SS SEG 1 ep 1

Paul Hayes and Pam Kowalewski run Complete Senior Transitions, a resource for downsizing and senior services. They aim to provide information and empower seniors to make smart decisions for their future. Challenges faced by seniors looking to change their living situation are discussed. Pam shares how she got into the senior industry and the importance of helping seniors downsize and transition with less stress. Paul shares a story about helping a lonely senior named Phyllis and how it led him to focus on helping seniors. Pam emphasizes the benefits of downsizing and moving into a community. They both discuss the main hang-ups for starting the downsizing process and the importance of taking it one step at a time. Pam's daily work at Complete Senior Transitions involves various activities, including visiting clients, answering questions, sorting and purging rooms, and coordinating repairs for selling homes. She enjoys getting to know seniors and hearing their stories. Hello, and welcome to the Smart Senior Show. I'm your host, Paul Hayes, and I'm sitting here with my co-host and wonderful business partner, Pam Kowalewski. Together we run Complete Senior Transitions, a one-stop resource for all things related to downsizing, real estate, and senior services. I want to first thank Holy Family Radio for giving us the opportunity to bring value to our listeners. Our goal with each of our clients, and for each one of you, for the show, is to arm you with information so you can tell them, so you can feel empowerment to make smart decisions as you plan for your future or to assist somebody else in their downsizing and real estate or financial goals. So on today's show, Pam and I are going to discuss some of the challenges we see every day with seniors who are wanting to or needing to make a change of where they're living. But first, Pam, I'd love for you to share with our listeners a little bit about yourself and introduce yourself. Hello, Paul. Hello, listeners. This is Pam Kowalewski. We are working on building a base in the market to assist our seniors so it is easier and much simpler for them to downsize and transition with less stress. Great. So Pam, can you tell us how you got into the senior industry? Well, I took the long way around. Started out in renovations and worked my way into downsizing for about 15 years after moving a whole lot, about 26 times in 22 years, in my own career and realizing some of my senior families needed some assistance and realizing some of our friends needed assistance and I was just really adept at organizing and planning and all the details that needed to go into a full downsize. So over the years, I developed a downsizing business that led me from there into real estate and then back around into downsizing again. And that's actually how we met. So I'm a realtor with eXp Realty and many years ago now, I met you at some different functions and found out that you had your downsizing business and saw the people that you were able to help and really provide value to and one of the things that I appreciate about you is how comfortable you make seniors feel as they're going through this process. So a few years ago, when I was looking for a way to help my senior clients in real estate, I had this idea of a one-stop shop for servicing seniors through their transition and at the same time, Pam, you were having the same thoughts from your perspective in downsizing. Indeed. Right? So it's been great to bring our two worlds together to create this service with Complete Senior Transitions to help the community. It is. It's a lot of fun. I love working with seniors. It is an extremely stressful process. It is overwhelming. A lot of our seniors don't have families to help them or maybe limited help and it just becomes a huge burden. And to be able to map out a plan for them and help them or their families or us put it into place and make things happen for them to remove that stress and just allow them to focus on where they're going and what they're doing, looking forward to their new life and their new activities, that's what I love. I love being able to just take that away, remove the stress from their plate and just make it happen and get them from home to home and not have to worry about a thing. Yep. That's absolutely, absolutely true. So for me personally, I got into real estate back in 2002 right out of college and what I found with all these transactions that I was doing over the years and growing company and whatnot, there was definitely a different type of service that was needed for our senior clients and specifically, I had one client, her name was Phyllis. And she had a small home out in the country and she had a detached garage that was just packed with stuff, stuff that she had accumulated over the years and she was in her early 80s, living by herself out in the country. Her health was starting to decline but more than anything, she was lonely. She was living by herself. Her husband had died a few years ago. Her kids were spread across the country and she was at a point now where she needed to move into a personal care home. She wanted to move into a personal care home and she had nobody to help her. So the community actually reached out to me and asked if I would help her with this process. And at that time, and this was about 10 years ago now, I felt completely ill-equipped to help her through that process. Fish out of water. Fish out of water, exactly. Because she had nobody, she didn't have a support system around her. And as I dug into her situation, I found that there are so many people just like her in our community and bigger than that in our nation. And in future episodes, we're going to talk about some of the challenges in our nation right now with affordable senior housing and we'll get into that in future shows. But with Phyllis, it was such a great experience. One of my favorite things about her was that she fed me ice cream every time I showed up. And I really appreciated that. But we took her from where she was through a stressful situation, a stressful move, to her new community where she was able to re-engage with her peers and her health was taken care of and she's just a happier overall. And that was the, that put me on this trajectory towards helping seniors. That's a great story. I've had several of those myself. That's one of the things I think I love the most about doing this is seeing seniors that are lonely, that have quit going to church, they watch it on TV. Or seniors that, you know, don't get to go out for dinners or lunches, they stop their Red Hat meetings, they really just sort of physically and emotionally withdraw into their home. And when they start thinking about downsizing and moving into a community, I can see the twinkle come back. I can see the joy and the excitement in their eyes. They haven't moved in a really long time and they're scared to move. They're scared to give up their things. They're scared to give up what they know. But at the same time, almost every single one of them that we downsize looks at me when we're done and says, why didn't I do this a long time ago? They're with people, they're playing bingo, they're taking the bus shopping, they're going to lunch, they're doing a movie, they are making new friends every day. So it is such a dichotomy from where they were to where they go. And I want them all to understand and realize it is fearful, I understand that. And you don't have to be scared. There are companies out there that will help you. We want you to be happy. We want you to live the life you deserve. We want you to be fulfilled every day. We want you making new friends. We want you to enjoy life because you deserve that. You've worked and built your whole life and you deserve to have some fun. So moving to a community is not all that bad, no cooking, no cleaning. You really make it sound easy and like I want to take advantage of that right now. So one of the things we talk about with Complete Senior Transitions is making the complicated simple. So we're a one-stop shop for coordinating a lot of the different activities. And there are a lot of different things that have to happen to take somebody from point A to point B. A lot of communication. Yep. And a lot of communication, a lot of communication with families. For the families out there, for family members who are looking to assist their senior parent or somebody, you know, their loved one or a friend, what do you think the main hang-ups are to start the process for people? I think the biggest thing is they're overwhelmed with stuff in almost every case. Even the people that don't have a lot of stuff think they have a lot of stuff. And they just don't know what to do with it. Where do I start? And one of the things we do in our consults is sort of explain to them the whole process. And we're going to do that eventually in this radio station or radio show is just walk through the whole process. But the thing is that stops them mostly is being overwhelmed and not knowing how to get rid of their stuff. What do I do with it? How do I even start? I have so much stuff in every room, I just I don't even know where to start. And so we really counsel them on just either getting a friend to come over or grandkids or whatever that may be and just sit and go through one room at a time. Go through a closet. You're done for the day. Go through some dressers. Then you're done for the day. So you just start a little step, baby steps at a time. And if you can't physically do that or you don't have the time or the wherewithal to do that, then that's what we're here for. We're here to just slowly guide you and help you get through the process. Great. Great. Thank you, Pam. I know that one of the things I hear is feedback from you or for you rather from past clients and current clients is that you care for them and that you care for their process. Everybody feels like they have an advocate when they're talking and working with you. And I do appreciate that about you. Before we head to a short break, I would love to hear from you, Pam. What is your common – what is a day in the life of Pam at Complete Senior Transitions like? Oh, that can be anything from just having a visit and getting to know my clients to answering hard questions that they're afraid to really ask or know the answers to. I could be sorting and purging a room. I could be helping guys and directing my team on loading up donations for Holloway. I could be walking through a house to figure out what kind of repairs we need before we put it on the market. It is a broad-based activity every day. It's always different, which I love. And my best thing in the whole world is getting to know seniors and hearing their stories, learning about them and their families, where they came from, what they're doing, and, you know, for me, that's history. That tells me a lot about who they are and where they've been. Great. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about the five big challenges we see with seniors as they contemplate moving, and we'll talk about some of the ways to overcome these challenges. Yep, challenges are always hard. We want to make sure that we take those away and we make life just as easy as possible for our seniors. We don't want them to stress, and we definitely don't want them to drag it out. It's so much easier if they can just get it done, get into their new community, and then we can worry about the house when they're finished. It doesn't all have to be done right now. Great. So, when we come back from our break, we're going to talk about our challenges, the five biggest ones that we see seniors struggle with, and figure out how we can help them the best with their move and how to get rid of things and how to overcome those fears. Complete senior transitions, we're here to help with caring and confidence. We'll be right back after this break.