Life Lessons

Assisted Living Secrets = Lost Revenue Imagine you are a young 85 year old and live alone in your home of 40 years. Your spouse died a few years earlier. All three of your children live several hours away. Both brothers and sister passed away about 10 years ago. You can drive, but your vision and memory aren't as good as they used to be and it worries your children. Each day you wake up at 7:00am, make a pot of coffee and read the local news paper. At precisely 8:00am you make a bowl of cereal so you can take the morning medications. After reading the news paper you turn on the television and begin watching talk shows, then soaps and before you know it, the evening news is on. Time seems to go faster when you play computer games. It’s time for dinner, but you aren’t hungry and it's such a waste to cook for one person. You decide on a meal replacement bar, some cookies and your evening medications. It's about time for one of the children to text or perhaps cal...

What are your most valuable life lessons? One of the most important things we can do is pass along or share life's most important lessons in hope others will be wiser than we were. These are not in any particular order and I consider this a living blog. I am sure I will add, delete up date portions of this post as I continue to learn and experience. I would love your feedback and or hear about your most important life's lessons. Treat others as you would like to be treated . Its amazing how much this simple philosophy impacts you and others. This will certainly be different for each of us. Always do the rite thing . When faced with a decision just do the rite thing. If there are no guidelines or you must act quickly this a golden rule. It may not be the best decision but doing the rite thing can't be too bad. Gather the facts as best you can . This will normally lead you down the correct path. I use this when conducting investigations, resolving customer and ...

Assisted Living and Mom Recently a friend shared a common frustration and challenge with me. He and his wife were trying to convince his mom (who always has known best) that is was time to move from her home into an assisted living community. How do you convince the person that gave birth to you, the one person that knows you better than anyone, the one person that has always believed in you, that she no longer knows whats best for herself? Mother knows best! Her love runs deeper than the rest. Mother could always kiss it and make it better, was there to nurse you through sickness or bad times. Her DNA runs through your every vein. Your heart beats because of her. Remember the valuable lessons that only she could teach. Those lessons were the foundation for who you are today. They helped you make the best decisions and do the right thing in her absence. Mother knows best! Her love runs deeper than the rest. The years have flown by and now mother is also a proud grand mo...

Trust and Honor in a Small Florida Town After years in the business and corporate world it is easy to become hardened and distrustful; very cautious at a minimum. We wrap ourselves in layers of litigious toilet paper. Its seems as though even the most minor decision we make must to go through a "what if" process. What if it offends, what if it leads to a law suit, what if, what if, what if ? We have been conditioned by our experiences to believe most people are out to get us. Hmmm? Wait a minute ! On a recent consulting engagement I found a town with the most honest, genuine, caring and giving people I have seen since my childhood. Imagine a physician wanting to give (free) flu shots to the residents of a local assisted living community or a company only charging you half of the $5,000 bill because they understand how the economy has affected you.  Imagine an artist who creates all day everyday, only to give her work away. While standing in line at the local groce...

Remember Retirement? Remember the rotary phone, life before remote controls, micro-wave ovens or Viagra ? Are we about to say "remember retirement"? Last year a resident of an upscale Independent Living community I managed requested a private and somewhat urgent meeting with me. It was important for him to explain in person why he and his wife were giving their 30 day notice to move out. He said "we worked hard, were successful and invested well, but never expected to live this long or for our investments to crash. We are running out of money and can't afford to live here anymore". "I may have to find a part-time job". That was the first of many conversations like this one and prompted me to take a look into several factors likely to affect retirement as we know it today. Only 11 percent of Baby Boomers are planning to stop working entirely when they reach retirement age. About 9 percent of Baby Boomers we be affluent (defined as having a ...

Can Assisted Living Learn From Starbucks? I hate to admit this, but I'm a fan of Starbucks, their coffee, locations, ambiance and most of all the quality and consistency of the store team members. There are many options for coffee and Internet usage, but something or things keep me a fan. The team members always make me feel welcome, the product is consistent even during high traffic times. While sitting in a Starbucks today I wondered what lessons the Senior Housing industry could learn so I did the popular thing and googled topics related to their hiring, training and philosophy. Here are some interesting bits of information I found in an article written by: Arthur A. Thompson, The University of Alabama John E.Gamble, University of South Alabama Every partner/Batista hired for a retail job in a Starbucks store receives at least 24 hours training in the first two to four weeks. The training includes classes on coffee history, drink preparation, coffee knowledge (...

This morning I received an email from a dear friend.  He probably received the email, thought it was special and passed it along to his friends.  So I am passing the body of his message along to you. There was no mention of the authors name.  I hope it touches you the way it did me.  There was a young woman who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and had been given three months to live. So as she was getting her things 'in order,' she contacted her Pastor and had him come to her house to discuss certain aspects of her final wishes. She told him which songs she wanted sung at the service, what scriptures she would like read, and what outfit she wanted to be buried in. Everything was in order and the Pastor was preparing to leave when the young woman suddenly remembered something very important to her. 'There's one more thing,' she said excitedly . 'What's that?' came the Pastor's reply? 'This is very important,...