CEO MONDAY MORNING MESSAGE: February 2011

Friday, February 25, 2011

Always Be Prepared

Always be Prepared

A friend of mine told me about an intense kayak lesson he took in

some serious rapids. He had to wear a helmet and life preserver

at all times. This was not a scenic float down a gentle river. The

event started with a 3-hour training session that consisted primarily

of practicing how to fall out of the kayak. It is imperative to keep your

feet headed downriver first no matter what. They practiced this over

and over again. All of the participants were trained to be thoroughly

prepared so that when they fall into the water (and they probably

would) they would not have to take time to think about what to do

next. Reactions had to be second-nature. There would be no time

for pondering.

This weekend I went snowshoeing upstate. It never occurred to me

that snowshoeing could be a dangerous sport, but one of my fellow

adventurers slid down the icy mountain and tore up her leg so deep

that she couldn't walk and had to be medi-vaced out of the state

park on a tank-like machine. Our guide's normal job requirement

is to lead everyone through the trail and make sure people have a

good time. Fortunately he was medically trained and snapped to

action immediately. Stop the bleeding. Make sure the victim stays

conscious and responsive. Protect her from further harm. What was

planned to be a walk in the park turned treacherous in a second, but

not deadly because of preparation.

At Signature Community we deal with dangerous scenarios all of

the time, and I am amazed at how responsive and prepare our

team members are. A great example happened during the recent

extremely cold temperatures experienced throughout the country

which were the biggest surprise in the lower parts of the southwest.

This part of the country is just not use to dealing with feeling

temperatures in the negative range, let alone even colder wind chills

and snow on the roads. I have to hand it the Signature Team for

handling these problems like champs. Whether it was working with

vendors to provide bags of salt when everyone else was out of stock

or other Signature Community offices sending plumbing parts to

areas that had run out of supplies at the local Home Depot, all the

teams in these hard hit areas worked day and night and all weekend

long to bring back services to our residents.

The Signature team was prepared for the worst and helped our

residents in their time of need.

Thanks everyone for making it happen.

--
Nickolas Jekogian
CEO
Signature Community
917-763-3500
www.ASignatureCommunity.com
Blog -http://www.nwjceommm.blogspot.com/

"Si³" Signature: Ideas, Innovation, Implementation!
Send ideas to: ideas@asignaturecommunity.com

Friday, February 18, 2011

Staying a step ahead

If the world around you is changing faster than inside the organization then

you will become extinct. - Jack Welch

The Daily

Last week to much fanfare The Daily, the first newspaper to move fully to

an iPad-only distribution, was finally available for sale. Rupert Murdoch,

an 80 year-old billionaire, is the first in the media world to go completely

iPad or tablet based media. The results provide a rich, fast read with in-

depth reporting. Since it is still in beta stages we don't know what the cost

is going to be, but hopefully it will be priced like the New York Post (50

cents/issue).

It is amazing to see the largest news publishing company in the world

going all in on a technology that is less than a year old. It is already in

the hands of 10s of millions of people across the world, and The Daily has

been quick to capitalize on this success. The expansion of this device,

but more importantly the availability of media material for it (especially

exclusive), brings to light just how fast old media world (newspaper

business, TV, even cable) is changing around us and how much work it is

for old world companies to keep up.

I applaud Rupert Murdock for his bold step into the new technology and

look forward to all the other media companies that will surely follow. I do

expect that my children will be very confused as to why all those trees are

being chopped down to produce newspapers that could much more easily

be distributed via iPads, Kindles and phones.

So what are we doing at Signature Community to keep up with

technology? First, our communications with our residents is increasingly

electronic. We now email our resident to confirm work-orders, survey their

satisfaction, negotiate renewals, and starting this year even sign leases.

We do almost all of our leasing now through online advertising, and this

leasing season we will have the first iPad equipped leasing team in the

country that can take the leasing transaction from beginning to end all on

an iPad. Additionally at Signature Community, all of our team members

have access to one of the industries best training program available 24/7

from any computer.

Investments in technology don't come cheap, but if done right they have

the opportunity to change the industry positively in the long term. We look

at our tech investments in the same way as The Daily; we need to keep

ahead of the competition.

Thanks for keeping Signature a step ahead of the others.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Pushing your limits

Last week I spent the day being treated like a grunt. I was yelled at,

verbally abused, called a sissy, and told to leave but I pushed on with one

of the hardest mental/physical challenges of my life. I was a Navy Seal

trainee for a day.

The Navy Seals are one of the most effective military units in the world

because they push their people well beyond their limits. The challenges,

although seemingly only physical, were mainly mental in nature. If

someone told me that I would do 500 pushups in one day I would have

laughed at them, but in the end that's what I was able to do.

At Signature Community I see my job as head drill sergeant. My job is

to push the limits of our team members to do things they never thought

possible. Sometimes it works amazingly well like in Kansas City where

Matt Gietzen is now managing more than 400 units at occupancy rates

well above the competition and in Indianapolis where Samantha Skrobot started

working in our office a year ago to help pay her rent and is now overseeing our

national leasing efforts. Thank you Samantha for not giving up when you

were getting calls every night at 3am to handle heat emergencies. (The

Navy Seal training program, as well as the Signature training programs,

understand the importance of using sleep deprivation as a training tool.)

Unfortunately, in a training program like this we can't please everyone.

In many cases people cannot handle the pressure or the uncomfortable

environment created by this push for excellence, and they are forced

to drop out. It happens. We as a team must move on without them,

knowing that we will always be finding team members willing to attempt the

challenge but only the few will succeed.

Thanks to all of you at Signature Community for making us the preeminent

team in the real estate business. The practice and training (and even

sleep deprivation) will payoff.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Press Coverage on Signature Community

http://www.entrepreneurship.org/en/Blogs/e360-Blog/2011/January/Entrepreneurial-mindset-can-exist-in-many-ways-and-places.aspx

Create your own luck

"I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have

of it", Thomas Jefferson.

Ask any very successful person what the secret to their success is, and

they will usually answer hard work AND a lot of luck. It is an essential

combination that has led to the greatest innovations of all times. I do

not believe that success is possible by only luck alone. Just look at the

history of lottery winners; more of them declare bankruptcy within 5 years

of winning than the general population. The same goes for hard workers;

without the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time all that hard

work and effort could lead to little success.

Last week Signature Community had one of those right-place-at-the-right-

time opportunities, one that I think will be very beneficial to our residents

for years to come.

So here is the story:   One of our residents in the Kansas City market

sent an email to our leasing office to relocate within our properties.

He inadvertently added an extra letter to the email address, and this

misplaced email fortuitously ended up being forwarded to my account. I

forwarded it to the proper team member at Signature; but I also noticed

that the resident's signature line was from the Kaufman Institute in

Kansas City, one of the preeminent organizations in the world for helping

entrepreneurs.

I took the bold step of reaching out to our resident (a director of the

Institute) to ask for the Kaufman Institute's help in growing the Signature

Job Training Program, with the goal of helping our residents retool

themselves into jobs or new businesses to survive this new economy.  I

had been thinking about this project for the past year and we have been

working on it at Signature for the past few months, so this accidental

email luckily came my way at the right time. My call to Kaufman was well-

received, and they have agreed to partner with Signature Community

on rolling out entrepreneurial training to select Signature Community

residents.

A little luck and a lot of hard work can produce great results. In the next

few month we will be making available to our residents what I hope will be

the kind of program that gives them the opportunity to succeed in this wild

new economy.

Thanks for making luck happen at Signature Community.