Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

Are You an Eldercare Non- Profit Wanting to Start a Geriatric Care Management Arm- Do Market Sizing

 

Non-Profit Seeking New Revenue?

Are you are a non- profit considering starting a geriatric care management business to add a revenue source to your non- profit. You do have a timeline – right? The second item on your timeline is a market feasibility study. You need to test what your market share will be. Will you have enough of the pie to make a profit?

Is This New GCM Service Feasible?

To start this feasibility study you need to determine the geographic footprint of the market you wish to serve.
You should look at your entire potential service. For example, if your non-profit serves the whole state of New Jersey the entire city of Princeton or the zip code 33023 in Hollywood, look at that
Geographic area. You are searching for the section in your service area most likely to yield older clients and their families who can afford GCM services the 10%
If you cover all the counties in Delaware, select all those counties. Create a market survey of those counties to find out which counties have the highest number of seniors, with the highest income described as your ideal client. You will be using the US census figures and other metrics.
Here is Some Great Tips To Make Sure Your Non- Profit adds a for-profit Geriatric Care Management does not go bust and actually lose money. It has happened. Avoid this mistake.

LEARN HOW TO MARKET LIKE YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDED ON IT 

January 23 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm PST

The busiest season for care managers is January & February after as adult children have just visited for the holiday and seeing their elderly parents skating on very thin aging ice

Learn care management marketing so you can:

Capture those desperate clients in January after the festive fright-

Develop strategic marketing that brings more customers,

Understand branding         

Develop a positioning strategy so the caller chooses you

Understand lead generation in care management

Get the best marketing software  

Create a 5 Star Marketing Plan for the top 10% of seniors who can afford you.

Click Here To Register 

FIND OUT MORE 

THIS FREE  WEBINAR  FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST Thursday, January 23, 2020

SIGN UP NOW  

10 Ways to Capture Family Stories in The New Year

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Tips to use  to capture these family tales during the coming year with aging parents

1. Use empathetic listening. This means to make all the messages you are are giving the older person— tone, how fast you speak, how they are sitting-  all saying, “I want to listen to them.”

2. Ask questions that prompt the story but don’t make judgments. If there are going to record the family tale, do it in a way that doesn’t distract or stop the older person from talking.

3. Start somewhere. If the elder isn’t going to tell stories on his or her own, start the story and see if they will follow along.”What was a New Years Resolution that you made and kept” ” Do you remember your favorite doll ” What was your first day of school like”

4. Music is just next to memory in the brain shown by Alive Inside So use Alexa, Spotify, to play  40’s 50’s music or especially the music of the era when they were teens Simple ways to spark reminiscence when you visit older family members :
5. Look at old photos together from the past or can be anytime. Choose ones from a period of time the person currently remembers, which could be the person as a young adult, teenager, or even a young child.
6.Play music from their teenage years. It is the background to the most emotional period of anyone’s life and deeply lined into memory.
7. Enjoy food they like or food that is a family tradition or specialty, particularly ones that have an element of memory attached from family celebrations. like taco Tuesday, Sunday Suppers, pizza night
Attend a religious service where the elder enjoys the sensory experiences of the smells and the bells -the sight of the pageantry, the whiff of incense or, the sound of a choir, a quiet prayer said together

 Three technology tools to help you with this legacy-building for your older client or family member including a new one my husband just received from our daughter Kali for Christmas

8. Story Worth was started by Nick Baum, a tecky who was, and in a way, a long-distance care provider for his parents in Sweden. He was curious about their past and invented the app based on his own need to gather his family history. My husband is a teller of past tales as a highway patrolman, then Hippie, then top marketing director for Pacific Cookie Company, the best cookies here is the west. Our daughter Kali gave Story Worth as a holiday gift, giving him a prompt she sends. This week ” what was your first job. I then have him record it on my I phone, enable dictation and just let him speak his story into the phone. I just emailed the first story to my daughter. I think this is brilliant and recommend it to adult children or people my age who want to pass on those stories they may never write down. At the end of the subscription, the Story Worth people send you a book of all the stories as a keepsake.

9. Life Bio-  provides an online template of biography and autobiography questions that have been carefully crafted

10. Quick Voice Recorder to catch the memory on your phone

 

Reminiscence is part of a whole new domain in aging called quality of life or attending to the older person’s need for joy through activities that stimulate the mind. Reminiscence does that but find out more about how you can increase  the quality of life of older people  after the holidays  and all year long

 

Marketing plan Critical to Profiting on ALCA or Geriatric Care Management Business

Merrily Orsini’s Advice on Marketing GCM

Merrily Orsini, esteemed author of her Marketing Geriatric Care Management  chapter in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition 4th-edition  has some sage advice on marketing aging life and geriatric care management

When it comes to distinguishing an aging life care management business, nothing compares to a solid and well-thought-out marketing plan. A strategic and successfully executed marketing plan has the power to shape an aging life care management business and how it is to be perceived by current and potential customers. It does this

What Does a GCM ALCA Marketing Plan Do?

  1. It forces you to define that new audience. Your targets are now not only for direct services, but also a larger audience of targets: managed care companies, and others that are creating models using value-based payment as a method to reduce costs in post-acute care.

             2. It forces the Aging Life or Geriatric Care Managers to take the time to define the values and unique benefits they offer and to develop various, affordable (time and money) ways to communicate those things to a specifically defined target audience.

Social Man Drawing Social Security Benefits In Notepad

Understanding who is the new target audience will allow the Aging Life and Geriatric Care Managers to create that critical market plan.

What is your Market plan and who is your audience?

Do you need a GCM Business Course to learn how to create a marketing plan, sales plan and how to actually market and sell the “Invisible” product- geriatric care management?

FREE Webinar

LEARN HOW TO MARKET LIKE YOUR BUSINESS DEPENDED ON IT 

January 23 @ 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm PST

The busiest season for care managers is January & February after as adult children have just visited for the holiday and seeing their elderly parents skating on very thin aging ice

Learn care management marketing so you can:

Capture those desperate clients in January after the festive fright-

Develop strategic marketing that brings more customers,

Understand branding         

Develop a positioning strategy so the caller chooses you

Understand lead generation in care management

Get the best marketing software  

Create a 5 Star Marketing Plan for the top 10% of seniors who can afford you.

Click Here To Register 

FIND OUT MORE 

THIS FREE  WEBINAR  FROM 2 PM – 3 PM PST January 23, 2020

SIGN UP NOW  

10 Intellectual Quality Of Life Activities for Elders

Loneliness & Isolation a Plague Among Elders 

Geriatric care managers who work with isolated or depressed clients who can use quality of life to bring back joy.

Care Manager Nina Herndon, the national expert of elder quality of life, cites in her chapter on Quality of Life, in Handbook of Geriatric Care Management a quote from the aging visionary Bill Thomas MD  in his book,  “What Are Old People For”  .Thomas says this is the plague of so many elders, who suffer loneliness, isolation, helplessness, and boredom because their environment is empty of companionship, intimacy, self-direction, and meaningful activity. Care Managers can fill this void with quality of life. One way to do this is:

Intellectual Quality of Life activities that engage older person  mentally

  • Hobbies
  • Learning
  • Brain aerobics
  • any form of creativity

Here are 10 other  ideas for seniors who live at home, or in Assisted Living

For seniors who are independent.

  1. For seniors who wish to travel again but need support to arrange a trip-Work with a senior travel agency to have the elder plan a trip that the elder would love to take but never did. Arrange for senior to take a class on planning travel and to  plan the trip Help them go online
  2. Games checkers dominos, puzzles, simple card games with a deck of cards with whales on them if they like the sea or more complicated games like bridge.
  3. Help the client join a local  book club with the kind of literature he likes to read (non-fiction- fiction – romance? )
  4. Help the client join a book club at the local library.
  5. Help the client join a Lifelong Learning  Osher group near you with intellectual activities if they enjoy book groups, Current Events, Cosmology, Shakespeare – whatever they love to learn or learn again.
  6. Introduce elders to your local community college or local college or theater company musicals and get tickets plus arrange transportation.
  7. . Identify what music they like and arrange to take them to local concerts, arrange to watch and listen on television or TV, if they have an I Phone Make a playlist of their favorite music, get them Alexa to just tell Alexa what music they want to hear, or join a choir if they used to do that and arrange transportation
  8. Attend a senior computer class or arrange for a 1-1 services with someone who can easily work with seniors and computers.
  9. Suggest joining in a games group at their local senior center or joining local games meet up- an example where I live https://www.meetup.com/Santa-Cruz-Board-and-Parlor-Games/
  10. Order Joyful Moments,  Geriatric Care Manager, Nina Herndon’s Quality of Life activity kit book, to get more ideas                         
Get More information about how to set up a Quality of Life Program check out My Geriatric Care Management Operations Manual that includes step by step  procedures on how to set up a Quality of Life Program 

   

 

 

Small Business Failure Rate 50% – Create a Time Line Before Launch a Aging Life or Geriatric Care Management Agency

 

 

WHAT STARTS FIRST IN A STARTUP?

Wondering what you have to do to get a new aging life or geriatric care management business started? What should you do first? What next? A startup timeline tells you the steps you need to take when starting a new care management business.

YOU NEED A TIMELINE
A care management business start-up timeline is meant to remind you of the tasks you may have to perform when starting your business. – before you open your doors

Not every care management business will have to complete each step. For instance, you may decide to get a NACCM credential instead of an NASW credential or no credential at all

MORE THAN HALF OF STARTUPS FAIL IN FIRST TWO YEARS

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), only 66 percent of small businesses will survive their first two years.

Opening a care management business takes, in aging, what we call executive skills. You have to have a

timeline with a logical order to open any business. What do you do first, second????

Do you have a timeline to open your geriatric care man agent business? You know you have to purchase client software, market, rent an office, get forms, get a website, create a brand, get a marketing database- but in what order.

Learn How to Create Your Timeline to Open plus all the Business Skills you Need to Open Your New GCM Business

Sign up for my New On-Line GCM Business Class at a very low introductory Price of $450

Skills you will learn

  • GCM marketing survey skills to pinpoint your area’s upper 10% clients and 3rd-party referrals to market to, to make your business profitable
  • GCM competitive analysis skills to set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and to gather information from each, to position your services vs your competition’s so clients will choose you
  • GCM timeline skills to identify and list (in a manageable, doable order), major tasks to complete before you open your business
  • GCM organizational design skills to create your business flow chart and job descriptions, and outline how power flows down your staff to deliver gold standard care to clients
  • GCM business planning skills to write a 13-part business plan to create a blueprint of measurable goals for your business’s financial success
  • GCM marketing skills to create a marketing plan to develop lead sources, conduct lead generation, launch social media, and conduct content marketing to gain new customers
  • GCM sales skills to position your agency to sell your menu of services
    through benefits to 3rd parties and clients though cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
  • GCM ALCA billing skills to develop a billing system that allows you to bill 85% of your time, control your cash flow, invoice promptly to make a profit
  • GCM financial forecasting skills to develop a 3-year financial forecast Excel spreadsheet to track your basic profit and expenses, and to track the number of clients and billable hours needed to break even make a profit, pay back loans, hire new staff, and take a salary yourself

Taught through Blackboard CourseSites

  • Self-paced course
  • Tech support
  • 10 video PowerPoints
  • 10 video intros to modules
  • 1-1 coaching with Cathy Cress
  • Chat room
  • Templates to follow with each module
  • Pre-test
  • Post-test
  • Bibliography
  • Assignments with each module graded by Cathy Cress
  • Facebook group to interact with other students, Cathy Cress and 25 other ALCA GCMs who have already purchased the manual
  • Signed contract must be completed before purchase

 

 

 

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