Grow Your Occupancy

Julie Podewitz, CEO and Founder of Grow Your Occupancy, is passionate about helping senior living providers maximize sales efforts and grow occupancy. Join Julie as she chats with senior living leaders who share their tips and strategies. AND, they’ll have some fun along the way!

Grow Your Occupancy is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 100 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Grow Your Occupancy, a business show with 100 episodes published.

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  Episode #176

  How Primrose Retirement Communities Built a Sustainable Lead Referral Pipeline

  Oct 1, 202632 min

  Professional referral sources are one of the most fruitful sources of senior living leads. When things get busy at the community, though, external business development often gets pushed down the list of priorities. In this episode of The Grow Your Occupancy Podcast, host Julie Podewitz, CEO & Founder of Grow Your Occupancy, welcomes Jessi Weldon, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Primrose Retirement Communities, and Amanda Daughters, Executive Vice President of Operations at Primrose Retirement Communities, for a candid conversation about building an outreach culture that produces measurable results. Jessi and Amanda share how Primrose transformed external business development from an “if I have time” activity into a non-negotiable part of its sales strategy, and why alignment between sales, operations, executive directors, and regional leadership is essential to making it work. Their conversation explores how Primrose establishes outreach expectations, measures face-to-face appointments and referred leads, coaches teams weekly, identifies the right referral partners for individual markets, and helps sales leaders build relationships beyond traditional hospital and healthcare sources. They also discuss why successful outreach can do much more than generate leads, it can strengthen programming, create community partnerships, support current residents, and connect senior living communities more deeply with the markets they serve. The results speak for themselves: referred leads represented about a quarter of Primrose’s leads last year, while nearly half of its move-ins came from referred sources. Julie and Jessi will continue the conversation at the 2026 SMASH Conference in Las Vegas in October during their educational session, “Beyond the Hospital: Diversifying Referral Sources for Sustainable Growth.” For senior living sales leaders, executive directors, operators, and regional teams looking to generate more organic referrals and create a sustainable outreach strategy, this episode offers practical lessons from an organization that has made business development part of its culture.

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  Episode #175

  The Coaching Mindset That Helps Senior Living Salespeople Grow: Julie Talks With Jeff Gronemeyer

  Sep 2, 202633 min

  What does great sales coaching really look like, and why is it so different from simply telling someone what to do? In this episode of The Grow Your Occupancy Podcast, Julie Podewitz, CEO & Founder of Grow Your Occupancy, talks with Jeff Gronemeyer, a Regional Director of Sales & Marketing with Charter Senior Living, for a candid conversation about coaching, continuous learning, discovery, and the human side of senior living sales. Jeff shares insights from nearly two decades in senior living, including why coaching should never feel punitive, how leaders can create a culture where learning and improvement are expected, and why the best coaches guide people toward finding answers rather than simply giving them instructions. Julie and Jeff also explore one of the most important—and often misunderstood—sales skills: discovery. Great discovery isn't an interrogation or a checklist of questions to complete. It's an ongoing conversation built on curiosity, listening, connection, and a genuine desire to understand the person behind the prospect. And if Jeff could wave a magic wand and eliminate one common senior living sales misstep? It would be ending an interaction without establishing a legitimate, meaningful next step. From building trust to navigating difficult conversations, this episode is a reminder that becoming great at senior living sales isn't about reaching a finish line. It's about continuing to learn, practice, improve, and show up for the people we serve.

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  Episode #174

  The Human Side of Senior Living: Sales, Technology & Helping Residents Stay Independent

  Aug 26, 202625 min

  In this episode of The Grow Your Occupancy Podcast, host Julie Podewitz, CEO & Founder of Grow Your Occupancy, sits down with Matt Kelley, Regional Vice President of Operations and Business Development with Personic Health, for a wide-ranging conversation about senior living, sales fundamentals, innovation and helping older adults maintain their independence. Matt shares lessons from a career that began in senior living and eventually expanded into home health and mobile wound care. He also recounts a recent eye-opening experience helping a friend’s mother search for an independent living community. She was qualified, ready to move and motivated, yet getting someone to answer the phone, return calls, provide information and consistently follow up proved surprisingly difficult. Julie and Matt discuss why the fundamentals still matter: answering the phone, having backup systems in place, responding quickly, providing useful information and making prospective residents and families feel seen, heard and valued. In a competitive senior living market, great customer service can be one of a community’s most powerful differentiators. The conversation also explores Matt’s work with Elevion Health and an innovative approach to medication adherence and wellness support. Through brief telehealth visits delivered through a resident’s television, clinicians can provide medication reminders, check in on residents, identify potential changes in condition and offer families an additional layer of reassurance and human connection. For independent living operators, solutions like these may also provide another way to differentiate their communities, support residents who need a little extra help and potentially allow some residents to remain independent longer before transitioning to assisted living. Whether you’re a senior living sales professional, executive director, operator or industry leader, this conversation is a reminder that innovation matters, but so do the basics. Like, subscribe and share The Grow Your Occupancy Podcast for more conversations about senior living sales, marketing, operations and occupancy growth.

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  Episode #172

  6 Sizzling Summer Sales Strategies to Keep Senior Living Occupancy Strong

  Jul 20, 202614 min

  Summer doesn't have to mean slower sales. In this episode of The Grow Your Occupancy Podcast, Julie Podewitz shares practical, field-tested strategies to help senior living sales teams maintain momentum throughout the busiest vacation season of the year. Julie discusses why consistent sales processes create stability, how purposeful home visits can strengthen relationships with prospective residents, and why now is the perfect time to re-engage cold leads hiding in your CRM. She also explores the power of storytelling in marketing and outreach, offers ideas for creating seasonal outreach campaigns that referral partners will remember, and explains how adding temporary sales support can help communities maintain occupancy while team members are away. Whether you're a sales director, executive director, regional sales leader, or marketing professional, you'll walk away with actionable ideas you can implement immediately to keep your pipeline active, your team focused, and your occupancy goals on track all summer long.

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  Episode #171

  Breaking Free from Paid Aggregators: How QSL Management Built Sustainable Occupancy Growth

  Jul 6, 202630 min

  What happens when a senior living operator decides to stop relying on paid aggregators and instead invests in its own sales team, referral relationships, and outreach strategy? In this episode of the Grow Your Occupancy Podcast, Julie Podewitz, CEO & Founder of Grow Your Occupancy, sits down with Tiffany Cooey, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing at QSL Management, to discuss how QSL has dramatically reduced its dependence on paid referral sources while growing occupancy across its expanding portfolio of communities. Tiffany shares the business case behind the initiative and explains how QSL shifted its sales culture from waiting for leads to actively creating them. She outlines the company's 30-60-90-day outreach planning process, how sales teams identify and cultivate high-value referral partners, and why focusing on quality leads consistently outperforms chasing volume. Whether you're a sales leader, executive director, or regional sales executive, this episode offers practical strategies for building a more profitable, sustainable occupancy pipeline, one that your team owns rather than rents.

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