February 2009 Newsletter
Lessons Learned From Running
by Tina West, COO, Sunrise Management
I recently ran in the Carlsbad Half Marathon. Those of you who know me know that running is a passion of mine. In fact, running has become medicine for my life – acting as a pressure relief valve as I can run off much of the stressors of daily living. As I was preparing for this past race, I was reminded of the many lessons running has taught me. Allow me to share:
One of my favorite sayings is “You get what you focus on”. I believe this to be true in life. What gets your attention eventually gets you. When I decided to run the 2009 Carlsbad Marathon, I became focused on being ready for the race. Each day I was focused on achieving the end result. Call this a goal if you will. In life, we need to have goals. What are we striving to achieve? Where are we headed? How will we know if we ever get there if we don’t know the destination? We can apply this to our personal and professional lives. In our world of property management, we are goal driven. We write budgets, we write marketing plans, and we write acquisitions analyses – to name a few. These are benchmarks and performance measures that we set for our asset performance. How focused are we on these goals? If we write a goal and shelve it, we are likely not going to achieve it. These plans and objectives need to be before us and grab our focus – daily, weekly, monthly. You’d be surprised – You get what you focus on!
My husband is a teacher and basketball coach. He loves the saying, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. I agree. When I decided to run the Carlsbad race, I needed a plan. I wasn’t simply going to show up and be prepared to run the 13.1 mile race. So, I made a plan. For 12 weeks, I had a detailed plan of how I was going to be ready for the race. I mentioned the goals we set in our industry – do we have a plan to achieve them? We can’t expect to simply achieve them objectives we set. What is our plan? We need a live action plan – How will we generate more traffic? How many leases do we need to obtain a specific occupancy? How will we reduce operating expenses? Don’t place your business plans, budgets, marketing plans, pro forma plans on the shelf and forget to review them daily, weekly, monthly. Plan for Success!
Don’t think there weren’t days when the last thing on my mind was to go for a pre-dawn run. My legs sometimes felt like bricks. Besides, it was cold out. I had too much to do. I could always do it tomorrow. Nike said it best when they said “Just Do It”. We just have to do it. We need to take that first step of action and get control of our thoughts and feelings but just doing it. We won’t see results if we don’t take the necessary steps. That is why fad diets and other quick fixes don’t work. It takes discipline. Success in our industry requires discipline. We need to make those follow-up calls, have difficult conversations with our teams (and owners at times), inspect what we expect, review the invoices for discrepancies, write those reports. You name it; we can all think of those tasks that we don’t want to do. Take the first step and just do it.
I love accountability – and not just for everyone else – for me too! I knew there would be days when my thoughts and feelings would get in way of my actions. So, I asked my husband to hold me accountable. I gave him permission to be tough with me when I felt like slacking off. When I did not feel like running – I needed him to remind me of my goal, my commitment, how my lack of action would prevent me from achieving success. We all need accountability partners. Our clients hold us accountable, our managers hold us accountable, and our peers hold us accountable. Just remember, when you give someone permission to be held accountable and they do – are we responsive?
Oh, I remember the days when my legs would not move fast enough or when a cramp challenged me to quit. This particular race preparation met me with 4 different injuries. Could that be age? Seriously, there were moments when the hurdles seemed insurmountable. You’ve been there. We have a bad week of leasing, a tough time with a resident that we seemingly cannot appease, a difficult call with a client, a series of poorly timed physical emergencies at a community. How do we respond? Do we pick ourselves up, dust off the dirt and stay the course? Or do we give up, choose a negative attitude, get angry and quit? Resilience is the key to success. Those people who I have found to be resilient in life are those who do not give up but get tough and fight through it. Remember, our thoughts determine our feelings which determine our behavior. Changing our thoughts about setbacks and hurdles will indeed change our feelings and yes, our action!
Each week I would track my results. Did I get the mileage in? How was my time? After the race, the first thing I did was check the race clock. In fact, at each mile someone was calling out the time. I did not wait until the finish line to know my pace but rather, checked frequently so that I could make adjustments if I needed to in order to achieve my goal. Do we check our results and analyze performance frequently, if at all? How do we know if we are hitting our goals? Those that work with me know that I am a huge proponent of analysis. I don’t wait for the monthly financials to know if we hit budget. I don’t wait for months to understand if an advertising plan is effective. I don’t wait until occupancy has dropped substantially to focus on necessary action steps. How are you checking your results and making adjustments?
So now what? Well, I have decided to run the Suzuki Rock and Roll Marathon in May. I must admit, I am a bit intimidated by a 26.2 mile run versus a 13.1 mile run. But, I believe in bettering your best. So, I am going to push myself to the next level. I am fortunate to have had people in my life that pushed me to higher levels. To those of you reading this article knowing you are one of those people – Thank you. It didn’t always feel good at the time but I look back and am appreciative that they did not expect mediocrity from me, rather excellence. At Sunrise, we expect excellence. We raise the performance bar of our teams, our communities, ourselves. If you don’t challenge yourself to a new height, you will never get there.
In the meantime, I am headed out for a run…
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