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Being real and being authentic with your homeowners about where your community is at, where your board is at, and how we're trying to deal with these situations in front of us will go a long way. Will you have detractors? Of course you will. Everybody's an expert when they're not in your chair, but you have to realize that's just part of the game. If you are being who you really are, and you're going to address the real problems, you will find a tremendous amount of respect. People will respect you tremendously, is what I meant to say. HOA Insights is brought to you by five companies that care

about board members: 0:33

Association Insights and Marketplace, Association Reserves, Community Financials, Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and the Inspectors of election. You'll find links to their website and social media in the show notes. Hi, I'm Robert Nordland of Association Reserves, and I'm Julie Adamen with Adamant Inc. And this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense for common areas. Well, welcome to episode number 172, where I'm again speaking with management and leadership expert Julie Adaman of Adamen Inc. Well, we were both struck by a bump in our industry, and it's the amazing power of denial. And sometimes there's a clear path forward, and the obstacle is not the facts or the cost; it's just simply denial. So, what do we do with that? And that's a topic we'll be wrestling with in just a few minutes, we are here weekly. So if you missed last week's episode 171 with board member Rose Walker, that was a treat. It's worth going back and catching that episode. Rose is the vice president of her Florida condo, and it got hit by a hurricane and other challenges. Yet she and the board were able to move forward and find calm after chaos, and that's a heck of a story that she was able to tell. So, if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, hoainsights.org, or search for HOA Insights on YouTube. But better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms, or subscribe to our podcast's YouTube channel so you don't miss any future episodes. And so the podcast increases in the search rankings and becomes more findable to more board members, and that helps us in our goal to give more board members the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their association. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA Insights mug I have here. Got my merch. Julie's got to have one. Yes, yes. The merch that we have here we keep on our desk. It reminds us of we've got a lot of board members to take care of, and they keep coming in and rotating out, and they keep coming in and rotating out, and there's a lot to tell them. And boy, we feel like we have a lot that we can offer. So we got that from our merch store, which you can browse through on our hoa insights.org website, or the link in the show notes, or you can simply visit just to pick up some great free stuff there, like board member Zoom backgrounds that you can use for your next board meeting. Well, we enjoy hearing from you, responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So, if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you'd like us to address, keep in touch at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at hoa insights.org. But today's program is on us wanting to bring this challenge out in the open. So, Julie, as we were talking before the program, you've seen this industry from the management side and the board side. Where do you see denial stopping progress? Everywhere. I would just say it's a larger. Yeah, was that what you're afraid? I was afraid you were going to say that. You said something earlier, Robert, as we were talking beforehand. It's it's kind of the human condition for sure, and denial is again not a river in Egypt. However, it is, but not what we're talking about. But I think denial is something we, as a society or as a world, are now in so much denial about so many things, and then you know, as we were talking about that, I was thinking, why, why is that? Why are and this and I would say it is, and you know, of course, I'm not, but I'm a realist. I I always have been. If you guys have listened to me speak before, you can pretty much guess that you know I'm. If I see it, I'm going to call it. I'm going to call it what it is. So I think that a lot of people are in denial because honestly, life is hard, and there's so much coming at you. Whether it's the community that you manage, or the community that you serve on the board, or you live in, or it's the general populace, it's elections, it's the news, it's whatever's going on in the world. It's all the stuff that bombards our inboxes, and actually, this device, which is in front of your face all the time, and it's just right there all the time. So, I think that a lot of denial happens because people just don't want to face it. Now, why they don't want. Face it. Why would it be? Well, number one, it's uncomfortable. Number two, it doesn't fit my image of myself or my mindset about something in particular. Or it's just easier to pretend it doesn't matter. If I didn't have headphones on, I would go la la la, put my fingers in my ears, and it affects everybody. But in terms of how it affects community associations. There's two sides of the denial, obviously, and it's the management of it, meaning whether you have a manager, management company, in-house manager, or you're the managers as board members, or it's on the board side strictly as board members. And again, I think it's the human condition, but it's something I think we can address and maybe start to dig our way out of because it's easy. It's easy to be in denial. Well, that's not really happening. Take it right to your wheelhouse, Robert Reserves. Oh, we don't need to put money in there. Oh, you should take that about the reserves and talk about denial about reserves. Yeah, I want to get to that, but I think it's important for us to lay this foundation that it's a human condition. It's not a community association issue. No, it's a human condition. Life is a hard place, and remember our kids talking to us. I don't know if it happened in your family, but I have two kids, and they were saying, "I want to grow up, but it seems like it's hard growing up. And yeah, grownups work. Grown up pay the bills. We pay taxes. We make decisions. Responsibilities. They have responsibility. Responsibilities. Yeah, you're responsible for your family, for the car running. Uh huh. For me, my wife's car needs to have fuel and needs to be clean. There's a million of these. Not to mention the business you run and your employees and all the the downstream things that happen. Yeah, it's a lot. What do the what do the kids call it today? I don't want to learn adulting. Well, this is hard, and so is denial part of just our survival instinct that we have to dull some of the edges so we can feel good about ourselves and we can feel good about who we are, who we've become. My wife and I had an interesting conversation with another couple over the weekend, and I'm going to get some of this wrong, at least. But the wife was a therapist. It was fascinating to hear her talk about humans and how so many of her patients pursue a dopamine hit. They they have something pleasureful, and whether it's scrolling or whether it's binge watching on Netflix, have something that we find pleasureful. And alcohol, drugs, you know, you can just go right down the line. The simple things, but we're talking here about volunteer service, being a board member, and we're talking about a manager who is serving others in dealing with a lot of their dirty laundry, a lot of their arguments, a lot of their lack of clear direction, and I think there's some degree that it's just-I don't want to fail, but it's partially the nature of what we're dealing with. There's a lot of being in the community association industry that is just playing hard, and you have to you have to dull some of the edges, or you're just going to get, or you're going to go off and live in the woods somewhere all by yourself. I hear that all the time from people. That's not a good solution. Yeah. Okay. We had some notes here, but for a board member, there it manifests itself in so many ways. It's not my problem. Point to the manager; it's their problem. Or it's not my problem. It's I just have an unusually lousy set of homeowners at our association, or what could it be? Physical. Our association. Oh, gee, the landscaper planted the wrong plants, and they ran over the sprinklers, and so everything's breaking and denying the fact that you're the one who hired the landscaper. Yeah, and you're the one who's supposed to follow up on the landscape. Yeah, you know, you know, Robert, I was gonna say thing about these about the board members. I think because when you run for the board, I mean, which I'm doing formally, I sent my stuff into yesterday. Good. Now, for me, I know exactly what's involved. This is my wheelhouse. I've been doing this for nigh onto 40 years now. But for most people who become board members, they have no idea what they're in for. I mean, they may have gone to a board meeting or two or three, or they just volunteered because nobody else would. Congratulations and thank you, but so they have no idea what they've gotten into. And a lot of our folks, like where I'm living, I mean, I'm one of the few people that still works, and a lot of these folks are retired. Some of them been retired for 20 years, and they get on the board, and they're like, "Whoa, there's a lot going on here. And then they get that God. I'm retired. I don't want to have to deal with this. Honestly, I don't blame you. But the truth is, is that if you these things are all happening around you, to you, to your board, to your community, and to put your fingers in your ears and say la la la is not going to make it go away. So if I understand. Understand the natural inclination to do so. Well, that's not really a problem. Well, we don't really need to fix that. Oh, I don't want to spend that money. All of those non-decision decisions, which is where this all leads to. You're saying, well, I didn't make that decision. Well, being in denial is making a decision. You've decided not to deal with it. So you just didn't say it to yourself. After understanding the inclination, I want to say that when you are in denial and you're you're really not looking at reality and calling it what it is, I mean, you know, is that an elephant or is that a pug dog? Well, that's a pug dog. It doesn't look like an elephant, right? But if you call it an elephant, you are not being authentic. You are putting up a facade of your own, so you're being fake. And I think another problem with all of us is we are surrounded by so many people who are in government, who are you know in our institutions, business businesses, yeah, absolutely business, and they're just full of baloney. And we all know it. They're lying. We know they're lying. They know we know they're lying. And but we all just kind of go along. But as board members, you know, you are really sitting at the tip of the spear of localized republic government. Your democratic republic. I had to tell somebody this on my swim club about two weeks ago. Who was, well, how come they didn't poll us about what we thought? I'm like, you know, this isn't a democracy. It's a it's a republic, and they're not going to poll eight people over a schedule change at wherever. Well, I don't even remember now what it was. Let me stop you right there. My understanding is a democratic republic is we elect our leaders, who then make the decisions. Yep. Okay. Good. Just want to make sure I was on the same page with you. Yeah, you are. But as board members, again, you're on the tip of the spear of this. And if you feel like I didn't sign up for this, I don't want to do this, and you're just warming a chair. Well, maybe they need you to warm the chair. You have to know that, and then you're gonna, you know, kind of move off the board later, but if you're a long-term board member and you find yourself not wanting to face things, and I get it, but I'm gonna posit to you, you're being a phony like everybody else. You are not calling the pug dog the pug dog and the elephant the elephant. When you find yourself doing that kind of thing, I'm gonna challenge you to be real about what is going on. I think our entire world is sycophonies, and they they are craving they are craving authenticity. And as board members, you are in the perfect place to enact it locally. I mean, all politics is local. Well, the things that you do as board members affects the people living around you, and I know you're all like going,"Yeah, that's the problem. It kind of is, but it's also a wonderful thing in the sense that if you are doing what is right, if you are calling the pug dog the pug dog, as opposed to calling it an elephant, people will respect you for that. If you are saying, "Well, that's not really a problem, and three quarters of the constituency knows it's a real problem, you look very foolish. Now, your life may be on the surface easier, but you're not doing what's right. I would challenge you to be authentic about it because people are craving it, and they will support you. That's where I'm going with my candidacy for my board spot, it comes back to being a board member is hard. We're we're not going to deny that you're a fiduciary. You are an elected leader of a usually a multi million dollar not for profit real estate corporation, and there's work that has to be done. It's not a social club. You can be sued for what you do or don't do for the decisions you make. You will be ultimately criticized everywhere, from

Facebook to Nextdoor. My advice: 13:44

stay off those. But there are some wonderful things you can do because it is your community. It's where you live, and we've heard some stories here. We do board heroes once a month or so, and there are some who just ache with how much they care for their association. There was one board hero we had who had been removed, overthrown, kicked out, and she still she still yeah it was a coup yeah at their association, and she still ached for her. I said, "Well, why don't you sell and leave? I love this place. She would get back on the board, and the new board. I don't need to tell you that story. I wish I remembered the episode number, and then even last week with Rose talking about how they have chaos at their association, and how she and the other board were able to find calm to lead them through. There are wonderful things you can do, and a little bit has to do with who you are. You know, are you are you ready for it? And Julie, I like what you were saying about be real. We have an opportunity to stand out and say, hey, neighbors. And in my world, we've got a roof that's getting really old, and it's going to be really expensive. I don't have the power to make it magically new again. It's going to be expensive. In the meantime, we're trying to do some simple things: add some pet waste stations and some little things that we're going to fix that crack by the mailbox. That's quality. Those are quality of life issues. Those small things. Yes, like fixing the potholes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Or the the graffiti on the subway. The little things that make a lot of difference. What can we do? Because we're here to help maximize your enjoyment of life here at this community association. That's that's wonderful when you address the reality. When you are there to say, "Hey, neighbors, we are in this, and you have community, you're banded together. We have an epidemic of loneliness in this country, and for people to say,"We are in this is our community, and as board members, you had the opportunity to be. What were we talking about? You said the word real, authentic, transparent, authentic, authentic to communicate to be able to make a mistake and say,"Oh, gee, yeah, we we planted the wrong flowers, or that shade that we painted the ironwork. I guess wasn't black. It looks like it's dark brown. Yeah, I'm so sorry about that. Can you live with it for five more years, and we'll get it black next time? Just little things where you can say just helps make our Happy Valley Villas unique. Doing it the way you just said that kind of self-deprecate, and I think some things that happens with us as as board members is you know a lot is riding on your shoulders and people are quick to criticize but sometimes you just got to go stuff happens or sorry we'll we'll fix it next time a little self deprecating humor but admitting the mistake frankly even before if you can get in front of it and admit the mistake that happened and go yeah are bad. We did not mean to make that happen, or whatever it was like that. People, they really don't mind the mistake. They may grouse, but they don't mind the mistake. It's how you address it that they will remember. That's I give that advice to community managers all the time. It's in my online courses for them. Is that it's not the mistake; it's how you fix it. If you think you made a mistake and then you need to be in denial about your mistake, you're compounding the problem. Just sorry. Sometimes you just have to do it. Fall on the sword. It's done. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you are not making mistakes, you're in denial. Yeah. And you're not doing anything if you're not making mistakes. You're not doing anything. I sent out an email yesterday to one of my partners. It said January 1516, and 17, and I don't know why I said January 1516, and 17. It was 1314, and 15. And I was like, follow it up. I am so sorry. Those are the wrong dates. And we all make mistakes. It's how we bounce back. Are we going to clear them? Are we going to fix them? Are we going to make them better? If you are not making mistakes, you're in denial, and I think that's part of those things too that you need to be clear about. How am I going to get out of this? Yeah, it's you know the first thing is to be honest about about it with yourself, and then to be honest about it, with your constituency, you know what, and I mean that doesn't mean you have to run out there, set your hair on fire, and you know, and just you know, stand in the middle of the street and beg forgiveness. It's not that. It's just, you know, if you make a big deal out of it, everybody's going to make a big deal out of it. But a little self-deprecation, little humor goes a long way in these type of situations, Julie. I'm looking at the clock here. It's about time to take a break and hear from one of our generous sponsors. After which, we'll be back with more common sense for common areas, and we're not denying it. We will be back in just a moment. Are you part of a homeowners association or condominium board? Making the right financial decisions for your community's future is crucial. At Association Reserves, we're proud to serve communities nationwide, specializing in reserve studies tailored to your community's unique needs. Our expert team helps you accurately assess your property's assets, forecast future expenses, and develop a solid funding plan. Whether you're a small HOA or a large condominium association, we've got you covered. Visit reservestudy.com to learn more and get a proposal for your association. And we're back. Well, Julie, during our break, we were talking about it's not if you are in denial, but what you are in denial about. And so, to our board member audience, I want to challenge you. What are you feeling uncomfortable about at this time? And I want to. We're going to spend a couple of minutes talking about how then you can turn this big ship around in the ocean that has a lot of momentum. Maybe it's been years of being proud of how low your assessments are, and you're looking at. The insurance bills, your reserve underfunding, all those kinds of things, and you realize we we've got a collision. We're we're not going somewhere good. Where where do we go with this? That's a really good question, and and this is something that a lot of associations have dealt with. Champlain Towers, they tried to, and that ended in disaster. They tried it, though. But you know, a lot of associations face this. More and more are facing it every single day because of so many. Now the associations are getting older-20, 3040, years old-and for so long. And you, I would venture to say that most of the audience of board members out here is going to be nodding along. What's the biggest problem they've had? They didn't raise assessments to keep up with expenses, realistic expenses. Not I'm in denial expenses, realistic expenses. So let's say this has been going on. The reason I pick on this, and I know we talk about this a lot on this podcast, but it's probably the number one thing that, in in my observation, low these 40 years in the industry, that is the problem, is that no one wants to raise the assessments, and it's been going on for a long time. Now you're the board. You're now on the board where you have to do something. You're like Robert said. Your insurance bill has gone up. Now that's like across the board across the country. That is a real thing. So, if you're thinking, "Well, we're just going to stop landscaping, you can't do that. But to keep the assessments where they are or artificially low, okay. So, I would say if you are going to take on something like that, if it's that type of, you're going to have to raise assessments higher than what your documents provide, and you're going to have to get a vote of the ownership, especially, and maybe get a loan or any one of these huge, huge tasks you're going trying to tackle. It starts small in the sense the board has to coalesce and say and agree on what they're going to do, and let's say okay what they're going to say and what they're going to say. And again, you need to come up with a program, a communication strategy, to get that to the owners. And this isn't going to take six months. It might take two years. It just depends on how big it is, how big the community is, and how difficult this is going to be. But it's again, no more denial. We're facing reality as it is, this is an elephant, not a pug dog. And the elephant in the room, we're going to introduce him, and he is that we need to raise assessments and probably get a loan to cover the shortfall we're going to have with our let's just say our insurance payment, as well as some other stuff we need to take care of and fund reserves. Many associations have that trifecta or more facing them. So, what do you do? You have to again face reality, get together, agree you're going to do it. Talk about your communication strategy. I would actually encourage you if you need to hire someone to help you with that. If you're able to, if you are pretty computer literate, you can actually use some AI programs to help you with that. I recommend Claude. I think it's the best. You may have to pay a little bit for it, but if you're not good at that, maybe you have an adult child who is able to do that for you or help you with it, and put together a program along with how we're going to. That could be emails. It can be the newsletter. It's the website. It's town hall meetings. It's maybe even one-on-one meetings. It's small group meetings. Again, it's not going to be six months. It may be a year, could be two years. But you can right that ship. You can turn that battleship around with number one authenticity, which means you have to be real about what the problem is, where you've been and where you need to go, and then you need to bring people along with you. You don't want to tell them about it. Well, you do want to tell them about it, but it's not a teaching, you know, shove it down their throat. It's a bringing them along into the process of how we have to do that, and that will be your most successful tactic to get this kind of thing done. We words. We have this. It's not you need to vote for this, but we have this challenge. Our community. Our community. Yes. Yeah. You know, it's easy to get in the us versus them thing in this business. I mean, having been on the management end for so long, it was always us versus the association. Sometimes the board. Usually, often the boards were with you. It was it was like you and the board versus the homeowners. But that, and I get why it is that way. I've lived it. But if you're trying to take on this type of program, this type of undertaking, it has to be our and we. Robert is 100% right. And then you talk about communication strategy. It may be just a multi-month. You may need to start a newsletter. You may need to start a text train. You may need to start emailing. You may have to have a dedicated website page to it. I mean, just dedicated to what's going on here about this. Yeah, and again, there may be some costs in that, but we're talking about the health of the community. And so, a few $100 can make a difference in the home values of 127 people, and make a real big difference because that's what we're talking about. Everyone's largest investment here, and so it's worth getting it right. Communication, transparency. I like your idea of enlisting people one on one. Maybe you do it committee by committee. Maybe you get a budget committee, and that way, if you have five board members, now maybe you got five committee people that can then be ambassadors throughout their building, their floor, their age group, the dog walkers, the tennis, the swimmers, the the the the moms with small kids, to spread the word out that yeah, this is this is we, this is our community here, and we had a leak in the roof over on Building Four. Did you know about that? All of our roofs are getting gold, and it's going to be expensive. And unfortunately, we don't have the money, so we need to get the money together. This is real. It's real, and it's going to support our property values. And so, if we want our two bedrooms, one sold for $450,000 last year, if we want them to continue to sell at that rate or higher, we've got to sink some money into this place, and that's strategy. And there's maybe some words like you saw. We and our. The other is in my world in reserves. There's so many people who think reserve funding is for the future, and we try to counsel them. No, it's not. It's for now. You need to pay the roof deterioration bill, the asphalt deterioration bill. It's as real as any other thing. It's more. It's so much more like a usage fee that we pay on an ongoing basis. So bringing it real and bringing it to now helps. But then again, that we come-we're back to being honest, being transparent, being real, those kinds of things. Yeah, yeah. Being real and being authentic with your homeowners about where your community is at, where your board is at, and how we're trying to deal with these situations in front of us will go a long way. Will you have detractors? Of course you will. Everybody's an expert when they're not in your chair, but you have to realize that's just part of the game. If you are being who you really are, and you're going to address the real problems. You will find a tremendous amount of respect. People will respect you tremendously, is what I meant to say.

I guess two things: 27:29

being a board member is hard, and you who are listening know probably what the problems are and what you are trying to deny. So address those. Address those with the board and create a plan. And then I was reminded by

Rose last week: 27:45

you got to take care of yourself. You got to find a happy place. You can't be carrying the problems of 127 or 322 or 18 other homeowners all on your shoulders. Don't don't burn yourself out. Your association needs you. So make sure you're taking good care of yourself. Julie, are those kind of the what closing thoughts do you have to add at this time? Well, you pretty much nailed that, Robert. But the thing is, I just want to tell board members that, as Robert said, it's not easy. We know it's not easy. We've both been on boards. I I told you I'm running for my board again. Why? Because I'm nuts, but also because I care. I really care about it. No, I seriously, I'm going to live here for another 25 years. So I care, and there is no sense in going into something like this for any other reason than because you care and you want to help. If you're going into being a board member because you know, look, I'm going to be the big man on campus or the big woman on campus and think that's all it is is that kind of you know you're going to point and tell people what to do, you're there for the wrong reasons and it's highly inauthentic. You know if you're there because you want to help, very authentic, and people will respond to it. And you know what? When they see you and they see you start to succeed this way, they want to be a part of that. People want to be a part of something successful. Yeah, you can create something good, and you can create something wonderful. Well, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to bringing many more episodes to you week after week after week. We'll be here, and it'll be great to have you join us on a regular basis. Spread the word. You've been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. If you like the show and want to support the work that we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation. Leave a question in the comment section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com, or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130. If you gain any insights from the show, please do us a huge favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting. The brands that sponsor this program. The opinions expressed in this program are for general information purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. Any past performance discussed during this program is no guarantee of future results. Any indices referenced for comparison are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. As always, please remember investing involves risk and possible loss of principal capital. Please seek advice from a licensed professional. Capital CS Group LLC is a registered investment advisor. Advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where Capital CS Group LLC and its representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure. No advice may be rendered by Capital CS Group LLC unless a client service agreement is in place. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video and Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team, you'll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with Stoke Light.