Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Sorina Tanase, Senior Housing Specialist & Real Estate Investor Advocate

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Interested in high-growth investment opportunities in real estate and senior care?As a real estate professional and owner of established assisted living facilities, Sorina Tanase offers a rare, inside perspective on two of the most resilient and rewarding industries. Whether you’re looking to expand your real estate portfolio or explore the business potential of residential senior care, Sorina provides strategic insight backed by hands-on operational experience. Connect today to learn how you can invest in purpose-driven, profitable ventures with long-term impact.Learn more: http://tanasegroup.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-sorina-tanase-senior-housing-specialist-real-estate-investor-advocate

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with this Serena Tenase, who's a senior housing specialist and real estate investor advocate. Servino, welcome to the program. Thank you, Mike, and thank you for having me.

Excited to be here. Yes, you're welcome. I'm looking forward to learning how you serve your clients. Get us started a little bit with your background and story, and what has your entrepreneurial journey been like to this point in your career? Well, originally, I am from Romania. I moved to the United States back in 2002 and started my first business, my first care facility and then got my real estate license and I've been doing both at the same time

for, I want to say, 20, 21 years now. Neat. What led you to that specific field? It was a growing industry at the time. I didn't know too much about it, but I had a very good friends who were doing it for a while and looking into it, doing my own research. research, I saw that this is definitely an industry that is never going to go away. We, as human beings, always going to need care and a place to live. And that's what I've been doing. And it proved very, very successful for me.

Yes, and I'm sure you've seen ups and downs in the markets. And when you see those market drops, what are you advising your clients on? from your experience regarding, you know, the market will come back or we need to be careful. How do those forecasts work? Yeah, it's like a two-fold here, Mike. Just a regular residential purchase. I would definitely have a certain type of advice. As far as a care facility, they don't see a downside, you know, even

the real estate in a, you know, even when we had here in the U.S. back in 08, 09, the crash, the care facilities, business and property, they maintain their value for a just regular buyer who is interested just in selling and buying a property. The advice, obviously, would be to, depending on the circumstances, either wait, either, you know, if you can wait it out, either, you know, buy now, and so forth. But from a real estate, a standpoint when you think of the care facilities, the value has always been there. Yeah. And most of the time, people just need to buy because of their reasons. So it, you can't really time the market. So if you relocate to a, you know, in another state and you want to buy a house because you sold your other house, you know,

if the market is down, the market's down. If the market's up, the market's up. So I think that sometimes people get too concerned over mortgage interest rates or the market's hot or not, but in reality, just get on back in and just, you know, let the market do what it's going to do. That is very correct. There is never a good time or a bad time to buy real estate, you know, Yes. What is the percentage of your business that you're serving, your clients? Is it typically the care facilities helping people figure that out for their loved ones? Or is it more on the real estate side or is it a good mix between the two?

Definitely a very good mix between the two. Just by being an owner of this type of facilities myself and the industry is very, it's a small world, right? It's a niche. Just by being an operator myself, people know my name and it just so happened that I started selling more and more capabilities, but definitely I would say it's a mix of both. I can't say one is higher than the other.

It's consistent, pretty consistent. Yeah. You know, typically when we're in business, we tend to look for problems to solve for our clients. What typically are the problems you're solving for your clients and what's your competitive advantage on both the care facility side as well as the real estate side? Definitely, I would say no matter what they're buying, it could be for a lot of people, this is probably the biggest purchase they would ever make. And the emotional aspect it's very important, the psychological aspect.

You have to really understand the psychology behind it. And first and foremost, be a good, for lack of a better world, maybe be a good consultant for them, be a good counselor for them, you know, and try to alleviate their worries. I would say that's what sets me apart. This is not about making a sale. This is about understanding where the client is coming from and forming a relationship first.

And after that, everything else is going to come. You know, it's really interesting that you say relationship because so many times in the real estate industry you hear, you know, let's go to the closing. Well, in reality, it's really an opening of a relationship because you're not closing anything. You're opening a relationship for a long-term opportunity to serve those clients.

Yes, absolutely. when people are so emotional and they're vulnerable. This is a, for a lot of them, it's what they just purchase, like I said, that they can make. If they genuinely feel that you're there for them and really fight for them and have their best interests at heart,

it's amazing how much trust they're going to put in you and they're going to follow your advice and how smoothly everything else goes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a really good, mindset to keep in mind. So through your career, it's been over 20 years, I'm sure that there have been challenges or failures that you've experienced, both on the personal side, you know, trying to grow the business. Talk a little bit about some of those roadblocks and hurdles that

you experienced and how you pushed through those. Yeah, there have been, you know, inevitable. There have been situations like this. I'm a strong believer, you know, the saying where there's a will, there's a way. Yeah. So I never saw a, what, and again, whenever a door closed for me, I never saw it. I never thought the mindset was not there. Oh, this is not going to happen. I always look for a solution. So I found the window all this, you know, every time. And I got it sold. I can give you just the short, example here when the market crash we had so many short sales as you know in bank on properties and so forth nobody knew what they were doing and i i was not scared i saw it as an

opportunity i saw it as a learning experience i was so excited about it because everyone was afraid and i'm like okay no let's see how we can handle this let's see what can we learn from this and i've done so many never lost one one two loans on the property three loans bankruptcy you know, you name it, you know, probate cord and so forth, you name it. It has been a challenge because it wasn't easy. You have to wake up like, I don't know, three or four in the morning because everything was on the East Coast and you were to sign a negotiator. And a lot of times, because nobody knew at that time what they were doing,

a lot of the answers didn't make any sense. It would have been so easy. A lot of my fellow agents were just disappointed and gave up. And I always, you know, I pushed through. And I became what they called the queen of the short film at the time. You had to do that by necessity because it was either that or give up. So you pushed through by embracing that, learning how to deal with those challenges. And then you kind of made a name for yourself.

and that becomes very resilient. Yes. You know, in my vocabulary, and I don't think it should be in anyone's vocabulary, there isn't the words or the phrase, I can't, I cannot. It's only I don't want to do this, not I can't do this.

There's a very, very big difference there, and I don't have that in my vocabulary. No, I look at the problem, and I decide, do I want to do it or not, that's a decision that I make, but I never say I cannot do it. Yeah, that's awesome. So talk a little bit about what it took from the standpoint of your approach to those challenges when you noticed them. In the moment, of course, it feels like what a big problem this is. And then you had to have the faith to realize I've done it before. I need to just put one foot in front of the other. How did faith? drive you and fuel you to persevere and and overcome those challenges?

I guess, you know, growing up in the communism, it was an advantage because I use that time to remind myself what it means, what he meant to grow up in those times, the absolute, quote, unquote, prison per se and lack of opportunities and, and, and, and, how blessed I am to be here, the land of opportunity, right? So I don't have the luxury to think differently because I was given, you know, by grace, to be here and I cannot think differently. I have to make the best because I've been, I've seen the worst and there's so many other people who would have wanted to, who would have liked to have this opportunity. And I,

there's no placeful, you know, miners here. Yes, that's a, I think sometimes our faith is bolstered when we look back at our own past and see what difficulties we came out of and how we made it through. And it in, it encourages us to keep on. And then that kind of becomes that self fulfilling prophecy. Yes, because there's a responsibility, at least that I feel, a responsibility to become successful and be an example for other people and especially help people in any way that I can experience, financially, advise, you know, counseling, and so forth. And having that type of energy and that type of mindset.

that is inspiring to people. They want to be around you. And like you said, not to say there haven't been times when you feel down or low, nobody has to see that. You have a talk to yourself. You pull yourself up and you move forward. There's no other way. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. I love it. That makes total sense. So think back on through some of those challenges that you experienced and you persevered through. How did those lead you to even more? success? It was just a burning desire and still is to just make a path for myself. And, you know,

for my son, I've been a single mom for a long time when I raised a child. And I wanted to make sure that my child has all the opportunities that he deserves, doesn't meet anything. doesn't feel like just because, you know, has only one parent, he lacks. So I showed him how to be strong. And I guess that was probably the fuel for me more than the desire to be successful. Yeah. You know, family really does that to us. And I couldn't agree more.

You kind of come up with your mama bear, Papa bear approach and want to take care of the family. And also prevent them from experiencing some of the struggles that you did. Yeah, absolutely. I definitely didn't want him to go through what I went through. And he's going to make, obviously, his choices in life are going to be different and better. And opportunities the same. Mm-hmm. Do you also find that the parenting style that you take with your child carries over into your clients

where you kind of feel like you're giving them some life principles and guidance as well as you're working with them in business? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You describe it exactly. Yes. It's that approach where you know what's good for your client. before they even, you know, say anything. I mean, they come to you.

I want to do this or that, but I'm looking in this area or that area. And you look at them and you know they're not there yet. But you guide them in such a way that they get there sooner rather than later with, you know, compassion and advice and not letting them straight. what I mean, you just are there 100% for them until they realize, okay, yeah, this is actually what I always wanted to do. You actually showed me. I just didn't know how to find it. And also, what you just said there is so key because earlier you said you take that

caring and empathetic approach. And what you just said there was when you know that someone should make a certain decision, but you're not saying you're wrong for feeling this way. here's the right way to feel. You're guiding them, you're teaching, educating, and then when they come to that realization on their own, it becomes a natural decision versus you forced them into something. So I think that that caring approach really does work well for any industry, but especially when you're talking about care facilities, there's definitely caring and empathy needed there. And then that carries over into, you know, when you're working with people for traditional

real estate. Absolutely. And it had a lot of impact on how, like, your point, traditional real estate and the approach with those type of clients, as an operator, you deal with so much emotional, I don't want to call it drama, but it is always very hard for the families to accept that there of one now it's gotten to the point where they have to be admitted in one of these facilities, right? So you have to make them feel at ease, make them understand this is just the next phase and show them the love that you're going to show them the love that you're going to show them the love that. It's okay to do this.

There's a lot of canceling and there's a lot of assurance that you have to. Mostly you have to cancel mostly the families before you do anything for the rest of. Because they probably have a little guilt as well, but yet you need to make that point that it's actually an act of love. Absolutely. Yes, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. You know, through our conversation so far here, it's just evident that you've got. that strong drive to succeed.

Looking back through some of those challenges, would you do anything differently if you had the chance? Maybe one or two, but overall, no. Because everything that I've been through, maybe the person that I am today, it might sound cliche, but that is actually the truth. Sure. Yeah, I hear that so many times.

People realize that I went through a hard time, I learned, I persevered, and I succeeded. And if I didn't go through that, I wouldn't be the person that I am today. So think back through some of those challenges you faced. In your opinion, what are some of the key attributes that people need to realize and overcome so that they can have that personal and professional success? It's very important to think when whatever the challenge is, it's your definition, right, of what might constitute a challenge. You're not a victim. People, a lot, first reaction could be, oh, I'm a victim, oh, why me?

No. You look at it. You look at it, straight in the face, straight in the eyes and say, okay, let's see how. First of all, I'm seeing this as a. learning experience. It doesn't matter. It happens. Let me see.

What have I done wrong? What I can learn from this and how I make sure that this is not going to happen again. But I'm not a victim. This is another chapter in my life or another page in a chapter. Yes. Yes, for sure. So thinking back now of all the struggles you've come through and become stronger from, that's really solidified your purpose.

Talk a little bit about your purpose and what your why is now in your personal and professional life. My why is to definitely to help people, to help them achieve their dream. If I can be a part of their success, that is definitely my why. Because it cannot be put in words or ever described accurately. The feeling when you see somebody that their dream at the time came true. And you made it happen. Yeah. I cannot, I don't know how to describe this.

I'm sure you know what I mean by this. And, you know, I've done that time and time again, every house that they purchase. If they got, I was able to make a deal for them, this is the house that I won. I was in a multiple office situation, whatever the case, and I was able to do it for them. You know, tears, it's just unbelievable that feeling. Yes. So giving and serving and giving value and just making the world a better place, one, one client and interaction at a time. I love that.

Yeah. for sure. Well, Serena, it's been really wonderful learning about your entrepreneurial journey and your drive to success. If someone is interested in reaching out and connecting with you, what's the best way that they can do that? Definitely, they can go to my website and they can book a consultation with me at canatsygroup.com. They can also reach me on LinkedIn. my contact information as far as email and phone number there on my website. And, you know, I'd be happy to help the way I did it so far.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming on. It was a real pleasure talking with you. Same here. Thank you so much for having me, Mike. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.

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