You Can’t Grow Occupancy With an Untrained Team - Day 8

🎙 Episode 8 – You Can’t Grow Occupancy With an Untrained Team 

If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I still putting out fires when I pay grown adults to do this job?”… this one’s for you.

In this episode of Start With Occupancy, I’m reminding you of something most people online forget:

You are not in the real estate business. You are in the service business.
The building is the backdrop. The people are the business. 

We’ll talk about why so many owners don’t have a “care problem” — they have a consistency problem — because their standards live in their head instead of in systems their staff can actually follow.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why “flipping a house into assisted living” is the wrong mindset
• How invisible standards and no feedback loop create turnover
• My VERIFY method for turning expectations into daily behavior
• Real-life examples of a terrible staff interaction (bonus drama 😬)
  and a beautiful one that won the move-in
• Simple micro-trainings and spot checks that protect your culture

Free Resource for This Episode 📝
Grab the “Inspect What You Expect” Staff Clarity Checklist – a practical tool to help you spell out, demonstrate, and reinforce the standards you want in your community.

👉🏽 Link to download the checklist…coming soon

If you’re ready to go deeper and build systems that support your expectations,
join the next Deep Dive Discovery cohort and let’s walk it out together.

Subscribe, share this with another owner, and DM me a screenshot of your favorite episode for a shoutout.

Transcript

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Tiffany 0:00

/Uh huh. Welcome to Start With Occupancy, the podcast for senior living owners, operators, and sales professionals. /Hi, I'm Tiffany, marketing strategist and former corporate baddie who got tired of producing results for wall street and wanted to make a change on main street. /I provide quick tips, idea nuggets, and case studies to help you with proven sales, marketing, and business development strategies along with leadership concepts so that you can inspire change, impact lives, and improve outcomes for the aging, their families and your teams. /I'm committed to equipping you with the tools, the knowledge and resources that you need to excel in your business. /With over /12 years of experience working inside senior living companies, large and small, I've developed a deep passion for advocating for the aging adult and those who care for them, all while driving business growth. /So whether you're already in the senior care industry or maybe you would like to be, if your mission is to serve them, my mission is to serve you. /Join me as we unravel the strategies and tactics that drive success in your business while making a difference in someone's life. /The goal is to touch, guide, and impact the lives of 10 families per month! /Are you with me? It's time to be inspired, gain practical tips and own your future.

Tiffany Updated voice 1:34

Hi! Welcome to Start With Occupancy. I am Tiffany Hill, Allen, your host, and I am excited about finishing this series with a focus because life keeps lifeing for all of us. This has been a really rough year for a lot of us, and the more that I keep pushing ahead, it just seems you just keep getting knocked down and the key is in entrepreneurship and business and life it's not, how you get knocked down, but how you get back up. And so while this series have been a labor of love that I've been working on for, it seems like forever, I wanted to reintroduce you guys to it. So if you haven't heard the prior, recordings, what we're doing is a 21 day all things senior living sales. And this is talking about the sales process, not the marketing process. And the whole point of it is just to help you who are new to this industry who don't know the idiosyncrasies of this industry and you're wondering you how do I do this thing? Okay, great, I'm licensed, but now what? I'm not gonna go over how we get residents, but let's say somebody walks in, what does that look like? You have staff, what does that look like? That is what the series is all about, is the actual sales side of it. And so many people just don't like sales. And what I find is that there's a lot of owners with a lot of heart, but they just don't know how to communicate that to families. and they don't know how to manage their teams because they may have never had to manage one before. even if you're a professional, some professionals, don't manage teams. That's not their gig or wasn't their gig, and now they're forced to because they have a business. If you haven't tuned in to the last seven episodes It is meant for you to binge. That's what the whole idea is that you will be able to, within three weeks binge and you will know a lot more And then after, I actually have a, a workshop training. It will be live it's not a course per se, but it is a cohort based, let's walk together in those six weeks, I almost guarantee you if you have somebody who comes into your community and you have the volume of people who come into your community, with the things that I'm showing you should see a marked increase in your move in conversion. The metric is called, visit to move in. And so if you have people visiting and they're not moving in, then this training is for you. or you don't know how to manage your team because maybe as you're working, you're having, things happen that is preventing people from moving in. Let's say your team drops the ball, that is something else. That is what this is all about. And like I said, if you haven't listened to the last seven, then tune in there. And we are starting today with, number eight. A large part of your business and your business success is going to be the people that you hire because you're in a service business, you're not in the real estate business. We need to take that out of our conversation and our thought process. Yes, you do own real estate, just like a Waffle House, right? You don't think of Waffle Houses as being in the real estate business, but they own so much property because there's waffle houses everywhere. It's the same thing here, right? Because of the nature of your business, you have property, but you did not get into this as a real estate investment. You got into this as a business investment, and that is where I find a lot of people, especially online. Conflate the two. they're like, oh, this is another great way of, flipping your house into an assisted living. Or, this is another great real estate investment. And it's not just online, to be honest. It's on Wall Street too. That is what a lot of these real estate investment trusts are doing. But they are more concerned about the real estate than they are the business of what they're doing. And if you're going to do this, which a lot of 'em are finding out, you've gotta understand people and you've gotta understand how to serve people and serve them well. One of the things that I wanted to, go over and that is a sticking point for many owners that I talk to is, that they are concerned that the standards as a business owner that you have for yourself and for your business aren't being met by your employees. And so therefore, they are frustrated. They're not sure what to do. They're having to let them go and try and find somebody new, which is a whole nother rabbit hole a lot of people do not want to get into. but they meaning you, the owners are so busy that it's hard for you to micromanage and you don't want to micromanage 'cause that never goes well. When I talk to or see staff members of communities, what I hear from them is that they sometimes don't know what you expect and then try to hold them accountable to some, invisible standard that they're just not sure of. They don't know where their goalpost is and families who I talk to feel the inconsistencies of care. They get very frustrated. the staff isn't being completely transparent or honest, or responsive and the staff doesn't know what they should say, what they shouldn't say to families. Again, the inconsistency of care will kill trust. And if you're wanting to build your business, have multiple locations, build your occupancy, it is going to be based on trust and care, visibility and your messaging. So here's the thing is that you want staff that is clearly trained and that is aligned to the standards that you require in your community. And one thing I also find is a lot of people don't know what standards they want in their own community. They haven't even thought about it that far. Consistent service is what families feel that they want the moment they walk in. They want to see staff that enjoys doing their job, that wants to take care of their mom. They want to see staff that, is proud of the things that they do day in and day out. And for owners like yourself, you want to spend less time putting out fires because if you have an incompetent staff, you're constantly putting out fires and you don't have time to grow occupancy. And is it the staff members faults that they have a level of incompetency that you are not able to grow and spread your wings as an owner? You have to really take in consideration of this. Most owners, like many of you don't have a care problem. You have a consistency problem because your expectations were never spelled out, demonstrated, reinforced or held accountable. And these are the four things that I think people miss when they are a leader in an organization, is that you have to be very clear on what you want. You have to show them what you want when they're doing it. You have to reinforce that they're doing the right thing. And if they're not, you have to hold people accountable. It is. It is, this is leadership. And, no great leader is going to allow people, or set people up to fail. That means that if someone is not doing something correct or is misguided, maybe they don't know how to do their job, a good leader's going to say, okay, let's take two steps back and let me show you again. Let me spell this out for you. Do you get it? Are you getting it now? Let me see you do it. You did a great job. That's the exact way I'm looking for it to be done. And if they don't, oh, you tried here, but now you need to do this here, and if you keep doing it this way, then this is what's going to happen. Let's agree that this is an important thing. You may not think that having fluffed out pillows on the sofa when new people are walking through the community is important, but I do. And so every time I come in and those pillows aren't fluffed, then then we're gonna have to sit down and talk about it. You know what I'm saying? Those are some of the things that you want to make sure, and I did that very silly example of fluffed up pillows. But, it can be anything that is in your community. So let me say this, if your standards live inside of your head instead of in the systems that you have built, your team will always perform on luck and not leadership. You heard me. Do you just want to be lucky in business or do you want to lead a great business? I think about something as simple as greeting a family when they are looking at a place for their loved one. I literally was taking a family, I'll never forget this. I was so mortified. I was taking her around and while we were walking down the corridor, after showing her a room and we were going back into my office, the staff member walked up to me, walked straight up to me and said, we didn't get our. I don't remember what it was now. I, it was, she was rude though. She was like, are you going? Oh, the bonus. That's what it was. We didn't get our bonus for, writing down the inquiry form. And I said, what? Me, what? Wait, what? We did five and we didn't get anything on our check. She literally said this in front of a family, and I was like. Okay, can we talk about this, a little bit later. She was so insistent and she was so rude. And I remember I finished with the family, I apologized to them and I went back to her and I was like, listen, you. things are wrong when I say, Hey, listen. I understand that you may have questions, but the wrong time to ask me about questions about if I submitted for your bonuses is while I'm talking with a family like that is not the right thing to do. How would you like it if it was you walking with your grandmother? 'cause she was young and your grandmother needed a place to stay, and someone came up to me and you and did the same thing. How would that make you feel? And regardless of whatever she said, I was like, don't do that again. And I'm not the person who processes that stuff anyway as your executive director, leave me alone. but I'm telling you, people are crazy and people, have their own agenda. And she was really just, a person who was a caregiver who really should not have been a caregiver. but she was hired with the old regime. I was new to that community and, I had to cut through all of that to turn that community around, as a sales leader and, and a culture developer, in that community. This is an example of wrong. Let me give you an example of right. We had, in one of my locations as a regional, I had a location where the chef, was a beautiful, very, amiable, lovely man, and a family came in and did a lunch visit. So they came in for lunch. He came out with his chef hat, his chef coat. He was engaging to them. He talked to them about the food, which was important to them. He talked about where he came from 'cause he was from China and how it influences, his, cooking style. But yeah, he can cook anything. He was just so engaging and the family absolutely was enthralled with the idea of having someone with his background, his cooking skills based on what he was talking to them about and the food was good. and he left such an impression on that family that they decided to move in. What you really want when any one of your staff interacts with a family any family, whether they live with you or not, maybe they're new coming in, you want the family to feel warm. You want that warm feeling when they are greeted every time that they're greeted, not the first time, not the second time, not the 10th time. Every time they're greeted, you want them to have that warm feeling. that this is a second home and it's going to create a ripple effect of trust during the beginning stages, but also of trust during the stages of retention. Because one thing a lot of people do not talk about it's retention. You're in a business that is always going to have a risk of an opening. There is always movement. People get sick. People, have higher level of needs. People pass away. People move with other family members. And, that is why marketing is so important. A lot of times people don't realize, they're like, I'm full. That's great, but you still need to have your name out there and have what you do out there and still do some form of marketing even if you are full. Create a wait list. Create a wait list. If they love you and love what they're seeing, and their needs are not eminent, there's nothing wrong with creating a wait list and taking a deposit, fully refundable, to have them on that wait list so they get first priority when something comes up. That is how you do it, folks. That is how you stay full. So going back and breaking down exactly how to turn these expectations into the behaviors. Let's talk about this. Why do staff turnover? Why do they get disenfranchised? They have a lack of clarity. I mentioned that a little bit earlier before, but lack of clarity, if you writing this down. Make sure you put that as number one, employees need to receive, feedback. I had someone I worked with, he was a regional by the way, and one of the things he said to me that was so alarming, and I should have been my clue when I went to this company was that he had not had a performance review in almost two years. He didn't have a feedback loop. He was just doing his job, but he didn't know what that meant and how he was doing, and if they were happy because there was no feedback loop. Can you imagine that? Staff often feel uncertain about what's expected of them and this is another reason for turnover and for lackluster care. Because if they don't know what type of care you feel should be delivered, then they might think that they're delivering the best care. Yeah. But have you taught them, have you talked to them about what your standards are just because somebody has come to you and have experience in X, Y, z nursing home, or 1, 2, 3, assisted living or, a, b, c, memory care? Just because somebody has experience from another provider, doesn't mean that they have your standards. And so helping them on knowing what that is and how they're to perform, what role they have in your organization. Meaning, do you want this person to have more of a leadership role? Did you even ask them what their future goals are? What do they want out of their life, and how can you help them get there? That was something I always did as a, as a regional, I actually interviewed all of my sales staff. Like, I literally did an interview, not for their jobs, but for their future. What got you into this? What do you like most about your job? What do you like least? What are some of the things that are barriers to helping you, achieve success that I can possibly help with? Or even let's think outside the box. What are the barriers, period? Where do you see yourself in five years? What are some of the things that you want to do that you haven't been able to do? These are some of the questions I ask sales directors. And you can do the same with your staff, whether they're care staff, dining staff, if you have a cleanup crew, if you have vendors who comes in, you can still have really important and quality conversations with them. One of the things I want to point out is that if you don't give them clarity of expectations and what their role is, it can lead to feelings of disengagement, frustration, and ultimately turnover. Feedback and management improvement is important. When you as a manager improve your skill through support and coaching of your team, your team's desire to stay also improves. Isn't that amazing? It is all about continuous learning folks, and that is why my mentorship programs are here. When you're an entrepreneur and you are, siloed and there's not a whole lot of people around you who do what you do that you can trust that you're going to, this is where mentorship and coaching comes to play. That's why I have the Momentum Marketing Bootcamp. That's why I have Compass Rose, XL, the accelerator program. That's why I have the workshops and the courses and all the different things because what you're doing again, is about managing people, managing behaviors, and managing expectations. So continuous learning is not only important for you as an owner, but it is important for your employee. Having them go through a training program. Have your employees ever gone through a customer service training program? What does that look like? I used to actually train community staff members, and I would call it the calvary team training. We called it the, a team training. When I worked in community as a regional, I would train the nurses, believe it or not, on how to leverage their knowledge, their skillset, what they do day in and day out to help with occupancy because they want occupancy, because they can have more hours for their staff if we have a more fully occupied community. They can provide for that single mom who's doing this part-time to have more full-time hours because occupancy would be higher. So they have a vested interest in that, and I would leverage that to help them understand how they can help and support sales. When you invest in training programs and equip people with the knowledge that's necessary, and to deliver high quality feedback, you're going to then build a culture, and that is what you want. You want your feedback, to be three things. You want it to be clear, you want it to be relevant, and you want it to be actionable. And so through that, you want them to see, that you are vested in their success in their job and in their future. So here we have the, what I call the verify Method, right? We want to verify, we want to vocalize, we want to make sure that they, that they know exactly, what they're supposed to do, how they're supposed to do it, why they're supposed to do it, and the impact of what they do. That's something I think about when I'm coaching people is how can I help that person see their own worth and value in that job and in that task that they have to do, and the importance of it. Because a lot of times you'll hear people say, I'm just a CNA, or, I'm just a resident assistant. I'm just a, I'm just a, I'm just a concierge. I'm just this, and that means when everybody's saying anybody just a, that tells me they don't see the value and how important their quote unquote, "just a" really is to the overall scheme of the organization. And so that is something that I really, if you're even in a small community, you don't want your staff to think that they are "just a". So you want them to know what does good look like in your eyes and what is non-negotiable in your eyes, or my mom, when I was younger would call it half, half a, That's what she's like, don't half a do this. And so some people don't know. What they think in their mind is doing great, is really half A. And you know what the A is, right? The E in verify is engage, I cannot begin to express not just my love of training and helping people. But I feel like training is helping people to become the best form of themselves. And so when you are training someone, make sure that it's interactive. Role play with them. Do hands-on demonstrations. Do buddy training. People remember what they do more than what they hear. So engage with them. And it also gives you time to build the relationship, build the trust, because your trust isn't just for families and for residents. You have to build trust with your staff and your staff has to trust you that you have their back, and you have to trust them that they have your back. The R in verify is for review. You always want to inspect what you expect. Spot checks, do observations, get out the office, come into your buisness That always baffles me when people say, oh, you can open up, its assisted living and travel the world because it's gonna make you this amount of money. yeah, nah, everyone should have some type of. vested interest. Now, are there sometimes investors who have managers who does the work? Absolutely. But even those investors, and I will tell you guys let me just be very clear and honest with you. I used to manage investor portfolios for the big corporations. That's what I did. and when I tell you those investors were involved, hands-on, involved. We would have face-to-face meetings at some of my communities and me having to explain where we are in occupancy, what was going on in operations, what was going on clinically, why was this person, why did they quit? What like they are hands-on? And this is people who, are corporate investors. These are real estate investment trust asset managers. That's what they call them. And we would have monthly meetings with them. So if you are someone who's looking at coming into this as an investor and you think that you're just gonna invest, hire a manager and go gallivanting. Even the largest places who have true, like big time management companies, multimillion dollar management companies, still the investors would ask, why did this person move out? Their asset manager on the monthly call would say, why did this lady move out? We, they, we would have to account for that. So if you're coming into this and thinking, oh, you're just gonna do it and because, someone said, this is a, a business that people should be in because the need is there and it's easy money. No, you gotta spot check, right? You gotta spot check what your staff is doing, observe, get out the office, see what's going on, and just understand that what gets reviewed gets repeated, right? That was my little soapbox you guys. I'm sorry. But I am so passionate about what we do. Inspire is the eye verify is the inspire and this is the positive reinforcement. You don't want to always be negative Nelly. You want to even find the smallest things to celebrate and that was one of the things that I learned at Avis is find what someone is doing that's good. When you have to have difficult conversations, don't go for the jugular right off the bat. Find what is it that they do that's good that you want to recognize that you may not have even mentioned. Then, discuss where there's areas of improvement, areas of opportunity that they can, be a better X, y, z role. And then, you want to close it with, with, again, recognizing what they do, right? Recognizing that you believe in them and that you believe that whatever behavior needs to be changed, that you have full trust that they will be able to do it, and be successful. And you want to sign off that way. So you want to start with the positive, do the, actionable things in the middle, and then end on a positive so that when people leave you, they feel good about the conversation, they feel inspired to be better. One of the things that my staff used to tell me when I worked at Avis and would have to write people up. For some of the craziest stuff too, by the way, but they would like, I remember this one girl said, I didn't even realize I was written up because you did it so well until two days later. um, She called me nicetie. She called me nicetie because she said I was so nice. But she was like, that was nasty work because you was so nice. But she said but I trust you. Like she, it was a joke. you know how people are really nasty, it wasn't like that. It was more like, you made me feel so good and so empowered. When I left, I didn't even realize that like, I knew that we were having these conversations, but I felt so empowered that it didn't tear me down. That's what she was really saying, and that was to me, the biggest hugest compliment from this particular person 'cause she was not a very easy employee. But. I could always see her potential. And she had definite good things, and I wanted to point that out and make her see things in herself that even she was not able to see. So, that is the "I". The "F" in verify is follow up. You want to coach respectfully. You want to redirect clearly, you want to correct people quietly. It should never be loud. Never be loud. It should be taking someone aside, talking to them whether it's in your office, whispering to their ear. You don't want to tear people down. I'm a big proponent that and consistency matters more than intensity. Yelling, screaming, cussing, slamming. None of those things, is going to be good. Consistency is always better. And the "Y" for verify, you want to verify that the standards that you have are being, adhered to every single time. The one thing when you go into Chick-fil-A, when they give you your food, and you say, they'll say thank you, and they'll say, my pleasure. When you say thank you to them for giving you the bag, they're gonna say, my pleasure. Most times, 90% of the time, that is not by accident, that is on purpose. you can think of different places. for instance, a standard. It used to be, I don't know, but. in Starbucks, they write your name on the cup and it was their standard to call out your name, and Moe's when you go into Moss. They would say, "Welcome to Moe's." That was a standard. And so you want to make sure that the standards that you have for your team is adhered to every single time. If it's not at your standard, it's not done. This protects your brand. This protects your resident experience. This protects your families. And this protects each of them. 'Cause the one thing you don't want to have is someone who, I would say have a very cancerous attitude, meaning that they're in the way and even if they're a good employee, but their attitude and the way they do things and the way they cut corners or whatever have you is, detrimental in the long run to your community and to others, and to the morale of your group is not worth keeping them. It's just not worth it. Don't do it. So how can you move forward in this? Do five minute micro trainings. there's loom videos. There's, the role playing that you can do. There's the watch me do it that you can do, but just break it down for them. Maybe during shift changes. Maybe, have an all staff meeting where everybody comes in at one time and you can do a mini training there while celebrating the wins of the month, or the wins of the week. but five minute micro trainings are always good. Create a kudos board. Every community that I went to as a sales manager, I had my own sales board, and I would recognize the staff who did something amazing. I would encourage them to recognize each other and let me know. I, sales, was in charge of that board and I always made sure that it was someplace where everybody could see it so that I could, allow myself the opportunity to give that positive reinforcement so that I could shift the culture within the community. And it always worked. Train their eyes to see the small things and train them on the small things meaning this, Are they comfortable having eye contact with family members and with residents? Are they only comfortable having eye contact with residents? But when family members come around, they are looking down, do they have a good handshake? Do they know what to say when a family member, is coming, that already is existing family or new family? Do they know how to introduce themself properly? Do they know how to answer the phone properly? Do they know how to take a message properly? Do they know what your standard is on taking a message, just a name and phone number, or do you want more information. Teach them, train them on how their presence impacts the whole environment and energy of your community. Make sure your standards are easy to remember with visuals, if possible, posted in areas where they are at all times. Meaning like the break room or the time clock, or in the kitchen if you're a smaller home, or in, some place where they're able to actually see. what those standards are. When I worked for Emeritus, we had this board. It was huge. It was not a easel and it was, gosh, I don't remember now if it was seven or five, but it was like five things that we did that was a standard for the company and one of 'em I remember so well is that I will speak and smile at anyone I see every day and multiple times a day. So meaning if every time you saw somebody, their standard was that you had to speak and smile, no matter if you saw them five times that day in the hallway, you always spoke and you smiled. So that's the standard. So how am I gonna help you guys to do this? Is I'm going to create a, a checklist for you. It's called the "Inspect What You Expect Checklist". And it's going to basically be a staff, uh clarity training tool that you can utilize and you'll be able to download. I'm getting all these together, and putting them up once I finish the whole series. That's why they're not there for the other episodes too. But there is something for each episode of the series that you're going to be able to download, that's a resource that you can use and download and use right away to help you, with, growing your community and being successful, that is the goal. Let me know if this was helpful for you. Please subscribe to to hear more about how to be impactful in growing occupancy. and as well as, share, share the podcast with others. Let them know that I am, here to help you grow in your business. because at the end of the day at. What are we here for? The goal of Positive Impact Network is to inspire change, to impact lives and to improve outcomes. And I want to do that for you, my friend. Thank you for listening and I look forward to sharing with you our next segment which is gonna be day nine