The Silver Tsunami Investment Opportunity: Senior Living Trends & Aging Economy Insights with Jerry Vinci

Karen Rands (00:02.729)
Welcome to the Compassionate Capitalist Show. Of course, I'm Karen Rans and I'm delighted you are listening today. If this is your first time and you like what you hear, please take a moment to give a thumbs up or a five star. If you are a returner and haven't yet commented or rated, please take a moment to. You cannot fathom how important this is for other business podcast listeners to be introduced to the Compassionate Capitalist Show by the platforms themselves.

This show is available on all major platforms and has its own website now, thecompassionatecapitalistshow.com. That makes it very easy to search on topics and find specific episodes. Lastly, because so many of you have been asking when the Compassionate Academy will be online, it is available now at thecompassionatecapitalist.academy. And that of course is beginner, stage, investor, all the way through advanced. We're very excited.

because people have been really waiting for me to get the new version of that out. It is out. So, all right. And the link's in the note. So, what are we going to talk about today? Well, most people think about aging as a personal or healthcare issue. But what they don't realize is that it may be one of the largest economic shifts of our lifetime. We're in the middle of it.

Jerry Vinci (01:02.03)
Thank

Karen Rands (01:20.543)
Just like we saw with the rise of SaaS, fintech, and even AI, there's a massive wave forming around age demographics, and more investors are completely unprepared. And part of what we do on the Compassionate Capitalist show is you as the investors, we want to bring in experts in an industry that know the trends that can help you understand so that you can look at companies that are

technology, solving the problems technology wise, service wise, just whatever might be impacted by these trends. So you can predict and think about it in what you want to learn, what you want to seek for strong investments. Because smart investors don't chase trends, they recognize patterns early and position ahead of demand. There's a phrase we like to use that's called skating to the puck in the

angel in VC space. And that just means you see where it's going and you skate to where that is going to be so you can score. I love sports references. And that's why today's conversation matters. Because behind the silver tsunami is not just a care challenge.

It's a massive opportunity for innovation, smarter business models, and investors who know where to look. So today I've invited someone who is in the trenches of this shift every single day. Jerry Vinci is a senior living marketing strategist and the founder and CEO of CCR Growth, a demand generation agency helping senior living communities increase occupancy and profitability through modern human centered systems.

with over 20 years experience across sales, marketing, operations, and as the host of the number one senior living marketing podcast from leads to leases. And if you're watching, you can see his logo behind him. He is very trendy. he's not, actually, I don't think he's in South Miami Beach, but.

Karen Rands (03:32.947)
He's got a, for those that aren't watching, he's got a fluorescent sign behind him that says from leads to leases. That's his podcast. So Jerry brings a rare combination of data-driven insight and real-world perspective. And what I appreciate most about Jerry's approach is this. He understands that this isn't just a numbers game. It's about people making one of the most emotional and important transitions of their lives.

So today we're going to unpack what's really happening inside the senior living industry, where the biggest gaps and opportunities are and what investors should be paying attention to right now before this wave fully hits. All right, Jerry, welcome to the show. Welcome to the Compassionate Capitalist Show.

Jerry Vinci (04:18.926)
Hey, Karen, thanks for having me.

Karen Rands (04:21.471)
Yeah, you're very welcome. Okay, so, you know, here's what I want to talk into, like, you know, talk about how you came to know this marketplace, because we're going to get into the problem that you're solving, and that kind of thing. And maybe it was a personal experience. I don't really recall right now from our prior conversation. But, you know, I have gone through this with, I have friends that in the space, obviously at my age, you know,

My friends are dealing with this issue of what options do people have, this whole they really want to age in place because they don't, there's not always a great perception of what assisted living is. We have this rise of the 55 plus communities that intended to be sort of, guess, a bridge on that. But, you know, tell the guests.

the people listening tell them how you came to understand this place and why and why you're doing what you're doing.

Jerry Vinci (05:24.686)
Sure, yeah, thanks for allowing me to share my story. You know, I've been in the marketing space for a long time. My parents own and operated a printing business my entire life. So I've seen that side of the market for a long time. And I watched all four of my grandparents go through some level of care, whether it was like assisted living or memory care, nursing home for dementia, things of that nature. So I really got a taste for how people enter the market.

Karen Rands (05:25.227)
Sure.

Jerry Vinci (05:51.214)
And then what happens once they're there, you know, in terms of the residents themselves, as well as the families who are affected. So as a marketing agency, I think one of one of the biggest challenges that I always sought after was doing more meaningful, purposeful work. And I had a hard time finding it with just working with businesses and, you know, just generalized marketing. So we've we kind of fell into the senior living industry. We ended up with a community as one of our clients, which just fell in love with it. We're like, this is so awesome. We're not just.

you know, helping them drive revenue. We're helping families find a place for their loved one. We're helping those residents, you know, choose their new place to call home. And most of the time it's the last place they call home. So it's a pretty heavy responsibility. And just to be a part of that ecosystem, you feel it, you know, and I think everyone who's in this space genuinely loves it and typically stays, you know, they don't leave very often. So it is kind of a calling. And even on the marketing side, I found that to be true as well.

Karen Rands (06:51.401)
Yeah, so Jerry, you live in this every day and it's in the title, I talked about at the very beginning, the Silver Tsunami. So for the people that are listening, what are they underestimating about what's coming?

Jerry Vinci (07:10.38)
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges. I mean, if we look at the industry overall, it's one of the most complex industries out there. And I think it's because it's been misrepresented on a lot of fronts. Investors often look at it as like a real estate decision, right? But it's actually like 10 businesses in one. It's one of the most complex operational businesses. You've got multifamily housing, healthcare, hospitality, dining services.

entertainment, transportation, you social services, I mean, you, you name it, you know, it's, it's part of it. And, and it's all being done, you know, for aging adults who are moving towards or through, you know, that final transition. So there's a lot of factors at play. you know, the simplest way I can frame it is that, you know, demand for senior housing is growing faster than the system can handle it. And what that means is like families, they're looking for

Karen Rands (07:42.079)
Yeah, wow.

Jerry Vinci (08:08.055)
for quality and they're looking for a dignified place for their loved ones. The operators are trying to, they're just trying to stay well-staffed and provide good care while still staying financially solvent. The workforce is another challenge that's completely stretched across the industry and healthcare in general. And then you've got kind of, know, capital and investors looking at it saying, you know, there's opportunities in all these spaces. How do we decide? Where do we invest our money? You know, so.

I think that like the question that people should be asking is whether we can build these communities to be, that can actually scale, right? While improving care, while keeping it financially accessible to the people who need it most. So it's a really complex question. In terms of the silver tsunami, we hear this a lot. And when you hear a tsunami, you think like there's just gonna be this massive wave. It's gonna come quick and fast and then it's gonna be over. But it's actually, yeah.

Karen Rands (09:00.811)
Yeah, yeah, it seems like they've been saying that for a long time, this tsunami that's coming and we're, I think we're actually in it, right? It's like a questing of a wave or something, I don't know, but yeah.

Jerry Vinci (09:13.102)
It's, mean, we're at the very beginning stages of it right now. mean, the, the oldest boomers turn 80 this year. Every, every baby boomer will be 65 by the year 2030. So we're, we're not necessarily, you know, through it or in the middle of it. We're actually in the beginning of it because by 2034, for the first time in this country, there's going to be more adults over the age of 65 than there will be children ever in the history of this country. Um, but it, but

Karen Rands (09:17.321)
Okay.

Karen Rands (09:31.242)
Okay.

Jerry Vinci (09:41.902)
I think the 65 plus number is kind of misleading too, because most people nowadays, they don't move into some type of senior care space until they're actually in their eighties. Even 85 is typically the number. So when you look at like this silver tsunami, you can say, yes, by, you know, 2044, the population of 65 and above is going to be, is going to increase by like 35%. But the population of

85 plus is going to increase by 111 percent and All of those are going to have way higher acuity, know a higher level of need than people who are in their 60s So you just imagine what that's going to do to the health care system

Karen Rands (10:25.063)
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's unpack that a little bit. So earlier when you talking about the complexity of an assisted living facility, I never really thought about the fact that they have all of these sort of like mini businesses within a business. So, you know, as I was like running through my head,

So you couldn't even compare it to a resort because resorts don't have the healthcare issues that they have. You can't compare it to a hospice facility or any kind of recovery that some of the aging folks, because they're long-term, they don't have the entertainment transportation issue. You know what I mean? Hospital, you know what I mean? So there's really no other business that I can think of that is

Jerry Vinci (10:55.715)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Rands (11:20.273)
an assisted living facility. And so, you know, I think that's where you can get into where, you know, there's the opportunity. So, like, if you would, from an investor perspective, where's the biggest mismatch right now between demand and supply? So I know, you know, we've got this growing thing, and I guess there's people building it. And when we had talked previously, you talked about sort of the shortage. But I even think within a facility itself, so even

whether they're existing or or you know in queue to come on board there's these critical break points in the efficiency and the profitability of an assisted facility. So where might there be you know inefficiencies you know even beyond just a shortage of actual facilities for people.

Jerry Vinci (12:11.874)
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, there's two parts to it too. There's multiple levels of care that all carry their own set of challenges. You know, everything from adult daycare to independent living, to assisted living, to memory care, and then all the way up to skilled nursing. And the higher you go, there's more compliance, there's more regulations, there's a higher level of need versus like adult daycare or independent living where a lot of times it's kind of the person's choice or the family's choice.

So there's different levels and challenges within those. then even if we just look at assisted living or an independent living community, for example, there's kind of three different scenarios that you typically see. So first you see there's the independent operator, someone who might own one or two communities. They understand the local market. And that's the biggest thing about senior living too. It might seem like a giant national...

endeavor, but it's all done at the local level. Even a large operator like a Sunrise or Brookdale that's got like 900 communities and trades on the stock exchange, they're still focused on every single community's impact in their area. So typically, if it's an independent operator, they're very close to the customer, local reputation drives that. So there's obviously challenges with that.

Large chains, you know, there's a lot of large chains that right now are trying to expand because they know that there's there's a housing shortage and they also want to get in and let's be real, get as many seniors in their buildings as possible. Now, while the while the wave is happening so they can reap the rewards. Then the third group is the roll ups. You've got people who are who are acquiring these existing operators, the smaller players in the market. And that's happening a lot.

Karen Rands (13:57.259)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (14:01.26)
And so there's, there's obviously challenges in all of those. think like the independent guy can be fast and agile. The big operator is like slow. It's going to move like the Titanic. You know, it's really hard to steer out of the way of the iceberg. but they're great at creating consistency across all their communities. And then you've got rollups where they may not know what's what's driving occupancy or they may not know why the community is not profitable or.

you know, what's going on with the staff or the culture or all those things. So they may not realize what they're actually investing in. So those are kind of all, you've got different levels of care and then you've got different types of, of investing happening at the same time.

Karen Rands (14:39.889)
Yeah, so...

Is there, because where there's, within each business, there's the pain in an industry or a sector is usually where the opportunity is hiding. And, you know, so as you're, let's talk about specifically about your business. And then as you, cause I know you, one of the things you identify as marketing, right? As a being, how, know, creating the awareness and, and the, for the independence.

You're solving problems in that space. But so as you get to know these folks and you're saying, do you hear an area where, I know there's a shortage in nursing, there's not really, there might be some function that AI that's specific to some things that they could do that regulate that might replace, know, where...

There's different things that I guess that could be part of solving some of those pains, just give me an idea of when it comes to at an operating level, what some of the pains are within a facility.

Jerry Vinci (15:53.39)
Yeah. mean, work for workforce for sure would be a giant one. You've got a dining room staff, for example, that's got a turn turnover about 70 % within 12 months. Well, we'll turn over care staff, long term care workers on average, they've got it within 12 months, it's around 50 % that stay in 50 % who leave. there's constant turnover, constant recruiting that's happening.

having to happen. And then also at the executive level, you're seeing some of the same things. Some executive directors might be leaving for a couple extra dollars an hour somewhere else, or the culture might not be a good fit, things like that. those are operationally, those are probably some of the biggest challenges around staffing. Another one that I see a lot of is retention. Retention is huge in this space because you look at like independent living, for example, where, you know, they're usually young, vibrant, older adults who

make the choice to move because they want to simplify their lives or they want all the amenities in one place, you know, like a cruise ship on land, essentially that's what independent living is. Yeah. But, um, I think that the retention there is really important because an independent living resident on average can stay anywhere from 10 to 15 years in your community. So you just imagine if you're charging, say, you know, 5,000 a month, multiply that by 10 or 15 years, that one acquisition.

Karen Rands (16:59.173)
yeah.

Jerry Vinci (17:20.206)
created a lot of revenue for your organization. know, retention's a big one, reputation's another huge one. What we do specifically, it's not necessarily marketing anymore, it's what we call demand generation, and that's one of our focuses. But demand generation, it's like marketing, but it's more about building trust. So demand generation is, my definition of it is creating conditions.

where your customers are already informed and already interested in what you do because you built credibility, trust and credibility trust. Why can't I think of the third one and visibility upfront? So, so that's what we're helping our customers do, but on a, a larger sense, we're also looking at sales and operations. we're, helping them build a growth engine that can help them. It helps align marketing sales and operations and we'll help them.

increase or maintain their revenue and occupancy over a period of time so it's measurable. It's one of the biggest challenges with senior living is the occupancy going up and down or them not being able to, if somebody leaves or passes away or multiple people that happens to, they have a really hard time filling those beds quickly. And that's why it's important to have systems in place.

Karen Rands (18:40.201)
Yeah, so let's talk about that because that what you said, think you said credibility, trust, awareness. What was the other one? was visibility, visibility. That's the thing. Because that is really applicable for.

Jerry Vinci (18:51.022)
Visibility or awareness. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Rands (18:58.853)
every business, right? You know, I mean, every business has to have that. I deal with it in my business, right? And what I'm selling, you everybody, you deal with it in your own business, even working, you know, to attract the assisted living facility. So within the assisted living industry, is there an advantage or disadvantage of independence over chains? Are chains more, do they proceed to be more trustworthy? Or are they the ones because

You say everything's kind of local, they not as personal or how does the marketplace perceive independence versus change? And is it really just case by case? Because just like a franchise of a fast food restaurant, right? You could go to...

one in this city and it's really bad and you're like I'm never going there again and then you go to another one and it's great right and so you know talk about that from an industry perspective as well.

Jerry Vinci (19:59.116)
Yeah. Right.

Jerry Vinci (20:08.958)
that's what makes this industry interesting in my opinion as well, because you, you don't really have brand affinity like you have in other spaces. You know, like I mentioned, Brookdale and sunrise, and those are some of the largest providers in the nation. They've got hundreds and hundreds of communities. But if you ask somebody for who their favorite senior living brand is, no one would be able to tell you. You know, 99 % of people never even look at senior living until there's a crisis. So there's, there's no. Yeah.

Karen Rands (20:35.455)
Yeah, I wasn't familiar with the band. was like, sunrise. was like, wait, I do know that one. I've seen those signs, you know.

Jerry Vinci (20:42.68)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's kind of what it is. It's like, you know, a lot of these brands will do a lot of advertising to just, just stay top of mind. So when those conversations do come up, they are a name that somebody remembers, but most people, when they search, they search for, you know, senior living near me, assisted living near me, assisted living in X, Y, Z city, you know, that type of search. So they're not really searching for a specific brand. I, I think

Karen Rands (21:03.466)
Yeah.

Karen Rands (21:09.963)
Hmm.

Jerry Vinci (21:10.348)
you know, there's advantages to both. So I think the, I think the independent operator, like the locally owned, again, they're going to be, they're going to be really close to the community. They're going to, they probably have an easier time building a referral network because they're, they're in the hospitals, they're in the churches, they're in all the places where they know that the seniors actively hang out in their town and around 90 % of residents typically in an assisted living and independent living community move from within a five mile radius of the community.

So typically they're already local to that community. So it's really important to build up that local awareness. I think the biggest challenge they face is that they are relying usually on personnel. So if like one of their key people leaves, like an executive director or something, the whole operation can either wobble or it can crumble because I've seen one executive director leave and everyone else leave with them, which is crazy when that happens, but it happens. then

Karen Rands (22:04.189)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (22:07.062)
As soon as that happens, the residents start leaving too, because they're not sure they can trust the new staff, you know, and the families get a little, they get a little wobbly too, and they decide to walk out. So, so that can happen with, with a larger chain again, it's, it's going to move slower and more methodical, but I think you've got like, they've got clear advantages. They've got economies of scale. So, you know, purchasing power, like when it comes to say like running ads on the search engines, if you, if you're a part of a larger organization, you might have.

a five, 10, $15,000 budget per community to run advertising, whereas a small operator might have a two to $3,000 budget. So just visibility alone, it's challenging.

Karen Rands (22:47.531)
Yeah, yeah, I get that. okay, so we had, talked earlier about roll ups and I wanted to follow up on that. cause we're, you know, one of the things I hear from private equity is that this is a space that they're looking at because they recognize the opportunity, the growth opportunity, the, know, of a market that's growing, that's going to need this kind of service, you know, and they'll buy underperforming facilities, you know, from what you've seen.

What separates the roll ups as succeed versus the ones that fail? And kind of like, can they treat it like a classic turnaround where they're just looking at an opportunity and they're like, we can do better? Or is there really some industry expertise that is required because not all consolidations create value, sometimes just height inefficiency at a scale.

Jerry Vinci (23:41.496)
Yeah, it's funny you say that because the one thing that I tell my team all the time when we talk about these portfolios is, know, scale amplifies whatever is already true about your operating model. I think, I think what roll ups have to do is just be really careful. Of course there's adjacent industries that I think people can like glean knowledge from and experience to be able to make a decision as to what would be a viable solid investment versus what might not be. You know, I just think like in general, sometimes

Karen Rands (23:51.551)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (24:11.382)
especially if it's a, if it's an operator who already owns communities, they might try to acquire too fast. We've, we've had portfolios that we manage where, you know, in one year or two months, they might try to acquire five or 10 new communities. And when they acquire these communities, they're not replacing the entire staff. Typically they're keeping their, their key players on board. But obviously with a corporate umbrella over top, there's going to be things that change. There's going to be cultural differences. There's going to be, you know,

Who's doing what? Who am I reporting to now? All of those types of things that create a lot of challenges within the organization. And I just think because it's such a complex business, they might be able to understand a few of those aspects of running this type. Maybe they understand the healthcare side, but they don't understand hospitality and how important the programming is. Because people don't buy based on like, they don't care if a room has this or.

Karen Rands (24:42.392)
yeah.

Jerry Vinci (25:07.18)
their food program has this, sometimes maybe it's about the experience. Maybe they wanna make sure that they have these five activities that they absolutely love and that's what's most important to them. So really just understanding what the local culture is asking for and making sure that whatever you do when you acquire that is going to enhance that, I would say.

Karen Rands (25:27.819)
So you're involved, when you get into, I mean, I've assumed in your business that you're helping the operators to figure out how to be better at Legion and creating this awareness and all that kind of stuff. So you're there involved. You do consulting with them on things that they can do that would make them more attractive.

as well if they have gaps, have a coach that for a regular business might have, like, well, you mentioned turnover, right? On things that might happen like that. So what are you seeing that has surprised you that investors might not expect about how these facilities operate? What is actually working when modernizing these businesses?

you know, what, and where are, how are people stuck in outdated models where they haven't thought outside the box that they can solve that in a different way?

Jerry Vinci (26:33.548)
Yeah, you know, I think one of the biggest challenges is trying to do too many things at once. A lot of these challenges, they take time to correct or to improve upon. And I always think like an operator, especially a new operator should just look at, you know, one measurable bottleneck and try to fix that first. And really from a consulting side, like that's what we're helping communities do by looking

Karen Rands (26:40.66)
Yeah

Jerry Vinci (27:00.726)
A lot of people in my space, they look at one piece of the puzzle. They either look at marketing, they look at sales, or they look at operations and they're not looking at all three and how they play together. And that's what makes us different is that that's literally what we're doing is we're analyzing their entire, from the moment that person touches the community, whether it's a form fill, a phone call, a chat to the time that they tour, to the time they deposit and the time they move in. And even after they move in, there's gotta be things that have happened. So.

We're analyzing all of those things. We're continuously auditing what it is we're doing, what it is the communities are doing and making sure that, you know, what we're doing is resonating with, is with their perspective audience. I don't think, I don't think a lot of communities really understand who their target audience is. You know, for example, you look at assisted living, a lot of communities will still market to the, to the senior, they won't market to the adult children and, and like,

more than 75 % of the cases, it's the adult children making the decision of where their mom or dad is going to move. So, you know, just making sure we're targeting the right people, uh, and making sure we're not trying to like bite off more than we can shoe. Um, you know, if there's, if there's like an issue with care and things like that, I mean that we have one community, for example, that had, they acquired this other community that had a horrible rating. was like, uh, they had like 40 % occupancy. So they were.

Karen Rands (28:01.365)
Sure.

Jerry Vinci (28:27.182)
They were pretty empty and they had a bad reputation. they re they rebranded and, it took months and months and months of them being actively involved in the community. And then little by little building up their reputation to the point where people actually decided, okay, this looks decent. Let's tour. so it's just really challenging. Yeah.

Karen Rands (28:28.981)
Yeah.

Karen Rands (28:43.289)
Yeah.

Well, because I see, I was thinking about, there's a new, The Man Inside, the TV show, have you ever heard of that? Right, Ted Danson, I think is in it, right? And he's like, goes into this, I think it's second season, he goes into a senior living home and, know, Ted.

Jerry Vinci (28:54.818)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so great. Yeah. Yep

Karen Rands (29:07.183)
And like, and even even on land man, right, they got the wife that goes to the senior living and they got a little parties and all this kind of stuff. it's like,

It's almost like they've done in-placement commercials or something to elevate the industry that, hey, we're fun, you should come and check us out. And now there's this paradigm of, where's the margarita bar? And we're so happy out, you know what mean? Kind of a perception of it. Because I know when my dad has been passed for a while, but when he was, we were needing to find some place, he did not want to go to an assisted

Jerry Vinci (29:24.022)
Yeah.

Karen Rands (29:48.199)
living, right? He was totally convinced of the old paradigm that, you know, you go there when nobody like when you want to be when you're going to be abandoned and it's no fun and it's like dreary and you stay in your room. And when he got there, he got his zest for life. He was like, this is like being on a cruise. I could go downstairs or somebody playing cards. I can, you know, have the

I can eat, the food's good, he got a girlfriend, he started inventing things again, all this stuff until he got where he was a fall risk and they needed, this particular facility didn't have the extended type of care for him that he had to then come back home, but it was for least a couple years of his life, he got like, he was really, really thriving.

Jerry Vinci (30:19.406)
That's awesome. Yeah.

Karen Rands (30:43.983)
know, dancing and you know, all kinds of stuff. So I think that there's, you know, there's the paradigm shift that you're talking about, the rebranding that some of these things have to have to do, have to do. But, you know, maybe it would be helpful if you help the audience. If you want to say anything about that, please do. But also, you know, truly understand from a business model standpoint.

Because where the difference between a nursing home, assisted living, adult daycare, aging at home, you mentioned all of those at the very beginning. So when you look at the overall industry, where they intersect, perhaps, there's some that continue on. there like there isn't a supply chain? Is there sort of a supply chain that there could be?

a business that owns the adult daycare that leads into the assisted living that leads into a nursing home or even all within a facility. I don't even know if something like that exists, but we talk about that from a dynamics of the industry itself for this aging community.

Jerry Vinci (31:55.778)
Yeah, no, that's a, that's a great question. Just to, just to amplify what you were saying too. I mean, I, I see a lot more programming now, around retirement and just catering towards that age group, because we've got such a large percentage of the population that's either in, that demographic or they're the children of that demographic. So it's becoming a hot issue for a lot of families now. you know, one in, what is it? one in five. No, it's not one in five. It's.

65 million Americans are caregivers right now for a loved one and four out of five of them don't get paid. Yeah.

Karen Rands (32:30.49)
Really?

That's a big number. Have you compared that? I'm sorry to interrupt like that. that 65 million? Well, because we're the sandwich society. The sandwich, what do they call it? The sandwich because we're caring for our parents and we're caring for our children. A lot of our children aren't yet out of home or something like that. So yeah, wow. Okay. 65 million. Okay. There's an opportunity.

Jerry Vinci (32:35.234)
Yep. It's a huge number.

Jerry Vinci (32:45.41)
Sandwich generation, yeah. Yep.

Jerry Vinci (32:58.306)
Yeah. Yeah. So that, so that's, that's a big challenge. Yeah. And that's why I like, you're seeing more prevalence now for things like adult daycare, right? Because it's giving some respite to those caregivers. but it's a far more affordable option. If you look at, just active, active daycare, I say, I would say, or adult daycare day, day services, depending on where you're at, it's called different things, but that's probably like the first step for a lot of

families that might know that, you know, mom or dad need a little extra help, but maybe they're safe at home still. Maybe they live in a single, you know, single story building and it's, you know, they've made sure to remove any of the obstacles that might prove to be challenging if they've got mobility issues or anything like that. But the cost difference, it's like a hundred dollars. What does it cost around a hundred dollars a day for adult day services versus assisted living, which on average is around 6,000 a month.

So it's roughly about 50 % the cost and, but again, they're not living there. They're only spending a couple hours there a day and that might not even be every day. Um, so it's only going to be so, so beneficial, but you know, the different tiers, I would say it would start with like independent living and within independent living again, that's the, that's the seniors who are, who are more active, vibrant, maybe they're, some communities will advertise that they're 55 and above. So sometimes there's people in these communities that are not even 65. They're

they're even younger, but that's not necessarily who their target market is. Within the independent space too, you've got communities that are called CCRCs, which stands for Continuing Care Retirement Community. It's also known as a life plan community. And these are what you're talking about. Yeah, so this is an all-inclusive model where somebody, and they typically will only admit people who are in those early stages of...

Karen Rands (34:41.293)
I never even heard of that.

Jerry Vinci (34:53.198)
the aging process, they're in their 65 to 75, typically they're in good health. They're not coming with a whole bunch of additional challenges in terms of mobility or health. And then over time, they have the ability to transition to assisted living within that same campus, maybe even memory care and maybe even skilled nursing. And I've seen some of them.

that are building hospitals now. their residents don't even have to go anywhere else to see a doctor, which is awesome. That's growing, I mean, you can imagine what the financial footprint is to run a community like that, but also to be a resident of one of those communities. Typically people are selling their home and putting it up as like a down payment to get in. So I mean, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Karen Rands (35:21.813)
Yeah.

Karen Rands (35:40.331)
Yeah, yeah. My grandma, as you describe that, my grandma, obviously many, many years ago, it was called Wesley Manor, have no idea, it was right on St. John's River. People came there in their late 50s with their boats that they could pull up.

going to go out on their boat, right? They was like, like all the stuff I talked about in these shows, you know, kind of probably not the happy hours, but they would go on trips and then she eventually got through till she was full hospital care there, ended up going someplace else for memory care, but it was, she was there for several years through that transition.

Jerry Vinci (36:16.43)
There's a lot of assisted living and independent living that have those, those happy hours, by the way. And I, I actually was reading an article last week about this memory care community that was lobbying to have, to be able to serve alcoholic drinks during, during their meals and things like that. thought that was interesting since it's so highly regulated. I'm not, not sure where that'll go, but, but that is, that is definitely a thing. if we, if we look just at independent living, not the CCRC model, but just somebody going.

who wants to downsize and simplify their life, things like that. That's probably like probably the most compelling growth opportunity, I would say right now for investors. It's, you know, it's number one, because it's where the younger, wealthier boomers are going to land first. But, you know, they typically have high occupancy, I think. In 2025, the average occupancy was over 90 percent. There's limited new supply. So there again, like

There's, you know, there's going to be people fighting to get those spots that they can get. Um, and overall, if you, if you watch boomers purchasing decisions, they tend to, uh, lean more towards lifestyle choices. Um, not, know, not just a place, not just a bed with a pillow and three meals a day. Like they don't care about that. They want the programming, the amenities, all of those types of things. So independent living has all those and it,

skeered towards those. Assisted living. It's almost like a quality versus quantity game. Like assisted living, this is probably the most competitive market just because there's so many assisted livings and they vary by state, like what they actually offer. And because you're dealing with like higher levels of care, reputation is typically the thing that's gonna drive results. if you've got

great reputation, great trust among your residents and families, the likelihood they're going to refer other people to you is pretty high. and even here, I mean, the occupancy rate, I think at the end of 2025 was like 88 % or 89%. So it's definitely growing. But the biggest thing is that financially, think it put assisted living pulled in around 45 billion last year, and by 2032, it's supposed to hit over 99 billion. So

Jerry Vinci (38:39.594)
at like roughly like a 12 % growth rate every year. So it's definitely a growing space for sure. And then lastly, you've got like memory care or skilled nursing memory care is just a very finite grouping within skilled nursing that's specifically focused on dementia and Alzheimer's care. It's and it's unavoidable. like if somebody you know, if someone has memory memory issues, cognitive decline dementia, like there's no other option for them but to go to one of these communities. So

Karen Rands (39:01.333)
Right.

Jerry Vinci (39:09.774)
uh, with that population increasing too. I mean, that's supposed to double by 2040. You also have a lot of opportunity there. So those are like the, the, the more unregulated spaces and then the, um, skilled nursing is way more, uh, regulated. It's, you know, they're, that's the space where typically people are tapping into Medicare or Medicaid to, be able to afford to live there. Um, so they're more, there's more government subsidizing happening. And because of that, the budgets are a lot thinner.

Karen Rands (39:16.841)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (39:38.026)
It becomes more challenging for growth opportunities, things like that. So most investors usually steer clear of that.

Karen Rands (39:45.995)
Yeah, no, that's good, that's good because I had, well, back when I was running my angel investor group, there was a company that came through and sometimes this is harder. was, they were designing a new kind of...

Jerry Vinci (39:46.744)
Hope that was helpful.

Karen Rands (40:06.549)
framework format for, it would ultimately be a franchise of a memory care facility, right? And, you know, design where I guess they would like to walk in a circle. So it had like certain areas and an atrium and like all this kind of stuff that they had. it, like, you could tell that it would make money, but traditional angels don't do those kinds of heavy infrastructure upfront loaded cost models.

Jerry Vinci (40:12.686)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Rands (40:33.322)
Right? really kind of, it's, think it's shifted some because the opportunity is so clear that it was, this was 15 years ago, maybe more, you know, that this company came through. They're raising like $20 million. I think they needed 2 million to start, but overall it was this, you know, kind of a thing. you know, that, the, the construction or the building, that kind those are, or, you know, the, that's a, that's a heavy lift. I know that I've seen the,

gosh, I'm gonna mess up my acronym here, but the EB-5 program, I think what it is is where foreign investors can invest in operating business. Our assisted living that we have down here in Peachtree City was funded that way. $10 million and it was creating the job. they get their green cards for their family when they invest in this business and they're involved in it. But that's, it's that kind of a model.

And so those are all the kind of stuff. what I'd like you to do is you could, you know, outside of that, outside of the traditional, I'm going to operate, I'm going to do these things. talked about the P funds. Where should investors be paying attention?

in some of the opportunities. it facility? I mean, we talked about facilities, a high dollar amount there, but technology, services, workforce, we talked about the shortages of workforce. There's probably some things that could make them more efficient when it comes to technological operations and stuff like that. If the biggest opportunities aren't always owned in the asset, so...

they're solving the friction in the asset. What does that look like?

Jerry Vinci (42:22.146)
Yeah. I mean, I would say most investors, they're not necessarily, that's not a challenge they're going to be able to solve on their own just because it is complex. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Rands (42:31.019)
Okay, well, so maybe it's the entrepreneurs that are listening, you know, be like, oh, somebody needs to create an AI solution that does this or something like that. I don't know. You know what I mean? It just so, you know, I just it.

I think the whole healthcare industry and they're talking about how AI is going to help where we have the biggest shortages that's sort of at the, you know, some of the basic stuff monitoring, I guess, or intake things, things that sort of take time, you know, watching the machines, know, independently so you don't necessarily have to have as much night staff there, know, different things like that. you're not going to take the robots and AI are not going to take the place of a warm hand.

that's there to help you or moving somebody through the hallways or any of those kind of things. There's always gonna be a people requirement. just thought maybe you might have some insights that you see a pain point.

Jerry Vinci (43:36.834)
Yeah, I think, you know, if I was going to do my due diligence as an investor, I would probably look at, you know, maybe like four, four or five or six areas, maybe like, the lead source mix would probably be the first one, you know, from, from the marketing side, you know, what percentage of their, of their inquiries are coming from, you know, their own channels, like their Google business profile, their social pages, their website versus.

third party aggregators. That's a huge problem in this industry is lead source because a lot of these communities that don't have proper systems in place, they rely on third party referrals like from places like a place for mom or caring.com. And what happens there is these agencies, they don't charge anything upfront to recommend your community to this prospect. But what happens is while they're recommending your community, they're also recommending like 10, 15, 20 other communities

in your area as well. So now this family has to deal with the, the in, they're inundated with phone calls, emails, text messages from 20 different communities versus one or two that might actually be a good fit. And then if this person ends up moving into your community, you have to, you have to pay the community has to pay that agency a full month's rent. sometimes even more than that, just to get that resident through the door.

So we have some memory care communities, for example, that are anywhere from $10,000 $15,000 a month per resident, right? And all of that's gonna go out the door. Yeah, yeah, it's huge.

Karen Rands (45:08.831)
That's a long ear.

That really impacts their bottom line on recuperating the cost of that person over a period of time. I can see, and that's the problem that you solve with helping them create their own funnel for Legion.

Jerry Vinci (45:19.148)
Yeah, and

Jerry Vinci (45:25.708)
And that's the biggest challenge too, because the higher, the higher the level of care, the higher the costs, but also the shorter the time that they stay typically is. So you've got, you've got length of stay, which is a factor on top of, know, what it's, what it's costing to acquire them and then what it's costing, to keep them in the community once they're there. So that's kind of, that's like challenge number one. from a sales perspective, you know, if, if I were looking at that, I

maybe do secret shopping. would look at like, what are their response times and what are their follow up times and are they completing following up? Because the sales, I'm telling you sales teams, and I'm sure it's the same in other spaces too. I just don't know them as well. but the sales teams typically will, we'll just avoid leads that come from certain sources. They won't equally vet every, every lead from every different source. And the challenge with that is

You know, they get one bad Facebook lead in or one bad lead from some other channel. And all of a sudden they're like, well, those leads are crap. We're not going to look at those. Just ignore those when they come in. We're just going to focus on these. And that's why, like, for example, they'll, they'll focus on the place for mom leads because they know that those people were actively searching, but it just, it's not, it's not a good qualified lead. So we want to make sure that those response times are quick and followups happen. third would be the reputation of the community. That's probably one of the hardest things to turn around.

Karen Rands (46:40.8)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (46:50.114)
Do they have reviews? If they do, are they positive negative? Is there star rating over say a 4.5? Is it below that? If so, what happened? you know, what can we do to triage reputation? next it would be staffing. Staffing is huge. Obviously keeping your staff is important, but also making sure you have enough staff because you've got, like you were talking about AI and things like that. You've got some communities thinking, we're not, we're just going to replace this person with the, with the program. But,

That's typically not how I've most places I've seen AI is only augmenting what it is they're doing. So instead of the nurse taking 10 hours to write their notes or to hand off their notes to the, to the night shift or something like that. Now it's all being recorded in some type of an AI platform or digital platform that allows them to easily just say here, here's the status of everyone, you know, without having to manually write all that stuff up. So they're spending more time and actually like patient care, which is, which is a good thing.

Karen Rands (47:45.919)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (47:49.838)
But staff turnover is a huge one.

Karen Rands (47:50.602)
And it probably adds to their yeah, that probably adds to they can work in a place and not have that drudgery might help them want to stay working there.

Jerry Vinci (48:00.866)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's probably why they got into the industry to begin with, because they, they could make equal pay doing far less stressful work if they wanted to go work in a doctor's office or something like that. regulates regulatory history is a pretty big one too, in this space, because most, I would say all assisted living communities there, you can go online and you can search and find any complaints or any, you know, any complaint patterns that have happened.

Across that community, just to make sure that, you know, they don't have some underlying issues that might not be resolved. and then, you know, the last thing, which I see a lot is when operators will own multiple communities or investors on multiple communities, their operating cadence is not fast enough. They'll, they'll look at spreadsheets or graphs or numbers on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis and not a weekly basis. And the challenge with that is if you.

If you look at your numbers today and you say, occupancy is at 90 % and then a month from now occupancy is at 75%. How long do you think it's going to take to close that gap? It's not going to happen overnight. So you're already months behind in that process if you're not keeping tabs on what's going on in the community.

Karen Rands (49:11.339)
Yeah.

Karen Rands (49:18.187)
Thank you so much for sharing that bit about like some of those those highlights because it really the dashboard, didn't, know, sort of like that sort of business efficiency, right? Business decision making kinds of stuff, right? So, so anything that you didn't get to talk about that you wanted to talk about here as we wrap up.

Jerry Vinci (49:41.366)
I think one of the biggest, yeah, I mean, just one of the biggest opportunities I think is from a property development standpoint, because we're so far behind when it comes to development. I think there needs to be some people coming into this space who are not in senior living, but who understand how to quickly, maybe not just roll out new communities, but maybe rehash, refurbishing existing communities. We're so far behind in the housing that we need.

You know, if we just look at last year, for example, there was around 20,000 units that were in construction in 2025. And that's, that doesn't mean they started in 2025. That just means they were in process in Q1 of 2025. There was only about 1500 units that, that had been slated to be built. Now, if we look at how many, how many units we actually need between now and 2045, we need to be building a hundred to 125,000 units every single year to keep up with demand.

So we are so far behind. A room. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Rands (50:37.291)
And by unit, you mean, like, a room that a person can stay in. 1500 last year? Is that what you said?

Jerry Vinci (50:45.422)
1500 and Q1. That was it. Yeah. Last year, last year, I'm not sure what the number is for this year yet, but no one, I mean, with, with construction costs and supply chain issues and everything else, it's getting harder and harder for Q for communities to even be built in a, in a cost affordable way for people. So yeah. So I

Karen Rands (50:57.333)
Yeah. Sure.

Karen Rands (51:04.914)
Yeah, those contain, you know, the whole container standpoint, you know how people have been making containers into buildings and apartments and things like that. There's an abundance of well, or had been at one point done an abundance of shipping containers that could potentially do that. But like going back to your 63 million number, you know what I mean? 1500 and a quarter. There's 63 million people trying to figure out what they're going to do with their parents. Yeah, there's a big gap.

Jerry Vinci (51:30.926)
Yeah. Yeah. And you've got over 10,000 people every day turning 65. So I mean, that's, you know, four, there's like 400,000 people over the age of 85 every single year being added to the census between now and 2045. So, you know, figure 20 % of them are probably going to be looking at senior housing of some kind. It's, it's a daunting number to, to look at. So I'm hoping that we have some investors who want to really seriously look at development and construction in this space.

Whatever that looks like.

Karen Rands (52:03.475)
Yeah, good. Me too. All right. okay. Well, I hope everybody hearing today. I didn't give you an opportunity. I'm sorry. I say that near the beginning. Jerry, tell everybody your website and we'll have it in the show notes.

Jerry Vinci (52:06.219)
Yeah.

Jerry Vinci (52:18.725)
yeah, sure. It's CCRgrowth.com.

Karen Rands (52:24.383)
So just add the CCR stands for.

Jerry Vinci (52:29.334)
it was kind of, we're paying homage to our first client. first client was a CCRC, the continuing care retirement community. So we wanted to have that in our name. So people recognize us as part of the industry. That was the big, the big focus there. So. Yeah.

Karen Rands (52:36.596)
Okay.

Karen Rands (52:42.795)
Okay. So this is just CCR. Okay, all right. Okay. So, you know, to the folks listening, thank you for tuning in today. You know, this is exactly why I say, you know, if you heard this opportunity, Jerry flagged.

Jerry Vinci (52:46.68)
Yep. Yep.

Karen Rands (52:57.499)
multiple areas that can be a part of this industry. And every time you're looking for a a growing segment, there's so many different pieces and parts that whether they're little, know, million dollar solutions or a hundred million dollar solutions that you can find in this, that you don't need to get a second job to build wealth. You need to understand where the world is changing and invest in the businesses that are solving that problem. Investing in entrepreneurs isn't

just about returns or investing in these initiatives like this is about funding the future we're all going to live in and that is so so true right now because we're pretty much all going to live unless we don't live long enough to get to a point of having some kind of assisted living or continuing care or something like that heaven forbid you and I both will have these kind of needs in the future and there'll be great places for us to go and all that stuff so

you know, if you didn't realize you're listening, didn't realize this was an investable trend, now you know. And that's why I created the education I offer. If you don't know how to invest in things like this and look for these opportunities, continue listening to the Compassionate Capitalist Show and go check out the Compassionalist Academy. With that, onwards and upwards, have a great day.