Transcription

• Speaker #0

  2030, we were supposed to, we need about 560,000 units to be built. And right now, it looks like we're projected to have about a 370,000 unit deficit. This industry is so complex, and there's so many people that are feeding it, not just the buildings themselves, but the service providers, the innovative products that are coming into the space all the time, that it's always made such an interesting conversation. You hear all the time people who get diagnosed with like Alzheimer's. It's like the entire family got diagnosed because now everyone in the family has to learn, adjust and adapt to this person's new reality. So I just think like educating yourself on senior living in general would would do yourself and your family a really good service.

• Speaker #1

  We were in negotiations investing in real estate. They're winning. They're making money.

• Speaker #2

  What's up, everyone? Welcome to the Real Estate Educators Podcast, where we provide the education you can build on. I am your host, Kevin Amos. We are back with another fun, exciting episode. I got Jerry Vinci with me today. Over 30 years experience in sales, marketing, and operation. He's a founder or co-founder of two active companies. We're excited to learn a little bit more about that. He specializes in senior living with the number one senior living marketing and sales podcast on Apple. Welcome to the show, Jerry.

• Speaker #0

  Thanks for having me, Kevin. Appreciate being here.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, well, I'm really excited to get to know you a little bit better. Right before I hit record, you were telling me how amazing senior housing is and maybe a little bit misunderstood. So let's help clear that up a little bit. But before we do that, I'd love to get to know you just a little bit. Can you take me back 30 years experience? So take me back 30 years ago.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So everyone typically asks the question of like how I got into the senior living senior housing space just because it is kind of a unique industry. You know, I've been in marketing probably my entire life. My parents owned and operated a printing business. So by the time I was in like seventh or eighth grade, I was literally running a printing press and got a real good taste for marketing and advertising on like the commercial level at a young age. Was out of school, started as an art director for a corporate communications company. Didn't really like corporate America, so I moved into... starting my own agency back in 2004. And during that time, all four of my grandparents were aging and all of them were in some type of senior care, senior housing, whether it was like an independent living community where someone just wanted to kind of like simplify and downsize their life or it was like assisted living or memory care for like more like cognitive decline and things like that. So I kind of got to see all corners of senior living and senior housing and and what that, looks like for an older person, plus their family members who are also trying to navigate that. And I just noticed that it was a very complex, difficult process. Anyone who's had to find a place for mom or dad knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's not easy. It's one of those things that we probably should have some education on decades earlier. So we know what to prepare ourselves for, but we don't. It's kind of, it's not like buying a car or a house where we've done it a couple of times before, or we know enough people who have done it where we kind of know what to expect. So I saw my family struggle through that whole experience. And from that, I really started to understand kind of how like the operational side of senior housing was working or not working. And so you could start to see like what a good community, a well-run community looked like versus one that wasn't. And so that kind of got my wheels turning. And um, It was about 10 years later into our agency work that we landed our first senior housing community as a client. And once we got behind the scenes and once we saw the kind of like the wizard behind the curtain and how these communities were actually running what needed to happen for them to be successful, that kind of sealed the deal for us because it was more than just marketing. It wasn't just us trying to sell a product sitting on a shelf for some company out there was, you know, We're talking about human beings. We're talking about, you know, potentially helping families find, you know, a new place to call home for mom or dad and potentially the last place they'll ever live. So there's a lot of like, there's a lot of weight behind that work from the marketing side. So that's kind of how I got my start in the marketing space. And then over the years, it's kind of transitioned. not just into marketing, but now also into the investment side of senior housing, because we started to see the same problem on both sides of the equation, both operators running the buildings and people looking to invest capital. And so. They were so investors have been putting capital in the senior housing, but they don't really have an independent way to validate the one variable in senior housing that actually decides the deal, which is whether an operator can sustain or grow occupancy in their specific local market. So unlike multifamily where kind of like the lease is the product in senior housing, the operating business inside the building is the product. And how well that business is run varies greatly depending on the operator. So Norton, our investment-facing product or service that we offer, helps investors evaluate the operator essentially to determine if the deal is a good deal, if it needs adjustment, if maybe it's something where they just need to walk away. So we're kind of like evaluating the deal in all stages and making sure that. that it is viable for, for investors.

• Speaker #2

  Okay. I definitely want to get into Norden and how that even does that. But before that, on the real estate investment side, a lot of our listeners are real estate investors, right? Or they're marketing to real estate investors. So it might be lenders or attorneys or realtors, that sort of thing. So it's definitely investment focused. And you just said that it's almost like running a business in a piece of real estate, which that's the way I view it. It's almost like a hospitality play. So how did you Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  totally.

• Speaker #2

  Did you have any real estate investment experience or any or we jumped right into the senior housing business?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, no experience in the real estate side in the beginning. It was really just looking and working with the operators and understanding the way that they ran their business. And the biggest thing I think that we noticed was just the inconsistencies in the way that operators were. We're handling intake, I guess, the whole lead generation process, the sales process. And then like once somebody actually moves in, kind of making sure the systems were all talking to each other. So so we we first started on like the marketing side and basically not just not just leads, because when I think marketing, I just think like we're just talking about leads and generating as many families of interest for that community as possible. but yeah But we focus more on like demand generation, which basically is like owning that entire arc. So from the family's first search on Google, all the way till the time that they move in, we look at optimizing that entire experience. So where are the leads coming from? How, what are the quality of those leads? And then looking at the sales team and their process and how quickly are they responding to them? How are they qualifying or scoring their leads? Right. And then, and then what does their follow-up process look like? because in senior... senior living, it's anywhere from 20 to 27 touch points to move a family from the first touch all the way through to move in. So how's the sales team handling all of that, right? And then looking at the systems they have in place for resident care, for follow-ups with families, and even for the residents themselves, and just making sure that all of those systems are talking to each other and that there's a seamless handoff between each of those departments as someone progresses through that, through... through the phases of onboarding, because it's not, I guess that's another thing about senior housing too. It's not a simple, quick process. Typical move-in times is about 180 days. If you look at just assisted living, for example, it's, it's six months or longer from the time a family starts searching until someone actually moves in. So it's not a quick, it's not a quick process. And there's a lot that can happen during those six months.

• Speaker #2

  Okay. So you got into some of the stuff that was what Norton's looking at. It sounds like the systems, the marketing, the follow-up, all of those things. And that's how you would judge an operator. Tell us about Norton.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So Norton essentially is an independent diagnostic that was built to help the senior housing industry kind of see a problem that they can't see. So Norton is, it's a graded independent diagnostic. And what it's looking at is how the building is actually filling. So how are those leads coming in? And are they coming through paid aggregators? In this industry, you have like a place, you probably heard of a place for mom or caring.com. If not, anyone who's done a search for senior housing probably has seen their links in the search results near the top. So they own about 60% of the search. volume in all of Google, pretty much 60% of searchers are going to those two platforms instead of to the communities themselves. So what's happening is those people are going to those sites, they're putting in, you know, I'm looking for a community in this area. Those sites send them a list of communities and then those leads get into the pipeline for those communities. But the problem is that if one of those people move in to the community, that community then has to pay a commission for that lead. And it's typically the first month's rent or even more than that. So that community is going to be sitting in the red for probably the first two to three months before they actually even see any profit from the resident. And the fact that in senior housing, more than half of your residents will typically leave within two years. You're constantly having to refill the building. So within the first, yeah, it's like 22 months is the average length of stay for, say, assisted living. If you're looking at like independent living or. You might have heard the term like CCRC or life plan community. That's more of like a luxury lifestyle where people are very healthy. They're coming in younger, so they're staying longer. So in those cases, people might stay for five, six, seven, even up to like 10 or 12 years, something like that. But the typical senior housing resident is there for less than two years. So really that question of like how the operators feel in the building is a big part of what Norton is answering. And then if there's we're also looking at other like public-facing signals, like what does the reputation look like? What are their competitors doing that they're not doing? Or what are they doing that their competitors aren't doing? We start to really get a sense for how that community stacks up. So can the operator sustain? the current occupancy or grow it, that's like question number one. And then question two would usually be like, where are they getting the leads or where are they getting their residents from? Because that's going to really change the financials and the growth, the growth trajectory of the community over time.

• Speaker #2

  So if we're looking at a regular long-term rental, whenever it turns over, it's very expensive. You have to get the unit ready again. You got to go spend your marketing dollars to go find a new tenant. I assume it's the same in senior housing. So. 22 months. That's really, that's actually quite short. That surprises me.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #2

  What causes that? Here's why I asked that question, Jerry. You think of that as like the last home and you had alluded to that, but I mean, it should be years and years and years. And hopefully, unless it's like really assisted living or something where it's like, almost like hospice. So I would just assume it's longer.

• Speaker #0

  The challenge today is. So we hear the term silver tsunami a lot, right? And everybody just assumes when we hear silver tsunami, we're talking about anyone who's 65 and up. The baby boomers, the first baby boomers turn 80 this year. And that's actually the first demographic shift that happens within senior housing. It's not 65 where people are moving into senior housing. It's actually 80 to 85. So what's happening is that people are waiting longer to move in. they have Because of that, they have higher acuity, which just means that they have more complex health needs and requirements. So those buildings that were built for, say, independent living people who just want to downsize and simplify their life, but maybe still want to go out and do all the things, that's not necessarily an option for as many people nowadays as it was because people are coming in older with these higher acuities. So that's... Typically, what happens is someone might come in at 80, 85, and they have a year or two in a community, and then maybe they need to go to a higher level of care. So they might need, say, memory care if they've got early onset dementia or Alzheimer's, or they might need to go into skilled nursing, which is another higher level of care. So they're either transitioning out of their current level of care or they're just passing away. So that's typically what happens.

• Speaker #2

  Okay. That makes sense. So when you think about senior living, for me, what I think about is like a larger community, maybe like a hundred units or so. You have a reception desk when you first walk in, everybody's super nice. And then there's obviously what you were alluding to is like medical. So it's like different levels of senior housing. Am I thinking about that right?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. And there's some buildings that have all of those things in one. So like a CCRC, which stands for continuing care retirement community, or now it's called a life plan community. Those will allow someone there's typically like a buy-in. So which averages anywhere from say like $300,000 to say like 2 million at the top end of it. But someone pays the entry fee and usually they're selling their house to do it because this is like a final push, the final move to a community. And then on top of the entry fee, there will be a monthly rental fee. But basically what happens is because they have all those levels of care in one campus, that rental fee won't necessarily increase. So if you were to, say, start independent living and then move mom to assisted living and then move to memory care, you'd be paying market rate for each of those moves. And, you know, the average like independent living is around, say, $3,500 to $4,000. $4,000 a month. Assisted living might be like $5,500 a month. Memory care can get up to like $8,500 to like $12,000 a month. So if you're paying market rate, you can imagine how expensive that gets and how quickly that adds up versus if you were to do like a CCRC option where you do the buy-in and your rent basically stays close to the same with a little bit of inflation adjustments and cost of living adjustments. But it would basically stay the same regardless of the level of care. So that's why a lot of people go that route.

• Speaker #2

  So the way you're describing it is like, these are professional operators. I know a lot of investors that are just looking for cashflow. And so they're like, well, what if we rent by the room? What if we do transition housing? What if we do senior living? And they're looking for different ways to increase the rent. And some of these mom and pop investors that might just buy one single family house as a senior living, turn it into like a, almost like an empire, right? They start, they started that. They start really small like that, but it. the way you're describing it is these are professional operators. Are you seeing the mom and pop investors in this space right now?

• Speaker #0

  You do. I think it's more than 50% of the inventory we have right now has one property and then like another 25% have like two to nine and then the rest have like, you know, they're like larger portfolios of communities. It's difficult because I find a lot of the smaller communities, they're... they're typically highly specialized. So they're usually assisted living or they're like a memory care run home. And it's like, you know, we see sometimes it's four, four units or six units in a building. It's like, it's almost a home that's been converted into, into a residential senior community. But typically, you know, they're going to have to have a nurse on staff or maybe more than that. There's regulations that they have to follow and, and all, and, and, and hoops they have to jump through. So it's not just like... You can't just open your home and say, hey, let's rent these rooms out to some older folks in our neighborhood.

• Speaker #2

  Don't invest in that project is what you're saying.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I would not. I would definitely highly recommend against that. And typically, like most states, there's rules and regulations in terms of like the investment committee. They can own the property and they can also operate the property, but they have to hire a third party management company to run the building. They can't do it themselves. So there's kind of like, I guess that's like a checks and balances systems that they have.

• Speaker #2

  Okay, that's interesting. All right, so everyone listening here are investors. We're listening to this show because we want to make money. Let's just be honest with ourselves here. So how do we do that in this business?

• Speaker #0

  Well, I think just understanding. Whether whether someone is in senior housing or not in senior housing, you're going to hear about it nonstop for the next five to 10 years because the demographic wave is going to push everybody towards it. You know, we've got the number the number of older adults right now. I mean, like I said, in 2030, I'm sorry, right now, the first baby boomers turning 80 by 2030 or by 2034, there'll be more seniors over the age of 65 than there will be children in America. for the first time in the history of the country. And that's not going to change anytime soon. I mean, you even look at like, there's like 72 million baby boomers. There's about 74 to 75 million millennials. So it's not necessarily like this demographic wave is going to go away. It's only going to like pretty much stay steady for the next couple of generations. So we have a major housing gap right now. And I think that's probably the biggest opportunity for investors who are looking to get into this space. And there's plenty of ways to do it. I don't advise anybody going out there and saying, hey, we're going to buy a building and run it ourselves. Unless you have some operational experience, I definitely would partner with someone who does. But you can look at like publicly traded REITs and private equity, and there's so many different ways. There's syndicators left and right who are looking at getting into the space or who are already in the space. So there's definitely opportunities to get into it from an investment standpoint. But the housing shortage, so by 2030, we were supposed to we need about 560,000 units to be built. And right now it looks like. we're projected to have about a 370,000 unit deficit. So we're behind, you know, significantly. And then after 2030, we need about 125,000 units every year built for the next decade to be able to accommodate the number of seniors who are going to be looking for housing. So developers, I mean, this is the key area. I just know, like, it's difficult because of the timing, right? Like building a senior community is not easy. The average, the time it takes from start to finish on a construction project for senior housing is about 29 months. So building something from the ground up with all the red tape and the construction costs and everything else, I mean, it's such a sizable investment and time suck that a lot of people are kind of like shying away for it. And they're looking at other ways, maybe reuse projects. You've got a lot of like commercial buildings that are sitting empty from the pandemic that... Let's just face it, like remote work is here to stay. And a lot of these companies are just not going back to their buildings. So you can repurpose those for senior housing. So you're starting to see like old malls and old corporate office buildings being converted, which is obviously going to speed up the process a little bit to get more senior housing in the market. But there's I saw a data point said like out of like 30 major housing markets. More than half of them had zero active construction projects for senior housing, which blew me away. That's crazy.

• Speaker #2

  That is crazy. And I'm thinking that there's oversupply in the markets that I'm in, Jerry, for apartments. Like rents are plummeting right now. So I could see some conversions. That would be an easy conversion, you would think.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So there's another asset class, too, within senior housing called active adult, which is kind of like younger. older adults, like 55 plus who just want to live among, you know, their peers who want to live among others who are 55 plus not. So it's not all in like retirement community where like everything's included, like a cruise ship on land. It's more or less just departments like what you're talking about. So you're starting to see kind of people transitioning more towards active adult. And then from active adult, they'll transition to something more intense, like independent living or assisted living, something like that.

• Speaker #2

  All right. This episode is brought to you by Pine Financial Group. Pine Financial is a private lender specializing in short-term rehab lending to real estate investors. Got a property that needs some love? We can help. We are able to offer funding solutions because we raise private money from individual investors. With more than 15 years of experience, Pine offers passive investors an alternative that provides stability, consistency, and security to your portfolio. If you like real estate but want to avoid the ups and downs and effort, A Pine Mortgage Fund could be a perfect fit for you. Accredited investors will experience an 8% preferred return and profit sharing. Diversify your portfolio out of Wall Street and into Main Street with a Pine Financial Group Fund. To get more information at pinefinancialgroup.com, that's pinefinancialgroup.com. Well, let's talk about your podcast, if you don't mind. Yeah. Some of our... guests or some of our guests, some of our listeners are podcast hosts and they're trying to get better podcast hosting. So tell us a little bit about it. How'd you start it and how's it going?

• Speaker #0

  I started the podcast. Podcast is called From Leads to Leases and it really focused on the marketing side of what we do for senior living. Our company that focuses on marketing is called CCR Growth and that just paid homage. The first client we had was a CCRC, so we took the name CCR Growth. And And I really wanted to focus on conversations with other senior living sales and marketing leaders just to understand what was working for them, what challenges they were facing, what was coming down the pipeline. Like there's this big push for in the senior industry for like age tech products and innovations and ways to improve the resident experience and the staff experiences and things like that. I just wanted to have conversations with others in the space and really get a sense for the people in the trenches. Like, what were they doing? What were they seeing inside the buildings? What were some of the trends that maybe we could share with some other operators to help them improve? Because at the end of the day, that was my goal, is to help reach as many operators as possible and to help them level up their game. Because, you know, we want families to be taken care of. We want the residents to be taken care of. We want staff to be taken care of. And so we just really we're all in on this industry. So I've had hundreds of conversations with leaders in this space, and really it's helped shape our entire approach to how we go about understanding marketing from an operational perspective and then also now how Norton operates on the capital investment side because we've had so many conversations about the housing shortage and the challenges with building new properties. legislative issues and there's all sorts of stuff. This industry is so complex and there's so many people that are feeding it, not just the buildings themselves, but the service providers, the innovative products that are coming into the space all the time that it's, it's always made such an interesting conversation. So, yeah, so we, we run a it's now it's a biweekly podcast because we like to give each guest enough airtime. between the shows, like a lot of promotions and newsletters and clips online and everything like that. So podcasting for us, it's been about that initial networking, but then also helping all of our guests share their message with our audience and with their own. And that's been really beneficial for us.

• Speaker #2

  And it's a lot easier to do it every other week for you.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, that too.

• Speaker #2

  We can be honest here, Jerry.

• Speaker #0

  I see some people, they've got a daily podcast. I'm like, wow, that's crazy, right? That's intense, man.

• Speaker #2

  We're getting ready to go to it two times a month as well for our next season. I've talked to other podcast hosts, and they said they haven't seen any drop off in that cadence, the reduction in the cadence. So I think we're going to try that and then just add every once in a while some market. We do some market update sort of things, and I'll add that in. But yeah, we're going to go to the twice a month as well.

• Speaker #0

  I think as long as you're consistent and the audience understands and knows when they're going to expect to hear a new episode. And then also like. on those off weeks promoting the next week's episode, it definitely works for sure.

• Speaker #2

  And the benefits to you from hosting is what?

• Speaker #0

  Industry knowledge, industry expertise, the clout, I guess, from having all these conversations. I'll go to conferences now and, you know, there was one conference where more than half the people at the conference, we knew each other. I had about 40 people at the conference who had been prior guests. So that was really cool. Partnerships, I think, is the big one for us because this industry is so interconnected that we've developed some really powerful partnerships who've essentially been able to go out and refer other communities to us where we haven't had. We don't run ads. We don't, you know, all the things we do for our clients, we don't have to do for ourselves because we have such a strong referral network. And that's mostly because of the podcast.

• Speaker #2

  And that's awesome. Yeah, a lot of the benefit of hosting a podcast is the credibility, as you alluded to, but it's also just meeting cool people like you. Like I got you for 30 minutes of your time. You're a busy guy and I still got 30 minutes of your time, right? So that's a big benefit of being a host. All right, right before we hit record, you said something to me that I found very fascinating. So I'm a big believer in self-development and mastermind groups and peer groups and that sort of thing. And I owe a lot of my success, Jerry. to that, just the people you surround yourself with. And you're getting ready to go do something pretty cool. You're coming to my neck of the woods in Boulder, Colorado. So tell us a little bit about what you're doing there.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So I've been a facilitator of men's work for probably 12 years now, and just recently moved from California to Salt Lake City and was really searching to find something in my local area that would, you know. fill me up or at least be equivalent to what I had before to build something. And just there wasn't anything here, which was surprising because it's a pretty big city. But that was like that was first on my list. I was like, I need to I need to find a men's group, men's support group, just moving. I've had my own business since 2004, and it's been virtual this entire time. So I don't get a lot of interaction right with people. face to face and it's been challenging. That's another, another great reason for the podcast too, by the way, is just having all those connections and meeting new people. And, um, but I really, I really was craving self-development and, and me and camaraderie and, and finding other men, um, you know, who, who wanted the same. So I reached out to, I did a search for online men's group in Salt Lake city and ended up finding her group in, in Boulder, Colorado, of all places. And he... And he said he had a list of like 60 guys who are all local to the Salt Lake area who were interested in in-person work. He sent me the list and me and another guy, we started, um, we just started reaching out and calling. And, and so we formed, uh, we formed our group. It's called common ground. Um, you know, so we have different, we all come from different, different backgrounds. We have different stories and different belief systems, but, but we, we always try to find the common ground as, as a group. Um, and so we've been running that since, um, roughly since like early June, I think. And it's been, been pretty successful. Um, yeah. so I you know, that type of work is so powerful and so important as men and just as individuals and professionals, right? Like, we don't have a lot of opportunities to talk about what's coming up for us in our personal lives, even with people in our personal lives. It's like, you hear a lot, I don't want to bother my friends with that. I don't want to tell my wife or my partner. I don't want anyone at work to know those things. So, like, it feels very isolating. And so to have a group where you can sit and share those dark corners of what's going on with you personally and not be judged for it and be supported and know that you have a group of people who are there without judgment, who are just going to be open to receiving and help you get through whatever it is you're facing is pretty awesome.

• Speaker #1

  I think this might be the most important message in this episode, Jerry. So if I was listening to this and I what you're saying resonated with me. What do I do? Do I do the exact same thing you do? Just go to Google and search men's group or women's group or like, what's a piece of advice here?

• Speaker #0

  I mean, every area is different. In California, I was part of a larger national organization called the Mankind Project. And we had a local chapter. I just happened to have one in my backyard, but they're not everywhere, you know? So like, that's a challenge. And then, like I said, here in Salt Lake, there really wasn't anything. I think like I, my advice to anyone looking for a men's group would, would, or any support group in general would just be to go, go check it out. There's nothing that you can, you'll experience from a phone call or, um, you know, a video chat that that's going to make you feel what the energy of that group feels like if you're looking for in person. And I personally. We do so much stuff online. We do so much stuff by ourselves these days. We don't even realize it until we sit in a circle like that and we start to talk and share those experiences with others. So yeah, I mean, you have to get a sense for like who's in the group, who's going to be supporting you. You know, are these people that I can trust and feel like open with? I mean, in our last meeting, for example, we had a new guy come in and within 10 minutes of the meeting, he was in tears. And like that to me says so much about our circle and how safe. And, and, uh, safe a container we've built for men to be able to come in and show that type of emotion where they haven't told those things to anybody before, you know?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. That's really powerful. And they are for the listeners benefit. These groups are out there. So yeah, I would say get on chat or whatever you use to search and just start searching and to your point, Jerry, just go right. Almost all of them will let you attend as a guest.

• Speaker #0

  Absolutely.

• Speaker #1

  All right, cool. Well, here we're at the very end of it. So here's how this goes, Jerry. I'm going to go through my notes here, what I learned from this amazing episode. And if you could just add some color or if there's anything I missed, you want to fill in the gap, that would be great. And then if there's any final piece of advice for a newer real estate investor or anybody looking to get into senior housing, either as an operator or a passive investor, some final piece of advice for the listener that we could take away, that would be fantastic. Okay. So we started out learning about your background and it's mostly a marketing background. You have lots and lots of experience in that. You went into the private, well, you were doing marketing agency and then you learned about senior housing because of your aging grandparents. And then you got to see behind the curtain and you fell in love with the business. So now you run Norton, which is a company that helps passive investors analyze opportunities. I'm paraphrasing basically. And then you have CCR Growth, which is more of a, I think, a marketing arm to help operators. So those are the two companies that you're running right now. Now, you said when you're looking at these, the number one thing you want to look at is the operator. Can they grow occupancy or at least sustain occupancy? And then obviously Norton helps us do that. How do operators handle intake? So the marketing is bringing in the leads, but it's all the way through the conversion process. So from getting a lead all the way until they move in. And it takes 20 to 27 months to do that. or 20 to 27 touch points to do that. So what's the follow-up system? It's 22 months average for occupancy. So there's a lot of turnover in this business, which is why the marketing is so important. There's definitely a high demand in this industry right now. We know that with the baby boomers. You ratted off a lot of statistics to back that point. All of them are very valid. So I agree with you. One of them was by 2034, there'll be more people over 65 than children. That was quite remarkable to hear that. How do you get involved? Partners, REITs, syndicators. If you're a developer, there's a development opportunity because there's a shortage of inventory. Some benefits to the podcast. The main benefit is this, right? Getting to know people. You will drive some business to your or leads to your business, but it's really about the relationships and the credibility. Surround yourself with the right people, which is what you did with your men's group. And if you want to get involved in a men's group, you got to go out and check them out. How did I do?

• Speaker #0

  That was great. That's awesome. I've never had a host go back and summarize like that. That's awesome.

• Speaker #1

  I think the listeners like to hear what are the most powerful points to me as if I was listening. So that's why we do it that way.

• Speaker #0

  All right, man.

• Speaker #1

  What's a final piece of advice for our listener?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I mean, final piece of advice would probably just be talk with professionals in this space, whether they work in a community or whether they are on the investment side. Understand the size and the gravity of this opportunity because we're all going to be experiencing this at some point. I think that's the biggest thing about senior housing is like it's not it's not it may seem foreign. It might seem a ways away. You may not have a loved one who's even close to it. But everyone you know is going to know someone who is in senior housing, needs to be in senior housing, is considering senior housing. It's going to be on the tip of everyone's tongue. So I think understanding this asset class, all the different I mean, there's like six different types of. of senior housing, like understanding what those are, who they're appropriate for. And then maybe just maybe thinking also about your situation with your family, like look at, you know, do you have aging parents? How are the how is their health? How communicative are you with them? Because I know like, seniors love to hide things, they don't like to tell people how they're doing how how their mobility issues have gotten worse, or maybe they're they're not taking care of themselves like they used to. So I think just. Really just paying attention to those things is so important because everyone gets caught. 90% of people moving into senior housing is because of crisis, because someone's fallen, someone got injured, someone got sick, or their level of care got so intense that they can no longer be cared for at home or by a loved one. And so everyone gets caught off guard. And it's a family problem. It's not just that person's challenge. It's the entire family. You hear all the time people who get diagnosed with like Alzheimer's, it's like the entire family got diagnosed because now everyone in the family has to learn, adjust and adapt to this person's new reality. So I just think like educating yourself on senior living in general would do yourself and your family a really good service.

• Speaker #1

  I love that. And it made me think of one other final thing I wanted to ask. So sorry if we're going a little bit long here. That's okay. And you're not a financial planner. You're not a financial advisor. I get that. But long-term care is a product that a lot of people don't understand so well. And when you start talking about these numbers of how much it's going to be every month to be in memory care, for example, up to 12,000, it's going to be more than that by the time a lot of our listeners get to that point. So can you tell me just real briefly about long-term care and when we should be considering something like that? In terms of the age? If it's beyond where you're comfortable answering, I totally understand that as well. I'm talking about the long-term care insurance.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, long-term care insurance. I mean, my understanding of that is, and I'm actually getting certified as a senior housing investment professional. It's called a C-SHIP certification. So I'll be like, by the time this airs, hopefully I'll be certified. So that'll be great. But yeah, so typically when someone's in their 50s is when they say to look for long-term care insurance. For whatever reason, there's a sweet spot if you... get it too soon, it doesn't really make sense or pay out like it would if you and if you wait too long, obviously. But there's also be careful with long term care insurance because there's some things that won't be covered, just like, you know, if somebody is relying on the government for to take care of their retirement or they think, you know, Medicaid is going to take care of their their long term stay indefinitely. Like it's it's not necessarily the case and it's not the case in all situations. So just make sure you do your research. But yeah, typically in your mid-50s is when that kind of starts to kick in.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, that's fantastic advice. And I didn't know that answer. I know that it's a financial product a lot of people don't really recognize or understand or use. And it can be a great product. Even for aging parents or grandparents, you don't have to buy a policy on yourself, right? If you want to gift somebody a policy and give them that love and that support and that help so they can move into a nicer community when they get to that point. that is an option. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I think it's important because most older adults today plan for about 20 years of retirement when in reality they should have planned for 30. So you see a lot of older adults running out of money in their later years, which is unfortunate, but it happens.

• Speaker #1

  It should be your best years too, right? So beautiful community. And for me, I want to be in a beautiful freaking community. So that's my goal. All right, man. Well, you're a busy guy running two companies, podcast host every other week recording. I know you got a lot going on and still you chose to hang out with me for 40 minutes. So Jerry, thank you so much, man.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you, Kevin.

• Speaker #1

  All right. For the listener, you have other podcasts you could choose to listen to, and you chose the Real Estate Educators podcast. And for that, I am so incredibly grateful. If you got value like I did, help me out. Five-star review, share it with a friend, and I hope you make this day a great one. I really hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did, please be sure to follow and leave a five-star review. Oh yeah. And tell a friend.