Reflect, Renew, Reimagine:
A 2025 Roadmap for Multifamily Success

Hello. Hello. Welcome in. Welcome in. Grab your commute. All of our amazing learners today. I'm very, very excited. Hello, everyone. These numbers are going on. Go ahead and say hello in the chat. Let Stephanie one and Stephanie two know that you're here today. Hello. In this case, I'm Stephanie two. Right? Well, no. I could be Stephanie too because you're the main act, the main show, the big kahuna, the one everyone's here for. Hi, Olivia. She says hello, Stephanie one and two. I love it. I love it too. It's super fun. We we we sometimes go by Stephanie Squared. It is true. I think you're very true. Hey, Aylor. Hi, Stormy. I love it. It's like it's like we're in the we're in the, like, locker room. She's like, hey, Aylor. High five. Yeah. And, you know, when you have kids in sports, you totally get it. No one knows your first name. I know. And they can't pronounce my last name normally, so it's fine. Hello, Matt. He just says, hello, Stephanie. It makes it easier, guys, because, you know, you can't get the name wrong. You're like, if I say Stephanie, somebody's gonna answer. Absolutely. Hello, Caitlin. Hello, Evelyn. Hey, Chris. Howdy, Ben. Howdy, howdy. Hey, everyone. Hello to Tiffany. I think they're just as excited as we are, and that's pretty exciting. Yeah. Well, a good day. I think we're gonna go ahead and get started because I know we have so much information in such a short amount of time, and you've jam packed it in. So I just wanna welcome everyone to today's webinar, reflect, renew, reimagine, a twenty twenty five roadmap for multifamily success. Hello to everyone. My name is Stephanie Anderson, and I'm the senior director of communications and social media right here at Grace Hill. I've been proudly serving the apartment industry for the past eighteen years with no plans to slow down anytime soon. In fact, so much has changed in property management over the years, but one thing remains the same, the amazing people. And, you know, great companies are the result of great people, and that starts with leadership and preparation and getting us prepared for a fabulous twenty twenty five road map ahead, which Stephanie is gonna help us with. But a little shameless plug before we get started here because I oversee the social media right here at Grace Hill. I would be remissed if I did not, insert a little plug here, about our brand new toolkit. That's right. We have a social media toolkit that we have just released to everyone out in the industry. It came out last week, and I'll tell you, the buzz was buzzing back at the assembly of delegates in Atlanta, Georgia last week because this is just encompassing of so many great things with new rules and regulations surrounding social media. What do you do? What do you not do? How do you get better? Boost your engagement. There's a lot of great resources in here, and so I wanna invite you to have access to that. I'm going to drop the link in the chat for you in just a few minutes. And so be on the lookout, click on that, access it, and let me know if you have any questions. But I promise you, you're gonna have so much fun, and I can't wait to hear all the ways that you'll be using it. Now before we get started, just a few housekeeping items. I know this is the boring stuff for sure, but I guarantee I'll get these questions at some point during today's webinar, so I'm gonna try to answer them for you right now. The webinar is being recorded. It will be shared with all attendees later this week. So as an attendee, you are in listen only mode, and it's not because Stephanie Square does not want to hear from you. In fact, we do. That's just gonna help with any outside noise and disruption so that you can hear the presentation. However, if you have questions or you want to engage with today's guest speaker, I'm gonna encourage you to use the chat and also our q and a box located on the screen. So you have multiple ways to engage with today's speaker. And finally, as Stephanie would tell you, today is a win win webinar. Ain't that right? Yeah. You'll have to get that branded, copyrighted. As a thank you for attending today's event. So you've already done the hard work. You are here today. You have been entered to win a three thousand dollar cruise travel voucher. This giveaway is in celebration of Grace Hill winning the National Apartment Association's twenty twenty four supplier of the year award. The drawing will take place on December twentieth. And in addition to today's webinar, you still have two more chances. So two more entries to get involved for this drawing, and those are remaining this year, one of them taking place on Thursday and the other one taking place on December tenth. So exciting stuff, but not as exciting as today's event. So let's move past all of that. I hope you're ready. I'm sweating just talking. I'm excited to formally introduce you to today's speaker. And because she can eloquently introduce herself way better than I ever could, I would like to welcome to our virtual stage, Stephanie Aylor. Woo. We need that, like, that virtual applause. Absolutely. The crowd's going loud. The crowd's going loud. I love it. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Number one, I am so excited. Did you say I'm entered to win or I'm not eligible? I think that because they came to see you, maybe someone will win from this webinar, and they'll invite you. But my friends, do not enter alone. Okay. Fair enough. Summer. Alright. Thank you so much, everyone. I am Stephanie Ehler, and I am the founder of Savvy Leasing and in a twenty five year industry oh, I don't even know. Veteran, they say, but I think industry, winner because even if I can't win the trip, I have won by being able to work with all of you. And you know what? Let's just keep it going. We don't need to talk about me anymore. We're gonna be talking about you. So we already did our introduction. Check that off the agenda, and we're gonna reflect We're gonna reflect on our twenty twenty four performance and our personal growth. That's what we promised you. We're gonna do that. So you're gonna analyze some of your key metrics. And alongside of that, some of your personal metrics as well. We're gonna renew we're gonna renew our mindset. I have some tips and tricks for you that will help you move into a better headspace. And we're going to then with our reflection and our renewal, we are going to reimagine setting goals for twenty twenty five. I'll share the actionable takeaways and the exercises and my resources at the end, and, hopefully, we have a little bit of time for q and a. I know Stephanie is going to watch the chat and the q and a and things like that for me, and I will kinda keep an eye on it as well so that I can hopefully answer some things in real time if possible. But it does get a little challenging to kinda balance them both. But feel free to pop the information into the chat. And if for some reason we do not have time at the end, I will make sure to personally get back to you with your questions too. So we'll make that happen. Alright. Let's do it. Let's talk and reflect on our twenty twenty four performance and our personal growth. So, obviously, key metrics are part of our everyday life. You hear KPI all day long. Right? Key performance indicators. And you have budgeted occupancy rates and NOI. You have goals for resident satisfaction, staff turnover as just some of the things that you reflect on and you measure every single year. So as we're thinking about twenty twenty four, we're gonna start with the the data. Right? You're not we're not quite done with twenty twenty four yet, but as we're wrapping it up, did we meet expectations? Right? Did we exceed expectations? Also ask yourself beyond just the data numbers, just just beyond just the numbers, what internal and external factors contributed to whether we exceeded or met our goals or not? Right? If we were on target, what contributed positively to that? Write those things down. You can even start noodling now. I should have I should have, like, given you the heads up that you're gonna want some paper and a pen because we're gonna do a lot of reflecting. So what were some of the things that you did personally that helped you meet and exceed expectations? Or, honestly, if if if they fell short. Right? If things weren't exactly where they should have been by this point in time, What didn't work? Right? Like, what could you have done different? What will you not do in twenty twenty five that you did in twenty twenty four? You know, what do we leave behind in twenty twenty four? Those are some of the reflections that you're gonna wanna do on your personal and performance from twenty twenty four. So just to kinda recap, it's not just about the data itself. There's a pattern here. Right? We're discovering the data, and then we're reflecting and asking questions and evaluating it. Did we meet expectations? And if we did, what internal and external factors contributed to that yes or no? What worked? What didn't? What will we take into next year? And what will we leave behind in twenty twenty four? Now those metrics, we wanna connect those to how it impacts your organization. So we have a lot of amazing people on this call. I see heads of training. I see property managers. I see leasing agents. I see corporate, accounting members and all kinds of different people. So hello to you all. So we all have our own, you know, organizational goals. And how do those metrics align with those organizational goals? Well, obviously, when you start connecting the dots, operational metrics like NOI and occupancy rates impact profitability for the organization. Right? Impact your market competitiveness. NOI, of course, is all about financial robustness. Right? Financial sustainability. And, truly, you're measuring things like resident satisfaction and staff turnover because that also impacts the organizational goals related to financial sustainability. Now how do those operational metrics align with your personal growth? You might be thinking, I don't know that my NOI really aligns with my personal goals, but it really does because it's all about intrinsically, you you know, honing in on your financial acumen. Right? Cost management strategies, things that you use and do at work, those all help you at home as well. You know, that operational leadership, I will tell you what, though. I get more respect leading my team than I do with my kids. I'm just saying. I don't know if you all feel the same way or not. So sometimes my, personal growth is is is more aligned with my organizational metrics and my operational metrics. So yeah. So NOI helps you build those skills if you wanna advance your career or bloom where you're planted and just become the best at where you're at, and that's part of your goals. You know, occupancy rates with your personal growth in leasing strategy and strategy in general and your tactical acumen, and boosting your confidence, right, and opening those growth opportunities in various ways. So connecting those metrics is an important part of reflection because we are not disconnected from our organization, and our operational metrics do help us with our personal growth. Even when we sometimes don't think it does, that day to day is absolutely contributing to your personal success. Woo hoo. And while we're thinking about it, it's not just about the numbers, though. It's about the moments. There's an amazing book called The Power of Moments by Chipit and Danhie, And what they share in the book is how the power of key moments and reflecting on those can define our experiences. You know, moments that involve transitions or milestones or even challenges, so it doesn't always have to be positive moments, offer powerful opportunities to create memorable impacts through intentional reflection. It's important to be intentional and really kinda sit in this and think about it. Right? Whether it's at work in signing new leases, you know, making those lease signings memorable because the moment isn't just your moment. It's also theirs. Right? Their moment is exciting because they're moving into their new apartment. So clear communication and building that trust as part of that moment is is important and influential. Resolving conflicts at home, at work, in the car when somebody, you know, honks at you or maybe flips you off. I'm not did I say that out loud? You know, we can turn those potential negatives into positives with our own kind of quick response and reinforcing our positive mindset. You know, we don't we don't respond in the same way as somebody who honks at us. We need to think about the power of that moment and how our behavior next will impact them, and it impacts our own attitude. So it's important that we resolve that conflict even if it's just internally. Maybe we exceeded expectations. You know, I threw my daughter an eighteenth birthday surprise party. That was an incredible moment for both of us in our year, and I'll never forget that and what that ultimately meant for our relationship going forward even though she was really mad at me. Like, all the way leading up to it, she was angry because I wasn't letting her have a party for her eighteenth birthday. I mean, come on. But luckily, that moment kind of upon reflection, the power of the moment superseded that anger. So focusing on these key moments creates lasting impact and helps you with your overall success. Because, again, sometimes, like, the moment can be positive. Sometimes the moment can be, an opportunity for learning. Right? So this is our first opportunity to reflect. I want you to actually, we're gonna do a little bit of quiet time, and you're going to reflect and write down some key moments from twenty twenty four that define your personal or professional growth, or I like to say or spark change that I don't I'm copying that from the power of moments book. They talk about sparking change. So take a minute. And even if you don't have a chance to finish putting your moments down on paper, write down the prompt because it's really important that you do come back to this. This is a building block to reimagining twenty twenty five is personal reflection on the power of moments. So we are gonna take just a minute to reflect. And if you feel like sharing, you are more than welcome to share, but we are just not, we don't you don't have to. But if you feel like sharing, we're more than happy to take in your information. So let's just take a minute and reflect on our moments. Stephanie, you're right. We shoulda had Jeopardy music, but I like the quiet. It's very intentional. Well, our minute is up for that, and I know you didn't all have time to write down all the moments that you wanted to and really reflect on those. But I do want you to, again, write down the prompt and really think about it after the fact. I mentioned, you know, my daughter's eighteenth birthday party and my personal reflection. You know, work wise, getting on stage at this year was a huge moment for me. You know, just feeling the energy motivates me to keep going with what I'm doing. The other part of moments are, you know, sometimes just moments that sparked imagination and sparked, growth. We're just just dinner with my industry friends at these events where we don't have to be on. We can just be. And and I love that. And, you know, because we're doing personal reflection, I'm I'm sharing. Sadly, the loss of my cousin at the young age of forty seven was a moment that made me have some really important reflections and realizations about my own health and the need to prioritize it. You know, I would say that definitely sparked change, and I think about her a lot and, in the moment that lots of moments in this year. So power of moments. Alright. Steph, did were you able to write some of yours down? I was. In fact, oftentimes, we don't realize the impact we've had or even what we've been through until we sit back and say, wow. I survived that, or, wow. I accomplished that. So it's the power of that time. Thank you so much for allowing us to have that. It's pretty incredible. You're you're so welcome. Well, now that we've reflected, we're gonna renew. We're gonna renew our mindset. We're gonna start with talking about what is a mindset. Like, what does that actually mean? And we're gonna talk about growth versus fixed mindsets. And then we're also gonna talk about our core needs that influence motivation, and it's all ties together really nicely in a bow. I promise. So let's get into it. So what is a mindset? Right? A mindset is a person's set of beliefs and attitudes about themselves and their most important qualities. So your mindset is what you think about your intelligence, about your confidence, about your leadership ability, about your competence, adaptability, character, personality, creativity. I've heard people say a lot, oh, I'm not a creative person. Well, is that inherent in an unchangeable quality, or can they grow into something else? Can you grow into something else? Can we fundamentally change these things? Spoiler alert. Yes. We can. In case you weren't sure. I wasn't gonna be like, nope. We can't. Peace out. So I am not the genius that came up with this. Obviously, you've probably heard about fixed mindset and growth mindset in the past. And, honestly, coming from this amazing doctor Dweck, Carol Dweck, she's a psychology professor at Stanford and wrote an incredible book, and I'll share the name of the book, mindset with you at the end as well. She's the one who was interested in people and how they cope with failure. That's sort of where it started for her. So she started studying children because children cope with failure in a much more, up improving way than we do as as adults. We kinda lose some of that ability to grapple with hard problems, as we grow up for some reason. Right? But she really wanted to know why do some people succeed or not, and how do we foster success? So some of the key questions that she asked in her studies was why do some people lean into failure and roll up their sleeves and dive in? Right? Like, why are people like, hey. You know what? We got this. And then why are some people prone to avoid failure and give up easily and just walk away. Right? Her studies on motivation progressed, to include, obviously, adults and cultures. And in two thousand six, she wrote a mindset, the new psychology of success, and it is really incredible. And I think that this statement is so powerful because the book challenged the common belief that intelligent people are born smart. Like I said, some people just say, oh, I'm not creative, but you can be. Right? A fixed mindset focuses on proving abilities and avoiding challenges, where a growth mindset seeks to improve abilities and embrace challenges. A fixed mindset says, I'm I'm not creative, and I won't ever be. But maybe I'm smart, and I wanna show you how smart I am. But I don't want to do it if there's an obstacle in my way. And the growth mindset's like, hey. I'm not super creative, but I'm gonna try to learn something that maybe will help me get more creative and challenge themselves. And they will thrive in that environment, and it creates a more accepting and thriving culture and an exceptional employee experience when you lead with a growth mindset as well. Alright. Let's dig in a little bit deeper into it. Do you like my images? I like that guy or girl or whatever on the left. I with those trophies, he's real sad. You gotta love AI. But that fixed mindset, they wanna prove something. They're pretty inflexible. They're typically showcasing competence, kind of like, I'm the best. Look at me. And they don't really care about anything else but outperforming others. There's a place for competition. Let's not be let's not be pretend here. There is absolutely a place for competition. Right? Like, I love to, you know, compete, but the person that I need to compete with the most is myself. And that's the growth mindset. I wanna improve something. I'm adaptable. I wanna enhance my capabilities, and all I really care about at the end of the day is outperforming myself. That's the difference in the comparisons as a little bit of a a deeper dive. People who have a fixed mindset typically fall short of their potential, and people who have a growth mindset can reach greater levels of achievement. Now keep in mind, defining achievement is different for everybody. I I talk about blooming where you're planted because I do believe that it's fantastic and wonderful to be in the same place and grow in that place. That because I had somebody that was a leasing agent for twenty years that worked on my team at one point, and you you might've thought, gosh, that person has a fixed mindset. Like, why didn't they wanna go beyond leasing? She didn't care. She loved it. She made bank with her commissions, and she had a growth mindset. She was always growing, and she was always trying to help other people. So don't be fooled. The difference is truly in these types of characteristics. Right? How do you identify that? And how do you identify it within yourself? And I'll be completely blunt. There have been times where I have been stuck in a fixed mindset myself, and I had to renew my mindset and and challenge myself to get back into a growth mindset because sometimes we just wallow or, as I call it, go down the rabbit hole. Right? Any Alice in Wonderland fans, you know what I mean? Remember the expression, like, if you believe you're not good at something, then you're not gonna be? Well, that's the fixed mindset. Right? As a result, you don't put in the effort because you don't want to fail. What's the point? Right? You avoid the challenges because you don't wanna fail. You shy away from hard stuff, even though we can do hard things, and you avoid feedback because you don't want to hear about it. And you're intimidated and resentful of your peers' success, maybe on the inside, maybe on the outside. But at the end of the day, this is helping you with nothing. Right? Having these fixed mindsets can help you plateau early and fall short of your potential. We're having the growth mindset. The characteristics of that is we believe that we can learn Excel. If you look at my LinkedIn page, you'll see that I actually had a pivot table class that I took on LinkedIn, and I published that I passed it. I was so proud because maybe I wasn't that great at Excel, but I knew that I could get better. Maybe I wasn't feeling great about giving a webinar, but I know that I can always improve and get better. Growth mindsets remain resilient when setbacks occur. We are either winning or we are learning, as doctor Debbie says, if you guys know who doctor Debbie is in the industry. We are winning or learning. When I I was leading my team at my last property management company, we had a weekly meeting where we would talk about our wins, and we would talk about our opportunities. And those opportunities, we're learning opportunities. It could have been another l word that we used, but we didn't believe in that because every single leading from a growth mindset or being in a growth mindset means that those opportunities are for learning even if it feels like a loss at the time. The other part of this is when you recognize the parts of yourself that need to move and be and renew a growth mindset, this is when you can unlock some of the secrets to success. So we're gonna do that right now. We're actually gonna do another exercise, and we're gonna think about where we went wrong or maybe right. Like, it doesn't have to be in the negative. Think about a challenge that you experienced so far in twenty twenty four. Evaluate and be honest about how your mindset influenced your response to the challenge, and reimagine a different result based on a different mindset. So reflect on the challenge, assess your mindset, and reimagine the result. And now, again, you can reflect on a challenge and your mindset was where it should be. It's okay to reimagine that it went wrong and, like, kind of pump yourself up that way. Like, hey. I did it. I did it the right way. So we're gonna take another minute. And, again, I know that a minute is definitely not long enough. I we just only have fifty five minutes together today. And so please write down the prompt and make sure that you take an opportunity to renew and talk about your mind think about your mindset after the fact. But we're gonna take a minute now to get started on it. So quiet intentional reflection starts now. Alright. I think that was a full minute. We're real close to it. I know that these are very personal, and so that's why we're I don't incur I mean, I encourage you to share if you want to share, but you do not have to share. But from a mindset perspective, I mentioned earlier how I found myself in a fixed mindset when it came to a a specific challenge. I won't, you know, go into a lot of detail. But upon, like, writing this, I ascertained that I was in a fixed mindset for that specific situation, and that's why the outcome was not what I would have liked. And had I renewed my mindset into a growth mindset, I can reimagine that there would have been a different outcome on that challenge. And as I go into twenty twenty five and I am faced with that type of situation again, I am going to be a lot more mindful and a lot more intentional in the way that I handle it. I will be in a growth mindset, and I anticipate that my outcome will be much more beneficial to me as we move into twenty twenty five. So, hopefully, you experience that same thing. And, again, if it was the other way around, if you had a really great mindset when it came to a challenge and you can see how it could have gone the other way, it keeps you motivated. Right? Keeps you motivated to stay in that growth mindset. Alright. That is a Steph. You're so right. That minute goes really fast. I don't know if I gave you a full minute on that one. I was looking at my clock, and I thought, oh, no. But it is very powerful. And like I said, I encourage you to write down the prompt and circle back to this. I love what's called done listing where you get it done in real time, but we only have fifty five minutes. So I I I can't we can't done list every single one of them. Heads up though too, at the end of the webinar, I do have all the exercises listed so you can screen grab that in case you did miss a prompt along the way. So just a little bit of, like, future planning for you. Alright. So moving on into the core needs. These are the core needs that influence motivation, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. So this is actually inspired from my friend, Jessica Fernkertland. She shared this information with me, and I it makes so much sense when it comes to creating a growth mindset and challenging and reimagining what our twenty twenty five will look at look like. So this is impactful for our motivation as a as an individual, but it's also impactful if you are a leader. What does your team need to become motivated? And here's the three things. Autonomy, which is, of course, control over one's actions, competence, feeling effective in one's role, in one's environment, and relatedness, which is your connection with others. Those are the core needs that influence motivation. So this comes from something called the self determination theory, SDT. I have to remind myself of how to say that. SDT, self determination feeling fear, theory. Easy for me to say. It is developed by Dessie and Ryan, and it identifies these as our three core needs that need to be addressed to foster a motivated and high performing team as leaders and as individuals to know what we need to do to work on our motivation, right, our internal motivation, and to renew our mindset. Autonomy, giving those team members control over their decisions and actions. Right? Allowing creativity, empowering people. Managers can support this by delegating and trusting their team to complete tasks, which leads to competence. And those that leads back to autonomy. Because if somebody doesn't feel competent, then they definitely aren't going to even want the autonomy. So you can build the competence by setting really clear expectations. You know, sixty percent of people don't necessarily know what to do on a day to day basis when they walk in their office. I know that seems crazy, but it's true. And it's because sometimes even when things are different every day, you know, in our business, we still have a little bit of hesitation because we don't necessarily have autonomy. So then that affects our competence. Right? Still, these are all connected together. Grace Hill has an amazing, program called policy partner, which helps to have your policies in one place, and it's searchable and all that. I used it at my last company, and it helped build competence because it's it helps set the expectations much more clearly. Obviously, training too. You know, provide training, amazing webinars, and LMS and and other, you know, on-site in person trainings. And probably the most important thing that I literally, like, pound pound my chest, is offering regular feedback, feedback loops, consistent, constructive feedback. I do not need an annual performance review. In fact, I don't know if you've ever seen my LinkedIn, but I literally talk about killing that all the time. Like, I literally I murdered it. Okay. Anyway so, yes, I laugh on my own jokes, especially when you guys are all muted and you can't laugh with me. But the leaders can enhance competence by coaching, inspiring, encouraging you to attend trainings, and, of course, that regular feedback loop. What were our wins? What are our opportunities? That helps build competence. And finally, relatedness. The need this need involves being connected and feeling connected to others. When we were in COVID, I know we talk about it all the time, but, like, we felt lonely even though we probably weren't even alone. But that was because we weren't feeling connected to each other. So leaders, you can help your teams by promoting that sense of belonging, aligning the team goals with personal aspirations. Remember when I mentioned my leasing agent who had been a leasing agent for twenty years? I knew what she wanted. She did not wanna be promoted, but she did like to get involved in things. Like, she liked being a part of tech rollouts. She liked being a part of what we call the, our learning academy. Those types of things. So I was able to align team goals with her personal aspirations to bloom where she was planted. And you can also create that positive, supportive work environment through encouraging skill development with competence and assigning and delegating effectively. That all, again, goes together as part of this self determination theory. Let's deep, deep dive a little bit into autonomy. I want to give you some specific guidance. Speaking of clear expectations, specific guidance is also important for competence when it comes to autonomy. So I have a coach that works with me and, so blessed, like, to have an incredible person in my life. And she shared with me this autonomy guidance. When something that you have to do changes from an inspiration to an obligation, if you have the autonomy to change it, you should. So when something converts from an inspiration to an obligation and you have the autonomy to change it, you should. So I'll give you a specific example. When I was a sales manager, I would start getting the Sunday blues. I would start having anxiety on Sunday night. I had hours worth of work to do because we had an eight AM Monday morning sales meeting. So I had hours worth of work that I needed to do on Sunday night, which just made me, like I said, anxious and feel just sad because I was taking time away from my family. And I no longer felt inspired by leading that sales meeting. Like, it became an obligation. And I don't know about you guys, but I think you can tell when your leader or yourself is no longer inspired by what they're doing, and they feel obligated instead. Well, luckily, I had the autonomy to change it. So I moved it. I moved it to the afternoon, which gave my team and myself Monday morning to get ourselves situated, get ourselves sorted, plan for the meeting, plan for the week, and not take up our Sunday nights during that. Now some people like to work Sundays, and that's totally fine. But I wanted to be inspired again, and I wanted my team to stay inspired. So I changed it. Maybe you have some early Monday morning due dates for some things. Maybe if that is not inspiring you anymore or you like to get it done, that's fine. Then knock it out. But if you're just feeling obligated and you have autonomy to change it, see if you can make that change. Now there is a chance that you have moved from inspiration to obligation, and you don't have autonomy to change it. Well, in that case, you will reflect on the growth mindset and renewing that growth mindset. Right? Because what what opportunities learning opportunities do I have in this task, in this situation where I'm no longer inspired, but I feel obligated? The autonomy I have, I can't change that, but I can change me. So what can I do to improve my perspective on it? That's where the inspiration versus obligation where you have some autonomy, where you have a say in it. Think about your other systems and processes that might be bringing your teams down. Right? Analyze if that system or process is part of the problem or if it's actually solving the pain point it was supposed to solve. Those are certain things that you've noticed becomes, you know, inspiration versus obligation. And and can you change it? And should you change it? This connects to the book Atomic Habits. I don't know if anyone's read that. Please pop in the chat if you've read atomic habits or the mindset book that I talked about earlier too. I'm just kinda curious if anyone's had a chance to read those. Atomic habits talks about small, consistent changes that can lead to transformative results over time. It encourages micro habits that align with your larger goals. So when I was talking about some some of the big changes that I made because I was no longer inspired. There's also small changes that I've made that helped me as well. And one of those is turning off my notifications. I turned them off. Except for my kids, they can get through. Sometimes. Actually, I have them totally turned off right now. Sorry, kids. But the reason is because interruptions cause me to lose my focus, and it takes twenty three minutes on average for a person to get their focus back after they've been interrupted. So think about it. Think about how many times your phone has gone off even in this webinar. Right? So if we had a million hours to do this, I love this exercise that I learned from a teacher. And what she did was she had her fourth period, all of your classes turn on all their notifications. If I had you all turn on all your notifications and start tallying how many you're getting during this forty minutes we've already spent together. It's incredible. Look at this class. Like, think of the distractions. How are you ever going to feel inspired and motivated if you're constantly being taken out of your the moment and the focus? You know, it's challenging to renew your growth mindset when you're constantly being pinged. So I connect this back to Atomic Habits and how turning off my notifications helped transform my world. It absolutely helped me align my daily life with my larger goals of getting stuff done, like knocking stuff out, actually being productive. So I encourage you. Is anyone else turned off their notifications? I would love to kinda hear from you guys if you turned off the notifications. I know. I'm looking at the comments right now. I turn my notifications off all the time. Yes. Awesome. I love that. So those poor kids. Right? That's what I thought. And my daughter, my oldest daughter, just graduated from ASU, and she's gonna be an art teacher. And I shared with I shared this with her because I was like, they have a no phone policy for a reason now. You know? Like, there's been arguments on, well, phones are part of our everyday world, but they do they do that does it need to be part of everyday world like this? Absolutely not. Right? Yeah. I love that. Thanks for sharing, guys. So after autonomy comes competence. Right? Building competence, setting clear expectations, upscale early and often to make your teams feel competent. Grace Hills LMS. They're mystery shop tools. Nothing helps me learn more than feedback on my performance. Right? And that will help facilitate gaining that competence that they need. Something else that I want you to renew is what you thought you knew about you. And so some of you guys have been in my, sales training classes, so hello to my favorite people in the world. Right? My savvy leasers. We talk about this in by sales training sometimes. We talk about learning style and integrating your learning style back into your learning. And so I will drop a, a link to a learning style test, towards the end of the comp towards the end of the webinar into the chat so you can go take that afterwards because I want you to spend a little bit of time on it. It only takes a few minutes, but it enhances your self awareness of how you learn and influences your professional development. I had a coaching client who swore up and down. He was a visual learner because he liked to read. He took the test. It turns out he was an auditory learner. He argued with me for a minute, and we talked about it. He's like, but I like to read when he realized that he read by listening to audiobooks. So that was how he read. And so once he learned that, one of his goals with coaching was he wanted to keep a journal, and he had started and stopped and started and stopped over and over again. But once he learned he was an auditory learner, he was able to start keeping an audio journal. Hello. And he was able to actually achieve the goals that he was looking to accomplish. Use this information to, like, maybe enable the computer to read you a story or an article if you're an auditory learner. Maybe you're like, I hate keeping up with all that stuff, but change the way you receive it, and you'll change the way you retain it, and you'll renew that mindset for learning. Alright. Anyone already know what they are? I'd be curious. I am a visual learner. I have to write it down in order to, achieve it. Alright. It is time for a very quick collaborative exercise. We're gonna do one part of this, and then I want you to do part two and part three after the webinar. So the exercise is this. Write down what words you would use to describe your mindset and your leadership style. Positive words only for this exercise. So go ahead and start doing that while I explain part two and part three that you'll do after the fact. So write down what words you would use to describe your mindset and your leadership style. Like, I'm I'm very high energy. Right? So that's what I'd use to describe myself. After that, after you've picked a partner and if you're not in the room with someone, then that's totally fine. Use via do it via text. Write down what you would use to describe them. So if you text your boss or your colleague, go ahead and have them write down words that describe themselves, and then you write down words that describe them and vice versa. Right? Don't share your words until they've shared until you've done both parts. And then compare and contrast. I'd love to hear if you have any surprises. I know I had, one group do this exercise, and a gentleman is like, my employee said I was fun and funny. And he's like, I don't think I'm fun or funny. And he was so low key funny that it made me laugh. And I'm like, literally, that's what you are. You are just low key funny. And it was perfect because he was like, wow. I am now well aware of this. So go ahead and start doing that while we move into oopsie. I went too fast. Move into the importance of self awareness. Right? Because we're gonna do that you're gonna do the exercise after. Did you know that ninety nine point nine percent of employees think it's important for a manager to be self aware? They want you to know, like, what's up with yourself. And so it's important from a relatedness standpoint that we're gonna talk about again in a second in the self determination theory that that that exercise helps with relatedness as well as self awareness. And self awareness is crucial for competence, like knowing where you are, clarity on your priorities and who you are, helping you be more realistic, helping with your motivation overall, and maybe most importantly, avoiding self sabotage. Remember when we talked about fixed mindset versus growth mindset? If you noticed on your list of positive words, it actually reflected a little bit more in the fixed mindset category. Because sometimes feeling that you are steadfast and you are, you know, you know, you have you your roots are strong, and you don't bend. All of those things you might be thinking that's a positive part of yourself. And sometimes it can be, but it also can help you self sabotage if you aren't able to renew your mindset, build your competence to be motivated. Alright. Finally, in our self determination theory is, of course, relatedness. I already mentioned how my team used to do wins and opportunities, But let's do this. Like, let's agree from here on out. Let's make sure that we're celebrating our small wins too. There's a book called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and she talks about fostering that sense of belonging and aligning teams to your organizational goals as well as their personal goals by celebrating small wins. I used to when I would get an appointment as when I was leasing on the phone, I would literally be like, ring a bell. Let's do this. I got an appointment. I mean, in the long stream of things, it feels like a small win, but it's a big win because they're more likely to lease if you set an appointment and they show up. Right? So celebrate the small wins, and it can really help with staff morale and help with the relatedness. Think of a simple change you can make in twenty twenty five that will help improve happiness in your work environment. And I'll share a story. And I like I said, if you've been in my sales training, you probably heard this story before. But the three kindest things that you can say to a person is I believe in you, you make a difference, and I appreciate you. It feels so good to be appreciated. It feels so good to feel like you made a difference. That helps stay related to each other, and it also helps feel competent. When I was a property manager and my team was leave, I would be the last one to leave, and I I they always came by my office to say goodnight. And I would always say to each of them, thank you for the day. Thank you for the day. Thank you for the day. Thank you for today. You know, essentially, I'm saying I appreciate you, and you make a difference. And I had one of my leasing agents come back. She had been promoted to a a different property, different company at one point. Came back a few years later. We ran into each other, and she told me that that stuck with her because it helped her disconnect from work, Christine, to home, Christine, where she felt she made a difference and she felt appreciated at work. But it was it was like her way of saying, okay. Now I'm gonna go make a difference and be appreciated at home. Right? Like, it was a it was a real good disconnect, and that helped us stay related to each other as well. Alright. In our last few minutes together, last ten minutes together, we are going to reimagine setting our goals for twenty twenty five. Alright? We're gonna use vision driven goals. I'm gonna explain some other goal setting approaches. There are nary a SMART goal amongst us. Not that there's anything wrong with SMART goals. I love myself a SMART goal. But I wanna think I want you to reimagine, right, what twenty twenty five looks like. Before I do that, though, if you have been questioning how to renew that growth mindset, I want to reassure you that adopting it is just a series of small steps. We are gonna have fixed tendencies and fixed mindset sometimes. I talked about my own challenge with that. It's natural to sometimes feel like failure as an option doesn't feel like a good one, But you also have to be thoughtful and intentional about the choice to change. Right? You have the power to grow and reframe your narrative, but you've got to be intentional and embrace it. When I turned off my notifications, I found myself checking notifications all the time, like, checking for them. Well, that sort of defeated the purpose of turning them off. And so I had to embrace the choice to change and have notifications be something that I look at, you know, on the last five minutes of the hour or whatever it might be where I'm not super hyper focused. Cultivate patience and consistency. Shift your perspective on growth. Right? It's not about beating each other. It's about beating yourself. That sounds weird. It's about beating yourself from the day before. So I'm better today than I was yesterday. That makes sense. Right? And a reimagining self improvement. Right? We're reimagining a lot of things today, and that's one of them. Okay. So innovative goal setting approach. I want you to close your eyes. Go ahead and close your eyes. I can't see that you're doing it, so I'm gonna trust you. And I want you to picture the end of twenty twenty five. Picture the end of twenty twenty five. What does it look like? How do you look? How do you feel? Where are you? Have you been around the world? Have you been to California? And if that's your if that's what you like, I want you to picture it. Because in the vision driven goals framework, it's all about working backwards. So now that you write down what the end of twenty twenty five looks like, maybe it's a financial goal. Right? Maybe you wanted to save x amount of dollars so that you can go around the world or take that cruise if you don't win it today or win it on December twentieth. Maybe it's a fitness goal. Right? Or whatever it might be. Write that down, and you're gonna work backwards. It's kinda like when, I cheated in a maze as my as my kids say because I work backwards in the maze. Do you guys know that's how you win mazes? You start at the end, and you work your way to the start. Hello? That's how I got it done so fast. That's not cheating. That's working within a vision driven goal framework. In addition to that, there's micro habits and momentum. So inspired by Atomic Habits. Right? You set the micro goals that accumulate into substantial change. Right? So turning off notifications and only checking them once an hour, that's my micro habit. Or, you know, running the dishwasher before I start work so my kitchen stays cleaner because, I'll tell you what, it is not a low priority for me. I would rather read a book than clean any day. Then there's OKRs. Here, KPIs, OKRs, all the things, FYI. But this is where you set some audacious goals in this one, some ambitious goals, and then track the results throughout. So if your if your vision driven goal is kind of ambitious, work together with your OKRs and work backwards on what those milestones need to look like. And then don't be afraid to reflect and pivot. You know, you've set these goals. You have the checkpoints built in. Please do that part because that's a big part of it when you're working backwards. And then remember when we were setting aside some things that we didn't wanna take into twenty twenty five from our when we evaluated our personal professional growth? Keep in mind those types of things as you reflect, and don't be afraid to pivot. Don't be afraid to pivot because sometimes you're gonna have to. The goal is not stationary. We are not stationary. I oh, let me go backwards one. So I have, a vision board that I mock up for my coaching clients, especially if they're auditory learners. This is actually an audible vision board where you can put, like, songs and video clips and other things to help you stay motivated. So whatever your learning style is, maybe this is the right move for you to help you build your milestones and back into your goals. It's called Milanote. I am strong. So in terms of balancing goals, it's obviously important that you keep in mind your professional and purse or your personal wellness when you're talking about your professional goals. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness are all powerful for personal wellness as well. As you renew your mindset into a growth mindset, that helps you balance your personal wellness and your mental health as well. So when you look at it through that lens, it helps you be more satisfied, more, your work is more meaningful in both domains. And the journey to balance is not about being perfect. Like, we are perfectly imperfect. It's about learning, adapting, and evolving continuously. Alright. So we have an another exercise, and this is our last exercise for the day. Has anyone read the, yes, year of yes by Shonda Rhimes? She is the showrunner for Bridgerton, if anyone's watching Bridgerton, and Grey's Anatomy, of course, twenty some years of Grey's Anatomy. I want you to reflect so, basically sorry. Let me go backwards. Basically, sometimes you have to set boundaries and say no. Right? But more often saying yes can be the appropriate way to renew and and reimagine your twenty twenty five. So I want you to think about an opportunity you said no to in twenty twenty four, and think about what it might look like if you said yes next time. So she talks about this as a transformative journey from her default of saying no. I call it coming from a place of no. Right? If you come from a place of no and you immediately think no, this is the exercise for you. So step outside of your comfort zone. Say yes to new experiences. As we know, it's equally important to recognize when you have to say no for your well-being and your personal well-being. But the door to yes may lead you somewhere exciting. When it comes to tech adoption, for example, maybe you said no and you were really not excited about a new rollout because we hear a lot about rollout fatigue and you came from a place of no, maybe say yes to that next time. Volunteer to be the pilot property. Shock your shock your boss. Regionals, corporate teams, say yes to owning it. Right? Maybe it's a new idea that someone came up with for marketing. You're like, that's not gonna work at my property. Say yes next time. And then personally speaking, I can't tell you how many times I said no to lunches this year because I didn't wanna take away from my focus. And I'm going to be more intentional about saying yes because remember when I talked about the power of moments? You know, those dinners with my with my peers in the industry really helped me feel emboldened and inspired, and I don't want I don't want that to go away. So I'm gonna say yes to more more lunches. So call me. As we wrap up, one thing in property management that remains the same is it's always gonna change. So you cultivate that growth mindset. You embrace challenges as opportunities. Connect your metrics to both your organizational impact and your personal goals. Remember the power of moments, practice kindness, reflect for self awareness, build your competence, lean into your learning style, identify where you where you are inspired versus obligated or obligated versus inspired, and make changes accordingly as you can and cultivate that sense of purpose. Here's the summary of exercises as we wrap up. I wanna say thank you guys so much for being so responsive. I hope that you had have an opportunity to really reflect, renew, and reimagine what twenty twenty five is gonna look like. I love looking at the the comments. The name of the audio vision board was Milanote, m I l a n o t e, and I'm going to drop that, quote in or the training link into here as well. And I just wanna say thank you guys all so very much. Oh oh, I saw you stop sharing my screen. Real quick. There's one last thing. One last thing. She's like, wait. Where did it go? Here it is. Share. I wanted to say can you guys see it? It says be patient and trust the process. The day you plant the seed isn't the day you eat the fruit. I don't know if you can see that or not, but awesome. Thank you guys so very much. Oh my gosh. Stephanie, thank you for leading us through this important content and really doing so in such a fun and engaging way. You know, I think so many of us have good intentions that we want to do things, but we don't find the time. And so being forced, as we'll call it, during this hour to have some quiet time and be a little bit intentional, it definitely got my mind thinking. And there were things where I knew immediately and other things where I had to sit back and think, I need to really lean into that more because I don't know. I don't know what I see or what I wanna do or any of those things. And I'm sure a lot of our attendees today might have felt the same. So thank you for being intentional and sharing so much of that. It's it was just a joy. You know, I do wanna let our audience know that if your team is challenged by any of the topics that we've discussed today, our team at Grace Hill can help you. Stephanie's done a great job in kinda inserting Grace Hill very organically. You know, we truly understand the trials and tribulations of everything, technology, leadership, growth, and, of course, along with the excitement of diversity, career advancement, and so much more. And we actually offer training and policies that will enhance your current offering or help you get started. So I wanna let you know our experts are available for a personalized demo and consultation. All I need you to do, if your team is struggling with technology or training or you need help, whether you're a current client and wanna demo to learn more about our solutions, or if you're not a current client and just wanna learn more about any of our products that that we have, just take a moment, drop the word change, c h a n g e, change, in the chat box, and a member of our team will be in contact with you. So I'm absolutely thrilled again that we had this great time together. Stephanie, did you have a chance to put up your QR code in case anyone has questions? I did not have a chance to do that, but I'm gonna do it real quick. I know we're right on the hour, so I do wanna share right here. They asked for the resources. So here's the year of yes, atomic habits, mindset, and the power of moments. So can you guys see that? Yeah. It's very small for us Okay. Because you can see the whole screen. But Oh, right. No. I I was I was doing it real quick for you, but there's that. If that helps you guys, if you wanna screenshot that. And then here's how you get ahold of me. My little my little QR code here, might as well make it bigger since I have it I'm in the back end of the system. Yes. Reach out. Touch base. Reach out and grab someone. Thank you guys so much. Thank you, Grace Hill. Of course. Thank you so much for joining us, Stephanie, sharing all your expert knowledge. And for those of you who took an hour out of your extremely busy day, we are forever grateful for you joining us for another one of Grace Hill's free webinars where we help enhance your learning and education experience. Again, thank you all so much for joining. Stephanie, all my best to you, and thanks for being amazing. Thank you so much. Alright. Bye, everyone.