The Wonderpreneur

Dwayne Clark was standing on a crate washing dishes at the tender age of 7 in an airport restaurant where his Mother, Colleen, was a cook. He grew up without a father. He was, he says, “at the bottom rung of the economic cycle.” The biggest influences in his life were all women: his grandmother, two older sisters, and his mom, who worked two jobs to support the family. Growing up in Lewiston, Idaho, he recalls “doing anything” to make money, including picking up dog excrement, sweeping floors, washing dishes, mowing lawns, and babysitting.

Solid values: Clark credits his mother with instilling in him a solid work ethic.

Photo courtesy of Aegis Living

“Deep down, I was angry that I didn’t have the things the other kids had,” recalls Clark, whose mother once stole potatoes from her workplace to feed her family potato soup for a week. “I didn’t have a father that could teach me how to change the spark plugs on a car, or a dad who would teach me how to box.”

Clark today is the founder and CEO of Bellevue-based Aegis Living, a 3,000-employee company that offers independent and assisted living, and memory care. Clark is also a bestselling author who has written several books. He is a producer and playwright who founded True Productions, where he produced the documentary Full Court: The Spencer Haywood Story, and served as executive producer for the film Big Sonia. He created The Potato Soup Foundation, a nonprofit that helps Aegis line staff through times of crisis; D-1, a nonprofit that offers mentorship to underprivileged youth; and is the owner of Queen Bee Café, a café and crumpet shop that gives 100% of its profits to local charities.

Meeting the Pope.

Photo courtesy of Aegis Living

“Oftentimes people have this view of the CEO that they dropped out of the sky and hit the ground rich, successful, unfettered, perfectly coiffed,” Clark says. “Boy, that sure wasn’t true for me. I’m able to relate better to the guy who’s washing dishes, or the care manager who’s wiping bottoms, or the nurse that’s holding the hand of a person who’s dying. I’ve done all those things.”

Clark and his wife, Terese, have traveled to 89 countries exploring different healing and wellness practices. Meet Dwayne Clark, in his own words:

I didn’t have the resources to have the coolest stuff that the other kids took for granted. I was angry about that, and I rebelled in essentially three ways: I would skip school, I would get into fights, and I would race cars.

Aegis now operates more than three dozen senior-living facilities.

Photo courtesy of Aegis Living

I was never a guy that stole anything. I had no criminal intent, but I was a juvenile delinquent of a sort, and it culminated in a moment when I had to look at myself and feel embarrassment. I had to take stock in my ethics and morals and make the choice to leave delinquent behaviors behind.

There was a time when we had no food in the house and no money. Now I look back at that with love. It tied us together and it inspired me to want a better life for my children and my grandchildren.

My mom would come home at night with burns on her arms. There was grease and gravy splatters all over her white uniform. The work took a toll on her body, and we didn’t have health insurance.

I think when you suffer, you crave for it to have meaning. Please don’t let it be suffering for suffering’s sake.

My sisters used patterns to make their dresses. I imitated them, and to this day I still love design.

When I was 14 and drawn to buying bell-bottom pants and platform shoes, what I was doing was declaring that I wanted to be different. I used fashion to distinguish myself from the rest. Fast forward and apply that to business. Every great CEO in the universe is looking for ways to be distinct. Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz, John Nordstrom, Bill Gates. They asked themselves, what can I improve on here? What can I fix?

I simply do not conform well, and I don’t think any great CEO is looking to conform. They don’t want to be like the rest. They are rebels at their core. Uniqueness is differentiation, and sometimes it is also a rebellious act.

I got into senior living in an unusual way. It was a dare from my older sister who was working in government representing seniors, and on the board of a leisure care community. At the time I worked in the criminal justice system at a maximum-security prison in Walla Walla. I carried a gun and went through Washington station training. I was on a tactical unit that would disrupt people that were taken hostage.

I was a very different person. I was about to go to law school to become a famous criminal defense attorney. My sister thought that was a dumb idea. She knew I did not like working with criminals. She suggested I respond to a recruiter’s call at an assisted living company.

Suddenly, something shifted in me. I wanted to succeed at this. So, I spent every waking minute that I wasn’t working secretly shopping senior communities and calling their retirement living competitors. This is 1985, so I used the microfiche at the library to read about the origins of retirement homes.

Likely, no one grows up wanting to go into senior housing, but when it occurred to me that I had a distinct vision as to how I wanted to embrace our older selves, there you go. I started building that vision.

The industry was dismal. Huge room for improvement. From the research, I built a notebook. It was a bit of a manual, but it also included programmatic ideas, competition, and a deeper look at the industry at large.

When the recruiter and I met, it was one of those cursory fake interview sorts of things. About 12 minutes passed and it was clear they were about to send me on my way.  I picked up my little backpack and asked them if I could show them something. Sure, they said. So, I pulled out the notebook and started sharing what I had discovered about what their competitors were doing and ideas for their own operations.

They hired me and gave me the opportunity to work for what was a truly phenomenal company. Eventually, I was recruited away by the executive vice president of a company called Sunrise, which later became the largest senior housing company in the world. I was with them for five years.

Likely, no one grows up wanting to go into senior housing, but when it occurred to me that I had a distinct vision as to how I wanted  to embrace our older selves, there you go. I started building that vision.

Aegis Living facility in Laurelhurst.

Photo courtesy of Aegis Living

One day, my wife was in the next room listening to Oprah while I had my head in our business plans. I was within earshot and found myself noticing how Oprah was consciously responding to her audience’s every human need. If someone was lonely, she had them meet an expert in dating. If someone wanted to lose weight, she brought in a nutrition expert.

This is how she built her audiences’ loyalty. With loyalty you can conquer the world. Right then, while preparing for the annual meeting, I changed course. I decided not to be conventional. Instead, we would have our own Oprah show. The team for sure thought that I had lost my mind.

That ability to connect evolved into the creation of extravagant conferences for employees that we call EPIC. It stands for “Empower People, Inspire Consciousness.” The goal of the conference is to wake them up to their own needs and uniqueness.

(At EPIC), we’ve had world icons such as Bill Clinton; the President of Mexico, Vicente Fox; Carlos Santana; Sylvester Stallone; Geena Davis; Ashley Judd. We hosted Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox, Macklemore, and the face of the Hells Angels, Sonny Barger. All I asked was that people open themselves, and witness a vulnerable, honest conversation. I wanted to provide a lesson in how to use curiosity to evolve your perspective.

I want our team to take time for themselves. I lead a meditation to help this process. I ask that people go inside themselves, with a notepad close by where they can write down the things that they hear their bodies saying. Sometimes there will be 27 things that they never would have known were inside them. They had been suppressing them.

Another powerful session we often do is called the touch exercise. Everybody puts their head down on their desk like in first grade. Then we read a sentence aloud such as “touch someone who’s changed your life”; or “touch someone who makes you laugh”; or “touch someone who you would trust to raise your children.” These little touches are like lightning bolts. People get emotional and some even start weeping.

Our corporate office truly captures the soul of our mission. We have a life clock. It began at the average age of a human and from there it counts backward digitally. I’ve seen people stand in front of that with their bottom lip quivering. I’ve seen others weep. When I walk by the clock, I think, wow, my life span just got 10 seconds shorter. Anyone who walks by and lets the clock impact them is going to instantly be brought into the present moment. That alone could alter their perspective in a valuable way.

We have a “Transform A Life” wall where 40 stories of actions taken in our company wide program to improve a life are recorded and frequently updated. One that is on the wall now depicts the story of Aegis employees coming together to help a woman on Capitol Hill who had no running water. She had been carrying buckets from the neighbors’ houses for five years just to cook, survive, and flush her toilet. The team raised enough money to dig up her backyard and connect her house to the water main, and ultimately that benefits the residents in our communities.

Also at corporate headquarters is a 30-foot-long rope called the Eno that helps you connect with the greater universe and remember that indeed we are one. Upstairs there is a custom motorcycle chopper that was Robin Williams’ favorite bike. The motorcycle is surrounded by images of rebellious CEOs. Howard Schultz, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others are dressed in leather to celebrate nonconformity. It is near another vignette with a touching movie clip of Robin Williams talking about the end of life.

My favorite aspect of this business is making sure the architecture of our buildings lives up to my imagination. For example, we just opened a new property in Ballard, and will use a Scandinavian theme. It incorporates the fishing and boating culture of the Vikings. I asked the architects, “How about you build me a Viking ship?” They looked at me like I had been on a brandy binge for five days.

Another thing we do differently is that we hire senior management out of multibillion-dollar companies. These managers do not know the assisted living sector, and I do not need them to. What they bring are new ways of thinking.

The first Baby Boomer is about to be 80 years old and, as it turns out, the average person enters a retirement home at about 82 to 84. So, by 2028, the demand for senior living charts like a hockey stick.

When a company is growing out of control you can’t guarantee quality, so I’m not allured into being the biggest or becoming a name brand or becoming known on Wall Street. I am not in the commodity business. I take care of human lives.

The clientele we serve is a 55-year-old daughter who is handing us their mother, and saying, “Please take care of the most precious person in my life. She is my world.” We take her seriously, and you can’t do that well if you are building 20 communities a year. I’ve done this for 39 years, and we have 38 buildings.

My own mom lived and died in one of our buildings. Several of our staff are also customers whose parents live here. Six of our board members have or had their parents here. It is this insider vantage point that informs our work.

We are installing AI biometrics so that we can see the movements of the staff and residents, and understand the length of time between, for example, when someone calls for assistance and when they receive care. New technology helps us be better.

I want our 84-year-old residents to eat whatever they want. Hey, you’re 84 years old. If you want chicken fried steak and feel joy in this moment, then great. We have a floating meditation tank at corporate headquarters to help employees be their best. We use what works.

When a company is growing out of control you can’t guarantee quality, so I’m not allured into being the biggest or becoming a name brand or becoming known on Wall Street. I am not in the commodity business. I take care of human lives.

Heart attacks, Alzheimer’s, strokes, and cancer have one thing in common: They are all diseases of inflammation. We use infrared beds in our facility because it effectively diminishes inflammation. Not everyone is going to jump into the infrared bed — probably just 2% right now. But we think when they get around to trying it, especially the 100-year-olds, they will be grateful we offer it.

My mom, who had Alzheimer’s, had a lot of flair and feistiness, and lived in Aegis for six years. I wrote the book My Mother, My Son as a tribute to her. The book was bought by Hollywood, so it is my hope that the story could reach even more of the people who need it.

I kept believing she didn’t have Alzheimer’s. I believed she was just not drinking enough water, or her thyroid was acting up, or some other lame excuse. When it is right in front of you, sometimes it is too close to see.

When people get sick in this country, we often refer to them as their disease, the cancer patient or the diabetic. We overlook the richness of experience and personality that underlies that person. We forget their lives and extraordinary contributions.

This is never truer than when facing memory loss. You watch a person slowly recede from the identity they’ve manifested for so long. Our society needs an antidote to this disease of invisibility. I hope the book helps by making at least one life visible.

I enjoy making art. Sometimes these endeavors come together with Aegis Living or align with my philanthropy. For example, my first sculpture exhibit will be in Capri, Italy, this September. The proceeds from the sale of those bronzes will go to charities for orphans. Six years ago, when I first started taking sculpture classes, I certainly never thought that it would lead to raising money for orphans in a foreign country.

There are always good things in the works at our film studio. It is an effective way to support social justice, as it allows important stories to be heard by larger audiences. Freedom’s Path is a recent film I’m involved in. It is a civil war story that received a 90% positive rating and two thumbs up. Another important human rights story is a film under production by (former Seahawks defensive end) Michael Bennett.

For at least a decade, people have been asking me to write a guide for those who have aging parents. I am going to call it Where’s My Purse? and it will cover everything from fraud, elderly dating, early signs of Parkinson’s, to such things as when to discuss retiring the car keys.

The last time my wife and I were in Italy I saw, as I always do, multiple generations enjoying their time with one another. It is an incredibly beautiful sight. It is rare to see in America.

I enjoy making art.

Photo courtesy of Aegis Living

I know the power of spending time with our elders because the last 40 years of my life has been shaped by them. I have come to call them “The Oracles,” because these older humans emanate a sense of sage peacefulness. They are full of wisdom, under- standing, and knowledge. They built the bridges, roads, theaters, and invented the incredible world we now exist in.

I live in a state of wonder and appreciation that I am surrounded by oracles rather than criminals. I worked with what could be called the worst of the worst populations, and now I work with the best of the best.

I’ve decided to interview 100 101-year-olds for a new book. They have 10,000 years of knowledge between them. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if this turned into a docuseries? I want to share the serenity that flows from these beautiful elderly. Then, everyone could witness how these oracles truly are the treasures of society.

When I’m an 85-year-old Aegis resident, I don’t want to be known as the guy who had a big company. I want to be known as the guy that impacted people’s lives for the better and helped them be healthier.