Well it’s been almost two years now that I’ve been on a pretty tough property and I have to say I have loved every minute of it (okay…almost every minute of it!).  For those of you that know me, I’ve been working in this industry for over 24 years now and this latest challenge proved to be my biggest, most satisfying one yet.

My team and I chose to nominate our apartment community for Property of the Year through the St. Louis Apartment Association because of the intense and insane amount of work we put in to the community.  We have all endured a lot of trying times, including being called names we had never heard before!  None of these trying times discouraged us though.  If anything, I think it made us push even harder to truly make this a “community”.  The hard work paid off and we are rocking it!  The majority of our residents now love living here and most of our new residents come from being referred by a current resident.

Here are some steps we took:

• Involving residents in activities – lots of them.  Nothing that cost a great amount of money but things that were meaningful and allowed residents to interact and get to know each other.
• We established a common goal and would ask ourselves daily if what we were doing would help us accomplish that goal.  If it didn’t help get us to our goal, we simply did not do it.
• We are always looking for feedback, both good and bad.  We ask everyone – residents, prospects, our own associates:  How are we doing?  What can we improve upon?  Then we take steps to make changes.
• We started doing monthly team-building activities to really get to know each person we worked with and establish a trusting relationship.
• Lastly, we make it fun.  How can other people enjoy living at our community if we don’t LOVE working here – sincerely?  We asked ourselves that question and made our community a place we are all proud of.

I’m writing this because I know how easy it is for all of us to get discouraged at times, but never give up!  You will get so much more out of life if you keep pushing on through those difficult times.  Conquer your biggest challenges and fear.  I promise…you’ll feel awesome at the end!

Lisa

Lisa actively supports Stray Rescue of St. Louis and anything related to animal rescue. She would like to travel to Germany one day to research her ancestors that came to America during World War 2.

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