Evan Petig (00:00)

You are trying to get somebody to buy a product that they probably don’t want or at least wish that they didn’t want. And if we’re being truly transparent about it,you’re selling somebody on moving into a place where they are going to die. that is a very difficult sale.

Jerry Vinci (00:15)

What if the real power move isn’t sales or ownership? It’s what happens when both speak the same language.Welcome back to another episode of From Leads to Lease is the podcast that dives deep into the senior living and senior care industries, bringing you insights, strategies and stories from the experts at the forefront of innovation, leadership and care. I’m your host, Jerry Vinci, CEO of CCR Growth. For those of you who don’t know about us,CCR Growth is a full-service marketing and growth agency that’s exclusive to the senior living industry. And through this podcast, I’m here to guide you through the evolving landscape of senior care, exploring the innovations, the strategies and leadership insights that are shaping the future of the industry. So whether you’re a provider, a caregiver or an industry leader, this show is here to help you make informed decisions and create meaningful impact.So today’s guest is Evan Petig a senior living asset management expert with over 12 years of experience managing investments and partnerships across some of the industry’s most complex and high value portfolios. With leadership roles at LCS and Sunrise Senior Living, Evan has helped guide teams managing over five billion in assets. And what sets him apart is how he sees value, not just in square footage or financials, but in the strength of owner operator collaboration.He’s here to help bridge the gap between what sales and marketing need and what ownership is looking for. So, Evan, welcome to the show. I’m so glad to have you here. Yeah. This is a very interesting topic and I think anytime we can bridge the mind of sales and marketing and operations, it always leads to a really cool conversation. So because you’ve worked with sales and with ownership groups, what’s the one thing you wish each understood about each other?

Evan Petig (02:03)

Great to be here, Jerry. Thank you.That’s a great question and I think it’s exactly that. Just trying to take the other’s perspective. I think at a base level, what ownership wants to see when they’re walking through the building is that the sales team knows what they have. They understand and are able to sell the value to a consumer. So that’s table stakes. Just, know, do you know and understand your product? Can you cite the value proposition? And that’s usuallyas far as some of the best owner visits, what the first few minutes of the tour really is. They just want to get comfortable with the salesperson really knows and understands what they have. The next level is really what I think would be the highest level for an owner is, does the salespeople, are they thinking like a business person or are they thinking like an owner? And what that really means, I think, from an ownership standpoint is justnot being able to say here are obstacles, then bringing solutions. Like if you own this building, if this was your responsibility, you know, what would you do or what could we try? And so I think that will go a long way with ownership just in doing exactly that, letting or encouraging, trying something new if you’ve been stuck or if there’s a potential solution out there that you haven’t tried yet. the other side,And again, sales teams have more experience or you have more experience with this and tell me, but I think it’s just the recognition of how hard it is to sell. Our sales counselors, residency counselors are experts in what they’re doing and they’re trying to do something extremely hard. You are trying to get somebody to buy a product that they probably don’t want or at least wish that they didn’t want. And if we’re being truly transparent about it,you’re selling somebody on moving into a place where they are going to die. And that is a very difficult sale. so going into it, I feel like when sales teams feel like owners understand that and understand just one, the professionalism and skills that they bring and how hard it is, it’s really easy to get caught in the trap of it’s just, well, you know, I used to have a coach and he would come up to you and be just so frustrated. And you would say, just,just run faster, right? And that’s not helpful. You can’t do anything with that. It’s really, how do we kind of partner on this together and what are the things that we need to do to solve this? And if you each think about it from the other perspective, you can get there.

Jerry Vinci (04:34)

Shit.Yeah, that’s a great answer.Back to what you’re saying about empowering sales to think more like owners too. I think that’s great perspective because often we get siloed into the different departments, whether it’s marketing or sales and everybody’s pointing the finger at somebody else as to why something can’t happen or hasn’t happened. And they’re just pointing out problems. They’re not thinking about solutions. So if you can get people into that mindset of everyone thinking, what if this was your building? What would you do to solve that problem? It changes the landscape.It changes the conversation and it gets people thinking in a more creative way and also it says something about leadership if Leadership is open to having those kinds of discussions too, right? they’re not just saying, my way or the highway. They’re like, well, what would you do? How would you solve this problem? I love that

Evan Petig (05:24)

Yeah,and ultimately it comes back to it’s a community, right? And so it’s us, it’s a team and it’s not just, well the sales team’s not doing this or the food and beverage group isn’t providing the right level of service, right? It’s just what do we do? And that just brings people together and enhances performance.

Jerry Vinci (05:40)

what you said to about the, is a hard product to sell because, of the fact that literally this is probably the last place they’re going to live and they don’t necessarily want to come here then you also layer on the fact that it’s just getting increasingly more difficult just because the customer’s more savvy. Now they know what they want. There’s more ways to search and find exactly what you want and need. And there’s just more competition in the market. So the salesperson has to work extra hard to even get that person to take the next step.take the tour or even just move ever so slightly in that sales process.

Evan Petig (06:11)

Absolutely.

Jerry Vinci (06:12)

You often say owners aren’t trying to be the critical in-laws walking through the house. Can you expand on that idea and how ownership actually wants to be a partner in performance?

Evan Petig (06:22)

Yeah, I think when we were, when I would, bring an owner to a community, I mean, one, it’s a big deal from the community standpoint, right? They want to have a good impression. It’s stressful. there’s again, essentially the, the, big boss coming to visit your community. And so how do you sort of set everybody at ease? and guess what I’ve tried to do is, facilitate an environment where there’s more collaboration.I think it’s easy for owners to walk through and find something wrong. mean, you can do it with your house, right? You can walk through your house and you know where, lots of little things aren’t exactly perfect. And it’s overlooking those and trying to really identify what matters. I sort of joke, yeah, it’s like you never want an owner visit to be like your mother-in-law coming to visit. And I have two mother-in-laws, my wife has a mom and a stepmom, and they’re both amazing. So that is…

Jerry Vinci (07:09)

man.

Evan Petig (07:13)

That ispurely for illustrative purposes. But it’s that, where you don’t want to feel like, they’re gone. I’m exhausted. You want it to feel like, OK, that was a good visit. And we have some great next steps. And we’re excited about the next week, the next month, the next six months. That’s how you want an owner visit to go.

Jerry Vinci (07:15)

Yeah.That’s a great way to look at it. love that. Talking about the product too, a lot of people, when they think about the product, they’re thinking just about the walls, but your definition of that also includes the pricing, the rooms and the finishes. Can you break down how that holistic view shapes your approach?

Evan Petig (07:47)

Yeah, absolutely. It does encompass all of those things because as an example, you say, OK, I’m going to move into a community. What’s the price? We can give a price and $5,000 a month might be extremely expensive for what you get, or it might be an amazing deal. It’s really what’s the value that’s there. And I know a lot of our focus is really on the room as a product itself, which includes the pricing, the finishes.And and all of those aspects, but if you zoom out it also includes the programming at the community it improved it includes the community itself That meaning that the different people and activities and clubs and all that and so Really need to take all of that into account You know kind of getting back to the room in and of itself. I kind of always say that look either he’s had three things whenwhen a prospect and their family walks into a room. they’ve gone through the community, they’ve walked down the hallways, they’ve seen the common spaces, now they’re gonna get to the room. It needs to have three things. So one, needs to be like new. Two, needs to be on brand. And the third is nothing weird. And I think we all kind of recognize if we’ve been in senior housing what that means. But I’ll break down each one of those. The like new, I mean, you can’t have stains on the carpets, dents in the appliances.chips in the paint, right? Because in a lot of, in many cases, you’re likely selling against a new building down the street and the high potential that your prospects and their families have toured something that is built, you know, maybe it’s brand new or built in the last several years. So yeah, you don’t want to walk into the room and have the sales people have to apologize or distract from something that catches somebody’s attention right away. On brand.So it’s very important to have standards. And I think we’ll talk about that a little bit later. But it needs to be at the right level for your brand. not every community is going to be the Taj Mahal. And not every community is going to be the entry level bare bones. But is what you’ve got in that building and in that room at the right level for what you’re trying to sell. if you are at the upper end of the market, do you have granite countertops, new cabinets, soft-closed doors?Tile, know, tile showers, those types of things. And again, not saying every community has to have that, but is that the right level for your community? And then thirdly, and this is the culmination of lots of lists of how we don’t have this, don’t have this. It just comes down to nothing weird. And I think we all know what that looks like in the community, and it means something different to everybody. But yeah, some of my favorite examples where we’ve gone through and refreshed a room and youHey, we replaced the outlet covers and then look at their white, but the outlets themselves are still brown or almond, right? You’ve got doors that sort of open into each other. The layout’s not quite right. You just, or one of my favorites, you’ve got the tub with the cutout in it where, you know, it kind of makes like a little U shape in it. And so I’ve found that that’s really helpful.vernacular for the sales teams and the plan ops team to kind of go through together and you can you can if you and I were to walk into a room we could say Jerry’s is that weird yeah that’s weird okay we need to do something about it right and so you know from a product standpoint if you can have those three things then you will eliminate you know 99 % of objections that folks can have.

Jerry Vinci (11:05)

I think along those same lines to another term that you use last time we spoke was inventory optimization. What does that actually look like in practice?

Evan Petig (11:12)

Yeah, and that is the culmination of quite a bit of work from me and a team that we assembled. And it’s a pretty fun process, but it started as pricing. so we would say, OK, we’re going to go do a pricing exercise. But we really realized pretty quickly that it’s not just about price, because again, our product is so different. And when you think aboutI’ve worked in pricing in a couple of other industries and I think about Coke and Pepsi and they know, okay, if I increase the price, you know, from a dollar 50 to a dollar 60, then my volume is going to do this. And we just, we just can’t do that. There are so many other elements to it. It really is a combination of art and science. You want to have the data, you want to have the metrics. But then there’s also, you got to have input from.the sales teams and frankly and through them the customers. What are people saying when you walk into this room? You may have a unit that is much larger than a competitive unit even within the same building and people like unit two so much better because of the layout and you’ve got to kind of take that into account. The process that we kind of developed over time, this is a series of differentoptimization events was, you know, one, start off with the data. So take the rent roll, you look at that, you analyze that. And I always like to say that that will lead you to lots of interesting questions that you won’t know the answer to until you get to the community. You may realize, like, okay, hey, you know what, in a community that’s 85 % occupied, you might have one room type that is 99 % occupied and another room type that seems very similar, seems veryyou know, similar layout that 60 % occupied. And so you kind of go from there like, huh, that’s interesting. Why is that? Let’s see if we can unpack that, to the bottom of that. Sometimes the teams can tell you exactly what it is, or sometimes you have to actually have to get there. But it starts with really taking that and breaking down the rent roll and the data and kind of analyzing what you have there. Then what we’ve done is we bring everybody together.and have conversations about it. You you’ve done the analysis on kind of a price per square foot basis. And again, some of it might be, we’ve got the one bedroom den priced at a much better value to the two bedroom. And that’s why it’s selling, right? And that’s something you could tweak and adjust on a spreadsheet. But actually getting to the community, sitting down and kind of identifying, okay, where’s our opportunity? You might say, we’ve got25 open units and 18 of them are this floor plan. Okay, there’s your opportunity. Now let’s talk about what do we need. Part of that inventory optimization is having standards. Again, many communities have standards and they know exactly what it is, but in the work that I’ve kind of done, what we found is in a lot of cases, it’s kind of loosey goosey. And that happens for a couple of reasons. And some, it has to do with budgets.regardless of who’s ever in charge of room turns, whether it’s the plant operations maintenance team or the sales teams, they have a limited budget. And so in a lot of cases, they do the best that they can with that budget. And frankly, that budget may depend on how many total units they have to turn. So you could just have a year where you’ve got a lot of units to turn and therefore you do less, which then leaves you with a slug of inventory that’s different from the inventory that was turned the year before, right?And so if you’ve got those standards, that’s step one. And again, the standards don’t necessarily mean everything needs to be the same. But if it kind of fits the like new on brand, nothing weird, you can have different levels of inventory for the same floor plan. And frankly, sales teams like that. They like to be able to say, Jerry walks in and Jerry is going to be a high end customer. OK, I’m going to show him the.The one it meets all those three things, but we’ve taken that finishes to a higher level. I’m going to show him that one. Oh, Evan walks in, he’s more value conscious. So I’m going to do this one where we haven’t maybe done a complete turn, but at least it’s nice. It’s solid. It’s a good unit. And so kind of going through that, identifying what we need to do from a product standpoint, from a room standpoint, and then working that. And then it’s a rinse and repeat. You do it again and again.

Jerry Vinci (15:13)

Mm-hmm.

Evan Petig (15:19)

until you get to the place you want to be from an occupancy standpoint.

Jerry Vinci (15:22)

Going back to what you said about Pepsi and Coke if one increases the price, obviously they have to calculate what that’s going to do to their volume. driving the senior living industry? it’s not brand loyalty for sure, because obviously most people until they start searching, don’t even know about senior living brands. is price driving the market or is there something else that you think is motivating more people make that decision to move in?

Evan Petig (15:43)

Price is part of it, but it’s imperfect information. You touched on it earlier that there’s so many different types of products available. Even within a single market, you could have a life plan community, you could have a CCRC, you could have just an AL memory care only building. You have 55 plus, you have all sorts of different types of products. And then with each one of those, there arealso multiple different variations and options on that. And it’s such an intimidating product to step into that what’s driving it is, can you establish that relationship? Can you establish that trust? Can you show the value? And all of the things that fall straight in front of sales and marketing and frankly, the community leadership team too, right? Like when they tour the building, does it feel good? Does it feel…

Jerry Vinci (16:10)

Yeah, right.

Evan Petig (16:32)

Are you welcomed warmly? All of those things. So I mean, I think the answer is, you know, trust and value.

Jerry Vinci (16:38)

From an owner’s perspective, what kinds of feedback are helpful from the field?

Evan Petig (16:43)

I facts are helpful. ⁓ Bringing data is helpful and data and goals. What is our baseline and what do we want to get to? What is a huge turnoff is the “cant’s” we can’t sell this because of this or, the place across the street, they’re discounting and so, you know what,

Jerry Vinci (16:45)

You

Evan Petig (17:02)

There’s nothing we can do. You want to bring solutions. so, you know, having that data and that information as well as bringing a plan, bringing a solution. you can say that this unit has been on the market for 365 days. You know, we’ve had X number of people too, or maybe you don’t have all of this data, but at least you can even go back and say, over the last two weeks, I’ve shown this apartment eight times and here’s what the feedback has been.we would like to do this. Here’s our hypothesis. We think that if we added some lighting and changed out the carpet, that it would show much better and we would overcome some of those objections and it’ll sell. So it’s bringing that more than anecdotal data. And then also what’s the suggestion for, how do we solve this?

Jerry Vinci (17:47)

And if a sales director was feeling stuck with pricing or product, what’s the right way for them to bring that up to ownership?

Evan Petig (17:53)

bringing that data. So how many days on market was the occupancy of this floor plan? How many rooms do we have of this type? It’s like hey, we have five of these types of rooms available. We’d like to try this with two. then also stepping into that ownership mindset and say, you know.Here’s what the financial impact could be. You might not be perfect at it. It might not be exactly the way the owner thinks about it. But at least if you say, look, if we think you’re going to have to spend $5,000 on this room, but it’s been sitting open for the last month, so what is the lost rent on that? And just kind of stepping into that, think that can be helpful. And then the last thing with that is reallybuilding up that trust and that comes with communication. So too many times we will say, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll have a call with ownership. Here’s what we’re going to do. And the worst thing that a sales team and operations can do is go dark. You know, because then what happens is, we were going to do this during the month of June. It’s mid July. The owner says, shoot, I wonder how that went. They pick up the phone and they call them and then we’re backpedaling or we’re trying to pull together the stuff, right? Even if it doesn’t go,exactly how we thought if we said, we’re going to do what we talked about to four units. We’ve only sold one of them. But here’s what we think, here’s what we’ve learned. Here’s kind of our new hypothesis or here’s how our thinking has evolved. That can go a long way with owners.

Jerry Vinci (19:17)

Is there a particular success story or example you can share where a property improved by aligning its product and pricing with a deeper understanding of the market?

Evan Petig (19:26)

Yeah, I do. think about one one CCRC in particular, and this is where a lot of this started. I’ll tell a little bit of that story. We had gone through we pulled. We pulled a bunch of data and assembled a team to go to that community and I had a key collaborator. He was actually in procurement, but was also kind of a lean Sigma guy, very much a process guy and you know, kind of we developed a lot of this working on it together. So we went down to this community and we gathered the.on regional operations team. gathered the executive director of the sales and marketing team and the sales and marketing director, as well as the plan operations who oversaw all of the room turns. So it was a big group. One thing I will say, and I should have said maybe at the beginning is part of the reason we chose this community is because they were always willing to try stuff. They were open to ideas and flexible. And so that made them the testing ground for all sorts of different things.Some successful, some not, but it was just, I know it was something that the executive director in particular brought to that community is, hey, we’ll give it a shot, right? So we gathered everybody there. We were going through some of the data and the nice thing about being there, and I should have talked about this on the inventory optimizations was as we were having either a disagreement or even maybe not remembering, hey, what kind of finishes did this unit have? You could get up and go see it.And we did that multiple times. We kind of talk and then we say, okay, we wanted to go look at it and let’s go look at this, this and this and everybody can get aligned on it. A couple of really key things came out of that. One was we were talking about, we were seeing all of the stuff I was talking about earlier as far as similar products, different finishes. had showers, some had two bathtubs, just all the different things.We talked about, this is where we came up with the standards. We talked with the sales and marketing director and their team about what does the consumer expect? What are the things? And as we were ticking through that list, we said, okay, so this is our list of standards and we all aligned on that. And she said, yeah. And she said, you know, if I have this product, I don’t need discounts. And they had been using 15 to 20 % discounts off of entrance fees, is the entry fee community, in order to sell the product. And she said, if I have this,

Jerry Vinci (21:34)

Yeah.

Evan Petig (21:38)

I don’t need those discounts. So yes, we ended up, and that was exactly the case to ownership was, we’re gonna spend a little bit more on the room terms, but then we’re not gonna have to discount. And we still kept a little bit in their pocket because everybody wants a deal, right? And you need to be able to have your standard closing tools and all of that. But that was kind of the first thing is if you come up with the right standard, most people will kind of walk in and look at this and say, okay, this is nice, I’ll take it. There’s always gonna be some…that one customization or something like that. But if you identify the right standards, you’re likely good to go. The other thing that was a big aha coming out of that community visit was the sales and marketing director and the plan ops director to totally different worlds. So the plan ops director, he had been at that community for more than 20 years. It might have been 25 work his way up again, very innovative, very much.hey, let’s let’s try something new. But he was Georgia born and bred and had been in that community for a very long time. Sales and marketing director was brought in fairly new, probably less than six months from, I think it was Indiana or somewhere. Just just as a new opportunity to try to help this community, they’d been stuck kind of in the low 80s from an occupancy standpoint. And they were teasing each other a little bit. And I’m not going to do that the accent of the plant ops director. But basically, he looked at her in a teasing way. said,

Jerry Vinci (22:41)

Mm-hmm.

Evan Petig (22:58)

Every time we get a room ready, you guys sell it. And we’re just like, wait, that’s it right there. cause this community had, they had, they hung their hat on customization where you would walk in and you’d say, okay, they’d convince you to buy a unit. And then Jerry, now we’re going to go and sit down and pick out our finishes. And then they’re going to work through and install all those finishes. And what that, what that does to your sales lead time is just expands it greatly. Right. And the community, that was their problem is they couldn’t ever catch up.They had an okay sales pace. They had a good product. had good, you know, it was a nice community. But their pace was just so slow because of all that. So once we put the standards in place, convinced, we took the case to ownership and we did what we call the big 10. We picked 10 units and we’re going to turn them over to the new standards. And just like the big 10 had expanded, it ended up being like 12 or 15 that we ultimately did.But we took that case to ownership, did those 10 units, they all sold relatively quickly. And then we learned from it. We got back together, okay, what were some finishes that maybe we didn’t need or how do we either kind of trim the cost or on these units, don’t need to do X, we’ll do Y instead. And we just kept turning it and the community grew occupancy and really started to find.know, their place in the market with those units that have been open for quite some time.

Jerry Vinci (24:22)

That’s awesome. That’s great methodology. And when it comes to turnarounds like that, what signals do you look for to gauge whether a property can even bounce back?

Evan Petig (24:30)

it’s a couple of things. One is the team itself, right? Is the team committed? Are they engaged? Are they focused? And a little bit, do they celebrate the win? on a turnaround, know, they kind of say, here’s the saying, you can’t turn an ocean liner around on a dime, right? The same thing for a senior living property.You know, there’s a lot of drift that occurs and if a community is in need of turnaround, it’s not just one thing that’s broken. There’s lots of different things and you have to do it kind of slowly intentionally and just focus on that continuous improvement. But I will say the celebrating of the wins is important and I think how they celebrate wins because we’re going to have goals along the way and the first goal might be, okay, let’s get to 80 % occupancy or let’s get to 12 sales this month, whatever it is. And you want the team to say,All right, we did it. High five. We’re not done yet. Right. What’s the next challenge? What’s the next thing? Because you start to build that momentum and then it just feeds on itself. pretty soon they’re selling faster or the community is filling faster than it ever has before. and it’s not hard. It’s that initial inertia or starting that initial movement that is the difficult part. And then once they get going, then it kind of feeds on itself.

Jerry Vinci (25:37)

I would imagine sometimes just figuring out what that thing is to get the ball rolling, right? What’s gonna motivate this team to kick it into the next gear? And then from there, everything just starts to snowball to some degree.

Evan Petig (25:50)

Yeah, for sure. And I do think it is that environment of, transparency, if you want to call it vulnerability or safety of just being able to try some different things. Because not everything’s going to work. But if the environment isn’t such that somebody will bring up an idea, then you’re never going to hear that idea. And might not be the first thing, but it might be the fifth thing that you need along the way. And soyou know, having the right environment is really critical to turnaround, critical to high performance, as you know. But in a lot of cases, for turnarounds in particular, it’s changing that mindset where it’s like you have the permission to experiment and try new things and to not be, you know, successful 100 % of the time.

Jerry Vinci (26:31)

we look at sales and marketing leaders too, I think they get siloed a lot of the times and they’re not really thinking beyond move-ins. Why do you think it’s critical for them to kind of see the entire business model?

Evan Petig (26:41)

You want them to know and be part of that team. In many cases, the sales and marketing team is their own kind of silo, if you will. And so one, can, frankly, can create chaos if they’re not part of that team to say, yeah, I’m bringing, I had an event today and if the food and beverage group.is unaware of it as an example that creates chaos and you probably don’t have a good event and you have people pointing fingers and things like that right so that that’s definitely part of it but also that higher level thinking about the business model of okay yeah i i got ten move-ins but i’d gave away the farm in discounts and so our financial performance that our executive director for example is measured on is actually going to be worse this month than last month because of these things right and soknowing and understanding what all of the different pieces are for the critical stakeholders only helps you be a better team member.

Jerry Vinci (27:34)

If we were talking about long-term sustainability in this industry, or even short-term, I would say, what’s the one thing you believe will define success in the next five years or the next 10 years?

Evan Petig (27:45)

That’s a million dollar question, right?

Jerry Vinci (27:46)

I know.

Evan Petig (27:47)

It’s going to have to be a real look at what we have and what we need from everybody that’s involved. I mean, from a consumer standpoint, from an owner and provider standpoint, and from the regulatory bodies and governmental agencies that are all involved. think whether it’s on the legislative side, you and I have both seen edicts thatare counterintuitive that both of these things can’t be true, right? We can’t have lower costs and higher wages, those types of things. so just how do you know, how does this work? I do think also, know, our industry functions fairly well at the higher demographic levels. And we’ve been talking about mid market ever since I’ve been in the industry.struggling to serve that and serve that as well as, you know, below the mid-market and just to me that would be a success for our industry in the next five years is if you can have something for everybody that’s clean, that’s safe, that’s comfortable, that’s, you know, providing the engagement and programming people want and need, have that long-term sustainability for themselves as a person.

Jerry Vinci (28:55)

there just seems to be such a gap in the market right now.You’ve got this group in the middle who can’t necessarily afford the private pay communities or the larger communities. And so they’re trying to find other options. And then we also have this massive influx of older adults coming into the market and, not all of them are homeowners. So they’re going to have to figure something out. I just don’t know what that looks like, and nobody seems to have a good answer in terms of how we’re going to house everybody. And obviously not everyone’s going to be looking for housing, but for those that arewhat are some reasonable solutions that we can put into place?

Evan Petig (29:26)

Yeah, for where I am hopeful about it is, is that the solutions that we need are already underway. think providers, people, they’re, they’re nibbling around the edges. They’re trying something over here that works or trying something over here and there’s not going to be a one size fits all approach. And so it’s just continuing to innovate where we can, but then also test and build scale.But I think, you know, as well as anybody, just the numbers are daunting and it’s really going to take some decisive action, again, on the regulatory side as well as by all of the other stakeholders to make sure that this can work.

Jerry Vinci (30:04)

If you had one principle that’s kind of guided you through your career that you wish more people in senior living embraced, what would that be?

Evan Petig (30:11)

Yes, great question. I mean, I guess for me, it’s have an idea. You know, I’ve kind of talked about this just trying something, having a hypothesis, testing that hypothesis, seeing if it works out because ideas can be changed. They can be tested, they can evolve. But when you have a dogmatic belief and adherence to that, that’s whereThat’s where people get stuck. That’s where communities get stuck. I think about communities, new builds as an example, new development communities. There’s an underwriting that exists. There’s a plan. And when communities stick too closely to that plan, when ownership says, no, this is what you said prices were going to be, we got to keep prices here. that’s when communities, I think, end up drifting and not achieving what they did.what they set out to do. sort of, you know, half joke, half, I mean, kind of believe, I guess, or have an idea that we don’t know what a community is going to look like when it grows up. And that can be whether it’s a new opening or whether it’s a community that you walk into today that opened 20 years ago, because it’s got to figure out, you know, what is the right markets, have moved, demographics have changed within where that community sits.What does this community need to be in order to be fully functioning and kind of achieve all that it could be?

Jerry Vinci (31:26)

Evan, if somebody wants to stay connected with you or learn more about you’re up to, where can they go?

Evan Petig (31:31)

I’m active on LinkedIn. That’s likely the best source.

Jerry Vinci (31:34)

Well, Evan thank you so much for such a great conversation and I really appreciate you coming onto the show today. As we wrap, yeah, yeah, anytime, anytime.

Evan Petig (31:41)

Yeah, thank you for having me. This was great.

Jerry Vinci (31:44)

As we wrap up today’s episode, want to extend a huge thank you to Evan Petig for joining us and sharing his hard earned insights from the owner’s perspective, from product standards and pricing strategies to capital planning and the future of housing for older adults. Evan, your voice adds depth to a conversation our industry needs more of. And if you want to stay connected with Evan or learn more about his work in asset management and operations, we’ve included his LinkedIn in the show notes. As always, we hope you found this episode insightful and inspiring. Don’t forget to subscribe toour podcast on your favorite platform and stay tuned for more episodes where we continue to explore the evolving world of senior care covering everything from innovative care models and leadership strategies to family support technology and the future of aging. Also remember that from Leads to Leases isn’t just an audio experience we’re also a video podcast so if you want to see the video versions of our episodes like the one here with Evan make sure to subscribe to our YouTube or Spotify channels. I’m Jerry Vinci CEO of CCR Growth thank you for joining us on From Leads to Leases please like subscribeand share this episode with anyone who might find it useful. I’m truly grateful for your time and attention. Until next time, lead with strategy and with heart. Chat with you again soon. Thanks, Evan.

Evan Petig (32:54)

Thanks, Jerry.