Yes, it was a four-peat! At the annual National Real Estate Investors Association Leadership Conference, June 26 – 29, 2010, in Nashville, AZREIA was presented the overall Award of Excellence recognizing your association as the best in the country. We are the first organization to ever receive the award four-times. We have won this very prestigious award every year in which we were eligible. And no, it doesn’t get old.
I only believe in doing things one way. If you can’t be the best, then you do everything you can to become the best. Since I “retired” from corporate life, my time has become my own and thus it has become more important. If time is important, then it must be used on worthwhile things. Therefore, if it is worthwhile, it should be done to the best of one’s capabilities, or why do it.
It is one thing to apply this standard to yourself. It is another to get it to “stick” across an organization, even a small one. The staff, including me, at AZREIA aren’t perfect, no one is. But, they do try very hard to deliver the best service possible keeping within our standards of ethics. Overall, AZREIA and its staff do a very good job. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have the best and most highly recognized and awarded association in the country, in the history of National REIA, across all eight very important measured areas:
- Professional Education
- Government Affairs
- Community Service
- Membership Development
- Print Communication
- Electronic Communication
- Conference & Trade Show
- Budget & Finance
There is another way we use to determine how AZREIA “stacks up” to other REIA groups around the country. One anecdotal way is from unsolicited direct comments from members of other REIAs. I usually receive one or two of these every month as we have investors visiting Arizona all the time and coming to the AZREIA meeting. They are usually amazed at three things:
- The high level of professionalism in how we run AZREIA.
- The amount of valuable information we provide.
- The Market Update specifics we share and the value of the data.
Also, other REIAs have sent the leaders and staff to AZREIA to observe our meetings and how we run the day-to-day operation. When we have guest speakers either national or those that do a lot of speaking, almost to a person they comment on how professional we are compared to other locations.
There is one area that I want to highlight because while we receive national recognition for our efforts and results, very little is known about what we do by our members and that is Government Affairs and our lobbying efforts at the State and Municipality level. I don’t have close to enough room in this article to list our accomplishments for this year alone. We have had six years of exceptional results that have saved all investors hundreds even thousands of dollars every single year through saving on taxes, fees and additional regulations that never happened because of our efforts. AZREIA has an excellent reputation at the State and in the Cities where we are involved. That is because we know how to represent your interest while being reasonable to the needs of the citizens and lawmakers.
While this article is meant to bring your attention to how AZREIA is rated and perceived throughout our industry, not everything is always rosy. Please read the Executive Director article inside for a critical look at where AZREIA is today.
We are proud of our accomplishments and the recognition we have received, but much is still to be done. The future of AZREIA is bright with the continued support of our members. I trust we will continue to deliver to your expectation and continue to be the best at what we do.