Episode Description
Mary Jane Fitts is a Senior Vice President of Marketing at Greystone Communities, a developer of senior living communities. In this episode we speak with her about trends in senior living, where it’s been and where it’s going.
“What’s it going to be like for you? Well, I think one thing we’re seeing is, again, going back to just the Boomer segment and how they can afford to do more than maybe their ancestors did through the years. But I think we’ll see a little more home care as well. As much as we’re building beautiful communities, we also know that people are very interested in what kind of care can they get at home. And there will be a segment of the population that will prefer to do that. .”
MARY JANE FITTS
Resources Mentioned in this Episode
Greystone Communities: https://www.greystonecommunities.com/
Transcript
AMY:
Hello, we are so excited to be here with Mary Jane Fitts. Mary Jane is a Senior Vice President of Marketing at Greystone. And in that role, she leads Greystone’s marketing department. She guides and directs all aspects of marketing, sales policies, objectives, and initiatives. She also consults with operational and development CCRC (Continuing Care Residential) communities, which include expansion, redevelopment, and multiple campuses. Mary Jane has over 34 years in the industry as a provider and a consultant. She has hands-on experience in selling all aspects of senior living. We are going to pick her brain today about trends in senior living, what she’s seeing, how things have evolved over the past few decades and what the future might hold. So Mary Jane we’re just so excited to have you here. Thanks for spending some time with us.
MARY JANE:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I’m just so happy to be here. This is a really fun thing to do.
AMY
Well, I know you and my dad are sitting together in Colorado Springs, and you two have known each other for a little while, and he’s told me bits and pieces. But I would just love for you to give me a little bit of background about how you found your way into this type of work in this industry.
MARY JANE:
That’s a great start because a lot of people don’t go to school and decide, oh, I wanna be someone in senior living. That is not really where our aspirations lie when we’re in college. But I will tell you, I’ll start with just some background. We have five children and so we made the decision early in life that I would stay home and have kids. My husband had a good job so I did that for about 15 years. Then my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It was a very early on setting in her life. It was very early. And so I decided that I wanted to know more about it. I found out that there was a place in our community named Newton Presbyterian Manor that was starting the first memory care specialized area for people that lived in senior living in the whole Midwest. And so I was very interested.
And I thought, you know, I have a background in occupational therapy. I bet I could do something there. So I got a part-time job because of the children, of course, being so busy. And I started there and they helped me to get educated on the disease as they opened this new area. So that started my career in senior living. It was all really because of my mother. I learned so much that first year at this specialized unit in our community.
And then I progressed with Presbyterian Manors for 14 years. I grew my career with this great organization. First starting as the activity director and then I opened a preschool within the residential community. The first of its kind, in the whole Midwest as well. It was the first to be in a senior living community. That was a challenging job! I had to go back to school; build curriculum; get the class space; get licensed. The licensing was the hardest part of all. The Adult Care Division, where I started to secure the license said, this is child care. We’re throwing you over to the Child Care Division as we don’t license this. Child Care said, you’re in a senior living community, so we’re throwing you back over to the Adults Division. So it went, back and forth. To the point where I was supposed to open after this six month delay. And I wrote them a note and said, I’m opening on Monday, whether I have your license or not. And they faxed it to me that day at 5 o’clock. So that started it. This school is still in business. It’s called Apple Day Preschool. And I taught it for the first year.
MARY JANE:
Then they asked me to become the Director of Marketing. And so I actually hired a Master Level teacher and she took it way beyond what I was started with. I’m very proud of that and that it’s still surviving and so fun. The school has such a great relationship with the people that live there. It’s such a win-win. So that’s kind of how I got into this senior living.
Then I went to the provider side where I worked for a marketing and advertising firm that handled only senior living in Kansas City. I did that for 10 years. So I had the provider side first and then I was able to do the vendor strategic partner side. And from that I went with another provider, Sears Methodist Retirement System, as Chief Marketing Officer for a few years. Eventually I made my way back to Greystone where I’ve been for almost 12 years – back to being the strategic partner.
PAT:
I have a quick question. Was the daycare operation within the senior living facility?
MARY JANE:
Yes, it was, but it wasn’t actually daycare. It was a preschool. And there was a reason behind that. Daycare is regulated and licensed differently. You have to provide sleep and food and outdoor space that’s of particular sizes and criteria.
AMY:
Wow. That is so interesting.
MARY JANE;
With a preschool, I had to build the curriculum for approval. And so it was really a teaching situation versus a daycare. And, it was a great revenue source. It was additional income for the community and it was needed in our community. We had two preschools that were closing. So the our classes were immediately full due to that.
PAT:
Did that relate well to the senior population?
MARY JANE:
Yes. So what happened was we had a space in a recreation room in the lower level of our community. Kind of in the basement. I used that space. And the relationship was that the seniors that lived there could become grandparents. They would sign up for a class. So the kids had a consistent set of grandparents that came each time to their class. As you know we live in a very transient world now. And so these kids didn’t always have a grandpa and grandma in town. And so they became very attached to the grandpas and grandmas that came to their classes. And they would help put on coats, tie shoes, help them color or do, you know, whatever their activity was at that time. The residents were grandparent figure for them. And they got very attached to each other. The kids actually provided a lot of activities for the seniors too. Like at Halloween the children would go through the whole community. Everybody would line the halls with candy for them. Just things like that were so great.
Holidays were special of course too. Reflecting back to the residents in memory care that I spoke of earlier – we were able to put the pre-school playground area in the memory care courtyard. The children would go out there and play – two and three times a day. And all the residents that lived there would just go sit outside and watch them. Oh my goodness. And they would blow bubbles. They’d draw chalk on the sidewalk. They would do so many wonderful things together. It was so super. Such a wonderful experience.
And what we also learned it started relationships between the residents and the parents of the children. When the moms and dads would bring their children, there would be residents in the lobby area who would greet them and welcome the kids every day. They started to know each other of course and that led to let’s go have lunch. Or come in here and eat in the dining room today with us. And they would start all kinds of relationships with the parents who probably missed that family member aspect as well. So it was just a wonderful win-win all the way around.
PAT:
Is that emulated many other places?
MARY JANE:
I think there are some, but I don’t know how many. Some communities will do the daycare to help their staff, but the preschool’s a little different. Yes, that first school is still going strong. And they keep in touch with me. They will send me little things, and I’ll say, congratulations on your 31st year. We’re so excited.
AMY:
I just love the multi-generational aspects of your story. As you were talking, Mary Jane, just hearing the story of how those two multi-generational aspects came together, one where time is so scarce, you know, being a parent of a young child versus where there tends to be time abundance later in life and how those two could just really complement each other and be so symbiotic. At first when you hear it, you’re like, oh, that makes so much sense. But it’s not necessarily anything that we see enough these days.
MARY JANE:
Right. It was very unique – even in our skilled nursing area where the kids would spend time. As an example, the children would go over and make a circle in the skilled nursing area where there were often a lot of residents sitting around. My son, who was attending this preschool, would go to this area where he had Grandpa Ed. He loved Grandpa Ed. Grandpa Ed would always have his walker and Aaron would go run under his walker. Grandpa Ed would sneak him a piece of candy. Aaron would run immediately to Grandpa Ed and sit by him. They had such a great relationship. We had no grandparents in town as they were far away. So it was a wonderful thing for him.
PAT:
I’ll jump in here. You know, my focus with Mary Jane is that she is very involved in the building of Aberdeen Ridge here in Colorado Springs. And I’m very excited about what it is going to offer. And I see it being very state of the art. And I am anticipating that there are going to be things at Aberdeen Ridge that are really innovative. Programs and amenities that I don’t believe that other communities in Denver or Colorado Springs offer. My question – does that reflect a trend? Is this an opportunity for PMMA to really do something special? What might be driving these features?
MARY JANE:
Right. I think you’re exactly right. Pat, we do have such a wonderful community we’re building here in Colorado Springs. And I do think it is part of the trending that we’re seeing. And it’s really starting with the seniors themselves. If you look at that age group that we’re really building for, it’s the baby boomers. And we have that segment that were born from 1946 to 1964. And so what we’ve seen in the last five years might have been early on what we call the leading edge of the boomers who moved in. That trend really becomes important because if you think about it, in about six and a half years, every one of the boomers is gonna be 65 and over. So that’s a lot of people that are going into later chapters of their life. It’s so important that we offer communities that are purposeful and interesting. They need to see why it makes sense to live in our communities and what we provide. What we started with at Aberdeen Ridge is not only a beautiful building, it’s very state of the art. It has upscale dining venues, swimming pool, wellness activities, creative arts, security, – just about anything a senior could wish for.
MARY JANE;
We want people to want to be there. It will be so beautiful when it is finished. But the other aspect is the ‘purposeful life.’ We’ve already started this before we opened the doors. It’s a program called Peak Living started about two years ago. It was really to offer something in advance of moving into this community that future residents could connect to.
And it’s embracing the seven elements of aging, successful aging. And so we have programs that offer all kinds of exercise classes. Some of them were done by Zoom during COVID. So it’s exercises. It’s dealing with international subjects. It’s fun food and drink activities. So I think again, back to your question, we’re seeing trends in the people themselves. That seems to be what’s changing. And we call it experiential living. It’s not your grandpa’s nursing home anymore. It just isn’t. It’s going to be experiential. We want you to have great experiences from hospitality to great food, to wonderful socialization areas. You know, not every place is going to have a Goldfield’s pub that is absolutely gorgeous with its own homemade chips and salsa that are complimentary. Not everybody’s going to have that. Yeah.
I looked this up and they have $70 trillion in wealth collectively at the end of 2022. So they can afford what they would like. And so therefore we wanna provide something that’s really gonna appeal to these boomers that have been so selective in their life.
AMY:
I am so curious, for as long as you’ve been in this type business, based on your past experience, if you could predict the future, what do you see coming in the future?
MARY JANE:
What’s it going to be like for you? Well, I think one thing we’re seeing is, again, going back to just the boomer segment and how they can afford to do more than maybe their ancestors did through the years. But I think we’ll see a little more home care as well. As much as we’re building beautiful communities, we also know that people are very interested in what kind of care can they get at home. And there will be a segment of the population that will prefer to do that. And they’ll afford to do that. But home care is something they have to manage. So we usually talk about that. You can do home care, but you’re going to have to make sure people show up. You’re going to have to manage changes in case the home care sells and changes ownership. You’re going to be dealing with those things. But that is a segment that will be changing. We’ll see more and more people want to do that. And I think people are going to seek out more options. Basically, they want more control. That’s the one thing we’re really seeing as we go forward in the future, that people that move into communities want that control. They don’t wanna lose that.
PAT:
Also, I think some of the technology that is being made available will play an important role. I’m thinking specifically of Alexa. Alexa or in some cases Ziggy. I think that will help people’s involvement and safety. I’m very excited about what that will provide. You’re familiar with that, Amy, on what’s being provided to the residents?
AMY:
Well, I am, but I bet a lot of people listening have no idea what Alexa and Ziggy are all about.
MARY JANE:
I think technology is definitely what we’ll see in the future, a lot more of it. And just to segue, just a second, we do have communities that are using robots, where they have them now in the dining room. And it’s really fun. They name them just like the Ziggy. But they come in with trays into the dining room. They can deliver food. And they can do lots of various things already. So we’re seeing, you know, that’s just a tip of the iceberg with technology.
But what we’re going have at Aberdeen Ridge is this wonderful Alexa, which everybody will have one in their apartment. It will be able to be like an intranet, if you will, where it can connect all the people that live there. You can call your family, you can call your neighbor. You can find out what’s on the menu for dinner. It just has a variety of things, just like Alexa’s in our homes. It’s gonna be really a nice tool for them to have.
And if they need help, they can get it quickly and really respond to whatever the needs are. So it’s gonna be a nice safety companion for them.
AMY:
That’s amazing and what an interesting concept. I’m really thinking about what role technology will play and how it is additive and incremental. A bit of a joke in our family, Mary Jane, is my parents taught me how to use my iPhone. It flips some of those old assumptions of the young teaching the old about technology. And the fun we’ve had with these podcasts is how do we look at aging from two totally different generational perspectives. And hearing you talk about the use of technology, I’m like, once again, they’re gonna be ahead of me in the technology game. And how cool is that? It makes me feel a sense of pride that my parents are the ones that are going into the future faster than I am, adopting faster than I do. If you want to order something from the pub, you know, maybe we’ll get it delivered by a robot. That’s super cool.
MARY JANE:
Right. We’ve heard there are some communities that have smart apartments and they already have these technologies in place. And I think we’ll see this trend continue. Like when somebody gets out of bed at a certain time in the night, it does trigger something or it turns on lights or, you know, there’s all kinds of very simple smart technology that’s built in. They can control a lot of things from their phone.
They can turn on their lights, they can open their drapes, they can have pills dispensed automatically for them. There’s just all kinds of things that have already begun and I think we’ll just see that continue as new things come along. I can remember going back to when I first started in the business, I did a group with my residents, we called it social group, and we talked about what was going on in the world. And one of the sharp, really smart men said, do you know that someday there’s going to be a telephone that will not have a cord attached to it? And we were all like, oh, really? That sounds crazy. Years later, we all started using cell phones in our cars. Now I answer my phone on the watch. I know, right? And now we can even talk on a watch. Who would have thought?
AMY:
That’s so interesting. If we wanted to stay on top of trends in senior living, are there places or communities or things we should be reading or paying attention to? Any recommendations for anyone who’s interested in knowing where all this is headed?
MARY JANE:
Well, you know, we have so much information just at the tips of our fingers on a computer. You can find about anything on the internet. But I think reading blogs, I would recommend looking at various blogs. I know Aberdeen Ridge has a really good blog. A lot of communities do. And I think that that’s really a good source to hear good stories every month that kind of keep you connected with what’s going on because we try to make those informative and interesting and changing.
PAT:
We do try to hit lots of the topics on these podcasts, but there’s lots of other local sources. There’s Senior living News. Life After 50. There’s many other various resources. I can’t imagine not being able to find out what’s happening in senior living in our area. I can think of at least three that really target the over 50 demographic. And they’re quite robust.
MARY JANE:
You know AARP used to be for a certain age, and I think that’s really extended its age range too. It’s something that provides a lot of sources for people to get good information.
AMY:
That’s fantastic. I feel like you’ve opened my eyes to what’s on the horizon for me personally, and definitely what’s on the near term horizon for my parents. I would love to close with a little bit of gratitude, Dad, unless you have anything else you want to tap into Mary Jane’s brain about.
PAT:
For my gratitude piece, I was able to sell my drone skills to a new project that’s next to Aberdeen Ridge. I haven’t shared this with Mary Jane but they are hiring me to fly my drone to document their construction. So I’m finding that is very stimulating. I’m making your mother go with me so she can tell me when I’m in trouble or we’ve lost sight of the drone. A very stimulating gig job.
MARY JANE:
I have to say you are a prime example of the seniors that we are seeing. Just that you’re still going strong. You’re still pursing new interests. And I think that’s another trend we’re seeing is people working well into their almost 80s. I mean, it’s just we see it all the time now. How many 80 year olds want to start a ski club? Well, they’re out there. Right. So it’s very, very exciting to see how this is going. I just love it.
AMY:
Yes, I was reading something the other day about the recruitment that’s happening to bring former retirees back into corporate jobs and starting to see this recognition of how much wisdom and even the emotional steadiness. I mean, it’s not their first rodeo with some of these projects or crises or whatever it might be. But I thought that was interesting even to the point where organizations are creating policies around grandparent leave. So, we know about parental leave, maternity leave, but really structuring into who else they want to retain. We are now are seeing have grandparent leave. And when your child becomes a mother or a father, you become a grandparent and we give you a week off for that! So I thought that was neat to see those thoughts and policies starting.
AMY:
My gratitude today is it’s not 95% humidity in South Florida. Sometimes you stop taking a really pretty day for granted, I think, after a really long summer I found myself walking into my office building today just feeling like fall was in the air. I laugh because that means something very different here than in Colorado. I think if there’s a little bit of being present to that and just marking the season. It’s turning a page on a new season and that feels like a nice chance to check in. So I’m grateful for that.
MARY JANE:
Well, being from Texas where it’s 106, and still this Friday, I understand the heat situation. But I’m now visiting in Colorado for Aberdeen Ridge and oh my gosh. Colorado feels great. 49 degrees last night. Feels great.
AMY:
You’re going to have to keep checking in on this project long after it’s done. Mary Jane. They’re going to need you just to make sure everything’s working right. What did you mention to me? You had a pretty big weekend full of a lot of fun gratitude. What are you grateful for today?
MARY JANE:
Well, I didn’t mention to you, I said we had five children and they’re married to five other children and they have a lot of children. So we have a very large family. We are actually going to have our 20th grandchild next Thursday. Oh my goodness. We have a very large family. So yes, we were celebrating that early celebration of a baby shower. So we had a lot of family in town.
MARY JANE:
It was fun, except we had it in a bank and we set off the bank alarm. So the cops came to our baby shower. It was so noisy. Somebody opened a door they shouldn’t have.
AMY:
That’s fantastic. I love the fact like so much of your chapters had to do with a preschool and then you have 20 grandchildren. So that was good training for what was to come.
MARY JANE:
I know. I have a disclaimer that two of my daughters have 11 children. One has six and one has five. So that’s kind of where the crowd came from. But no, I’ve always said I like babies and older people. That’s been my thing my whole life.
AMY:
That’s so exciting. You’re right in your sweet spot right now then. That’s great. Well, thank you so much for this time and just sharing your experience and your perspective with us. And I certainly learned quite a bit. I’m going to be paying attention in different ways to trends and what’s shaping those trends. So thank you. And thank you, Dad, for recruiting Mary Jane to be a guest today.