How do you as a property manager, in the world of constant problems, find time to stay active and prioritize your mental health? The PM world can wear on your state of mind, but healthy practices can have huge downstream effects for you and, by extension, your business.
Peter Hernandez, creator of the #PMHealth Facebook group, is joined by Brad Randall and Janet Fields of Welch Randall Real Estate and Janet Fields of Oak Trust Properties to break down some proven tactics for keeping a healthy body and a healthy mind during the constant barrage that is property management.
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Season 3 Episode 21 features Peter Hernandez, Brad Randall, and Janet Fields
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Transcript
Janet Fields
And you have to recognize that, right? And it's a practice. It's a skill that we're constantly growing and massaging and developing. There's the spiral, the downward spiral of just the chaos, your mind taking over and intrusive thoughts, and you just start going down there. But the opposite is the Victoria cycle, right? So once you give words to something and identify it and you say, This is the thing that I need to look out for; here's the triggers, here's the flags. You can start exercising the opposite of that to counter it or to try to balance it, if that's the thing.
Peter Hernandez
Well, good morning. Maybe it's afternoon for some of you. I am in Central time, so it's noon for me, but I can see some friendly faces here today that I know are in the West Coast. So it's early. Karen, it's great to see you. big hello to everyone that joined this morning. Thank you all for. For being here today. We are excited. Second, Nature has given us an opportunity to share with you today some of the not only challenges that you all encounter or face in the property management industry, but more specifically, what are some helpful or useful tools that you all can benefit from to have a fit, mind, fit body and to be a fit leader. So we're very, very excited for the opportunity. Thank you to second Nature for having us. We're going to make this very interactive. A lot of fun. Feel free to turn on your cameras. So are your big smiles. We're going to have some paws. Please know that some of these polls are very. They are all private. They're anonymous. Yes, they're anonymous. Thank you. Read. So they are anonymous. We don't have to worry. We won't see who said what, but it'll be fun and interesting to see what we know, what some of these results tell us. We know that you took some time every year out of your day to join us today. So let's start with just a very small exercise. We're going to invite Brad and Janet to join us here in a minute. But let us talk about why are you here today? You saw the topic, you saw the theme for this specific podcast. It is Fit Body Thumb. Sorry, Fit, Mind, Fit, Body Fit Leader. Tell us why make some notes if you can bring a pen and paper that we're going to have a lot of interaction with today. So let's start with writing down your why so let's take a minute or two. Tell us why you are here today or write down why you are here today and then we'll share this in the chat. All right. So do you hope you guys enjoyed the music as you were meditating and writing down some answers on your big why? Why this topic? Why are you here today? And I love the answers that you guys can scroll through through the chat and look at some of these answers and they're all very, very interesting. I love this one. I'm going to just read it and I love that it says that this topic sparked my curiosity. 20 years in the business and no one has ever asked about my mental health and stability. Yet I know my work affects my mindset at times. Isn't that the truth? And that's exactly why we're here. We know that this is a very, very challenging business industry, and everything that you all deal with puts a lot of stress on your mind, your body and team and family. So this is what we're all about, this is what we're here to talk about today. And so, again, love the answers. Thank you all for sharing. I love you. Are you willing to participate? So what I'd like to do now is invite both Janet and Brad. They are going to tell us a little bit about themselves. First of all, if you don't if you don't know them, let's do a real quick intro. So Jen and Brad, could you, you know, tell everyone here just a little bit about yourself and then we'll jump into your why today, Janet, Thank you.
Janet Fields
Good afternoon. Good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us. Of course,
Janet Fields
I'm down in Charleston, South Carolina. I have Oceans Properties and a originally family owned property management company. I'm the second generation who has worked with my father and he has gifted me and I have given him retirement. And it's amazing and I love it. We manage about 500 properties down here with a diverse team of remote team members, local team members, and we're always trying to work on culture. We're always trying to try new things and just trying to stay healthy and mindful of the environment and the lifestyle that we're creating.
Peter Hernandez
Thank you, Janet. Brad, tell us a little about yourself.
Brad Randall
Yeah, you bet. Pleasure being on today. My name is
Brad Randall
. I am based out of Salt Lake City. I am in the mountains surrounded by snow and plenty of hiking during the year. But I am owner and operator for a company called Welch Randall Property Management, and we have about 425 doors, single family, small mole type things. And then we also manage 68 communities, which if you want to talk about mental health each away and mental health go hand in hand. So I love being a part of this community. I've been a long time member of PM Health and I have a wonderful, beautiful wife and a seven year old three year old and a ten month old, well, 11 month old. So we are in the thick of it right now.
Peter Hernandez
Thank you both so much for telling us a little bit about yourselves. You, as well as everyone else here, have made time aside today to talk about this topic, about, you know, physical and mental health. So let's start with Janet and Janet. Why is it important for you to be here today? Why do you feel like mental and physical health is important to you?
Janet Fields
Well, yeah. So I've experienced ignoring it and the downfalls of it, sneaking up on you and taking over your lives. I, I don't know if any of you have experienced where I work in the chaos that's just kind of crept in. And you just kept reacting and kept reacting until you no longer have a social life. You no longer have a family life and everything's a fire and emergency and you have to get control of your mind, control your schedule, get control of your body and treat yourself and everyone around you well. In order to create a productive and healthy environment that you want to be in. So I think going through chaos and just a really toxic time in your life creates a space to think about what you really want, what's really important, and that what you have asked for in life is what you can have if you're not asking for it. If you're not being intentional about it, you're not going to get it.
Peter Hernandez
Thank you, Jazz. I love you said intentionally. We'll talk more about that here a little bit. Brad, what is your why why are you here today? Why was it important for you to take time out of your day, aside from, you know, just me telling you, please, please, please be here today?
Brad Randall
I think all of us at the turn of the year, you kind of have a bit of a renewed mindset. Hopefully everybody has a bit of an optimistic outlook. You know, I think we get to the end of the year and especially in property management, we think about survival and you look at and say, okay, we survive 2023, then you get into 24 and we're at a time where I think you you do have a chance to say, What do I want to make of myself professionally? What do we want to make of our team? And without focusing on the mind and the body and how that affects your work and what you do, you can get mid-way through the year and you'll be right back where you were the year before. And something that I've realized is that this dedication or this focus is a focus for life, not a focus for the beginning of the year. And the goal, one of the goals of PPM Health is to try to change our mindset, to say we always need to be looking at our mental health and our physical health, not just when a podcast comes out, not when we're in a conference or when we want to lose weight. Like this needs to be a daily focus. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm here, because I love to learn, I love to grow. And who better to do that from than with our peers.
Peter Hernandez
Thank you so much. So let's dive into it. There's three, three areas that we'll be discussing today, which is mind, body and leader. So let's start with mind you all face so many challenges in the property management industry and these challenges create issues. They create stress and it creates anxiety, an overwhelming feeling of sometimes not knowing if you have things in control or not. Brad, Janet and you guys speak on the importance of recognizing or identifying warning signs when it comes to a healthy or sometimes an unhealthy mind.
Janet Fields
Brad, you look like you have an answer. I think you should. go for it.
Brad Randall
I think I want to be really honest and upfront here in saying that I think my CD is something that I neglect more often than I should. I will look at stress going on and I'll kind of just put it in the back and sweep it to the side because you just have other things to worry about until it usually builds up to a point where I, I snap at someone I love, which is terrible, or I am not sleeping, I am not I'm not engaged in what I'm doing. And every day feels drudgery. And so the mind piece of it, I feel like the first thing we have to do is recognize that these are things that everybody faces. And if you are feeling stressed, if you're feeling lonely, if you are feeling even a little bit desperate or isolated at times, recognize that everybody feels those things in the normal spectrum of what we do on the day to day.
Peter Hernandez
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
Janet Fields
Sure. Yes, I agree especially when you start to feel it and you have to recognize that. Right. And it's a practice. It's a skill that we're constantly growing and massaging and developing. There's the spiral, the downward spiral of just chaos. Your mind takes over intrusive thoughts and you just start going down there. But the opposite is the victorious cycle, right? So once you give words to something and identify it and you say, this is a thing that I need to look out for, here's the triggers, here's the flags. You can start exercising the opposite of that to counter it or to try to balance it, if that's the thing. Recognizing besides learning that language, practicing the skills, and then constantly learning to find out what else is going on in your mind, in everybody else's mind, and what can we do to fix it? Because as much as they feel real and the stress feels real and biologically, it's like there's a lion chasing us, there's no lions chasing us in this life. It's all in our brain, it's all chemistry. And if we take a step back and try to create stillness and calmness, we can overcome these things and we can thoughtfully move forward. So I just find it important to check in, to find out am I not a healthy spy, or do I need to create a healthy spot?
Peter Hernandez
Yeah, very, very good. Brad, you mentioned that stress and anxiety and, you know, these things sometimes create a reaction to people that you love. Yeah. You might snap at them, you might not do something that you normally wouldn't do. So that is definitely a sign to look out for, Right. Is there anything else that either one of you could say, Well, this is definitely something that is it really does it really come down to looking at things that you're doing that you normally wouldn't do? Or are there other ways to identify signs when it comes to stress and anxiety?
Janet Fields
I think typically for me it's things that I recognize I'm doing that I don't want to be doing like stress eating or things Brad mentioned, not wanting to delve into the things you usually enjoy. Like you run away because it becomes overwhelming or it just doesn't feel right. Not having a regular sleep schedule or a healthy eating schedule like it. You start feeling pent up anxiety. You just can't tackle the things that were so easy before or not. A complete uphill battle. Yeah, thanks to the reactions that I have.
Brad Randall
Yeah, I agree. And I think looking at your sleep is probably where a really good place to start is looking and saying, okay, in the last month or the last week, how many hours of sleep am I actually getting? And for me, if I am getting, you know, small doses of sleep or I'm getting to bed really late and I'm not getting decent chunks of sleep, that is usually where I start. That is my it's just a great metric to begin with. and Karen, just put this in the chat as she says, that's her favorite metric. Like if you don't know where to start, start with sleep.
Janet Fields
And I notice my power drops drastically if I'm not getting more than 7 hours of sleep. And I used to think 7 hours was normal until Garmin told me that it's not normal that 8 hours is more normal and healthy. Apparently.
Peter Hernandez
That's right. So I'll touch on this. You guys mentioned sometimes those signs of stress and anxiety can be doing things that you normally wouldn't do, doing things that you don't want to do. And then last is probably the other one, which is where you're maybe not doing things that you want to do or you should be doing. Right. So it's just, you know, think about that, right? So family, you may snap at them, you might overeat or you may not have time to do certain things that you want to or should do. And there might be some signs to look out for. So let's do this. Let's jump into our very first poll. Let's get some feedback from the group here and then we'll chat about some of these answers. How about that? Well, this first poll is specific to the mindset topic. So let's do this. Let's do this first one. If you are honest, 100% honest with yourself, where would you say your overall mental health is currently? We've got a couple of options here for you. While this is interesting. All right, got a couple more seconds. The poll has ended. Okay. All right. So, no, no, you're fine. So let's look at this. 72% said I have rough moments, but overall, I feel good and positive about my current life and my future. Guys, any surprises there?
Janet Fields
That's a little better than I was thinking.
Brad Randall
I know. I know. When we've done kind of some rough polls on this before, it has trended a little bit more negative or not even negative, but that it's a little bit rougher. So, yeah, that's actually great. Great to see overall from the group.
Peter Hernandez
Absolutely. And in the 4% overall, I feel good and positive about my current life and my future. So another part that will be touching on here as we go through these polls are tools, right? So you guys mentioned some areas that that help are some tools that help guide. You were specific. You said when it comes to your sleep metrics and understanding what that's like, Garmin was a good tool for you. So tell us a little bit about that.
Janet Fields
Yes. So Garmin has a lot more watches for all different types of sports for walking all the way up like triathlons and hiking and all that stuff. And it'll track your body by body metrics, your activity. It'll even drink tracks like you're drinking, eating, if you want to go on to that. But some of the things I like to just look at are the sports that I focus on. And then I started looking at sleep and steps so I can't get my sports in. So I thought I was doing fabulous with sleep, getting like six and a half, maybe 7 hours of sleep. I thought I was killing it. I thought that was amazing. And then there was a comparative graph that showed other people what, like the bulk of people, like the mean median mode people did. And I was finding that people typically get 18 hours of sleep and I started doing some reading and apparently that was healthy and what I was doing was not healthy. So the more I started looking at that and trying to have bedtimes like lights out, no devices, time at regular wake up time, I noticed that the willpower got a lot better and it lasted longer throughout the day. Not that I'm doing 100% of everything I want to do, but like that my top three things of the day. If I put them at the end of day, I can knock them out. And by 1:00 I can do the little things or take off of the day. Yes, more mental energy to get the big things done, that the sleep was huge.
Peter Hernandez
So I like this and thank you. I love this comment here in the chat saying working from home definitely blurs that cut off time. I set pre end of day alarms to remind myself to start winding down the workday doesn't always start the entire overtime but it does help a little. Love, love love that because if we did a whole poll of you know, how many of us spend most of the time working from home now it's probably a very high percentage. Right. So how do you clock out and any ideas there? Right.
Brad Randall
So when you're looking at clocking out something that has changed in the workplace with COVID and technology, people expect you to respond at any hour of the day. You know, this whole out of office thing, you used to leave the office and you would go home and then you come back the next business day and people are like, well, come back. There's voicemail. People just are in general, society is much more impatient with that. And so I think what you have to do is you have to kind of set those boundaries. So for me, I literally have to put my phone farther away from me, then closer to me if I'm going to connect to those people that I love because the phone is too much of a distraction for me. I hear the beeping, I hear the inputs coming in. So putting the phone away also for me, if it gets to be towards the end of the day, I will start scheduling my emails to go out the next morning. So if you're responding to emails at 9 p.m. at night, then your clients are going to know that you're available at 9 p.m. at night. So start scheduling your emails using Boomerang or some other tools that are out there so that they're getting them during business hours, you know, and you can shut off notifications and things like that, but you have to intentionally clear what is cluttering that end of the day.
Peter Hernandez
Absolutely. We've in the group, we always talk about, you know, habits. We talk about, you know, these tools that we can put in place to help us achieve goals. And so that we're talking about resting or clocking out at the end of the day, making time for ourselves or making time for family. There's a book I was recently reading and it mentioned something like what? Something that could work for some folks could be maybe putting your phone in a designated spot once you're ready to be done with your day and just just place it there, just leave it there. So you're walking around the house instead of having it with you in your pocket or, you know, some are with you now, you don't, you don't feel tempted to constantly look at it like you would. So they mentioned that that was even a great idea for when you go to sleep away from your bedroom maybe away from you know your nightstand. So we're talking about sleep. Let's do the next poll because it's specific to sleep and how this will dive into the mind part of sleeping on average. How many hours do you sleep per night? Wow. Okay.
Brad Randall
If it's true to property management, it's not going to be a ton. Probably.
Peter Hernandez
All right. there we have it. So, 60 to 62% say they get from 6 to 8 hours. I'm actually very surprised by that. It was going to be less so aside from work, there are other challenges that could interrupt our desire, our need to rest our mind. Brad, you just gave us earlier. You told us about your family. You have a baby at home. You have your property manager and you have a baby at home. So how does this all work around you, trying to get rest and rest your mind?
Brad Randall
So Karen brought up a point in the chat. It does. That means straight through. No, I think for some it means yes for me and my stage of life. We have a seven year old, a three year old and a ten month old getting 8 hours straight. I think I'd have to be dead to get that right now, because we usually have a kid like coming into our room in the middle of the night or something like that. But for me, the way I try to cope with it is I try to get more quality sleep. And for me that's usually going to bed a little bit earlier. I have found that if I can be asleep by ten, that 10 to 1 a.m. window is much stronger for me than going to bed at like midnight and then getting up at three or whatever. So for me, it's not necessarily straight through the night, it's just maybe trying to start the bedtime routine earlier to get better quality sleep earlier. Yeah.
Peter Hernandez
Great, great answer. All right. We're going to jump into the next part of this discussion, which is a fit body. And so all of these are going to connect, right? Obviously it'll be a bigger challenge to try and get in a good workout, a good walk or whatever kind of activity and enlist if you're not rested right, if your mind is not in the right place. So what we'll do with this next topic is we'll dive into the poll and then we'll dissect that. How often are you currently active for at least 30 minutes daily, once or twice a week, one of three times a month? Or are you out of rhythm or cadence? Okay. I think there we are daily. It was going strong there for a second. I was really surprised. So here it's still the highest: 46% say they get some sort of activity at least once every day. So let's talk about this, Justin and Brad. Let's let's how do you and we can probably tie this into habits, right? So how do you go about your day? How do you go about making sure that you get your activity and what does that look like?
Janet Fields
Yeah, so I have a few different schedules I fall back on depending on if I have an event that I'm training for or if I'm trying to take it easy if I'm burnt out on some sort of training. So when I am running and I have a partner in all the stars and everything's perfect, perfect, I love to be out the door and meet my running partner at 5:00 in the morning and run for an hour. And it's amazing and makes my day great. Well, that's a hard schedule to keep at. It can affect a lot of things like your willpower because you're not getting enough sleep typically at night. But the other thing that I do constantly is walk my dog. My dog gets two walks a day, my husband takes them in the morning after the kids get dropped off, and then in the evening when I get home, Taupo gets a walk. Its walks are usually pretty long, leisurely because I'm listening to an audiobook. Sometimes it's learning, but in the last couple of years, I also learned that you're not supposed to always be learning and multitasking. So I've learned to enjoy an audible audible that's just a novel, or to take the headphones off and just listen to nature. So those are the two exercises that I fall on consistently. I'm always up if any of my friends invite me on a hike or to go somewhere to do anything, I'm usually a lot of people who say, Yes, let's do it. I don't care about the details. I'm going to do it. That keeps me pretty spaced up that way. Keep it interesting.
Peter Hernandez
Very cool.
Brad Randall
Read. I love Janet's thoughts and Janet. So if you're not in the PM health group, Janet is super consistent and that is something that I've always really admired about her. Is she? She does the walks, she does the runs, and she's just like her, she's very consistent that way. Some things that help me so I do trail running and road running. And then this year I'm trying to focus on some more weight training because I'm terrible with weight training, but I like to have a race in the calendar at all times. So if I want to get better at running, find a five, K, ten K, half, whatever it is, and pay for the race, put it a few months out, but pay for the race. Don't talk about the race. Pay for the race. The next thing I would recommend doing is we are property managers, which means we calendars are probably color coded for all of those things. But do we put our exercise in our calendar, put it as an appointment? So on Sundays, I do my workout schedule for the week and I put it in the Google calendar and I have a different color for it. And am I 100% perfect? No, but when I put it as an appointment, it's better. And then the last thing I would say is make working out easy. And what I mean by that is my wife will always kind of make fun of me because I will put out my shoes, my outfit, my water bottle, my keys, everything, my Garmin is sitting right by the door. So when that alarm goes off, all I have to do is grab it and go, because the harder I make it, if I have to find my clothes, find all of that, like it's all it's all about making good habits easy. And so I try to make it as easy as possible.
Peter Hernandez
I love those answers from both of you. So let's look at the 21% here. They're not in any rhythm or cadence, but they're obviously here. You all are obviously here because you'd like to change that. So how do we get there? How do we start? How do you guys recommend we start? You mentioned that you touched on it a little bit there at the end. Brad, When it comes to liking your shoes and your clothes, are there any other suggestions or tools?
Janet Fields
He uses habit stacking or, you know, removing all the friction by designing your environment sort of thing? Yeah. I mean, what's important to you, what you enjoy, Like if you're just going to lose weight, that's your goal. That sounds horrible. That sounds like a nightmare. That sounds like punishment. But if you're going to run a race with a friend or you're going to do something like a mud run because you think that's amazing, those are fun things that you can get excited about. So finding something that motivates you, that excites you and then putting it on the calendar is good. Brad said something funny that I thought was funny because I've done it. I talked about a race too much before and I got dopamine from talking about that race, but I got more out of talking about that race than doing the daggone race, and that was disappointing. So I learned. I try not to talk about the race. Yeah, just finding out what you want, scheduling it, like you said, put it on the calendar, even if it's at five in the morning, putting it on the calendar. So you're always cognizant and you're the people with support, you know what's going on as well that that's important to you. So you have to have bedtimes. But building those routines and removing the friction from your environment is key.
Peter Hernandez
So much to talk about here. Thank you both so much to talk about here. Somebody just mentioned atomic habits in the chat. So if you haven't read that book, it's a great book to read. There's another book. I just finished reading and I wanted to touch on what Janet said about the experience. So create the experience that you want. And so one of the examples in that book says that if you know that you may have the habit of coming home at the end of the day, you've got the best, most comfortable couch. And right in front of that couch, TV that, you know, you're going to grab the remote and turn on and watch, remove this. This may seem a little extreme for some, but again, it's about recreating the environment and removing the cushions from that couch. Put them somewhere where it's going to be hard to grab or just, you know, just get in and put back again. So when you come in the next day, there are no seats. And if you've ever sat on the couch, it's got no cushions, you know, it's not very comfortable, Right. So you can do that with anything that you're trying to recreate the right experience for OC calendars you guys touched on there and I love it. Your day does it, your days don't.
Janet Fields
Peter, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Who's level up? I want to chat with everybody. Is that Robb Dial?
Peter Hernandez
Yep. Perfect. Real quick, guys. Your day doesn't always go as planned, so your calendar might, you know, you might have to change things up a little bit. So what does that mean? If you've got your workout, your activity, your walk set for that morning, if something goes wrong, you just try again tomorrow. What are your thoughts there?
Janet Fields
That's my time. It's mine. I put it on the calendar like this is my life. You know, we serve everybody else all day long for everybody. I mean, you need to have something that's yours that you look forward to that you're doing for yourself. If you're only investing in everybody else all the time and what's left for you, you know, so you just have to protect your time. I find as a mom and a parent that sometimes you lose your time and sometimes you have to like, refind it and regret, create it and protect it because we give ourselves away so much that we don't have anything lost.
Brad Randall
Yep, I, I and I. I totally agree. I have a slightly different perspective just because I'm Janet is like Janet is a rock star. I am an aspiring Janet. I'm not there yet. But I think my focus is progress, not necessarily perfection immediately. And if you look at a week and your goal is to work out like if you're if you are not working out at all right now and you set a schedule to work out seven days a week, that is probably a bit of a be like too big of a jump, You may start out and say, I want to do three times a week for half an hour, build into that cadence and start to feel comfortable and then add to it. And for me, every week there's usually a workout I miss or have to reschedule because of some external circumstance. And what I try to do with that is say, All right, that sucks that I had to miss that one, but what can I do? Like what is my long term vision here? Because I think it's easy that you start to get discouraged and then you just stop and that's the last thing you want. If it comes between working out, you know, every day for half a month and then giving up or working out three days a week for a year and being consistent, do the latter.
Peter Hernandez
Yeah, absolutely. I would also add to that you've got to you've got to be couple of things you want to you want or why you're going to do something again referencing level up and said to do a specific exercise any time that you want to accomplish something, whether it be in your career, your personal, your health, do the seven Why exercise So ask yourself seven times why? Why do I want to go running in the morning? Why do I want to go for a walk in the morning and you'll have an answer. But do the exercise. Ask yourself seven times. And so you finally get to that seventh. Why? And that will be the foundation that motivates you and drives you to your goal. So cool it or exercise. Try it out. I think you'll like it. Purpose and intention. So I'm currently not running. I've been asked to replace my running with walking so I've got to walk a certain amount of steps or amount of time every day. So in my calendar you'll find something that says, What? What did I name it? I named it Daily Recap. Now, it doesn't say that I'm supposed to go for a walk at 3: 30 in the afternoon. It says it's my daily recap. So what does that mean? Means I'm basically going to wrap up my day. What did I accomplish? What did I miss? So it's that there's a purpose or an intention behind that specific activity. So just a cool little, little trick. All right. So I think we have another one. Do we have another Laura? Laura, we have another question here for the body. Here we go. How do you prefer to workout alone with a workout buddy in a group setting such as a workout class? This one's going to be really interesting alone. All right. Okay. Okay. There we go. So, so far, 68% said alone. Any surprises there? And Woody, Oscar. Yeah.
Brad Randall
So all I would say to that is I work out alone a lot. But I will say that usually I am more consistent if I have some sort of a community accountability partner, you know, And a lot of times my workouts are better if I am with someone. So I don't cut the run a little short or I will push a couple extra reps when I'm trying to do something like that. But I mean, you're not going to necessarily be able to work out with someone all the time. I've just found that a lot of times with others I am more accountable.
Janet Fields
Agreed.
Peter Hernandez
A great point. And the challenge there is that it's hard enough to control your own schedule right now. Having to schedule something with someone else and have those schedules actually work together is a challenge. But it's quite interesting that people would prefer to work out alone. Accountability capability partner buddy Why is that helpful? Is it important even if you don't get to do it every day, every time that you work out how often and how helpful it is?
Janet Fields
It's easier to do hard things when somebody is doing it with you. I notice that if I ask my kids to go all close by themselves or do something, they don't typically do that. It is just like a huge not a load for them approach. But if I walk over there and say, Hey, let's do this, they just walk up. They're like, It's no problem. The same thing with mountain biking. Like if you never have done a line before and it looks scary, you have somebody to tell you when you want to see somebody else do it first. Like things are not as scary as hard with company.
Peter Hernandez
Agreed.
Brad Randall
Yeah and and having an accountability partner whether that's physically doing the activity with them or even just someone that you check in with. So somebody that could be across the other side of the country like tread Ratliff and I will periodically text because I'll just say what's your next race or how's your how's your training going? And it is nice to have someone to bounce those ideas off of, but also Train has texted me before and said, I haven't heard about your race, like why have you booked a race? And it's like, yeah, I probably should book that. So there's, there's a lot of positives to it, you know, to having someone else there with you.
Peter Hernandez
Thank you. We have a so so Laura asked does this posting in the PPM health group help you keep going and this was specific to Janet does it help?
Janet Fields
Absolutely. If I haven't posted in a while and I see Peter posting every day, I am like, okay, it's my turn to go in there and contribute. These people are going. There's people who are consistent every day posting and stop hiding. Go do something and post it and share with the world.
Peter Hernandez
Love it. I want to mention that I get a lot of folks telling me that they don't post. They feel a little embarrassed. They feel like, well, you know, Janet or Brad or Trent or whoever, like they're, you know, running these crazy raises. And I'm just not going to do that. But they do get some inspiration from so let's turn it around. Why is it why would you tell them if you will tell them why we would like to see them post.
Janet Fields
I want to see you post because I want some new ideas of what to do and I want to see some new scenery. I want some new ideas. I want to see what you think is fun. Also, I get to learn about you on a more personal level. More than just that. You're a property manager in Wisconsin. Like now I know you have special interest and now we have another Segway to walk up to each other's conference and say, How many units do you manage? You're like, Hey, we're doing a great hike. Like there's some hiking here. There's a trip afterwards. Do you want to meet up and do it? We're going to do a little chat and I like it's just another way for us to interact. It's a great connection.
Brad Randall
And I love that. And I think if you look in the PPM help group and I don't mean this like none of us are like fitness models or anything like that, like we all are regular people that are just trying to get a little bit better each day. And I think it was Pete Newberg that posted around the New Year and that he had a goal to lose some weight over the holidays and the engagement on his post about losing weight like Pete doesn't post every day. But when he posted that out, I just thought, this is amazing. Like what a cool thing to do over the holidays. And there was so much interaction. And so just like Janet said, we want to learn from each other. We want to see what people are doing in different parts of the country. We want to see your dogs like Taco. We want to see what you're up to. Karen I always want to see where she's walking because she has such good views where she's walking, and then she usually gets a taco after. And I just that's inspiring to me. A good walk in a taco.
Peter Hernandez
That's right. The other thing is you don't have to be a runner. Right. So give us in the chat real quick, if you would, give us some examples of some of the activities that you feel like you would or you enjoy the most. Anything in the chat that you tell? I said you're not a runner, which is fine. You know you don't. And everyone likes to run. What do you enjoy doing as far as activities? Audiobooks during walks Love that. Playing sports with my kids. CrossFit, Yoga, meditation, Pickleball, CrossFit, 30 minutes. Love it. Softball nine. I love camping, Camping and walking. That's perfect for the mind, right? What a relaxing environment to be able to just decompress and relax. Awesome. Walking dogs. Yep. Love it. Dogs make everything better, don't they?
Janet Fields
Yes. Yes. So that's why they're constantly challenging me to do pull ups and stuff, which is not my favorite challenge because I'm not a 13 year old male with tons of testosterone. But that's another thing. We challenge each other in the house to do things like he'll do pull ups. My younger son likes the new place and my husband is always trying to kill us, like on some balance board or doing something.
Peter Hernandez
So let's bring this Pokemon hunting. Check that out. yeah. Love it like you do the family. Awesome. So let's try this together. We talked about mind, talk about body. Why? Why? What's the connection there?
Brad Randall
Brett? I think when you separate mind and body, you're doing yourself a disservice because they interrelate so much. If you focus on taking better care of your mind, taking better care of your body, they're both going to get better as a whole. And you're going to be a better leader. You know, And bottom line is people take cues from us very regularly. And if you are leading in your company and you are coming into the office stressed or jumping on Zoom meetings and you are distracted, not happy, just not engaged, what sort of tone are you setting with your team? You know, you can't expect them. Then you come home and say, well, people are just, you know, they had such bad attitudes today. And it's like, well, I wonder, wonder where that came from. And so it really does have to start with us. And it doesn't mean that you're happy all the time. It just means that you're cognizant of what's going on so that you can be in a little bit better balance than you would be if you weren't focusing on it.
Peter Hernandez
Is there anything you want to add to that, Janet?
Janet Fields
Yes, I had a leader in the office a couple of years ago and she would say, Hey, we're salons, we're swans. We glide on top of the water and we just hear it and turn and turn underneath. And I'm not sure if that's really accurate anymore. It was great when I was practicing faith and time care, but now I feel like I have an internal swan as well. Like it's not all the time, it's not on time. And sometimes with tornadoes like yesterday, literally tornadoes. But if your comments side and you're setting the tone with a nice confidence and air and just treating everybody well, it spreads. Yeah absolutely as well as what you don't need.
Peter Hernandez
Yep yep. So you guys see you all touched on leadership and how this again this all connects, right. So we've all heard that the oxygen mask comes down. You gotta put you gotta put you got to rely on yourself before you help others. That's the exact same concept when it comes to a team that you want to be there for an assist. So we'll dive into the leading part of health before we do that. One question here for the chat. If you could exercise on any given day with a famous person, who would it be? If you could go for a walk, a run, skateboard, pokemon hunting, anything with a famous person, Who would you like to do it with? It's going to be fine to see any famous person, actor, actress, or singer. I knew it was going to be Taylor Swift for you, Brad. Harold, I know that.
Brad Randall
Look, I'm just being real.
Janet Fields
She's such a powerhouse, so amazing.
Peter Hernandez
Enzo Ferrari I love that.
Brad Randall
I think I feel guilty...
Peter Hernandez
Lucille Ball.
Brad Randall
eating processed foods.
Janet Fields
Processed foods?
Brad Randall
Yeah. I feel like I get shunned because I'm eating Lunchables with my kids.
Peter Hernandez
These are some great answers, guys. Thank you, I love Karen just called me out. Peter will say "his peloton girlfriend". Absolutely. All right. Well, let's talk about leaders, fit leaders. You may be a leader in the organization. You may be a leader within your department. Either way, you're observing and assisting a team. You're working as a team. So you'll see challenges with peers. You'll see maybe different roles and responsibilities that you have to adjust to. So let's start with the first question in the poll for this section's leader.
Laura Mac
Technical difficulties.
Peter Hernandez
No worries.
Laura Mac
For some reason it's not letting me launch it. Usually there's a button that says Launch. Hold on, guys.
Peter Hernandez
No worries. Well, I'll tell you what it is. And then when we see it on the screen they start participating. So the first question for being a fit leader is how often do you meet with your team?
Laura Mac
Yeah, it's not letting me launch. Maybe this can be a chat question.
Peter Hernandez
Okay, let's do that. Yeah. So how often do you meet with your team? Is it once a week, Once a month, once a quarter or all of the above. Once a week. Once a month. Once a quarter or all of the above.
Janet Fields
I like this question.
Peter Hernandez
Well, I see a lot every week. So this is great. What do you guys do Janet Brad and how does this help you be a better leader?
Brad Randall
We're weekly right now and then what I'm trying to do, what I try to do every day, is try to have some sort of connection with each team member, even if it's just like something that I can just engage with them for a minute. A lot of times I would come straight into the office and just like plug in to my laptop and get going. I'm trying to be a little bit more intentional about spending some extra time just kind of doing check in.
Janet Fields
So we are 100% virtual. I'm the only one that goes to any office, so we do a L10 meeting once a week and every other week we do all the end meetings on top of that. So any weekly I used to do the check ins, if they're like a parade, it was honestly exhausting. As a leader, I would walk in and then I would check in for a minute or two with everybody walking all the way. So it'd be like 45 minutes till I get to my desk. I found that really hard and I've always felt like I blacked out. When I hear other leaders talk about how often they check in and how they try to do that meaningful one on ones and stuff. I've never felt like I've met the bar on that, but I definitely like our meetings. We have a Slack channel that is like a social channel that we talk about positive things. There's a lot of birthdays on there. I got a new pet. There's a lot of I'm going to a wedding or I have anything in there that we kind of keep up virtually together. Yeah, I never feel like I'm killing it in this department.
Peter Hernandez
That's okay. Is it? So I saw some some answers here the daily the ten minute daily meetings and I'm sure this there's folks in here today that are a big fan of traction right in their following they're following that that order that sequence there. What do you what do you think about the Daily ten? I know. Was it Brad, that you said you liked it? At least I had. How do you structure them?
Brad Randall
So we actually don't do those currently minor more informal. I know
Melissa
does those.
Melissa
Sharon And they have some great processes in place and everything like that. So I'm not the best for that one because I'm a, I'm a work in progress.
Peter Hernandez
Okay, okay. So what you know, I see a lot of a lot of folks do them as something that they just have to check off the list for the day. What have you done to make these meetings, whether they're daily or weekly, to make them more meaningful, more than just transactional?
Janet Fields
Yeah, we go on with an agenda. There's a reason, there's a goal and there's, you know, an executable item at the end or a resolution. And so that's how we do things, is there actionable? We do have a leadership channel for just about every other big piece in our company where we communicate instead of emails, we say, Hey, there's this issue that came up, here's the address, here's the whatever's going on. Now you tag whoever's important and we have a conversation and work it out. As the people become available. Not a stop what you're doing situation. It's more of a party, email or text, but we keep in touch a lot that way. I love it because, I don't know, maybe just my age group or it's just digital and I don't feel like at the drop of a hat. Everything I'm doing to pick up the phone or go to a meeting is causing everybody's time to be just so expensive. I despise it. It's not productive either. So I think the informal lines of communication are great. And then our weekly check ins, we're really hash out like big items that need executable teamwork.
Peter Hernandez
Yeah, well, you guys, can I see we have a last minute special guest 2024 and Narbonne president is with us now. She's going to tell us a little bit about her daily meetings.
Melissa
I was not prepared to be on camera. My kids are home for a snow day, so it's been a little chaotic. We do the daily test and wouldn't necessarily always include my husband or myself, just depending on our schedule. But our management team runs them. And it's a simple three questions. What am I working on today? What do I need help with and what deadlines do I have to meet? And so what this produces is a camaraderie of, for one, we can see who has more work on their plate than someone else and what can we shift. And it also has created a really strong teamwork environment for someone to be willing to step in and help with that without me having to go and say, you know, Suzy is overwhelmed, so I need you to step in. So what do I have on my plate? What do I need help with and what deadlines do I have to meet? And so collectively, they're holding their spouses accountable and they're helping out each other. And it's a quick, easy 10 minutes, and they do it every single day.
Peter Hernandez
Yeah.
Melissa
Well, you know, two or three people, it's small because my departments are all small, but we're all in the office, too. So it's also part of our culture.
Peter Hernandez
I love that. I love the part where you said you get to see what everyone's got on their plate and even, you know, maybe, you know, determine if it's too much that's elite or is going to do it right. They're going to look at their team and that's going to help identify if they are too much to the point that they'll become stressed, anxious, etc.? Right. And so you're looking out for them.
Melissa
On the flip side of that, Peter, the biggest change we've seen is that you have those people that feel like they're overwhelmed all the time and they have so much work, but when they see everyone else's, what they're doing, they're like, Maybe you shouldn't say that, or maybe I should complain, or maybe I should take on a little more because my plate really isn't as full as everyone else's. So it's really elevated the effort in our office probably more than anything, a little healthy peer pressure. That's what I call it. Yes, we do peer pressure. Brittany praises accountability, attendance, all of it.
Peter Hernandez
Yeah. Cameron was just sharing in the chat that they use Trello and that's a great tool as well. So love, love you guys are sharing, you know, the different tools that you guys are using for any of these.
Melissa
Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Well, let's get to our last call question. I think this is going to be interesting because we're going to tie all of this back to all three topics, mind, body and health. Last question for today. It's good to know what type of leadership style you have. How would your team members describe you? Authoritative and decisive, supportive and nurturing, charismatic and inspirational, visionary and strategic. Wow. Okay. All right. The results tell us that you say that your team would describe you as supportive and nurturing, or you always answer Janet and Brett.
Janet Fields
I had a little trouble between the last three, honestly. But yeah, I was supportive because we don't want anybody to freeze in their tracks when they feel like they're making mistakes. So I always feel like I'm doubling down there. It's like we always need to learn from mistakes. We need to build and grow. What do you need? All those things.
Peter Hernandez
Okay.
Brad Randall
Brett Yeah, I feel like if you're in property management, you probably have a healthy dose of nurturer in you. You are more than likely a patient person. You're more patient than most. So supportive and nurturing is what I put down. What I know I need to work on better is being more communicative in our vision and goals. Like where? Like that strategic place. I have a ten up here and we have like our vision statement and things like that. But I think I need to be better at sharing that vision with others so that they can take, they can create, you know, they can build with that.
Peter Hernandez
Yeah. So thank you for those answers, Karen here. It says here at the end of the chat that the personality tests have actually told her what she is like. So, you know, that would be a question that I would have for everyone. There's, you know, okay, this is what I think how my team would describe me. But do we actually know that? So, you know, whether it's desk culture index, 16 personalities, whatever you decide to take, it's a great exercise to learn about yourself, to learn about your team, and to learn how to interact and be a leader.
Laura Mac & Carol Housel
And that wraps up another episode of the Triple-Win Property Management podcast. Thank you for pressing play. We hope you've gained valuable insights and inspiration. The Triple-Win Property Management Podcast is proudly produced and distributed by Second Nature, where we believe in a Triple-Win, building winning experiences for your residents, investors and your teams with the only fully managed resident benefits package. Visit SecondNature.com to learn more and talk to an RBP expert in your area. If you have any questions or comments or want to weigh in on the conversation, we'd love to hear from you. Email TripleWin@SecondNature.com. That's TripleWin@SecondNature.com. Stay connected with us beyond the podcast. Visit our website at SecondNature.com to stay updated with upcoming property management events and articles. And don't forget, you can keep the conversation going in the Triple-Win Property Management Facebook group. It's exclusively for property managers. To receive even more valuable insights and updates, subscribe to our newsletter. You can find the link to that and much more in the show notes. On behalf of the Triple-Win community, this is Laura Mac, thanking you for tuning. And on behalf of Second Nature, this is Carol Housel. Check back soon for another exciting episode. Until then, keep striving for that Triple-Win.