Senior Care Academy
Senior Care Academy is a podcast dedicated to providing valuable information and expert advice on navigating the world of senior care for both senior care providers, and families with aging parents. Hosted by industry professionals, each episode covers a wide range of topics including healthcare options, legal considerations, financial planning, and emotional support for caregivers. If you are a healthcare provider, have aging parents, or are a senior adult, this podcast is for you! Tune in to gain valuable insights and resources to help you make informed decisions and provide the best care for your loved ones.
Senior Care Academy
Aging with Purpose with Steve Gurney
https://www.retirementlivingsourcebook.com/about-us
When the quest to find the right nursing home for a loved one becomes a catalyst for a lifetime of advocacy and innovation, you get someone like Steve Gurney. His 35-year journey through the landscape of senior living, from creating a vital guidebook to navigating the complexities of end-of-life care, is not just inspiring; it's a masterclass in positively impacting an entire community. As he sits with us, Steve recounts the evolution of his business, from its roots to its expansion, and the lessons learned along the way, including the transition from a startup to part of a media giant, and back again.
If you've ever pondered the richness of life in senior communities or how to foster better connections across generations, this conversation will open your eyes. Steve's immersive experience living in different senior residences at the age of 43 brings an intimacy and understanding to the discussion that is rarely heard. He shares heartwarming stories that reveal the vibrant community spirit often overlooked in conversations about elder care, and the value of authentic leadership. This isn't just about aging gracefully; it's about living fully at every stage of life, and Steve's insights on breaking through age segregation to build supportive, intergenerational communities will resonate with anyone who believes that our later years should be as rewarding as our younger ones.
We wrap up with a hard-hitting look at the pressures facing leaders in the elder care industry and the innovative strategies needed to navigate these challenges. Steve doesn't shy away from discussing the responsibility of leaders to absorb stress and inspire their teams, or the importance of transparency and proactive problem-solving in creating a positive work environment. His vision for an aging society that celebrates life and seeks joy, regardless of the number of candles on the cake, is more than just uplifting; it's a call to action for every one of us to rethink how we approach aging, both as individuals and as a society. Join us for this profound exploration of what it means to age with dignity, purpose, and a sense of belonging.
Book a demo for Helperly's Senior Care software!
https://calendly.com/srichardson-7e6e/30min
Welcome everybody to the Senior Care Academy podcast, a podcast focused on the aging space and senior health care tips, tricks and inside secrets, I guess. Today's guest is Steve Gurney. He is the founder and publisher of Positive Aging Community. He focuses on print media in the East Coast and the Mid East Coast area, Pennsylvania, Baltimore, all the way down to Northern Virginia. Steve, welcome, we're excited to have you.
Speaker 2:Really charged up to be here, Alex.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us where you're from, just a little bit to get to know you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I never imagined that I would have a career in senior living, especially a 35-year career. But how I got into this was when I was in college. My grandfather needed a nursing home and my family is from the Washington DC area. I saw what my family had to do to make this difficult decision to move my grandfather into a nursing home.
Speaker 2:Well, when I graduated from college, I didn't have the greatest job in the world, but I reflected on how it just seemed kind of odd that there wasn't a resource out there to help people like my family make these difficult decisions about what nursing home to go to or what have you.
Speaker 2:And so I put together a guide that listed all these options, and I didn't really think I was starting a business. I really just wanted something on my resume to show I was a self-starter or to maybe get into grad school. But, much to my surprise, people really loved what I put together Back then it was called the Guide to Retirement Living and they encouraged me to keep on going. And here I am 35 years later encouraged me to keep on going. And here I am 35 years later, still doing it Now. Along the way, I started doing this and started working my way up the East Coast from Washington DC to Baltimore to Philadelphia, and then I ended up selling the business to the Washington Post and I ran it for over 20 years under their ownership, and about five years ago I bought it back and now I'm running it on my own again.
Speaker 1:Wow, 20 years under a certain company is a long time. What did the transition look like when you first made it?
Speaker 2:For me. When I first made it I sort of gave you my background. I hadn't really worked anywhere before, like I sort of worked a job right out of college and then all of a sudden I'm running my own business. And when I joined the Washington Post and joined their team for me, I was learning so much. It was great number one to have colleagues that were in the same field as me and additional resources and ideas, so I really enjoyed that. I sort of expected when they bought it that I would be continuing going around the country doing the resource guides that I'd created in the DC area, but they wanted me to just focus on the Mid-Atlantic and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:Now here's kind of a cool thing about where I'm at now, one of the things that I started doing very early in my career. I realized that a lot of older adults are resistant to thinking about anything about elder care or assisted living or nursing, because they're healthy. You know why should I think about planning ahead? And so the phrase that I hear a lot from the consumer was oh, that's nice, but I'm not ready yet. Meanwhile, social workers, realtors, area agencies on aging, all these professionals that work with older adults they were ordering my books by the box load, and so what I realized was I'm going to build a community of these professionals that work with older adults and in turn, they'll pass out my resource guide to the end consumer.
Speaker 2:And so I did a lot of in-person events for professionals. We would have these wonderful events where we'd have a speaker, everybody would get to network. They were great. And then COVID hits and all these people start calling me and they're like what are we going to do? We can't meet in person. So I started playing around with different online platforms and fast forward now, three or four years since COVID, we do these weekly discussions with every topic under the sun, and now these discussions they used to be just professionals. Now about half of our audience are older adults and their families and the other half is professionals. And then the other cool thing is where, pre-covid, I was primarily just talking to people in the mid-Atlantic, we have people from all over the world tuning into some of our discussions now. So it's really evolved.
Speaker 1:Wow, I know your acquisition was a pretty important part of your career. I kind of want to have like a twofold question here. Can you talk a little bit about what inspired you to reacquire your company from the Washington Post, and then can you talk a little bit about how the evolution of your company has changed as a result of reacquiring it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll try to make it as brief as possible, but basically, when I sold my business to the Washington Post, we were part of a wholly owned subsidiary that operated independently in Northern Virginia, so we weren't a part of the big Washington Post newspaper. We basically did three resource directories mine on senior living, an apartment guide and a new homes guide. So it was this great small company with these bootstrap entrepreneurs. We just happened to be owned by the Washington Post, and so we would go to our budget meetings every year and everything was great. Well, I guess sometime around 2018, the lease in our Northern Virginia office was due and the Post was like hey, look, we've got some space down here, let's bring you all down. And it was your typical consolidation Some people lost their jobs this, that and the other.
Speaker 2:Now my team everybody retained their job and we were down there working just fine. But it's a shift going from a small, sort of more of an entrepreneurial shop to a big operation. And my team members they tried as long as they could, but they didn't really like the feel of the big business and the Washington Post isn't going to change for a little guidebook. And so they found jobs. And then I just basically said to them hey look, I'd like to go do my own thing and I could run this book for you as a consultant, and that was really kind of difficult. And so they said, well, will you help us sell it? And I was like no, but if you wanted to give it back to me, I'd take it, and so that's yeah it's kind of an interesting way.
Speaker 2:It didn't exactly work out that way, definitely, but it was wonderful, kind of coming back into sort of the bootstrap operation that I had many years ago. And then COVID hit, which being a print media product, that was a little bit scary, and so it really has created a reinvention of what I'm doing, but it all seems to be working out quite well.
Speaker 1:I loved researching you. I loved looking at your content that you had put out. You're very high energy, high passion. Do you find that your skills allow you to connect with specific individuals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get really excited about this space of senior living and elder care because I think there's so much potential to apply sort of positive energy and a creative outlook and just try new things, and that's what gets me charged up.
Speaker 1:What projects has your team been taking on recently at the positive aging community? What are you guys focusing on? What are your goals now?
Speaker 2:I think my main passion is that these weekly online discussions that we're doing. I love connecting with people in real time who have problems, who are looking to expand their knowledge base, who are looking for solutions and, just like you said when we started this discussion today, it's like gosh. I love doing this because I'm talking to people. It's like when I'm talking to people and I get the same energy. I just got off a call with the author of a book called Gray Love and it's all about dating after 60. And just it was fascinating dating after 60. And just it was fascinating, I mean, and it's just so many things that I didn't think about and I have to say so.
Speaker 2:The author of this book, she's wonderful. She and her co-editor they're editors, they're wonderful. But what really gets me excited is when we do all these live and interactive and it's the audience questions. It's them sort of sharing their stories and the questions that they ask, because I would have never have come up with some of the questions that are asked in our discussions. I just love the variety of different topics. I'll tell you what discussion topics are. The first is solo aging. Any discussions on solo aging we get twice as many people turning out to that discussion and it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:Wow, really.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So think about some of the things that I never really thought about is that many of us, let's say that we're lucky enough to be in a marriage that lasts till death. Do you part? Be in a marriage that lasts till death, do you part? Okay, the thing is, you know, I think a lot of us think that we're going to die on the same day, at the same time as our spouse, but one of us is going to outlive the other.
Speaker 2:And in these solo aging discussions you realize it's sort of like after you get over the grieving of your spouse and you kind of think about it, it's like, wow, I haven't made a new friend in 40 years. What am I going to do? Or it's funny, it goes both ways. We had one discussion where a woman said I love my husband so much. Okay, I miss him dearly, but I love traveling on my own, because I used to travel with my husband and he didn't want to be there and I had to kind of cater to him. And now when I go somewhere I'm on my own.
Speaker 2:But these solo aging discussions are fascinating. It can also be really eye-opening because there's a lot of people out there that they don't have somebody that can be their power of attorney or their guardian if something happened to them and they're very empowered to sort of figure out, okay, what are some of the solutions that I can do. So solo aging is a hot topic. The other hot topic that we talk about is what to do with your stuff. Okay, so you think about it Really. Oh yeah, somebody who's 85 years old. They've accumulated a lot of stuff, even if they're not a pack rat, and it's kind of like how do we manage all these photos If you're thinking about downsizing but you're in like a three bedroom house? Where's all this stuff going to go? And there's so many different things that I never thought about. Now there's a really cool concept that we've talked about a few times on our platform called Swedish death cleaning, and I know it sounds like a topic for me when I'm dead.
Speaker 2:Let me start giving these things away to people who will find value in them before I pass away, instead of having all of this stuff in my house that somebody's going to come in and pretend like they know what it meant to me and where it could go. And inevitably when families go through this, a lot of times the stuff just goes in the dumpster. And when it could go and inevitably when families go through this, a lot of times this stuff just goes in the dumpster. And when it could be in the hands of somebody. You might have a piano in your living room that you haven't played in years and your grandkids could be using it now, but it's thinking about that giving it away now.
Speaker 1:I love hearing all of your insight and your expertise is truly invaluable. I never thought that solo aging would be a big issue, or what to do with your stuff would be a bigger issue that the population are interested in. Maybe, on the flip side of it, what topics have surprised you that you're interested in?
Speaker 2:Well, we're in the same boat. These two topics came out of the woodwork just through conversations and it's like whoa, I had no idea. But there's some other topics that I find really interesting and are important, and a lot of it is end of life discussions. Okay, I used to be really nervous about that, like it's like oh geez, I've got a speaker on who's going to talk about death and dying or hospice or something around end of life, and what I've discovered is that the discussions around end of life are probably some of the most meaningful discussions, because when you're talking about how you want to be remembered, what happens if you become ill and you need hospice, what things are important to you, and things like that, when you talk about death, you're actually thinking about how do I want to live my life until I die?
Speaker 2:For a lot of people, myself included, a talk about death was one that was more sad or something that I was afraid of, and now I really embrace discussions around death and dying. The important thing for us all to remember is that if I'm talking about death today, it doesn't mean I'm going to die tomorrow, but I am going to die someday. Okay, I don't know when, but not talking about it. All that does is puts my family in the dark in terms of you know I want to be remembered.
Speaker 1:So you're almost like putting it off. You're putting off like the consequences of dying.
Speaker 2:Well and I'm glad you brought up putting things off, because I think in the topic of elder care and senior living, that's what most of us do Most of us put these discussions, planning conversations off, mainly because we don't want any of this stuff to happen. So, talking about dementia, saying to your loved ones hey, if I ever get dementia, this is what I'm thinking about, how I'd like to be cared for. When you make a statement to your children, they're probably like dad.
Speaker 2:Why are you talking about this? That's so sad that you would get dementia. Don't talk about that. But by not talking about it now, if I do get dementia, they don't know how I wanted to be taken care of, you know. And now they're scrambling around making those decisions. And I think that it's important for us all to just try our best to have conversations, do some kind of planning, and by not talking about it or not thinking about it, you're not helping anybody. And the thing is dementia great point of discussion None of us have a crystal ball. I really hope that I don't get dementia and I hope my wife and my loved ones don't get dementia. But the fact of the matter is, the older we live, the higher probability that we might have some form of dementia probability that we might have some form of dementia and we just need to do our best to take care of our loved ones, because the fact is is that if you do get dementia, eventually you're not going to be able to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen so much content online about dealing with dementia, learning to handle it with your loved ones. It's a condition I would say that is becoming more talked about, more prevalent. Are there other not discussed medical issues, mental issues that you find should?
Speaker 2:be more discussed in the senior space.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you these are coming up on a weekly basis, so if we did this discussion next week, I'd probably be bringing something else up Some of the medical conditions number one, like Parkinson's and movement disorder. It's amazing how many people are affected by that Osteoporosis. So many older women and women in general are impacted by osteoporosis. But I'm going to tell you about a discussion that we had yesterday.
Speaker 2:That is the leading killer in hospitals and that's sepsis. And I didn't even know what sepsis was a few months ago. But sepsis is a infection that is very difficult to detect and if you don't detect it it can literally kill someone in a very short period of time. And oftentimes these are older adults that are going into the hospital, they're getting a procedure, they get an infection. It's hard to detect unless you get a urinary analysis, and so one of the things that a lot of hospitals are starting to do now is have sort of mandates that if somebody is showing fatigue and disorientation or whatever, automatically let's check them for sepsis through urinary analysis and get this going. But there are many dementia, mobility, arthritis, all of these things. The problem is, unless you've lost a loved one to sepsis, sort of like it's off your radar, but once it happens, it's all of a sudden. You realize is that whoa, this is really impacting a lot of people?
Speaker 1:That's 100% true. When something affects your inner circle, especially someone you love or care about, you start to become the expert on it. That's for sure. Like to talk about those. Can you discuss a little bit about how Sourcebook services seniors in the sense of helping them understand what they're able to have, what they have access to? What is it about Sourcebook that allows seniors to expand their network? Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:one of the things that I'm really passionate about is choices. Okay, it's helping people understand that they have choices, whether it be a healthcare condition. It's knowing that you know you can advocate for yourself and there's people out there that will advocate for you. So, like oftentimes, you know you're in the hospital or you go to the doctor's office and he or she says okay, here I'm writing you a prescription for this, here, take it. We can do some research, we can talk to other people, we can get additional opinions.
Speaker 2:I know I'm going on a tangent here, but I wanted to bring up the prescription, because probably one of my favorite discussions that I've had on my platform is with this woman who was in a nursing home for two years. She had hallucinations, diagnosis, dementia, she had all kinds of the conditions. She was bedridden and they put her on hospice, which means basically they're projecting that the end is near. One of the things that they did when they put her on hospice in the nursing home after living there for two years is they took her off all of her medications except for pain medications, and now she is living in a condo in Southern California independently and I'm not necessarily saying and she wouldn't say this either. There's a lot of things going on saying and she wouldn't say this either. There's a lot of things going on, but when they took her off all the medications, she was on about 15 medications at that time.
Speaker 2:In general, our healthcare system and the consumer were looking to take a pill to solve our problem, and this is just a great example of where getting off the medications enabled her to sort of regain her independence. And one of the things that I never knew existed is there's a new group of pharmacists out here and what they're called is de-prescribing pharmacists. So instead of pharmacists that write prescriptions. These pharmacists evaluate the drugs that you've been prescribed many times from multiple physicians that don't know the other drugs that you're taking, and they work to get you off of those medications that are unnecessary and that might be counteracting and creating conditions like this woman that I was talking about. I know I'm rambling here on that, but what I'm really empowered to do is help people understand choices and help them make connections with people and organizations that might help them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love how your focus is on stories and individuals. I know in the link that you sent me to review you said that stories shared is how connections are made and how true communication happens. Can you tell us a little bit about how your work has satisfied that within you? Being able to share stories, connect with other people. What does that look like for you?
Speaker 2:I kind of discovered this early on in my career. I had an editor, because I'm not a writer I mean, I've gotten better at writing but I actually hired a wonderful editor and she really opened my eyes to the power of like I could sort of create a checklist on hey, here's 10 things to do to live a more purposeful life. Or I could tell a story and interview somebody that's living a purposeful life and that story is just so much more interesting and when we're listening to somebody's story we can pull things out that we relate to and we know that there's another human that has been through this, whereas when we're lecturing to people or sharing checklists, sometimes it's easy for those to kind of go over our head.
Speaker 1:Definitely. I think I relate to that in the sense of having strong leaders in my life and around me. You've been a leader all of your career. You've started your company and you bought it, you sold it, you reacquired it. What has building connections with your team throughout the course of your career meant to you? Would you share some light on?
Speaker 2:that Actually I'll kind of put school at the University of Maryland, baltimore County. It's called the Erickson School of Aging Studies and they recruited for the first class of this graduate school a bunch of us that had worked in the field of aging for many years and we got to go through this amazing program together. And it was at that point 20 years in this business that I took my first official leadership class. Ok, and up to then, what it made me realize I was like whoa, I didn't realize you could study leadership. I didn't realize that they had all these different ideas and ways of looking at being a leader, because what had just sort of happened by default is that you start working a job or you create a business or you get in a field and you just sort of overnight become a leader. But learning about really intentionally being a leader and reflecting on what type of leader I want to be, it was just amazing to go through this program.
Speaker 2:That was one of the main benefits that I got in that graduate program and then, I'm going to tell you something that sort of developed out of that is that what I realized was I want to be an authentic leader. I want to be somebody that, whether I'm talking to you or an employee or somebody that needs my help, that they really look at me as like somebody that will actually understands what they're going through and is willing to roll up my sleeves and do just that. And so I'm 58 right now. When I was 43, I moved in and I lived in five different senior living residents as a resident, and what I realized was that people looked at me as an expert in senior housing, and I sort of reflected on the fact that how can I be an expert at something that I've never actually experienced firsthand? Yes, I've an expert at something that I've never actually experienced firsthand. Yes, I've been to 500 places, I've interviewed hundreds of people that have made the move, but I've never spent the night in one of these places. And so I moved in temporarily and I lived in five different places, and it was an amazing experience. It gave me a more authentic perspective at what people might be going through, enabled me to look at it through a different lens, and that's probably one of my most proud projects. That also sort of helps me be a more authentic leader by telling that story.
Speaker 2:What was that like? So the first thing that I did when I did that was I didn't want to pretend to be anything other than what I was as a 43-year-old who's healthy and obviously the other people that are in this community were older than me and might have more health conditions but what I wanted to put this community the first community I went to to the test is can this be a home to a person, not an older person or a person with disability? And I tried to go through the experience very similar to what everybody else went through that lived there. So I filled out the paperwork, didn't bring my furniture, I went through my house and I went through sort of okay, if I was really moving here, these are the three items of furniture that I would take to be in my apartment. I kind of went through that. Now here's one of the things that I learned All five of these places I stayed at were the best neighborhoods I've ever spent time in. Here's the reason why Right now were the best neighborhoods I've ever spent time in. Here's the reason why Right now I'm in a single family home in a suburban, car-dependent neighborhood.
Speaker 2:But when I lived in these communities, what I never realized in visiting them all is how much the residents that live in these places take care of each other. When you walk into an assisted living, you really think that, oh, the staff and the nurses, they're the ones taking care of everybody. But in a building with 100 residents it's impossible for a nurse to run around and take care of everybody's needs. It's the neighbors that are taking care of each other, and I think that most people don't want to live in these age segregated environments. Ok, but once they get there and they make connections with their neighbors, the other people living there, and they see the supportive environment that they're at, it's a very wonderful community.
Speaker 2:What it made me realize was whenever I would do these moves and I would come back home, I felt really lonely, even though my family is living with me in this house. The reason I felt lonely is that on my street I'm friendly with all my neighbors. We wave to each other, we borrow our lawn equipment every now and then, but we didn't really care about each other and we weren't in close proximity to each other like when I was living in the senior living residences.
Speaker 1:I actually do recognize that. I visited a few senior care residences in the past year, working at this company that I'm with now. Help, really, it's been nice to see the residents care for each other. There is one place that I got the chance to visit in Sandy, utah I think it's called the Covington, if I'm not mistaken, but one of the residents had passed out in their room and two or three of the other residents. I couldn't believe my eyes seeing them move as quickly as they did, since, you know so, used to seeing seniors meander about. But they're in a brisk walk over to that room and they had tears in their eyes. They're very emotional about this person's well-being and thankfully it was just a minor fall and nothing crazy. But you really do get that sense of community, you get that sense of togetherness that you're really missing in normal neighborhoods.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you think, because you're in a building like that, that the first person that's going to respond is going to be a nurse or an RN or somebody like that, but it's whoever's closest. I got another cool story about me living in the community. So when I was living in the community, there was a minor league baseball team in Ohio. Minor league baseball players are hosted by families like exchange students. Well, instead of this baseball player living in somebody's basement, this baseball player was living in an assisted living community and the whole community would go watch him pitch and all this stuff. And I saw this. I was like this is absolutely brilliant. And I got to know him and I got to know the owner of the community and I gave them so many props. It was amazing.
Speaker 2:So I was in the Washington DC area and I immediately start calling all the minor league baseball teams and retirement communities. I want to do the same thing here. I think every minor league baseball team should have a bunch of players living in the senior living communities. It's just a win-win. And wasn't successful lining that up, but I talked to so many people that the next year there's a women's professional soccer team in Washington DC and they had three Olympic medal winning soccer players that their contract said they couldn't live in somebody else's house. Like these are rock stars, olympic medal. So the team was going to have to pay for an apartment or hotel room for the whole season for these three players.
Speaker 2:And somebody heard what I was doing with the retirement communities. They called me up and it was like that. These three girls, three women, they lived the entire season in this retirement community and they played for Washington Spirit and the coolest thing about it was they would have these fan appreciation nights at the retirement community. So all these little girls and families were going to the retirement community to meet the professional soccer players that lived there and there's no way that they would want to go into that retirement community if they weren't there. So it just brought the younger and the older together in such a positive environment.
Speaker 1:For me it feels like you're pioneering. I don't think I've heard it anywhere else but age segregation, the concept of utilizing youth, younger generations and the wisdom and experience of older generations, kind of meshing that together. Can you talk about what your dream community would look like, or maybe what this? Idea really entails.
Speaker 2:So, first off, one of the main things for everybody to realize is that the reason that we or our loved ones are hesitant to move, like when you say to grandma or ma, you know, I really think you should move to this community, you'll be taken care of better and I'll sleep better at night, knowing that people are looking out after you. And most of the time people resist. And what I've discovered is the reason they're resisting is not that they don't want to be taken care of. It's not that they don't want to move to the community. It's that it's an age segregated community. The only legally segregated housing that we have left in this world is we can create a building and segregate people under a certain age from living there, a certain age from living there. And when mom tours this building and she says I don't want to live with a bunch of old people, and the adult daughter says but mom, you're old. What mom means is I live on a street with black, white, young, old, married, single, divorced, gay, straight, and now you're saying that I got to go live with a bunch of old people and I'm old. None of us want to be in a segregated environment. So that's one of the challenges that we face Now, this baseball player. There's workplace housing. There's lots of things that are starting to be developed to break the age segregation barrier.
Speaker 2:I guess one of my dreams is that in the future, most of the housing options that we have that help take care of seniors and make them feel more safe and independent would have some sort of intergenerational component to it. Now one of the things that I'll throw out there is my dream you said today it's like, steve, if you could build a community, what would it look like? And number one, I'd love to see an intergenerational component, but what I'd also love to see is a component of where the residents of the community are really taking care of each other in a more intentional and meaningful way. So there's a type of senior living community that's called a life plan community, and in a life plan community you have independent living, assisted and nursing all on one campus. And a lot of times what you will see on these campuses is that the people that live in independent living they don't even want to be around the people in the assisted and nursing that's sort of like other people. You know, I don't want to go there.
Speaker 2:I might catch something you know or what have you, and if I could build one of these communities thing you know or what have you and if I could build one of these communities? It would be a requirement. It would be basically hey look, alex, if you want to move into Shady Acres here, you need to volunteer 10 hours a month helping our residents in assisted and nursing. And just imagine if you had 100 independent residents devoting a thousand hours of time over in this area. Number one the life experience for those people in assisted and nursing is going to be better. But number two, I'm going to realize that these people over here are no different than me, and that's one of the things that you see in a lot of communities.
Speaker 2:One of the things I hate seeing is where you can't take a wheelchair or walker into a certain dining room. It's like, wait a second. There's teenagers that use wheelchairs and walkers and what they're trying to do is sort of erase this aspect. Like a walker, a wheelchair, a cane is something that's bad. It's helping people live a more independent, safe lifestyle.
Speaker 1:So do you think, I guess, before we kind of pivot here do you think there are stigmas behind aging and what do you think as a society we should be doing to eliminate those stigmas? Because having a cane is a part of life. My grandma had a wheelchair for years. We'd push her down the boardwalk at the beach. You take turns and you play with her walker. I'm used to it in my life, but seeing it doesn't bother me in public. What is your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:This is the broader topic of ageism, which is just like racism and sexism. It's an ism. None of us want to be attached to an ism and there are lots of examples of ageism that's out where an older worker may be discriminated against to get somebody who's younger. Ageism can also occur when somebody is younger and an older person is like, oh, I'm not going to hire that person because they don't know what they're talking about, they're not old enough. And then somebody else is saying, oh, he's too old to do this job or what have you. So we hear about ageism in the workplace and that's one form of ageism. But the form of ageism that I like to talk about most is the form of ageism that what we say when we look in the mirror, and a lot of times that form of ageism is the most poisonous out there. So, for example, what's funny is I'm looking at myself right now and I see that I have gray hair, but I don't think of myself as having gray hair, like I've always had brown hair, and kind of shocking when I look at a picture of myself what I see. But, for example, let's say that I look in the mirror and it's like oh, this gray hair and these wrinkles. Oh gosh, I just look so old.
Speaker 2:And if my kids hear that, what kind of message am I communicating about growing old? And we hear this all the time. We feel like we've got to do something to sort of erase these beautiful signs that we've lived on this planet for so long. And what I tell people a lot of times is oh gosh, yeah, I just don't like the way that I look. I'm aging, and this, that and the other. I tell people you just got to smile, okay, it doesn't matter. The secret to looking young is a smile on your face. Now, a smile on your face is oftentimes hard to get, because I lost my loved one, I got healthcare conditions, I can't do the hobby that I like to do, and that's what I like to talk about. It's reinventing ourselves, it's finding purpose, no matter what our age and ability is, and connecting with other generations is a great way to do that.
Speaker 1:So we've touched on a lot of good points. To take kind of a pivot towards the operation side of senior living and the leadership side of it, Can you talk a little bit about the best qualities that you see in senior living professional, whether it be a nurse, whether it be a therapist, whether it be a CEO, CFO? What are the best qualities that you've observed in your career?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that I've witnessed firsthand is how important the leadership message at the top of whatever organization is operating is, and I guess I never realized this that much. So I work with a lot of senior living communities, senior housing communities out there, and oftentimes they're like chains where you might have a company with 20 senior living residents and you'd like to sort of think that, oh, it's like McDonald's, you go into this one and you're going to get the same cheeseburger. But it's not that way and the difference is it's the leader of that particular community is the main differentiation is that the tone that this person sets will go down right to the person that is cleaning out the bedpan for your mom. And what I found is that people that are running businesses, they have a lot of stress. You got to figure out. Are you going to make my numbers? I got 10 more people to hire.
Speaker 2:I can't do this, and if my role of a leader is to take that pressure and just apply it to the person underneath me, they're going to apply it to the person underneath them. It's going to go right down to the person that's taking care of your mom. And I found that the good leaders in the organizations. They absorb the pressure of running the business and they figure out how can I creatively motivate my team to solve the problems that they have in front of them, instead of if I've got somebody above me who's yelling at me about the stock price revenue, this, that and the other. I can't just apply that pressure down below. I got to be creative. I got to build a team that wants to sort of meet the needs of the organization.
Speaker 1:I think it comes from within A lot of my favorite leaders and mentors, especially growing up I was part of like a youth program at my church and all of my mentors. You could tell that they're self-motivated, self-starters, very positive, similarly to yourself. What would you say to the person who maybe is struggling to find the motivation within themselves to change or to take the pressure off of their employees? What would you say to that leader who might be struggling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think, whether it be leadership or a solution for an aging loved one, the important thing is to talk to as many people as you can. You know, like I said, until I went to grad school, I didn't realize that you could take a class on leadership, and I was like blown away at everything that I was learning. And I find this all the time in the elder care world, too, is where families are just sort of like wow, I didn't know that any of these resources existed. And how we learn to improve ourselves is it's talking to people. It's why you love doing interviews like this and why I love doing them too, is because when you're talking to people and when you're bringing up challenges that you might be facing or opportunities that you're looking for solutions, it's now number one. Somebody knows that you've got a problem, and most people out there want to help each other.
Speaker 1:That's a great response talking to people and learning from them. I know oftentimes I say the same thing like oh, I didn't know I could do this, or I didn't know I could do that, especially working at the environment that I'm in now, and it provides a wonderful opportunity to learn.
Speaker 2:And most people like they're flattered when you call them up and it's like hey, I admire the company that you run, or I saw your position on LinkedIn and I've always aspired to be somebody like you. How can you not embrace that, Something that most people will take time to talk about?
Speaker 1:I guess switching back over to your company and your role. Can you talk about the impact you hope your work will have in the next five years, 10 years?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one person who says that I help them think differently, whether it be elder care or business or a family problem. That just warms my heart and I feel really lucky because I get emails on a regular basis. I wouldn't say it's a daily basis, but usually a few times through the month I'll get an email. And it's man. I was listening to something that you said on the discussion. Or just the other day I got somebody that received their copy of sourcebook in the mail and they talked about how it really helped them make a better decision, and I just want to be remembered as somebody that really tried his hardest to help other people.
Speaker 1:I guess last few questions here before we wrap up. What is the best advice that you've received? That you kind of took you off guard at first?
Speaker 2:Well, that question kind of took me off guard, but let me sort of frame this. When I sold my business to the Washington Post, my boss who later became president of the whole organization he basically said look, when you're working for me, I got one thing that I want you to really think about, and that is no surprises. And I got one thing that I want you to really think about, and that is no surprises. And I kind of looked at him funny at the time because you know, I'm in my early 20s and I'm sort of like what do you mean by that? And he goes well, here's the thing In business we've all missed our numbers.
Speaker 2:We've all had problems that occur. When you see a problem coming, I want you to let me know so I can help you solve that problem. He goes, if you just sit on it, and it's like, oh geez, I don't think I'm going to make my numbers this month. Maybe something will happen, and at the end of the month I'm going to make it. So I'm not going to tell anybody about it.
Speaker 2:Not only am I creating a bigger problem for myself, but I'm not giving my leader the opportunity to help me solve that problem. And I love that advice and I use it all the time, and I oftentimes get upset with my kids because it's sort of like oh hey, dad, I need help with my homework. When's it due? In an hour, it's like, wait a minute, you knew that that homework was due a month ago and we could have been working on it. And now this is a problem for me and it's a problem for you. So no surprises and life is full of surprises. I think the key is that addressing it immediately, bringing it up to the people around you, so that you don't create a crisis for everybody.
Speaker 1:That is advice I've never heard before.
Speaker 2:No surprises.
Speaker 1:That's a concept I think my dad tried to teach me, but it just didn't really get through.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of things like that, and myself included it's. I didn't listen to my parents when I was growing up, and so now I got kids that do the same thing, but as we get older, it's one of the values of wisdom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, that caught me off guard. That was really amazing, I guess. Second to last question here what if you had a magic wand and you could just wave away a problem that we experience in the senior space today? What would that problem be?
Speaker 2:I really would be dementia. If somebody has got mobility issues, if they don't drive anymore, we can work around those types of things, but when somebody who had previously lived a life where they were making decisions on their own and they're independent, and now they have developed dementia where they're not able to make safe decisions and live independently, it puts so much stress and strain on families and none of us want our legacy to be remembered that way. So that would be my first magic wand. And then if I could eliminate ageism after that and make it so that we celebrate age, that would be another little magic wand wish.
Speaker 1:Those are two solid wishes. I think you'd have my vote if we could wish away something. Last question here today Is there something that you wish that we had asked you, that we didn't get the chance to talk?
Speaker 2:about? No, this has been an amazing interview and I loved it. You asked all the right questions and we talked about all the topics that I really enjoy talking about.
Speaker 1:That makes me happy to hear. That really does. I enjoyed my time too. A very quick hour. Thanks for tuning in everybody. Steve Gurney, founder and CEO of Positive Aging Community. If you live in the mid-Atlantic area, please check out Sourcebook and when we post a podcast episode, make sure to include links to his website links to check out his resources. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for being here today, steve. All right, thanks.