I’ve worked in senior living for over 13 years, and what I love the most about this industry is the sense of community that senior living offers. Walk into any senior living community across the U.S. and you’ll discover a unique culture with a unique assortment of people and a strong sense of community.
It was this sense of community that led Craft & Communicate’s co-founder Rich Malloy to land in the offices at Craftwork Coffee, a coffee shop and co-working community in West Fort Worth. It was here that we slowly built our team, first with one office, then two, then quickly, what seemed like overnight, six offices for our full-time group.
Finding Our Sense of Community
We chose Craftwork for the community. It is also the main reason C&C chose to stick with senior living, and only senior living, as our client base. It’s essential to be around people.
As much as I love our ‘Work from Home Wednesdays’, the days where I’m in the office I find myself much happier, more willing to say yes, and more willing to get out of my comfort zone.
Senior living marketing and creative leadership are what I have done for most of my post-college years. It’s my passion to come up with creative ways to get people to hear about all the great things happening in senior living. This is why our first full-time hire wasn’t a graphic designer or a web designer or a marketing expert. It was a public relations expert.
Give Thanks in Senior Living: Being the Industry’s Voice
Getting the word out about senior living takes a truly unique group of people. You can’t show that in a digital campaign filled with stock photography, and you certainly can’t show that with holiday schemes and end-of-year pricing slashes.
You can show that through outstanding public relations, as well as an outstanding support team of designers, marketers, and inside- and outside-the-box thinkers.
Community is essential in long-term health, in life expectancy, in emotional resiliency and in developing empathy, too. Staying at home alone all the time does nothing but create stress, fears, insecurities, depression, and so much more. As a senior, life gets harder and harder, and living at home alone gets scarier and lonelier. That’s why communities thrive.
And that’s why we choose to office out of Craftwork. There are much cheaper options throughout Fort Worth, and there are many more office-friendly options. But there’s nothing else with this sense of community, 7 days a week, most hours of the day. And that’s what keeps us staying here. It’s what keeps us thriving.
During this month of thanks, I’m grateful for the community we’re apart of and the communities we support. I’m grateful for those on our team who have chosen to share their lives supporting seniors and I’m grateful for all the help, assistance, and love our clients’ communities provide for seniors all across America.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Jen
