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Episode 1116 | Inside Work
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Lottery Tickets & Inside Jobs
Lottery Tickets & Inside Jobs
In her famous song “Ironic” Alanis Morissette opines “an old man turned 98 – he won the lottery and died the next day”. We don’t learn anything else about the life story of his old man. Perhaps he led a full and happy life, and the lottery winnings preceded a lovely final day. It’s also possible that he lived in poverty and spent money he couldn’t spare to buy lottery tickets in hopes of a better future only to find he had no future left.
Lottery Winners & Losers
While we don’t know the rest of this fictitious man’s story, there are plenty of real-life cautionary tales related to lottery winners whose lives weren’t quite the fairy tales they imagined instant wealth would bring. There is a temptation to look at their stories with a feeling of superiority, believing their foolishness is unique to them and that in the same position, you would make much better decisions. Maybe. Maybe not.
If you have ever struggled with too little, it’s easy to believe that more is the solution and much more is everything. Buying the lottery ticket alone can lead to daydreaming about the many things you’d do and the places you’d go and stuff you’d buy. Before you know it, dissatisfaction with your current life can creep in. That is a high price for an extremely low probability. Nevertheless, this post isn’t about the lottery per se, and it isn’t intended as a moral judgment on those who play it.
Living for Big Dreams
The same story holds true for any number of big grandiose desires or goals. People dream of acquiring luxurious things, believing they will then be respected, accepted, and feel better about themselves. People who manage to reach some of those aspirations often find that the feeling they expected was fleeting at best. How heartbreaking.
When considering your personal ambitions and desires, it is helpful to consider: If you achieve them, how will it change your insides? How will you then view yourself deep in your heart? Will you be a better person?
Inside Out
It seems to me that nothing external can fix the internal. It can wreck it, as we see in the lottery example, but it can’t improve it. Only you can do the work from the inside out. Therapy, journaling, meditation, and other deep inside work tools are essential to rooting out, identifying, and sorting through your motivations. Happiness is an inside job – something I wrote about more than a decade ago.
It is a long process – even a lifelong one – but it’s worth the effort. When your dreams come true (and I hope they do) you will then be able to distinguish the things that really matter to you and discard the rest.
I encourage you to work from the inside out.
How are you making your inside work a priority? Share your stories with us!
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Apartment Blog Distribution in the Workplace
Learned a good lesson this week about choosing apartment blog distribution in the workplace – one I am humble enough to admit.
Real Life STL Media, an entity of Mills Properties, published a post today that was called into question. Not in the way you might think. It was not by an outside source but rather an insider.
Distribution Channels Matter
Not an hour after publishing a piece of content on our apartment lifestyle blog; I received a call from one of our internal team members suggesting the content was not okay for the workplace. An assertion that I didn’t understand in the moment. But after some discussion laced with examples, it dawned on me that the content was not the problem but rather the distribution channel.
You see, several weeks ago we decided to subscribe every team member (leaving the opt out statement clearly in place – so you could unsubscribe if you wanted to) to the blog via internal work email addresses. At the time we thought that would be a good way to gain exposure. In hindsight I can see that people should always have a choice to opt in or out of what they want to see. That is as true in the secular world as it is in the professional work place.
We had two choices – tone down the content or do a mass unsubscribe.
Your always learning and adapting Multifamily Manic,
M
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Let’s Do Some Average Work
Average gets a leasing person a fair amount of sales
An average service tech can do a fair amount of tickets in a day
An average make ready tech can do a fair amount of turns in a day
An average assistant manager can process a fair amount of transactions in a day
An average manager can lead a fair charge
Ever Get Annoyed?
Do you ever think – I really have a disdain for this guy or that gal because they seem to get more done in an hour than I get done all week? They get twice the commissions for half the work. They get twice as many service requests done in a day than I do and they head home on time everyday.
Get Annoyed Get Excellent
Put that ill-headed pride aside – get pissed – get over it and just ask. Ask that top producer what it is that makes them different. Ask them how they organize their day. What they say to people during the apartment tour and demonstration that gets them so many leases. Ask the leader how he/she gets so much out of their team. Then get busy doing that stuff.
This note from the margin got me thinking about the things that I do to avoid being average –
- I am number challenged. Budgets, forecasts and proformas are the bane of my existence. This is the hard work part of the business to me. What did I decide to do about it. I took out a budget and starting a blog series. I will take roughly two years – writing once a week – to think through and define every single line item right through the debt.
- For the longest time I really struggled with the written word – to combat that, I started reading everything I could get my hands on. I took the time to memorize the 5000 words used on the SAT test. And, I started this blog.
- I struggled with giving and taking feedback to and from industry leaders. Answer – I started participating in industry forums like the ones you see on Multifamily Insiders.
- I struggled with finishing. I love to start things but I get to a point and I lose interest. Answer – this is the eighth year of M Brewer Group. I have changed the name three times over the years and have written well over 2000 posts. And, I hope to never finish but not for lack of an endgame.
- I learned some basic code language so I could tweak the look of my blog. Word to the wise on this point (have a Mike Whaling backup plan if you get it wrong).
- As mentioned above – I read a ton.
- I am constantly trying something, suggesting we try something or pushing to get something done.
- I exercise.
- And, I love people where they are at without enabling them to settle.
Guess what, I still misspell words, break the rules of grammar, start and don’t finish, muck up budget work and go long stretches without posting to this blog. Do I fret – no. I acknowledge, learn from it and move on.
What do you do to keep yourself from doing above average work?
Your looking past average work multifamily manic,
M
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Multifamily #Trust30: Happiness is an Inside Job
Day 19 of the #trust30 challenge
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
How can you bring MORE enthusiasm into your work? What do you have to think or believe about your work to be totally excited about it? Answer it now.
(Author: Mars Dorian)
A number [bigger than I like to admit] of years ago a mentor of mine said to me that, “If you ever stop having fun doing what you are doing, go do something else.” He went on to suggest that being happy started with me. And, along those lines I later heard that happiness is an inside job.
Multifamily Happiness
It took me while but I have come to believe those words. And, in the context of today’s prompt, I believe that Enthusiasm starts with being happy in who you are. In my head it gets back to character. In fact and in contrast to Mars prompt, I don’t think work is the prompt that gets you juiced. Rather, YOU are the catalyst. YOU bring more enthusiasm to YOUR work by working on YOU!
Your believing that Happiness is an inside job contributor,
M
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