This couple in their yard outside their forever home might need us to make some improvements for them that will enhance their lifestyle and quality of life – helping both them and us
When we see the kinds of improvements we can make for individuals to improve the overall safety, comfort, convenience, and accessibility of their homes to enable them to remain living in them long-term, it gives us a tremendous sense of satisfaction. It’s a feeling that is often hard to describe. Just seeing how happy someone is that they can continue to live in the home they love without needing to consider leaving it or moving into some type of managed care facility is quite powerful. That’s a chief reason why many of us are aging in place specialists.
Whether we are working with people with no urgent needs or those that have very specific mobility or sensory issues that we need to address, the improvements that we can make are both effective and appreciated for helping our clients remain in their homes.
Often, regardless of what needs the clients are presenting, their budget, or the size of the job, we have an opportunity to work with people who are very receptive to making changes in their homes to improve their general safety and ability to function well in their homes. This makes our work even more rewarding and enjoyable. Certainly, people who have a specific medical need that they would like addressed fit this category and look forward to the improvements and modifications we can make for them to assist them in remaining in their home and navigating it well.
However, there are many people that we can attempt to help or work with who don’t think they need many changes in their home (or even none) to facilitate their use of it as they continue to live in it. There are not foreseeing or projecting any decline in their abilities over the short-term. may not be receptive to any outside assistance, and their budget is really immaterial becuse of their overall attitude and state of mind.
Depending on how we frame our business model, we may or may not we may be interested in working with people in reasonably good health that could benefit from a few safety improvements or upgrades in their homes but aren’t very inclined to want to have any work done. It’s not the idea that we can’t help them with improvements or that we aren’t qualified to do so, but it’s just the concept of attempting to work with someone who could benefit from a few changes that doesn’t seem to want any work or attention to looking at the safety and efficiency of their home.
So, how do we go about serving a significant portion of the marketplace – procrastinators mostly – who could benefit from improvements but aren’t inclined to see their homes from the same perspective that we do? Do we ignore them and focus on the higher priority potential clients and the ones who are more appreciative of the work we can do for them? Do we forge ahead and do what we can for people who may be denying that anything we can offer them will actually help them in their homes?
There’s not a precise answer, and it’s going to depend on the marketplace and the amount of other clients to be served. It’s possible that we could find enough to occupy our time by just working with people who specifically need our help to use their homes better. There may even seek us out to help them, but they are going to be appreciative our our ability to help them regardless of we meet them.
This can be a significant dilemma for us. On the one hand, we may have plenty of work to do just serving people referred to us from healthcare professionals and medical facilities as well as others in our network. Is there really any room in our schedule – although there unquestionably is a need – for us to work with people who really don’t favor having any work done? Why fight it? We could wait for them to be ready and come to us at that time rather than trying to convince them that they can benefit from improvements we can make.
In addition to the procrastinators – the people who are denying that they need anything done – those who are ignoring the effects of aging on their mobility or sensory abilities, or people who indifferent to having any improvements made in their homes because they think that everything is fine the way it is – there is another group of people who don’t desire very much work to be done in their homes but are receptive to talking with us. In fact, they may take the initial step and contact us about a small project they have in mind. They just have a smaller idea of what we can do for them or think they have a very limited budget. Still, we can work with this group of people.
Helping people with their housing needs, regardless of their requirements when we meet them, is something that can give us immense pleasure and satisfaction.