as varied as human nature is. If it’s trained to be mean, it’s likely to seem mean-spirited. If it’s trained to be exemplary, then it’s likely to show integrity.
For CEOs grappling with AI, evaluating it can be like finding human talent. The quest for talent is the most important job of a CEO. Choosing an AI approach is also a talent search.

Break the Invisible Wall

Jul 14, 2026

By Steve Moran
Every organization, every department, every leader has frustrating problems or challenges that seem to resist all attempts at finding a solution.

Your customer service is just not as good as it should be.
Your customer retention is not making the grade.
You have too many people calling off.
People are getting bored with your product or service.

You have brainstormed, talked to experts, read books, asked AI and nothing seems to help. I picked up a crazy fun idea from a reel by executive coach Alisa Cohn, tried it with my own team, and it flat-out worked. It could very well give you the breakthrough you need too.
Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

What The Industry Is Talking About

Jul 13, 2026

By Steve Moran
AI is at its best when it processes vast amounts of information that humans could never do. This is a look back at what people were talking about and thinking in senior living last week.
The big meta-theme
The industry is talking like the demand problem is being solved — but the operating model problem is not.
Occupancy is back, capital is interested again, supply is constrained, and the oldest boomers are turning 80. That creates optimism.

But underneath that optimism, the conversation is full of anxiety about margins, labor, acuity, regulation, affordability, resident expectations, and whether operators are actually ready for the next customer.
1. Occupancy and demand are the loudest “good news” story
NIC is setting the tone: senior housing occupancy hit 89.5% in Q1 2026, up from 89.1% in Q4 2025, with demand rising while new development stays slow. NIC also says occupied units rose to about 637,000 in Q1 2026. (National Investment Center)
That data is showing up everywhere. McKnight’s framed 2026 as a “critical juncture,” with expectations that occupancy could surpass 90% and maybe approach the old 91.3% record. (McKnight’s Senior Living) SHN is making a similar point, saying average occupancy is near 90%, but also noting that median occupancy is already around 92%, which means the “upside” story may be less uniform than the average suggests. (Senior Housing News)
What people are really thinking: “The market is finally coming back — but are we mistaking occupancy recovery for business-model health?”
2. Supply shortage is becoming a moral, political, and business story
The second major theme is scarcity. NIC’s line is that demand is accelerating while development remains stalled, “limiting availability for older adults.” (National Investment Center) France Media / REBusinessOnline framed the sector as facing the “predicament” of strong demand and limited supply, citing higher financing and construction costs, baby boomer aging, and constrained new supply. (REBusinessOnline)
Public press is picking up the same idea in more consumer terms: senior housing scarcity, older adults buying or reserving before they need it, and families potentially facing fewer local choices. MarketWatch summarized the supply gap as hundreds of thousands of units needed by 2030 versus far fewer likely to be built at current development rates. (MarketWatch)
What people are really thinking: “If we don’t build, the industry wins on pricing — until families, regulators, and the media decide scarcity looks like exclusion.”
3. Capital markets are getting excited again
The investor conversation is much warmer than it was two years ago. France Media reported that seniors housing outperformed all other NCREIF property sectors in 2025 with a 10.6% total return, more than double the expanded property index return cited in the piece. (REBusinessOnline)
SHN reported that senior living M&A is still “competitive, selective, hot,” with some deals beginning to trade above replacement cost and competition strong for stabilized properties. (Senior Housing News) Reuters also covered Janus Living’s senior-housing REIT IPO filing, positioning senior housing as attractive to investors partly because it is a “real economy” sector less directly disrupted by AI. (Reuters)
What people are really thinking: “Senior housing is investable again — but mostly if you already own, can buy stabilized assets, or can survive brutal development math.”
4. Construction is the bottleneck everyone keeps circling back to
Even with demand rising, construction is still stuck. SHN reported that tariffs, construction labor shortages, and persistent cost pressures are tempering hopes for a 2026 development rebound. (Senior Housing News) McKnight’s similarly described construction as moving with “cautious stability,” with tariffs, labor shortages, and cost pressures still in the picture. (McKnight’s Senior Living)
The visible construction conversation is not “let’s build like crazy.” It is more like: “Can we pencil anything? Can we convert? Can we renovate? Can we buy? Can we create middle-market or affordable options without losing our shirt?”
What people are really thinking: “Everyone says we need more inventory, but nobody has fully solved how to build it at a price residents can afford and investors will finance.”
5. Margins are the shadow story behind the occupancy celebration
This is where LinkedIn snippets were especially telling. One LinkedIn post captured the undercurrent well: occupancy recovery is getting attention, but rising labor costs, staffing challenges, and increasing resident acuity make the economics more complex than occupancy alone suggests. (LinkedIn)
SHN is also writing directly about operators trying to use expense control and technology to push margins higher, with the framing that demand is high but “occupancy is just part of the game.” (Senior Housing News)
What people are really thinking: “We can fill buildings again. But can we make money while delivering the level of care residents now need?”
6. AI is everywhere — but the conversation is maturing
A year ago, the AI conversation was more “look what this can do.” Now it is more practical: infrastructure, workflows, ROI, staffing relief, care coordination, training, and safety.
McKnight’s covered AI as a profit-enhancing operating strategy, citing major healthcare AI investment in 2025. (McKnight’s Senior Living) It also reported that provider groups told HHS senior living and care need infrastructure support, payment alignment, and technical assistance to adopt AI well. (McKnight’s Senior Living) Congress is also entering the conversation: McKnight’s reported on a bipartisan bill proposing a federal study of AI’s effects on older adults. (McKnight’s Senior Living)
On the marketing side, the conversation is shifting toward AI search, local demand, and better leads, not just generic digital marketing. (conversionlogix.com)
What people are really thinking: “AI is no longer a novelty. The winners will be the operators who use it to redesign work, not just buy tools.”
7. Data and BI are becoming core operating infrastructure
SHN reported that more operators now see data and business intelligence as “cornerstones” of operations, using analytics and predictive tools for revenue, staffing efficiency, and resident care coordination. (Senior Housing News)
This is one of the most important under-the-surface shifts. The old industry was relationship-driven, instinct-driven, and census-report-driven. The new conversation is about dashboards, predictive analytics, pricing, labor optimization, acuity, and resident risk.
What people are really thinking: “The next generation of operators will run senior living more like an integrated operating system than a collection of buildings.”
8. Regulation and assisted living scrutiny are heating up
AARP’s recent report says assisted living now serves nearly 1 million residents, and that about 44% of assisted living residents have Alzheimer’s or dementia — a higher share than the nursing home comparison cited in the report. (AARP) That is a huge narrative shift: assisted living is no longer easily defended as mostly hospitality with light support.
McKnight’s is tracking more regulatory movement: 18 states updated assisted living regulations with increased focus on staff training, and other stories point to state-level changes involving staffing, emergency response, cameras, memory care, and reporting. (McKnight’s Senior Living) The Washington Post’s earlier assisted living and memory care investigations still echo in the background, especially around elopement, understaffing, and dementia safety. (The Washington Post)
What people are really thinking: “The industry can either tell a credible data-backed quality story now, or have one imposed on it later.”
9. Workforce remains the unsolved constraint
The staffing conversation has shifted from “shortage” to “operating design.” People are still talking about shortages, but the sharper conversation is about retention, training, career paths, tech-enabled productivity, and whether communities can support higher acuity without burning people out.
McKnight’s workforce guide mentions starting small with AI by identifying repetitive tasks that are good candidates for automation. (McKnight’s Senior Living) McKnight’s also has current coverage around technology driving staff retention and ROI. (McKnight’s Senior Living)
What people are really thinking: “We are not going to hire our way out of this. We have to redesign the work.”
10. The consumer conversation is harsher than the industry conversation
Inside the industry, the tone is cautiously optimistic: occupancy, margins, capital, growth.
In public press, the tone is more worried: affordability, safety, hidden costs, confusing choices, staffing, dementia care, and whether families can trust what they are buying. AP’s consumer guidance on choosing nursing homes or assisted living facilities emphasized staffing, visits, pricing changes, Medicaid policies, discharge risks, and trusting what you see beyond the lobby. (AP News)
The FT’s “boommates” story points to something senior living should not ignore: some older adults are solving aging, loneliness, and affordability through shared housing and other alternatives, not traditional senior living. (Financial Times)
What people are really thinking: “Senior living is not just competing with other communities. It is competing with every alternative families invent when they don’t trust or can’t afford the product.”
11. Social Media
From what is publicly visible, LinkedIn senior living conversation clusters around:
One: optimism with a warning label. Occupancy is rising, but many posts immediately pivot to labor costs, acuity, margins, and whether operators are actually healthier. (LinkedIn)
Two: digital transformation / AI. Posts and company pages are using language around integrated platforms, occupancy growth, care quality, sales, marketing, and operational efficiency. (LinkedIn)
Three: the “new operator” thesis. There are posts arguing 2026 will reward operators who modernize care, memory care, tech, and integration — and punish those still using the old playbook. (LinkedIn)
My read: Social Media is less focused on policy nuance and more focused on “wake up, the playbook is changing.”
The Foresight Perspective – Really Worth Thinking About

“Occupancy is not the same as health.”
Great angle because it challenges the industry’s victory lap without being negative.
“The shortage is coming — but who gets left out?”
This connects supply, affordability, middle market, and public trust.
“AI won’t save senior living. Redesigning work might.”
This is exactly where operators are mentally headed.
“Assisted living is becoming healthcare whether we admit it or not.”
This is a provocative but defensible piece given dementia prevalence, acuity, and regulatory pressure.
“The next senior living operator is part hotelier, part healthcare operator, part data company.”
This ties together consumer expectations, acuity, AI, BI, workforce, and margin.
“The industry has pricing power. That is both a gift and a trap.”
As supply tightens, pricing improves — but public backlash and affordability concerns grow.

Finally
The senior living industry is in one of those rare windows where the market is giving it another chance.
Demand is rising.
Capital is interested.
Occupancy is recovering.
But the old operating model is not built for the next decade.
The conversation is not really about occupancy anymore. It is about whether the industry can become more sophisticated fast enough: better data, better labor design, better dementia care, better tech adoption, better consumer trust, and better affordability answers.
That’s the story underneath all the stories.

The 13 Bullet Points That Went Nowhere

Jul 10, 2026

By Steve Moran
A few weeks ago, I was at the California Assisted Living conference in Sacramento. The content was exceptionally strong. They were talking about really big challenges and really solid solutions.
Sitting at the same table with me was a C-suite executive with her notebook open, rapidly making notes. I could see at least 13 bullet points, and the talk was not yet over.
I got to wondering what she would do with those bullet points. Then I realized this was just a single session at a single conference. She would likely go home with 50 to 100 bullet points, even acknowledging that not every presentation would be as strong or as relevant as this one.
The Hard Part
I am not critical of what she was doing. I do the same thing, and I guarantee I attend a lot more conferences than she does. I have so much content right now that I need to write about, and a lot of it will never see the light of day.
The problem is…
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free …

The Promise of AI in Senior Living Is Not Dazzle — It Is Time

Jul 9, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In a recent episode of Tech Tuesday, Steve talks with Veronica “Mo” Carr, an Avendelle Assisted Living franchisee in Raleigh, North Carolina, about how she is using AI agents in the real world — not someday, not in theory, but right now. You can watch the full conversation HERE.
There is a lot of noise around artificial intelligence in senior living.
There are conference sessions. There are big promises. There are worries about hallucinations, HIPAA, job loss, complexity, and whether any of it is actually practical for operators who are already stretched thin.
Then there is Mo Carr.
Mo operates small assisted living homes — three now, with a fourth on the way — each serving no more than six residents. Steve calls her one of the most sophisticated AI users he knows in senior living, and not because she is running a giant technology department. She is not.
She is using AI because she has to.
Phone calls. Text messages. Family communication. Staffing. Scheduling. Financial management. Training. Resident updates. The endless stream of operational work that comes with running care homes.
As Mo puts it, AI touches every operational task in her business.
From Prompts To Agents
A lot of senior living leaders have played with AI as a question-and-answer tool. They open ChatGPT, ask for an email, summarize a document, brainstorm a training outline, or rewrite a message to a family member.
That is useful. But Mo says her work has moved beyond that.
She has shifted from prompting to AI agents.
Her explanation is wonderfully simple: regular AI is a one-time helper. You ask a question, and it gives you an answer. An agent is more like a personal assistant who never sleeps. You give it instructions, connect it to the tools it needs, and it keeps working.
That changes the conversation.
Instead of asking AI to help draft a training outline one time, an agent can help identify a training need, pull the relevant information, and generate a checklist or outline. Instead of manually searching systems, an agent can pull information from QuickBooks, a CRM, email, or other platforms and help complete a task.
The magic, at least for nontechnical operators, is that Mo says this does not require writing code. It requires knowing what problem needs to be solved, giving clear instructions, and building the right workflow.
That is still work. But it is a very different kind of work than most senior living leaders imagine when they hear the word “AI.”
Family Communication In Real Time
One of the most compelling parts of the conversation is around family communication.
Every operator knows this tension. Families want to know how mom or dad is doing. Caregivers want to be responsive. But answering the same kinds of questions over and over takes time. Looking through notes, checking the EMAR, summarizing updates, and sending texts or emails can pull caregivers away from residents.
Mo is using AI agents to change that.
Her agents can pull information from documentation and push updates to family members by text. Families can also communicate back, asking questions like, “How is Mom doing today?”
That is not just a convenience feature. It changes the nature of the interaction.
When families already have timely updates, in-person conversations do not have to begin with staff scrambling through records. The caregiver can be more present. The family member can arrive better informed. The conversation can become more relational and less transactional.
Steve immediately sees the potential, especially for friends and family members who are not nearby but still want to stay connected. A simple weekly update, generated from notes and sent automatically, could give people peace of mind without creating another manual task for a caregiver or family member.
AI As A Clinical Signal Finder
Mo also gives a practical resident-care example: PRN medications.
If a resident is receiving an as-needed medication repeatedly for a behavior, an AI agent could help identify the pattern and flag it. It could notify the operator that the situation may need review. It could generate communication for the clinician. Depending on the workflow and compliance structure, it might even draft an email to the care team.
The point is not that AI replaces clinical judgment.
The point is that AI may be very good at noticing patterns that busy humans miss — especially when those humans are juggling residents, families, staffing, documentation, and the thousand other things that happen in a senior living day.
Of course, Mo is clear that checks and balances matter. AI is a tool. It still needs to be checked, vetted, and built into a responsible system.
That is an important distinction. The goal is not blind automation. The goal is better support.
Why The AI Buzz May Be Fading
Steve raises an interesting observation from the conference circuit: For a while, AI seemed to come up in every session. Then the energy seemed to fade.
Mo’s explanation is simple and probably right: People are overwhelmed.
The tools keep changing. Just as someone gets comfortable with one system, an update changes the interface, the workflow, or the possibilities. For people who enjoy tinkering, this is exciting. For everyone else, it can feel exhausting.
That does not mean senior living can opt out.
AI is already here. It is already embedded in tools and systems. The question is not whether senior living will use AI. The question is whether leaders will use it intentionally.
Mo believes some leaders will build these systems themselves. Others will need help. That opens the door for a new kind of AI consultant — someone who understands operations, audits workflows, identifies repetitive tasks, and builds practical automations that save time.
Not theoretical AI. Useful AI.
The Human Reason Behind The Technology
The most powerful moment in the conversation comes when Steve asks how AI is making Mo’s life better as an owner and how it is improving life for residents, team members, and families.
Mo starts with her why.
In a span of about three months, she lost her mother unexpectedly to pneumonia and then lost her best friend, the founder of Avendelle Assisted Living. During those bedside moments, calls, emails, and texts kept coming. She had to choose between being present and responding to the demands of the business.
That experience changed how she thinks about time.
AI, for her, is not about being trendy. It is about being more intentional. It is about managing the business well enough to have time for family, friends, travel, and the things that bring joy. It is about not constantly choosing between a task and a person.
That is the real promise.
For caregivers, AI can reduce repetitive work and generate training more quickly. For residents, it can give caregivers more time at the bedside. For families, it can provide better and faster communication. For owners, it can create room to breathe.
The Bottom Line
Senior living does not need more AI hype.
It needs more examples like Mo’s: practical, human, operational, and honest about both the possibilities and the risks.
AI agents may sound futuristic, but in Mo’s hands, they are already helping with training, family updates, documentation workflows, medication pattern recognition, scheduling, finances, and communication.
Steve ends the episode eager to bring Mo back for a live demonstration. That may be exactly what the industry needs next — fewer abstract conversations about AI and more real-time, practical lessons from operators who are already using it to make life better.
Because the best AI in senior living may not be the one that dazzles at a conference.
It may be the one that gives a caregiver five more minutes at the bedside.

You Can’t Market Your Way Out of a Bad Product

Jul 8, 2026

By Steve Moran
For just a few moments, I am going to go full-burn cynic.
And yet … in my cynicism, I hope you will find great optimism.
This craziness will all make sense as you read on.
Connection, Not Care — Friendship Not … All That Other Stuff
There is so much conversation about how baby boomers want a radically different experience and a sense that senior living needs some repositioning. I mostly think that, as long as we are primarily a care model, the boomers’ needs and wants are going to be minimally different.
But … if …
We start leading with connection instead of care. Talking about belonging and social wellness rather than safety features and clinical oversight. I think that conversation could transform the industry and the aging experience.
I am not sure we really get it. It feels to me like this is what is really happening …
We change the language, update the brochures, and train the sales team to lead with connection and community. Except that when prospects tour our communities, they see the same old, same old.
If the programming calendar is still bingo on Tuesday and a movie on Thursday, we have a problem.
If we call batting around balloons with pool noodles exercise or entertainment, we have a problem.
If the common spaces still feel institutional, not like hospitals or nursing homes, but rather like 4- and 5-star hotels … nice institutional but still institutional. A kind of fake “just like home,” we have a problem.
If the most active thing on the activity schedule this week is a bus trip to the casino, we have a problem.
The Prospects We Want
The prospects we most want to attract, the earlier, healthier, more independent ones who could benefit most from choosing community before a crisis, are exactly the ones who will see through the gap between the pitch and the reality the fastest.
They’re sharper. They’re more discerning. They have higher standards for what a good day looks like. And they will go home from that tour, sit down at their kitchen table, and say to their spouse:
“The salesperson was great. The place itself … I don’t know.”
And then they’ll recommit to aging in place for another two years.
This matters because the reframe the industry is reaching for, connection-first, wellness-oriented, community-centered, is only as powerful as the lived experience it’s attached to. It’s not a repositioning if it’s just repositioning. It has to be a genuine redescription of something real.
The Hard Question
So the honest question every operator needs to sit with is this: if a healthy, active, socially engaged 70-year-old moved in tomorrow, would the day I’m offering them actually be compelling? Not to their future 85-year-old self. To them. Now. This week.
In too many communities, the honest answer is no. And no amount of better marketing language is going to fix that.
Here’s what gives me hope: some communities that have done the product work and have genuinely rebuilt the experience around what an earlier, more capable resident needs and wants are seeing the results. Not just in occupancy numbers. In culture. In word-of-mouth. In the fact that their residents recruit for them, because they’re genuinely proud of where they live.
That’s the prize. But you have to earn it by actually building it.
I said, “The communities that have done the product work are seeing the results.” I need to be more honest than that, because vague optimism isn’t useful, and I don’t actually know of many places where it’s working.
The one real example I can point to is Garden Spot Village in New Holland, Pennsylvania. A remarkable 22% of their new residents are between 50 and 69. But here’s the important context: Garden Spot is a faith-based community affiliated with the Mennonite Church, built entirely around purpose and service. Residents go on mission trips to Kenya. More than 60% volunteer regularly. People move in younger because the community gives them something to move toward, not just somewhere to land. It works. But it isn’t easily copied without the underlying culture that drives it.
Beyond that one example, I’m honestly not sure the industry has figured this out yet. The average move-in age for independent living is 77. Half of all assisted living residents nationwide are over 85. Less than 6% are under 65. The data says crisis-driven, late-stage entry is still the overwhelming norm.
So when I say the product has to change before the marketing can change, I’m not pointing to a wave of communities that have already solved this. I’m pointing to one community in Pennsylvania that has, and an industry that mostly hasn’t. That’s a more honest picture. And it means the opportunity is wide open for whoever gets there next.

Buildings Matter. Operators Matter More.

Jul 7, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is based on the Pivot with Pettit episode “From City Planner to Senior Living Pioneer: Mitch Brown on the Future of Senior Living.” Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
The Next Senior Living Boom Has A Catch
There is a lot of excitement around senior housing right now.
That comes through clearly in Bill Pettit’s conversation with Mitch Brown. Investor interest is rising. Demand is obvious. Demographics are not exactly subtle. Active adult continues to attract attention. And the industry knows the opportunity ahead is enormous.
But Mitch keeps coming back to one inconvenient truth.
The problem is not just getting capital interested.
The problem is who is going to run all of this.
That is the part of the episode senior living leaders should not miss.
Demand Is Real — But So Is The Affordability Problem
Mitch is not dismissive about the opportunity. He plainly sees the wave of demand. But he also cuts through the hype fast.
There is an affordability problem.
A big one.
Construction costs are high. Regulations are heavy. Labor is difficult on both the operating and construction sides. Experienced people have left the industry. The economics are hard. And while everybody can talk about hundreds of thousands of units that will be needed, meeting that need with a product that is both desirable and financially viable is another matter.
That feels like one of the most honest moments in the conversation.
Demographics do not automatically solve bad math.
They do not erase labor constraints.
They do not magically create operating talent.
The Real Scarcity Is Operational Excellence
Mitch makes a strong case that development itself may not be the biggest bottleneck. The bigger constraint is operating capacity.
That is a striking point because senior living often defaults to real estate language: Pipeline, cap rates, debt, land, starts, absorption. All important.
But Mitch argues that what investors increasingly want most is not just a site or a building. They want access to operators who can scale and grow without breaking the thing that makes communities work.
That is a huge distinction.
He even shares an example of an investor knowingly overpaying for a small portfolio in order to secure a relationship with a strong operator. That tells you everything you need to know. Great operating platforms are not just helpful. They are becoming strategic assets in their own right.
Maybe THE strategic asset.
Developers Are Not The Heroes
Mitch says something else that deserves to be repeated more often in this industry: developers are service providers to operations.
That may not be how every developer sees it, but it is probably how the best ones do.
The communities that succeed over time are not the ones with the prettiest rendering or the cleverest site plan alone. They are the ones where the operating team is involved early, where culture is built intentionally, and where the entire model is designed around the people who will actually serve residents every day.
That is a big deal.
Senior living still has too many moments where real estate gets celebrated, and operations get treated like the thing that shows up later. Mitch’s view flips that. As he tells it, the real job is to build something operations can make come alive.
That is not anti-development. It is mature development.
Why Active Adult Still Needs Operators
This becomes even more important in active adult.
From the outside, active adult can look simpler than traditional senior living. That can fool people. Mitch explains that the economics are leaner, the margins are tighter, and the management fee structures often look much more like multifamily than senior living.
So then the question becomes obvious: how do you convince great people to do something harder than it looks for less margin than they are used to?
That is not a small question.
It is one of the defining questions.
The industry still needs a model that properly values what it takes to operate active adult at a high level. Because if everybody says the future is in active adult, but nobody creates a structure that makes great operation sustainable, then the segment hits a ceiling.
What Boomers Actually Want
Mitch also points to something more hopeful.
He believes boomers want aspirational living. Not institutional living. Not surrender. Not the end of the road. Aspirational living.
That can take many forms. A flexible lifestyle. A community with intellectual energy. A two-home rhythm. A modular cottage with like-minded people. A place that removes hassle without removing identity.
That is a useful framing.
The future may belong to the companies that can create those experiences at more approachable price points. Not just premium versions for a small slice of the market, but products that feel desirable and human for many more people.
And that takes more than capital.
It takes operators who understand customers.
The Best-Kept Secret
Near the end of the conversation, Mitch and Bill hit on something that feels painfully true: active adult is still one of the best-kept secrets in the market.
People often do not fully understand it until they visit a community, meet residents, and see the lifestyle up close. Then it clicks.
That may be the challenge and the opportunity.
Senior living has spent years trying to explain itself. Maybe it needs to get better at helping people experience what a good community actually feels like.
Because once they do, the question is not usually “Why would anyone want this?”
It is “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
And that may be the future in one sentence.

Finding Talent Hidden in Your Own Organization

Jul 6, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Every leader, no matter the leadership level, starts every important initiative with optimism and high expectations. In senior living, it might be a CEO or executive director wanting to open the culture to more resident inclusion, or it might be a financing provider or development business wanting to help operating providers find success.
Most People Mean Well
Good intentions prevail for everyone. A young employee seeking to manage his or her career brings hope and optimism to their first position. The same is true of first-time supervisors or functional directors (e.g., activities, food service, maintenance, care services) in a senior living enterprise. It’s even true of those residents who seek to be helpful by making suggestions.
The trick is to find the most talented people to support the leader in that vision. That requires a number of factors. First, it needs a leader who can recognize the most talented people, not all of whom may be aligned with the leader’s thinking. Great leaders learn to listen to those who do not agree with them. Other wannabe leaders emphasize loyalty and may sideline or dismiss thinkers who are less than loyally subordinate.
Second, it calls for a leader with the charisma and modesty to attract the most talented people to be willing to work as a team with the leader. Those charismatic, inspiring leaders are rare. Most “leaders” are little more than administrators.
Third, these barriers to unleashing talent for the good of the enterprise are particularly evident in hierarchically run organizations. I can’t remember the last time a major in the U.S. military was promoted to major general. The military is the ultimate in hierarchy. Rank is even openly flaunted on uniforms. That may be necessary for the military, but it can lead to mediocrity in competitive undertakings.
Timeless Truths
The drawbacks of corporate hierarchy are not new. In 1969, a book by Laurence J. Peter, titled The Peter Principle, first appeared. It may have been intended as comedy, consistent with the movie from the same era, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. As is often the case with humor, it popularized a truth that might otherwise have remained buried in academia.

That truth: People are promoted up a hierarchy not by their suitability for a more authoritative position but by their reputation in their prior positions.

That truth leads to less suitable leaders stuck in smothering positions. The Peter Principle tenet in a nutshell.

“People rise to their level of incompetence.”

That blocks the rise of talent and leads to mediocrity in an underperforming enterprise, far from the vigor that made the organization a success in the first place. It takes that first generation’s success to fuel the comfort of hierarchy that leads to corporate drift.
No Tolerance for Complacency
Business requires constant rethinking since the pace of the business economy is rapid. The rising competitor that you’re overlooking is not going to wait for you to catch up. With subsequent generations, the Peter Principle can take hold, and a slow administrative pace can become entrenched and rationalized.
The most important task of a leader is to find, motivate, advance, and reward talent. It’s people, talented people, who determine how well the business purpose, aka mission, is fulfilled. For instance, it takes particular talent, infused with wisdom, business judgment, fast learning, and understanding people, to put into perspective what AI means for the future and how best to harness it.
Amazon?
I thought of that the other day when I was struggling with Alexa+, which is Amazon’s late-to-the-market foray into artificial intelligence (AI). Whatever else you may think of Jeff Bezos, it seems evident that he had an eye for talent. Alexa+ could benefit from some top talent right now.
The usual subsequent generation management response to a lackluster business unit is for the leadership – CEO, board, or executive – to ask the responsible business manager for a briefing. That can lead to a soporific PowerPoint presentation instead of the identification of needed fresh talent.
One source of talent is industry conferences, which can allow those looking for clear thinking to size up competitors’ leaders who might be just the tonic needed to shake up a lagging unit. That’s particularly true with the need for the kind of genius talent needed to prepare an enterprise for the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence and robotics.
Of course, there’s no reason why a mammoth organization like Amazon, under Jeff Bezos’s leadership, can’t hold its own conference, even inviting outsiders if desired, to allow inside talent to shine forth from under the weight of hierarchy above them. To the best of my knowledge and belief, such internal discussion forums are rare.
A Tough Leadership Transition
Andy Jassy, Bezos’s successor, got the top job after amazing results with Amazon Web Services. To an outsider, his focus appears to be on reducing costs to build profits, including eliminating or repurposing underperforming businesses. Loyal Amazon shoppers have noticed an increase in in-your-face pushes to get you to buy stuff as though Amazon were entitled to your patronage. Is that Jassy? It’s hard to tell.
AI is, of course, a challenge. Amazon’s Alexa proved to be an unlikely success. An attempt to attract businesses to what has been a consumer platform, called Alexa Smart Properties, is questionable and surprisingly disconnected from consumers and even from other Amazon initiatives like televisions. Into that murky siloing, Amazon has thrown its most prominent AI project, called Alexa+.
Needing a Closer Look
It doesn’t take much interaction with Alexa+ compared with other AI initiatives to realize that Alexa+ isn’t hitting the mark. The challenges are similar to those confronting senior living. When consumers are given second place in the direction of a business, it’s time to find new outside-the-box talent to win the enthusiasm of consumers. Ignoring consumer input, while claiming an overweening expertise, may bring short-term results but will inevitably fall short in the long term. Treating your consumer as a potential adversary is not a formula for success.
The key is always finding the right talent for the crucial positions. In senior living, that’s often the executive director position, but that’s another story for another day. Hint: good regional vice presidents can be more effective as autonomous executive directors than as a parking place for those caught by the Peter Principle. Executive directors make a community succeed or fail. Residents are not property. Senior housing is communal, much more than just a building. Residents are more than a revenue source.

What Do You Need to Fire Yourself From?

Jul 2, 2026

By Steve Moran
I might be the world’s best idea thief. Podcasts, LinkedIn posts, Instagram reels, books, emails, and articles, I steal from all of it, then write my own version. It used to bother me to give credit, because I wanted people to think I was the brilliant one. I have come to realize that all brilliant teachers and thought leaders are, at their core, great thieves building on the knowledge of others.
This one came from a reel I saw while on vacation in Europe last week. The thought leader talked about how most leaders have things they need to fire themselves from. When I sat down to write this, the link was dead, so I can’t say for certain who to credit. My best guess, with some help from AI, is Dan Martell, whose leadership content is all over the internet.
Fire Yourself From
Right now, as a leader, you are doing things you shouldn’t be doing. You are doing them because…
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free.

Can Two CEOs Be Better Than One?

Jul 1, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Foresight TV, Steve talks with Shane Herlet and Tom Gaston, the newly appointed co-CEOs of Maplewood Senior Living, about what it means to share the top leadership role — and why Maplewood believes the model can make the company stronger. Watch the full conversation here: What a Co-CEO Model Could Mean for Senior Living.
Co-CEO structures are still rare in senior living. Maybe because the model sounds complicated. Maybe because most boards, investors, and leadership teams are more comfortable with one person at the top.
But for Maplewood, this was not some exotic leadership experiment. It was, as Tom describes it, a natural evolution.
Shane and Tom have worked together for roughly 15 years at Maplewood and even longer in the industry. Shane comes from the operations side, with a career rooted in assisted living and skilled nursing. Tom brings a deep background in technology, real estate, capitalization, and systems.
They are not two strangers forced into a shared title. They are long-time partners who already know how to work together.
A Leadership Transition No One Wanted
The co-CEO structure follows the sudden death of Maplewood’s founder and former CEO, Greg Smith, in 2023. Tom describes the loss as a shock to the organization, the industry, and to them personally.
It was also a real business test.
There were licenses to transition, ownership questions to resolve, and investors, team members, residents, and families to reassure. Through all of that, Tom says the goal was to maintain confidence while keeping the underlying business strong.
That matters because Maplewood was not in survival mode. It was performing well. The challenge was to preserve momentum while navigating grief, transition, and the practical complexity of leadership succession.
In many companies, that kind of moment exposes cracks. At Maplewood, it seems to have reinforced the value of continuity.
Defined Lanes, Shared Values
The obvious question with any co-CEO model is simple: Who does what?
Shane says the key is having defined lanes. He focuses heavily on internal operations — budgets, community support, compliance, and the day-to-day pieces that keep the company moving. Tom has taken the lead on investor relationships, legal issues, capital partner work, and the broader transition process.
But lanes only work if there is trust. Shane and Tom make clear that they agree on the big things: employee-first thinking, doing the right thing for people, and staying focused on the customer.
And when they disagree?
They joke that they never do, but the real answer is more useful: They have a long history, shared values, and enough mutual respect to work through the hard stuff.
That may be the hidden requirement for a co-CEO model. It is not about splitting power. It is about multiplying leadership capacity without creating confusion.
Performance Creates Optionality
The Co-CEO arrangement is working for Maplewood. Steve notes that the company has reportedly seen same-store NOI growth of 65% since 2022 and occupancy around 96%. In an industry still talking about recovery, staffing, rate pressure, and “the next shoe to drop,” Maplewood appears to be outperforming.
Shane points to a few reasons.
Maplewood came out of COVID strong. It never allowed occupancy to fall below 80%, recovered quickly, and moved north of 90% faster than many others. From that base, the company has been able to drive rate, supported by strong physical environments, quality care, continuity, and operating discipline.
Tom adds that after the restructuring and transition of the last two years, the company has never been stronger financially, operationally, or from an executive team standpoint.
That gives Maplewood something every operator wants: options.
It can grow. It can invest in people. It can improve systems. It can think about what comes next without being consumed by crisis.
Direct, Candid, and Serious About Performance
Shane is described as direct and candid, which leads Steve to ask the obvious follow-up: Is that a good direct and candid, or Steve Jobs direct and candid?
Shane laughs, but his answer is serious.
Senior living is a serious business. Maplewood has long-tenured leaders and long-tenured line associates, something Shane is deeply proud of. But tenure is not a substitute for performance.
His current message to the team is that when things are going well, that is when leaders need to double down. He compares it to pilots going back through the checklist one last time during a delay.
In senior living, that means preventing the elopement before it happens. Seeing the move-out risk early. Addressing the cultural issue before it becomes a crisis.
This is where “direct and candid” becomes less about personality and more about discipline.
The Customer Behind the Customer
One of the most compelling parts of the conversation is Shane’s view of the home office.
For Maplewood’s home office team, the primary customer is the field.
That may sound obvious. It is not always how the industry behaves.
Community associates are the ones showing up during holidays, weekends, snowstorms, and emergencies. They are the ones caring for residents and families in real time. The role of the corporate team is not to make life harder for them. It is to prepare, support, and serve them.
Steve has long argued that when frontline team members love coming to work, residents and families feel it. Shane agrees. If employees are happy and supported, they take great care of residents.
That is a simple idea. It is also one that the industry still struggles to bring into reality.
Leadership Training Without the Corporate Theater
Steve shares the results of a LinkedIn poll showing that many senior living leaders feel they received little or poor leadership training.
Maplewood’s approach is less about formal programs and more about exposure.
Shane says Maplewood is large enough to have resources but small enough to let leaders see “under the tent.” Community leaders get to see how different parts of the business connect — operations, finance, compliance, capital, staffing, and customer experience.
Tom adds that he and Shane have both done almost every community-level job at some point in their careers. Maplewood has a flat home office with roughly 25 to 30 people, which makes leaders more approachable and teaching more natural.
The result is that some Maplewood leaders have grown into senior roles inside the company, while others have gone on to leadership positions with competitors.
Shane and Tom see that as a win.
That is refreshing. The industry needs more companies willing to develop people, even if some of those people eventually leave. That is how the whole field gets better.
Technology Is Useful — Until It Isn’t
Maplewood is also investing in systems and technology, especially in back-office operations. Shane mentions tools such as UKG, PredictAP, Vena, Sunbound, and AI-based accounts payable and business intelligence systems.
The goal is not technology for its own sake. It is speed, clarity, and better information in the field.
But Tom is also candid that not every technology investment works. Some expensive systems get installed and then ripped out a few years later. Sometimes, simple is better.
That may be the most mature technology lesson of all.
The promise of AI and data is real, especially around predictive insights, fall detection, resident monitoring, and earlier warning signs of change in condition. But Maplewood is not pretending every shiny tool solves the hard problems.
The question remains: Does this make life easier inside the community? Does it help deliver better care?
If not, it is just another thing for team members to manage.
Premium Brands and the Trickle-Down Effect
Maplewood currently operates two brands: Maplewood Senior Living and Inspir.
Inspir is the company’s ultra-premium brand, designed for gateway cities and high-service environments. Tom describes the New York project as a kind of “luxury spaceship,” with complex building systems, demanding resident expectations, and sophisticated operations.
He compares it to Formula One.
The point of Formula One is not just the race car. It is the innovation that eventually trickles down into everyday vehicles. In the same way, the lessons Maplewood learns from its most complex Inspir communities can influence the rest of its portfolio.
That includes technology, service models, design, operations, and programming.
Tom also says Maplewood would love to figure out a third brand — something that appeals to a broader market where there is real need. They have not cracked that yet.
Neither has the industry.
But it is a question worth chasing.
Growth, But Not at Any Cost
When asked to dream about the next five years, Shane says Maplewood wants to be recognized as one of the best operators in the eyes of its customers.
That is the right benchmark.
Not biggest. Not flashiest. Best.
Growth is possible. Shane mentions perhaps doubling the company and maybe creating a third brand. But he emphasizes controlled growth, staying in core markets, and making sure Maplewood remains a great employer and destination for residents.
Tom adds that Maplewood does not have to grow. It will grow organically if it chooses to and if the opportunity makes sense.
That may be the strongest argument for the co-CEO model at Maplewood. It is not about ego. It is not about building an empire for the sake of size.
It is about shared stewardship.
And in a senior living world that needs stronger operators, better workplaces, smarter technology, and more leadership depth, Maplewood’s experiment is worth watching.

What Sun City Got Right And Senior Living Forgot

Jun 30, 2026

By Steve Moran
In 1960, Del Webb opened a retirement community in the Arizona desert, and people lined up.
They lined up not because they were scared. Not because their kids made them. Because at a certain age, the idea of a community built around people in the same life stage, with the golf courses and the activity clubs and the neighbors who weren’t going to judge you for retiring at 60, sounded amazing.
Sun City worked because it was aspirational. The Villages, in spite of all the negative press, works for the same reason. And Margaritaville, the retirement community concept built around the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle, is crushing it for the same reason. These are communities people choose with something that looks almost like enthusiasm. A 48-year-old doesn’t want to move there. A 63-year-old who’s starting to think differently about what the next ten years could look like? Different conversation.
Senior Living
Traditional senior living (assisted living, memory care, independent living) largely lost, or maybe never really figured out, the aspirational living proposition. I think it’s worth asking why and whether it’s possible to get it.
Here’s what I think happened: as the industry matured, it leaned harder into care. More regulation, more clinical sophistication, more focus on what the community could do for residents with increasing needs. All of that was appropriate and necessary. And if we are honest, it created a serious opportunity for increasing the rates we charged in the form of care fees.
The Problem
The cultural cost was real. Communities started feeling less like places people chose and more like places people ended up.
The marketing followed the culture. Brochures full of smiling seniors with kind caregivers. Emergency response systems prominently featured. Language about “dignity” and “peace of mind,” which, read honestly, is language about decline management.
Prospects, at least the younger, healthier, more independent ones the industry most needs to attract, said, “No thanks, not for me, not yet anyway,” doubling down on aging in place.
The Question
So here’s the Sun City question I keep coming back to: what would it take to build something that a healthy, active, socially engaged 70-year-old would actually look forward to? Not tolerate. Not accept as a reasonable option. Actually want?
Or is it even possible to do so and really call it senior living?
We have to start by being honest about the really hard reality that if we can do this, it requires a product change, not just a marketing change. You can’t slap new language on an unchanged experience and expect different results. If the programming calendar is still built around a frailer, more sedentary resident, the 70-year-old, or even the active 80-year-old, you’re trying to attract, is going to see that on the tour and leave.
I do believe there is an opportunity here to create something genuinely worth anticipating, something that will have a significant competitive advantage in the decade ahead. Not just in occupancy, but in culture, in word-of-mouth, in the quality of the experience they’re able to create.
The Key Insight
The key insight from Sun City isn’t the golf courses. It’s the aspiration. It’s the sense that moving there is a move toward something rather than away from something. That choosing this community is a statement about who you are and how you want to live, not an admission that you can no longer fully manage on your own.
Senior living can get back there. But it’s going to require honesty about what actually has to change and a willingness to build something different, not just describe the same thing differently.
That’s harder. It’s also more worth doing.

Unexpected Change in Sales Compensation

Jun 29, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Like insurance, senior living is a sales-driven industry. It’s often said that life insurance is not a product that people buy. It has to be sold. There’s some truth to that, though it’s less true for property and causality insurance. Some might say that it’s more true of senior living. Personal, human relationships make the senior living sale … most of the time.
Radical Change
With that thought in mind, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal was striking. The article reported a change in State Farm agents’ compensation that has the potential to dramatically reduce their earnings. At an all-agents meeting, State Farm’s CEO announced, “Next Gen – Good Neighbor,” a program to increase agent productivity by using AI to enhance human interaction.
State Farm has roughly 19,000 agents, and you can imagine the reaction across the sales force. It’s not positive, and it’s not pretty, but it may be necessary. Progressive® Insurance has been moving forward faster than State Farm. The WSJ cites “analysts” for a report that “Progressive sells over half its personal auto policies direct to consumers, using AI and tech to keep costs low.”
Wake Up
This can be a wake-up call for the slow-moving senior living industry, at least technologically speaking. Already, many shoppers for senior housing or other senior living services start their search online. Those shoppers can move past a particular community’s webpage very quickly if it doesn’t instantly engage them and get them thinking positively.
AI has great promise to help with that instant engagement, especially if what is on offer has distinct differentiating advantages over competitive alternatives. Here’s where know-how and ingenuity come into play. If all a community does is shop for a vendor to meet the challenge, then their offer is unlikely to be any better than that of all the vendor’s other clients. The vendor’s purpose differs from that of the buyer.
Better? or Good Enough?
The alternative is to develop a unique AI response that may use tools provided by the big players such as OpenAI, Google, Grok, and Anthropic. After all, they are pouring all that optimistic capital into LLM development and data-center processing that today’s AI requires. They differ from each other, but that doesn’t make your message unique. To be unique means that you have to have AI understanding and creative genius in-house. You needn’t settle for being just like all the others.
To prepare for this future, which is coming sooner than you can imagine, organizations need help identifying the talent that can give them that unique, differentiated advantage. Joe Velderman, for one, has the eye and maturity to recognize that kind of talent, so it was no surprise recently when he left the single-site community where he had long worked. The opportunity to lift the industry is vast.
Integrated Marketing and Tech
It will require marketing genius combined with technical genius. Progressive® outmaneuvered State Farm with (1) an effective TV campaign starring a single spokesperson and by (2) embracing direct sales mediated by a robust commitment to technology. The back-office matters, but it’s of no value unless the public knows about it.
Progressive® found Stephanie Courtney through an audition process, shaped her persona as the upbeat face for a previously little-known insurer, and the rest is history. Could something as imaginative as that give senior living the credibility it needs? So far, the media trend and the public perception have not been moving in a positive direction.
Could a high-tech approach and a creative marketing presence be the catalyst to move senior living out of the shadows of institutionalization and into the mainstream of empowered aging? Time will tell. For now, it’s not clear that anyone even has the vision to give it a try.
Gambling on Vision
State Farm is gambling that making its sales force more efficient and more up to date will revive the lead that the company once had with its “good neighbor” image. That might be a positive gamble for a transformative senior living entity as well. The expectation is that State Farm’s sales force won’t be disadvantaged over the long term. New tools will give them the chance to prove themselves and prosper. AI with a human touch may be our new good neighbor.

What Do I Need To Stop Believing About Myself? – The Brutal Truth

Jun 26, 2026

By Steve Moran
No pop psychology
Last week I wrote about the false beliefs that make us feel too small, the ones that whisper you’re not good enough, not worthy of the room. If you missed it, start there. This week is about the opposite problem.
And it will be a much harder, more brutal truth.
Most leaders are too impressed with themselves.
They tend to be overconfident, certain, unwilling to seriously consider that they might be wrong. I can read your mind; you are thinking … “I know some leaders like that, but not me.” Yep, you too. Honestly, it comes with leadership. It is 100% true. And 100% true about me.
I have conversations with a lot of leaders. C-suite people, founders, executives who have built real things. And they share a nearly universal trait. They love talking about what they’re doing. What they’re thinking about. What they’re building. What they believe.
They are not so good at listening.
I say that without judgment. I genuinely like these people. And I have to confess, I am the same. I like telling my story. I like talking about my ideas. I catch myself doing it, and I recognize the pattern from the outside looking in. It’s embarrassing.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free.

Getting Old Is Not as Great as We Pretend It Is!

Jun 25, 2026

By Steve Moran
I am 71 years old, and I am living this experience. Don’t get me wrong. I have a great life at 71, and there are things about being this old that are amazing that I wish I had when I was younger. Better perspective, more peace, more chill.
But it comes with challenges: more time at the dentist and doctors’ offices, the need to pay more attention to diet and exercise. I am not as strong, don’t move as fast, and take longer naps.
We need to be more honest, more frank about the decision to move into senior living. We rarely want to talk about this out loud.
People don’t move into senior living communities because they’ve decided it’s a great lifestyle choice.
They move in because something has changed. Either decline has already started, a fall, a diagnosis, a moment when living alone no longer feels safe or manageable, or they can see decline coming, and they’re trying to get ahead of it. Or they are watching a spouse or partner decline.
That’s essentially the whole universe of move-in motivations. Crisis entry or anticipation entry. And right now, the vast majority are crisis entries.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, partly in response to a yet to be publicly released white paper by my friend Russell Rush called The Isolation Economy. Russell makes a compelling case that senior living should reposition itself around connection and belonging rather than care and safety. I agree with him about the problem. I’m less sure about the solution.
My Pushback
Here’s where I push back: Russell’s argument nudges toward a world where people choose senior living the way they choose a gym membership: proactively, enthusiastically, because it sounds like a great idea. And Russell is far from the only person making this argument. I want that to be true. But I don’t think it is. And I don’t think pretending otherwise actually helps us.
The honest reality is that senior living will always be decline-adjacent. That’s not a failure of marketing. It’s human nature. Nobody thinks seriously about where they’re going to live when they can no longer fully manage on their own until they start to face that question. That’s not pessimism; that’s just how people work. It is why we have pharmacies, funeral homes, cemeteries, and hospitals.
So What Can Actually Change?
The entry-causation ratio can change, and it’s a huge opportunity. Right now, crisis entries outnumber anticipation entries by a wide margin. What if we could flip even part of that? What if we could help more people decide to move into senior living while they still have choices … while they can still participate fully in community life, while they’re still healthy enough to build friendships and establish routines?
The Payoff For Senior Living
The payoff isn’t just philosophical. It’s financial. Earlier entry means a longer length of stay. It means higher acuity, which means less staff time per resident. It means residents who are capable enough to help shape the culture of the community rather than just inhabit it. It means a fundamentally different and better operating model.
But I think the way you get there isn’t by pretending decline isn’t coming. It’s by making the anticipation of decline feel like wisdom rather than defeat.
There’s a version of this that I find genuinely compelling, and I’ve heard it resonate with people in their late 60s and early 70s when it’s said plainly: “You’ve been smart about every other big decision in your life. Why would you wait until you’re in crisis to make this one?”
That’s not denial. That’s not spin. That’s an honest appeal to the kind of person who plans ahead, who thinks clearly about the future, who has spent a lifetime making good decisions, and doesn’t want to stop now.
The goal isn’t to make senior living something it isn’t. The goal is to make choosing it earlier feel like the smart move, because it genuinely is.
That’s a different pitch than “connection-first wellness ecosystem.” But I think it’s a more honest one. And in my experience, honest usually works better.

S8E9- The Small Things Are Everything: Amy Birkel on Senior Living Culture, Leadership & Workforce Retention

Jun 24, 2026

What if senior living’s biggest challenge isn’t staffing—but culture?

In this inspiring episode of Foresight Radio, Steve Moran sits down with Amy Birkel, Chief Operating Officer of Heritage Communities, for a conversation about leadership, workforce retention, and the future of senior living.
From washing dishes in a rural Nebraska nursing home to leading a 24-community organization across six states, Amy shares the experiences that shaped her passion for serving older adults and building thriving workplace cultures.
You’ll hear powerful insights on:
Why “the small things are everything” in resident care
How workplace culture impacts staff retention and resident satisfaction
The leadership lesson that changed Amy’s career forever: “Being clear is kind.”
Why senior living needs to become a destination people want to move to
How Heritage Communities reduced turnover through leadership development
The importance of investing in frontline staff and emerging leaders
The “Dirty Jobs” initiative that connects home office teams to community life
Why purpose—not just pay—drives long-term engagement
Amy’s vision for the future is bold:

“I hope we’re a destination people want to come to and don’t feel like they have to.”

Whether you’re a senior living executive, operator, caregiver, or industry innovator, this episode offers practical leadership lessons and a hopeful vision for the future of aging services.
Topics Covered:

Senior Living Leadership

Workforce Retention

Employee Engagement

Resident Experience

Workplace Culture

Assisted Living

Memory Care

Leadership Development

Senior Housing Trends

Aging Services Innovation

The Only Thing That Helped Was Presence

Jun 24, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is part of Murry off the Mic. Watch the full episode here.
Murry’s second defining story shifts from staff culture to resident care — and it changes the temperature of the entire episode.
He remembers one of the first residents who moved into Aspen House: carrying a “thick chart,” with diagnoses that intimidate even experienced professionals — Lewy body dementia and Parkinson’s.
The resident was living with hallucinations, fear, urgency, and a constant sense that something critical was being missed — like needing to pick up kids from the bus stop.
Murry and the team tried what most systems default to:
Doctor visits.Orders.Medication changes.Documentation.
And none of it fixed the problem.
What Actually Helped
Murry says the only thing that helped was presence.
A willingness to sit in a low-lit room with calm energy.A willingness to share the space.A willingness to be there in the fear without trying to “solve” it too quickly.
Some nights included talking.Some nights included crying.Some nights included laughter at the absurdity of what life brings.Sometimes it’s a hug. Sometimes it’s ice cream.
And the point isn’t that the nights are magical. The point is that they are repeated.
They show up again the next night.And the next.And the next.
This is the version of leadership and care that the podium of leadership can’t teach.
Because it isn’t about knowing what to do.
It’s about being willing to be there.
Belonging As A Clinical Intervention
Murry connects the resident story back to the staff story — and he draws a straight line through both:
Culture is the product of the environment.
When staff feel seen, heard, and supported, they show up differently.When residents feel known and included, everything changes.
Belonging isn’t a “soft” idea in that framing. It becomes a practical tool that affects behavior, resilience, and care outcomes.
It changes how staff treat each other.It changes how residents experience their own identity.It changes what people believe is possible on a hard day.
Why This Is The Right Premiere
This episode works as a launch because it isn’t trying to impress anyone.
It’s trying to locate the truth about leadership where leadership actually lives: in the quiet, repeated moments where presence becomes a practice.
Murry’s invitation to the industry is clear:
Bring the stories that don’t fit a keynote.Bring the moments that shaped you.Bring what you think when you’re not performing.
Because in senior living, care doesn’t come from having the perfect answer.
It comes from showing up.

Never Have a Worthless Meeting Again

Jun 23, 2026

By Steve Moran
Since selling Senior Living Foresight to ProcareHR, the most common question I get is this: “How’s it going?” My answer is always the same: great. I get to do a lot more of the things I like doing and fewer of the things that need to be done but that I hate doing.
One big difference, though …
A larger, more complex organization means more meetings, and more meetings I am not leading. Like all leaders, I think the meetings I lead are way more important and necessary than other people’s meetings.
And of course, they feel the same way about theirs.
This has caused me to put a lot more thought into my own meetings. And more broadly, how leaders can make their meetings more impactful and more efficient. Because here’s what I know: most meetings end in conversation. Very few end in action. There’s a difference, and it matters more than most leaders realize.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack)…

Stagnant Jobs and False Stability

Jun 22, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Midway through my sophomore year in college, a classic book appeared describing the corporate experience. One observation was:

“Management has tried to adjust the scientist to the organization rather than the organization to the scientist. It can do this with the mediocre and still have a harmonious group. It cannot do it with the brilliant, only freedom will make them harmonious.” [William H. Whyte, The Organization Man]

That’s still true today of hierarchical organizations. Hierarchy is prevalent in senior living. No wonder that the industry lags others in technology and organization. Hierarchy often leads to job stagnation that leaves employees feeling vaguely dissatisfied. What was true all those years ago is still true today. It’s best to leave at home that which distinguishes you and, at work, adapt to the hierarchy.
Stay or Leave
Human nature remains human nature. We are individuals who are at our best when we come together naturally for a shared purpose. We have that when friends come together to build an innovative startup. We lose that when we are hired as subordinates to someone we don’t respect. Unfortunately, the latter happens more often than is generally recognized.
Innovative thinkers are inherently nonconformist, and they are not always pleasantly well-rounded. They may be the key to an organization’s future, but they may not fit into the sterile step-by-step advancement structure common in hierarchy. You may be one. If you feel unseen and unheard at work, it may be that you don’t belong there.
Now, a new book has just appeared that makes this point for today’s generation. Just as Whyte focused on “scientists” instead of brilliance generally, so this new book is narrowly focused on a single profession, even though its wisdom applies generally to people working in corporate structures. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose [meaning].
Be Your Best Self
If you are a regular reader of Senior Living Foresight, you likely are not a person who fits seamlessly into the mediocrity of corporate structure. SLF is uniquely focused on the future of senior living and on possibilities for positive change rather than defense of the status quo. For you, the message extracted from this new book may be just the push you need.
To get benefit from it, though, substitute “talent” for the author’s preoccupation with his own chosen profession. He’s an actuary, and the book is The Independent Actuary by Syed Raza, but it’s more than that. It could be titled The Independent Thinker,” and you can read it as that. In fact, you can act on its message without reading it. If you want to read it, though, you can without cost if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.
This article is not to hawk a book but to share organizational and personal wisdom. I include the book just to ascribe credit where it is due. You may like the regularity of a recurring paycheck effortlessly deposited into your bank account, but that comes with a high-risk exposure.
Safety in Numbers
Mr. Raza’s insight is that you can be much more secure if you have multiple employers, and that you will also gain personal growth. With several clients, instead of a single employer, you can lose a client and still have a livelihood bridge to a replacement client. The stagnation of a hierarchical corporate career can stunt your growth. To quote Mr. Raza:

“Early in your career, risk is lower, recovery is easier, and optionality is wide. Later on, though, your lifestyle locks in, your mortgage grows, your identity hardens, and fear increases. The result? The cost of waiting rises.”

The antidote to job stagnation leading to career stagnation and a lackluster work life is to break free from corporate seduction and to treat your career as your primary business challenge. In short, Mr. Raza observes that you can become a business instead of working for a business. The one choice leads to independence and income security. The other leads to dependence and stagnation.
Mr. Raza writes of how easy it is to be lured into a false contentment with an excessive workload, sacrifice of your family, etc., all in the name of carrying a corporate position. The risk of false contentment, he adds, “often goes unnoticed until something forces you to confront it, like: a layoff, a restructuring, or a desire to leave.”
To help you understand if this fits you, he asks, “Is your compensation determined by the market or by a salary band?” Good question. Are you paid what you’re worth or by HR policies?
It Just Makes Sense
The answer Mr. Raza and logic offer is to go out on your own. You can be a consultant, a freelance worker, a gig worker, or a project worker. What determines your work status for the IRS, a key determination, is primarily control. The more direction and control a business has over a worker’s schedule, methods, and equipment, the more likely that worker is an employee. It’s likely that this artificial control is exactly what is making you dissatisfied.
The challenge is to find clients. It’s best to have several clients or many. Start with where you work. Your current employer can be your first client. Never burn bridges to your employer by unloading in your departure all the injustice you may feel you experienced. If you’re leaving, you know that your employer has an opening. If the company has the flexibility to use an independent contractor to get the work done, you may be the best person for that.
The alternative to constructive leaving might be to form a union. We can put that out of our minds right at the start. Unionization immediately sets up an employee organization at odds with the employer. Better is to help conform the employer toward a better business model.

As an aside relevant to SLF readers, some residents in senior living have suggested forming consumer “unions” to bargain with providers by using the paying of fees into escrow as equivalent to a strike. Labor unions, though, are protected by law and consumer unions are not. It’s better to work with others than to foster conflict.

Beyond seeking to support the employer you are leaving, finding clients is the same as finding a new job after losing the job you’ve had. You, though, will be in an enviable position of controlling your leaving instead of being laid off or, worse, being let go for cause. The important thing is to make your availability known. You do that by publishing, posting, and networking. LinkedIn is a good place for that, and industry publications are another. Mr. Raza offers other suggestions.
It’s Less Risky Than You Imagine
My own experience, which Mr. Raza indicates is his as well, is that clients come more readily than what you fear. I remember a friend who preceded me into working independently telling me when I was first on my own, “Don’t worry about clients. Once people know you’re available, work will just come in over the transom.”
If you’re a low-level employee, start a trash management and cleaning business. If you’re midlevel, say a maintenance or enrichment director, start a related service, demonstrating how clients like your last employer can get better service at a lower cost by retaining you. You have the major advantage of being able to spread the cost of services over several clients.
It’s Not Your Fault
Finally, don’t blame yourself if your career is languishing in stagnation. You may rationalize that you deserve the treatment you’ve been enduring. You don’t. If you work in a hierarchical company, your boss may feel threatened by your know-how, competence, and pace of delivering results. You can never know when your boss may be poisoning your reputation within the company for the self-serving purpose of framing circumstances for your dismissal.
As employers move to the flexible economy, the ingenuity unleashed by moving beyond hierarchy will benefit their businesses as well. By going out on your own, you’re not being disloyal to your employer. It may start a laggard business on a new course toward greater success. If you still need encouragement, click on this sentence for an anecdote from renowned business professor Seth Godin. Take the jump, open your parachute, and land safely. If that’s too academic, click here to listen to Tom Brady.

Designing Senior Living for Connection — Not Just Convenience

Jun 19, 2026

What if a coffee shop, local bistro, or food truck could do more than provide a meal? In this clip, Gaurie Rodman explores how senior living communities can use outside partnerships to create social connection, improve staff quality of life, and make buildings feel more connected to the surrounding community. You can watch the full episode here.

Transcript:

Think about this from the resident’s perspective.
What if the coffee shop is actually a local bistro set inside the building in a way that the larger community can come in and residents can go there, too? Now we are socially engineering connection within the building without even thinking about it.
We have moved beyond the idea of, “I have a 100-unit building, and I am doing everything for myself.” We are now seeing buildings where people are talking about courtyards designed so a food truck can come in, plug in, and serve one of the meals.
We talked about this on the food service side. What if I can tell my food service staff, “One day a week, you are going to get off because we are going to rely on partnerships with a local restaurant or a food truck to provide that service”?
For somebody in the food industry, having a regular Sunday or Monday off is a big deal. Think about the value and quality of life we have just created for that staff member.

Senior Living Is Shifting From Care to Lifestyle

Jun 19, 2026

Senior living’s future is not just about care. It is about creating environments where older adults feel safe, supported, and fully alive. In this clip, Gaurie Rodman explains why the next generation of residents will expect more than protection — they will want choice, identity, energy, and a lifestyle that helps them stay connected to what makes life meaningful. Watch the full episode here.

Transcript:

If I’m aging, and I’m thinking to myself that part of it is table stakes — it’s looked after. Either the building is looking after me, or technology and systems, or people, or a combination of all three is making me safe.
But everything about this space empowers me to be my best self — whether it’s that I want to continue to travel, or I’m a foodie, or I just want a little crazy in my life. I want intergenerational connection. I need that, because that’s what drives vitality. That drives better health care. That drives better living.
It’s all about living your best life — and then not just being kept going.

What Do I Need To Stop Believing About Myself?

Jun 19, 2026

By Steve Moran
I attend 15 to 25 conferences a year. I have conversations with thousands of leaders, some casual and some amazingly deep. I’ve been doing this long enough that it should feel routine. And yet I am still terrified walking into every single one.
A while back I started doing short one-question street interviews. The format is simple: I walk up to a stranger and say something like, “I’m doing a series of one-question interviews. Can I interview you?”
That’s it.
Easy ask.
Low stakes.
Except it isn’t. Not for me.
Every time. Every day. That first approach is almost paralyzing. In truth, there have been days I didn’t do it at all because fear won. I stood there with every intention of walking up to someone and just … didn’t.
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What Boomers Really Want From Senior Living

Jun 18, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
Steve Moran talks with Gaurie Rodman of Direct Supply in this episode of Directly Speaking. Watch the full conversation here.
Senior Living’s Boomer Challenge Is Not About Age — It’s About Identity
Senior living keeps asking what boomers want.
That sounds like the right question, but Gaurie Rodman makes it clear that it is probably incomplete. The deeper question is this: how do you design for a generation that does not particularly want to get old in the first place?
That tension matters.
Boomers are not simply looking for a safe place to land. They want safety, yes. They want support, yes. But those things by themselves are not enough. Safety is not vitality. Security is not meaning. And being protected is not the same as feeling alive.
That is where the conversation around senior living design often goes sideways.
Aging Is Personal — Not Just Practical
Gaurie describes the challenge as partly cultural and partly personal. In America, aging has too often been framed as decline. Youth gets celebrated. Aging gets managed. That story gets stuck in people’s heads for decades.
So when someone begins to consider senior living, they are not just making a housing decision. They are dealing with identity.
Who am I now?What does this choice say about me?Will this place let me stay myself?
Those are not soft questions. They are central questions.
Too much of senior living has historically been built around circumstances instead of personhood. A resident needs care. A building provides care. End of story.
But that is not how people choose where they want to live for the rest of their lives. Every housing choice before that point reflects values, preferences, aspirations, and self-image. Senior living should not suddenly become the one stage of life where those things no longer matter.
The Taj Mahal Problem
Steve raises an issue that many in the industry understand instinctively. A lot of senior living has been shaped by real estate thinking.
That often means big, beautiful, impressive buildings — spaces meant to wow on first impression. There is logic to that. Investors like strong assets. Prospects like attractive environments. Everyone likes a building that feels polished.
But there is a danger too.
A building can be gorgeous and still feel wrong.
If the environment is scaled more like a grand lobby than a home, if it feels performative instead of personal, if it prioritizes image over connection, it misses the point. Gaurie says what many people have thought but not said out loud: some of these environments feel less like home and more like institutions dressed up in nicer finishes.
Boomers are not going to embrace that easily.
They want agency. They want relevance. They want spaces that help them continue being themselves, not spaces that quietly tell them their real life is over.
Flexibility Is Not Optional
One of the most important ideas in the conversation is this: the industry does not actually know exactly what the next generation of residents will want.
That uncertainty is not a problem to hide from. It is a design condition to accept.
Gaurie talks about the need for flexible, adaptable buildings. Not because flexibility is trendy, but because the market is changing too fast — and the consumer is too complex — for rigid thinking.
That means buildings should not be designed around one frozen model of aging. They need to support multiple lifestyles, evolving expectations, and changing levels of care. They need to make room for individuality.
That is hard. It is expensive. It requires discipline.
But the alternative is worse: building communities that are obsolete before they fully stabilize.
Community Matters More Than Containment
Another major shift is this: senior living cannot keep pulling people out of community and expecting them to feel whole.
For years, the model has often been to find a nice piece of land, place a beautiful building on it, and create a self-contained world. The intention is usually good. The result is often clean, efficient, and safe.
But boomers do not necessarily want to be removed from life in order to receive support.
They want connection to neighborhoods, to activity, to intergenerational energy, to ordinary daily experiences. They do not want to disappear into a protected bubble. They want environments that keep them linked to the broader world.
That is more than a location issue. It is a philosophical issue.
The best senior living design does not say, “Come here and retreat.” It says, “Come here and keep living.”
The Real Goal
The most powerful thread in this conversation is that design is not really about buildings. It is about human possibility.
Can the environment help someone remain adventurous?Can it protect without smothering?Can it support without diminishing?Can it create belonging without erasing individuality?
That is the challenge senior living has to solve.
Not how to build prettier buildings.Not how to create a shinier lobby.Not how to make aging look less old.
The challenge is how to create environments where people can still feel like themselves — maybe even more fully themselves — as they age.
That is harder work.
It is also the work that matters most.

A New Space for Honest Conversation in Senior Living

Jun 17, 2026

In this launch clip, Murry shares what excites him most about Murry Off the Mic: honest conversation, meaningful growth, and the people behind the work. Watch the full episode HERE.

Transcript:
Steve Moran here. As many of you regular viewers know, we are at a top tech gathering in Las Vegas, and today we are launching a brand-new show called Murry Off the Mic. I am so excited about it.
First, thank you so much to Procare HR and Foresight for even thinking of me for this. It is a real honor.
What excites me most about this opportunity is all of the people I have met through the years and the chance to bring them into an environment where we can have a real conversation. I am looking forward to growing through this experience, and I hope the audience is interested in growing with me.

Revolutionizing Your Resident and Team Experiences at Zero Cost

Jun 17, 2026

By Steve Moran
This is something that has been rattling around as disconnected thinking in my head for months. I had the sense there was something here but was at a complete loss.
While at LTC100 in Scottsdale a while back, like magic, the dots connected. Two observations I couldn’t reconcile suddenly became one big idea.
The two observations:

When expenses start creeping up, it is a widely accepted practice to take a hard look at all expenditures, looking for even small ways to reduce costs. When you shave pennies in enough places, it creates meaningful, measurable improvements to the bottom line.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of technology vendors that promise higher efficiencies and staff savings. Mostly, the claims get dismissed because unless a technology can allow you to reduce headcount or scheduled hours, the rightful reaction is, “So what?”

A New Way To Think About It
Here is the problem that no one ever talks about: tasks always win. Team members are hired to do a job, and that job is ultimately a series of tasks. Meaningful connection with residents is also expected, but when time is tight, connection is what gets crowded out every single time.
As I was listening to some interesting AI technology pitches that included the usual claims of staff savings, it hit me hard that they were onto something big that no one is talking about.
It’s Huge
If organizations started looking for penny-sized savings in team workflows, those pennies would add up to meaningful extra minutes, maybe even extra hours, that could be used to create better experiences for residents.
Imagine your team members recouping 30 minutes a day. Or an hour.
Where the Minutes Could Come From
The savings are hiding in the friction nobody talks about. A few examples:

A care aide spends 12 minutes per shift tracking down a supervisor to ask a documentation question that an AI assistant could answer in 30 seconds.
A nurse dictates incident notes by voice instead of typing them out. That’s 8 minutes back per report.
Scheduling software eliminates three phone calls to fill an open shift. That’s another 15 minutes.
Automated family updates, a brief text or email triggered by a care event, replace the manually written message the charge nurse was composing at the end of a long shift.
The resident wears a patch or spends one minute in front of a technology-based mirror that captures vitals, loads them into the resident record, and flags possible changes in condition.

None of them is dramatic or even noticeable by themselves. But across the team and across a week or month, those moments become additional meaningful encounters between residents and team members.
What You Do With Those Minutes
This is where it gets good:

A caregiver sits down next to a resident who has been quiet all morning, not to complete a task, just to be present.
A dining team member notices a resident’s birthday is tomorrow and spends five minutes personalizing their place setting.
A nurse calls a family member not because something went wrong, but to share something the resident said that made the whole hall laugh.
A med tech finishes a pass early and takes a resident outside for ten minutes of fresh air because the weather is nice and the resident mentioned yesterday that she missed her garden.

None of those things cost money. Every single one of them is the difference between a community that delivers care and a community that delivers an experience.
The Real Opportunity
The senior living industry has been asking technology to solve a staffing problem. That is the wrong question.
The right question is, “What would your team do with their time if the friction got out of the way?”

The Frontline Is Not a Cost Center; It’s the Value Proposition

Jun 16, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In this episode of Heard in the Halls, Lindsey Daugherty sits down with Serina Durrah, VP of Operations at Clayborn Senior Living, for a conversation senior living leaders badly need to hear. Watch the full episode here.
Serina’s story starts where senior living really happens: on the floor.
She became a CNA in high school. Her first job after graduation was as a caregiver in assisted living. Like a lot of people, she assumed it would be a stepping-stone to something “more prestigious” — a hospital, a doctor’s office, a more traditional health care path.
Then she fell in love with the residents.
One resident, in particular, became almost like a grandfather to her. Every day, he greeted her, pointed at her, asked how she was doing. That connection changes everything.
And this is the first leadership lesson senior living needs right now: People do not stay in this industry because the spreadsheets are beautiful. They stay because residents become real.
The Missing Voice At The Table
As Serina moved from caregiver to med tech, assistant care director, business office director, executive director, regional leader, and now VP of operations, she brings something with her that too many leaders lose along the way: the memory of what it feels like to be the person actually delivering the care.
That matters.
Because in senior living, decisions made in conference rooms do not stay in conference rooms. They land on caregivers. They land on nurses. They land on housekeepers, cooks, dining teams, maintenance directors, activity teams, and executive directors already trying to manage 49 things before lunch.
A process change may look smart on paper.
A labor target may look reasonable in a boardroom.
A new initiative may sound simple in a meeting.
But Serina asks the question every operator, investor, and executive should be asking: How does this affect the frontline caregiver?
Does it make the work easier?
Does it make the work more efficient?
Or does it make an already hard job harder?
That is not a soft question. It is a business question.
NOI Starts On The Floor
Lindsey pushes into the question many leaders are thinking but do not always say out loud: If an investor wants to increase NOI, why does the caregiver matter?
Serina’s answer is simple: senior living is the care business.
If the frontline team is not strong, resident satisfaction suffers. If resident satisfaction suffers, occupancy suffers. If occupancy suffers, revenue suffers. If revenue suffers, NOI suffers.
This is not complicated.
It is also not always easy.
The caregiver is not just a line item under labor. The caregiver is the person who knows whether Mrs. Johnson is eating, whether Mr. Smith is more confused today than yesterday, whether a family member is worried, whether a resident is lonely, whether a fall risk is increasing, whether the community feels warm or cold.
That is the business.
And when those caregivers are frustrated, exhausted, ignored, or unsupported, the spreadsheet eventually tells the story. It just tells it too late.
The Spreadsheet Doesn’t Show The Whole Day
Serina makes a point every ownership group should tape to the wall: When leaders only look at the numbers, they miss what happened in real life.
They see labor over budget.
They do not see five family members walking in with questions.
They do not see two residents getting sick.
They do not see one resident falling.
They do not see a coworker calling out.
They do not see a caregiver running behind, trying to serve residents well while feeling like she is failing everyone.
This is where senior living often breaks down. The people farthest from the work make assumptions about the people closest to it.
Serina’s dream is simple: Investors and executives should spend time in communities and actually witness what frontline staff are doing every day.
Not a polished tour.
Not a staged visit.
A real day.
Because a real day in senior living is messy, human, unpredictable, and full of moments that never make it into a dashboard.
Collaboration Beats Command And Control
Serina is clear that operators understand investors need a return. The goal is not to pretend margins do not matter. The goal is to create a more honest path to getting there.
That path requires collaboration.
When operators ask for something specific, they need ownership and investors to listen with an open mind. When performance needs to improve, operators need room to explain what is happening, what plans are in place, and what obstacles are real.
Sometimes progress slows because people are dealing with people problems — HR problems, resident issues, family concerns, staffing realities, or regulatory constraints.
You cannot simply “terminate everyone” because there was a bad month.
You cannot spreadsheet your way around trust.
You cannot demand performance from teams who feel ignored and unsupported.
But you can build clarity. You can build accountability. You can build trust. And you can build a bridge between the people watching the numbers and the people creating the results.
The Bottom Line
The biggest leadership mistake senior living makes is treating the frontline as the expense that needs to be managed instead of the engine that creates the value.
Serina’s journey from caregiver to VP is not just a nice career story. It is a warning.
If senior living wants better occupancy, stronger retention, higher satisfaction, and healthier NOI, leaders need to get closer to the halls.
Because the answer may not be in the board deck.
It may be with the caregiver who just finished helping a resident feel human again.

Education and Training: Leadership Basics

Jun 15, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Recently, I set myself a task that most would avoid but which proved surprisingly thought-provoking. That task was to reread George Eliot’s, Silas Marner. You may not know either the author or the book, but it has the potential to teach more about building senior living communities than any contemporary academic analysis.
Understanding Communities
Let me explain. I was interested in learning more about why some purpose-built communities come together well, even as others seem dysfunctional. This phenomenon is central to senior housing. Some communities, like Goodwin Living in Northern Virginia, are very successful. Others, though, have residents at odds with operating management.
This may seem a little like trying to understand why some marriages work and others … well … do not seem to have been made in heaven. Sensing that commonality, I first looked to social psychology as a possible starting point. Someone suggested a book, and I dove right in.
The book was, Attached, coauthored by Amir Levine, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, and Rachel Heller, a psychologist. That led me to a school of psychology, “attachment theory,” attributed to John Bowlby, a British child psychiatrist, and Mary Ainsworth, a developmental psychologist.
“Attachment theory” posits that the bond between infants and their primary caregivers is informative for subsequent adult behaviors. That seemed like Sigmund Freud’s observation that infancy is critical for human development. In today’s understandings, that’s self-evident.
Deeper Understanding
If modern clinical psychology originated with Freud, with attachment theory seeming obvious and even trite, I considered what wisdom that could inform community formation existed before Freud. My first thought was that wisdom about human behaviors was found in literature.
I then remembered a book we were forced to read in high school that had no meaning for me at the time. The book was George Eliot’s, Silas Marner. From later studies, I knew, though, that Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was a novelist fascinated by medicine (e.g., Middlemarch).
That seemed the reverse of Freud’s path as a physician fascinated by the stuff of novelists, infidelity, etc. The novelist’s eye for emotions seemed more likely to be productive for my quest than did Freud’s clinical approach. That proved to be dramatically true, and it opened to my adult understanding, a curricular misadventure from high school.
Community Insights
Silas Marner is about communal life in a small English village in the early 19th century. Get it? The communal life depicted in Marner is very similar to communal life in senior living today, or to communal life in any era, for that matter. The language is colloquial and archaic, but that can heighten the sense of universality that can inform our understanding of senior living communities. Every community is both universal and unique. Here’s an example:

“Priscilla here turned to the Miss Gunns, rattling on in so much preoccupation with the delight of talking, to notice that her candour was not appreciated.”

We can all think of people who talk at length with little content of interest. Perhaps, even, that is more common among the residents of a senior living community than among younger people. Still, I know many corporate leaders who like to sing at length about their unique insights and wisdom.
Another example comments on medical practice and might be as valid today as it was then, though the remedy proposed would not be accepted today.

“Silas had taken to smoking a pipe daily during the last two years, having been strongly urged to it by the sages of Raveloe, as a practice ‘good for the fits’, and this advice was sanctioned by Dr. Kimble, on the ground that it was as well to try what could do no harm – a principle which was made to answer for a great deal of work in that gentleman’s medical practice. Silas did not highly enjoy smoking and often wondered how his neighbours could be so fond of it.”

Even today, many a doctor would never question the use of chicken soup as a remedy for a cold or a spoonful of honey for a cough.
Assuming you were inflicted with the reading of Silas Marner before your awareness was ready for the encounter, you remember that Silas was a miser, hoarding money, until Providence sent him a greater purpose. That, too, has its parallels in senior living. There are many who are motivated more by personal gain or personal adulation until something brings them to turn emotionally, as Silas did, toward a higher mission.
Education and Training
That brings us to the subject of this article, the distinction between education and training. Both have come to be found on college campuses today. Education is a broad exploration of human experience. I was blessed to have early been attracted to culture and history, and I continued to pursue that interest in graduate school, though I never completed a dissertation.
Training involves indoctrination into the practices of a vocation. Many people major in business, social sciences, or practical arts. I was also blessed to find employment at age 22 that allowed me to work my way through the examinations to qualify as a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries. Like reading for the law, actuaries are still able to learn without having to spend time in classrooms.
There is a difference between training and education, and, candidly, the advanced study of history has served me better in business than has the mastery of the math, compliance, and business concepts required for Fellowship.
Authority or Skepticism
Here’s my explanation of why that has been so. With training, even in a university, there is usually a textbook that forms the authority for the course. Students are expected to master the text, and that requires memorization. The result is to reduce emphasis on the art of questioning the status quo. I know of no vocational program that encourages students to question the textbook in search of a better approach.
Education is different. Understanding of human nature and critical thinking form the core of what is taught. A good history professor, or literature, philosophy, or even religion professor, encourages students to challenge the understanding that the professor presents in the lecture hall. The professor is usually still learning as opposed to vocational professors who are mostly teaching.
Well-Rounded is Best
Both skills, mastery and creativity, are the makings of great business leaders. Business is continuously changing and rapidly at that. History can help understanding of how progress advances. Those who have been schooled in business or other vocational curricula are well served later in life to delve into the humanities, especially history and literature, to gain the adaptive skills to stay ahead of the pace of change.
For those grounded in the humanities, business requires an understanding of finance, economics, risk management, accounting, and other technical topics. Presumably, a university experience has developed skills of rapid reading, absorption of varying customs and practices, and clarity in writing. People wishing to prepare for the opportunities ahead can benefit from reading in the areas they missed in college. Writing and publishing can hone clarity of vision and attract helpful feedback.
Learning is lifelong and never stops, whether it is credentialed by the awarding of degrees or merely provides the basis for more effective leadership.

The Leaders Who Can’t Be Wrong Are the Most Dangerous Ones

Jun 12, 2026

By Steve Moran
Best-selling author Adam Grant recently recommended this article, “The Personal Value of Conversations Across Serious Disagreement (guest post).” My immediate reaction was something like this:
This is what the world needs right now.
It seems like on social media, people are either too harsh, too agreeable, or too afraid of disagreement. None of which makes the world a better place. None of which helps organizations get better. Here is what I am seeing …
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I Am So Cool …

Jun 11, 2026

By Steve Moran
I just checked. I have 31,475 followers on LinkedIn. I bet you don’t have that many.
Confession: I actually feel completely smarmy telling you that.
Honestly, it means nothing, except maybe a lot of wasted time on LinkedIn. If your goal is to grow your LinkedIn follower numbers, anyone can do it. It’s not an overnight thing. I have been on LinkedIn since its early days — at least 20 years back, when having 1,000 connections was a big deal, and no one could quite figure out what to do with it.
One more thing you should know about my LinkedIn stats: there are plenty of people out there in the senior living ecosystem who rack up way more impressions per year than I do.
What It All Means
I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t pay attention to your LinkedIn analytics. You absolutely should. But followers and impressions can easily become vanity metrics that feed one’s ego and nothing else. I have a number of friends who are trying to sell services, good services, valuable services, who have had posts go viral, only to be disappointed that it brought them zero business.
What Counts
There are really only two things that count on LinkedIn:

It Grows Your Business. This means different things for different people and organizations. In some cases, the posts become “top of the funnel” that trigger a sales sequence that leads to business.
It Makes the World a Better Place. This is perhaps more subjective, and some might even call it judgmental, something I am glad to own. Here is what I mean. Does your post help leaders lead better? Does your post help people think about things differently? Does it inspire them to live a better, happier life? These are the things that count.

The Highest Value
As I have been working on this article, I have come to believe the highest value LinkedIn offers is actually the simplest: making new connections and deepening existing ones.
In person, human-to-human, will always be the richest form of relationship building. That’s followed by phone calls and video calls. But sometimes, because of distance, time, and energy, LinkedIn becomes the thing that keeps us connected until we are in the same place at the same time. And when that moment comes, those conversations are richer because of it.
We have AI, and we have social media. Both have made our lives better, maybe. If I’m honest, I’m not 100% sure I believe that, even though I use both constantly.
What I do believe is this: the platform is only as valuable as what you bring to it. Followers and impressions won’t tell you that. But the person who reaches out because something you wrote mattered to them, that says it all.
When the Numbers Count
When I sold Senior Living Foresight to ProcareHR, that follower number had a real dollar value attached to it. Reach matters when you’re building something. Influence is an asset when it’s time to put a price on what you’ve built.
So I’m not here to pretend numbers don’t matter. Sometimes they genuinely do.
But the question that actually matters is this: did your post make anything better for anyone?
The Closed Loop Problem
You can feel it when you scroll …
Trite memes dressed up as wisdom. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Teamwork makes the dream work. If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. Fail fast, learn faster. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Maybe. Maybe not. But they got likes, so here we are.
Poor me posts about how overworked and misunderstood they — fill in the position … executive directors, marketing directors, life enrichment directors, regional leaders — are, with no path forward and no solution offered.
Photos that are really just “look how cool I am” with a caption stapled on.
Trivia posts. How much meat should be in a taco? How many things on this list have you done? Designed entirely to generate engagement, carrying zero actual value.
Complaints about AI. Every. Single. Day.
None of this makes anyone’s life better. None of it grows anyone’s business. It just recirculates, performing influence for an audience that is performing right back.
What Actually Builds a Following
I’ve been writing for senior living leaders for a long time. The following I have didn’t come from posting my metrics. It came from saying things people recognized as true and valuable, even when those things were uncomfortable.
That’s a slower build. It doesn’t generate the same short-term spike. But the people who follow you because you said something that mattered are a completely different audience from the people who followed you because your number looked impressive.
One of those audiences will still be there in five years.
The Only Number Worth Posting
LinkedIn is an amazing platform that gives you the opportunity to improve the lives of your audience and, by extension, your audience’s audience.
When you post things that bring real value to people, you make the world just a little bit better. That makes your life better and your organization better.
And ultimately, it will make you more money, since we are all selling something.

S8 Episode 8 — Why Where You Live Shapes How You Age with Ryan Frederick

Jun 10, 2026

What if the most important decision you’ll make as you age isn’t about healthcare, finances, or retirement — but where you choose to live?
In this episode of Foresight Radio, Steve Moran sits down with longevity strategist, author, and place planning expert Ryan Frederick to explore why “place” may be the most overlooked factor in healthy aging.
Ryan shares his unique journey from Silicon Valley engineer to senior living developer, consultant, author, and founder of Here. Along the way, he discovered a powerful truth: where we live shapes our health, relationships, financial well-being, and overall quality of life more than most people realize.
The conversation dives into Ryan’s Four Quadrants of Place Planning framework—Environment, Health, Community, and Finances—and why aging in place isn’t always the best goal. Instead, Ryan argues that intentionality, adaptability, and social connection should drive our decisions about where and how we live.
Steve and Ryan also discuss:
✅ Why community matters more than amenities
✅ The surprising link between friendships and longevity
✅ Why “resident experience” may be the wrong focus for senior living operators
✅ The danger of the “forever home” mindset
✅ How senior living communities can help prospects make better decisions
✅ Why the best communities empower residents to shape culture themselves
✅ The role of place planning in helping older adults thrive for decades
Whether you’re a senior living leader, aging services professional, family caregiver, or simply thinking about your own future, this conversation will challenge how you think about aging, independence, and belonging.
🎙️ Listen now and discover why the future of aging may not be aging in place—it may be finding the right place at the right time.

How Senior Living Stumbled Into One of Its Biggest Ideas

Jun 10, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is based on the Pivot with Pettit episode “From City Planner to Senior Living Pioneer: Mitch Brown on the Future of Senior Living.” Watch the full conversation on YouTube.
Active Adult Didn’t Arrive With A Grand Plan
Senior living loves origin stories.
Usually, those stories are a little cleaner than reality.
One of the best parts of Bill Pettit’s conversation with Mitch Brown is hearing how active adult did not emerge from a giant whiteboard strategy session or a perfectly timed market thesis. It emerged the way many good ideas emerge in this industry — through a problem, a half-finished building, some market intuition, and a willingness to try something that did not fit neatly into the existing categories.
That matters because active adult is now one of the most talked-about segments in senior housing. But Mitch’s story is a reminder that before it became a category, it was simply a response to unmet demand.
A Building No One Quite Wanted
Mitch describes a partially constructed project in Orange County that had originally been intended for assisted living. The bank had effectively walked away from it. The market did not support the original plan. The asset needed a new idea.
Instead of forcing it into the wrong box, Mitch saw something else.
He saw demand for modest, independent housing for older adults at a good price and without a government subsidy. Not luxury. Not licensed care. Not a traditional independent living community with all the bells and whistles. Just a place that met a real need for older adults who wanted something simpler and more affordable.
The result was 139 units in Laguna Hills.
The rent was around $600 a month.
And the community leased all 139 units in 90 days.
That is not just a success story. That is market feedback.
The Industry Was Already Changing
What makes Mitch’s view especially helpful is that he connects this early experience to a larger shift that was already underway.
Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he and others could see traditional independent living changing. Residents were moving in older. Frailty was increasing. The product was drifting away from truly independent older adults and toward a customer with more needs and, often, a higher price point.
That left a gap.
A lot of people did not need licensed senior living. They did not want traditional multifamily housing either. They wanted age-friendly housing, lifestyle, community, and ease — but without all the structure and cost that came with full-service senior living.
That gap is where active adult began to make sense.
Not as a buzzword. As a response.
The First Try Wasn’t Easy
One of the reasons this episode works so well is that Mitch does not romanticize any of it.
He and his team later built more active adult communities in California through Kisco, and they quickly discovered that running them was not simple. In fact, one of the most important lessons in the interview is that active adult is not just senior living with less care, and it is not just multifamily with older residents.
It is its own thing.
That sounds obvious now, but apparently it was not obvious then.
Their operators, who were excellent in traditional senior living, struggled. The staffing model was different. The service mix was different. The residents were younger and wanted something different. The whole operating approach needed to shift.
So they pivoted.
They brought in a multifamily partner to handle the multifamily side while Kisco handled the senior housing side — sales, lifestyle, marketing, and the resident experience. In other words, they stopped trying to force one existing model to do a job it was not built to do.
That decision feels important.
Too much of senior living innovation is really just old operating assumptions wearing new clothes. Mitch’s story suggests that active adult only started to work when they respected the fact that it was different.
Why This Still Matters
This is not just a story about what happened years ago.
It is a story about what the industry still gets wrong.
Active adult is sometimes treated as easy because it appears lighter. Fewer services. Less care. Leaner staffing. Simpler buildings. But that can lead to the mistaken belief that it requires less thought.
Mitch makes it clear that it requires different thought.
Different customer. Different economics. Different sales process. Different expectations. Different psychographics. Different ways of building community.
That may be one reason the segment continues to attract interest while also frustrating people who underestimate it.
The Bigger Lesson
There is a bigger point sitting underneath all of this.
The best innovations in senior living often happen when someone notices the market changing before the language catches up. Mitch and others saw a customer who was not well served by existing options. Then they started building for that customer.
That is what the industry has to keep doing.
Because active adult itself may not be the final answer. It may just be one more chapter in a broader rethinking of how older adults want to live.
And if Mitch Brown’s story tells us anything, it is that the next big idea in senior living may already be sitting there in plain sight — half-built, badly categorized, and waiting for someone to see what it could become.

Dirty Jobs Insanity

Jun 9, 2026

By Steve Moran
This might be the most insane leadership technique I have ever encountered … in the best kind of way.
Once a month, the entire corporate team at Heritage Communities abandons their “important corporate office work” and heads to one of their senior living communities to do something way more important.
They do things like raking leaves, painting parking lot lines, cleaning out a pond, scrubbing whatever needs scrubbing. Doing the most unpleasant tasks that no one likes doing but that have to be done.
They call it Dirty Jobs.
When Amy Birkel, the COO of Heritage, told me the story on Foresight TV, I was enthralled. It’s not just a program; it is something truly revolutionary.
Here is what happens …

Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

What’s Your Business Model?

Jun 8, 2026

By Jack Cumming
The opening sentence of the video was a grabber, “Aldi breaks most of the rules of modern retail.” Imagine a senior living enterprise about which the first thing that came to mind was, “[LongLife Community] breaks most of the rules of [senior housing].” My passion has been business, and my age has brought me into senior housing. Naturally, I watched the video looking for ideas that might help senior living providers, their residents, and their industry associates.
The Middle Market
For a long time, articles and postings about senior living have heralded not only the coming demographic wave but also the largely untapped middle market. For the middle market, the tendency has been to emphasize Active Adult 55+ and Margaritaville as what the middle market wants and can afford. It’s as if all middle-market seniors were heavy drinkers and golfers.
My insight is that we can find, in Aldi’s approach, a more suitable business model for the large, neglected middle market. Many of the operating principles that are driving Aldi’s growth can apply equally well to bringing senior living to the middle market. That doesn’t mean that more affluent agers won’t sometimes choose the more frugal offering. Think of all the wealthy people who shop at Target, always giving it a snooty French pronunciation, “Tar-zhay,” with emphasis on the second syllable.
Frugal Operations
From the outset, Aldi emphasized “no frills” to drive home its value proposition of low prices. After all, the name, “Aldi,” is derived from “Albrecht Diskont.” Albrecht was the surname for a German family’s grocery business, and “Diskont” translates to “Discount” in English.
Two brothers, Karl and Theo, took it over, introduced low prices and frugality, and then divided it into two corporations, Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd, to resolve a brotherly dispute. According to the video, Aldi’s watchword, at least for Aldi Süd, has been to question everything: “Does this reduce the total cost of serving the customer over time?”
The very name, “Aldi,” declares that the business offers quality (family reputation) at a discount. They don’t waste money on architectural and other frippery. They focus on giving value to consumers. In senior living, it could be branded to provide a similarly barebones offering with homestyle food, resident volunteers, and simple living. “Does life enrichment reduce the total cost of residency over time?” Answer, “No, residents could handle that for themselves.” And that’s just a cost-saving beginning.
Ownership Structure
Aldi’s unusual ownership structure is part of its unique business model. To begin, neither Aldi Nord nor Aldi Sud is a public corporation, nor are they not-for-profit. They are more akin to benefit corporations since continuity of employment for employees and long-term value for customers are driving principles.
Before World War II, Germans were known principally for frugality and industriousness. The Albrecht brothers, who created Aldi, were of that generation, and they served in the German military during World War II. Military values were derived from Prussian concepts. Among those values were loyalty, discipline, duty, readiness, and unit autonomy.
These values are implicit in many of the concepts that have allowed Aldi to thrive. It suggests what Germany might have been capable of if it had not pursued conquest, antisemitism, and German (Aryan) superiority. The Albrechts today are the wealthiest family in Germany, and they have global reach. Still, there is goodness in the “Stiftungen” (foundations, trusts, beneficences) which have the overall ownership authority.
Goodness As a Value
That “goodness” is evident in the practice of letting checkout clerks sit instead of having to stand all day, as is common elsewhere. Aldi’s employees are mostly happy with their treatment. Compare that with a Spectrum Cable store I visited recently. I asked an employee why they didn’t have stools. The answer: “We’re required to stand if there’s a customer in the store.” That’s the usual American norm.
Could following the abstemious values that have guided Aldi and made the Albrechts the wealthiest family in Germany help senior living better fulfill the industry’s mission? Could moving away from not-for-profit organization toward benefit corporations give the industry latitude to better serve its beneficiaries, the residents? These are questions that deserve serious conversation.

My Network Has an Expiration Date … and So Does Yours …

Jun 5, 2026

By Steve Moran
I came across an Instagram post this week from Jen Gottlieb. Seven things she’d do if she were starting her network from scratch. Weekly networking events. Daily connection calls. Monthly gatherings you host yourself.
A list of 20 dream relationships you study intentionally.
It was a great list, and I saved it.
There was something, though, that got me thinking … It was an assumption about me, well, not me personally, but about everyone who read the list. It was an assumption that I think is fundamentally wrong for most people.
It’s in her very first task … “I would go by myself to a new networking environment every week that attracts the type of people I want to meet.”

Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free.

The Future of AgeTech Is Not a Button. It’s a Village.

Jun 4, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is based on a recent Tech Tuesday livestream conversation with Steve and Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of LogicMark. You can watch the full conversation here: The Future of Caregiving: Digital Twins, Smart Homes, and Aging-in-Place in 2026.
For decades, medical alert technology has lived in the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” era.
A button. A call center. A device that often screams “old” louder than it delivers dignity.
Chia-Lin Simmons thinks it is time for that to change.
As CEO of LogicMark, she brings a very different background to the aging services world. She has spent nearly 30 years in technology, including time with companies like Google, Amazon, Audible, and other AI and connected-device businesses. At first glance, moving from big tech and artificial intelligence into medical alert devices might seem like a strange career turn.
But for Chia-Lin, it is deeply personal.
Like many Gen Xers and millennials, she is part of the sandwich generation — caring about children, careers, and aging loved ones at the same time. And she sees a gap between the connected world younger caregivers already live in and the tools available to help older adults remain safe, independent, and connected.
“We are still using old-world technology for one of the most important human challenges we face,” she says.
The Ramen Noodle Moment
Her passion was shaped in part by a story involving her late mother-in-law.
After her father-in-law died, Chia-Lin’s mother-in-law was living in a two-acre home in New Jersey. The family persuaded her to wear a medical alert device. It was the best available option at the time.
Then, during lunch at a ramen restaurant in Oakland, she sat down a little too quickly. The device mistakenly detected a fall and loudly asked if she was okay.
The restaurant went silent.
Everyone stared.
This elegant, artistic, independent woman was mortified.
That moment stuck with Chia-Lin. The technology was intended to protect her. Instead, it embarrassed her.
That is one of the central challenges of aging technology. It cannot simply work in a technical sense. It has to work in a human sense. It has to preserve dignity. It has to reduce stigma. It has to be something older adults will actually use.
Because the best safety device in the world is useless if it sits in a drawer.
Beyond Reactive Technology
LogicMark’s newer products are built around a broader vision than the traditional medical alert button.
The company offers wearable and mobile devices with features like fall detection, geofencing, video check-in, medication reminders, and connections to family caregivers, professional monitoring, and 911 support.
But Chia-Lin is especially interested in moving from reactive care to proactive care.
Reactive technology says: Someone fell. Get help quickly.
That still matters. A fast response can make a real difference in outcomes.
But proactive technology asks a bigger question: Can the data show that someone is becoming more likely to fall … before the fall happens?
That is where digital twins enter the conversation.
What a Digital Twin Really Means
The term “digital twin” can sound like buzzword soup. Or worse, creepy.
In this context, Chia-Lin describes it more simply: a data-based model of a person’s patterns over time.
How many steps are they taking? Are they taking their medication? Is their walking changing? Are there shifts in activity, blood pressure, glucose, sleep, or other health signals? Are those changes meaningful when compared with their own baseline?
This matters because most health care encounters are snapshots. A person sees the doctor at a single point in time. They may feel better that day. They may forget what happened last week. A family caregiver may notice something has changed but not be able to describe it clearly.
A digital twin offers a longitudinal view.
It does not diagnose. It does not replace the doctor. But it can say, “Here are the pattern changes we are seeing. This might be worth paying attention to.”
That kind of information could be useful to family members, professional caregivers, and physicians — particularly when it is shared as data rather than as a self-diagnosis from “Dr. Google.”
AI Should Not Be The First Responder
One of Chia-Lin’s strongest points is that AI has a place in caregiving, but not everywhere.
She is not excited about putting AI on the front line of an emergency.
If someone has fallen, is injured, or is frightened, the last thing they need is a bot trying to decide whether the problem is real. Most people already know the frustration of customer service systems that make it hard to reach a human. It’s annoying when dealing with a bill — it is unacceptable when someone may have broken a hip.
Instead, Chia-Lin sees AI as most useful behind the scenes.
AI can analyze large volumes of data. It can detect patterns humans might miss. It can compare changes over time. It can help caregivers and clinicians make better decisions.
In other words, AI should help people be more human — not replace the human response when people are most vulnerable.
Technology that Can Grow
For senior living operators, the conversation gets even more interesting.
Technology in communities has often required major infrastructure investments: wired systems, wall-mounted devices, pull cords, sensors, and platforms that become outdated long before the building does.
Chia-Lin argues the future should be more plug-and-play.
Senior living communities should not have to rip apart walls or make massive capital investments every time a better solution comes along. Devices should be easier to install, easier to update, and easier to integrate with families, care teams, monitoring centers, and community staff.
This is especially important because falls do not always happen near a pull cord. A resident may fall in the shower. They may fall after setting a device on a table. They may be conscious but unable to reach help.
The future of safety cannot depend on a resident crawling to the right spot.
The Real Promise Of Age Tech
Steve raises the concern many operators feel: There is an explosion of age-tech products. Walk any senior living trade show floor, and the number of technology vendors can be overwhelming.
What works? What is hype? What is affordable? What will residents actually use?
Chia-Lin believes the next few years will bring more plug-and-play technology, better use of AI, and smarter integration of data from multiple sources. The real promise is not simply more gadgets. It is connecting the dots between devices, caregivers, clinicians, and residents.
That means technology should be less siloed. A fall detection device, a smartwatch, a ring, a blood pressure monitor, and a medication reminder should not each live in their own isolated cloud. The value comes when the data works together to show meaningful changes in a person’s life.
Dignity Comes First
The biggest insight from the conversation may be this: aging technology will only succeed if it respects the people it is designed to serve.
Older adults do not want to feel monitored, mocked, or labeled as frail. Families do not want to feel constantly anxious or completely in the dark. Operators do not want another complicated system that is expensive to install and hard to maintain.
The future of caregiving technology has to be smarter. But it also has to be kinder.
It should protect without humiliating. It should alert without overwhelming. It should give families peace of mind without stripping older adults of dignity.
That is the real opportunity.
The future of caregiving is not just a better button.
It is a better village.

I Am So Damn Tired of Lying

Jun 3, 2026

By Steve Moran
No one ever told me that providing him the highest quality of life would require me to become a world-class liar …
As a regular reader of Foresight, you know a bit about my journey as a family caregiver for my 93-year-old stepfather Gary, who has Alzheimer’s.
What you may not know is what that journey has actually required of me.
The Lie That Changed Everything
My mother was married to Gary for more than 40 years, second marriages for both. I am Gary’s caregiver because he has no children and no emotionally close biological family members. He has been part of my family since I was in my late teens.
Even though Gary had been divorced from his ex-wife, Monica, for decades, he still maintained a friendly relationship with her. She was even named to receive money in his will.
A few months ago, he received a phone call from Monica’s best friend informing him that she had died. He was bereft. Sobbing, hand-wringing, end-of-the-world pain and sadness and regret.
It was more overt emotion than he showed when my mother, his wife of 30 years, died.
It was hard to go through, but I know he loved Mom, and I blame his dementia.
By the next day, he had forgotten the call. Forgotten she was gone. But … he had not forgotten about her. He asked me if I had heard from her or knew what was going on in her life.
I gently reminded him she had just passed away. In his Alzheimer-damaged brain, it was hearing the news for the first time all over again.
The same tears. The same broken heart. The same regret.
It took a third repeat of that cycle to realize the truth was doing nothing but inflicting pain.
Now when he asks, my response is different: “I haven’t heard much from her in a while. I’ll check in and let you know.” It solves the problem every single time.
But it’s not just Monica. There are questions that come constantly, and the truth would only cause pain.

“Do you know where my car is?”
“I wonder how my parents are.”
“Will you be back later today?”
“What’s going on with my business?”

The honest answer to every one of those questions would cause tears, anger, sadness, or regret. So I lie.
Compassionate lies. Lies that protect him from a reality his brain can no longer hold.
A Grand Science Experiment
What I sort of knew, but never really understood, is that caring for someone with dementia is an ongoing science experiment. You try something, and if it doesn’t work, you try something else. If it works, you keep doing it until it stops working. Then you try again.
The lying is part of the experiment. It took three rounds of watching Gary grieve Monica before I found what worked. I imagine there are things I’m still getting wrong.
I don’t lose sleep over whether this is the right ethical framework. I lose sleep over whether I’m doing enough for him.

Opening Doors of Hope

Jun 2, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
In a recent episode of Foresight TV, Steve sat down with Joel Theisen, CEO and founder of LifeSpark, and Dr. Bill Thomas, chief experience officer, for a conversation about rethinking senior living from the inside out. You can watch the full livestream here.
There is a problem in senior living that almost everyone knows, but almost no one says out loud.
We tell older adults and their families that senior living is a wonderful lifestyle choice. A place of connection. A place of support. A place where life gets better.
And yet, if we are honest, most of us are not exactly lining up to move in.
Steve put the question plainly: Are we lying to ourselves and to the public?
Joel Theisen did not dodge the question.
LifeSpark did not begin as a senior living company. Its roots are in home- and community-based care. That matters because LifeSpark’s model did not start with a building, a dining room, a care plan, or a sales pitch. It started with the person.
Joel describes LifeSpark’s 30-year journey as an effort to change the experience “from the customer side out, not the business side in.” That sounds simple. It is not. Most of senior living is still organized around silos: property management, care, food service, activities, medical appointments, therapy, hospice, home care.
Families experience those silos as noise.
Mom has another appointment. Dad has a UTI. Someone needs to check the medication list. Someone needs to figure out whether this trip to urgent care is really necessary. Someone needs to explain what the doctor said. Someone needs to answer the phone at 9 p.m.
Too often, that “someone” is the adult daughter, son, spouse, or friend who is already exhausted.
LifeSpark is trying to build something more complete.
Complete Senior Living
Joel calls it “complete senior living.” It includes senior housing, medical care, urgent response, hospice, palliative care, home-based services, and an experience model built around purpose, strength, and well-being.
That last part is where Bill Thomas comes in.
Bill has spent a career challenging the way aging services thinks about older adults. At LifeSpark, he is helping turn that challenge into operating practice.
One example is the Lifeguard program. Residents, staff, and family members are trained to become “lifeguards” in their communities — people who look out for dangerous situations, blow the whistle when something needs attention, and help make life better for themselves and their neighbors.
It is a simple idea, but it flips the script. Residents are not just recipients of service. They become part of the safety net. They become contributors. They become needed.
And then there is the sports league.
Yes, a real sports league.
LifeSpark has created what Bill describes as the world’s only inter-senior living community sports league. At the time of the conversation, 42 teams were competing in a triathlon tournament for a $42,000 purse.
No, they are not all swimming laps, biking roads, and running marathons. The events are adapted. Walking, steps, seated biking, upper-body movement, and team participation all count. The point is not to mimic an Ironman competition. The point is to build stamina, strength, teamwork, identity, and pride.
This could sound like a gimmick.
Joel insists it is not.
LifeSpark has made it part of the business model. Owners pay for it as a separate line item because they see the impact on lead generation, safety, length of stay, satisfaction, differentiation, and culture.
That is the important part.
Experience is Business Strategy
In too many organizations, experience is treated as decoration. Nice to have. Fun when there is budget. First to be cut when things get tight.
At LifeSpark, experience is strategy.
Bill put it this way: culture is not a side conversation. Culture is the glue that holds the value proposition together. How people think about one another, treat one another, encourage one another, and show up for one another becomes a strategic asset.
Joel added the hard business edge: LifeSpark uses zero pool staffing across 50 buildings. He ties that, in part, to a model where employees are not simply “cleaning butts and creating a safe environment,” but are part of something with purpose and vocation.
That is worth sitting with.
We talk endlessly about workforce shortages. We build campaigns. We tweak wages. We add signing bonuses. But maybe one of the most powerful retention strategies is giving people work that feels whole.
Not just tasks.
Not just shifts.
Not just compliance.
Work that opens doors of hope.
That phrase came up near the end of the conversation, and it may be the best description of what senior living should be trying to do.
Open doors of hope.
Creating Places People Choose
For residents, it might mean discovering they can still compete, still help, still belong, still grow.
For families, it might mean they can stop being unpaid care coordinators and go back to being daughters, sons, spouses, and grandchildren.
For team members, it might mean they are part of a mission that is bigger than the next task on the list.
And for the industry, it might mean we finally stop selling senior living as a place people should go and start creating places people could choose.
Bill offered one of the best lines of the whole conversation: “Big house, small life. Small house, big life.”
That is the story senior living has not told well enough.
Most people do not fear a smaller living space. They fear a smaller life.
They fear losing independence. Losing identity. Losing their pets, their garden, their routines, their neighbors, their freedom. They fear becoming invisible.
The challenge for senior living is not to pretend those fears are irrational. The challenge is to build communities where the tradeoff is honest — and worth it.
At some point, the big house becomes a burden. The gutters need cleaning. The chickens need feeding. The stairs become harder. The appointments multiply. The world gets smaller.
The opportunity is not to say, “You should move.”
The opportunity is to create places where people can say, “I could move there. I could grow there. I could still be me there.”
That is a much better story.
And more importantly, it is a much better business.

Why Educating Families Is the Biggest Priority Right Now

Jun 1, 2026

Families are making some of the most emotional and important decisions of their lives, often with too little clear, trustworthy information.
In this clip from Murry Off the Mic, Margaret Cabell explains why educating families has become one of the most urgent priorities in senior living. The challenge is not just helping people find a community — it is helping them understand their options, ask better questions, and make decisions with more confidence.
Watch the full conversation with Margaret Cabell on Murry Off the Mic here.

Transcript:

Murry: When you wake up these days, before you get into your day, is there one thing in senior living that is always sitting at the top of your mind?
Is it caregiver burden? What would you say sits at the top of your mind for the industry?
Margaret: That’s an excellent question, and I’d say it has evolved over my career.
Now, when I wake up, the number one urgency I have is really informing families. That has become a mission of A Place for Mom and a mission of mine since joining.
There is such a lack of education. There is such a lack of information — verifiable information, unbiased information, and guidance.
That’s what gets me up every morning and makes me say, “I’m going to do my very best today for my sales team so they can guide family members. I’m going to do my very best for my community partners so they can understand and be connected with the right family members.”
And we’re going to work together to make this industry a little bit more transparent.

Why Families Rely on A Place for Mom (Even If Operators Don’t)

Jun 1, 2026

A Place for Mom may be one of the most debated names in senior living, but families continue to rely on it when they are trying to understand an overwhelming and emotional decision.
In this clip from Murry Off the Mic, Margaret Cabell explains the tension between senior living operators and family caregivers — and why her work is focused on bridging those two worlds. For families, the need is clear: they need help decoding senior living, understanding their options, and finding the right next step.
Watch the full conversation with Margaret Cabell on Murry Off the Mic here.

Transcript:

Murry: Some operators swear by it. Some swear at it. But one thing is for sure: the population at large absolutely depends on A Place for Mom.
My guest today is Margaret Cabell. She’s a translator in the world of aging, and I absolutely love that. I perceive myself as a bit of a translator too.
Margaret: It’s having a balance between serving community operators and serving caregivers. Our role at A Place for Mom is to serve caregivers and seniors.
While operators may not find us to be absolutely necessary, or the best fit for them, we are the best fit — and we are absolutely necessary — for families and caregivers who need help on this journey.
My job has been to bridge those two camps and show how we’re serving both sides of that need.

Code Blue, What to Do?

Jun 1, 2026

By Jack Cumming
One of the most controversial issues for senior living staff is whether CPR-trained staff and off-the-wall defibrillators should be everywhere and, if so, should they be used. The kind of incident that gives rise to this decision is often called a “code.” Obviously, it’s not uncommon for old people to “code” at dinner with young wait staff standing nearby.
Logically, most residents tend to want to be resuscitated if there’s any chance that they might have a normal life afterwards. Providers, though, fear liability, and with good reason. Those who know are aware that fragile bones weakened by osteoporosis can easily cave under the compressions of CPR, causing harm or even fatality.
Provider Policy
An incident involving an 87-year-old resident at a Brookdale community in Bakersfield, CA, brought this challenge to national attention. As a 911 operator pleaded for someone to start CPR, community policy prevented on-site staff from doing so. Listening to the pleading and response at the previous link can be heartbreaking, but we live in a litigious society, and intervening can be costly.
While you might think that the United States has the highest rate of litigation in the world, that’s not true. The U.S. comes in fifth in cases per 1,000 of population. The leaders are: 1. Germany: 123.2/1,000 2. Sweden: 111.2/1,000 3. Israel: 96.8/1,000 4. Austria: 95.9/1,000 5. U.S.: 74.5/1,000. That may be unexpected. Still, a popular impression is that fear of the liability exposure connected with serving a frail, often gullible population can put a chill on many provider actions that might otherwise be positive.
Physician Perspective
That brings us back to the question of whether to intervene in a Code Blue or not. I was eavesdropping recently on an online conversation among physicians. Here’s how it went. In response to questioning about what to do with a Code Blue from a doctor early in a medical career, a more experienced physician wrote:

“The only two things with proven mortality benefit in cardiac arrest are 1. high quality CPR (which includes minimizing time off the chest) and 2. early defib for ventricular arrhythmias. Everything else is secondary to those two things, and the way you run a code should reflect that. I count down from 10 as soon as compressions pause (10 seconds is a lot shorter than people think when they’re trying to do things like get IV access or establish an airway).
“Don’t mess around with stuff and extend out that pause. Can’t get an IV that fast? Can’t get an ETT [Endotracheal Tube] in between pulse checks? Either get someone who can do it with compressions ongoing or go IO/SGA [Intraosseous Access/Supraglottic Airway], respectively.
“Control the chaos, kick people out of the room if you need to, and then once you’ve established a good rhythm/flow with the group in the room, run down the list of H’s and T’s [Cardiac mnemonic]. The actual medicine of your standard floor code isn’t hard. It’s keeping all the insanity around you to a minimum.”

A second doctor confirmed the wisdom of the first physician:

“Anesthesiologist here and agree with this advice. As someone who takes a lot of calls and responds to probably 7-10 codes a week. This includes airway like you said. I’ll never have people hold chest compressions for me to intubate. As long as we’re able to ventilate, chest compressions take priority.”

Good Samaritan Rescuers
Obviously, it helps to have experience before attempting resuscitation, though the ethical question of whether to intervene or stand by watching someone perish remains. It’s best to have someone there who does 7-10 codes a week, which is hard to imagine, bringing the level of experience desired. In an emergency, though, you have to go with what’s at hand.
Using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) is much less hazardous than CPR compressions, though there is a low risk of electric shock to the rescuer. Still, since time is of the essence, CPR is needed to keep oxygenated blood flowing to the brain and vital organs while the AED is analyzing the rhythm or charging.
That brings us to the defense that “good Samaritan laws” protect people who make well-intentioned attempts to help another person who is in distress. Unfortunately, good Samaritan laws vary among the states. Some protect laypersons while others focus on licensed professionals.
Before establishing a policy for such emergencies, providers need to understand the legal context. Significantly, some states not only protect “good Samaritans” but go further to impose a “duty to rescue” on any bystanders. Click here for more authoritative information.
As a disclaimer, I am not an attorney, much less a physician, and am merely drawing attention to an issue that providers and others may wish to explore with a licensed attorney. Ethics would suggest that providers ensure that prospective residents understand the facility’s policy before they commit to living there. Being able to document that understanding would seem like the best defense. Perhaps it shouldn’t be left to marketing.

Leadership Changes at Every Level…

May 29, 2026

Serina Durrah explains how leadership changes as you grow from caregiver to executive. The relationship side of leadership should stay constant, but each new level requires a broader understanding of the business, the team, and how decisions affect the entire community. Watch the full episode HERE.

Transcript:

Lindsey:How did your leadership have to change — or did it?
Serina:The relationship part of leadership hasn’t changed.
But the way you have to look at the business and figure out how to lead at each level can definitely be a challenge.

Balancing People & Results

May 29, 2026

Serina Durrah shares why relationship-based leadership is not separate from business performance in senior living — it is essential to it. For executive leaders, the key is mentoring the right people, building strong teams, and helping them balance operational goals with what residents truly need. Watch the full episode HERE.

Transcript:

Lindsey:Now you’re at the executive level, where results really matter. That’s a hard balance. How do you marry the relationship part of leadership with the push for results?
Serina:One of my favorite things about this industry is being able to lead and mentor people — watching people grow.
For me, that is key to managing the performance of the business: having the right people in the right places, mentoring them, and helping them understand what is best for the business while also balancing what is best for the resident.

What Spreadsheets Don’t Show About Senior Living Care Teams

May 29, 2026

Serina Durrah explains why senior living leaders need to spend more time inside communities, not just reviewing labor reports and spreadsheets. Behind every number is a frontline team juggling resident needs, family concerns, emergencies, and call-offs in real time. Watch the full episode HERE.

Transcript:

I would suggest that they join me in a community and witness what our frontline staff is doing every day.
When you look at the numbers on paper and say, “Oh, we’re over in labor,” what you don’t see is that five family members walked in today, two residents were sick, one resident fell, now I’m running behind, and my coworker called in.
So I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to figure out what my next step is.
That’s what we miss when we’re looking at spreadsheets, data, and numbers. We miss what’s happening in real life.

Crush The Trust Game Like This

May 29, 2026

By Steve Moran
I recently published a sobering article titled “No One Trusts You.” The data is daunting and depressing, but there is good news …
Once you accept this reality, you can do something about it, and because most people don’t do anything about it, you have the ability to have people see you as a standout leader and your organization as a standout organization.
Before we get to the how, I want to remind you that the lack of trust you are experiencing is not your fault. I hope …
Here’s what I mean. The people you’re trying to reach didn’t decide to distrust you. They were trained to distrust everyone. They got surprise-billed by their doctor. Their employer announced layoffs on a Tuesday after telling everyone the company was family. The salesperson at the last place they looked smiled too much and knew all the right answers to questions they hadn’t asked yet.
You’re not dealing with a fresh audience. You’re dealing with people who’ve been burned, and you just happen to be next in line.
I am guessing you have some of this distrust as well and know what I am talking about.
This matters because the solution isn’t better messaging. In fact, if you try to message your way out of a trust problem, you’ll make it worse. People who are already skeptical can smell a polished pitch from across the room. The solution is behavior. Specifically, a handful of behaviors that research shows actually move the needle.
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free.

What Do Residents Want?

May 28, 2026

By Jack Cumming
If you’re of a certain age, you remember a time in the 1960s when the question, “What do women want?” was heard throughout the land. Women were asserting themselves, wanting equal rights and equal recognition. Many men of that era were puzzled. They couldn’t understand why women were restless.
Resident Realities
Today, it’s residents who leave providers puzzled. I thought of that not long ago when Bob Kramer posted a LinkedIn response to an earlier post by Dan Hutson. Both are men I respect. Bob Kramer founded the National Investment Center and has mentored many who are prominent in the industry. Dan Hutson is a much-admired thinker and writer on senior living.
The posts were about residents. Neither Bob nor Dan is a resident, though both may be age-eligible. Dan and Bob are right about many things, including the perspective that residents, in essence, hire senior living operators to provide the residents with benefits, including better lives than they would have otherwise. That simple turn of phrase, “Many baby boomers and Gen Xers will be hiring a senior living community in the coming years…”, is a change from how many in the industry think.
“Oh, To Be Seen and Heard”
It’s not marketing that fills those units, builds occupancy, and brings a revenue entitlement. Marketing is needed to midwife the transaction. But the better insight is that the providers are the servants of the residents, not their masters. What did women want? They wanted equality. What do residents want? They want equality. We can start there.
If residents want equality, and if providers are willing to give them equality, what would equality look like? It begins with mutual respect. Not long ago, I encountered an instance in which a key employee complained about a resident engagement application. Residents had taken the lead in bringing the application to the CCRC. Residents also play a key role in maintaining the platform and keeping it current.
Did the employee take her concerns to the residents who might have worked with her to resolve her issues? No, instead, she went to an employee in the distant corporate office with her concerns. Her reaction about where to turn reflects the corporate culture as it impacts that community. What do residents want? They want to be seen. They want to matter. They don’t want to be a nuisance that the corporate office keeps under control. That brings me to the question:

“What kind of residents would Dan and Bob be if they took the leap and moved into residence in a Life Plan Community (CCRC)?”

Unseen and Overlooked
Dan and Bob are both active advocates for senior living. It’s unlikely that they would quickly change their motivations if they were residents. They are also highly visible within the industry. How might they react if they were as invisible as most residents are? We don’t hear much from John Erickson, the developer, who is now a resident in one of the Erickson communities.
I can’t imagine that either Dan or Bob would be content to have “resident” be their primary identity. Perhaps that’s why neither of them has made the move. Bob Kramer closes his post by observing:

“Imagine a community that fails to nurture strength, purpose and belonging. The residents would feel they’re not able to learn anything, do anything new, contribute anything, or make a difference in somebody else’s life. It sounds miserable, because without those opportunities, what is there to live for?”

A Resident’s Response
Bob, speaking as a resident, I can assure you that many of us find our meaning outside of the CCRC that houses us. But not all of us. Some of us do live in communities like Goodwin Living, where residents are respected and included. John Knox Village in Pompano Beach, FL, is reputed to be another.
If you are working in senior living, you may welcome what Dan Hutson and Bob Kramer are sharing in this exchange. If senior living is no more than a livelihood opportunity for you, then you’re missing the calling that justifies the undertaking. Even though Bob and Dan don’t appear to be considering residency, they clearly view senior living as a calling. Treating residents as people just like you is a good place to start.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

A Bright Future
As mentioned, there are a few communities that do treat residents as full citizens. Jill Vitale-Aussem is known for advocating for residents in her book, Disrupting the Status Quo of Senior Living: A Mindshift, and in her leadership. The emergence of co-housing, cooperative, and even condominium communities recognizes the wish of many residents to live full lives up until the time they can’t.
The Village Movement, too, reflects growing popular skepticism of the impression of senior living as a place where residents lose dignity and self-worth merely by becoming residents. The future is bright that residents in the not-too-distant future will have more meaningful residency choices than is the case today.

S8 Episode 7 – The Leadership Crisis in Senior Living: Burnout, Hiring, Culture & Retention with Chris Heinz

May 27, 2026

What’s really driving executive director burnout in senior living? And why are so many operators struggling to hire — and keep — great leaders?
In this episode of Foresight Radio, Steve Moran speaks with Chris Heinz, president and managing partner at Westport One, for a candid conversation about leadership, recruiting, burnout, culture, and the future of senior living operations.
Chris shares why the industry’s obsession with “facts and features” hiring is failing, why leadership training often misses the mark, and how the best operators are creating cultures that people actually want to stay in.
The conversation explores:

Executive Director burnout in senior living

Leadership training gaps

Hiring and retention strategies

Why culture matters more than ever

The shift from visionary leadership to tactical leadership

How operators can better support teams

What hiring managers are getting wrong

Why candidates need to sell accomplishments — not job descriptions

The importance of mentorship and support systems

Building senior living cultures that attract top talent

Chris also discusses his personal journey through endurance racing and fundraising for dementia care and how that mindset has shaped his perspective on leadership and resilience.
If you’re a senior living operator, executive director, sales leader, recruiter, or industry professional trying to build stronger teams and healthier cultures, this episode is packed with practical insights.

The Moment Leadership Gets Rewritten

May 27, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is part of Murry off the Mic. Watch the full episode here.
Murry tells a story that lands because it’s painfully familiar: he does everything “right,” and it still doesn’t work.
Early in his career, he was trained in business process and organizational thinking. He learned what leadership is “supposed” to look like. Leadership lives at the top. Leadership stands at the front of the room. Leadership holds the microphone. Leadership speaks from behind the podium.
Then he helped launch a small assisted living community called Aspen House, built from the ground up — blank walls, empty rooms, big responsibility.
And when the moment came for his first all-staff meeting, he stepped into the role he thought he was supposed to play.
He stood at the podium. He shared the vision. He explained what was going to happen and how they would get there.
And afterward, he realized something unsettling: the meeting didn’t create any spark. Nobody walked out. Nobody threw tomatoes. But nothing caught fire. It was just him talking — and everyone else politely absorbing.
It didn’t feel like leadership.
The Moment Leadership Gets Rewritten
The shift doesn’t happen in a meeting. It happens back at work.
Murry describes being down in the rooms with care associates: painting walls and setting up medication boxes, building charts, figuring out workflows — doing the real work of starting something new.
And while they’re standing side by side, the real conversation begins.
They talk about what matters.They talk about fears.They talk about uncertainty.They talk about how different this household model feels compared to what they’ve known.They talk about the fact that they’re nervous — because responsibility is real and resources are limited.
And somewhere in that moment, Murry sees it clearly:
Leadership didn’t happen at the podium. It happened in real time while they were doing the work together.
That’s the heart of his idea of just-in-time leadership — leadership that shows up when it’s needed, in the moment, in relationships, through listening and action.
The Best Leadership Is Not Reserved For The “Leader”
Murry pushes the point even further: in a real community, any member can step into leadership.
Not the “appointed leader.” Not the “titled leader.” Not the person with the corner office.
The person who notices what needs to be done.The person who speaks up with care.The person who steadies the team in uncertainty.The person who listens, then acts.
That’s the kind of leadership that actually builds culture — because it builds trust.
And trust is what turns “a group of staff” into “a community.”
What Aspen House Teaches The Industry
The Aspen House story isn’t really about Aspen House. It’s about an industry that still overvalues performance.
Senior living is full of formal moments: town halls, staff meetings, leadership training, carefully crafted messaging.
Those things have a place. But Murry’s argument is simple: if leadership only exists in formal moments, it’s not leadership. It’s theater.
Real leadership happens when the work is happening — and people are watching to see who shows up.

Your Culture Needs More Work Than You Think

May 26, 2026

By Steve Moran
I frequently ask leaders about how good their workplace culture is. I don’t think anyone has ever told me it sucks. Most tell me it’s pretty good. That people are generally happy, engaged, and productive. Some will admit there are pockets of struggle, but on the whole? Things are really good.
I used to be a skeptic, believing they were not telling the truth or not paying attention to what was actually happening in their organizations.
The more of these conversations I have had, and the more I’ve thought about it, I have realized I missed something really important.
From the leader’s perspective, they are 100% right.
The problem is that they are only seeing the part of the culture that is right in front of them. They are not seeing the entire picture …. And yep, I am probably talking about you … It’s really hard to do. You are several leadership layers away from it. Those reporting to you are going to spend more time talking about what’s working rather than what’s not.
There are ways to know …

High turnover
Poor Glassdoor / Indeed scores
Lots of drama
Burned-out, exhausted department heads
Frivolous lawsuits and regulatory complaints

It’s a simpler problem than it first appears to be. In most organizations, there are lots of really good, really fun, really joyful things happening. They tend to be small things, tiny moments, and the hustle of getting everything right. Those moments get missed.
I hope you already did the exercise designed for you as a leader. You can find it here. https://practicalleadership.substack.com/p/what-if-you-could-have-more-joy-in
This one is similar. But it’s for your team. And it will change things more than you can possibly imagine because the truth is, there is more joy all around us every day than we realize. We’ve just stopped looking for it.
It will be most effective when your local leaders do it with their teams … all the way down to the front line.
Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

No One Trusts You

May 22, 2026

By Steve Moran
According to PwC research, there is a significant perception gap between employees and leaders. In fact, 86% of senior leaders say they have a high degree of trust in their team members, but only 60% of employees feel trusted.
There is more …
Only 32% of employees trust their leaders to make the right decision, and only 29% of team members trust their managers (DDI).
Convinced trust is a problem? There is even more …
Continue reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) for free.

A Devastating View of Senior Living

May 21, 2026

By Jack Cumming
If senior living is to thrive and improve the lives of aging Americans, we have to change the perception, and the occasional reality, of the industry. This was driven home for me by a recent article I read on Medium. The title is “Assisted Living Isn’t Care — It’s a Crime with a Billing Department.” Wow! That’s devastating.
Our Demanding Mission
Accepting responsibility to care for frail and vulnerable people is a high calling. It should never be undertaken lightly, merely because it is a promising asset class. Of course, even with the best of intentions, things can go awry from time to time. Working with families, residents, and aging advocates — collaborating — can avoid we/they confrontations and improve performance.
The family that loses a loved one will naturally be mighty upset. But postings describing costly neglect, like this Medium article, are devastating for the industry, regardless of whether the descriptions are accurate or not.
If this is true for assisted living and skilled nursing, which provide for people who need care at move-in, think of how much more devastating it can be for the trust expectations of people who move into an independent living residential unit in a life plan community (CCRC). Many of them are locked in by entrance-fee commitments, so they have no good alternative if the management changes and care responsiveness is diminished.
Protesting Instead of Responding
To read much of the trade press, and the “educational” material published by industry advocates, including the leading trade associations, many providers see themselves as misunderstood, victimized by superficial, sensationalist journalism. That’s convenient and self-serving.
What’s comforting reassurance for those in the industry, though, doesn’t seem to be changing popular perceptions. It’s important that what people experience matches what they expect and what they think they’ve been promised. There’s been a flood recently of negative media reporting on individual situations.
We’ve long known that the industry, through its trade associations, has resisted constructive regulation that might have ensured financial soundness, fair contracts, and equitable resident experiences. Many providers still have a jaundiced view of their residents, even of talented independent living residents. That may reflect the intoxicating, addictive rush of top-down control and self-importance, but the outcome is a perception that senior living is not an industry to be fully trusted.
A Better Mindset
Safeguards to earn trust can result from effective collaboration with aging people and a resulting change in mindset. Residents want a safe, dignified aging experience. Subordination to corporate direction is contrary to meeting that expectation.
To achieve effective collaboration, the industry moguls would have to be willing to give residents the dignity of full partnership. It’s the residents who fund the industry. Not surprisingly, there are similar industries that are better servants of their customers.
Many private social organizations, qualified by IRC 501(c)(7), are member-led and member-governed. They may employ a club manager, but the manager is there to serve the members and not to meet the expectations of a corporate overlord.
Similarly, cooperative housing corporations qualified under IRC 216 are resident-led and governed. They also may employ a managing agent or property management corporation, but control and empowerment reside with the residents. As noted elsewhere, cooperatives are better than condominiums for entities in which resident deaths are common.
What Would Change Look Like?
If the industry trade associations were to collaborate with residents, prospective residents, and their families, aging in America could be much better than what it is. For now, too often, providers are selling institutionalization and pretending they’re not. That calls for change in substance and not mere semantics.
There are some who don’t think that senior housing buildings should be called “facilities,” even though that’s exactly what they are. Moving into a building or property will be moving into a facility, so long as residents give up the self-determination they enjoy in a home they own for residential living in a building owned by someone else.
The opportunity for collaboration may be the industry’s best hope for its future. Who might take the lead in trying to shift the trend toward empowerment and security? Will the leadership come from the advocacy associations, or will it come from entrepreneurial disruption?
This is one in a series of articles exploring how providers, residents, and resident families might work together for better aging.

Is the NIC Fall Conference Just Like The Met Gala For Senior Living …

May 20, 2026

By Steve Moran
Just for fun … and I love attending NIC events … and they are the premier gathering of senior living leaders …
===
I woke up in the middle of the night and started doom-scrolling through photos of the outrageous, outlandish costumes worn by some Met Gala attendees.
I got curious about all the details of the Met Gala: who gets invited, how the whole costume thing works, what it costs, and of course, who is frozen out. It is complicated, expensive, and fraught with landmines. It is also, when done right (as I understand it), a place to network at the very highest level … Just like the NIC fall conference.
And just like the Met Gala, even though I manage to sneak into the conference, I feel like I am more like one of the “gown fluffers” — that’s a real term and a real job people get paid to do, the ones who make sure the trains are spread out just right and everything looks perfect for pictures — than someone on the inside.
NIC Fall Conference
Every September, the most powerful people in senior living and seniors housing descend on a hotel in Chicago or another big city to get deals done. Relationships get made. Capital flows. Fortunes shift.
And every year, I show up in Chuck Taylors.
I have been attending NIC Fall for more years than I care to admit. I have watched it evolve. I have witnessed the rituals. And somewhere along the way, I realized that what we have here is not a conference. It is the Met Gala. With better food, worse fashion, and nobody willing to admit they got dressed for the occasion.
The Lobby is The Red Carpet
At the Met Gala, celebrities arrive on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum and pause for photographers. Everyone is watching. Everyone is calculating. Who came with whom? Who went up the stairs alone? Who got the placement?
At NIC, the red carpet is the hotel lobby. Nobody has a camera (well, even that is not quite true), but make no mistake, everybody is watching. The moment you walk through those doors, the social algorithm kicks in. You are being assessed. Your lanyard is being read. Your company name is being filed away. The question is not “who are you wearing?” The question is “who are you with and how much are you deploying?”
I walk in every year in Chuck Taylors and a blazer that has seen better days. I am not sure what the algorithm does with me.
The Outfits Tell the Story
At the Met Gala, fashion is armor. The right dress signals everything: your boldness, your budget, your brand, your publicist.
At NIC, the uniform is a dark suit or a blazer with a pocket square that says “I am serious but approachable.”
The shoes matter more than anyone will admit. There is a reason the private equity guys all seem to be wearing the same Italian leather. It is not an accident. It is a message.
And the big-money folks and the operators each have their own style, from loafers to HOKAs to cowboy boots.
Then there is me in my Chucks; they are part of my costume, and they send a message too. They have a story to tell about wanting to be someone who makes the world a better place. It also says “authentic media voice, senior living, and truth teller.” The guy from the capital markets firm who looked at my feet and then looked away says something different.
The Front Table
At the Met Gala, where you sit at dinner tells you exactly who you are. Anna Wintour does not put you at the front table by accident. The front table is a statement.
NIC has a similar system. The sponsored dinners. The general session seating. The breakfast roundtables where the real conversations happen. Some tables are more privileged than others, a lesson I learned the hard way one year …
I will not name the year or the people. I arrived early to the general session, spotted an open seat at the front table, and sat down with the confidence of a man who has attended this conference many times. Within four minutes, a very polite but very firm person informed me that those seats were reserved. I smiled, said “of course,” and walked myself to a much less prominent position.
The Stage
At the Met Gala, certain people get to speak. They are photographed. They are quoted. They are on the program.
At NIC, there is a stage. Smart, credentialed, well-connected people stand on it. They have opinions about cap rates, workforce housing, and what the Fed is going to do. They have slides. People listen.
I have never been on the stage.
I have interviewed many people who have been on the stage. I have written about what the people on the stage said. I have published those articles. Several people on the stage have told me they read my stuff. And then they went back on the stage.
I wave to them from the sidelines …
The After-Party
The Met Gala after-party is legendary. Exclusive. You either got an invite or you did not.
NIC has a version of this. You know the ones. The hospitality suites. The private dinners that are not on the official schedule. The gatherings that happen after the gatherings. These are where the real deals get done, the real relationships deepen, the real conversations happen.
I have been to a few of these. Mostly because someone felt sorry for me or because I asked directly, which, it turns out, is a surprisingly effective strategy. Nobody expects the guy in Chuck Taylors to just ask.
What It All Means
Here is the thing about the Met Gala. For all the spectacle and the posturing and the fashion armor, it is fundamentally about people who care deeply about being seen by the right people, in the right light, at the right moment. The performance is real. The stakes are real. The relationships that get made in that room change careers.
NIC is exactly the same thing. The suits are the gowns. The sponsored dinners are the front tables. The stage time is the red carpet moment. And everybody, everybody, is performing something.
I have made my peace with my role in the performance. I am the guy in the Chuck Taylors who writes about what he sees. Somebody has to do it.
See you at the next event.
A final note … While the NIC events are the most prominent, most glamorous aspect of NIC, I need to point out that NIC is so much more than an entity that hosts conferences. They are a top-tier research organization and a top-tier educational organization. They make the industry better for people.

Proactive Care Isn’t A Buzzword — It’s A Trust Strategy

May 19, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This article is adapted from the first episode of Heard in the Halls with Lindsey Daugherty. Watch the full episode here.
The Moment That Exposes The System
A moment many families recognize: Steve arrives to visit his stepfather, Gary, and learns that a fall happened minutes earlier. Gary is okay — but the house manager apologizes anyway, carrying guilt for something that may not have been preventable.
That small exchange reveals something big: senior living often operates under a cloud of unspoken fear — fear of blame, fear of lawsuits, fear of losing trust — even when everyone knows aging includes risk.
The Hard Truth: You Can’t Eliminate Gravity
The only way to prevent falls entirely is to restrain people, and that’s not the point of care.
The goal shifts: communities can’t prevent every fall, but they can reduce unknowns, improve interventions, and support caregivers so they don’t carry the burden alone.
Transparency Is Not A Nice-to-Have
Families get fragments — “mom fell,” “missed medication,” “doctor appointment” — but rarely the full context. That fragment-based communication breeds anxiety and distrust, even in good communities.
Transparency helps caregivers and families move from emotional reaction to shared problem-solving.
Proactive Care Starts With Better Visibility
Proactive care is what happens when teams can see patterns and pain points — hydration, mobility, medication factors — and adjust care plans before the next incident.
That’s also where technology, workflow, and culture collide. If the floor is drowning in paper and disconnected systems, communication breaks down — and the resident becomes a series of tasks instead of a whole person.
The Cultural Shift Hiding In Plain Sight
Near the end of the conversation, Lindsey and Steve land on something that sounds small but isn’t: language. Imagine caregivers answering “What do you do?” with: “I transform lives.”
That sentence changes posture. It changes pride. It changes how the industry talks about itself — and how the world hears it.
“Heard in the Halls” is positioned to make that kind of shift feel normal: more honest conversations, more connected perspectives, and a senior living story that finally sounds like real life — because it is.

The Lifestyle Gap Senior Living Operators Need to Close

May 18, 2026

Why is senior living so hard to sell before someone experiences it?
In this clip from Pivot with Pettit, Bill Pettit and Mitch Brown talk about one of the industry’s biggest marketing challenges: helping prospects understand the lifestyle, connection, and quality of life that often only become clear after move-in.
It’s the familiar story — mom worries about the cost, the adult daughter sees the value right away, and a few months later, the new resident wonders why she waited so long.
For operators, marketers, and sales teams, this is the gap to close: selling a lifestyle people do not fully understand until they live it.
Watch the full conversation HERE.

Transcript:

We’ve always done a crappy job in this business helping people understand why this lifestyle is so much fun — why they age better and why, overall, they have a better life — until they actually experience it.
How many times have you toured one of your buildings, like Merrill Gardens, and you’re watching the prospect, the daughter, and mom walking through?
And the mom says, “Oh no, honey, this is very expensive.”
And the daughter says, “Oh mom, I’d move in here tomorrow.”
Then, two or three months after mom moves in, she says, “Why the heck didn’t I do this sooner?”
The only people who really understand why active adult is so appealing are the people who live in the communities.

Family Business: Why Not Collaborate?

May 18, 2026

By Jack Cumming
Aging is a family business. That’s true in many senses. Age impacts families directly. That’s obvious. Less obvious is that some of the best senior living providers are family businesses. Sure, they want money. Who doesn’t? But they also want to uphold their family reputation. And many are founded to honor their own aging family members.
Is Tax Exemption Positive?
The mythic pretense is that qualifying for tax exemption, i.e., becoming a not-for-profit, is a sign of excellence. It’s not. I believe that even those who spout this the loudest understand that not-for-profit providers often fall short of what’s best. To begin, family businesses don’t dodge the citizen obligation to pay taxes. Moreover, the family’s investment provides a financial cushion to shield residents from catastrophic loss. Family reputation can be a stronger motivator toward quality and good faith than a mere corporate entity.
Ever since I moved into senior housing in 2006 and began to experience the industry and its advocacy organizations, I’ve been puzzled that the most influential senior living trade association gives primacy to tax exemption. I expected that the industry advocacy organization would give priority to demonstrating that its provider members were trustworthy corporate citizens.
Yes, there are member providers who serve the indigent, and their tax exemption is as justified as any. But many tax-exempt provider members of LeadingAge offer market-priced housing for the affluent. They rely on an old revenue ruling that alleviating the distress of aging is charitable regardless of how profitable it is. Family-run senior housing enterprises tend to emphasize the resident experience long before tax status. Family reputation is at stake.
Family Purpose
Merrill Gardens is a family-built and family-owned enterprise with deep roots, originating from a timber business established in the 1890s by Richard Dwight (R.D.) Merrill. Now it is a fifth-generation family-owned business based in Seattle, Washington. It’s known for the high quality of its independent and assisted living communities.
ERA Living is another exemplary Seattle-based family enterprise. For founders and owners Eli and Rebecca Almo, it’s their family values that fuel their commitment to residents and staff every day. Unlike virtually all not-for-profit entrance-fee senior housing entities, ERA treats entrance fees as a first deed-of-trust claim against the property. The not-for-profits treat entrance fees as at-risk equity capital, but family investment absorbs that risk for ERA’s entrance fee communities. That’s a major protection for residents.
Continuing Life is likewise a family enterprise that wins praise for its integrity, value, and citizenship. The Spieker family specializes in full-care inclusive Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs), which evince their family values to provide the best, most comprehensive retirement option available to people today. As is the case with ERA entrance-fee communities, residents in Spieker family communities have a deed-of-trust financial shield.
Of course, not all families are as upright as these examples suggest. Any form of enterprise can succumb to dark forces, and there are tax-exempt as well as taxpaying enterprises that have fallen short. Aging residents in these communities are right to be wary. They cannot rest easy, and they don’t have the lifetime peace of mind that they are sold. Click here for a link to the story of a life plan community (CCRC) that fell short.
Why Not Collaborate?
The question raised by these examples of family-led senior housing enterprises is why LeadingAge doesn’t collaborate with them. In this series, we have urged LeadingAge to collaborate with residents. It’s hard to understand why LeadingAge, which seeks influence, is so limiting in its reach.
Media reports of financial failure have drawn a cloud over the industry. LeadingAge has circled the wagons, denying that it’s a concern to address. Collaboration, though, has the potential to lift the senior living industry to a higher standard of trust. Working together, we can provide better aging for America than what has been achieved so far.
LeadingAge, please take notice, and open the doors to elevate all stakeholders, particularly the residents who have placed their trust in this industry. The possibilities that are there to be grasped.
This is one in a series of articles exploring how providers, residents, and resident families might work together for better aging.

It Seems Obvious, but Which Would You Choose?

May 15, 2026

By Steve Moran
Imagine this scenario …
You have been out of work for a while. You are watching your savings drain away. You want to work. You love what you do, and you are good at it; and the longer you are out, the more that feeling eats at you.
You have been interviewing like crazy, frustrating at first, but out of the blue, you end up with two amazing offers on the table:

Job 1 pays 15% more than anything you have ever made. It is a higher-profile company, more visibility, more prestige. On paper, it looks incredible.
But after you interviewed, did your research, and talked to people who work there and people who used to work there, something felt off. Everyone seems stressed. Everyone seems unhappy. They all smile, but it is not the real kind. It is the forced kind — the kind where you can see the effort behind it.
Job 2 is still a great salary, more than you were making before. But it is 15% less than Job 1, and it lacks the same name recognition or cool factor.
What it does have is people who love being there. They love the company. They believe in the mission. They actually like each other. They spend time together outside of work. They are friends.
Every time you talk to someone from Job 2, you feel something. The joy. The passion. It is not performed. It is just there.

The Choice
Some of you would choose Job 1. Seeing the extra money and prestige as worth the less-than-ideal culture… And then you spend years quietly (or maybe not so quietly) resenting it.
Most of you would choose Job 2, because you have worked in toxic, depressing environments. You know the truth: you would have a better life there. Not just a better job. A better life.
The Rubber Meets The Road Question
Now here is the hard question; I beg you to be honest; after all, it is just you and me, and you don’t even have to tell me.
Which one of those two organizations is most like yours right now?

Continue Reading on Practical Passionate Leadership (Substack) …

The Advocacy Army Is Already In Your Building

May 14, 2026

By Rebecca Wiessmann
This is the third and final installment in the three-part series drawn from Steve Moran’s conversation with Brian Perry. Watch the full episode here.
“Does This Stuff Actually Work?”
Steve asks the question operators whisper after advocacy days and Hill visits: Does any of it matter, or is it all performance?
Perry says politics is absolutely full of performance. He even calls some high-profile politicians performance artists. But he insists that showing up still changes outcomes — partly because visibility signals seriousness and partly because lawmakers are constantly sorting signals from noise.
If a sector never shows up, it gets treated like it doesn’t matter.
The Real Difference Is Constituents
Perry draws a hard line between lobbyists and voters. A lobbyist may have the right message, but a lawmaker knows that a lobbyist can’t vote for them.
Bring seven constituents from the district into the office, and the meeting becomes a different kind of conversation.
That’s the pivot point for the entire episode: senior living’s most persuasive advocates are not the people who fly to Washington most often. They’re the people already connected to care every day.
Mom-And-Pop Can Be Loud In Ways Big Companies Can’t
Perry offers a helpful contrast. A single community in rural Indiana won’t match a national chain’s political resources. But local relationships can be disproportionately powerful — Rotary ties, school ties, city ties, faith-community ties — the human web that shapes local politics.
“All politics is local” is a cliché for a reason.
The Missing Force: Employees, Families, And Vendors
Steve puts words to what feels like the giant missed opportunity: why aren’t employees and families being activated as part of advocacy?
Perry agrees — and starts stacking the math. A 100-bed building has residents with multiple family members who care deeply. Add caregivers and their families. Add vendor partners walking in and out. Add the surrounding community.
It becomes an “army” large enough that, if organized, it changes what lawmakers fear and what they prioritize.
Steve’s Practical Translation: Better Work And Better Pay
Steve closes the loop in operator language: if teams want better pay and a better environment, this is one path. Advocacy isn’t abstract — it’s one of the levers that influences reimbursement and regulation, which in turn shapes staffing, wages, and the daily work experience.
The message is as direct as it gets: if the people closest to care stay silent, decisions get made without them.
Watch the full conversation with Steve and Brian Perry on YouTube.

S8 Episode 6 – The Future of Senior Living Finance

May 13, 2026

What does it actually take to finance — and sustain — a successful senior living community in today’s environment?
In this episode of Foresight Radio, we sit down with Kristy Ollendorff, Chief Credit Officer at Clearinghouse CDFI, to unpack the realities behind senior living finance — from underwriting decisions to the growing challenges around Medicaid reimbursement, staffing, and shifting regulations.
With nearly three decades of experience, Kristy shares what separates thriving communities from those that struggle — and why experience, local market knowledge, and aligned incentives are non-negotiables.
We also dive into:

Why many lenders are pulling back from senior living—and what that means for operators
The real impact of delayed Medicaid reimbursements on cash flow
How smart operators are pivoting (memory care, private pay mix, unit conversions) to survive
Why “hired hand” leadership models often fail—and what works instead
The growing importance of rural markets and state-backed loan guarantees
What the future of financing senior living could look like over the next 5–10 years

One theme comes through clearly: rigidity doesn’t work in this industry anymore. Adaptability does.
Whether you’re an operator, investor, or industry leader, this conversation offers a candid look at the financial forces shaping senior living—and what it takes to navigate them successfully.

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