NIC Chats Podcast with Fee Stubblefield

Lisa McCracken:

Welcome everyone, to the NIC Chats podcast series. I'm Lisa McCracken, the Head of Research and Analytics with NIC. Glad you are joining us today. But more importantly, I'm very excited about our guest. We have Fee Stubblefield, who is the founder and CEO of The Springs Living and also an author. So, super excited to have you here as, not just the founder and CEO of The Springs, which we're definitely going to get into, but to have you reflect on your recent book, which is "A Culture of Promise". I've known a number of people over the years who maybe aspire to be an author, they talk about it, but can you just comment as to really what was the genesis of writing this book, "A Culture of Promise"? And, what took you from concept to actually doing it in addition to your day job? That's a lot of work.

Fee Stubblefield:

Well, that's a great question. It's been going for a while, and it wasn't my idea originally. I, you know, author doesn't necessarily resonate to me. I'm definitely a storyteller. So it's kind of putting stories on paper because this really is a book that puts story to concepts and uses the metaphors of this really unique story about a place that I grew up, to demonstrate what I believe in and what Springs Living has. The principles of the Springs Living has operated on for almost 30 years. But I think the way to describe how why this happened and how I got started is I'm not sure that I should probably be the CEO of a company longer than I have a mortgage on my house.

So 28 years at some point, right. Who knows when I won't be the CEO? And so how does an organization evolve and stay? I mean, and you can you can and it culture promise really goes into kind of those core things and points of view that we've used. And but it was written for our company. It wasn't really written to be on Forbes. It wasn't written to achieve. This week we just got the email from Forbes. It's achieved multiple, number one, new releases, number one bestsellers. It's actually broken out of the long term care and senior housing care categories, which it achieved number one and into the general category of bestseller in money and business organizational change work behavior. And so we're really excited to see it's kind of weird, you know, looking on those lessons from of the great books that are there.

So I think it's having an impact. you know, the reviews that are popping up are interesting for me to see because we have not asked for any reviews. There's no review marketing. There's none of that. I want to know what people think. I need it to be like this story, authentic and so, I wrote it for our company, and it just happened to be this idea of, wait a minute, if we could sell a few, could this be an ongoing source to raise money for workplace, stability, which is our springs ahead?

The initiative, which really focuses on work done around brain health and the 11 things that people need, to live a healthy life, you and me, but also our workforce that not everybody gets the opportunity and the privilege to develop all those 11 things that we need in our life. And so really, it really that was the second reason.

The first reason, was built to allow our company to evolve. And other than that, it just came to a point. Covid happened, interrupted the whole thing. I tried to hire a ghostwriter because I don't consider myself an author, and I didn't want to write the book. And before Covid and actually, that went really poorly. And I just knew if it was going to happen, I was going to have to do it.

And then about a year and a half ago, it just it had it just had to happen. It just I couldn't not I don't know why you describe it any other way than I couldn't not do it. It just like happened.

Lisa McCracken:

I think it's as somebody who's read it, I think you do a really great job, of connecting your past, and it's really fascinating to read about how your upbringing has very much shaped you and positioned you for the work that you've done, quite frankly.

And, you referenced in the book a few times that, you know, you found a bit of your purpose and your calling in this industry, and most people don't have that opportunity or really that awareness, I think, in life. And I appreciate just how you weave that in, to the story of your company in the book. I think it's a very personal touch.

So, I'm not an expert on ghostwriting, but I can see where it really probably needed to come from. You and you did a great job with that. Really.

Fee Stubblefield:

Thank you.

Lisa McCracken:

So, I do want to touch on a couple things. So obviously that and even in your intro here, you touched on a couple of things that I want to get into as it relates to culture.

But, we talk a lot about aligning with just some of the basic things that our customers really want and they need. And I know you talk about your grandmother and all of that, and so forth. So how would you grade us as a sector in that? Do you think that we have had it and we've lost it? We've failed at it or, you know, it's changed because there's a lot of talk about the customer changing, too. Does the baby boomer want what previous generations, the silent generation, the greatest generation want? And do we need to adapt? Or is that core need and desire of what they want the same. So there's about five questions in there Fee, and I'll let you tackle it. But it's really about the customer needs.

Fee Stubblefield:

One way me to answer that Lisa, is in the terms of the book and what's going on with. So there's, you know, there's a bestseller list and there's a new release, you know, that's right. That's no release list. And I feel that as an industry and a sector with all the other sectors out there that people could choose as careers or performing optimally as an industry, call that the bestseller list of, you know, put us in the hole of everything.

I would say we're not on the bestseller list. One person who doesn't care, nobody wants to go there. And there's more reasons than just ,quality. We've got a half of it. Our industry has half of the formula, but the other half is just human nature. Right. And I talk about that in the book is just really understanding from all these years and so many people, wonderful people that I've known and I've just seen it.

There's something the realization that there's less ahead than there is behind this board. And it has nothing to do. So with quote, Lisa, my mom and dad right now, they are barely surviving in their home. And guess what? They don't want to do, right? They don't want to move into the Springs. And they're there almost every day. They're there every single day. At one of the communities in the Portland area, they're eating lunch, dinner, activities. They're involved, but they don't they won't move in. It's like you guys. Right? and they don't want to move because of what it says. But as an industry, we have the other side of the coin, right?

That's one side. That's our individual humanness. So you're we're always going to have to work through. And that's our job to get people comfortable with getting the support, saying build a bigger, live a bigger life. But on the best seller, we got a long ways to go.

Since Covid and the things I'm seeing, I know you're seeing, the evolution that we're seeing, you know, all the great I mean, all of my peers and colleagues out there, the other companies are doing some amazing stuff.

So I would say on the best new release list, senior housing care and long term care, senior housing care, let's say for sure, because we're not in actually long term. We don't do skilled nursing. So I really can't speak about that other than that was the motivation right  for the strength. It's doing. It's we're reinventing. We're making it better. It's happening. And I've got great confidence. I mean, look at all the stories out there of people that are in this business, the stories just like mine, that's for. And that's the case for a personal reason. They've entered this. So I would say that the future is very, very, very bright, but we've got to get over some, probably well-deserved, points of view or, you know, reputation of the bad. And that's going to take a little time.

Lisa McCracken:

I think so much of it too, is it's getting over the mental block on the, you know, the older adult side is this is where you know, not when you give up independence or you become less of a person. But where can we take some of those things off of your day to day burden and help you be the best person that you can be?

I do think that we're in a shift with that. And I do think we have some image issues or whatever, but I also think that there's just great things happening to what you pointed out and just fantastic organizations out there that we need to continue to tell our story. And I think that this book helps to do that for sure. So, in terms of attracting people into this industry, so obviously we've got the older adult is our customer, but the workforce is very much our customer too. And you've often you've already talked about your employees and so forth. So do you think some of the same challenges that we have, maybe on the, customer perception side of things, our challenge for us recruiting people into this sector and into the space, I mean, there's a little bit of a lack of awareness, I would argue, about who we are as a sector. So, do you think that this culture of promise has any type of a role in a play in terms of the workforce and growing awareness and, and attracting people into our space?

Fee Stubblefield:

A 100%. It's all through the book. I think we've got a couple of things we have to do. I think one of our biggest problems out there is really, as an industry is really the understanding of what business we're really in. And the culture of that business that we're in, especially when it comes to what happens in the communities and the facilities, the operational culture and then the capital culture, which I talk about in the book, the understanding of what our promise is, so a culture of promise. So all cultures. Right? According to William Snyder's research, all cultures derive from the promise to their customer. We know that employees culture are so important. Integrate organizations, building organizations, attracting and retaining the people that need to go there to work there. But the employees, our business. If you think about an organization like The Springs Living as a our part of our company. That's the management company that the employees work for or a part of. We like to say our a part of not workforce, but are a part of where the paychecks come from. We're not in the senior housing business. We've never thought I mean, we thought that early, but it was pretty obvious. It actually was a recruiting, training, motivating leadership, business.

We don't take care. You walk around our offices, there's no older adults but me now. But in the office, we take care of people, right? And we give the tools to the people that actually happen. So our core business has got to be workforce is everything. And to do that, you have to culture and here's why.

And it's how we look at this, why this is so important is because the people in our enrichment culture, our cultivation culture, where it's judgment based, it's messy. It's we promise to take care of people, right? Okay. Tell me how to take two people and two people taking care of them. Is very different based on a lot of different things.

Now there are certain things, you know I talk about aspirational promise, which is really the feelings of judgment, all those things that are critical. It's that soft cushion on your favorite chair. But under that, you must have a rigid structure, which is your business promises. And so yeah, we can do certain things the same, you know, and that's really what the culture of capital, which is control needs to see that we've got those business processes and structures.

We've got to do better at understanding aspirational promises of business promises like two sides of the coin and then and how we integrate those and work with those because our employees, you want the best employees that our residents want to be around the minute they think that you're in this business for money, they're done.

And so you can everybody says the same stuff, but it's not what you say or do, is Maya Angelou talked about, is how you make people feel. And they can their instincts are amazing. And you just can't fake this. It's got to be real. And so the culture has to be real.

Lisa McCracken:

How do you measure it? Because it's really hard. You said you feel it and you can go into organizations where you feel that there's just a very different culture than another one, you know, how do you measure, how do you know your culture is working in your organization?

Fee Stubblefield:

Well, so that is a brilliant thing, and it is the deep subject of the second book that's in production right now.

So I won't go into all the details of that, but you can measure it. Everybody talks about values, but really values can only be measured one way. And so the measurement of this is judgment based. So you have to have people that almost can sniff the air. And I know there's a lot of people out there, especially if they like words like scale and you know growth and growth is great, scale is different. You don't want something like that. You want to be able to put it in, in something that you can replicate. But that's a culture of manufacturing. We're a culture of growth. So think about even around how we look at capital. Think about it is as like we talk about in the book. And you even mentioned in some of the thoughts you sent me is the financial side is a byproduct, right?

So think about think about. Because we're organic. It's messy. It's like farming and planning. It's dirty. It's dark for you. Do you play an orchard? It could be years before you get any fruit. So you have to know that knowing that eventually if you do the right things, if you understand the, growing cycles and how to care for the trees and nurture the trees and grow the trees, that eventually you're the economics are going to work out because you get these golden apples and you're going to put them in a nice boxes. They're going to go to your favorite grocery store. And you're gonna buy it and it works out.

Lisa McCracken:

How do you do your homework upfront? This gets to, I think, the alignment that on the capital side it with your capital partner because we need that capital to grow. I mean that that is a reality. So, and I would argue that some of your peers have nailed it, others have struggled in. And so get any words of wisdom in terms of how to ensure that alignment that way there's alignment on what these ultimate promises are to your customer. How do you best do that?

Fee Stubblefield:

Again, massive it's this is in culture promise, but it's also really focus in the next book. It's a long term view that has short term options for people capital. You got to create flexibility here. But you gotta know what the life cycle is. If you look at a development is really and I keep using the tree, the orchard analogy, you could use a vineyard to if you wanted, whatever. But in the agriculture, because I really think this is the right concept for our industry and even how we do capital. If you look at egg blending, it's very different than blending into real estate, right? I mean, there's similarities and you can land on the real estate pieces, an egg, right? And they're under it. And very similar to how we underwrite a real estate. But then there's the crop part. It's very different. And so like if you're going to do an orchard that's a multi-year loan, it's because it's a 5 to 7 year process.

You actually get a crop and we're doing the same thing when we offer a building. And so if you don't invest in it's all about the formula. So the organizations that are doing it right Lisa, know that formula. And if you look at the results of and we're going to be talking about this in some NIC sessions, there's some planning coming up talk and correlating the actual operating results.

But if you looked at our actual operating results over time, you would see that the risk adjusted capital is very, very good and that we invested upfront. And it took a long time, a really long time. But once those roots get established, your reputation in the market gets established. Families trusted you in the market. They know that you're just not gonna leave them high and dry because there's a forever need there.

It's unstoppable. You can't stop you. I mean, you can, but it's really hard. And it usually happens when people sell. And, new leadership comes in and they're going to try to tweak, you know why and make a big deal and get their promotes and get out. And so as an industry, you've got to think differently. But again, we're going into the next book, which we're going to talk about next year at this time.

Right now back to a call it one thing at a time here. These principles here, I think are pretty important to gets solidified. But yeah. So your other question that you talked about sorry I'm go for it.

Lisa McCracken:

Now I've got like five teed up.

Fee Stubblefield:

I'll let you ask the question. You ask the question.

Lisa McCracken:

Sorry. Well I so I you know we did touch on the growth though. So because I think, you know, culture that's the long game and that can be hard. And sometimes I have seen organizations get tripped up on the culture side because of the growth. It's sort of their focus on the growth and that sort of North Star, if you will, and they forget, you know, the maintenance and, you know, for lack of better term calling maintenance, you know, culture and constantly maintaining that a maintenance program.

So, you know, how do you grow and not lose focus on the operations and the that capital after 11 oh, chapter 11. There we go.

Fee Stubblefield:

That's a quality growth curve. We I mean, there's so many great companies and I talk about them in the book as they go of, major conferences.

Lisa McCracken:

I think that was powerful. That was interesting to read. he ghosts of senior housing past.

Fee Stubblefield:

I used to call them the ghost of NIC, but I tried to broaden it because they were lot of conferences, but because I you just I've been going so long to the NIC, and it's been such an important part of our companies evolution and success. That, I just remember all those people that did some really good things and a great people.

And so, yeah, good people. Why didn't they succeed? And that's the question we have to be asking ourselves. And the simple answer is in the concept of this quality growth curve, when you outgrow your quality, when you grow faster than you can maintain quality, right? And so how you define that quality we talk about we actually this book is not we're not telling anybody how to do anything.

We're telling people what we did. And they actually it creates if we create a framework in this book for asking questions so that we can it's a thought process to a framework to ask questions to determine how individual organizations want to measure quality. We don't have to do it all the same. It'll help certain things we do because we've got to continue pushing data, research, transparency, you know?

We have to continue on this past at the next champion. If we're really going to drive the cost of capital down and we have to drive the cost capital, they've got to get more consistent returns, people have to know what to expect, because this goes to the underlying costs, not only for our customers, right? And eventually themselves. It depletes resources, but from just a geopolitical perspective and the demographics coming our way. We need this for our national federal budgets. We can't sustain, the cost is coming to us in the way that we're doing it. This is a large sweeping. This is of great national interest. Right? And that's why we're starting to see all the interest from the politicians, and regulators because this is impact.

Lisa McCracken:

Yeah, I agree, and I do appreciate you sharing that your book has gotten outside of the senior housing bubble. I think that that's very powerful, again, showing, you know, as Bob Kramer likes to say, we're on Broadway now to a greater extent than what we've been on the past. I do want to ask one other follow up question on the growth piece.

So, you've probably felt this sometimes. Sometimes you feel like, oh my gosh, is it going to be easier just to build the culture from scratch versus change a culture? And that often comes into play when there's an acquisition, you know, you taken on a new operations and so forth. Any experiences to reflect on that?

I mean, how do you how do you shift a culture? So it's not just, hey, this is who we've been since the founding and we're growing ourselves, but bringing new people into your family that can be tough.

Fee Stubblefield:

When I saw your question that you wrote that this is one of the best questions that I've had. Lisa, and this is a very important one, and I definitely have a perspective because we've done it multiple times. Half of our growth over 28 years has been from development. Half of it's been from acquisitions, from I think one of the reasons why, and we struggled with some of our acquisitions, even though we had an idea at the start that we didn't want to buy buildings, culture.

So we didn't buy buildings that were just for sale. We bought organizations that we knew had a culture of care for their employees and their residents, whether they were going to, you know, ownership owners that needed to retire, wanted to retire or move on or whatever. They were known as, even though they didn't best practices they might have had. They were known as good, caring places that I would want my grandmother to consider. And so we always looked at acquisitions that way. Now there's a whole nother group of of acquisitions out there that are happening right now all the time. And I have a definite opinion about that, and we're even venturing into that. But while I don't have the answer because I have not taken one of those, we're going to do that and we get a definite view of how to do that.

But let me just use a metaphor as a suggestion of how this might go. There's probably other people out there that you could talk to that would give you better insight on this, because we've resisted to just buy any building. But if you think about it. So let's go back to our orchard. We plant this tree, let's say, and it's going to take us five years for this orchard to start its first crop, to get the positive NOI right? And, let's say that, three years in, we got a problem, let's say a disease gets into the roots, we'll call it tree Covid or whatever you want to call.

Lisa McCracken:

I was gonna say. Or a pandemic. Yes. It sounds familiar.

Fee Stubblefield:

Or let's just say that it was done by a farmer that maybe was not an orchard is. Maybe they were. I don't know, they might have been farming something. I actually probably went farming or something. Maybe they were, you know, fresh out of, you know, building widgets somewhere, and they decided to get in the farming business and they forgot to, maybe fertilize and pull weeds and other things like that. They maybe not. They didn't pay attention every day. I don't know.

Okay, so now we got these established roots system for three years. So now I'm going to fire that farmer because they didn't do a good job. I'm going to kick them out. I'm going to terminate their lease. And I'm going to say okay new farmer you come in here and make those plants grow again.

And I want to hit my original target. You tell me what happens.

Lisa McCracken:

That that's a longer term gain and turnaround in that orchard a little bit for sure.

Fee Stubblefield:

If they even come in and one year at the end of four years, they're still not going to have anything.

You're still going to go, even if you can use stream majors and do some deep watering fertilization, whatever. The tech I'm not Orchard is, I'm around a lot of them, but you're still not going to do it any faster than the original one, and it's likely you're going to have to rip those trees out and start over.

Unfortunately, change culture. This is one of the things that unfortunately, the realizations of this is my personal view in our business, and other things I've seen to change culture. You change people. And you can't change people. That's the other side of it.

Lisa McCracken:

That's an interesting conversation for another day too.But yeah, I mean, you know, certainly sometimes there's hard decisions. I mean, because, yeah, you're the keeper of the culture and that, you know, you have responsibility for that. And I think that, you know, that sometimes requires some difficult decisions. So if you had one group or you'd say, I think this group of people could benefit most from reading this book, who would it be? Would it be, you know, certain groups within the senior housing care space? Would it be those outside of our space? Any thoughts on that from a wishlist standpoint? And who's reading?

Fee Stubblefield:

Well, I probably start number one, would be people that are new in our profession and either started a new company and or go because there's so many new companies out there, I can't even not even know all the names of everybody out there now. I mean, I hear new names every single day. And because I think it'll give them hopefully permission from how long I've been doing it to trust their instincts because I wish I would have done that a little bit more instead of doing what I thought. Like everybody wanted me to fit in this hierarchical organization and do things a certain way. And I tried to stuff our round peg in a square hole and it was tough. And so, well, I guess around that goes in square. Well, better than square one. Gather round.

Lisa McCracken:

I get the point. You, Richard, you're challenging the status quo, frankly.

Fee Stubblefield:

But I didn't understand the organizational culture. And so I think this can create clarity because this is written for people in our company as the primary deal. The rest of this is a bonus, as I said at the start. But I would say after that it would be it would be, cap of writers, and anybody that may be struggling a little bit right now in getting the results and, where things are at. But I think it eclipses that it eclipses the principles in here are evident for any entrepreneur and business.

So it gets out of that to that it breaks out into that broader category. And I think that, yeah. And then my mom, I hope my mom reads it, she hasn't read it so far, if you can believe it. And I even say it in the book, and I love my mom and she loves me.

But for some reason, I think she's waiting for the audiobook, which will be coming out. In another month. But I even give her credit right up front here.

Lisa McCracken:

Well, speaking of credit. So final question. We're running we're coming to the end of our time here. So final question. Those of you who haven't read the book yet, you're going to hear a lot about Fee's grandmother. What would she say if she were here and knew that she was one of the central stars in the book, and that that her grandson authored a book like this?

Fee Stubblefield:

Oh, that's an easy one. Yeah. This is a you save the easiest one for last. First of all, she would say, oh, brother, she said a lot. Oh, gosh. And then she would say, why in the world would you want to air all of our dirty laundry?

Lisa McCracken:

For the good of others. Hey, we all have dirty laundry. If it helps Fee. I thought it was fascinating. You did a great job. I think it's a great service to our sector. Remind people where they can get the book.

Fee Stubblefield:

Amazon and Walmart, both, are available. And, you call my mom, too, because I sent her, like, 50 copies open. She'd read one. And so I'm sure she would sell one pretty cheap. Well, we'll get the word out there. And her phone may be ringing off the hook, so. Well, thank you for your time again, Fee Stubblefield. The founder and CEO of The Springs Living again, this is Lisa McCracken with the NIC Chats podcast. You can find more information around NIC and our events at nic.org. So thank you for your time today and, you'll wish you the best with this book in the future one's and not multiple. And there may be 2 or 3 coming.

Fee Stubblefield:

Hope not. Thanks, Lisa.

Lisa McCracken:

All right. Thank you. Bye bye.