I was chatting with Behind the Leasing Desk’s Heather Blume last evening and the topic of leadership came up. Then by some stroke of Seth Godin genius the follow blog post pops up this morning. Seth’s Blog: Check-in, Chicken. In essence, it speaks to the value in checking in with your team. And, in an effort to prime the pump for an post I am going to pen for Heather, I thought I would share a story with you.
In late 1999, I lived in Seattle Washington where I worked for Equity Residential. At the time I lead a twenty person team at a 750 unit property called Waterstone Place since sold and renamed Club Palisades. The property gave a whole new meaning to the words – never a dull moment. That being said, I had the pleasure of working with some crazy cool people who loved what they did for a living. It was fun to them. Hard work but lots of fun. And, as a team we practiced the art of checking in.
Every weekday morning started with the admin and sales team listening as I read from both old and new inspirational and motivation books. Truth be told, I’m not certain everyone loved it as much as I did nevertheless they indulged me. I remember reading lines from books like Think and Grow Rich and The Laws of Success by Napoleon Hill. Stories of definite major purpose, courage, desires and wherewithal. All powerful and rich with discipline. A few paragraphs everyday with one follow up question – what did that passage make you think? Around the room we would go – one by one – sharing. To this day – I take reminders from that group of people of the power in that exercise and what it meant to the team. We took the site to a historic 98.8% occupied with just 2.2% of the inventory left to lease at the pinnacle. I have to believe in some way that the power of checking in every morning had something to do with it.
Have a crazy amazing Friday and check in with your team – I know I need to!
m
What are the three core responsibilities of a today’s Regional Property Manager Role?
I could have used Twitter for this and in the same respect I hope to open some good conversation in the comment section. So, be brief or be long winded – I think it will all be valuable stuff. Times are good and times are changing…
Hope your week is a compelling one -
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I ran across Stop the Cap this evening while reading some blog post and Google alerts. At the risk of causing discord with the fine people over at Mid-America – I have to ask, is it really worth it? I recognize the value in exclusive marketing relationships and revenue shares and advocate them myself but this one seems very anti-resident. In jest, I kind of wish I had a few Mid-America communities in my various sub-markets, I could use a few occupancy points.
Maybe the story has it all wrong and if so my apologies for drawing a spotlight to it. However, if it is valid the following excerpt really sums up the downside:
Mid-America earns a significant kickback bonus from Comcast for mandating cable service on all of its renters. That upsets many renters who choose not to have cable service, or subscribe to a satellite provider like DirecTV or DISH. The $40 fee doesn’t go away if you don’t want the service. Earlier in July, Stop the Cap! covered Mid-America’s mandatory cable service introduction in other parts of Tennessee and Texas.
My question comes in the context of an era of social media – did anyone consider the potential for bad buzz?
What does the community think? Good idea? Bad idea? Other points?
Be gentle -
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I love quotes – every now and then I like to share the ones that really move me and I think that will move you too -
Business has been crazy as of late and the blog has been left to suffer. Not good for a number of reasons and in the same respect I appreciate the time to focus. That being said, thank you for the various emails some of you have sent questioning the next post. In some ways – it’s a good precursor to the quote I want to share.
“Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” -M. Scott Peck
Could I take that one step further in the way of being a leader in the Property Management Space?
Until you value your time you won’t value the time of others either.
Being on time is huge in the eyes of others – if you make the commitment – be there.
What are you doing with your time as it relates to others?
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It seems to me that Property Management Companies are in essence Professional Service Firms. The chief objectives are to maximize the physical and fiscal performance of a real estate asset for institutional and or private owners. But are they really called to be and do more?
Property Management Company: Cause
I received an email not long ago asking a question along the lines of finding a cause for a firm – in an email exchange I penned the following:
I see a cause as being something bigger than self or team. To me – it’s audacious in nature. And, it has nothing to do with selling more stuff but everything to do with building individual and organizational character as a way of changing the world. I don’t use – changing the world – in jest. It is the only premise with which to build an organization. In my head organizations are built to serve the people that serve it – period. That is first and foremost. If built right all else will fall into place. An organization that focuses on building character will see that character exercised in the way of success on every level with every metric.
I think Emerson said it best when he penned the following:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…to leave the world a better place…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”
Capture that in the way of a cause that lays over your companies mission, vision, strategy and goals that help to execute as much and you have something people can believe in. You will have found something that people can get out of bed in the morning for – you can change the lives of hundreds if not thousands and as a default – you will create wealth beyond your imagination and more important – the imaginations of those that are served by the organization. They will have lived what Emerson had in mind – all because you made a decision to offer up a worthy cause.
Do you have a cause? What is it? Why do you think it is important?
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For those of you still grappling for a reason to spend time building social networks for the purpose of marketing apartments try this – they can become one of your unique selling propositions. Apartment Facebook Like Pages become a benefit that you can use to market your Apartment Living Experience. For a powerful example of how this works let’s look at the world of sports. Fan communities form around the team in support of the team and in some instances become an equally compelling draw.
Community as the Unique Selling Proposition
The Seahawks have their 12th Man
The Browns have their Dog House
Then you have these guys/gals
In essence there is a compelling reason to come and be a part. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s intriguing. There is a reason to want to Like – to want to Follow – to want to Listen – to want to Participate or to want to Create and Share your Apartment Living Experience with others. And, that reason is innate in all of us. We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to feel apart of something important. We are drawn to it because our nature is to be social. As apartment marketers – we should work to create these unique selling propositions. We should build on-line communities.
And, hope with wild abandon that you get a guy like this to lead your Community -
I am reading Clay Shirky’s new book: Cognitive Surplus this week. And, panning through some articles this morning, I ran across the following quote from Clay that I really liked in it’s essence:
scraplab — Optimism
“The final thing I’d say about optimism is this. If we took the loopiest, most moonbeam-addled Californian utopian internet bullshit, and held it up against the most cynical, realpolitik-inflected scepticism, the Californian bullshit would still be a better predictor of the future. Which is to say that, if in 1994 you’d wanted to understand what our lives would be like right now, you’d still be better off reading a single copy of Wired magazine published in that year than all of the sceptical literature published ever since.”
Clay Shirky, in interview with Decca Aitkenhead of the Guardian.
Mills Properties is making a thoughtful integration of social media principles into their Get Social with Mills Initiative. And, in doing so we decided to craft a document of social media principles for our apartment management company as a whole using thoughts, ideas and original works from in and outside of the industry.
Social Media Principles for Apartments
The four companies we have elected to draw from are:
JC Hart
Dell
Coca-Cola
Intel
There are hundreds of examples out there to choose from if you are thinking of writing your own. I can’t tell you that we used some magic formula to pick the companies we did. That is with the exception of JC Hart – we know Mark Juleen and admire the efforts he and his team have put together in executing a great strategy. With that, we also look forward to feedback along the way as we believe that there is no perfect science to the process.
If you have a set of Social Media Principles for your organization and wish to share – link it up down in the comments. We would love to read them.
Have a great weekend -
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You likely know from your own experiences both on and off line that Emotion Sells! Excitement Sells! Cool Sells! Gossip Sells! Optimism Sells! Humor Sells! Anger Sells! iPhone 4 Sells! Well – more appropriate to this post concerning the iPhone 4 – Being Part of the Cool Kid Tribe Sells! Wit Sells! Deep thoughts by Jack Handy Sells! Heart Felt Sells! To Big to Fail Sells! And B.S. Sells – in spades! Point? It’s the stuff that hits the hardest and softest parts of that thing called heart – soul – spirit and mind! So get out your Kleenex or pick up that axe in need of a good grind – as we have absolutely nothing to tell you that you don’t already know -
Scott Stratten from the very popular UnMarketing Blog cut the idea of sharing down to its core recently -
UnMarketing » Blog Archive » Word of Mouth Has Changed, Sort Of
Look at what gets shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter. Funny stuff, brilliant knowledge-filled posts, sad things, stuff that angers you.
Repeat after me: People. Spread. Emotion.
Apartment Facebook Like Page: Rules for Share
It’s kind of like Steve Leonard’s rule for customer service : Rule number one: The customer is always right. Rule number two: If the customer is wrong, see rule number one! I am adopting Scott’s mantra as it relates to sharing content on your Apartment Facebook Like Page or your Apartment Twitter Status updates: And, to distill it into a set of rules [I hate rules but for the sake of keeping] Rule number one: People. Spread. Emotion. Rule number two: If there is no spread, see rule number one!
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I was chatting with Behind the Leasing Desk’s Heather Blume last evening and the topic of leadership came up. Then by some stroke of Seth Godin genius the follow blog post pops up this morning. Seth’s Blog: Check-in, Chicken. In essence, it speaks to the value in checking in with your team. And, in an effort to prime the pump for an post I am going to pen for Heather, I thought I would share a story with you.
