Speed to Human: Preparing Senior Living for the Next Growth Wave

AI can support the work. But in senior living, it cannot replace the human moments that determine trust, culture and occupancy. 

Melissa Brown continues her conversation with Jerry Vinci, founder of CCR Growth, co-founder of Nordon and host of From Leads to Leases. They examine why senior living teams should prioritize “speed to human” over speed to lead—and where AI can create capacity without removing the personal connection families need during a crisis.

The conversation also explores how leadership, culture and hospitality shape a community’s reputation long before problems appear in the financials. Looking ahead, Melissa and Jerry discuss the widening senior housing supply gap, the underserved middle market, adaptive reuse and why operators cannot simply wait for the silver tsunami to fill their buildings.

In this episode:

• Where AI can help—and where the human connection remains essential
• How leadership and individual team members shape culture and brand
• Why hospitality across the entire community affects sales and retention
• The growing shortage of senior housing
• Middle-market and adaptive-reuse opportunities
• What operators should be doing now to prepare for the next growth wave

Learn more about Gravity Consulting: https://gravityconsulting.com

Transcript

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MELISSA BROWN
As we continue this incredible conversation with Jerry from the From Leads to Leases podcast, thinking and talking strategically about decisions you can make today that are going to improve your success over the next few years. Structure and options. You know, AI is a super hot topic right now. I think in some ways it's super hot, and it's also really tired because a lot of us have tried AI platforms, you know, various tech built around systems we're already running. It's supposed to revolutionize our lives and make things so much better.
And I usually find that it falls far short of that. You know, I heard of somebody that had an AI platform that will do the initial phone calls with patients or potential family members or residents and then do the follow-up calls. And that's all being tracked by AI. And the human doesn't even interact with the person until 3 or 4 times in. And their conversion rate was very, very high. But I'm interested in your perspective on that. As an operator yourself, how do you approach that? Do you think it's a good idea, a bad idea, or is it just not time yet?

JERRY VINCI
I don't think there'll ever be a time in this industry. Honestly, I think AI can always support human efforts, but it's never going to replace the human efforts that matter. So if we just think about intake in senior living, it's different from, I would say, any other industry because families—they're not shopping, right? They're not buying something sitting on a shelf or a car or a house or anything like that. They're in crisis. Like there's been a fall, maybe a hospital discharge, a dementia diagnosis, like there was in my family. And now it's no longer a sale. It's like, you know, it's kind of like a life-or-death situation.
So they're making a decision in, like, 72 hours that they should have made 18 months ago. And not only that, but they're carrying, you know, grief. And like you were saying, guilt. And, you know, there's even, like, family conflict. All of that can come onto the first phone call. So, you know, that first human moment, it's not really a nice-to-have. It's kind of like it is this business. That's what senior living represents. And so that's why, like, having these systems in place matters because, you know, you hear all the time, for example, about speed to lead, right? That's like a big thing. Now I stopped saying speed to lead.
I started saying speed to human because we're not trying to make them more robotic. We're trying to make sure a real human voice reaches that family before they've already booked a tour somewhere else out of panic. Right. So I think, you know, you can use AI to do certain things. Obviously, there's heavy lifting. You know, you can automate admin work. You know, that way the sales counselor isn't doing data entry when they should be talking with the family member. You know, if a family member calls and says, I need 45 minutes of your time, they have the time because this system is in place to handle that.
You know, the back end data stuff that has to happen. So these systems can exist to kind of like buy back the human moments and not erase them. But, like, let AI draft and summarize data and email communications, but anything like high-stakes family conversations, they've got to be human. I don't ever see that going away. I don't ever see us getting to the point where the families feel comfortable not talking with a person as well, or not meeting with the person and just letting AI drive the bus on that. I think that's just a recipe for disaster.

MELISSA BROWN
Yeah, I can't imagine that ever being successful either. I don't think you can remove a human from the process. AI has come so far in just the last couple of years. It'll be interesting to see if they can really anthropomorphize the AI phone scenario, so that you can't tell that it's not a human. You know, I've heard talk of it. I've seen some examples.
It's interesting to see what might happen over time, but I agree with you that ultimately there has to be a human connection for the critical moments that helps them manage that and is just there for the resident—future resident—and family member to answer those questions and interact in a way that only a human can to another human.

JERRY VINCI
Yeah. And I just think there are things contextually that it's really difficult for AI to pick up on, you know, and I mean human to human, especially if you're in person, like there's body language and things like that. Our sales teams are so well versed and trained on that I can't imagine there'd be an AI version that could accomplish the same thing. But the other thing to think about, too, with these human touchpoints is that those are actually the signals that tell you that the building is in trouble. So all of them are human signals, the reviews, the retention that the community has.
If there's friction on the team, all human signals, and they're all human signals before they're financial ones, but they do show up financially later. So if, for example, like reputation slips because care slips or retention drops because the experience drops, something like that, those signals are going to show up in the financials later. So paying attention and making sure those moments are still human is going to be really important for the operation, I think.

MELISSA BROWN
Yeah, if you're in a community and you see the culture's moving in the wrong direction, what are some key things that you think of implementing, changing, or adjusting? Where is the issue usually if the culture and the care are going in the wrong direction?

JERRY VINCI
I mean, top-down, right? I would always look at culture. Culture always starts at the top. So whether they're part of a larger portfolio and maybe that's being disseminated down from like a corporate team or if it's handled at the community level, I would always, you know, speak with leadership first to learn about their philosophy and how they manage their team and then make adjustments from there.
You know, one caretaker who's not fulfilling the role the way that they should be can definitely, like, cause a lot of damage, but not so much as, like, someone at the top who's ignoring it or not paying attention or doesn't even know what's going on, which is even worse. Yeah. At CCR Growth, our demand-generation agency, we're looking at that whole entire spectrum from the moment that family first searches until the time they move in. There's a lot of systems in place there. Right? There's the lead generation part of it. How are we acquiring these leads and are they quality and how good of quality are they?
Then there's the sales process. You know, is that optimized? How quickly is that sales team reaching out and how many touchpoints are they having with each of those prospects and how are they weighing what a good lead is versus a quote-unquote not-good lead? I hate to even say that because I know that there's a family on the other end of that. Right? But we can't help everybody, so we have to have a system in place to be able to decide, you know, who's going to move forward, who we're going to have a deeper discussion with, and who's just not going to be a good fit.
So having systems in place for that and then operationally like what happens after the tours, you know, what kind of follow-ups do we have? What happens after they sign their deposit? What happens after they move in? Like, what does that look like? So we're kind of like auditing that entire process and just making sure that from start to finish that it is seamless, that, you know, marketing isn't one department and sales a different department. They are one and the same. And we just call it the acquisitions team. And that acquisitions team has got to be on the same page. Otherwise it just creates so much chaos.

MELISSA BROWN
Yeah. I've been amazed all the years working with various teams, starting with therapy departments of 8 to 10 people and now running entire communities, helping other clients manage their communities—how just one person who maybe isn't even at the top, maybe they're just one of the department heads—can change the entire dynamic and culture of a whole building. And so I think as leaders, we have to be really intentional about identifying those people and then deciding, is there an opportunity for me to counsel and influence this person and see the right change, or is it time for us to part ways?
I think it's too easy to say, well, they're a good worker. They mean well, they don't know how they come across, but it's affecting your entire culture. And it goes out like spider veins in every direction, up and down from where that person is. So, you know, I have found consistently that when culture is off, there's usually just 1 or 2 people that are really at the root of why the culture is off. And if you move those people on and get the right people in to replace them who have the right vision, you can change a community in 3 to 6 months. You can turn a community around. It's kind of unbelievable how much of an influence just 1 or 2 people can have. Have you found that too?

JERRY VINCI
Yeah. I was thinking too, while you were talking that like the building isn't the brand. The people—the staff in the building—make the brand, especially in senior living, more so than anywhere else. And yeah, I mean, you know, you think about like a maintenance worker, for example, is still someone who interacts with residents on a regular basis, with families on a regular basis. And if they don't, they should, you know, like everyone in the building should have, you know, a great attitude, be friendly, be warm, be able to answer questions and be helpful. Like that's something else too.
I've seen a lot of communities where 1 or 2 people are the only ones who can give a tour, and then the really successful communities, you see that, like, you know, the events coordinator, the, you know, head of operations, the executive director, the sales director, like, there's multiple people who are more than confident to be able to handle that and create a really good experience. And I think that's important because when this person and this family gets into the community, they're not just dealing with one person. They're dealing with so many different people that like, hey, I already met ten staff members and they were all great.
They were all so helpful and educational and pointed me in the right direction. And like, that's what you want to hear. And like if that's happening at the community, it's really shocking to see a community like that not perform well.

MELISSA BROWN
I agree with you. I was recently helping a friend of mine look for placement and she had Alzheimer's and was actually at a younger age, and we were trying to figure out where the right place was for her. So I was with her and some of her good friends, and we were touring different locations. The place we ended up picking for her—you know—it wasn't the nicest or newest, but everybody we interacted with was nice to talk to. The sales lead was unavailable. She had another tour going on when we got there.
So the director of nursing came and gave us a tour, you know, and she was very confident; anyone could answer questions. As we walked around, everybody knew that this was a new person walking around and stopped to say hello to us. So that hospitality angle really cannot be overstated. It's essential for success in senior living.

JERRY VINCI
Yeah, absolutely. So as you look at the silver tsunami coming, what do you think are the main things that operators are just completely unprepared for?

MELISSA BROWN
Where's their blind spot?

JERRY VINCI
I mean, all I can think about is the lack of supply that we have right now. I mean, that's the concern that I have, honestly, just thinking about it. Because even from an investment side, like getting people interested in this space, like senior housing has always kind of been like this asset that's like sitting on the side of real estate. It's not really been something that's at the forefront of people's minds when it comes to investing, and I know it's a complex asset, so I think that's part of the challenge. But we're at like 20 to 25% of the housing supply that we actually need year over year moving forward.
So I'm not exactly sure how we plan to fill that gap. And, you know, not that that's the operator's job to figure that out. But again, I think there's this mindset of like, we've got this wave of people coming. We just have to sit back and wait. And that's really just not going to be that helpful. Yeah. I mean, I don't know from an operator perspective, I mean, shoring up all of the areas that potentially could be a differentiator for you versus your competitors.
I think like looking at like how you interact with families doing tours, how do you interact as a team internally, you know, do you have infighting in different departments or is everybody on the same page? What other like technologies or other things can we adopt into our community that maybe will help differentiate us against our competitors as well? You know, you see like there's a couple of communities where just a small piece of tech is the difference, right?
Just one thing that they have like, oh, we have a Roomba in every room, or we have Alexa in our apartment, or we give everybody a tablet or, you know, there's all these little cool things that can be done. And again, like you're saying about the skylight, like it doesn't have to be a super-costly expenditure, but it's a value-add. Right. Just knowing that, like, every room has a smart TV or it's tapped into, you know, some software that allows residents to interact and speak with their TV rather than having to work a remote, like there's all sorts of cool things that could potentially be there.
So, like looking at that stuff, what are some ways that we can diversify and differentiate and not just sit on our hands and just assume that, like, what is working now is going to keep working, because I don't necessarily think that it is. I think we have to continue to innovate.

MELISSA BROWN
Absolutely. And I think, really, we can't build too much new senior living. I think there's a whole lot of people buying existing senior living, and there's nothing wrong with that, of course, but I think we need to be creating more. I mean, it's already happening with nursing homes, and Medicare is doing it on purpose because it's too expensive. We've got nursing home deserts all over the country now, and I think it's a real shame.
And what that really ends up doing is you either are forcing the senior to leave their community to live out their days, which I think is not what we want to do as a society, or it's going to end up being whoever has the most money gets into senior living and too bad for everybody else. So something we're really passionate about at Gravity is the middle-market strategy—really trying to reach the middle market with reasonable costs, but still having all these high-end amenities and experiences we're talking about, because if you run it the right way, there are margins there.
And I think one of the interesting things that's come as we've been exploring various options is reuse. So whether you're buying a historical building and getting all those federal and state tax grants to help you convert this historical building into a senior living opportunity, or you're taking a tired old office building, which, you know, we all know so many of us are working remotely now. Office buildings have so much less value than they once did.
That is a great use case for where you could install senior living into it, especially in an urban area where people expect that type of an experience and really, you know, get the real estate at a good cost because, you know, office spaces don't have the value they once did. And your construction costs, if it's the right office space, can be significantly less because so many of the things you already need, like a lot of big office buildings, have a huge cafeteria and a kitchen that used to serve all the employees who worked there.
It's a perfect scenario where just some minor aesthetic changes, and you've got a dining room and kitchen that you need for senior living. So I think investors are starting to take it more seriously. We're finding people being more interested in it. Even, you know, friends and family members are saying, hey, I saw something on the news the other day about how senior living is where it's at, and I'm like, it's the truth. It's coming.
So I think the smartest people are building as much as they can to reach the middle market today, and I think they're going to be the ones with the greatest opportunity as we look towards the silver tsunami really getting here.

JERRY VINCI
Yeah. I saw a data point that said something like less than 25% of older adults can afford senior housing, right? Even if they were to sell off assets, like, that's a scary statistic. And that to me speaks to that gap in the middle market that, you know, most of the investment committees that I speak with or developers that I speak with, I mean, they're all looking at building these large high-end facilities because they know, you know, they'll be able to sell it for more. And the price per resident is going to be higher. So like there's obviously a larger margin there.
But there's just such a huge, huge number of people who are just not going to be able to afford it. And, you know, it's no wonder why, like less than 10% of, you know, the population who could move into senior living will ever move into senior living because number one, they can't afford it. Or number two, there's just not a good fit option for them. The interesting thing, too, is some data points about the number of units that are actually needed, like I was reading, it said something like between now and 2030, we need 56,000 units to be developed every single year to be able to like meet the demand.
But then after 2030, because again, we're at the beginning stages of the silver tsunami, like the baby boomers, the oldest baby boomers just turned 80. So we've got the next 15 years essentially that we're going to have to be looking at this. But between 2030 and 2040, we needed on average about 100,000 units every single year to be built. And in 2025, we had, like, 19,600 units under construction. And that didn't even mean they started it in 2025; it just meant that those were the ones that were in development. So like, we're so far behind the numbers that we actually need.
And like obviously building a senior living community doesn't happen overnight. It takes years. So if a project starts today, it's not going to be ready to move in until 2028 or 29, you know? So like we've got some serious ground to cover. Like you're saying, rehabbing and repurposing these buildings I think is going to be a great way to go. But there was also a data point that said something like in the major housing markets, like more than half of them had zero active projects or active construction in senior housing. So I just couldn't believe that's the case.
And, you know, it just seems like there's such an opportunity out there and such a need that we're all going to jump on at some point and get involved.

MELISSA BROWN
Even if they overstated the need by twice as much as what's really needed, because I do think this current generation and their children are as anti-institutional as any generation has ever been. Right. So they're going to try to keep their parents out of senior living if they can. And I think people want to stay out of senior living for themselves, too. Even if it's only half as much as what's stated. We're still so far behind. So I agree with you. I think the smartest people are looking for cost-effective ways to get projects to market as soon as possible, because the real value is coming.
I think 5 to 10 years from now, the properties you create today are going to have exponential value because of the realities of the silver tsunami.

JERRY VINCI
Yeah. And can you change the narrative? That's the other question to everybody. We're still fighting the story of like, I'm not moving into that nursing home. You know, like there's still a lot of people who still think that's what senior living is like. And so we're still fighting that narrative. So can we find a way to change that? I don't like the word convince, but can we show more people that that's not what it's like and that this could be a viable option for more people to increase that percentage beyond 10%? Because maybe, maybe that's the case.
If more people were willing to move to senior housing, I think there'd be more likelihood that capital would be more willing to put money into it to build more units. So it's kind of like the catch-22 right now.

MELISSA BROWN
Yeah, yeah. Anyone who can get the funding should move forward with projects today because, exactly, the value, again, I think is just going to keep going up. Well, thank you so much for being here today, Jerry. I know you do the From Leads to Leases podcast, but anyone who's listening, how can they find you if they want to continue the conversation?

JERRY VINCI
Yeah. No, thanks for having me. This is a great conversation. If anybody wants to connect with me directly on LinkedIn, for sure, just look up Jerry Vinci. You can find me. If you're interested in learning more about what we do on the capital-facing side—the investment side of senior housing—the company is called Nordon and you can find it at NordonAdvisory.com. You can learn about the diagnostics that we help investment committees put together. And then on the marketing side, the demand-generation side, you can go to CCRGrowth.com

MELISSA BROWN
Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing all that. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the podcast today. Don't forget to subscribe. And remember, it's not just what you know, but how you apply it that makes all the difference. See you next time. Senior Living Executive Strategy is brought to you by Gravity Consulting, an outcomes-focused consulting firm for senior living, skilled nursing, and home health organizations. If something in today's conversation connects to a challenge you're facing, or if your organization has an operational, clinical, reimbursement, or growth issue that needs to be solved, visit GravityConsulting.com to learn how Gravity can help.