Stellar Senior Living is a management company that operates 36 senior living and skilled nursing communities across multiple states. With hundreds of employees spread across dozens of locations, creating consistency and alignment was a major challenge until they implemented EOS® as their business operating system.
We spoke with Maddison Klitgaard, Stellar’s in-house EOS® and operations specialist, about how EOS® transformed their operations from chaotic fire-fighting to strategic growth, and how Strety became the platform that made it all possible across their complex multi-location business.
Can you talk about the common challenges you see in the senior living industry that EOS® helps address?
The biggest thing that I’ve seen in the industry is the constant chaos. It’s an emotionally charged environment — you’re supporting families, and caring for aging adults who may feel like every issue is an emergency. It’s easy to fall into a reactive mindset, constantly putting out fires and never looking beyond what’s right in front of you, which I feel like EOS® really combats.
They talk in EOS all the time about climbing the tree. And usually in senior living, that’s not the case. You are solving what’s right in front of you and not looking at long-term solutions. But if you come up with a true solution to one problem, it can typically be applied across multiple issues and departments.
Another challenge is the siloed nature between the different critical departments at your average senior living facility. Typically you have your executive director, (essentially the CEO). A business office manager (known as a BOM) who handles HR and accounting. A maintenance director, taking care of the building, your clinical team with a nurse and clinical administrator, a chef, housekeeping supervisor, and life enrichment/activities.
The departments can feel so separate from each other, which creates a strong “every man for themselves” mentality. What does the maintenance director care about what’s happening on the clinical side with the nurse? EOS helps break down those silos through structured meetings, shared goals, and a unified vision that brings everyone onto the same page.
Finally, there’s team health. In senior living and healthcare in general, we have incredibly high turnover rates. It’s demanding work, both physically and emotionally, especially on the clinical side. It’s not fun, it’s hard, and a lot of the time thankless. If you don’t have a team to support you, people just burn out. EOS builds stronger leadership teams, improves communication, and fosters a culture of accountability and support. When teams feel aligned and heard, retention and morale naturally improve.
How did Stellar come across EOS®?
One of our owners, Adam Benton, is part of a YPO group of entrepreneurs and business owners. Through that group, he met an EOS implementer and they started talking about EOS, and it immediately sparked his interest. He read Traction and thought, “This is exactly what we need… and I think we can bootstrap it ourselves.”
So we self-implemented at our corporate office about three years ago. Adam was especially excited about the structure it could bring to our meetings. We’d be more efficient, focused, and accountable and actually move the needle towards our ultimate goals. It was rough going, as it always is for a business newly running on EOS, but we got there slowly and started to see results. We were more effective and able to see a lot more traction in our goals. We were finally working on the right things, aligned around our vision, and seeing real progress.
How did you track your EOS implementation when you first got started?
When we first started implementing EOS® at our corporate office, we used an EOS® software that was still in beta — and free. We thought, “You can’t beat free,” so we went with it and used it for nearly three years.
It worked well enough for our internal team of about 60 employees. The interface was simple and easy to navigate, but there were bugs and recurring issues. Since we were only using it at the corporate level, we could tolerate the occasional glitches — it was free, after all.
But when the software moved to a paid model without any tiered pricing, we had different expectations. If we were going to pay a substantial amount, we needed more reliability, more features, and better support.
More importantly, as we prepared to roll EOS® out to the senior living communities we support and manage, we knew we needed a more dependable and polished solution. We couldn’t take a chance on a tool that might not work mid-meeting. That shift is what ultimately prompted us to look for a more scalable and professional platform.
What was your software evaluation process when looking for an EOS platform?
I signed up for free trials with all of them.
The initial one was Ninety, because that’s what many of the EOS Implementers™ I spoke to use and recommend. We loved the capability — it was really robust, you could do a lot with it. But it looks like it’s from the ‘90s.
Because of the nature of our industry, most of our department heads at the communities are deep in the day-to-day. They’re not sitting behind a computer for eight hours a day — we don’t hire or train people for that kind of desk work. So there was concern that using software that wasn’t intuitive would be a barrier to adoption.
We looked at Bloom too, and it was fine — it had the basic capability of the first software we’d used, but still felt a little clunky and limited.
We even talked to our IT department about building our own within Microsoft Teams. And then it was actually funny — both our COO and I stumbled on Strety in a Reddit thread!
What were your initial impressions of Strety?
I signed up for a free trial and said, “Honestly, I love the balance.”
Strety felt like the perfect middle ground. It’s very robust, you can do a lot, but looks very clean and simple to use. I think it’s a good balance between EOS One or Bloom, where it’s very minimalist, and Ninety, which is extremely powerful but overwhelming for our users. After just a bit of self-exploration, I thought, this could really work for our teams.
Then I set up calls with Stephen and Derek from the Strety team, and just talking with them, I thought, “Oh, I’m sold.” Because we’d had frustrations with our prior software’s customer service. I would send off a request and wouldn’t hear back for two months. Once I was working with Derek and Stephen on an issue, when our CEO was breathing down my neck saying “this isn’t working,” and Strety fixed it day-of. They were making my job easier.
From the very beginning, my experience with Strety was hands down the best customer experience I’ve ever had with a software company.
I did maybe a five-minute demo with Derek and then figured out the rest myself using the Strety Help Center. To be able to feel like I became a Strety expert through self-learning talks volumes that it’s a very intuitive program.
What are the biggest differences you see for your team using Strety versus EOS One?
Strety’s breadth of capability is huge.
Because we’re using a franchise model of EOS® — we’re not the standard 100 people or less company, we’re implementing in a more bootstrapped, nontraditional way of doing things— and we wanted a place where we could throw everything, and not worry if the software could handle that complexity. We need to be able to track weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual numbers because we work with investors and owners of these communities. To be able to track those monthly and quarterly numbers that we have to be held accountable to is amazing, and we don’t have to have it in 400 places, scattered across spreadsheets and documents.
The second biggest thing was Strety’s integrations. We’re trying to simplify as much as we can with all of our software. We’re trying to get one platform for everyone, and we’ve chosen Teams.
Strety’s seamless integrations with Microsoft Teams and Outlook made it easy for our teams to use and stay connected to EOS® — even when they have a million things going on, which they always do.
What was your strategy in rolling out EOS to individual communities?
After we gained traction at the corporate office and found an intuitive EOS software solution in Strety, we thought — we should really bring EOS® to our communities. This would help them gain clarity and alignment across department heads, and help cut down on the typical senior living industry chaos.
We introduced EOS at our annual Stellar Summit, which we hold for community leadership. That gave us the chance to explain the “why” behind EOS and generate excitement and buy-in.
From there, I hit the road, traveling to individual communities. We would do three or four communities at a time, bring them into Strety and EOS® one at a time, train them up on the software and obviously on EOS® and L10s™. Once they were up and running and feeling confident, we’d move on to another four or five. We just kept plugging along until all 36 communities were doing it.
How do you organize your Strety implementation between the home office and the many communities you’re managing?
We wanted to maintain strong communication and visibility between our communities and the corporate level, so we chose not to use separate instances. Instead, we’re all operating within one Strety instance, with separate teams set up for each community. Right now we’ve only rolled out EOS to our leadership teams, so per community there’s really only one team. As we grow and want to delineate down to our frontline employees, we may separate them out into different instances.
We do have some communities that are overachievers that have built out their own V/TOs and Accountability Charts, which we love. They should have their own vision. One of the things we appreciate most about Strety is that individual teams can build and own their vision within the platform, rather than just relying on a company-level document.
What did you do to ensure successful adoption when rolling out Strety?
I feel like it’s a mixed bag when you’re rolling out to such a large breadth of users. I saw people that got it in an instant, and I still have people that can’t figure out how to log in. The most effective thing I did was record detailed video trainings. I’d walk through everything — down to the smallest clicks — and invite everyone to attend live. Then I’d pin those recordings in Microsoft Teams, so anytime someone had a question, I could just direct them to the training.
I also had the Strety Help Center easily accessible and said “I promise you any question you could possibly have is in there.” And finally I’d offer hop-on trainings where users would share their screen and I’d show them exactly where to go. Those things were the most helpful in the initial learning curve.
Have you noticed any particular area where you’ve seen the most change since switching to Strety?
Our operational Rocks are significantly better than they were before. Strety makes it so much easier to add milestones, details, and descriptions — it’s just a more robust system overall. I’ve heard multiple times that people love that they can link everything — they can link Rocks to annual goals, Rocks to To Dos, etc.
With Strety, there’s a lot less ambiguity, so there’s more alignment and clarity. From better defined Rocks, we’ve had better success in our solutions. It’s less duct tape, less band aids, more lasting solutions to our issues.
Are you using any of Strety’s features outside of the core EOS tools?
We’re definitely using the HR Center — our director of HR loves it because he’s such a one-on-one meeting advocate. We’re definitely using Strety Projects too, and people love the project management capabilities. .
We’re also loving the engagement surveys. We hold a quarterly all-hands meeting where we go over the V/TO and align on all of our Rocks. I’ve started to run surveys every quarter so we have visibility of our employee net promoter scores and all those metrics, from our leadership group all the way through the corporate team. I’m obsessed with that feature as it gives us clear visibility into team engagement and helps drive continuous improvement.
How has running on EOS® helped Stellar as a business?
Our owner’s vision for EOS® was clear: it would give us a competitive advantage by making our operations more efficient, while also proving that happier employees and residents drive better results. EOS® emphasizes that these elements — team health, retention, resident satisfaction — all contribute to the overall health and profitability of a company. If you don’t have strong retention, it costs you money and limits growth. Everything is interconnected.
The communities that have fully embraced EOS® recognize the critical importance of team health. Their retention rates have skyrocketed — far exceeding industry averages. To put that into perspective, the typical retention rate in senior living is about 44.6%. We went from 57.8% in Q1 2024 to an incredible 90.6% in Q2 2025.
This dramatic improvement not only boosts our bottom line but also elevates the quality of care we provide to residents. EOS® has truly transformed how we operate and succeed as a business.
What advice would you have for other business owners and operators who are curious about starting an EOS® implementation?
My advice? Do it. First of all, just do it. Just start.
I think the hardest thing I’ve found is that people typically want everything to be perfect from the get-go. They want full understanding and perfection. I constantly have to say, “It’s not going to be perfect, because EOS® is breaking habits that we’ve had in the corporate world for so long. It takes time.”
I just say embrace it, do your best, and just go. Just start. Embrace the discomfort. If you’re going to self-implement, give yourself even more grace. It’s going to take you at least three years to start to be like “Okay, we’re starting to rock and roll.” Trust the process. Stay committed.
Thanks, Maddie! To learn more about Stellar Senior Living and their communities, visit their website. If you want to see how Strety can help your multi-location business implement EOS consistently across all teams, start your free trial here or book time with our team for a product tour.
