Well Heeled Seniors Who Bought Payless Shoes Are Concierge Clients Too

April 12, 2023

Do You Need Concierge Clients?

Well, Heeled Seniors are a group you should know about Geriatric care managers and home care agencies need inquiries about services from adult children of concierge seniors. But some Concierge seniors will surprise you. Older adults who can afford long-term geriatric care management and home care include seniors who shop at Grocery Outlet and lived very frugal lives.

Well-Heeled Seniors Who Used to Buy Payless Shoes

You may be surprised that this upper 10% of the population includes teachers and subway workers.

Well-heeled seniors, according to the New York Times, include middle-class retirees who buy shoes from Payless but have a defined pension so they can travel in Europe as retirees and afford care at home care and private care management when they decline

Defined Pensions Directly Affect the Quality of Aging Care

They rode the post-war economy, held jobs long term, and through that defined pension (no 401K) face a very healthy financial picture in aging. They worked for city, county, and state governments are teachers, truck drivers, social workers, or union members in all trades. They had a career at Xerox, IBM, Campbell Soup, and big Fortune 500 companies.

Well-heeled seniors, these middle-class concierge clients, have adult children who call a geriatric care manager when they visit Mom and Dad and find care problems – or their aging parents have a health crisis. But they will really shop around as they have been raised by frugal parents on limited budgets during their childhood even if their parents now have excellent retirement through defined pensions.

They want the best service and seamless points of the compass that an aging life or geriatric care manager can give each client. These retirees lived on small salaries. Teachers who graduated in 1967 made $5000 a year. So they lived a working life of cautious shopping and tight family budgets. Now in retirement, they can sail down the Danube with their generous defined pensions and afford private duty home care and long-term geriatric care management when they need it or their adult kids who visit home or the emergency room and know Mom and Dad need help.

New Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

FIND OUT MORE

Webinar-Why Merge Home Care and Care Management

When-May 18, 2023 -2 PM -3:30 PM PST

If you are a home care agency consider merging with a care management agency. A care manager is a perfect person to introduce home care to family caregivers. Care Managers sit down with the family and go over the geriatric assessment and care plan they created for the client. Last, this 1-1 care manager meeting introduces a concierge guide through the labyrinth of caregiving, showing exactly what homecare plus care management will do to solve the client’s problems, increase their quality of life and offer relief to the sometimes-desperate family members. Find out more by signing up for this free webinar

Learn

How this merger creates more Profit for both Care Management and Home Care

The Advantages of Merging Home Care and Care Management

Competition Survey to make third parties and Adult Children Choose you

Co-Branding the merged agencies.

Technology for both home care and care management

Co-Locating both staff.

Marketing Merged care manager home care.

Critical Success Factors for the Success of the Merger

-SIGN UP NOW

Solo Agers Are Vulnerable to Social isolation

March 5, 2023

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation and mental health problems, particularly if they lack close family or friendship ties.

Also, known as Elder Orphans, Solo Agers represent about 22% of older adults in the United States. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation or are at risk of doing so in the future, according to a 2016 study. “This is an often overlooked, poorly understood group that needs more attention from the medical community,” said Maria Torroella Carney, the study’s lead author, and chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at Northwell Health in New York. Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation, according to a recently released survey of 500 people who belong to the Elder Orphan Facebook Group, with 8,500 members. Seniors living alone, being unmarried, and not having family or friends nearby are more often lonely and more likely to be depressed and have a poor quality of life. In the study understanding older adults who are aging alone 45% reported being sad and 52% reported being lonely.

Because adults with children may effectively be solo if their adult children live far away or they have a child with a disability who can’t care for them, or they are estranged, more aging adults are looking elsewhere for support to increase their quality of life.

Solo agers are vulnerable to social isolation although loneliness is a serious concern as all ages are found out during COVID. During the epidemic loneliness, isolation, and depression were experienced by everyone including kids who could not go to school. Seniors experience this all the time. Social isolation is associated with a multitude of problems, such as high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, and cognitive decline. If you lose the ability to drive, develop mobility issues, or live far from friends and family, Solo Agers may have very limited social interaction while aging in place. this a poor quality of life

Geriatric Care Managers can bring socialization, increase quality of life and so much more to Solo Agers.

Increasing Quality of Life socialization and networks of friends can help solo agers who are lonely. They can also help Solo Agers who are planning their aging plan to increase socialization to avoid pitfalls that so many seniors face in retirement- loneliness, isolation, and depression. The great thing about Solo Agers is that they are planning their aging, are highly educated and have the income for care managers, and can afford private care aging without Medicare covering long-term care

Solo Agers: Your Next Generation Client in the Upper 10)%

Sign -up for Free Webinar

Description

Who are solo agers
Why you should know about them
What makes them unique as clients
What services you can offer them
How do you market to Solo Agers
How you can do life care planning for them with wealth managers and attorneys

Sign Up

Geriatric Care Management Business?Want to Start one?

February 7, 2023

Want to Start a New Geriatric Care Management Business?

A care management business can be started by an RN, a social worker, someone in the health field, or anyone with dreams to become an entrepreneur.

But what skills do you need? Your entrepreneurial care management dream must spring from the intersection of three streams: your passion, your competence, and market opportunity. To start a geriatric care management business, the adage to “know thyself” becomes critical. Are you passionate about geriatric care management? You will need passion to sustain you when the situation gets tough—which it does in all beginning businesses. You must have the core competence both to be a geriatric care manager (GCM) and to run a business. But good GCMs with no business acumen, which is often the case, frequently fail in business.

Is Starting a New geriatric Care Management Business a Good Choice for You?

To start of new care management business you need market opportunity, which is a business skill. In other words, are there enough people in the top 10% of the area plus third parties who will refer to you like elder law attorneys, concierge physicians, and unscale assisted living you serve to have a”market” to have sales and generate a profit? If very few older people in the upper 10% live in your services area, you may not be in the right place to start a new geriatric care management business. If 10 other GCMs are practicing in your town, the

An entrepreneur geriatric care management business?

competition may limit your own market opportunity. You find out by doing a competition survey Finally, you need to assess why you want to start this type of business in the first place. Are you motivated by financial gains? by community recognition? by a need to make a difference?

In a New Geriatric Care Management Business

You Have To Know Cash Flow

An entrepreneur care management business owner must understand billing and cash flow. This is another key business skill needed by a care manager. Without this knowledge, you will fail like 50% of new businesses do. Along with this, you have to understand how to bill 85% of your care manager’s time to stop cash flow from putting you out of the business. This leads to overall financial forecasting skills. When do you break even, when can you hire a new care manager and afford to stop being a solo practitioner who wears so many hats you are crushed by the weight?

A new geriatric care management business

Do You Know The Best Phrases To Attract VIP Care Management Clients?

Learn Billing and Financial Forecasting and More in my new online Start-Up GCM Business Class

Billing for new geriatric care management business

Most care managers have no business background because they are nurses, social workers, and health professionals without an MBA. Yet their business depends on cash flow, marketing opportunities, and financial skills to pay the bills

Get Critical New Geriatric Care Management Business Skills in My GCM Business Class

Check out my Online GCM Business Class which includes 10 modules on starting your GCM Business including two modules on financial management so you do not go under and lose your dream start

GET 100$ DISCOUNT ON CLASS IF YOU BELONG TO ALCA

Skills you will learn in My GCM Business Class

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 cash flow -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
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 marketing survey skills to pinpoint market opportunity, your area’s upper 10% clients, and 3rd-party referrals to market, to make your business profitable
GCM competitive analysis skills to do a competition survey set the fee per hour your market will bear for your services and gage your market opportunity and 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 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
An entrepreneur geriatric care management business
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 through cold calling, 1-1 sales meetings, and inquiries, by knowing how to close the sale and sign the contract
LEARN MORE ABOUT LEARNING GCM BUSINESS SKILLS WITHOUT GETTING AN MBA
GET 100$ DISCOUNT ON CLASS IF YOU BELONG TO ALCA
Check out our affordable price or choose a monthly payment plan

How Storytelling at Thanksgiving Can Give Elders A Happier Family Holiday

November 22, 2022

Want to increase aging parents’ and everyone’s enjoyment at Thanksgiving? Try storytelling at Thanksgiving using elders’ memories.

As an aging professional, you can bring joy to an older person through reminiscence, storytelling, and oral history for elders

This Thanksgiving, if you really do travel to a family home or grandma’s house, travel safely If not make the safest choice, stay home and use Zoom and include your elderly

parent. You can do oral history for elders if they can use a computer or have a family member or friend who visits often and who lives nearby and is in their bubble serve and share Thanksgiving dinner at their home and use zoom with them to see other family members on the holiday.

Share Your Thanksgiving Story

If you are at a family member’s holiday dinner and use reminiscence for elders by asking everyone to tell their favorite story about a Thanksgiving dinner. Start with midlife members to get the idea and then ask

again parents to share their stories.

Oral history for elders will bring extra thanks to Thanksgiving by learning about an elder’s past and giving them the opportunity to share, which sometimes they do not do in the hubbub of family talking.

The “telling ” also means someone documents. That magically gives the elder and a child social interaction and connectedness. Elders vividly recall their past by telling stories from vignettes in their life – especially life in their 20’s, which sparks the richest recall called the “20’s bump”, according to researchers.

Elders sharing stories means passing on history.

So try storytelling at Thanksgiving and it becomes intergenerational. The older person is given a chance to give the larger picture of their life and family history to children and grandchildren or extended family, who may not have heard all the details of their grandparent’s or parent’s life before. My 10 grandchildren have grown up with their now 80-year-old grandfather. telling them exciting stories of when he was a California Highway patrolman. So a dual dose of a higher quality of life for both the older person and the aging family is increased through oral history and reminiscence.

Capture Your Families Past Before It Is Gone

Many midlife adults now do ancestry and regret that they did not ask questions of older family members when they were alive. Capture that past now on this family holiday. An aging professional or a geriatric care manager can suggest family or friends record the Thanksgiving story as oral history using technology like an i Phone or i Pad.

Story Telling at Thanksgiving with Story Worth

Another great idea to capture reminiscence for elders is giving them StoryWorth.

My daughter sent this gift to her Dad and both he and I love it. Each week StoryWorth sends a question to my husband that prompts him to write about his past. He writes his reminiscence out longhand and I easily use the dictation on my phone and email his story to Story Worth.

At the end of the year, my daughter will order a bound book of all the stories- a whole collection of memories, an oral history of an elder father that she might never think to ask and will be saved for her and her children to pass on family history. I will order a copy for all her three siblings. Equally important, my husband, really enjoyed writing about his past and the prompts have brought many vivid memories back to him.

Sweet grandmother holding a beautifully cooked turkey dinner.

Do I Need Social Media for Holidays?

November 8, 2022

Do I Need Social Media?

Do I need Social Media to attract new clients during the coming holidays? Many have a solo practice and it is one more thing to do on top of marketing your business, managing clients paying bills – all overwhelming jobs?? Some geriatric care managers own flip phones and dig in their heels and say what is social media marketing going to do for my kind of business and do I really need it?

Social Media Main Plank of Care Manager Marketing Strategy

Social Media is so important, especially in the coming holidays -critically to reach long-distance care provider who visits aging family members to celebrate the holiday, where they find frightening signs of parents needing care. and then know to call you. It doesn’t matter if you run a solo practice or a big national company. Social media is an essential piece of your business marketing strategy. Now in this busiest season for care managers, you cannot consider skipping social media, especially in a small business like care management

Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. With more than 4.1 billion people around the world using social media, it’s no passing trend.

4 Ways to Get More Clients With Social Media–

You need social media most importantly if you are just starting your aging life or geriatric care management business or want to grow the number of cases you have to grow and thrive, which you can over the holidays, the busiest season of the year for care managers. So, this is what you can do to get more customers to use your services. Write a blog

How

Choose Word Press or another blog software and set up an account to start positioning information to potential clients. The platform can add links to social media so you just post easily on your blog instead of going to each social media site to post. To get more help sign up for my holiday webinar on technology

How

Design the format (they have templates), write content, publish on a least a monthly basis, and consider services like Constant Content

3. Open twitter Facebook, Linked in Pinterest Accounts

Sign up and learn how to use social media. Best if on your website and automatically posts

Services needed to complete

4. Join Linked in for professional referrals: Develop a Profile, get testimonials, and join Linked in groups like Aging Life Care Asso group

Create a Facebook fan page for your GCM business

Learn to use Pinterest for your business

Create a Twitter account for your business

Join Instagram for business

Sign -up for Google My Business

5. Lack of Social Media Skills No Time to do? Hire Expert

If you feel you do not have the time or the skills to do this- very likely for folks over a certain age- we did not grow up with this language- hire someone to do this or best bet a grandchild.

You can also have a professional create marketing content, newsletters, and blogs for you using businesses

To get more help sign up for my holiday webinar on technology

SIGN UP FOR MY HOLIDAY WEBINAR –

Get Ready for the Holiday Rush

WEDNESDAY November 16th, 2022, FROM 2 PM – 3:30 PM PST

Learn how to create!

Pre-Holiday Social media campaigns to reach worried caregivers
Pre- Holiday-Materials about the warning signs that a parent needs help
Pre-Holiday Marketing to help you sign up families who might face a serious decline in aging parents

How to sell services to desperate post-holiday callers from Normal dysfunctional & long-distance family
How to use tools to contain holiday chaos & arrange care in festive family fright
How to move the family to New Year’s stability

Position Your Agency ahead of Care Managers who do not have great pre-holiday marketing campaigns and lack the clinical skills how to work with Adult Children and families during the chaotic aging family holiday visit when adult kids find their aging parents need care
Featuring

Cathy Cress MSW author of the Handbook of Geriatric Care

Management

Sign-up for my Free White paper to learn to use the copy & keywords to sign-up for home care or care management Concierge-VIP Clients who can afford care management & home care as Medicare does not cover long-term care

Contact

Connect with Cathy

Get Cathy’s “10 Critical Success Steps to a Profitable Aging Life or GCM Business”