In retrospect, I wish that I attended NIC (http://www.nic.org/events/) two weeks ago
in Chicago. Unfortunately, a personal scheduling conflict and an amazing
recruiting workload made it very difficult for me to get there for the event
and more importantly prepare so that I’d be productive while in town.
However, I do feel like I virtually attended the
event. You see, in my world as a headhunter, ahem – executive recruiter,
I am on the phone each and every day. In today’s work environment of
email and social media – we now have two other communication modes working
simultaneously and around the clock. Between the three channels, I am
directly exposed to at least one hundred, if not more, opinions, trends,
comments and “other” daily. Lately, more days than not, the conversation
in our office has been on seniors housing…and the conversation has been driven
by you, the masses of real estate professionals that we connect with daily,
both “in” seniors housing and those wanting to get in or are about to be.
The principal reason for this exposure-level has been the
sheer amount of executive recruiting activity we are conducting in the
space. During the past 12 months, we have conducted no fewer than four
lead development officer searches for emerging seniors platforms. We are
presently in discussion to launch a fifth. And the uncanny thing (in this
relatively plug & play investment environment) – all five have their own
“twist” that made each one unique and different. One was focused on
delivering a specialty residential product to a very tiny sliver of underserved
demographic, the other was exclusively limited to a particular geographic
market and requisite demographic, whereas another spun-off a
commercial/MOB/health system infrastructure and yet another was leveraging the
national infrastructure of an industry residential giant.
When I am talking to incumbent industry players, the
talk-track is much the same as was echoed in the halls during NIC (or so I’m
told); demographics, capital, partnering, consciousness toward regulatory
matters. However, the excitement is really from who is on the outside
looking in. There is so much investment capital that not yet
participating in the space. Add to that, eager, established and confident
real estate companies that believe they can compete with the seniors housing
icons or even find untapped market share relative to geographic, product
differentiation or sheer scale that was previously unattainable.
It’s an exciting time to be certain. I have cleared my
calendar and I look forward to attending the ASHA Conference (https://www.seniorshousing.org/)
this coming January in Southern California.
Until then, Brian
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