September '07 - Life in the Fast Lane

(U.S. 1)

For Princeton resident Grazina Crisman, a family emergency turned out to be the necessity that became the mother of her new invention: www.SeniorsA2Z.com, a website that offers a wide ranging indexed resource directory of categories to interest seniors and their families.

“About a year and a half ago my husband’s 91-year-old aunt, who lives in Washington State, suddenly took ill and needed a bit of help,” Crisman says.  “In preparation to go out and visit her, we thought she might need a bit of home care.  I tried to gather some in formation so that we would have a productive visit.”

So she did what every modern person would do – she looked for information on the Internet.  “I did a Google search and got literally hundreds of thousands of references,” says Crisman. “But what I was looking for was specific resources, not an article about aging.  I wanted information on where I could take my aunt and what were her options in Washington State.  This problem just spoke to me.”

As a long time professional organizer, Crisman knew that there had to be a better way to sort and categorize such potentially vital information.  “A lot of the time when people are in the position of searching for care or services for an aged parent they are frantic and in a hurry and don’t have the time to sift through such a pile of information,” she says.  “I knew that a problem for me could also cause a problem for a lot of other people.”

So she decided to start a simple step-by-step process to organize the seemingly endless amount of information.  “I like to organize things and am at heart an operations and process person,” she says.  “But soon I realized that this is an organizing project of a lifetime.  I decided to create a business that will be the comprehensive go-to source for all the sectors combined – public, for-profit, and not-for-profit resources and services for seniors.”

Officially launched in the spring, the website includes everything from more serious issues like health, financial, senior housing and legal issues for the elderly, to fun activies like travel, education, senior dating, and fitness classes.  “The important thing is that we provide only relevant information to our readers because it is all sourced form our proprietary database of senior care providers and supporters,” says Crisman.

Listings are free, and Crisman is selling ads for $40 to $100 per month.  She has yet to make up her start-up costs but believes that SeniorsA2Z will eventually appeal to a wide variety of services and product providers.

She lists public services as well as commercial services and non-profits.  “I would be providing a disservices if I didn’t have all three,” she says.  “Truly a care-giving solution, nine times out of ten times, will consist of all three.”  She currently has more than 3,000 listings – about 2,000 that focus primarily on New Jersey and the remaining 1,000 aimed at other states. 

By presenting one template, through which everyone sees the information, she makes it easy to look for information on state websites.  “People flail around on state websites because they have so much information,” she says.  “I am trying to present a consistent format, so every state will be presented in the same way.”

In addition to using basic categories, Crisman organizes her website with something she calls Life Events.   “If a parent is leaving the hospital, for instance, I tried to anticipate all the related topics – nutrition service, transportation, wheelchairs – that might be needed,” she says.  “I then listed them just to get them going.”

While Crisman, who declines to specify her own age, admits that she is not an expert in senior care, she is also quick to point out that she doesn’t need to be.  “I think of myself as the Yellow Pages of senior information,” she says.  “I don’t provide any of the services myself.  I point to those who do.”

The thought of finding a home nursing services may seem to have little in common with finding a good yoga class for seniors, but Crisman says that the processes are really very similar.  “If you want to buy a book, everyone knows about Amazon.  But if you need help for seniors, there is no comparable go-to source.”

Crisman explains that SeniorsA2Z really serves three types of audiences:  Caregivers (typically the baby boomers) who are caring for their elderly relatives, the actual services providers and the seniors themselves.  “Of course I qualify that by saying younger seniors because they are more tech savvy,” says Crisman.  “If you are young at heart, healthy, you will proactively seek out travel opportunities or maybe ongoing work opportunities.  If you are older and need some help no one wants to psychologically admit to that.  So we rarely see people needing help who seek it out themselves.  It is others who seek it out for them.”

Although Crisman eventually hopes to have her business serve the entire nation, she says so far she has New Jersey nearly covered and is ready to branch out into neighboring states.  “I started in New Jersey because it is my backyard, and we have a elderly population,” she says.  “But the ultimate goal is to be a national services because that is where the real value will come into play, because families are so spread out.  If you have a parent in another state you may find that you have to call a state agency and they wind up sending you a catalog.  Then you have to wait for the catalog to get to you.  When you are in that state of mind, well, that is just not fast enough.”

Crisman has already posted the basic public starting points for every state.  “But I lack the local information.  You can’t do it all at once.”

While the odds of building a successful Internet business are generally not encouraging, Crisman already has some aces up her sleeve.  These include experience, temperament, and a home life steeped in business success.

A first-generation Lithuanian-American, York, Crisman grew up in Queens and Long Island.  Her father was an engineer, and her mother worked for the Federal Reserve in the currency exchange department.  “I remember being seven years old and my mother would tell me to go clean my room,” she laughs.  “Now my room was never that disorganized, I have to say, but I would take everything out of my bookcases and reorganized it.  Then I’d take a look at it and step back.  I’d ay to myself, even at that age, now that is a good-looking bookcase and look how well everything is organized.  So it is in my blood.  The process end of things is a forte of mine.”

She went to Hofstra University, Class of 1974, earned her MBA from St. Johns University, and lived in Manhattan for a number of years before moving to Princeton in 1990.  Her husband, Doug, en entrepreneur himself, formerly ran Cognetics Corp., and now operates a company called Oldhorses, an enterprise that focuses on working whit business owners to tangibly get to the next step (U.S. 1, March 25, 2005).  Recently Crisman sold the assets of a forth company, ITG Competency Group LLC – a provider of off-the-shelf job competency models and implementations services – to Massachusetts based Salary.com.

Grazina Crisman has her own impressive resume of business acumen, having worked for over 25 years in corporate America or such firms as Wang, Oracle, and Logic Works, as well as in small business.  As a professional organizer, she also has had a consulting company, Productivity Shoppe (U.S. 1, July 28, 2004).  “I started out as an analyst and programmer in a big corporation and quickly went up the ranks,” she says.  “I was always working in the area of supporting customers and sales organizations.  That’s why I am very comfortable dealing with the public as well as with different levels of corporate life.”

Another point in Crisman’s favor is that the future looks exceedingly bright for businesses that operate with seniors in mind.  According to AARP, 76 million Americans are over 50 years old, and every 50 seconds someone new joins that group.  As the baby boomer generation continues to age, senior services will become all the more important for people.  “The first of the boomers are turning 65 years old in 2011 and some are already calling it a ‘senior tsunami,’” says Crisman.  “Seniors will be swelling the ranks of digitally savvy for a long time to come.”

While some may balk at her description of herself as a professional organizer, Crisman says that it is just her way of using her talents.  “I’ve learned over the years that organizations of information is not natural to everybody and that happens to by my strength,” she says.  “People would ask me, why do you think you can do it? I responded, well, why couldn’t I?  I’m comfortable dealing with the range of businesses – from big companies with wonderful resources to the entrepreneur, the single person provider.”

When the idea came to her a year and a half ago, she was initially surprised that no one else had thought of it before.  “It is a daunting task, and I think that is why people have shied away from it,” she says.  “Some sites do small parts of what I do.  For instance there are many sites that list resources for senior housing.  But that’s usually where they stop.  I’m the first to deal with the issue comprehensively, and that is because I am passionate about organizing and presenting information.”
The feedback has been encouraging, says Crisman: “It is very exciting.  I knew that I was doing something good.  But to have a positive impact on peoples lives that I don’t even know – that has come as a real surprise to me.”