“When launching a new
enterprise, ensure you’re
‘passionate about what
you want to do,’ because
you may have to live
leanly for a while.”
“You have to have
bravery—a belief you
can do anything you
set out to do—and
that has to come
from within you.”
“If you’re going to sit in
my seat, you’re going
to have to know how to
attract business.”
—Handelson
“Senior living seems
uniquely suited for
women to succeed since
the prime target
customer is an 85-year-
old widowed woman.”
“I approached every
change as a chance to
grow a greater skill set
and grasped the
opportunities that
came my way.”
—Temple
—Bacon
—Sweeney
—Farrow
A place for mom, the nation’s largest elder
care referral service. “I was so impressed
not just by the risks they took, but also
their confidence,” she says, referring to
the other women interviewed.
Temple started as a speech patholo-gist, but, wanting to run her own business, she transitioned into sales and
marketing in senior housing and quickly
recognized an unserved niche—helping
seniors and their families find the best
elder care appropriate for their needs and
personalities. In 2000, a rising recession
made raising startup capital difficult, and
it was challenging to interest investors in
an Internet-based business related to senior living. Nevertheless, certain she had
a viable solution, Temple quit her job, invested savings, acquired a second mortgage, and raised money from family and
friends. Today, she’s president and CEO
of a thriving firm that ultimately received
$5 million from an investment group that
shared her vision.
When launching a new enterprise, ensure you’re “passionate about what you
want to do,” because you may have to live
leanly for a while, Temple advises. Also
pick partners carefully, she says. “I don’t
think any one of my founding partners
and myself could have done it on our
own, but together, we built a great company.” Her two partners complement her
senior living sales and marketing experience by being experts in information and
Internet technology.
Even now, Temple will decline po-
tentially lucrative opportunities out of
concern of expanding too quickly and
spreading resources too thin. For exam-
ple, some have suggested the company
build a clinical software line to match its
successful marketing software, You’ve
Got Leads. “Could I do it?” poses Temple.
“Yes. I was flattered, but we said no be-
cause we felt it would put too much of the
bandwidth of the executive team on this
one project while taking our eyes off the
core mission.”
blazing trails
brenda bacon was attracted to assisted
living because it offered the chance to
improve the lives of others and to be an
entrepreneur. With an MBA in health-
care management, she first worked at
a large hospital and then, after her first
child was born, as a consultant advising
hospitals on how to increase revenues.
Realizing the economic impact of the
knowledge she had acquired, she and sev-
eral partners opened two nursing homes
in the mid-1980s. Now she operates 19
mostly-assisted living communities, rep-
resenting several hundred million dollars
in investment, as president and CEO of
Mt. Laurel, New Jersey-based brandywine
senior Living.
Four rulEs
Stephanie Handelson of benchmark Assisted Living on successful leadership...
1. marry wisely. “The marriage for me is your team,” Handelson says. “Surround
yourself with really good people or you’ll end up in divorce.”
2. quality is not a luxury; it’s our minimum standard. “If quality is your baseline, then
you can wow them with experiences,” she adds.
3. invest in business intelligence. Don’t skimp on spending what you need to see the
big picture of everything going on in your operations. The goal is to be able to have enough
information to be able to move nimbly and strategically before a slight drop in occupancy,
for example, becomes a crisis.
4. maximize your profits. The biggest challenge today is how to maximize revenue,
control costs, and drive a margin in a tough economy. You need to be creative and be
prepared to use a lot of levers, Handelson says.
