The Quest for the Temple of Community

In this heartfelt and visionary episode of The Quest for the GoodLife, Dr. Mike Strouse and co-host Ivo Ivanov explore the power of real communities—what makes them work, why they matter, and how GoodLife's Neighborhood Network is redefining intentional, inclusive living. From memories of small-town Missouri to the story of a remote Alaskan building that houses an entire town, Mike and Ivo reflect on the deep human need for connection and interdependence. Learn how professional neighbors, purposeful design, and organic supports can build what Dr. Strouse calls “Powder Blue Zones”—places where everyone belongs and everyone contributes.

Transcript

Ivo Ivanov (00:00:13):

Hello and welcome again to the Quest for the Good Life with Dr. Mike Strouse. This podcast is a production of GoodLife University. Our host is Dr. Mike Strouse, among many other things, a president and CEO of GoodLife Innovations. I am Ivo Ivanov your sound engineer and fun engineer and also your co-host with the co-most. Dr. Mike Strouse is in the house. He's got his trusted fedora on. So we are ready to take you again on a quest for the Good Life. Dr. Strouse, I was thinking about neighborhoods and how important they are to our mission, and I was looking in the dictionary for the definition of neighborhood, and it says that this is a district, especially one forming a community within a town or a city. A second definition is simply the area surrounding a particular place, person or object.

(00:01:31):

But for us, it is so much more and it has been more for many, many years, and it really, really kind of defines in many ways our mission. And I was thinking about neighborhoods in the place where I grew up. I grew up kind of in a dystopian world. It was behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria during communist rule. And everything was kind of monochromatic. Everything was the same color. It was gray because when you take away competition from the economy of a certain place, it becomes uniformly the same. There's no motivational device to drive the economy forward and drive innovation. And so there's no reason to have different types of clothes, different colors, different cars, different chocolates. Everything is the same. There's no competition. Whatever the factory makes, people will buy it. They had no choice. And so the buildings were the same as well.

(00:02:51):

And the government purposefully destroyed all homes and built these residential buildings that they called ‘blocks’. Why they called them ‘blocks’ because they looked like blocks. We lived in boxes inside those blocks, apartments, small apartments that were all the same. But what was interesting is that little by little, that monochromatic world on the outside gave way to a very colorful world on the inside of these buildings. Why? Because within those buildings, within those boxes next to each other, lived doctors, professors, mechanics, garbage men, everybody lived next to each other. And this created little by little a community and an opportunity for people to learn to communicate with each other. It was a really interesting function of an otherwise horrible idea. So I grew up and everyone around me grew up knowing how to talk to each other, how to relate to each other, how to be sympathetic and empathic to other people's problems, hopes, aspirations, and so on and so on.

(00:04:17):

It was a tight knit community. When electricity would go out, which happened often, everybody would get together, the neighbors would get together, light candles and talk to each other, tell stories, spend time together. I feel like this was a horrible social experiment. Communism was, and it failed miserably. But one of the good things, one of the unexpected results from this was the creation of people that knew how to communicate with each other, how to relate to each other, how to help each other and live harmoniously. So there was definitely a benefit of this opportunity to live close to each other. This got me thinking about something I recently saw on tv. It was a town in Alaska called Wither Alaska. Wither, we'll put a link on the website so people can see it for themselves. But Mike, this town, this entire town in Alaska, in a remote area of Alaska, lives in one building because the conditions are so harsh. You might've seen it.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:05:45):

I didn't see that, but I was in Alaska in a small town and I saw that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:05:49):

So something like

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:05:50):

Something very much like that where the entire town shared a structure. Yeah, a singular structure. And I saw it on special once. It wasn't even Alaskan. I saw where there was a building that constituted the entire population of the town and it was within one structure.

Ivo Ivanov (00:06:12):

Yes, yes. They had they experienced,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:15):

I saw that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:06:15):

Yeah. 60 mile per hour gusts of Arctic wind. Incredible blizzards. Transportation is impossible. The town can only be reached by air or water. There's a ton of under the mountains that you can reach it by carport,, it closes often. It's a one lane. So 200 people, 200 people live in one building, but it's not all the police department is in it. The school is inside the building, convenience store, barbershop, everything is inside this building. And it sounds horrible, frankly, but these guys are so tight knit. They're one family.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:06:58):

Yeah. I want you to think about, because this really may be relevant for our discussion today.

Ivo Ivanov (00:07:05):

Yes,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:05):

Of course. I'm sure you knew that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:07:07):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:08):

But what did they all those settings have in common? It was an inter-reliance.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:16):

Yes,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:17):

They were reliant.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:19):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:07:20):

I go back at a different time, a similar situation, but I grew up in a rural area in southern Missouri, in the Ozarks, southern Missouri, a very small town, 269 people, outdoor plumbing. I mean, really. And that was a situation where neighbors needed neighbors. They relied on each other, they couldn't exist. Older folks needed younger folks, older folks helped younger folks. There was such an inner reliance on people in a sense, you couldn’t be anonymous.

Ivo Ivanov (00:08:07):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:08:07):

I mean, you knew your neighbor, you knew your neighbor's needs. They kind of knew your needs, and you all had this little ecosystem where you relied on each other. I mean, in my small town, truth of the matter, I was what, 20 miles from a place called Springfield, the largest city.

Ivo Ivanov (00:08:27):

Yeah, Springfield.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:08:28):

But it was a rural area, and we had our own little businesses in that town. And I'm telling you, you didn't go shopping in Springfield unless you couldn't get it. Where I lived, where people really went to that. I mean, because we were economically relying on people. We were relying on helping people out. And then when the Evolution for farming really hit and you had these progressively farmers, all of a sudden you saw these people band together and create a co-op, a farmer's co-op, and then they were able to share and get some of the advantages of size, but while keeping their autonomy and independence and individual safety. These neighborhoods, they may look differently, but they had some things in common that were really important, you know?

Ivo Ivanov (00:09:28):

And relying on each other. This is something that I should have mentioned that in those communist blocks, we couldn't really survive on our own needs where constant supplies were scarce, and the neighbors always, always came to the rescue. It was very, very important. So yeah, those were communities that were created because they HAD to be created. We didn't have a choice. And in Alaska, they were pushed by the weather to create this community. But our organization created communities because we knew that they would be extremely beneficial. There was no weather that forced us to do it. Or communism,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:16):

Ivo, I want to say, yeah, maybe we created a little bit of that, but I want to say no.

Ivo Ivanov (00:10:23):

It was over.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:23):

We became a part of it.

Ivo Ivanov (00:10:26):

We joined it

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:26):

We discovered the BEST ones and tried to become a part of it. I was thinking about this earlier. There is just this constant love affair with the sense of neighborhoods. You guys all know about Norman Rockwell paintings, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:45):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:10:46):

When you look at a Norman Rockwell painting, what do you see? What happens in those paintings?

Ivo Ivanov (00:10:52):

So there's a sense of serenity and a harmonious communication and nostalgia and kind of a simple and beautiful way of life, of people helping people and yeah, you are right. Being part of a community family,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:11:10):

You may where they're walking down a street singing or they're serenading or they're in a barbecue. I mean, I always think that the things people love the most have been the same thing that has happened for several hundred years. It's spending time with families. It's spending time with people you know and love, a sense of belongingness, not anonymity. The inverse of anonymity, of counting being somebody that isn't a place. What's that Friends song? How's it go? Remember a place where everybody knows your name?

Ivo Ivanov (00:11:52):

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:11:53):

Right.

Ivo Ivanov (00:11:54):

That's Cheers. Cheers. Right? Yeah. [Cheers Theme Plays]

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:11:56):

Cheers. Yeah, cheers. It's where everybody knows your name. It's invented that third place

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:12:03):

Where It's home, it's working. Then the third place where you go that everybody knows we're romance by that, and it comes in every walk of life. Ivo, I mean, Mr. Rogers, who's a member of the neighborhood person that you meet while you're walking down the street, the person that you meet each day, right? I mean, it is like there's every version in the world that keeps going back in a nostalgic way of us being in love with a place that you're a part of that is just ALIVE. And I can't help, Ivo. I want your hat, except I got a hat. I got a hat. But you've got the ‘be a good human hat’ and ‘stay human’. We're seeing a lot of that now.

Ivo Ivanov (00:12:56):

We need more of that, right?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:12:57):

Well, I think you're seeing a cry that's coming out loud and strong that we're done. I mean, everything that's not really great about our current time is really part of not being human, not having a place that you belong to, not being. The more autonomous you are, the more invisible you are, the more not a part of something you are. I mean, we've admitted words in our niche industry like “inclusion” and things like that. I mean, it's gone under a hundred names. It comes out in songs, it comes out in paintings. It comes out in every nostalgic thing that we all clinging to. The most important thing in life is being in a place that you belong. Not being autonomous, being a part of something, knowing your neighbor, knowing it is being part of something that is real. It's bigger than yourself where it's not all about you. And I think that that's a lot wrong with care is everything is about, is focused on the individual that's being supported at the exclusion of the context. They don't talk about. The neighborhood is about the whole vibe of belongingness and just all of that. We need to celebrate humanity more

Ivo Ivanov (00:14:31):
You know, John Dunn wrote a poem like 400 years ago. You just made me recall this. And it is so amazing that this poem is still so relevant today. It was called “For WhomThe Bell Tolls”

(00:14:49):

And it's a legendary poem. It gave us the expression “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and also gave a title to a great Hemingway novel, of course. But many people forgetting that this poem starts with the words, “no man is an island”. So he gave us two timeless expressions within three paragraphs of this small poem. And No Man is an island how viable and powerful this little truth is. If you look at people who isolate themselves and live in a cabin in the mountains, they don't live a long life and they live sad and tough and excruciating existence. And the people that actually enjoy longevity and keep their faculties into deep, deep elderly age are the people that live within a community. And I remember 15 years ago, you took me on a walk in Overland Park, which is a great town,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:15:58):

Ivo. It was longer than 15 years,

Ivo Ivanov (00:16:00):

Maybe it was longer, man, years just melt together.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:16:03):

Ivo years. And dog years is longer.

Ivo Ivanov (00:16:08):

It was longer. You're right. But we walked, yeah, years just go so fast nowadays. But we walked through this apartment complex and you were, at the time, you were kind of putting together an idea, a concept in your head, and the wheels were spinning and I could sense this. And you were walking and looking around and saying, “I wonder if we will be accepted here. Look at this place. Look at this amenity. Look at this amenity. Can you imagine a network, a network of neighbors that support each other in its organic and natural?” And then you said something that I still remember to this day. You said, “and our technology will be perfect here.” Our technology was just in its embryonic stage, but you have this ability of foresight that you can see forward. You have many qualities, but I think this is your biggest quality, the visionary in you, and you saw it ahead of time, but I believe what drove you that day to walk around this apartment complex was, you recognized this longing of a human being to be part of a community, to have natural supports. And you said, why don't I take that longing and turn it into a successful program?

(00:17:41):

I think this is what happened that day, and this is how we ended up with something listeners called “the Neighborhood Network”. This is one of our most powerful engines right now and one of our most successful programs, and I can testify to this after maybe you explain what a Neighborhood Network is, how it works, how it is selected, what are the things that go, there's many variables that go into the selection of a Neighborhood Network, intentional community, amenities, all these things. And also the neighbors are important. So how does it work?

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:18:22):

I will, but we just bought a new house and moved into a neighborhood, and what's interesting about it, it was a new development. As you know, Ivo, we downsized. All of our kids are gone. Kids are gone.

(00:18:40):

In a smaller home. But we were looking at where to go and what we liked and stuff. But what was interesting, I moved from a community that had been there for 50 years and I was only there seven. And I have to tell you, Ivo, I never completely felt part of it because a lot of the cliques in that community had already been formed by the time I got there. And it was a little hard to have inroads. I don't know if you know this, but in small towns, there were sort of people that grew up there and then there's people that moved there and the people that move there don't necessarily have the same experiences as the people who grew up there. I'll say that. Interesting. It's true, right? I mean, I think eventually it ends up maybe, but there's just this, if you're from a small town and you've never moved away, you're in it. If you move into it, it's not necessarily the easiest groups to get into. But when we moved to this new place, the whole development wasn't more than maybe four years old, five years old, everybody was new. We walk our dog around the little pond and lake little thing they have, which is really cool. There isn't a person we don't walk by that we don't stop and talk to, and they're all looking for friends because they're all have equal standing in a way.

(00:20:19):

So I mean, every time you go to a neighborhood, you learn about something in it. And I can't really say what the perfect neighborhood is because it's really got to be perfect for you in a way. But I will say this, we all travel around the country. I have an RV. You guys know that. I love doing that. I go to conventions and speak and I'll pull up in my RV in front of it and drop anchor and go in and speak, and then I'll leave. I have a picture in Iowa of a 40 foot RV in front of the front door of a place I went in and spoke and I went and spoke and I went back and got my RV and left. But I go to these different places and try it. And there are places I sit here and think, man, I'd love to live here. It's just got everything that's important to me. And to me, Ivo, it is like memories of my hometown in southern Missouri and memories of Norman Rockwell paintings and

(00:21:31):

just the old fashioned, that's what appeals to me on some of those things. But as we walked around neighborhoods that day and stuff, I was looking at like, what would the people that I serve love to be a part of? And, you know, I always have to explain to people that I'm not a fan of what some people call “intentional communities” in our world where, I mean they have 'em like even 55+ communities, I'm not against it, but they also have communities where special populations sort of band together and disproportionately become a community, like a specialized community, in essence. I honestly have never, I haven't met many people that gives them what they want.

(00:22:23):

You don't get that sense of sort of interdependence, the inclusion and diversity, and you just don't get to go out and pick the place out that you really want. And so what I was thinking that day when we were walking around is like, gosh, it has churches, it has stores and it has a cool walking trails and the people seem really nice and the housing's cool and low crime rates, all those kind of things that you think about. And it's like, I don't want to be a part of my own little community that I create. I'd rather be a part of a community that's already created that I just already love. That's what you want to be a part of, but you also can't be on the island yourself. Remember Ivo, we changed our formal mission statement where we said providing a Good Life to those people that need help to live independently AND those people who make it possible.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:23:29):

That Last part wasn't just caregivers, it was EVERYBODY. Our goal is not just focusing on the individual, but the context and the lives of everybody. If you can't have a win-win relationship for everybody, you get it for nobody.

Ivo Ivanov (00:23:44):

Yeah. They're interconnected

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:23:46):

And I think that's all the problems with our planning process where we only focus on the individual and not the context. Good lives are a life you become a part of. It's not just when you create, it's something you just join up with, right?

Speaker 4 (00:24:03):

Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:24:04):

You can't create a neighborhood. I mean you could try, but it's a heck of a lot better to go pick one out.

Ivo Ivanov (00:24:15):

Yeah. I was thinking about the importance of neighborhood and how we can measure whether a neighborhood is successful and because it's hard to do that and there was…sports gives us something that's very tangible. It's a result. Like if there's a sports competition, if you're running 100 meters and the time tells you whether you've been successful or not, at the end, right? In football, it's the score. In basketball, it's the score. And there is a place in smack in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, our state, it's called Smith Center. [Powerhouse Football. I'll tell you.] Right. That's what I was getting. I knew you were going to know about this.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:25:07):

Legendary.

Ivo Ivanov (00:25:10):

So this is a very small town and less than a thousand people. There's not much production, much industry in it. There's an RV factory not far, and that basically supports the town. But my goodness, this is a close knit community and the entire community gravitates around the football team, the high school football team.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:25:35):

I mean, I know that it does around the football team, but if you go to a game, actually I have. It is all the people, they gravitate to each other, they know each other. There's just look at the elements again, there's no autonomy. You're in a town that is a goldfish bowl.

Ivo Ivanov (00:25:58):

Yes, exactly. I went there because I wanted to write about it, and at the time, maybe, I don't know, I'm going to be incorrect again, but let's say 17 years ago, I went because this football team was doing things that were never done before. They had seven undefeated seasons in a row. I think that's a record to this day. They were putting up numbers that made no sense. They won eight state championships and his tiny, tiny town, tiny high school, and I, I wanted to meet with Roger Barta, who's the head coach, and he's currently in the Hall of Fame. That's how successful this man was in a small town. And what I've discovered is exactly what you were saying. That guy recognized the importance of people knowing each other and supporting each other and created a community, a network around the football team. He was printing cards like baseball cards for each high school player with their statistics, with the things that they like or with their height and weight and their score on their GPA and those.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:27:24):

I want to point that out. I think I have seen a card.

Ivo Ivanov (00:27:28):

Yeah, trading cards.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:27:29):

It was trading cards. And it wasn't just the stats, it was about them as a Human.

Ivo Ivanov (00:27:33):

Yes, yes,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:27:35):

Exactly. He was concerned that He was producing people that made a difference.

Ivo Ivanov (00:27:41):

Yes. And the little kids would collect the cards and strive to be on a card one day. There was continuity that he created, and then there was tiny little joint in the downtown main street called Jiffy Burger, and after each game, the entire town would get into the Jiffy Burger and discuss every play of the football game. And the football players were idols. Roger Barta was an icon, and this community, this support system produced a winning team. They didn't have the fastest, strongest players, but they had the best community

(00:28:25):

And they were undefeated. They were a juggernaut of a team. And I was thinking, measuring the success of a community, there you go. There you have, it's seven, eight, undefeated seasons, A hall of fame coach, continuity, and most importantly, Mike: Nowadays, young people leave their small towns, young people, they have to follow their dreams and their dreams always exceed the boundaries of their town. But because of this community, I discovered when I visited that people were coming back, that they move out and after a while they come back. This is how powerful that gravity was of that community. It was beautiful to watch.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:29:16):

The town that I lived in, right close to it. In fact, our school incorporated into that eventually was a place called Marshfield, Missouri, and when I lived down there, it was a town of 2000. My parents had a dry cleaner establishment in that town. We were a part of that town. Ironically, that town of 2000 had the oldest 4th of July west of the Mississippi that would be in a continuous existence, two living presidents. Both Bushes led that parade in their respective terms.

(00:29:54):

One guy named Ashel Minor, was a World War II veteran, and he led that parade for 50 years there every 3rd of July. The day before the 4th of July parade was always a day that they celebrated the anniversaries of graduating classes. And every graduating class in town would have a little booth and they'd have their, I was 1975 and there was 76 and all the way up. And then that year, that was either the fifth or the 10th or the 25th, they would have a special thing. But to this day, people go back on the third. It didn't matter where they live, they make their way back. And I think that's all about it is, and I'm trying to bring this thing home a little bit on the point is, a town or a neighborhood, I mean a neighborhood can be a town if it's the size of Marshfield.

(00:30:57):

The reality is that was 2000. Our first Neighborhood Network was with a neighborhood community that was an apartment rental community member, one of the ones in town at least. And it was a Price Brothers community that had over 2000 rental units. Well, we were only 10 or 15 of those 2000, and there were 8,000 people in that little community. But there was a lot of elements about that that I liked. It had walking trails, it had amenities. The housing was neat. The management company was really cool. The people stayed there and there was a high diversity of the kinds of people. There was a lot of, it turns out, I think I told this story that when we did that Neighborhood Network, we literally looked at that 2000 units and recognized that there was like 12 units that came open every month. And that's just looking at those numbers, it averaged about 12 a month that would come due. We sort of virally stepped into that community by having people lease places every month or two in there, and they were completely inclusive within that. And you end up with 14 or 15 places among the 2000, the national norm is about 3%. People with, for example, I/DD [Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities]

(00:32:24):

We were way beneath that number, that percentage, and it's completely inclusive. And the guy who was we were releasing from, I didn't even tell him we were doing it. We were just doing it. The only reason that GoodLife was involved is because none of the people that we supported could afford the financial means test to get into the neighborhood. So we had to guarantee their lease.

(00:32:47):

So the developer kept seeing “GoodLife Innovations” as guarantor of these leases every few months as we were going in there. And finally, I got a call from him, Doug Price, was his name, was great guy. And he said, who are you? Who are you? And I thought, oh boy, here we go. And I told him, and he got real quiet and he said, I have a son with autism and 28 years old, I have been hoping for something like this for a long time. Well, the truth is we developed a friendship and about three or four months later, we got a check for a million dollars from this foundation for the Neighborhood Network. That's a fact. That's amazing. This has relevance for another thing I'm going to tell you about today. But he gave me that million dollars as a gift, to GoodLife, and he said, if I could, can I tell you something that's more valuable than this gift? And I said, yeah, I'd love to hear that one. He turned to me and he said, well, about 20, 25% of the people who live here are seniors. I think I said this before in another episode, but the point behind all that was that there were other people of need in that community that he wanted to support. These are people who just organically lived in that neighborhood.

(00:34:09):

Every time something like that happens, I start trying to expand the vision of what we're trying to accomplish with a neighborhood. And I recognize, wait, we're not the only people who have needs in good neighborhoods. We're not the only people who have needs. There's all kinds of needs. There's a veteran who's out there who has a disability. There's a person who has MS that has a progressive disease that needs your help. There's seniors that are out there that need your help. But the thing also about every one of those people is they all have something. They also can contribute.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:34:54):

Another Aspect of a neighborhood. It's not about what you get from it, it's what you can also give to it, right?

Ivo Ivanov (00:35:01):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:35:01):

If you just get from something, and that's the problem I have with most of the planning processes in our field, you just get, but if you can also give something, if it's mutual, it's interdependent. If you create and embrace this interdependence of a neighborhood, then you become part of it.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:35:23):

You don't become part of it if you CONSUME it, you become part of it if you have an interdependence on it. So the whole goal, this is like you said, mind is turning and your brain's turning that thing's been turning for 20 years, Ivo, it's like constantly, you keep learning stuff about the power of a neighborhood, and there is nothing more powerful than a neighborhood just, I mean, maybe there is, but I'm just continuously impressed upon what one can give you if you give to it, if you become part of it. And the goal is just, okay, how can you organically harness this? And you just go from one little thing to the next. And that's why I got into Blue Zones, that Ivo, it's like, wow, there's these, how many of 'em are there? Ivo? Six. Six,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:36:22):

There's six blue zones in the world. And it's like those are like, okay, well if you're going to study neighborhoods, that's not a bad one to study.

Ivo Ivanov (00:36:32):

Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:36:33):

I mean Blue zones like Superpowered, fuel of long life and a good life. What's going on there? And you know that there's an interdependence there. There's a sense of belongingness there. I mean, how you eat and how you live and the stress that you have and

Ivo Ivanov (00:36:54):

Exercise

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:36:55):

Purpose.

Ivo Ivanov (00:36:56):

Yeah, purpose,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:36:57):

The sense of family is elderly people contribute to young people and young people contribute to elderly. It's like this huge interdependence. I mean, the truth of the matter is every one of those neighborhoods, every one of those communities, every one of those things that we think are special, it's the Smith Centers of the world or the Marshfields of the world or these blue zones of the world or that amenity that's out there and that they've actually created a network in the context of this huge urban, crazy place out there where they have a sense of belongingness. That's where those developers are going now of trying to create something that gives you a sense of Community

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:37:41):

And neighborhood in the context of a urban metropolis or in the rural area of Western Kansas. I mean, it doesn't matter where you are, you can create it, but some people do a heck of a lot better job than others.

Ivo Ivanov (00:37:54):

Yeah, it could be anywhere. Our producer, Megan Olafson, I was talking to her the other day that she's considering visiting Europe with her husband who has roots in Italy, and they were thinking about visiting Italy and hopefully one of the blue zones, Corsica, which is very close. And that's what defines this place is the close knit community. This is why it is a Blue Zone. Yes, there are cliffs and people walk a lot and exercise and eat a lot of fish, but really everyone knows that or really keeps these people healthy. 90-100 years is the community, the neighbors, and like you said, young people and old people communicate. They're not separated by age and they support each other. Young people visit the old people for their wisdom. The old people rely on the young people for chores and physical help. But yeah, they're interconnected. Like you said, in the Neighborhood Network that we created, we are basically creating blue zones here, trying to recreate blue zones. They have a unique functional structure that is Professional Neighbors.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:39:16):

I mean, there are elements of it that we've tried to emulate. You can't be part of something without being part of it, right?

Ivo Ivanov (00:39:25):

Yeah.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:39:26):

You can't rent it. I don't mean rent by renting a place, but you just can't rent. To be a timeshare of a neighborhood, you've got to be a part of it. And so one of the elements of a Neighborhood Network is a Professional Neighbor. We want a high number of people who are providing care to belong to the same neighborhood of the people who are receiving care. And we want it for a lot of reasons. We want them to be completely and utterly vested in the quality of life of living in that neighborhood. We also want them to be able to build bridges between people who need care and people who can help them. And we also want the people who are just in the community and there are people who are in need in the community, but we want those people in need sort of having the ability to contribute, those professional neighbors in addition to providing care and support. And when I say professional neighbors, I mean literally, we pay for their place. We pay their salary, we pay for them to become part of that, to the point where now we're sort of evolving in the ability to provide even people who we start recruiting people within the context of the neighborhood after that,

(00:40:59):

Who also may be, they may be nurses, they may be maintenance people, they may have something to offer that neighborhood. And if we're going to contract with somebody to provide support that somebody needs, why wouldn't we first try to find somebody that already lives there? I mean, again, that goes back to my time in the small town where we kind of had a pact that we're not going to go to Springfield and buy a pair of jeans itf we can buy a pair of jeans in our hometown? That's what we do. Why would we not have that same expectation in a neighborhood that we create? If we can somehow leverage and support the people in the neighborhood, why wouldn't we do that? And that goes back to that really living that mission of improving the lives of the people we support and those people who make it possible. It's like interdependence. Everybody's life has to be improved. How do you do that? It's a lot. It's not one thing.

Ivo Ivanov (00:42:09):

I can testify to the success of the Neighborhood Network in a rather unique way because I live very close to one, like three blocks away from one. And I made, naturally, friends within the neighborhood because part of my job is to take pictures and video and create multimedia content. So I am with the people that live there a lot. And little by little we became friends and me as a neighbor, I started visiting just because I'm visiting my friends. And we share a lot of common interests with people who live there. And one of them is love of sports. So I ended up watching the Kansas City Chiefs games in the Neighborhood Network in one of the apartments. And little by little, more and more people started congregating during the Chiefs games in this apartment to a point where we would have 10, 12 people, sometimes more tailgate, watching the game, celebrating, getting together ahead of time. We designated this apartment to be The Lucky Apartment because the chiefs always win when we watch the game there. And you know how superstitious fans are, and then something interesting happened,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:43:33):

Ivo, I'm from the Ozarks, southern Missouri. Do I know how superstitious? It's just good sense to just not make those. Don't mess with faith, gosh sakes!

Ivo Ivanov (00:43:42):

Some people might call it good sense. But if you flip Ozark backwards, it’s KRAZO.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:43:51):

Ivo, your wife can testify that I stayed in western Kansas on the dirt road for about 30 minutes because the black cat went by my path.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:44:02):

Do you remember? I dunno if she's ever told you that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:44:04):

Wow. I didn't know that. 

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:44:06):

There were two people, her best friend and her, was in a car with me and a black cat went in front of us and we pulled over and they asked, why'd you stop? And I told them, and we waited there for about 30 minutes till the other next car went by before I took off again. So yeah, I do understand that there are reasons why the Chiefs win, and you got to be mindful that you can't mess around with that.

Ivo Ivanov (00:44:30):

You can't mess mess around. You can't mess around with the Mojo.

(00:44:32):

But yeah, one day we got a phone call in the apartment and he was the Professional Neighbor that, it was the weekend, we were about to watch the game and the Professional Neighbor said, “can I come too?” So we were joined by the Professional Neighbor and it's all so organic and so natural it just happens. And there we were, this tight knit community, who were one day we believed that we should be paid by the chiefs, by the organization for helping them win game after game after game. And we firmly believe we contribute to the team. But it is a beautiful thing to watch, to see this idea, this concept unfold in front of my eyes and become such a beautiful, harmonious coexistence and support system. Just Fantastic. 

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:45:30):

You're right. But I'm telling you, we've gotten it wrong before, too. I mean, part of getting it right includes getting it wrong, not getting some of the principles down or not keeping your eye on how things work the best way. But I'll tell you one thing. For example, you lived behind the Iron Curtain and you gave a beautiful story that everybody sort of, regardless of their mean or maybe their means of the class, like a doctor or a garbage collector, they all kind of had some equal standing.

Ivo Ivanov (00:46:04):

Yes. Financially pretty much the same.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:46:07):

Yeah. Well, the thing is, that's not true in our country. Remember I told you that we had the people that we wanted to live there didn't have the financial means to live there. They didn't meet the means test to qualify to live there.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:46:29):

So GoodLife paid a subsidy for everyone so that they could, and the reason I'm saying that is not to say, oh, that's cool about GoodLife. Actually, I want to tell you something. We didn't exactly do that because I mean we wanted to have people have better housing,

(00:46:49):

But we didn't do that for that reason, specifically. The reality is that that neighborhood was selected because it had a collection of caregivers that we knew lived there. It had nurses that lived there. It had amenities that lived there. We knew that we could hire staff that would like to work there. The truth of the matter is that it was cheaper for us to provide a subsidy for people to live in a nicer place than it was for us to figure out how to get all those resources I just talked about to places that nobody wanted to be in. Everything about the payment philosophies and the planning philosophies are just not exactly in keeping, not just with best practice, but also and even cost. I mean, for example, Professional Neighbors, it's like, well, Mike, how do you pay for people's housing? How do you afford to do that? Because getting set revenue from different sources and everybody knows that, but the truth is by having people live there, then there was some other benefits for that, one of which is that housing to them was a tax-free stipend because it was requirement of the job,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:48:10):

Number two, since they lived there, I only had to play them at night if I deployed them to support somebody. And sort of occasionally, I only had to pay them for the time that I used them. I didn't have to pay them to be on call because it wasn't required. I was able to leverage the method of service delivery to fill gaps in care. So I didn't have to put somebody waiting for a need because I could deploy them. So my point is, we were able to deliver care more cost effectively because of how it was designed, and that included paying more for housing. The truth is it's kind of like looking at a car and saying, that's really, you got a little bit more expensive engine, but it's so much more efficient. It is like, oh,

Ivo Ivanov (00:49:08):

Expensive is cheaper sometimes. Yeah,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:49:10):

Well there's components of care. You've got housing, you've got transportation, you got inclusion costs, and you've got staffing costs and all these different costs. Housing is not the biggest cost.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:49:22):

Yet, we're making decisions solely on the cost of housing. And people can say, well, they can't afford to live there, so they got to live at this other place. Well, yeah, but that's the cheapest part of the cost. Now, because of that decision, I have to get staff working shifts cause I can't get them to live there. They may not even qualify to live in that section eight housing project. I've got to figure out how to get nurses to go there. They have no amenities that I wanted. So I've got to now transport them to the amenities. You go all that stuff and you can sit there and say, well, okay, that's a lot of money. So why are we making decisions on the smallest cost item out of all of that?

(00:50:08):

It didn't. So we did all that stuff differently and there's a whole science, there is a whole science behind that, and we were able to afford a subsidy because we were cost-effective on all of that. But the bigger issue on all of that was we didn't start with all of that. We just said, where do we want to live these lives for this group? And as a consequence of that and listening to people like Doug Price who gave us advice, we realize all of a sudden there's these other people who already lived there that we weren't serving. I mean, Ivo, when you look at I/DD as a field, I can serve more people in a five block region, 15 minutes from my office than I could in the state of Kansas if I only serve people with I/DD. I'll give you an example. A good friend of mine has some software capabilities and he looked at heat mapping. Neat.

(00:51:15):

There's software out there that looks at demographics. I mean, there's a lot of things that you can learn about neighborhoods that I didn't know about that exists. For example, you can actually look at the age of people in various postal zip codes, which gets down to the absolute neighborhood level. You can tell the economic realities of them. Within a 15 minute deployment of where I sit today, there is a circle that I can draw around a community, a series of people living within a 15 minute deployment. There's a 15 minute deployment. If you get right in the heart of the circle and work to the edges of it, that's going to be about 5,000 people. 35% of them are aging adults. Think about that. So you already know there's a group of people who are living in organic living arrangements and in neighborhoods or in the area that has churches, it has grocery stores. You know where this is. I mean, it's got every amenity, it's got parks, it's got all this stuff you ever wanted right there. Ivo, they don't even know each other exist.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:50:23):

So I would tell you this is the opposite of what we were looking at, is like, I need to figure out a way to create a sense of community there. And if I can, we got all the elements for another Norman Rockwell scene. They got all the parts of it, but they're just not working together. They're not connected, and there's got to be ways to do that. And I've talked with different people about how you create electronic neighborhoods through e-neighbor-like approaches and how you create a sense of belongingness. How do you organize a neighborhood. They have all the parts to it. They're not organized. And I give you that example of the people who need care. One of the elements of lack of organization is everybody who needs care pretends they're on an island

(00:51:14):

And that the care is just for them. That would be like Uber saying that everybody has a driver specifically for them, and that's it. There's no community of drivers. There's just you got a caregiver and that's it. And so, of course, when that caregiver turns over, then you've got a gap of care. There's no solution for that. There's no sharing, there's no no organization. This is why assisted living still prospers today because they've taken a facility and they've organized the care where a core cohort of staff can support a large number of people who have intermittent needs. And as you know, we wanted to do that very same thing in a neighborhood. So that's what we're doing. So we've created Neighborhood Networks, and by the way, they are already in that 15 minute deployment circle that I just talked about. We already have one and soon another Neighborhood Network in that circle, but there's the rest of the people in that circle and they don't have that same network. So here's the new vision, and that is: create the neighborhood and then maybe even a couple of them and then let that neighborhood filter out into that entire circle and offer what we are calling “Safety Net Services”. So think of a neighborhood, a safety net for all the people in it, a sense of neighborhood-layer, and then hopefully that blue zone starts shining with that whole thing.

(00:52:53):

And so we're able then to deliver care for so many people in a very small geographic environment where the rest of the people are trying to do the same number of people, but across the entire state. 

Ivo Ivanov (00:53:07):

You know, philosophically, it sounds so logical and relatively simple, but actually a lot of thinking and planning goes into it. You came up with a brilliant formula that is sort of the backbone of the Neighborhood Network that involves a well-selected neighborhood and the technology, which is a really, really important component of this deployment infrastructure that you've created 

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:53:39):

Professional Neighbors, professional caregivers. And we even now have the manager director of the Neighborhood Network. They live in the same neighborhood too. Everybody needs to live there. That's all kind of a requirement now.

Ivo Ivanov (00:53:50):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:53:51):

Then the technology to holds that glue together. So we're creating a sense of belonging by the platform of technology on that. But then there's more. There's websites, there's events, there's both the science part of it and the Norman Rockwell scenes that you've got to create in that. Remember that first million dollars that we got?

Ivo Ivanov (00:54:13):

Yes.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:54:14):

Yeah. Well guess what, Ivo, we got another million dollars to do this.

Ivo Ivanov (00:54:18):

Unbelievable.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:54:23):

And not from that same person. I'm not at liberty to say, but we got a grant to take our Neighborhood Networks and fuel 'em up and create a Safety Net across a 15 minute deployment and then literally turn that into a larger community of organized care in the context of a normal everyday living community that's just filled with resources. I want to get the caregivers from the same place. I want to get the people we support. I want the diversity of anybody who has a need to live with greater independence. I want everybody in it. If they get something, I still want them to contribute. All of that is now the new mission. And if we can pull it off, which I believe we can, then we have a whole new model of how you can create neighborhood support systems that are literally amenity of a well-selected community and make that something that we can improve the lives of everybody.

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:28):

Yeah,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:55:30):

It sounds kind of like very lofty, but you know what I think about BHAGs [Big Hairy Audacious Goals] and it is intended to be lofty, but I'd rather shoot for the moon and get at least out of the orbit, get at least close then not.

Ivo Ivanov (00:55:49):

Listeners, Go on our website and check out pictures of the Neighborhood Network because these are amazing, amazing neighborhoods. There is not a single Neighborhood Network that doesn't have spectacular amenities. And we talked about blue zones and how important exercise is not a single Neighborhood Network we have that doesn't have a spectacular workout facility, great clubhouse, swimming pools, beach volleyball, tennis opportunities, and

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:56:27):

We didn't develop any of those things.

Ivo Ivanov (00:56:29):

No, but we selected those particular places because they had those amenities.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:56:37):

Yes, Ivo remember, we also have become part of small towns where the town becomes the neighborhood because it already is. It's like my hometown where it already had one. So you can just organize the need in that town and hold it together just like you do in an urban area. There's no difference between the two. The styles are a little different and your strategies might be a different, but the outcome is trying to create an interdependence and ability to contribute and all those kind of things that they do. Get the technology platform in there and stop looking at everybody like they're on a care island that they're literally, everything's about them for them there. And as if nothing else exists, when you know right down the street there's somebody else that has a need, you can't deliver care anymore that way because there's no way to have an infrastructure large enough to be able to support needs on-demand and fill only the gap and not have to just staff somebody, shift staff to be there just in case somebody has a need. You got to have all those things to solve that problem.

Ivo Ivanov (00:57:46):

Speaking of shift staff, I wanted to mention something else that is, I think, very, very important. So last week I was at a birthday. And it was of a friend of mine who lives in the Neighborhood Network and receives services in the Neighborhood Network. So what's important is that the birthday was his 33rd birthday and he became part of the Neighborhood Network when he was 23. So that's 10 years,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:58:11):

Isn't it something?

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:14):

10 years. And he's incredibly happy to be there and he can't imagine moving out of the Neighborhood Network. He's part of it. And also I noticed something else. People just love it there. They don't move out. There's no turnover and there's no staff turnover. You mentioned the Professional Neighbors and managers now live there and they love it.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:58:37):

One person’s lived there since the day it opened.

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:37):

Since the day it opened.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:58:42):

One professional neighbor has lived there since the day that opened in 2010. I think.

Ivo Ivanov (00:58:44):

And this reminds me about something else you said that if it's only about giving, it's not going to be successful. You have to receive something as well. And this industry, the apartment complex industry, their biggest challenge is this crippling interruption of leases and basically turnover of residents. Well, what have we given them? Very, very low turnover. No turnover of leases.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:59:19):

Right. We have affected– because a lot of people have to move out because they can't get the care that they need that's in those communities. But I'll tell you, I think I know who you're talking about.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:59:30):

I don't know if you remember this, but I walked in that you could do it the same into their place. And there is a KU football helmet sitting there with the coach's name signed. I remember walking in there and saying, wow, this is pretty cool. Where did you get that? Oh, he lives in here.

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:50):

Yes,

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:59:51):

We got to know him.

Ivo Ivanov (00:59:51):

That's right.

Dr. Mike Strouse (00:59:52):

Because he would move there and stayed there because he wasn't yet a resident. They got to know each other and that's how he got it. But it is like that's how it works, isn't it?

Ivo Ivanov (01:00:04):

Yeah, it's beautiful. So two birds with one stone, you reduce turnover in the staff turnover and you reduce turnover in the leases of the apartment complex, which

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:00:17):

Is win-win. Yeah.

Ivo Ivanov (01:00:18):

Mind blowing. It's a win-win situation.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:00:20):

Well, I'll tell you though, the one thing I'm learning, and I'll end with this, is that doing just one population in the Neighborhood Network, even if it's in the context of supporting a normal typical community, isn't as useful as providing silo-free care to anybody that has a need because seniors are highly desired by developers to stay there.

(01:00:44):

I remember one of the developers tell me, seniors pay the rent on time and they don't tear up the joint. And I remember saying that it's like, okay, if I serve a whole bunch of seniors, I might also serve people who have a little bit more disruptive nature to them. They're going to be a little bit more tolerant of a few disruptions. If you serve a whole lot of people, that's super valuable for the developer. So you got to package that together so that you protect everybody and give everybody an ability to live there. So these like things you learn like bits and fits across time, but by golly, at the end of the day, if we create a little bit of a light colored blue zone, I'll be pretty happy

Ivo Ivanov (01:01:24):

Powder blue zone.

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:01:28):

And if I have the ability to go visit the six Blue Zones, Ivo, and maybe you can deduct that from my taxes because I have made such a point about how important they are for me learning this, then my life will be complete.

Ivo Ivanov (01:01:42):

That will take a lot of traveling to Japan, Greece, Italy, And so on. 

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:01:44):

And so now I way to deduct that from my taxes, potentially. We'll see about that

Ivo Ivanov (01:01:57):

I don't know. Excellent, excellent. This was the quest for the good life with Dr. Mike Strouse, the only man who was able to turn Jackson Pollock into Norman Rockwell. 

Dr. Mike Strouse (01:02:07):

Be a good human, Ivo. 

Ivo Ivanov (01:02:09):

We want, yeah, we want to remind our listeners that our inability to remain concise is completely deliberate. Also, we want to remind them to be good humans. This episode was produced by Megan Olafson and recorded at The GoodLife University Studios. Sound editing and sound engineering were provided by me, your co-host with the co-most Ivo Ivanov. Together, we thank you for listening and promise you that The Quest for the Good Life will continue next time.