THE PREMIER MULTIFAMILY EVENT IN THE MIDWEST!
Schedule
VIEW THE 2022 SCHEDULE BELOW
The Midwest Multifamily Conference is for apartment professionals who want to level up their career, community & connections. Whether you’re a leasing professional, regional supervisor, property owner, or maintenance professional, you’ll find an education track tailored to you.
Opening Keynote: Achievement Now - Elevate Your Success
According to Inc. Magazine, 92% of individuals who set yearly goals fail to reach them. Join keynote speaker, Tyler Enslin, in this participant-focused session to understand the actual reason why so many people fail to reach their goals. Relatable, engaging, and practical, Tyler has a passion for inspiring individuals to determine a path to growth and achievement. During this presentation, you will create meaningful individual goals for yourself while developing action steps to begin achieving your goals right away. You will walk away with four simple habits that can be implemented immediately to drive achievement and discover actionable keys to a productive mindset. Leave the opening session feeling motivated and energized to begin reaching your goals!
The Struggle Is Real: 3 Strategies To Lessen Stress & Enhance Wellness
As an essential industry, we gave a lot of ourselves during the pandemic. There is a daily struggle to meet rising customer demands, along with the high level of stress dealing with the many unknowns. This current ever-changing landscape has had a negative effect on our mental health, as well as our overall well-being. It’s crucial to understand the importance of mental health and wellness to you, your team, and your company. Join Amy to discover long-term strategies to maintain and protect your wellness professionally, as well as personally. Leave this session with practical tips to become an overall healthier person!
We’re Better Together: The Surprisingly Simple Leadership Strategies That Will Help You Create An Extraordinary Team
In this session, Rommel will break down the complex issue of leadership into three simple strategies that you will be able to implement immediately for yourself and your teams. You will learn the big mistakes leaders make every day that make your life harder (and how to fix those mistakes right away), the powerful foundations of the Leadership Traction Model, and the secrets behind the “Grow and Go” framework. Rommel will share surprisingly simple leadership strategies to create an extraordinary team.
Increase Your Sales Leads on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the single best source of leads on the planet. And it’s FREE. What if you could position yourself on LinkedIn to attract prospects, and referral partners — without being pushy, sales-y or aggressive? In this session, you will discover three of the best strategies to get more high-paying prospects in your business using LinkedIn, “the Google for Business Professionals!” You will leave this session with Jennifer ready to establish yourself as the go-to expert on LinkedIn.
The 5 Innocent Evils of Digital Marketing
Traditional digital marketing tactics are beginning to have an adverse effect with renters and could very well impact a company’s efforts to attract and retain renters. This growing indifference towards an outward-facing strategy can be seen in just about every industry, and multifamily is no exception. Renters today are smarter and more eagle-eyed than ever before, but what makes sense on paper could negatively disrupt a renter’s online journey. In this session, you’ll learn five “innocent evils” related to apartment marketing and what your company can do to avoid an unintentional sabotage. Leave feeling more prepared than ever to revamp your marketing strategies!
Talent Development for Maintenance Technicians
In this session, you will learn how to promote talent from within your company and provide the resources for a successful maintenance supervisor. Chris will train you how to manage budgets, people, processes, time, and risk. Leave this session with more knowledge on standard leadership competencies that you can immediately take back to your team to make everyone the most successful as possible.
Don’t Care Anymore? 4 Methods To Cure Fatigue & Bring The Compassion Back
Are you feeling burned out and drained from stressful days and demanding customers? The first step to regain the desire to serve is the awareness that your compassion “bucket” is empty. The “cost of caring,” otherwise known as compassion fatigue, can lead to negativity at work, loss of enjoyment, and depression. Learn how to from apathy to empathy and bounce back stronger than ever. In this session, Amy will give you four strategies to get you back on track and equipped with the techniques to regain a new caring outlook. You will walk away with a game plan ready to take back to the office the very next day!
The NEW Zero Moment of Truth: 10 Years in the Making!
No longer are today’s renters just popping up at the Leasing Center hoping to take a tour. By the time they make any type of contact, renters already have a good idea what a community has to offer, which means the information they find online can help or hurt your ability to secure a lease. What exactly do renters consider to be most important when searching online? And once they do lease and move in, what does it take to keep them year after year? Attend this session to get the answers to these questions, and more! Multifamily professional Melissa DeCicco will cover 10 years of renter trends to help you catch the attention of renters who are serious about finding their perfect home.
Work | Life | Balance: Clarify your Boundaries and Live your Whole Life.
On a scale of 1-10, how are you at setting and keeping your boundaries? Boundaries are imperative when asking how to access balance in your work life and in your whole life. Join Goal Coach and Motivational Speaker Jacki Carr for a workshop that explores balance and boundaries. Prepare to leave with three tools to support your boundary practice. Bring your own paper, pen, and an open mind!
Lunch
Trade Show Floor Open
Fantastic Follow-Up: Just Say “No” to Copy and Paste
Follow-up is most effective…when you actually DO it! Seriously, you’ve invested your time, skills, and passion into turning a lead into a tour, performing a perfect presentation, closing the sale, and overcoming objections. Sometimes, you still don’t get the commitment. Learn new techniques you can take back to your property the next day to make your follow-up a value add, memorable, and effective.
Who’s Next? Succession Planning for the Maintenance Team
Are you struggling with maintaining and developing your maintenance team? You can prepare for change by grooming porters into technicians, techs into leads, and leads into supervisors. Join Chris to learn how to create a continuous internal development cycle to attract and retain top workers and provide opportunities that result in satisfaction and stabilization.
The Five Keys to Dealing With Difficult People (Without Making Things Worse)
Let’s state the obvious…people can be difficult. Really. Difficult. The problem is if you want to succeed in life you have to be able to win with people, even the ones you don’t like. Learn how to create connection and understanding with difficult people without making things worse. Rommel will share with you the big mistakes that people make in communicating with a difficult person that stops them from gaining relational traction and how you can avoid them, as well as the secrets of the Compassionate Confrontation Pathway™. Walk away from this session feeling excited, clear, and ready to deal with the difficult people in your life.
Moving Beyond the “Pivot”
Strategic Agility is an organization’s ability to think ahead of the market, quickly adjust to shifting trends, and capture new revenue ahead of the competition. In order for an organization to be truly agile, leaders must learn to ASK and ADAPT, rather than to DECIDE and TELL. Today’s rate of change won’t slow down any time soon and nothing is more important than the ability to respond quickly and innovate in the midst of disruption. In this session, you will take a 5-question quiz to measure your organization’s strategic agility. Lia will teach you how to create an easy-to-implement plan to propel your properties forward. Are you ready to lead your teams into the future? You will be after attending this session!
Five Ways To Jumpstart Wellness In The Workplace
Today’s challenges to mental health cost employers over $80 billion each year. It is time to take action to lower absenteeism due to mental illness and decrease health care costs due to stressed out employees! Why not take steps to help your team build mental strength, enhance productivity, increase morale, and stay as healthy as possible? Discover five real life strategies and ideas you can apply right away to create a more caring and mentally healthy workplace today.
Preventive Maintenance Program – Your Best Investment
Join Chris to discover new ways to spend time to save time and equipment, while also increasing your residents’ satisfaction level at the same time. In this session, you will learn how to ramp up to a full Preventative Maintenance Program, even during those high-demand cycles, to make your days easier and more productive each week.
Rock Your Sales Results
You’ve done it! Made it past the most challenging two years in the history of sales. The opportunity to have your best years ever are right in front of you. Are you prepared to seize them? Do you have what it takes to attract renters in new and innovative ways? Having went from goose-egg (thanks to Covid) to having her best years ever, our speaker Jennifer Darling has a unique perspective and proven strategies to help property managers and leasing professionals succeed in a totally new environment. You will learn how to create more opportunities with lead generators that attract today’s renters while resetting your mindset for results beyond your imagination.
The Love Languages of Employee Engagement
We invest so much into recruiting, hiring, and onboarding. Now how do we keep that Rockstar or Unicorn happy, engaged, and performing at discretionary levels? Team members have individual expectations and needs; how do you create or foster a company culture that satisfies so many different personalities and styles? Each of your teammates and employees may respond to different “Love Languages” and when you learn to speak their language, engagement happens. Whatever your position, from the boiler room to the board room, you can make a difference at your company. Learn from Charlotte how speaking individual Love Languages increases engagement, retention, and performance promotes a happier and healthier workplace.
Dude, Where’s My Caulk?
Stop wasting your valuable time and money searching for supplies! In this session with maintenance guru Chris King-Dye, you will learn how to embrace best practices to manage inventory and organize the maintenance shop for the most effective use of time and talent, all while reducing workplace accidents. You will get back to your property the next day ready to avoid part-swapping and scavenger hunts!
Take Your Day Back! The 5 Time Management Principles to Help You Do More With Less Effort
With all of the technology we have today doesn’t it feel like we should be able to accomplish more while doing less? Yet, haven’t you noticed that it feels like we are accomplishing less, even though we are doing more? There are so many great opportunities within your grasp, however many smart people miss out on them because they keep falling into common traps that keep them from being their best every day. Join Rommel to learn how to create the optimum environment for maximum results in your day, as well as a simple framework that will help you identify where you need to focus your attention. You will walk away from this training feeling empowered and equipped to take your day back so that you can accomplish what is truly important!
Nuance Selling: It’s the Little Things That Can Make Big Sales
Really great salespeople know that selling is truly an art form. During this session, Lisa examines the small, essential details that can take you from good to great in just 60 minutes! Whether you’re a Leasing Professional or an Industry Partner, you’ll leave with amazing new sales skills that will set you apart from the competition. The finest salespeople use empathy, persuasion, body language, and more to establish their credibility while gaining their customer’s trust. Lisa will cover those and more to take your closing to a higher level than ever before. No gimmicks – just skills and techniques to help you advance your career, make more money and be more successful.
Marketing View for the Maintenance Crew
The Maintenance Team is most valuable to the organization and their role when they “get it”….when they contribute to the goals and expectations of the team from the shop to the top, from the prospects to the residents. Understand every apartment community’s top two goals and learn how to get into the communication loop for maximum contribution to income and occupancy.
Lunch & Awards
Trade Show Floor Open
Why Ya’ Gotta Be So Mean? Dealing with Angry Residents and Co-Workers
It seems like everyone is a little bit cranky these days, doesn’t it? With a possible recession, a pandemic that’s STILL going, politics, and everything else out there, it doesn’t take much to set people off, does it? When you understand WHY people are cranky, it becomes a lot easier to deal with their attitudes. Join industry professional Lisa Trosien to learn not only the ‘why,’ but simple techniques to calm down mean people, while keeping your mental health in a good place at the same time! Discover the power of emotional contagion, why you should always seek to understand where people are coming from, how to practice active listening, and so much more to keep you calm and collected during your workdays.
Time Management for Maintenance
Learn from maintenance professional Chad Moulin best practices for preventive maintenance, make-readies, and time management for increased efficiency, smoother operations and a higher NOI at your community. This session will provide key concepts to consider when developing a preventive maintenance schedule, ways to maximize time in the field or office, and how to execute make-readies systematically to ensure high standards are being met for successful move-ins during the turn season. During this session, you will also find out about the newest advances in technology to allow your team to work smarter, not harder!
Professional Reputation: Cultivating an In-Demand Personal Brand
Reputation management is mostly regarded as a business practice. But what about managing your own reputation? What others say about you when you are not around, especially about you professionally, can make you or break you. The mere mention of a name elicits a positive or negative reaction. Doors can open or close, opportunities can appear or vanish, people can smile or frown. This session delves into five ways you can intentionally secure your reputation while building an authentic and well-respected professional identity.
Vision & Goals: How to Design Your Future and Write Goals to Get There
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Do you set goals? Do you write them down?
What happens if/when we fail?
Are your goals set in reaction or in possibility?
Do your goals inspire you?
Join Goal Coach and Motivation Speaker Jacki Carr for a goal setting workshop to the future. In this session, we will explore writing a vision to then define and set goals to make that imagined vision a reality. Bring your own pen, paper, and an open mind!
Emergency Preparedness
A waterline break has occurred on the 3rd floor. Water is coming out profusely onto the lower levels and getting into electrical sub-panels, while at the same time another unit has complained of their carbon monoxide detector going off along with a strong smell of gas. Which of these two emergencies is a higher priority that poses a greater risk to life and property? If you answered, “strong smell of gas,” you are correct! These are both maintenance emergencies we hope to never have to go through, but would you and your team know what to do in the event of a more catastrophic event such as a natural disaster, fire at the community, long term power outage, a vehicle hitting a building, or an active shooter reported at the property? None of these scenarios are ones we would like to think about, but Benjamin Franklin said it best, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Join Chad as he provides key considerations when developing an emergency preparedness plan, risk mitigation, triaging afterhours callouts, FEMA recommendations for responding to natural disasters, which emergency supplies to keep in stock, and how to best respond to an active shooter at the community according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"Video, Video, Video" - The Best Ways to Use Video for Marketing, Leasing, and Communications
As of this year, video now makes up over 80% of all internet traffic, with more people saying they want to learn about a product or service through video than any other means. Just because you have pre-recorded virtual tours doesn’t mean you’re maximizing your marketing strategy. Learn from Lisa the best possible ways to showcase your property through video (TikTok, Instagram, and more), as well as ways you may not even be utilizing. Additionally, Lisa cover important video enhancements that will make your videos more watchable, more sharable, and even more effective. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about video, this class is bound to teach you something new.
Maintenance Executive Social Hour (MESH)
Awards Dinner Reception
Midwest Prodigy Awards Dinner
Join us at the JW Marriott for the annual Midwest Prodigy Awards Dinner to celebrate the best of the best in the industry.
