By Steve Moran

I continue to believe that life enrichment is the fundamental key to high occupancy and everyone loving senior living, seeing senior living as a great place to grow old.

I was recently talking to someone about the budgets life enrichment leaders have to work with each month, and he made a brilliant point — that most communities budget more money for lawn care than they budget for life enrichment.

Our Priorities

In life and in business we often claim to have one priority — that’s the story we tell ourselves — but our behaviors suggest our heart priorities, our real priorities are something different.

I am afraid that often this is true in senior living.

Home or Senior Living

Every time we communicate with a prospect or give a prospect a tour we are saying, “We believe that you or your loved one will have a better life in senior living — in my senior living community — than at home.” But then we spend more on lawn care than activities. … Maybe we are in fact more concerned about how our communities look than what it is actually like to live in them.

Senior Living and PT Cruisers 

When the PT Cruisers first came out I was intrigued — not enough to really consider purchasing one or even going for a test drive. I just knew that they would be cool to drive, because they looked cool from a distance and up close.

When I was offered a PT Cruiser at a rental car counter, I jumped at the opportunity. I was going to drive along the California coast with my arm hanging from the window looking and feeling cool.

I loaded my bags and jumped in the driver’s seat, and before I even turned over the ignition I was struck by how ordinary the interior was. Driving it did not improve my impression. It turns out I was not alone. They stopped producing it in 2010.

What Is Possible

Life enrichment is the most important thing that senior living does. It is the only thing that you cannot get at home. It is the thing that allows residents to live out their very best lives. When all this happens senior living will be the thing that nearly all older people long for.