Simone Kelly with Seniornicity

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Rob Gandley: Hello everybody, and welcome back to Franchise Marketing Radio. I’m your host, Rob Gandley. We’re the show where we connect with the brightest minds in franchising those driving innovation, building meaningful customer relationships, and transforming systems that scale. And today we actually have a special guest. And he has been involved in the franchise industry and and now is building a very cool tech company and business within the senior care industry. So I want to welcome the founder and CEO of Seniornicity, Simone Kelly. Welcome to the show.

Simone Kelly: Thanks for having me, Rob. It’s a pleasure.

Rob Gandley: Well, it’s great to have you. And so like I told you earlier before we started, the way I love to get started is to help the audience understand a little bit more about how you became you. And, you know, we’re going to talk mostly about you today and what you’re doing, but love to hear that journey story as an entrepreneur. I know you are one. You’ve been in the franchise industry as a franchisor, which is very interesting. Tell us more how you how that journey led to this and and we’ll take it from there.

Simone Kelly: Well, I guess I could cut to the chase. So I started building businesses this. When I was 29, I started lending company and then I started lenders that could I try to cross-train them into real estate. And then I did an escrow company, transaction coordinating company, all within the same. And then I ended up selling that. And then moving forward with raisins and raisins was my franchise wasn’t a franchise when I started, I actually fell into it. It’s an estate sale company. And then we got busy really fast, and at that point I was either going to divisionalized it or I was going to franchise it. And since I’d already been in the franchise world, I’d purchased a Remax when I did the real estate and the lending company. So I kind of knew what franchisees wanted and what was missing, and was able to plug that into my franchise model and decided, oh, franchise Grayson’s. And so I did franchise that up until we got to about 32 franchises. I stayed on board until we got to 52, and then I moved on to senior necessity. A senior necessity actually has been in the back of my mind for 3 to 4 years prior to the Grayson setup, because I had gone through it with my mom.

Simone Kelly: She had had a stroke at 55, a major stroke, and she was really young, and I had the background that I thought I knew what to do, and we had taken care of my dad until death do him part when I was 21. And so I just thought I knew enough about it and I really didn’t. I made so many poor choices financially how to care for my mom. I mean, it was I mean, we I got her better within six months, which was like a miracle, but my mom’s like a fighter of all fighters. Um, and so she went back to work. And when I was done, I was decimated. Like, emotionally, physically. I mean, everything was just turned upside down in my world. And so it took me about 5 to 10 years to get back to where I normally would be. And, I mean, I took like an hourly job for six months, um, with a friend of mine just to learn how to get back up and not have to worry about my mom. Right. How to rebuild. How to have a success again. So I saw what it could do to somebody in such a short period of time in making the like the poor decisions.

Simone Kelly: When you’re caring for your family because your emotions, your emotions are everywhere and you just throw everything at it and you just it just ruined me, to be honest. Um, and then, um, build back up and started Grayson’s and now, unfortunately. But fortunately, I had another stab at it. My mom had a near fatal accident on Mother’s Day a year ago. So it was a year. Time has been flying by, but I knew better then you know. I’d been working with Grayson’s and seniors and family members, and I knew what, um, assisted living, you know, assisted living people did. I knew what, um, like the skilled nursing, which I hadn’t known anything about before. Um, all of the, you know, where they had to go through rehab, the rehabilitation, so I could make better choices based on my experience. And wow, it was seamless. Like it was incredible to know what I knew then. Now when my mom had her accident, it had I known that prior then it would have been a lot easier. But I think now, because I did know that experience of the hardships of doing it without using all the things I know now, how many people are going through exactly what I went through that first time, because most people go through it one time.

Simone Kelly: I unfortunately got two times, but fortunately because I was able to learn as I went. So it was an incredible journey. So seeing your ethnicity was really put out there, um, to help seniors and their families, because I’ve always thought it people don’t want to be a burden, right? My mom always says, I don’t want to be a burden. Um, but unfortunately, you inevitably will be one, especially if you don’t know how to navigate. Um, and it’s a burden on the family. It’s a burden on the time. It’s it’s the emotional burden. It’s the it’s the financial burden, which is one of the biggest burdens is that financial one. You do you quit your job. Do you go live with your parents? Do you move your parents in? Is there a disruption in the family, like there is so much going on, and if you have the proper tools and the people to work with as a team, you can get through it pretty seamlessly. But if there’s not something like senior out there walking them through that step of what they go next, it will devastate you. At least it did with me. And I’m a pretty strong person, so I’m assuming it’ll devastate many of them.

Rob Gandley: Well, I can tell just from my background and experience with senior care, and I just happened to work with a brand that is in that, uh, in that industry. And it is very much, uh, like what you’re describing, like I would say, anybody that’s, uh, in that age range where your parents are older, where you start to think maybe they’re getting older and they might need you in some way, that you know you don’t want to wait until you’re confronted with a situation you have to react to. You don’t want to react. You want to be able to respond is probably the better way. And so what you’re describing is what I hear all the time from people going through it, uh, people that we help, people that run businesses that support families that go through it. It is very much like that, very emotional. Uh, everybody has a different emotional scenario, probably depending on the parents and the situations and families. So very, very interesting situation that you don’t really plan for, do you? I guess until it happens, which is nice because that’s a lot about what we’re going to talk about today. So I was I was interested in, you know, you have this vision for senior ethnicity and this beautiful platform and website that you’ve built. Um, take us through, well, first, before you describe sort of what it is now and where maybe the vision of it is going. Was there something when you were with Greyson’s That sort of triggered this? Was it. Was it the first time with your mom or was it, uh, so it kind of came in your mind. Was there a clarity about the model, though? But the actual model you have now? When did that sort of become? Yeah, that’s what we should do. Like what was there a time, something that triggered that sort of vision?

Simone Kelly: Yeah. Was early on actually before I franchised, um, my first client at estate sales. Um, there were two daughters that were my age at the time, twins. And they had gone through something very, very tragic with their family and they did not want to go back into the home. So I ended up meeting with one of the husbands of the daughters, and we walked through everything. Um, I did a sale there, and, and, and the family was overwhelmingly happy because it didn’t. It allowed them to avoid a lot of what they would have to go through, which is going through all the family memories going through the house that they were born and raised in, um, dealing with the tragedy head on with going inside the home. And so I thought, well, if we can help family members like that, if people have passed on. And as I started doing Grayson’s, more and more and more, I realized a lot of what was happening is not just somebody passing on, it was somebody going into assisted living, or they wanted to go into active living because the the parents were by themselves and the kids, you know, they come home with their kids and they’re like once a month, they’re like, we’re going to grandma’s. And then, you know, they come in and everybody’s doing the dishes or cleaning the house, and nobody’s really sitting, spending time or that quality time because they’re like, we have to clean the house.

Simone Kelly: And then five hours goes by and they’re like, why? And the family feels great as they’re leaving grandma’s house. But then the grandma or the grandfather is sitting there like, whoa, like that was a lot. And they’re like, oh, thanks for coming by. But it’s almost overwhelming because you’re not having that normal interaction like you would if you had lived with them. Um, and so as we went through Grayson’s, what I noticed with a lot of the customers is they weren’t getting a lot of care or attention that they needed that interaction with other people because people are busy. We have kids going to soccer games and swim practice and this and that. You don’t have time to spend all that time at the home with the senior and the seniors home by themselves. And so you can hire a caregiver. Obviously we have that on senior in age at home. And you have, you know, your companion with you 12 hours a day. Sometimes people have them for 24 hours. It just depends on what you want. But then you still don’t have that full interaction with society because you’re inside and you maybe walk the park or something like that. So we did see a lot of, um, deterioration of the home because they weren’t going upstairs anymore. They were living downstairs. Um, you know, everything got really dusty, dirty. It just seemed like, um, basic deterioration of everything.

Simone Kelly: Um, and so when we went in, we had to clean everything up, and I just saw, like, families were trying. They were trying to get there as much as they could, and they were, you know, and some of them lived thousands of miles away because there’s such a transient going back and forth. And so when we came in, it just kind of felt like almost like a sadness. Right? Like, like something so wonderful happened here for years. And then it just kind of degrades as time goes on and people run out of time and they get busier and they’re working or whatever they’re doing. So yeah, senior ethnicity definitely came into fruition during that time that I was working with, um, our clients over at Grayson’s. And, you know, the franchises went through the same thing. And it was really, um, enlightening to see. And, of course, obviously, my mom and what I went through with her kind of I look at senior ethnicity as almost like a pay it forward for all of us that work with seniors, like we know all this information and we’re able to help people. Are we going to take our time to help them, or are we just going to keep it within ourselves and just let people keep bouncing around out there? And so that’s kind of what I look at. Senior is like a pay it forward of what we’ve learned from our experiences.

Rob Gandley: Yeah. Tell me. Tell me a little bit about the website. Like, just so the audience understands, um, the service sort of the, the experience of of senior ethnicity. I mean, I think you were in your mind trying to solve some key problems, right? And so in your mind, could you explain, you know, sort of the main goals of senior city and the problems it solves for families, and then maybe also for the professionals around the families?

Simone Kelly: Yeah. So senior ethnicity is really out there to help families and and their seniors, their parents actually make better decisions if possible. Right. It is really geared towards, um, parents that own their own home. I mean, most of our wealth now in the economy is based on, you know, the higher age group. You know, you’re 60 on up and a lot of that wealth is built because of their homes. They have a ton of equity in their home and they don’t know what to do with it, right? And oh, the kids want to satisfy the children. You know, the siblings that are going to inherit homes and also the seniors and the care they need or the activity they need while not crushing that home because you could sell that home and, um, let’s say 300,000, but your dad and mom in a, in an active living and all of a sudden, after four years, because it’s expensive, you now have flushed through all that money for mom and dad’s care. You don’t have a home and are now moving in with you, so you basically have just prolonged it because people are living longer, especially when they go into active living. They’re they’re having a time of their life. They don’t want to go anywhere. Right? It’s not like they’re sitting there just waiting, you know. Oh, when’s he going to come? Uh, no, you’re you’re living a lot longer.

Simone Kelly: And so the idea of seeing unicity is to take like, we have six providers, we have, um, you know, lenders, we have realtors, we have senior placement, we have estate sale companies, we have property managers. And of course we have caregivers. If you want to age at home and of those providers, if you think about them, how do we keep a home, right. And we say we don’t want to sell the home that satisfies siblings. It satisfies the seniors. And you’re able to keep that home. How do you do that? Will you use a property manager or property manager is going to come in and they’re going to rent that home out for you. So that money you’re making on rent is actually going to subsidize the care or the active living that they’re going into. So now you have the home and you’re subsidizing the care so you’re not out of pocket. Or if you are, it’s very minimal depending on what you’re going to rent your home for. So that’s another way. Now the realtors are there because they’re there if they want to sell the home, if if it’s a dire thing and they need to sell the home, right, then they will sell the home. They and they work with senior placement. Now senior placement um, is fascinating to me. I knew nothing about it.

Simone Kelly: Have you heard my background? I didn’t even know it existed until three years ago. Um. And it’s unbelievable what a service. I and I really feel like senior placement is the core of senior ethnicity, because that’s where you start off. That’s where seniors and their families are coming to you to say, we don’t know. Mom wants to go to an active living. We don’t know active living places. We call the communities. They don’t call us back or they’re full. We’re racing around town. We want to go ten miles. We didn’t realize 25 miles out is the perfect place for you and all the senior placement people that I’ve come across from the professionals, they are so good at knowing every single place. Is it a big community you want or do you want to? Which they are amazing at? Is finding those homes that there’s only 5 to 10 seniors in and it’s a home in a neighborhood, and they feel comfortable because they don’t want to be in a giant home. And as they figure out their financial situation, because senior policeman is very good at saying, what is your financial situation? They don’t shy away from it. A lot of people and the older generations of 67 and up don’t like to talk about their finances, right? But they’re really professional about what is your financial situation? Do you have equity in your home? Do you have, you know, what type of money can you afford to move so that we can find the best place for you? And then once they know that, then they can either gather with a property manager and work with them as a team.

Simone Kelly: They can gather with a realtor, work with them as a team. Any situation that they put them through with their home. You’re always going to have an estate sale because the home is packed. And so that is part of that provider section that’s really important is having that. So each one of those helps them get through their next stage because it’s really important to understand there’s so many crevice to it. Yes. You you want to go to active living and you’re like, I don’t want to wait for my kids to come over. They can come visit me when I’m, you know, playing cards with my friends at the community, right? But when you do that, you have a house full of things. You have to pay for it, obviously. Um, where do you go? Um. And are you going to sell your home? Are you going to rent your home, or do you want to age in place? And that’s why the caregivers are there. So Senior City is like a team of people that are coming together to help one family at a time.

Rob Gandley: And, you know, you’re checking a lot of boxes there. And I think just from my understanding, um, that is sometimes the problem is that there’s so many considerations and they’re sort of disconnected sometimes, and one doesn’t know the other, and they’re not thinking holistically of the actual use case. I like to throw that word out. That’s a technical sort of. We use that a lot. But but you know, the idea that the scenario is mom or dad is in a scenario where they’ve got to make a change. It’s it’s probably something significant that’s driving the thought process. And Then you start to think about what do we do with the house? Or what do we do with all the extra material things that we don’t really need right now? What do we you know? And all these other questions start to creep in and it’s just yeah, it’s a lot. Right. And you don’t know quite what to do. So from my view, senior ethnicity is really bringing together the team and allowing each to kind of be the quarterback so that they can bring the other partners in as well. So if I’m a senior placement expert, I could be working with the real estate side, with the financial side, with the legal side of things and really help and all that can be through senior ethnicity. Tell me a little bit about the model for the website. Like how how are you going to make this. Well, you got to fund it, right. You got to make you got to sustain it and allow it to grow and flourish. Um, tell me a little bit how you do that. Like you launched it a certain way. Now, I know you have some packages and things to explain the model and who it serves. And if there are services and and how that all works.

Simone Kelly: Yeah. So you have to fund it. So that’s me. The buck stops here. Yeah. Well, it’s it’s not a, um, technology that’s out there right now where you have, uh, websites that focus on senior placement. You have websites, obviously, for lending or property management or all of the different ones, caregivers. They’re all separate. Right? What I’m doing is I’m taking six different providers that work together. And we’re really building like a B2B platform where you’re building teams and your placement people are building teams with real estate agents, with property managers, with estate sale companies. And not just like one estate sale company. You want several in your area, right? Because personalities matter. You you know, as we get older, our personalities, we want to work with people who we get along with or who we can relate to. So it used to be in the old days we would be like, and you and I are old. Unfortunately, you would get like one person and you’re like, I’m loyal. I know it’s reality. It’s like, you know, I’m loyal to this realtor and I’m just going to work with this realtor. Even if that realtor didn’t get along with those clients, you still try to just stuff them in front of those clients because you’re loyal to that one. You can be loyal to many, but where your loyalty lies is with your customer, right? So if you know your customer and your placement, you go in and maybe he’s a little cranky, right? And you’re like, okay, this person has no patience for the cranky one.

Simone Kelly: I’m going to use this particular property manager because they have a lot more patience. That’s not loyalty to, you know, like disloyal to the people you’re working with on your business or business team. It’s actually loyal to your customer so that you can get more referrals and more things. As we know, when we help somebody, that family is going to refer you to other people to help them. Like this was seamless. This was amazing. I mean, the people I use for nurses, for my mom, I’ve referred them to 5 or 6 other people to go work because they were amazing and that’s how we build our referrals. So senior initiative was built as like almost like a virtual, uh, like meeting, right. People were seeing now are going on to the site. They’re emailing each other different providers. Would you like to meet for coffee? Would you like to meet up here in my area? I have a client that wants to work with something like this. Would you like to be part of my team on this? And that’s so important that we keep that open.

Simone Kelly: Because if you’re just doing senior placement and you don’t have a real estate license, how are you to do all those other facets unless you have people within your area and senior initiative? We work with people that are virtually they’re getting proper training through a lot of franchise models, and that’s why it makes perfect sense to me, because obviously, being an owner of a franchise and then starting a franchise, I know franchise models, they can be, um, they’re supported, they get proper training. Um, they’re working around other people, hundreds of other people that are owning the same business and they’re able to get feedback back and forth. They’re going to their conferences and everything else. So synchronicity definitely does a bit of vetting when it comes to who’s on there. And it’s not just franchise models that are on there. Obviously we have independence, but independence to a point that we have to vet them to make sure that they’re still getting the right certification. Are they getting the training? Are they communicating with other people? What are their reviews like? If they have like five reviews that say the same bad thing, you’re thinking, that might not be. So we want to put on the side. So it’s it’s um, it’s how it works. Like so for senior is free for providers to join.

Simone Kelly: There are add ons, like if you wanted to put your phone number and your website on the site, um, you could do that. I think it’s like 11.99 a month or something. It’s very inexpensive. Um, the basic one gives you obviously your picture, your biography, the biography. Um, you can I, you can just put in one thing. We’ve had the biography triggered for keywords per provider. So if you’re seeing your placement and you say, I’m an incredible senior placement, but I’m a senior advocate as well. When you click the I it’s going to know your senior placement. It’s going to bring up all of those keywords and put it in paragraphs that are better understood to the public. Um, so it’s it gives you like a mapping. You pick like five territories, five cities. If you want more cities, then there’s an add on for that. But five should cover a majority of what you’re doing. Um, and really, that’s we didn’t want to burden with a payment plan. Right. Like, we could very easily say it’s $99 a month to be a part of synchronicity. It’s 29. It’s whatever it is. But what happened when we started that model? We started with a 29.99. A lot of people were resistant to pay that 29.99. And what that was doing, it was hurting our seniors and our family members from coming in and finding providers in their area, because people were not willing to pay that provider amount to be a provider.

Simone Kelly: You have to cut that out. Sorry. But anyway, so back to that. Um, so what we did is we basically said, look, we built a microsite. Let’s see if that microsite can cover the cost of synchronicity so that we can make senior free for all providers. That way, making it free for all providers, that is, you guys are the product providers are the product of what I’m selling. It’s like filling up your store with your product, right? If people are resistant on paying a monthly, then there’s no product for the senior or the family members to come in and purchase or be a part of or call because they’re in new Jersey and we don’t have somebody in new Jersey, they’re going to be like, why did I even go to this site? There’s nobody even near me, right? And so the idea is to make sure that there’s product on the shelf for when the seniors come in. So it is free to all providers because we didn’t want to hinder helping seniors because there was a measly 29.99 price tag on that. We want to make sure that we have enough product for everybody in the United States to utilize.

Rob Gandley: Yeah, what amazing thinking. Yeah, because if you think of LinkedIn as a as a business model or as a platform, it’s it’s very different obviously. But but wouldn’t it be great if you could find teams on LinkedIn that actually worked together and they work together to help other people? Um, that that would be cool. It’s not built that way at all. But but it’s that’s how I’m seeing this is you have one side which is the consumer, the families, people like myself. I’m in the age range where I have an older mom, and, um, but I’m sort of the visitor. I’m the person experiencing senior, but the providers are also experiencing it from a different point of view. They get to work together, they get to partner. They get to meet each other, be you know, you just mentioned awareness not being like a few years back. You weren’t aware of senior placement advisors, and there’s probably four franchise brands that specialize in that service. But you’re right, in one of the biggest marketing challenges most of them have, even the biggest ones are awareness. Still, believe it or not. You think, oh yeah, people would know about it. But a lot of people like myself in my age range, they wait until they need to do something and they’re on Google, or they’re hopefully finding synchronicity, right. Like and maybe a lot sooner than that. But I also think it’s pretty amazing that the groups can get to know each other, right? The professionals can work together. That is one of the keys to their businesses, is really having the other people around them.

Rob Gandley: And that’s probably one of the best marketing tactics for their individual businesses, is to meet other professionals and get referrals from each other and work together as a team, and that becomes an extended product for everybody. Everybody has a greater reach of a holistic solution, right? Even if I’m a placement person, but I’ve got the estate planner, I’ve got the real estate folks, I’ve got the funding. I can get that job done. And that’s what we strive for. Uh, like I said, I’m involved with a certain brand that does that, and that’s what we try to, you know, it’s one of the major, um, tactics we use is to partner with other professionals in the area, and this just facilitates that in a technological way. So with that said, let me ask you this. What was the and what is the marketing strategy for you? And from a maybe, maybe break it down into a digital side, like how do you get more consumers right to keep seeing the site? What does that look like for you? And then of course, on the partner side, I think it’s probably been a combination of things, right. Like a little grassroots outreach partnerships, but also same kind of thing. Like you need to get out in front of them and make them aware of senior density. Tell me a little bit about the marketing. And did franchising influence any of your thinking when you when you launch this.

Simone Kelly: Yeah. So the marketing side of it, one of the things that I had to, you know, because as as you grow businesses, as you know, you pivot with where your market’s going to take you. Right? You have a a grand master plan, right? When you start and generally it never ends up where I mean, it’s a general reason. Like I want to help a million seniors in their family. Our first, you know, year into fruition. Right. And that stays. But what changes is how you get there. Right. So when we started it, like I said, we had the payment one that wasn’t getting people in. So then we were able to make enough money on the microsites to make synchronicity free forever. Right. For the basic plan. And you’re like, okay, that’s great. Now we’re there, now we’re moving. We’ve gained over, I think, 400 plus people now. And so what we want to get is like we have, I think, 3200 providers on there now. Um, and the different aspects of it. But what we want to get is those people who are on there to make sure that they put their picture in their biography, in all the things their, their cities in, right, their social media because they have their social media hookups there. And to have that look professional as the consumers come on.

Simone Kelly: Because if you just put in the fake ghost picture, right, that’s already on there and you say, I’m a senior placement person and you pick one city and you don’t put your social media up there, that reflects poorly on everybody else. It reflects poorly on the site. It doesn’t look like you even put the time in. And if you haven’t put the time in to a site that’s so easily put, you know, out there for seniors, then what do you think the seniors and the consumers are going to think when they come? And they’re like, oh, this is weird. Like it just has like this ghost picture and a name. And I got an email over here and they do senior placement. I’m not sure what that is. It just they only do one city. So it really tells them like, hey, where where’s your professionalism? Like you want me to hire you? Take the time to fill out all the things so that I know what I’m hiring. I can read up on you. I can look at your social media and do all the things I need to do. So the marketing part. The first stem of it, what I realized is making sure the providers take the time to put all of those things that they have in place up, so that the seniors and their family members can come and see them and before they launch into a conversation with them.

Simone Kelly: So that’s the first part of the marketing plan. The second part is we want to be, at least before we do a giant like we market now. We stream, um, on like different channels. Uh, there’s like 263 channels that seniors really go on and they stream on, like their iPads or their TVs or whatever. And so we do little commercials on there. Um, we’re doing, um, the banner ads on, like, you know, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, sporting events, things like that. Seniors are going to LM garden, all of those garden housekeeping real estate ones. We do all of that on a very small scale right now, though, because we’re not trying to get consumers in right now. What we’re trying to do is get providers in that product that we talked about earlier, because there is there is a very unique line here because you don’t want to shove out all this marketing and have them come and be like, nobody’s here. And then but you also want providers to come in and join. And they’re like, well, how are you marketing like, and what am I going to get a lead right away? I’m like, listen, this is what we need to do.

Simone Kelly: This is a journey we all have to take together. So we have to basically bring providers in. And I would say my goal is to have within the next couple of months and at least 45 of the states in the United States, at least, um, and within those states, at least 5 to 10 providers of each provider. Given so of all the six provider sections, we have, you know, real estate, senior placement, the provider ones that we have at least 5 to 10, um, of each one within that one state before we start the heavy, heavy marketing, which is, you know, that’s obviously an investment in itself, but it’s waiting to be invested until we get to that point. Because I would not feel good about launching something. Let’s say we were like, right now we’re in 20 states, right? That’s not even half of the states in the United States. That’s not that’s not a good use of money, if you ask me, because one, I’m going to bring people in that aren’t going to be able to use our site, and they’re going to end up on Google with 50 million choices. They’re going to get frustrated, go down this rabbit hole. How do I, you know, Google? How do I help my mom who fell and broke her hip? And then you’re going to have all these sponsored ads first, and you’re going to go down the rabbit hole of Reddit and all these different things, and you’re going to go on and on and on.

Simone Kelly: You’re just going to quit and you’re going to make all these poor decisions. So I want to make sure when we launch with the big marketing that we want to push towards, is we have enough providers in there to do that. And a lot of that is, like you said, grassroots. Um, like what we’ve done is like, we are the national vendor of Keller Williams, right? And we just did their conference. I mean, they’re one of the largest real estate companies out there and I understand team aspect. So that’s why I went to them first and became their national vendor. You know, we’re working with your group and four other groups, right? Um, we’re working with five other property management groups, and these are larger groups. These are people that we’re not going for the 1 to 1 provider. Right? They will find us. Those providers will. But we’re really going for the ones that, like I said earlier, have already been somewhat vetted. They’ve been through a process where they and they’ve done business and they’re surrounded by people that can help them through their business as well.

Rob Gandley: Yeah.

Simone Kelly: And we don’t want I think what we talked about was like, it’s I think Google is an incredible search engine. But I also think that what Google really if you look at Google and you’re building a business, what it is, is taking a segment out of Google that they have, you know, spread out over billions of bytes and taking that segment and making a search Specifically for what you’re looking for. So what synchronicity is, is like a tiny minute site of Google for seniors, right? Where we’re going to be able to assist you and your family through their next phase of life, whether active living or whatever you have on that.

Rob Gandley: Right. You’re stringing the rabbit hole. You’re you’re you’re kind of putting the rat so you don’t have to go to the down the rabbit hole to discover that you needed those seven other professionals. Right? Maybe you start with real estate and you figure, you know, but you kind of string them all together all in one shot. So you you don’t waste as much time. Uh, and and I love your franchise thinking. I know being a former franchisor means that you, um, you understand that that. So your grassroots strategy to go and build up synchronicity by partnering with some of the biggest brands in the world was a smart move. And and you’re right, they are consistently vetted in that sense. And it’s why there is a A problem, in my estimation, in senior care, because without franchises, I don’t think you could put people on the street that are at that level. Right. In other words, to hire that many employees that are that good, that can help people at that level is hard to find them. But you can recruit a franchisee, somebody who wants to be a business owner, someone who has, you know, and that’s why you’ll find a lot of the franchise brands will be your providers, because trying to have a big company do that, right. You go to a big corporate and they just have a lot of advisors. Let’s say you don’t find that many, right? They’re mostly going to have to be franchises because again, finding that level of person and hiring them would be extremely expensive for any big company to try to, to deal with.

Rob Gandley: And that’s why most benefit providers for corporations, if you have a senior care need, oftentimes it’s just by the phone. There is no one to help you like on the street. And senior city is the local on the street Professionals that you can you can depend on, which is a sorely needed, uh, solution. It truly is. So. So I’m glad to hear that. I, you know, I wanted to kind of tie in the franchise. I figured that had some influence on you. Um, let’s talk a little bit about. I didn’t want to I want to be more specific about it in most of my conversations because it is affecting us all. And I think it’s important, um, in every industry, how do we evaluate every business has to evaluate this a little uniquely. Tell me a little bit about you. You mentioned quickly, uh, in passing in a previous question that when you do the Bios, you know, you just put a word in or something, a couple things and boom, it it writes a great bio for you. It makes you look good. Right. Um, tell me more about your thinking around how you deploy AI features for your audience is one thing. You got your professionals and your seniors, uh, your families, but also for you internally, like your internal teams and your developers and anybody else like, how are you seeing I play out? And as a leader, how do you kind of decide what to focus on?

Simone Kelly: Well, I is it’s one of those words like synergy. Remember when synergy was everywhere and I’m like, ah, if I hear that word one more time, I swear. And it was on, like, billboards. It was everywhere. It drove me crazy. Um, and I kind of, um, replaced that word, it seems. And, you know, some people are like, I’m scared to death of it or. Oh, I use it for everything. Um, I should be introduced in, in in small segments, right? Um, like, where we have I obviously you have it with your social media aspect where I everything to a certain platform and it’ll do all these different things it needs to do like LinkedIn. You have to wear a suit to post on there. Well, I will take that one post and it’ll send it to LinkedIn and and it’ll post it professionally with the right verbiage for LinkedIn. But it’ll take that same post and send it to, let’s say, um, Facebook and make it a little bit fun and jazzy and Instagram a little bit more jazzy, or maybe some music, and I can do that for you. But for me, AI is something that you introduce lightly as you go. So when I mentioned, like it’s part of the bio, okay, that’s the most important part. Um, when you, your picture obviously make it something that you didn’t take 30 years ago because of a senior meet you and you don’t look the same. They’re going to shut the door and you’d be like, there’s a criminal at the door because you don’t look like your picture, right? I look through that people and they’re like, no, I’m sorry, I had an appointment with somebody else. This is the picture I had. Um, so. Yeah, you know, but that bio.

Rob Gandley: I’m thinking I’m thinking. I’m thinking LinkedIn is, what, 20 years old now? So people, like, threw stuff out there from 20 years ago and they still haven’t updated. It’s funny. It’s like some people probably have it. It’s been ten, 20 years, right?

Simone Kelly: There’s this like thing going around to where it’s like you can make an AI Barbie doll or something. I’m seeing it all over the place and I’m thinking, don’t use that as your like this or like this. I don’t, I don’t get it. Um, and then a lot of people are using AI for their pictures, so then they I mean yeah, that’s again looking 20 years younger than what you are. Um, I mean, yes, obviously you want to look a little younger and take better care of yourself if you want, if that makes you feel good. But I don’t necessarily know if making a Barbie doll is the right place to be, for that would.

Rob Gandley: Not.

Simone Kelly: Be.

Rob Gandley: That would not be a good use of AI right now. Yeah. Let’s zero in on what what what, uh, what we should be zeroing in on. So. Yeah. You were saying, right.

Simone Kelly: Like, don’t don’t put your, your apple avatar up there. Right. Like, here I am. Like, it’s not going to work. Like what real picture. You know, you gotta do. We’re working with seniors so they are reality is everything to them. And so, um, I think they are you bleed it in there. So the biography is very important. One of the most important things you can have. And so what we’re seeing and what I’ve seen in the real estate market being broker and lending and obviously senior placement and estate sales, all the all the different providers that I offer there, I’ve been in that business. I’ve either owned or started a company in that business. I’m very versed on what what is needed and what what role they play with each other. Right. Which made synchronicity a lot easier for someone like me to build. Whereas if you were to build as, let’s say, a senior placement, you’d be like, why do I need property management? That’s like, I know why you need it, because I’ve been there and I’ve done it right. But when you look at I, you can’t go, oh, my whole site is I. So someone comes in and they call and they go, they go. I don’t know who I need to use. And you use a chatbot and they’re like, um, my mom fell down and it hit.

Simone Kelly: And then the AI gentleman comes back to you. Or the female, do you want a female? You want a male. What’s your name? What’s this? What’s that? And it’s just so impersonal, right. And what we’re dealing with in seniors is we’re very personal. And so taking away that aspect of being able to call in. So we don’t have AI generated call ins if someone doesn’t know what they need, or they just want to call because they don’t like just going to a list of people who can help them, then they can call and they’ll get a person, and that person will have ten separate questions. And those questions are so pointed that by the time you’re usually on the sixth or seventh question, we already know what provider you’re going to start with. Right. And so that part of it I know a lot of people are doing AI with get rid of your receptionist, get rid of your, you know, your assistants. It doesn’t work in this industry in my opinion, because it’s it’s it’s it’s a personal thing. I mean, this is your life. Like this is where you’re going to go in your next phase. This is where your family is going to go visit their mom and dad or grandma and grandpa. So for us, we don’t utilize AI that way. Well, how we’re bleeding it in is through the biography.

Simone Kelly: Because if you go and market and you say, I’m the greatest senior placement person in the world. Okay, so the consumer consumers looking at that going, great, what can you do for me? Right. So you really want to start off your life, right? It’s all about them, right? But you you want to start off talking about the consumer. I have been a senior advocate working with seniors for 20 years. I absolutely love working with seniors. For me, I would put the crankier the better. Bring it on. I love cranky people. I find them quite amusing. Um, and then moving on to where my accolades are at the bottom. What everybody got really trapped on is competition, right? Um, how can I be better than Rob? Well, Rob says he’s been in the business 35 years. I’ve been in the business 35 years in two months. So I’m going to put. I’ve been in the business 35 years in two months, right? You know, it’s just insanity what I’ve seen on these biographies. So the I generation of that is how do you put together a biography using keywords? Have it make sense? Um, acknowledging the seniors. Right. What can you do for the seniors and not what you have done at the first three sentences. Right. And so that’s what the AI does. It’s helping them become more in tune with what the senior or their family members are looking for, rather than talking about you.

Simone Kelly: It’s not it should not be your resume on LinkedIn. It should be how can you help them? And I don’t care if you’ve been in the business 50 years, does that mean you’re good at it? In my mind, I think you’ve been doing the same thing for 50 years and you still haven’t figured it out. Like that drives me crazy. Like, why haven’t you moved forward? Right. So for and and I think probably like some people maybe, I don’t know, I’m a little off, but maybe I do. But I would rather see AI implemented in little increments. So once you do that with the biography, then you go on to the social media, which we have a platform where you can go to the AI for that. And then when you get comfortable with the AI or social media, then you move it over to, let’s say, the mapping and the mapping becomes AI generated. But if you were to have and then eventually you’re going to have a point where someone’s going to just connect you with the right people, right? And that’s all. I mean, that’s not even I that’s already being done outside of AI. It’s just going to be quicker. It’s going to be more efficient.

Rob Gandley: It it it’s mostly behind the scenes. It will be a better experience for the visitors. But a lot of AI behind the scenes, right. Not really taking anything away from the quality of the interactions. Right. On any side with the the providers, with the families, with everybody, the whole community that you touch is and I’m with you on that. I don’t I think a lot of, a lot of marketing, maybe in the last 2 to 3 years has been a little more like this gold rush mentality of, oh, you know, AI’s going to take over and we can just come in and and create all this revenue or something. And it’s really not what it’s about. And not a very good message either. Um, it’s really about people becoming better. And if you become better, that should mean you have more time. If you have more time, you can invest in relationships, and I believe every business that’s a relationship business will just be able to do that better in the future. Not not getting rid of people. It’s getting more from people and people enjoying what they’re doing better.

Rob Gandley: Uh, yes. It might mean some companies don’t grow like they may have grown, but I don’t think they need to get rid of anyone. They just need to make everyone better. I should serve us, right? That’s what it should be. And I think hopefully it stays there. But thank you for being that kind of leader because that’s. Yeah, you think about what’s going to actually help your, your audience, not, uh, not what the shiny object is, but I before we, we wrap up today, um, I wanted to make sure you shared the website. And also if you had just, I don’t know, one piece of advice that you just feel like keeps resonating for a family, right? You can make it for a partner if you want, or a provider if you feel like that’s coming to mind. But what would it be? So share your website. And what would that one piece of advice or family member or for a provider, be that you would leave with them to help their journey go a little smoother?

Simone Kelly: Well, the website is senior nicety. It’s s e n I o r n I c I t y. Um. It derived from the, um, word of synchronicity. Um, and it actually was. I was in a car and on my car, it had a thing that said, um, the police was on, I think it was king of Pain, and it had the album synchronicity, and I love that word. And then I’m like, oh, a senior, because the plan was already there was the name I needed. And so that’s where Senior Nicety came from. Um, one piece of advice that was given to me, and I can give to everybody that they’ve already probably heard when you go through something that is life changing, whether you’re going to go to living or your parents, um, you know, a hip’s broken or or Alzheimer’s. God forbid you know some other ailment. Make sure not to make decisions financially without actually connecting to somebody on synchronicity, because that was what my first mistake was, was I wanted to. I was almost embarrassed, like I was embarrassed to call people and say, I don’t know what to do, right? Don’t be embarrassed to call somebody and do it. And don’t make a fast decision because it could affect your life like it did mine.

Simone Kelly: It took 5 to 10 years financially to get back where I needed, and that was all because I didn’t have senior ness. I didn’t have this platform. And really, so when you’re working with your mom, your dad, or it is your it is you a senior looking at don’t make a financial decision because you don’t want to, because you don’t want people to think that you’re all knowing. Right? Because we all think we’re all we are not all knowing. We’re I mean, look at these six providers, six provider types. It takes six provider types to get you where you want to be without devastating your entire life and your family’s lives. For providers, one thing I can say is if it doesn’t fit right, if it doesn’t make sense to sell the home. Okay, we’ll refer that to your network, your B2B, of of property management. Because when you do that, then you get a better referral base from that person. Wow, I went I went to them, I was going to sell my home. And they said, no, you know what? This doesn’t seem like the right thing to sell your home. You’re going to be out of money in four years.

Simone Kelly: Let me get you over to my one of my property managers, and they can take care of you. And then you do take care of them. That’s what that family member who did that, they’re going to refer you. So don’t try to fit them in a pigeonhole. Don’t be like, oh, well, you know, I can send you over to atria. Doesn’t have half the stuff you need or want. It’s a little bigger than what you want, but I have a really good relationship with them, so I want to send them to, you know, me, send them to another place that’s smaller what they want. Take your time. Um, it doesn’t have to fit, I guess every lead doesn’t have to fit into your lead. It can fit into somebody else’s, but you will then in return, that lead back. I do believe that things come back to us as we give out so good things, right? Don’t give bad things, but when you do something good, it will come back to you. It may not come back when it shouldn’t come back from that same person, but it will come back in another way. And so maybe just taking our time and is probably the best advice.

Rob Gandley: Yeah, well that was some really good advice. And I feel like what you had said about the provider just doing the right thing. I think doing the right thing pays massive dividends. If you just trust in that. Like don’t force deals, you’ll be you’ll be you’ll have too many deals to do if you just do the right thing by people. And I really believe that. And exactly. People will remember you, probably the one that you gave away. They’ll remember you more than all the other deals combined. Right? But it’s important. And you have that ability, especially with a website Like in a service like synchronicity. So Simone, thank you for being on the show. Thank you for sharing your insights, uh, with everybody. And I think at this point in time, this is a needed message. I mean, I keep saying that it’s I’ve been in the senior business, senior industry a while, um, in terms of the marketing side. But, you know, it seems like the awareness still is going to be a thing. And, uh, hey, if we can and I’d encourage the audience, please share this, uh, share with people that you know that you think it might resonate with. Um, ultimately, it’s a message that needs to be heard. You know what? It hits the leaders in our country. Uh, most leaders are in that age range where they have older parents. So we really need to get the word out how to do this right. So anyway, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time today. Bye for now.

Simone Kelly: Thank you for your time, Rob.