Editor’s Note: This story is part of the series "Entrepreneurship: Square One and Beyond," a Next Avenue initiative made possible by the Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation and EIX, the Entrepreneur Innovation Exchange
At 102 years old, Esther Lang is running a small publishing operation out of her senior living community.
A former physical therapist, Lang now lives at Sunrise of Severna Park — and she has written three books for adults, two children's books, and is hard at work on her next. She sells her titles at the community's craft shows. For Lang, moving into senior living wasn't a closing chapter. It was a plot twist.
She is not alone. At Amblebrook at Gettysburg, a 55+ community nearby, residents are pursuing new passions for everything from writing and photography to holistic health businesses.
Across the country, a quiet revolution is reshaping what life inside a nursing home or senior living community actually looks like. Forget the outdated image of shuffleboard and passive afternoons in front of a TV. Today's communities are putting on Broadway musicals, launching aero gardening programs, hiring "Community Navigators" to help newcomers find their people, and watching residents open Etsy shops from their rooms.
The shift isn't just feel-good programming. A series of long-term studies from Rush University’s Memory and Aging Project focused on older adults in the Chicago area, found that purpose in life is one of the most robust predictors of health and wellness in old age.
For some, like Esther, that purpose and engagement comes from pursuing new lines of work and entrepreneurial passions.
The numbers are compelling. The stories are more so.
“The term “encore entrepreneurship” has emerged to describe this phenomenon, typically referring to people launching businesses after leaving full-time careers.”
Encore Entrepreneurs
There’s long been a misconception that the entrepreneurial spirit primarily exists within younger demographics. That’s actually not true. According to the Kauffman Foundation, adults aged 55 to 64 have become one of the fastest-growing groups of new entrepreneurs in the United States. They represent more than 25% of all new entrepreneurs as of 2019, up from just 14.8% in 1996. In fact, people 55 or older own 43% of the country’s small businesses.
The term “encore entrepreneurship” has emerged to describe this phenomenon, typically referring to people launching businesses after leaving full-time careers. But in today’s senior living communities, it’s a trend playing out on a smaller, more intimate scale with residents turning lifelong skills into something they can share, teach, sell, or build.
Esther Lang’s bookshop-at-the-craft-fair is one version of this. But the form it takes varies and the communities where seniors are plying their newly discovered trades are finding that the impact on resident wellbeing can be profound.
These are shifts that are not being driven by activity directors, but by residents themselves.
The Purpose Shift
Calvin Nesvig, founder of AveeCare, a software company that works with nursing homes and assisted living facilities across multiple states, has had a front-row seat to this evolution. What strikes him most is how decisively the model has changed.
"What surprises me most is how much resident-led programming is taking over from the old top-down activity calendars," he says. "Instead of an activities director planning every hour, residents are proposing the programs themselves — a retired engineer running a weekly fix-it group, a former teacher hosting Spanish conversation hour, a retired bus driver giving informal history walks around the neighborhood. The staff role has shifted toward clearing the way rather than scripting the day."
That fix-it group run by the retired engineer? In any other context, it would be called a consulting practice. The former teacher’s Spanish conversation hour is a tutoring business. The distinction between “Activity” and “Enterprise” is blurring. Nesvig says the communities leaning into that blurring are seeing the best outcomes.
He's also noticed a surprising trend around technology. "The assumption going in is that residents will resist screens. In practice, the ones who try it tend to surprise everyone. I've heard a couple of stories about residents starting small Etsy shops with their craft work. The money is rarely the point. They like having something on the calendar that is theirs."
And there are some interesting side benefits. Nesvig notes that communities built around resident initiatives tend to report less caregiver burnout. “When residents are engaged in something they actually want to do, the day-to-day care interactions get warmer, and aides stay longer in their roles,” he says. “That’s a quieter ROI story than most operators share publicly, but it’s real.”
Where Programming Meets Care
At Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Commack, New York, Therapeutic Recreation is a state-mandated part of every resident's care plan — meaning it's not an add-on. It's clinical.
Kathleen Biggs, Assistant Director of Therapeutic Recreation at Gurwin, describes the team's guiding philosophy simply: "If it's happening in the world, it's happening at Gurwin." That means a Paint and Sip program where residents who arrived convinced they had no artistic ability leave with a canvas they're eager to hang on their wall. It means a "Green Thumbs Group" for memory care residents, built around the sensory familiarity of soil and herbs and bloom — things that cut across cognitive barriers in ways words sometimes can't. It means a Teaching Kitchen returning this summer, where residents become chefs following step-by-step recipes and recreating homemade favorites.
And it means the monthly Breakfast Club, where the dining space is transformed into a neighborhood diner — warm lighting, waitress-style service, seasonal menus, a chef action station. "For the residents, it is less of an activity than a restoration of ordinary life," Biggs explains.
The moments her team treasures most are the unscripted ones: the resident who wheeled into Paint and Sip convinced she had no artistic ability and left grinning ear to ear; the man in the cooking class who recalled a recipe his mother made when he was a child.
Similar entrepreneurial spirit is on display at The Apsley, an assisted living community in New York City. There, one resident turned her love of knitting into a full community initiative — launching a resident knitting club now producing handmade scarves for pediatric patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Another resident, driven by a lifelong passion for James Joyce, worked with the Program Director to start a Ulysses book club for fellow residents. These aren’t activities handed down from a calendar.
They’re ventures residents conceived, pitched, and now run.
Finding Your People
For those considering a move — or helping an aging parent make one — the social infrastructure of a community may matter as much as the medical one. Hillcrest, a life plan community in La Verne, California, has thought carefully about the transition period, which can be the loneliest stretch of all.
"A good match is important so that we can perpetuate a good community that feels good together," says Shirley Turner, who oversees marketing and sales at Hillcrest. The community pairs current residents with newcomers, hosts welcome lunches, and encourages prospective residents to begin attending events before they've even moved in. Friendships, she notes, frequently form between prospects and residents before a move-in date is ever set.
Hillcrest recently introduced a new staff role — the Community Navigator — specifically designed to help new residents find activities, groups, and friendships that fit their personalities in those critical early weeks. With more than 23 resident-led clubs, including an RV travel group and a certified pet therapy program called The Hush Puppies (whose members visit residents in memory care), the options span well beyond the typical activity calendar.
Those options are increasingly driving entrepreneurial pursuits that originated through avocational interests.
“They’re asking ‘what does this person still want to build?’”
What This Means for You
Whether you're 55 and beginning to think about your own future, or helping an aging parent evaluate options, the takeaway from what's happening in today's best senior living communities is the same: the questions worth asking have changed.
It's no longer just about staffing ratios and dining menus. It's about whether a community asks what a prospective resident still wants to build — not just what care they need. It's about whether programming is done to residents or by them. And it’s about whether they’ll have opportunities to ply their trades whether based on past interests and professions or new ones.
Beth Southorn, who has spent more than 30 years working with older adults in supportive housing through her organization LifeSTEPS, puts it plainly: “The organizations getting this right aren’t asking ‘what activities can we offer?’ They’re asking ‘what does this person still want to build?’ That reframe changes everything.”
Esther Lang, at 102, is still answering that question with her manuscripts and a craft show table. The communities paying attention are making sure she and other entrepreneurial-minded residents have the time, the space, and the audience to do both.