Alaska's all the time, what's the secret sauce? - There is no secret sauce. - It's just the relationship. - Yeah. - It's just having those relationships. - Welcome to season seven of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors, Accu-Shilled, Align, Nick-Map Vision, Pro-Care HR, Sage, Hamilton-Cap-Tel, Service Master, the Bridge Group Construction and Salinity. And produced by Salinity Marketing. - Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas, some great recordings here at Atlanta, Hotlanta, Georgia, on a great August afternoon. We're here at a conference where there's a lot of great conversations going on, and we've got a good friend and industry veteran on the show, Chris Sides. Welcome to the show. - Thank you, thank you. - We last night had a mastermind dinner. I selfishly enjoyed picking your brain over a variety of different topics. And the first topic is the most important topic that I wanna start out with is about your barbecue program. - It gets a lot of attention, so it started back in '08. We were very new operators at that point in time, and we were in the Knoxville Market, and that, if you remember the collapse of '08, you know, there's a lot of manufacturing in Knoxville. And we were there in the Loudon area, so mountain boats in a place like this. And we had people that were pulling their families out of the communities and taking them home to live, 'cause they needed their social security check to survive. So being in the South, you know, we used to always say we can fix anything with an antibiotic and a cancer. So you go back to the old potluck dinners, and we would cook barbecue, provide the meat, families would bring in, you know, side dishes and everything else, and that's how it all started. And so all those potluck dinners turned into recipes, turned into two cookbooks. First printing we did many, many years ago was 5,000. We gave them away. We didn't even sell them. We used them for a marketing event. We've since done two more printings for a total of 10,000. We have a few left, but here again, every time we get a new community, we take cookbooks and we, you know, that's, it's just, it's kind of a grassroots internal. It's got a lot of legs, a lot more than we are, but at the end of the day, we're not caters. We're here to, and we have to remind people sometimes, we're not caters here, but it just is one of those things that was born out of necessity and has just been seen. - And so you take this show on the road though. Let's take it a little further. - We do. - This is not just a, well, we do this at our company Christmas party. - So we developed another phase of that. It was called Fast Friday Barbecue. And you're getting this started because we had a location. It was actually a Dominion location that was off the beaten path. And it was like, well, how do we get people to this location? And those were the days before Waze and some of these GPS apps. And so we created a box. It's called a Dock in the Box. We had a pound of barbecue, couple of side dishes, some very solid things. And we would just sell it, you know, for $5 a box. But the idea was they had to drive the community, driving the portico, so they knew where the community was. And we would just sponsor a local, like Boys and Girls Club, something local to that, you know, being a good neighbor. Here again, that got legs and that took itself. And we raised, I guess it was back in maybe 2017 or 18, about $30,000 for local charities. We did everything from childhood cancer to Boys and Girls Clubs, Mills and Wheels. We did a lot of Mills and Wheels. And then through COVID, during COVID, we would go to different locations and do it for first responders. It makes zero money, it's just a give back. So we used it there, but typically we still do the fast Fridays, but we do it at new locations. We can only do about four or five a year because it takes a whole week in just a lot of work, but they always pay. They always pay dividends and people always remember. - I know it wasn't your intention, but also brilliant marketing. And that's been a cool thing. And last night, obviously me and Lucas are thinking, well, the next mastermind, we've got to have the barbecue doctor there to do some barbecue instead of paying for catering services, even though you're not a caterer. That would be super cool. - It's got to find the right points. - This actually has a point to the conversation because it brings us back to a really core issue in senior care that you elaborated on last night in our dinner, which is what are the basics? What are our older adults inside the community? What do they need most? There's so many things that they need. And yes, technology, a beautiful building, activities, all of these things, but there's a couple of the basics that if you can't get right, you're going to miss the boat, elaborate. - I think your question last last week. If we come back in a year and we have a toast, what will we celebrate? And I said, well, you know, hopefully we're all still here and we're solved. That's what we hope to celebrate in this environment. But this really goes down to a lot, even what we've heard here at the conference today. We never focus a lot on what everybody else is doing. And we don't really worry about competition. We don't really look at a lot of national statistics. We don't look at technology a whole lot. We just try to simply focus on being the best we can be within our own box. And that means that, you know, every pill is given on time, every residence fed at a proper meal on time. They're clean, they're, you know, a dignified and in a safe environment. So we just call it the same place to approach. And we do a lot of that. And we do a lot of trust the process. We work on the process. We work on, you know, one day at the time, not getting too far, don't focus on the scoreboard. Just focus on doing the best. And it's full time job. And we really say, until we can do that flawlessly, you know, we can't really focus on anything else. In truth, we told it's very hard to do that flawlessly. But we really just try to stay in our box and focus on what we can do best. - That's so awesome. It's such a great way to look at it. And it is so difficult. Chris, what are like practical ways you keep your team focused on that? Because with all the distractions, all the noise, all the challenges that you deal with in all these communities that you operate every day with all these different leaders, what are some practical ways you keep your team motivated on what's the most important thing, the blocking and tackling, as you say, that we got to do every day? - I think for us, we try to be in those communities as much as possible. I try to, I think last year I have over 220 nights. We like to spend time here. We spend a lot of time. We had hurricanes here several weeks ago. I was at a community. It's just providing the support. That's all we can do. We can do so many things back in 2021, 2022, when the staffing crisis really kicked in. You know, we have the best PTO. I think that you can have a really rich program. We looked at benefits. We have all of that in place. I mean, it didn't really help when it was down to it. It's just about spending the time there listening. Knowing as many important things as you can know when you go in, cook for them. So when we go, when we do go out for a week, and we may be doing a fast Friday on Friday, we're always there on Monday. We're doing a mill, too easy for residents. We're feeding the employees on Wednesday. Thursday's kind of a pitch for us. They get ready for Friday. But we're there and trying to take stuff in. And it's really about the human side of it. More so. I just don't think there's enough money out there to combine your way. It's the relationship people ask us all the time. What's the secret sauce? There is no such sauce. It's just a relationship. It's just having no relationships. You've been able to scale operations and somehow be able to scale to not lose touch with the relationships, what you're talking about. Is there a certain way that you've been able to do that? Because, you know, I know there's a lot of startup companies out there that are trying to get to scale. And then it's like, where's the line? Where it's a fine line where you get maybe too big where you can't still feel like the relationship recipe that you're talking about, that you've got to constantly try to work on. What have you found that's helped you be able to scale and not lose that? We have been so fortunate when we have done an acquisition per se. We've been so fortunate, and this is a really good opportunity because I didn't want to end here today without recognizing the people that work for us on our team. So believe it or not, 36 communities, nine states, 2,500 apartments. There's seven, 4,000 folks, wow, 7 or 7 of us. And we're spread all over. And they're just good at what they do. And it's really my job to support them and give them autonomy. They all know how the, you know, we're just focusing, we didn't have HR until about two years ago. And we had an excellent opportunity to hire from a previous company. And she came home with us, she has an HR background. And she had some senior housing experience, but then she also had a counter court that had retail experience and McDonald's. And, you know, so we get so focused sometimes on senior housing while an hourly employee to a certain degree is an hourly employee, whether that's hamburgers or, you know, senior living, a grandma, if you will, and just being able to hire the insect relations. When we do those zooms every two weeks, we're constantly in touch. It's a lot of communication. And you just have to realize, I think that some of the, making people coming in often refer to this, this business stops for, doesn't stop for a hurricane. You have a family emergency, keeps on going. You get COVID, keeps on going. Family member keeps on going. It just keeps on going. And you just have to keep that in 2022. We took on seven buildings, 700 employees, close to 843 apartments in one fell swoop. Wow. So, trial by fire. Right. It's just that relationship piece of the pie. And I just look at myself as one of them and we've had great relationships with them all. Forecast ahead for you. You've been growing steadily through the years and you've obviously picked up a lot of new business, new communities. What is your forecast for growth? What are you looking for? What are you excited about? Well, we're happy where we're at. We have a, we're a large shop operator for a REIT, based out in California. It's a radia structure. So, it's not a lease back. REIT actually JV was some of them. That's been good for us. We've always looked at growth as, these to make sense for everybody. You just don't take stuff to add to a number, add to a community count. I don't know what growth is. 36 right now. Actually, we would like to contract a little with some underperformers and things like that. Kind of, you know, step back. I just don't need, we're good at what we got. And we've got room to grow. So, you know, we've got certain buckets that, you know, are about 90% occupied. So, that equals 70 rooms somewhere. There's our growth. And that was taught to me a long time by a mentor I have back in Horizon Bay, Tealobast, who's, I think, now retired. But he used to always say the growth in the big room. He wasn't worried about running around and, you know, where we need more, we need more. And it's like, I think we got 80 units. You know, how much is that? There is the growth. So, the growth for us is in the big room. That's a brilliant way to look at it, Chris. I appreciate you saying that. And so, I would imagine knowing what kind of, if we do look at industry averages, almost every operator out there has numerous vacant. So, if there is an opportunity there, what would you say is your strategy in-house to, as you're looking at opportunity, which it sounds like your occupancy is amazing. So, that's good. But you still have opportunities like we all do. So, what are some ways that you guys, is it building refreshes? Is it retooling some marketing? Or what are you doing? - Most of all of our stuff is acquisition. And if I say you look at the average, most of our stuff is probably built late '90s. You know, '96, '97, it is tired. And so, you know, I've known you for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years. - Yeah. - And then, I'd seen your relationship with Lucas. And then, we took over some communities out in Texas that he had done some work for. And then, along the whole, we had a freeze and a pipe bust. And I was like, well, I better introduce myself to Lucas. 'Cause I got a big mess. I need to clean up in Tyler, Texas. And he answered the phone and it sort of went from there. So, we're trying to do some fresh ups. You know, we can't do as much as we would like to do, but paint carpet, lighting, and some furniture go a long way. So, we're doing quite a bit of that. From an occupancy standpoint, you know, where we can, sometimes where we are highly occupied, we just have to look at revenues. But being mindful of, you know, there is a limit that people can only pay what they pay. And there is a limit. So, you have to look at, you know, maximizing, I think we're good expense managers. We always have been good expense managers. And so, it has a lot to do with kind of what we looked and staying small to look towards vendors. And we've also, too, kind of changed our approach. In some areas, there are local vendors that do much better for us than the big guys. So, we'll go local in those particular scenarios. But where we can, mostly just, you know, freshen up and continue to make the best we can with what we have as a state. We're working in our box, you know, here's our box. Let's figure out what we can do with what we got. - Absolutely. Lucas, the philosophy is consistent and it's been a successful recipe. I know a lot of our listeners are the ears are perking up and appreciate the value that Chris is providing to the industry and the communities that you serve. So, thanks for being a guest with us today. - Great. I appreciate it tonight. We'll figure it out. - Well, you can come to League City, or Cook & Barbecue in October. And we'll let you know next on where it wants to go. - That's awesome. - Yes, I can't wait for that. That's gonna be a fun event. And, you know, I really enjoy these. I kind of consider this a bit of a mentor podcast. These are core principles that so many in the industry really resonates with. So, Chris, very much appreciate your time. And so, for our listeners, if you'd like to connect with Chris and his team, scroll down on your podcast player and look at the show notes, those links there. You can also go to btgvoice.com, access this content so much more. Hit us up on LinkedIn. We want to hear your views and comments on this topic. What are you seeing in your communities? And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge the Gap. - Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at BTGVoice.com.
