Episode 1: The Ultimate SNF & ALF Podcast ft. Ryan Harris

all right so we are about to begin you're good you ready I was born ready oh all right welcome everybody to the ultimate s Annette and al F podcast so excited to have you guys here today we have a very special treat we have a champion of super star in the making and his name is mr. Ryan Harris he comes from an incredible company solstice Senior Living and what these guys do is they take care of people in the best possible way Ryan is the he's a senior director of sales and marketing for the company he's a champion he has a great story in today's podcast we're going to be talking about his story we're gonna be talking about marketing how to market facilities in communities in the best way and we're gonna be talking about some of the challenges that the industry is facing today so thank you so much for joining us Ryan I really appreciate it but it's a pleasure it's a pleasure I like your energy and I I was showing some people around the office they everyone will know your name fairly soon well they definitely were like this guy's got the same energy as you have I was like I don't know so appreciate that I appreciate that too men do you actually have the the little thing that I sent you today I got it I got it right here oh it's a fantastic look at this thing beautifully open it up boom look at that I love it cool thank you so much for that love I really appreciate that so Ryan I just want to ask you a few questions for our viewers today because everybody wants to hear what you got to say I just want to first ask you you know how did you get started in the in the senior in the senior care senior care market I would say I always tell people have been about nine years or so I don't want to date myself but you know I I got started my grandfather actually had Lou Gehrig's disease ALS I didn't I didn't make the distinction between the two I didn't know it was you know one of the same and especially during the ice bucket challenge and all that most recently some so nine years ago he he comes down with this you know horrible horrible disease that moved very fast and so we had to look for a place you know he's losing his motor skills he's cognitively you know it started with mild cognitive and then went to fall on dementia you know he at least he knew I was family but he was my uncle Stuart he thought I was my uncle right well so that was pretty tough going through that seeing that that's your almost it does well that was 15 16 years ago sorry and so that's like kind of the first thing is you know taking care of grandpa until we could find him basically a place where he could go and have the one-on-one so took care of him I took care of my dad who was also sick and had a bone marrow disease yeah and he was a teacher and he was he was a landscape architect guy and he didn't use gloves and he got in his bloodstream this benzene product and he got very sick and ended up passing away too so you know taking care of my two favorite people it just came naturally naturally to me I was in I was working for radio intercom I was doing promotions and I just graduated with a sound engineering degree of all things because life is short you should do what you want to do and music was was my passion that still is so you know the radio it was looking pretty pretty dim for a little bit you know we have Pandora we got I Heart Radio coming out you know Spotify and so you know I was talking to a guy and the guys like you're not going to make a lot of money unless you get into management you know going on and being a radio personality was something that I felt like I needed to do when I was younger and he just took me aside and said listen I cannot pay for my kids education for this and that so anyways I get into senior living I take the first job I can get right and it's in it's in the kitchen like I'm serving tables like this years ago and the one thing I wanted to do as I said you know I'll take the job you know as long as I can as long as you guys promote from within you know so I just kind of moved up the ranks over an extended period of time so over eight years each year is just doing a different job and you know most recently over the last few years I've got it into sales and Excel because I've always been man I was I was the guy even though I wasn't a salesperson sales person wasn't available they come get me and I was the driver you know at Xavier or a med tech yeah or the engage life director you know which is like a activities director on steroids right and I was the one I would go take them over to the apartment so I was trying to have those hard conversations with family you know the something needs to change conversations and it's something I've been comfortable with and so it's I've had the highest honor of helping out seniors and taking care of seniors for a long period of time and it's something it's something that I figured you know if I'm gonna do something you got to be the best and you know I love it good for you man good feel and could you can you tell us some of what some of your responsibilities some of your roles over at solstice right now what what you're you know what you're charged with there oh my goodness gracious Yeah right there's always what's in the job description and there's a little bit extra to so what I really like about this is it's so it's sales and marketing so I also I subset appointments I meet with families I go do home visits I go to the skilled nursing facilities are the sniffs as we call them out here in the wild wild west hospitals you know I go to their houses things like that so lots of visits appointments but my favorite thing is marketing and advertising and actually goes into the advertising again I have what's really cool about about the company that currently working for solstice is they give us autonomy they don't tell us well you're running an ad here you're doing this and that they they kind of let us do what we want to do and that's what I went to school for I'm gonna just who who said who can who can say that they went to school for something and actually use it these days like barely anybody oh yeah absolutely right you're absolutely right so you're you're very you're involved in the mark you're involved in client acquisition you're involved in getting you know people into your facility right that's one of your one-year tasks any which way any any way I do it you know as long as it's moral you know as they say and yeah absolutely I'm a census driver you know get this thing to 100% with a wait list that's what that's what any community could ask for absolutely love that and you know I say all the time to our clients that you know much more than a video production company much more than an adze company or a video brochure company we're a census driven company because he at the end of the day that's where everything starts and that's where everything ends right if there's no if there's no clients if there's no residence if there's no patients nobody's getting the care and everything stops so that's where everything begins you know another thing to what I really enjoy is you know it's really important to be good to your employees right it's gonna be good you're you're sometimes they're sometimes they become family you working these people like you know I saw nothing without my frontline staff I'm nothing without my direct lines up right so what's the best way you can take care of somebody is make sure they have enough hours their hours don't get cut you know so it's not just the residents that we affect it's the employees that you know we affect in that way too so you know I I make sure this place is full we got enough hours for everybody and then not only that is it roles it's just like this effect like a domino effect in a good way where they can have enough money to take care of their family so they can you know they can bake on that but men take care of your people I love it how's the Lully so I want to ask you some questions here so what what is what is what have you seen is your best method for attracting new rate new residents and new patients into your into your community ah the best method I would say are you know you got to throw a really large events every so often so it's good to have little events here and there and and going and promoting at the senior centers and going and calling your industry friends and you know going outside the box and inviting community people to churches all those different things and inviting them in the one thing you want to do is you want to get somebody into your community you want to get somebody into your business you know or on the phone in a lot of cases - I've done a tour with FaceTime and Hold'em nice states away you know you just do what you have to do and so getting in front of them showing off what you have showing off your culinary that was my favorite thing that's always my favorite thing is obviously the food right people are gonna come if you put food and drink yeah yeah timo is just get this chick in the book oldest trick in the book baby you'd sell sell with the food right get something that they're gonna want to come out for and and show off your best thing make sure that's community is looking good and get all your directors there and and have a good time it's all good that's you know benefits everybody so you'd say advances is a strong way one of your strongest attractors for for for residents new estimates innovations yeah so so one other things too is the community that I'm currently in right now my home base is Normandy Park it's just outside of Seattle a lot of the referrals actually come from the residents so I take that marketing money and I have mixed events where I have some you know industry folks come in I have their family come in and you know we have throw an icy net for the residents on top of the other stuff going on and we've had I don't know about six friends of residents move in over the last six months that's twenty percent you know 15 percent of my business right there Wow so it's amazing that's him yeah yeah that's a maintaining you know there's the referral things to of course you always want to grow things organically right yeah so so you don't have to pay for a referral source or anything like that so that doesn't always happen for all communities there's different sizes of communities there's different you know for skilled nursing assisted living memory care all those different things too the last thing that I mean what sometimes if you get a qualified lead right say it's a place for mom or hearing calm or there's a thousand different sometimes their referral agents or well you know if they're anxious right right so there's sometimes you got to pay for these qualified leads you know they I talked to them they know that they can financially they have the insurance you know if it's skilled nursing or if it's assisted living or memory care long-term care insurance that their finances are because these things are expensive all of this cost lots of money yeah I mean it is not free no I mean that that is you get what you pay for it yeah yeah I hear you in solid so that's great I want to ask you one what if what here's another question for you what is the biggest problem that you are facing getting a little personal here that you are facing in terms of census that you're that you're seeing status quo so you know them staying at home so it really you know I was looking at your different podcast crushing the competitor and things like that I loved it I loved well you saw that willing to busted and buzz yeah right so how do we crush the competitor how do we do that you know the competitor is been staying at home interesting actually that's I know anyone's it your biggest competitor is I'm staying at home yes so that's very very very intelligent an intelligent point I appreciate that yeah so so what does that mean let's break that down you know so they're at home yes you can get in-home care yes you can have home health come in and do those kind of things yes you can get you know let's go down the rabbit hole even further say you need an x-ray or like your analysis is you have a urinary tract infection right next to cause major confusion well you know one just totally out of character you know Oh mom wasn't like this before you know you can get all that done in the household absolutely but you know what happened you can have a companion one-on-one but you know that's that's very spending so if you want to know kind of if you don't have the money to do that you can come to a community you can get the same exact thing done they can be done in and one of these atmospheres here where they have the nurse oversight where they can get the care major thing number one socialization could imagine if you went to work by yourself and didn't contact anybody all day at all Wow that would be horrible yeah yeah so imagine waking up and just walking outside your your apartment door and you got stuff going on good stuff going on you got seated exercise chair tea that's a thing it's Tai Chi in the chair you got like that Facebook yeah you got trivia things going on you can go on trips and all these different things and you're meeting you're socializing with these people you know with all these layers of dimensions in there to where they're gonna not be alone they're gonna have stimulation you know and they're using their brain well I love that I love that that's very cool so biggest competitor is staying at home you mentioned a place for mom you know they're the elephant in the room or you know there's definitely there's definitely other ones as well how has your experience been with outside companies in terms of helping you guys build census yeah definitely some some are better than others and then also coming from California working in Oregon and then now in in Washington pretty much all along the west coast there there's there's a kind of I don't know it consensus that they are better in different regions for different companies so you know say Karen calm is better down south in Southern California and maybe a place for mom is a little bit better up here well what am i what am I saying there I'm saying that you know qualifying so say somebody says well I really liked a big library and you need to be close to the water and then it has to be you know I don't like this hospital I like this hospital great ever especially some of sometimes they'll just get too many leads you know and that's bad for the industry because they're really going to these people as the specialists saying I have these three or four needs these four things need to happen can you give me some communities you know do the legwork so I can go and prequalify these communities for these families like communities like mine so where it's going to be a good fit because fit is huge yeah absolutely absolutely totally agree with you cool what would your number one advice be I mean you're you're you know head of sales and marketing what is your number one advice to all the other people who are in sales and marketing in the SNF in the a LF industry I guess for the entire industry with what's like my biggest expert anybody in relating it that it relates to sales and marketing for ALS and SNFs yeah what would that what is there what is your number one advice you've accumulated over all yours over all of your years of experience following up and I feel like that's probably the biggest thing if you don't call somebody back and you don't say I'm gonna call you at two o'clock or I'm gonna meet you here in that just make sure you do it you would be surprised who doesn't call people back you know if you don't call somebody back then that pretty much is telling them that we don't want your business or I'm too busy for you well you know I love I love that advice because it's it's simple it's actionable and it's something that people could take for granted it's not something fancy like geo-targeting in this and that just follow-up return a phone call be available and follow up you know in sales I know it's a little bit different but in sales we have a saying that the money is in the follow-up a lot of people get excited about that when that referral comes in it's fresh and it's new but but any good sales person knows where marketing person knows that it's in that it's in that second third fifth six twelve good well I got what averaged 12 for a movement it's twelve twelve communication whether it's a text an email a call 12 on a speech yeah because people getting you know incredible ease their lead source could be great their sales and marketing team or you know greater driving those leads but if nobody's there following up and making you know bringing them home then they're there being wasted so I love that simple actionable thing for that and my last question to you Ryan is and this has been great I'm really enjoying this and you've been awesome is what where do you see the future of the industry going in the next 5-10 years yeah I hear I don't know lots of different sources 17 years you know almost 20 years it's supposed to be really good I've I've heard that you know there's literally only one other industry and it's warehouse fulfillment like Amazon's and stuff like that you know so Senior Living is is literally the number two thing you could even invest in yourself right now like a real estate investment trusts so it's huge right now Jimmy Buffett's got his thing going down and Florida wait you don't want to be gets in it's time to get it oh my god right yeah so so literally like if you want to be ahead of the curve you know you got to make these places five and thirty years ago when you think of these places like they were just they called them all convalescent homes I know there are other places terrible yeah isn't that horrible you go to die yeah so so whether it's a sniff a skilled nursing facility an assisted living community independent living community where I'm at right now or a senior living or some places or tri-level where it's independent assisted in memory care and some even have a skilled nursing on the same campus it's got to be fun it has to be fun because we can do that why would you not make things fun why wouldn't you have some kind of attraction you know what I'm saying with activities and trips and just kind of just a little bit of variety I mean that that's that's if that's the ahead of the curve thing and that's where we're gonna see things go and that's probably the most important thing to focus on especially all these folks you know getting into this game maybe they're coming from just straight real estate or other industries cuz it's lucrative right now please if you're out there please make these places fun it's it's better for the sales people it's easier to market under the market and imagine yourself living at these places you want people saying oh you're going to this so-and-so you're going to that place you're going to go to solstice I wish I could do that Wow you know that's what you want beautiful beautiful there you have it folks you heard from the man himself mr. Ryan Harris senior director of a sales and marketing at solstice Senior Living thank you so much for your time I really appreciate it this has been amazing if you guys need to reach out to him you can find him on LinkedIn Ryan Harris super available anyone else who'd like for them to follow you nope that's it man just you can find me on LinkedIn right now let's keep a LinkedIn all right man thank you so much for time again looking forward to to God really work god-willing working with you guys in the future and let's let's let's keep the industry strong thank you so much for your time thank you very much you guys have a great one all right man [Music]