By Steve Moran

This is a complicated, difficult topic, at least for me. It started when my wife sent me this Facebook Reel of a bunch of adults playing a game where they have a red Solo cup attached to their waist, plus a Christmas ornament on a string, and the goal was to move their hips in a way that gets the ornament in the cup. Her thinking was that I would use this for the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade kids I teach at church each weekend. 

But it got me thinking, what if we created a YouTube or TikTok channel that showed only residents having fun? No, let’s go beyond that — what if we created a channel that showed 50- and 60-year-olds going into your community and having fun, since they are largely the ones making purchase decisions about senior living?

Back to Margaritaville …

For example, Latitude Margaritaville (which I wrote about here) seems to be doing a better job than most on providing a fun atmosphere. In reality, their communities are about much more than fun. They are about human connections; they are about community; they are about fitness. But what they lead with is fun.

This is actually true with all of the Margaritaville products. They do this because it works.

Is Senior Living Fun?

This is actually pretty painful to think about, but it is hard to imagine anyone ever saying senior living is fun, even using the broadest definition of fun.

Fun might be something like this reel, or it might be tutoring or painting or playing cards or dancing or … only you know what is fun for you.

Perception

We don’t perceive senior living as fun; residents don’t perceive it as fun; family members don’t perceive it as fun; and team members don’t perceive it as fun. So of course, we think it is not really fun at all. But what if we are wrong about this? In the first installment of our “People of Senior Living” series featuring Norm’s Coffee Club, it was fun.

I am not sure I have ever really seen a single promotion of senior living that would say, “Come check us out because you will have a fun time.”

What if we worked at fun?

What if we promoted senior living as a fun place to go and hang out?

Because in reality we all like fun. We all need fun.

For further discussion on this check out this post by Sara Kyle.