Was it a successful annual conference of the Oklahoma Association of REALTORS®? I guess it all depends on how you define success. I would deem our most recent Fall 2022 Oklahoma Association of REALTORS® annual state conference a success, even if we were operating at 75% staff capacity. The conference had a great number of registrations, roughly 150 people over last year’s numbers, and luckily they never saw us sweat, likely because the A/C was on full blast the whole time and freezing people out. But here is why we actually might have sweat it out just a tiny little bit;

Because of unnecessary drama.

That’s right, we anticipated (and dealt with) a little bit of drama, common at most large-scale events.

However, let’s focus first on what we did to eliminate it among the internal team in several ways that started well before the day of the event. We communicated using the platform Slack and managed the project planning in Asana so that everyone knew their role. Hosting any event, big or small, starts with preparation. It takes a whole year to plan a conference for our membership, and the first step is defining the team roles up front. That is not to say that each person has to operate in their own silo; we help each other, cross-train on each other’s responsibilities, and help out wherever needed. Everyone has access to the tasks before us if they access their Asana account, and we make a point to each recognize our workloads and that of the team as a whole. Asana is an incredible project management platform, and I highly recommend looking into it if you’re an association executive or team leader. We coupled that with Slack, the world’s best internal communication platform that allowed us to keep in touch with each other while planning and on-site. And an informed team, led by strong communication and direction of roles, eliminates drama. At least among the staff.

But speaking of unnecessary drama… I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some uncontrollable member drama. First and foremost, if you are a state director reading this, your job is to be informed. I have said a million times that uninformed leaders making decisions are the worst thing that can happen to an association. If you do not know, go to the source. Contact the OAR Leadership Team or me for information or to dispel rumors. Please stop relying on toxic social media groups to be your source of information. Identify the toxicity of your information, especially if it is all being presented negatively by someone. Stick with the issues, do not let it get personal about someone, and ask constructive questions if you are unclear on something. Your OAR Executive Committee members are not dumb people; in fact, quite the opposite. They have spent countless hours in meetings reviewing our strategic plan, coordinating it with our financial statements, working on building plans, and fitting our activities within our policies. If they, or your local board association executive, are not your source of information, then you might not have all the information and facts. So proceed with caution when someone speaks with authority on a topic but does not interact with the executive teams at OAR and only speaks of doom-and-gloom about how awful the association is being run. If you want to eliminate the unnecessary drama, go to the source. Call your association president.

In my CEO Report to the board, I highlighted the following things:

1. I thanked the staff. The entire world is understaffed, appreciate those that showed up and treat them with kindness. I mentioned above that we are operating at 75% staff capacity. And yet they gave it their 100% and made it all happen. Be grateful for those who showed up, even if there was only coffee or water to drink at the meeting and tea was unavailable.

2. I reported on membership. While we are still significantly up in membership sitting at 14,092 members statewide as of this report, we can expect to likely see a small decrease in those numbers over the next two years. Will that decrease be 18%? No. We budgeted for a small, less than 5% decrease. How we addressed that rumor, we backed our numbers up with data. We reached out to our advisors and behind-the-scenes teams, including speaking with our national association’s chief economist. We make data-driven decisions, not personal feelings decisions around here.

3. I presented a building status update. We are full force into the new headquarters building project that was voted on at the last board meeting on June 13, 2022. We are still in the schematic design with our architects for the rest of this year. We will be moving staff out of the building in December of 2022 in preparation for the current building demolition. In March 2023, the current structure will be knocked down, and construction of the new state-of-the-art building will begin going up with an estimated completion date of April 2024. Exciting stuff is happening!

4. We are in core standards season, which means that all 17 local boards are finalizing their core standards submissions since they are due to the state on November 1st. It was nice to report to the board of directors that I anticipate all boards will be meeting their requirements, and I do not foresee any noncompliance issues.

5. And among the many other details and updates, I also reported on our involvement with our national association. We had over 50 of our members apply to be on NAR committees, which significantly increased over the engagement numbers last year. It’s exciting when our members get involved and are excited to share with their colleagues back home in the great state of Oklahoma.

And finally, in the remainder of the board meeting, we accomplished three big-ticket items:

1. We passed the proposed 2023 budget with no dues increase.

2. We approved the clean 2021 audit of the financial books after a presentation from our auditors that provided the highest and best opinion of our records, an unmodified opinion.

3. And we ratified the 2023 Slate of Officers, which was elected by the entire membership at the meeting that directly followed the board meeting.

So here is your recap. A sweeping event that brought the Oklahoma Association of REALTORS® together to conduct the business of the largest trade association in the state. And it truly was a success.

Want to take a look at the photos? See the entire collection here!