“Hi, you´ve reached XYZ Apartments. If this is an emergency, please call 911. If this is a maintenance emergency, please call 214-555-1234. If you would like to learn more about our magnificent community here at XYZ Apartments, please leave a message and someone from our professional leasing staff will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you and have a wonderful day.”

While not loathsome to the untrained ear, this generic message on a community´s answering machine can be cringe-worthy to those of us who are intimately familiar with exactly how much time, money, and effort went into developing a customer´s website. Simply mentioning the website address in the property´s recorded message could have very easily sent a renter to their website, where they could have fallen in love with the property and applied right then and there for the available unit of their choice. At this point, the renter calling has a choice to either leave a message, move on to their next choice or possibly call XYZ Apartments again if they don´t find something else they like. That renter could have easily have become a resident had they known they could go to the website.

In addition to adding “please visit us online at XYZApartments.com” to your voicemail and hold messages, here are some other important places for your website address to be.

• Business cards
• Stationary
• E-mail signatures
• Promotional banners
• Signage—the importance of this can´t be overstated. Most people will be able to recall a website address over a phone number in a drive-by scenario

Have you ever felt powerless? It shows up when you find life uncontrollable. More often it shows up when you expected a certain outcome to an event, a relationship, a job; anything that doesn´t turn out as you wanted. So we forget that we have power, or we have given up on it.

Trust me, it is still within you. To me, what is important about power is how you use it! For example we all have power over someone else…often over many others. You have the power to make someone feel as tall and solid as a mountain; and you have the power to make someone feel insignificant, as tiny and unimportant as a tiny ant.

What is important is that you stay aware and channel your power for good; use it to make everyone you encounter be happier, smarter, braver, grander! Use your power to do a great job at your job; your career. Use it to give yourself a raise…by being the best, to make smart decisions. Use it to influence others in a positive way, to make a difference in their lives and in the success of your company, to insure that your customers get what they really want and need. Use it to raise children to love themselves.

You HAVE power…it is up to you how you use it. From this day forward just think of yourself as Superman or Wonder Woman…I want to watch you leap over a tall building, I want to watch you fly!

I managed to stump the readership last month, so here are the answers to last month´s quiz:

American Psycho

Breakfast at Tiffany´s

Ghost World

Glengarry Glen Ross

Here is this month´s Quiz:

1. GENRE Workplace Comedy CATEGORY Coworker/Neighborly Relations WHY IT´S MULTIFAMILY A cult classic on video and cable, arguably required viewing for anyone in a professional work setting. Moreover, the plight of the main character typifies the experience of bachelor residents. Consider uneasy agreement Peter keeps with his neighbor Lawrence to “pretend” they can´t hear one another through the wall they share.
2. GENRE Classic Suspense Thriller CATEGORY Neighborly Relations WHY IT´S MULTIFAMILY One of Alfred Hitchcock´s most remade (and satirized) stories. Jimmy Stewart is a photojournalist in traction who begins following the lives of his neighbors through the rear window of his apartment, leading to a murder mystery. An exploration of the curiosity we all feel toward the disparate lives playing out door-to-door in any multifamily environ.
3. GENRE 90s Suspense Thriller CATEGORY Roommates! WHY IT´S MULTIFAMILY A Prescient cautionary tale for the Craigslist era to come. Bridget Fonda needs a roommate, and Jennifer Jason Leigh answers her ad. Creepy Psycho antics ensue.
4. GENRE unassailably cool, timeless classic romantic comedy CATEGORY Resident Lifestyles WHY IT´S MULTIFAMILY Jack Lemmon is an eager-to-please office worker who loans out his apartment as a rendezvous spot for his lecherous bosses, only to fall in love with one of their girlfriends. Despite the name, this one will resonate with leasing agents most: the fashion has changed, and nothing now is photographed in black and white, but office/gender politics lessons still resonate today.

Send your answers and suggestions to jfoster@ellipseinc.com