What Gets You to 100, in Occupancy and in Life

In this milestone episode, Erin reflects on what it really means to show up consistently — as a podcaster, a leader, and a community builder. After 100 episodes, she’s learned that the pursuit of success is rarely about one big moment, it’s about the quiet, steady rhythm of doing the right things over and over again.

 In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why 100% occupancy is a byproduct, not the goal
• What consistency in podcasting taught Erin about consistency in leadership
• How to lead your community like you’re playing the long game,  with intentional action, not reactive hustle
• The mindset shift that turns discouragement into momentum
• How to define success by what you build in yourself, not just your census

 Key Quote

“I thought 100% occupancy was the win, but it was really about becoming the kind of leader who creates it, not chases it.”

Whether you’re at the beginning of your leadership journey or stuck in the messy middle, this episode is a powerful reminder that consistency, aligned with purpose, is the compound interest of leadership.

Show up. Build trust. Stay the course. Let’s go.

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Transcript

0:36

Folks, it is here. 100. Or let me say, 99 episodes ago, I was crying while editing a two minute intro. I didn't know what I was doing. I just knew that I needed to do it. I believed that if I could make it to 100 episodes, that I would know what I was doing, that I would feel confident that I would. Be there, right? Wherever there is. And I'm here and lemme tell you, hindsight is 2020 and I realize I'm just getting started and the only reason I got here is because of one thing and one thing only. And that's consistency, period. What if 100 wasn't the finish line?'cause it's not. What if 100% occupancy doesn't equal success? What if clarity, confidence, and credibility that you have been chasing only comes when you stop chasing them in this episode I'm gonna talk about what it really took to record 100 episodes of this podcast and what that milestone didn't give me and what it did, and I believe. You know, it scares me to say this a little bit, I believe that the biggest lie that we've ever been told, the one that I believe from a professional standpoint, is that actually being a hundred percent is enough, and it's not enough. It's never gonna be enough. A hundred episodes isn't enough for me. I mean, look. Creating a podcast and doing it every week is hard. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you. It's takes a lot of commitment and the only person who's telling me yes or no or anything is me. And so it'd be very easy for me to just consistently not show up and inconsistently deliver, but I want to build trust with an audience. I want to serve you. I want to add value to you, and so therefore, I have to show up a hundred percent occupancy. Says that you're a good salesperson, or it says that you've got a great team. But that doesn't mean that your work is over. It just means what you've got is really good and that it's worth investing in, and that includes you as a leader Most of us are working ourselves to the bone, trying to grow occupancy, solve problems, find some kind of balance between being everything for the company and still being enough for ourselves. And let me tell you something, it's not enough. It's not enough. A hundred percent occupancy being the pinnacle of success. The only benchmark that's measured and applauded. That's the biggest lie that we've been told. Because if you hit a hundred percent occupancy, the wait list is expected next, and one on the wait list is not gonna be enough. You solve the big problem, guess what? A new one's gonna show up, right? And you finally take a day off and. Can you shut your brain off? Is it possible? I'm not sure. All this is reality. It's our reality. If we are working inside senior living, and honestly, if we're even any type of leader outside of the senior living industry, this is the main problem. Whatever we do, it's not enough. And we're working so hard, solving all the problems, we don't see the impact. All of that is, is contributing to a burnout and contributing to leaders, great leaders, good leaders, wanting to leave, but we gotta tackle that differently. And that's what I hope this episode is about today. I think I realized why that pressure never goes away. That pressure of finding that balance or that that enoughness, I think I figured out why it never goes away. I know that I did for me, although I still struggle with it, but I can put it in its place. It's because we're focused on growing someone else's definition of success, right? We're focused on growing the company. We're focused on growing the occupancy of the community. We're focused on growing on other people's leadership development, which are all very important, but we're not growing ourselves. We're chasing the results from someone else's vision while ignoring our own potential and our own definition of success. Unhappiness is going after something that we don't know that we want and trying to kill ourselves, trying to achieve it. If we don't know what we want and we're constantly out there trying to solve somebody else's or reach somebody else's definition of success, which is not a bad thing. We're never feeling enough because we don't even know what we want. I'm supposed to feel some kind of way whenever I hit a hundred percent occupancy, but if it's not enough for them. And I just put all this work into it, then it's not enough for me because I don't feel enough. And that disconnect. This is what creates the burnout. This is what makes us feel like no matter how much we give, it doesn't matter because it's never going to be enough. Because it isn't enough when we're living by someone else's definition of success. But. What if success isn't about achieving a number, a percentage, what if success is about aligning your growth with your goals and their goals? What if success is found? In the process of doing the right things at the right time, and here's the key word, consistently, that's what I have learned. That's what a hundred episodes has taught me, is that consistency and doing things for the right reason. Is what success is. It's why I feel success recording this episode. It's why I feel enough and not enough at the same time because these a hundred episodes have given me so many experiences that I would've never had had I just recorded two episodes or five episodes. Or 10 episodes, and so it is enough, but it's not enough because I love growing in this area. I love it. Ultimately. I love it. Do I struggle with. The time that it takes that I have to invest in for each episode. Yes. Do I struggle with trying to find guests? Sometimes, yes. Do I struggle with having to get the content ready for this episode? Yes. But do I love it? Yes. Yes, I do. I love it because I get to connect with you. I love it because I'm adding value to you. I love it because I hear back from you. I find it weird that I'm by myself and I'm talking into a camera and a microphone. In a playroom, but I love it because other people value it, get value from it, and I am growing because of it. That is why it's enough and yet not enough at the same time. I spent 20 years chasing someone else's definition of success, and I gave them almost, almost. Everything they wanted, it was never enough. It was never going to be enough, and I felt that way, but I attracted that because I felt that inside of me, I attracted who I was. I attracted somebody who was going, or a company, excuse me, that was going to prove my thoughts. Right. That I was going to stay in that environment of not enoughness, and yet at the same time be enough for a lot of people that I cared, served and loved. But it reinforced a thought of I was never enough. It reinforced a thought that was. Completely enforced way before I ever started working inside senior living. So this is not senior living's fault. It truly is my own thought process, my own belief. And because that was a sentence that played over and over and over again, I attracted something in my life that was going to verify that thought. That is the power of your thoughts, right? That mindset that stunted my growth. That stunted my career, and yet it also propelled me because I wanted to prove people wrong about me. But then I started this company, then I started a coaching program that helped me understand that that mindset, that thought process was false. It was wrong. And then I started this podcast and I started it honestly. To prove myself right, that I was enough, that I could do this, that I had more to say that I could help people, because that's what I love to do. And I'll be honest with you, when I began this, I thought I had to be perfect. Which is the problem, right? It's the same trap that I fell into in this role as I did inside of a community. We feel like we have to be perfect. The perfect survey, the perfect tour, the perfect move in the perfect whatever, right? Quality enhancement survey, quality assurance, survey, whatever it is, it has to be perfect because if we're not perfect, we're going to get in trouble. And my God, I don't wanna get in trouble. I was terrified to say the wrong thing. I was worried someone might disagree with me. I was afraid somebody would call me out. I was afraid that I wasn't polished enough to be heard, but then something happened. I realized because of feedback from you, the listeners, people who consistently listen, that perspective is enough. That presence is enough and that there is absolutely no certainty inside senior living. there is no right way to do things because we're human. There's different cities, there's different states, there's different counties, there's different perspectives, there's different expectations. And that somehow along the way, perspective is a gift. And that I learned that this podcast and the way that I communicate with people is a perspective. It's just something that allows you to think about things differently. A new way doesn't mean it's the right way. Doesn't mean that everything I say or did or didn't do is right or wrong. It's a gift my experience is a gift to the person who doesn't have 20 years experience because my way to problem solve is a gift that could spur you to think about different ways to solve problems, and that my presence every Thursday. Is a gift because you know that you can depend on me. There's no certainty in life. Although, I thought there was, I was certain that things had to run a certain way and I was certain that I was right. But there is purpose in showing up. And that's important because your presence matters. As a leader, as a parent, as a director of nursing, as a lifestyles director, activities director, your presence is important and your consistency is even more valuable than your certainty because we're human. What? What certainty do we have today, this moment? That's it. So my goal became simple because I started off really big and it was really scary. And of course, even in the community, we all start off with, we have to be a hundred percent, we have to be at a hundred percent. If we're gonna be a good community, we have to do this and we have to do that. Those are all certainty terms that are not necessarily available to us all the time. We're not gonna go from 55% to a hundred percent in three months. That's gonna kill you, okay? But you can grow steadily. You can focus on one day at a time, one tour at a time, one associate at a time, one episode at a time like this. So I had to realize I had to change my goal from being. The best right, or perfect or whatever it was, a hundred episodes. I wanted to be a podcaster with a hundred episodes because then I would know what to do. Then I would know what to say. Then I would know how to edit something. Which is true because in the beginning I didn't know how, but when I simplified that goal down to adding value to just one listener. And if one listener listened, I would record another one. And if one listener listened, I felt I had to record another one to honor that one listener and to do that, to keep showing up. I had to do that despite my fear, my insecurity, and my rookie green status. The cost of success, The cost of reaching a goal is time, is effort, is showing up. Putting the work in, doing the reps, that's the cost. It requires you to do it anyway when people don't listen. When the episode only gets 30, listen. You record anyway because your goal is just one listener, right? If nobody likes the LinkedIn post, it doesn't matter. Your goal is to talk to the people who actually look at it and value it. The cost of success is time, effort, and willingness. That's it. Showing up. Patience and persistence, those are skills that you have to cultivate. They're the skills that require reps because it's consistency that get you the results. It's not doing it one time, it's not trying something, and then it failed. It's trying something. It failed. You study it and you do it again. And you do that over and over, even if you don't see the results that you wanna see, because consistency creates momentum, and that is your superpower. That's what you may not understand, is that every time you do something over and over and over again to learn and to get better, you create momentum. You're preparing for the moment. And that moment for those years and months and days of preparation, that is the moment where it's not luck, it's preparation, it's reps, and its consistency that brought you to that moment. So this episode, I want to unpack what consistency has taught me. Specifically in my senior living career and through this podcast, hundredth episode of getting here because it's the same, I literally have managed my company now the same way that I have managed a community. And it's the way that. I led inside of a community. It's the way I've decided to grow both personally and professionally, although I don't think there's a difference, and it's the way that I define success and how it can do the same for you. So let's talk about the power of consistency. All right. Point number one, you don't need to be great to start. You need to start to be great. You know, there's this. Often overused statement about building muscle, losing weight, that you have to put the reps in and it is true. Look, I'm struggling that with myself. ugh, don't get me started. You have to break down the muscle. You have to put the reps in if you want the muscle to show through the fat. That is true. How many times, how long does it take if we value people who lose a hundred pounds, 50 pounds, 25 pounds, all these Instagram people that tell you how they lost all this weight, what is the main. Reason why they were consistent. They were consistent on doing the right things at the right time for the right amount of time. That's consistency, right? So when I had my four hour meltdown of editing the intro to this video, I sat there, I did not know what I was doing. Look, I hate technology. I guess hate's a strong word. I struggle with technology. I know that it is a weakness of mine, and one day I look forward to giving this part of my business to somebody else who loves it because it's not me. But I knew in the moment, even through the tears, even when I felt like such a failure, because it took me four hours to edit a two minute intro. And that's why I haven't changed the intro, honestly. But I think I'm gonna change it soon. I digress. I knew in that moment that when I became a podcaster a hundred episode podcaster, that I would know how to edit an intro, and it would take me 30 minutes and it would take me 30 minutes rather than four hours. Well, I'm happy to say that I can edit a lot faster now. Yes, I can. I am proud of my editing skills. I have found softwares to make it easier. I am very proud of my work. I consistently showed up every day and I still don't like it, and I know it's not in my strength zone. I know it's not in my gifted zone, but I know that I also have to do it. And over time, over weekly struggles, my skill caught up with my effort. Is it ever going to catch up a hundred percent with my effort? No, it's not, but I am proud of where I am today and it took me time, repetition, and effort to get there. I so I didn't have to be great and I don't have to be great today. I just have to start. But I do have to love myself and give myself grace. And know that I can get better because consistency builds my credibility. Consistency builds my skill, and the more that I show up, the more credibility I earn from you because I'm building trust with you because I'm showing up. But by showing up, I have to work through things that are hard and uncomfortable for me. To show up, and that's important for me It's part of my bigger vision in adding value to a lot of people that I can't see or be in the same room with. I want to expand my reach and this is my way to do it. So I have to work through the hard parts. I have to slog through the editing. I have to find the clips. I have to do all of that, even though I don't love it, to have the intended impact that I want to have. Consistency builds credibility, and you don't have to be great or even good to start. You just have to start, and that's important. Point number two, consistency builds security. Your team doesn't need a superhero. They need a steady hand. I like this analogy because too many of us think that we have to be heroes to be trusted. Too many of us think that we have to overextend ourself and sacrifice our own time in order to be successful, and that's not true. And even though I have hit 100 episodes, I should have hit 100 episodes four or five weeks ago. But over the course of a couple years, I missed a few weeks. There were certain things going on. I didn't manage my time well, and I wasn't going to overextend myself and give an episode that was. Not the quality that I wanna put out. So I had to say to myself, I'm not gonna put a new episode out. And I had to sit with that, and I had to be okay with that. These are boundaries. These are truths that I tell myself. These are expectations that I didn't meet, but I'm okay with because other priorities came up. And I couldn't meet the standard and I didn't hate myself for it. I didn't martyr myself to meet a standard. I just accepted the fact that I couldn't do it. And that's a steady hand. if you're inside of a community, your team doesn't need you to constantly be a hero. They need you to be the example of understanding an expectation, living out that expectation, and also living out boundaries that may have to change an expectation for a minute or say, I couldn't make it because of this, so I sent someone else in my place, or to communicate in advance that something was happening and so therefore, My presence is not going to be here too many times. We think we have to be superheroes when really all we have to be is a steady, consistent hand because your consistency in communicating and your consistency and your presence builds your credibility. Are your words, your actions, and your vision and alignment? That is credibility. That is consistency. That is building trust. I show up every Thursday, most Thursdays with a new episode. Every Saturday morning I send out. A mentoring email come hell or high water. I have not really missed a Saturday morning Why do I do that? Because I want to build trust with you, with my, with my email list, with my listeners to the podcast, and it is something that I learned from my leadership inside of a community. Look, I. I got it down to an art. I parked in the same parking space every day. I drank the same thing every morning. I started my rounds in the kitchen. Every morning. I would do very specific things with the same people. I would say the same words. I would wear heels where they would know when I was coming, people knew that they could trust me because I was a steady hand. I was consistent and a lot of our teams need consistency more than they need anything else. And if you can be a steady hand to people, if you can communicate well and proactively, if you can learn to respond overreact and if you can choose to show up. Consistently inside of your community, you build trust, you build security, you build credibility, and that's important. You walking the halls in your community, you communicating to your regional team, you commu having your regional team communicate to you knowing what to expect. Is important because how many times have we had leaders where you never knew what to expect and you were kind of always scared and on edge, like, oh, what were they gonna say? But this consistency, it builds your credibility and it builds security in the people that you serve. And you make the choice to do it every day. Every day. What can you commit to? Who is the person that I wanna show up as? How do I communicate? How can I communicate specifically? Do I make proactive communication an important process in my leadership? Remember, and I'm gonna say this over and over again, consistency builds credibility. Consistency builds security. And point number three, consistency compounds your growth. Now, this is something that is kind of newer to me over the last few years, that intensity is impressive, but consistency is what truly brings success. I am an intense, passionate leader. I believed that intensity was something that was a driver of momentum, that I needed to be intense. That, that, that intensity is what brought success to me. But when I look back, the intensity. Was the fuel of what brought success, but it wasn't the reason because intensity can repel people away from you. Two. I mean, somebody with a lot of intensity, can be hard to be in the same room with sometimes, but. Long term consistency will always beat short term intensity. Think about sales directors or executive directors who came into a community and really was on fire and started getting all these move-ins and life was going great, and then something happened. And their fire, their flame that just went out.'cause they couldn't be consistent. Their intensity was so hot that it couldn't keep the flame going. Short term intensity will lose to long term consistency over time. Consistency is what builds that momentum. If you think about Dave Ramsey and the snowball effect, You pay off the smallest bill first, and then you move to the next bill, and then you move to the next bill, and the next thing you know, you've got this momentum, right? And you got your snowballs getting bigger, and all of a sudden this debt gets paid off faster. That's what he sells, the debt snowball. If you think about a rocket or a train, it's the same thing. It's the energy. It's the reps that you put in. It's that fuel and everything else that goes into getting a rocket off the launchpad. It takes a long time for that launchpad to get ready to launch the rocket into space. It takes a lot of intensity, but it also takes a lot of consistency to get the rocket ready to be launched. Momentum comes from tiny steps, tiny actions that build over time into this really big burst of growth, and that's what happens every day inside of a community. That's what happens. When I made a commitment to every Thursday releasing an episode every Thursday, and then it took this weird turn for me, this, this podcast did whenever I decided that I wanted to interview people, and this is where the compounding effect comes in, because I started this podcast with solo episodes, and obviously as a new podcast, you don't get a lot of. Listens. And my downloads were fine. I was happy with them. I expected one listener and I got many more than one. Right. But in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a lot. But I still kept going. And I'll tell you, and I know I've said this before, but one of the biggest fears of my life was rejection. But one of the biggest dreams I ever had was being a broadcaster, sports broadcaster, interviewing people on the field, or interviewing people after a game or something to that effect. And if I was to live my dream, I was going to have to ask somebody to come and be a guest on my podcast. But living my dream meant that I had to ask strangers I didn't know to be on a podcast that was so new that hardly anybody listened to it and talk about fear, especially with the core wound in my life being rejection. I would, I wanted to throw. Up. I wanted to run away. I did not want to have to put myself in that position to have to ask anybody to be a guest on this podcast because I didn't want them to say no to me because this wasn't a professional project. This was an errand project, and personal errand was still very raw to rejection, but I put it into a perspective. This was my dream. This was little Erin's dream and that I owed it to her to ask and what's the worst that could happen? People say, no, and that's okay. That's okay. And so I did. I started asking, and if you go back to year 2023, um, I started, I think I had my first. I think I had maybe five or six guests. And then year 2024, I decided that I was going to be consistent and I was going to have guests on my podcast almost every week. And that took a lot of effort for me to do that and it took a lot of overcoming nos to do that as well. But here's what I learned about compounding growth, the more people you get on your episodes. The more people you get to know and the more you learn from them. And now all of a sudden I'm growing at a rate that I have never grew in my life because a, I am asking people to be a guest on my podcast. They're saying yes, so they're saying no, and I'm okay with both and I'm learning from them. And then they introduce me to other people, and then I am giving away influence for them and I'm getting influence from them. And all of a sudden I start to grow, this podcast starts to grow, and my growth compounds because I took the effort and I'm consistent and I show up and I ask, and I'm okay, and I keep going and I learn. And I add value to them and they add value to me. Consistency compounds your growth over time. It doesn't matter if they say no, if it seems impossible. You keep trying. You fail, you learn, you reapply, You have to look at things from a very critical eye. To grow and learn and adapt because it is worth your time. When you grow yourself, you grow everything else. You grow your capacity, you grow your influence, you grow your problem solving, you. Growth depends on your consistency and when you keep going and you invest in others, your growth compounds. And that is really important, and it is doing it anyway. It's showing up and doing the work even when nobody sees you, because it is the discipline that you have in the quiet dark times that will earn you the success that everybody sees. It's overcoming your own thoughts, your own mindset, your own limiting beliefs, for you to see how your growth matters. That your consistency, your presence, your showing up, your deciding that you were made for more matters, and give yourself the time and the grace to keep trying and keep learning. All right, to recap, consistency builds credibility. Consistency builds security. Consistency compounds your growth. Yeah, and consistency reinforces your vision and your values leadership, as well as parenting. But that's a whole nother podcast, right? Leadership is caught not taught. So your presence matters. Your words matter how you, pick up the trash, how you love on your residents, how you love on your team, how you, how you communicate, and introduce people. on tours, all of that matters. How you treat people is how your team will treat people. How you show up will eventually be how some of your team shows up, how you talk to the 20% of the people inside of your community that move the needle of success. That's how much success you'll get because when you focus on. Those 20% growing, those 20% adding value to everybody, people will naturally want to come and grow and rise with you. That's how your consistency will compound your growth. Your vision and your values have to be reflected and your actions and your words, because leadership is caught not taught. You. Your team, your community is a reflection of you, the leader, the coach. How do you show up? How do you wanna show up? How do you value them? And I'll tell you and know I've already said this, passion fades without discipline. I think consistency is just another word for discipline. You have to show up and stop relying on feeling like it. I didn't feel like doing this today. I didn't feel like doing that today because you have to do it anyways. Your moods should not determine your actions. When you create habits, those habits determine your future. They determine your actions. When you believe that you are worth it and they are worth it, You start doing things differently, I love this quote by Michael Ange says, If you develop the habits of success, you'll make success a habit, and that is something we should all strive for. Vince Lombardi had a quote too that says, once you learn to quit, quitting can become a habit. Your thoughts influence your emotions. Your emotions influence your actions and your actions are directly tied to your results. Do the work, even if you aren't seen, do the work. Even if they don't appreciate it, do the work because your growth is important. And do the work because one person will be impacted in a positive way, and that one person could be you. It could be you. I used to think that certainty was the goal, like it had to be done this way and it has to be done this way because it has to. Or that means I'm a failure, it has to, or that means that I'm going to get in trouble. But now I understand that confidence isn't built by knowing. Confidence is built by showing up over and over again. How many times have you seen people who know everything and can't do any of it? Confidence is action oriented. That's what consistency gives you. Consistency gives you the evidence of proof that you are capable. Now, I want you to know that the only reason why I knew that I could do this is because my junior year in high school, I was voted most likely to talk to a tree, and now I talk into a microphone in my home office 100 episodes later with a platform that has reached thousands of people. That was a French teacher who knew what she was talking about, right? It turns out that this gift was always here and I just had to keep showing up to uncover it. Not because I'm special, but because I'm consistent. There are gifts inside of you that have been buried deep under layers of inconsistency, lack of discipline. Lack of confidence, lack of belief, lack of mentorship. You can do anything you want to do with any gift you have. You just have to be aware of it and believe that you're worth it. And over time it gets better. Time is the currency of success and it. It takes a lot of time and it will continue to take time to reach the potential that we all have inside of us, and it is certainly a goal that is worth investing in. And I just from the bottom of my heart wanna say thank you. You have given me your time and your attention, and that's two very precious things that you will never get back. And my goal is to add value to you. And every feedback that I've ever received from you on an email, from a podcast, I have treasured it and I have listened to it and I have tried to adapt to it. And I wanna continue doing that for you because I want to add value to you. I do this for you, I do this for me. But I do this, I record this, I study topics for you, and that is the greatest gift that you could ever give me. And I just say, I want to say thank you. I also have other ways that you can work with me. Um, I have our new Executive Director's Playbook course, which is really a great course to offer a lot of perspective on very specific topics. We also have a learning cohort that goes with it, the Executive Director Launch Lab. Our first cohort is halfway through and we are going to be starting, open registration for the next group, which we're excited about. So if you want more information, please uh, send me an email. I'll be more than happy to discuss that with you. Our first group has been amazing and getting to know everyone, and their story and being able to offer perspective advice and mentorship and direction has been, another gift that I will always treasure as well. Mentorship is something that. I'm very purposeful and passionate about, and there's not enough of it inside senior living, and you can have that for yourself. It is an investment, but it's an investment that will compound your success and your own growth. And I'm seeing that firsthand and it's exciting to watch. Growth is exciting to watch. So again, thank you for giving me your time. I know it's very important to you. I appreciate it more than you know, so thank you. And always own your story so you can create the future that you want.