Get ready for another SMASH 2023 recap featuring Author and Executive Coach, Daniel Stillman, Author and Founder and CEO of B Squared Media, Brooke Sellas, and EVP of Warschawski, Sam Tomlinson as they unpack the power of conversational leadership and what it takes to get qualified leads and conversions.

This episode was recorded at SMASH Sales and Marketing Summit 2023.

‍

Produced by Solinity Marketing.

‍

Purchase Good Talk by Daniel Stillman, host of The Conversation Factory podcast. 

‍

Purchase “Conversations that Connect” by Brooke Sellas.

‍

Become a BTG sponsor.

‍

Listen to more episodes here.

Welcome to season six of Bridge The Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. Powered by sponsors Accushield, Aline, NIC MAP Vision, ProCare HR, Hamilton CapTel, Service Master, Patriot Angels, The Bridge Group Construction and Solinity. And produced by Solinity Marketing.
‍

Lucas 00:53

Welcome to Bridge The Gap podcast, the senior living podcast with Josh and Lucas. We are at the SMASH sold out conference 2023 here in Las Vegas, having a great time, meeting some great people and having amazing conversations. And on that topic today, we've got an amazing guest, Daniel Stillman. You're an author and a speaker, and you've got a great book here titled "Good Talk." Welcome to the show.
‍

Daniel 1:17

Thank you very much, guys. I'm glad to be here.
‍

Lucas 1:19

We're super glad that you're here too. And you have a podcast. This is not your first rodeo.
‍

Daniel 1:23

You know, there's a great joke about this where it's like, I didn't know I was supposed to learn everything at my first rodeo, guys. I know you're my second rodeo, but God, it's like I could use some pointers still.
‍

Lucas 1:33

Well, you were a speaker today and on, I think it was page 2...
‍

Daniel 1:38

I usually can't, I don't know, chapter verse of my own book because you just put it on the page and then you forget about it. But we did talk about some frameworks for people. I work as an executive coach mainly. My theory of change is basically like it's a leader's job to find the stuck conversations and unstick them in the organization. Not necessarily to have to solve all the problems, but to unblock people and to create fluid conversations where they're blocked conversations. Because when you're just going in circles over and over again, it gets boring. In the workshop, I think one of the the big hand raised moments was, "Who has ever been in a meeting where you felt like you were solving the wrong problem?" Lots of hands. "Who has been in a meeting where you're talking about the same problem over and over again?" Lots of hands. And so to me, what I call "conversational leadership" is being able to break out of those cycles into positive, productive, transformative conversations.
‍

Josh 2:40

Well, and that is a great foundation for you to be able to give our listeners who, most of which probably were not able to get to this sold out event, a sampling of the framework that you took these attendees through. So talk us through a little bit of the framework of how you make this happen in your organization or your team.
‍

Daniel 2:58

It starts with just the conversation facts. So my first degree was in physics, it's about having a set of equations that you can solve the universe with. Like, that's what we love in physics. My second degree is in design, industrial design. And so I think about materials and one of the things they taught us in school is like, if you're making something out of clay or steel or glass, it's going to be different. So you've got to know your material. And when you're a leader, when you're on a team, the material is people and the materials is conversations. One of the frameworks I told 'em are not frameworks, that's just facts. We can talk at 125 words per minute. 125 words per minute is not a lot. We can read at around 250. So the first thing I told them that they can do to transform their meetings is actually talk less, read more.
‍

Daniel 3:43

This is something that the most innovative companies do. They have a pre-read, they're in a Google document. They're reading and writing together because it's actually faster. You can process more data more quickly. And if people just Google silent meeting manifesto, just run the silent meeting, you're going to actually be a lot more effective because people won't be talking over each other. They're going to be reading and writing together. But there's another number which is really terrifying, which is 4,000. 4,000 is how fast we can think. So you guys are thinking right now, you're like, "Do I have another question? I should, where do I want to go with this? Like, do I want to ask more? Do I want to take it in a different direction?" And it's your job to be interviewing me. So you're being very patient and thoughtful about it. In an average conversation, our minds are whizzing, whizzing, whizzing, whizzing.
‍

Daniel 4:28

And there are two aspects of this. One is we can't assume that what somebody has told us is everything that they're thinking about a problem. And for leaders, this is especially challenging because if somebody says, "Here's the problem," and you go, "Here's the solution, here's what I think you should do." You've literally heard just the tiniest tip of the iceberg of what's going on for them. So the idea is to slow it down and ask for more. I mean, it's basic. Everyone here's probably heard of active listening, but actually practicing it takes guts and patience. Slowing the conversation down is hard 'cause of that 125, 4,000 gap. The other one is 400 and 600. 400 milliseconds is the average gap between when somebody speaks and when we feel like we should drop in because there's too much silence for 100 milliseconds is how fast it is between the starter pistol and Jackie Joyner-Kersee getting off the blocks.
‍

Josh 5:15

Whoa.
‍

Daniel 5:15

Which is really fast, right? And we're like, "Oh, there's just too much silence here." 600 milliseconds is how long it takes for us to form a thought, figure out what we're going to say. So most of responding with is garbage or where we think someone was going to get to. So that's one of the things I really wanted people to understand is that the numbers game and the fact that we have to do something differently to change the conversation, slow down, ask more. It's very simple.
‍

Josh 5:41

Give me the opportunity to ask you what was your "ah ha" moment? I mean you're making, this sounds simple, but I have a feeling there's something that happened in your life that was an "ah ha" moment. You're like, I need to write this because nobody's got this figured out yet. What was it for you?
‍

Daniel 5:56

I'll hurt you, Daniel. You know, one of my first jobs out of grad school was working as an experienced design researcher. So I would go to homes around the suburbs of New York City and ask people about how they use the products and services in their lives. And for everyone who's listening, if you want to talk to customers it's actually the wrong word. You want to go listen to customers, right? You want to really learn what's their real life like, what's happening at the dinner table when they're making a decision about going to senior care living. That was the session yesterday, right? How are we really going to peel back the layers and understand the conversation that's happening? What's so easy to have happen, and I'm sure this happened to you guys in your work and you got a list of questions and they answer one, and you're like, "I got to move on to my second question. I'm running out of time.
‍

Daniel 6:42

And they finish the first question. They take the break, that 400 millisecond break, and you start your next question, and this has happened to me. You take a breath in and they see that you're asking and they go, "Oh, what was your next question?" And you go, "Oh, no, no. Like I see you're about to say something more." There's always something more that somebody's going to say. And if I ask my next question as they're thinking of something else, I've obliterated it. It's happened to me so many times in my life where somebody's just about to say something more as I'm asking my next question. And I really realized, "Wow, my urgency, my sense of urgency is erasing the opportunity to learn more from someone else." So I think when I made that realization of like, "Wow, unless I learn how to slow myself down, I'm not going to be able to get the best out of people and learn the most that I can about what's going on in the world it's going to cost me."
‍

Daniel 7:35

And so I think that's part of where it came from for me. And the other is just like my own experiences of being told when I wanted to be asked. It really is awful when your leader takes something off the table for you when you thought like, "You know, I had an opportunity to offer my creative solution." And they're like, "No, too much urgency. I'm going to solve this for you." It's really disempowering and that definitely happened to me in my career. And so that matrix that's in the book of the asking versus telling, just really being able to navigate that with effectiveness, to ask the right questions that really unlock people and then to tell, to say what's really going on for me when, and this is the flip side of it's just being able to say what's happening when it matters. Being able to navigate that ask versus tell spectrum is so important. And I think in our personal lives, we know it, in our professional lives, we know it. I've had a lot of failures, massive failures that I've wanted to really nail better in the future. So that's for me.
‍

Josh 8:33

Well, thank you for the transparency, Lucas. This is pretty cool that we get to sit down. I always feel I told you, I feel like I get an MBA off of listening to the thought leaders we have on our show. It's amazing.
‍

Lucas 8:44

It is. And I loved how you put those two things together about other people's experiences and then also your personal experiences of being treated that way. It really helps me understand that kind of concept. And I think that most of our listeners can say, "Yes, that's happened to me and I didn't like that either."
‍

Daniel 9:02

Right? And this is the platinum rule for leadership, right? Servant leadership is treating people the way we want to have been treated.
‍

Lucas 9:08

Daniel, we know that you have a busy schedule. This is great. So how can people connect with you and listen to your podcast, order your book?
‍

Daniel 9:15

Yeah. I'm very search engine optimized, I guess. If you Google Daniel Stillman I'm one of a few. They can go to danielstillman.com, they can see lots of articles I've written about silent meetings and about the Talking Thinking Gap if they want to learn more about it. The coaching model that I taught today is in there as well. It's called the Soon Coaching Model, S-S-O-O-N. So if you want to start coaching with your teams, there's some simple ways of getting started. And they can find "Good Talk: wherever fine books are sold. But if they go to my website, they can get a free chapter. And there's some worksheets and stuff that they can't get from Amazon.
‍

Lucas 9:48

Josh, I don't know about you, but this is some of the most practical information in a condensed, very short conversation that I think that I've ever heard. And so I can't wait to dive into this book.
‍

Daniel 9:59

Oh, thank you, brother. I really appreciate that. I also forgot to say my podcast is theconversationfactory.com, so they can find some of my episodes and I'd love to have you guys on sometime. It'd be fun to ask you about how you do your thing.
‍

Josh 10:09

Well, we've got it recorded. We're going to hold you to it.
‍

Daniel 10:12

A hundred percent.
‍

Josh 10:12

Thank you so much for our copies of the book. I can't wait to read this.
‍

Lucas 10:16

He wasn't going to give these to us.
‍

Daniel 10:18

Yeah, of course, those are yours! SMASH has paid for you.
‍

Josh 10:19

That's why I said it.
‍

Daniel 10:19

Awkward.
‍

Lucas 10:28

We want to welcome to the show, Brooke Sellas. Welcome to the program.
‍

Brooke 10:31

Hey, thanks for having me.
‍

Lucas 10:33

So Brooke, tell our listeners your title and your company, and I think we're going to be focusing today on social media.
‍

Brooke 10:40

Yes. So I started my company B Squared Media just about 12 years ago. We do social media customer care, it's called B Squared Media. And yeah, we're just trying to teach people how to use organic social media to gain more revenues, sales and more loyal customers.
‍

Lucas 10:56

So what does organic social media mean?
‍

Josh 11:01

I'm glad you asked that. I was about to ask that.
‍

Lucas 11:03

Can you pick it up at Whole Foods as opposed to Walmart?
‍

Brooke 11:06

Yeah, well that's the whole joke, right? If you go into Whole Foods and you see something labeled as organic, you know you're a social media person if you automatically think of social versus food, but I digress. So organic social just means no paid efforts behind it. A lot of people will say that they only use social media for the paid aspect and that you can only get to return on investment with organic social by using paid. And we actually say, "Not so fast." We can do it through organic, but it just takes a lot of caring and prepping and conversation.
‍

Josh 11:35

Give me a very practical example of how you communicate feelings versus...
‍

Lucas 11:43

Feelings instead of features, right?
‍

Josh 11:44

Exactly. So what would be some examples of how you would do that?
‍

Brooke 11:48

Okay, well, I'm going to get nerdy on you for like a super hot second and tell you that I did my undergraduate thesis study on the social penetration theory. Terrible name, brilliant concept. But essentially what it says is to build relationships as humans. We have four levels of self-disclosure cliches, facts, opinions, and feelings. We'll call it the onion theory. So we don't have to keep seeing the P word, but in the onion theory, and if you think about an onion, you have to peel back all of those layers before you get to the core, right? And think of the core as trust with the brand relationship. So if I'm sharing cliche information about my features or my products, somebody can go to my website and find that out, right? That's cliche. It's not sharing anything new. It's not a disclosure. If I share a fact, it has to be something that isn't otherwise known to be a disclosure. So if I'm constantly sharing my features over and over again, those facts, right about those features become cliche. However, if I share something that's an opinion or a feeling, I'm trying to align myself with my audience and then get them to share those opinions and feelings back.
‍

Josh 12:48

Are you seeing that this approach works just as well for what I would consider two of our biggest challenges, not only driving occupancy for marketing and sales, but also recruitment for team members appealing to those feelings and how are you seeing that be used successfully, if you are?
‍

Brooke 13:07

Yeah, we definitely are. So I think you have to understand how the process works. It's connection, right? And connection is a two-way street. So a lot of brands, I'll ask them like, "Why does your brand matter?" And they'll say, "Oh, well, we have like 200,000 followers on Twitter. Our Facebook page has a million people." Okay, cool. And now what? Like, how many of those people are engaging with you? How many are having conversations with you? How many of those people are turning into customers or getting into your pipeline without paid media? And a lot of times they don't have an answer for that. And the reason why is they're building a follower base, not a customer base. So if you can kind of change your mindset about how you use social media to connect and then have some of those conversations, you can better lead to conversion because you're not trying to market or share content to everyone, right? You're only trying to share with those who are your current customers or would be customers. And then that does lead to ROI, because what happens is that people who are in the same market, I won't ask how old y'all are, but I'm Gen X, okay? So for me, using social media is a newer thing, but I still use it pretty easily. I'd rather go to social and find out information than like pick up the phone and call someone, right?
‍

Josh 14:21

I've heard a lot of people say that the reason why they advertise and spend a lot is to get speed of transaction. Is it a slower ramp up and to build, because I'm hearing relationship and it seems like, well, that doesn't happen just immediately. So if we are committed and we want to go down the path of this process, if I'm a provider listening to you and I'm really wanting to believe it, what do I need to be ready for? What do I need to be committed to doing? What kind of patience do I need to have to get this kind of long game going?
‍

Brooke 14:55

Yeah, it's dating, right? We're not jumping into marriage, right? If you want something right now, absolutely use the paid advertising to get you those results right now. But ultimately I think the reason why people go for paid all the time, it's because they want the quick route and because that's the easiest form of attribution, right? If somebody clicks through on an ad and they go to your form and they end up taking a tour and then they become a customer that's really easy to track. What I'm talking about is harder to track. However, we've come up with a concept called the Care Method, CARE. And essentially what we're doing is we're looking at all of the conversations that's the "C" on social media, and then we're applying "A" and "R" acquisition or retention tags to all of those conversations. So how much of the conversation is acquisition?
‍

Brooke 15:42

How much of the conversation is support, right? Retention. So when I asked my clients when we first started doing this, like how much of this social chatter do you think will be acquisition? Meaning those people who are on the path to purchase looking to buy? And across the board, they all said zero to 5%. But what we found was that all of them had at least 20% acquisition happening. Chatter on their social channels. I'll give one example. One client who has 12 product lines had four, that month over month continuously to this day, this was two years ago, has 60 to 80% acquisition change. They were doing nothing to address that. It's low hanging fruit, it's right there on the table. So if you were able to go through and do an audit of your social channels' conversations, right? That's important. And then look at the acquisition and retention, apply those tags, and then you can start to think about engagement, right? The "E" in care to understand how to then close those conversations that are acquisition based. Right?
‍

Josh 16:41

I'm kind of hearing you say between the advertising, the relationship building, and I'm obviously dumbing this down for myself. We take a balanced approach as needed. But I would imagine if we get that relationship game really going, it may get going good enough that we can see that our reduction in our advertising spend could drastically go down, right?
‍

Brooke 17:00

Oh yeah, definitely. And one of the interesting things that we're working on right now, a case study with, it's a financial brand, so not the same industry, but we know that their call center, the calls are $14 per call. That's what it costs when somebody calls into the call center. On social we know that we're going to get the exact dollar amount for this case study that we don't have yet, but we know for a fact we're under $5. It's not just thinking acquisition and retention, it's also thinking about operations and how you can reduce overhead and things like that. So I just think it's a really interesting and innovative way to use social media that not that many brands are doing, right? They're still focused on the cliches and the facts. So if you can kind of change the mindset and go into thinking of more opinions, feelings, conversations, right? The acquisition, the retention, the engagement, you can get to revenue and you can really easily beat out your competitors because I promise you they're probably not thinking that way.
‍

Lucas 17:53

I would love to see some practical examples. So we're obviously this is senior living, social media is now more common for the operators and the providers to be providing that type of content. Who is that audience? Is it the adult daughter, the extended family or the residents? And how does this play out in trying to develop those relationships instead of just having a stock photo of some actors around a chessboard or a glass of wine or something.
‍

Brooke 18:22

So I'm just about to release a report, it's called the State of Social Media Customer Care for 2023. And what I looked at was how do the different generations starting with the boomers use social media and do they use social media? And what we found was even boomers are using social media just because sometimes you get a quicker response there. Their platforms used if, for boomers, are more like LinkedIn and Facebook, right? They're comfortable on LinkedIn, it's very buttoned up, pretty professional. So they're comfortable there making inquiries. Facebook is just where they've kind of been, right? That is now the Boomer platform. And then if you go to my generation, it starts to get into more like Twitter and Instagram and down and down and so forth and so on. So I think really it depends, right? Who is your audience at your facility or at your place of business or within your industry?
‍

Brooke 19:06

And then understanding where those people are spending their time on social, understanding your audience, and then going to those platforms and spending your time and investing your money there versus shiny object syndrome, which is like, "Let's be on all the platforms." But if you're not having those conversations, if you're not speaking directly to that customer base, remember we don't want a follow our base, we want a customer base, then it's not going to do you any good. You're going to be spinning your wheels, which is what I feel like a lot of brands are stuck in right now. They're kind of on the hamster wheel of like producing all this content, being on all the channels, but not really getting to the customer.
‍

Lucas 19:41

Does this live or die by the ability of the activity professional or somebody at the community being able to shoot this stuff on an iPhone? Can this be handled by a centralized corporate marketing and sales leaders that is basically spending thousands and thousands of dollars to send out film crews to go and film this high quality, highly emotional interview style?
‍

Brooke 20:06

No, no. People don't want stylized content, right? This is why TikTok is exploding the way it is, because it's not stylized. This is like shot from the phone, you're your tears and your snot or like coming on if it's a really emotional video, right? It's like, y'all are as old as I am, I think. But remember the Blair Witch Project?
‍

Josh 20:24

Yes, I've tried to forget it. But yes, yes, yes.
‍

Brooke 20:25

It's like that.
‍

Lucas 20:27

I lived in Orlando during the filming of that.
‍

Brooke 20:29

Okay! Yes. So then, you know what I'm talking about. It didn't feel stylized, right? We all thought it was real because that's how they marketed it, but also because of the way it was shot. And that is really what people appreciate today. So it really is boots on the ground, people who are able to capture that content. It might even be residents who are capturing that content. And then you, you have what we call user generated content. And with their permission you can use that to then again, post to your sites or your social media pages so that Sally is showing you how fun art class is versus the corporation.
‍

Lucas 21:02

Brooke, great conversation. Really appreciate it. And you have a book, right?
‍

Brooke 21:06

I do. It's called "Conversations That Connect." It's on Amazon. But yeah, it's all about like the psychology behind what we just discussed. And then part two goes into the very like tactical, okay, now here's how you actually get it done.
‍

Lucas 21:20

Gotcha. And I presume you're on social media?
‍

Brooke 21:22

Uh, yeah.
‍

Lucas 21:23

Okay. Very, very good. And so we'll make sure that we connect to all of your links in our show notes here. Our listeners can go to btgvoice.com, download this episode of many more. Brooke, thanks for spending time with us today.
‍

Brooke 21:34

Thanks for having me.
‍

Lucas 21:37

We have a great guest today, Sam Tomlinson with Warschawski. Did I get it right?
‍

Sam 21:42

Nailed it.
‍

Lucas 21:43

Nailed it! Well good. You are doing two different panels today and tomorrow and I believe one is on lead generation and then one is on automation?
‍

Sam 21:51

Pretty much. So today's was lead scoring marketing automation, how to make leads work for your community, tomorrow's getting the leads to work for your community.
‍

Lucas 22:02

Okay, so everybody here at this conference knows what lead scoring is. I'm not a marketer, I don't know what lead scoring is, and I'm sure a couple of our listeners don't either. Can you explain that?
‍

Sam 22:12

Sure. So lead scoring is basically the process where you take a bunch of leads that are coming in the door and look at various factors about them, whether that's their qualification level, how well they fit your community's needs, their financial ability to pay, their willingness to join your community, how much that what you have to offer aligns with their personal values, taking all those things, computing a numeric score and using that to determine how ready or not ready given lead is to be sent to the sales team.
‍

Lucas 22:39

Sounds like it's a helpful scoring system so that the sales team and the marketing team can somehow align on the quality of leads that are coming in. Do I have it?
‍

Sam 22:48

Pretty much. Okay. I mean that's kind of the way it's usually used. I think it's a little bit underused in that sense. So a lot of today's presentation was all about, well, yeah, it's good for that. A hundred percent great for that, but it's also really good for understanding where your leads might be coming short and how you should be thinking about addressing those gaps.
‍

Lucas 23:06

You are leading the panel. Was there a time for Q&A where you got some questions about how this actually practically plays out?
‍

Sam 23:13

I think a lot of them are frustrated by lead scoring because a lot of the models are outdated, they're super manual, they are suboptimal in how they're implemented. So a lot of people are wondering like, "Okay, well how do you actually do it better?" Because realistically lead scoring hasn't changed since like 2010. While it's all kind of rule-based, it's kind of manual. It doesn't have to be that way, right? Like a lot of times the pushback that you get from communities is like the sales team's like, "Well, this was a super high scoring lead and they were not ready to talk to me." And the marketing team's like, "Well, there's super high quality leads, why are you bad at sales?" A lot of it is bridging that gap and thinking like, "Okay, well where is this lead strong? Are there factors that are saying that, you know what, even though it looks good, it's really not because we really do have to align everybody," like you said, being on the same page. You talk to a lot of communities a lot of the comments were like, "Well, we're not on the same page, so how do we convince them this is a better page to get on?"
‍

Josh 24:07

And a lot of that starts with just diving in, asking the right questions and not assuming that what you've always done is going to get the same results. One of the ways that we bridge the gap at these events is we take this thought leadership to them. And so this is one half of what you're talking about tomorrow. You said it's lead gen, correct?
‍

Sam 24:28

Yeah, it's a lead generation from playbook. If today was how to make those leads work for you, tomorrow's how to get the leads in the first place. I think especially in senior living, it's important because so much of the senior living marketing that we've seen over the last three, four years is stuff that I was like, all right, well we were doing this in 2012, 2015. For better or worse, it's an industry that has been like you said a little bit like, well, we do things the way we do things and that's how we do things. So this is really looking at it from a much more modern approach. Like how should we be thinking about this? How should we be thinking about integrating different channels? How should we be thinking about our search landscape, right? Just for instance, very popular topic is got a place for mom, I've got care.com, I've got our own inbound marketing, and then we've got our agency partner and we've got this and this and that. Well, how do you think about this? How do you balance these different things out? How do you decide who should be funded and who should not? A lot of tomorrow is all about number one, looking at that. And number two, thinking about a holistic plan that actually looks across the whole life cycle about how both potential residents and adult children consume media where they're looking for answers and gets each community in front of those people that they need to reach in a way that just likely to result in positive interaction versus just more noise.
‍

Josh 25:43

My understanding is you have clients in the industry, you've also got other industries that you serve, which I think gives you a good optic on being able to kind of have one foot in, one foot out and also be able to bring things that are working from other industries and that consumer knowledge. On the one hand, where you see senior living marketing sales right now would be one of the biggest challenges that you see we need to overcome. And flip side of that, what's kind of the biggest opportunity you see?
‍

Sam 26:08

The biggest opportunity for senior living is probably the fact that it's been done the way it's been done. So the growth potential of those marketing campaigns, of those marketing initiatives is staggering. Like we work in hyper competitive, you know, plaintiff's attorneys, SaaS, FinTech, home services, right? So those industries are brutally competitive. And when you take those same tactics that you've used in those industries and you bring 'em to senior living, you can really have a disproportionate impact. So that's the opportunities, the communities that start absorbing those tactics, learning, taking that test, learn methodology, using modern bidding strategies, using data more, you can win and you can win big because you are not playing against professionals. Sorry, that sounds really mean, but it's not. It's just you're not playing against A teams, you're playing against B and C teams. That's a huge opportunity. The communities that embrace that win and the communities that don't continue to struggle and they continue to have to rely on aggregators for leads that are super expensive and potentially not qualified, especially in certain targeted verticals that we all know it's nobody's fault.
‍

Sam 27:13

It's just the reality of life that the communities that can generate their own consistent flow of leads are the ones that are likely to be the most profitable. And then the other big one is, candidly, there's a lot of people who have a lot of means who are starting to consider 55 and over independent living, assisted living communities. And when you couple that with the fact that we have a higher percentage of two income households than we've probably ever had in our country's history, you have rising consumer debt, you have rising student loan debt, you have rates that are at 30 year highs for homes, right? All these factors are saying that traditional models of care that are not a care home are less viable at this point. Just so many people that are going to be needing that kind of care over the next 5, 10, 15 years. And it's a huge opportunity.
‍

Josh 28:04

Lucas, we've been hearing this already just one day into our event, in spite of challenges, obstacles, there's so much opportunity. And we were talking again and I think one of our guests said we're the best marketers, but our industry is penetrating maybe 10% of the age income qualified market. So you combine that with a lot of the things that we have been doing are a little bit outdated, that huge opportunity just for a fraction. And the exciting thing is to see the passionate people that are assembled here at SMASH listening to great thought leaders like Sam. And it gives an awesome opportunity and runway. So I hope our listeners, whether they're in the industry or thinking about getting into the industry, they see the runway and the opportunity to really, no matter what you're doing, there's huge opportunities to come into senior living. And, you know, hopefully our podcast getting this out to them helps spread that word.
‍

Sam 29:02

Yea, I hope so. Because it's, like you said, it's huge, it's a massive industry and it's it's needed.
‍

Lucas 29:03

Great comment to end on and Sam, we thank you for your time today, for spending some time with us. And we’re going to make sure to connect with you in our show notes. And to our listeners go to btgvoice.com and connect with this episode and so many more. We’d love to hear your comments and conversations around that. We’ll be posting this on LinkedIn and our other social channels so feel free to chime in, we’d love to hear from you. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridge The Gap.
‍

29:08

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.