By: Casey Harding-Brown

Luisa Smoot is a community manager for high-end apartment complexes in Denver, Colorado. She has over 5 years of experience in the luxury rental sector as well as new construction management.

This just turned 30-year-old is a total boss babe. After graduating college she worked her way up in the leasing industry and is now in charge of one of the most impressive buildings in Denver, The Pullman.

She takes care of the financials, building operations and also works hand-in-hand with development, asset management and marketing teams, as well as the general contractor and architects. As a lease-up manager, she works with her team to roll out innovative programming to make their buildings feel unique.

Here are some of her biggest pointers for other boss babes striving to get their best work done:

1) Negotiate the offer

Sharyl Sandberg’s, “Lean In” book says 7% of women negotiate their offer vs 57% of men. Well, Luisa says, “f that!” and negotiate that offer! While you will most likely not get your offer accepted every time you negotiate, you will always feel better for having the balls (or should I say pussy!) for bringing up the conversation. Even if they do say no, you’re in the exact same position as you were if you never said anything, and if they say YES you can increase your salary, benefits etc. You have everything to gain by negotiating and much more to lose by saying nothing.

2) Hold people accountable

Holding people accountable is SO important, especially if you’re managing people. If someone is affecting your business or life in a negative way and you continue to let them do it, you become partially responsible for that because you did not hold them accountable. It can be a tough conversation but do not put it off because it’s necessary for the growth of you, your peers, and your business. The longer the problem persists unaddressed, the worse it will most likely be, so nip it in the bud and move forward!

3) Don’t wait on your goals

Inspired simultaneously by a meme posted by her boss with five simple words “One day, or day one” along with a Tony Robbins podcast called “Do You Want to be Happy?”, Luisa wanted to reinforce that “One day” may never come and what’s guaranteed, is this moment right now aka “day one.” So don’t put any goals on hold (professional, personal, etc) for “one day”, make TODAY “day one!”

4) Be intentional with who your surround yourself with

After attending a “Most Admired CEO’s dinner, Luisa got the chance to talk with Walter Eisenhower of Sage Hospitality Group and his words of advice to her were, “Love what you do and love who you do it with.” This was a recurring theme throughout the night and it hit home for Luisa her encourages all boss babes to surround themselves with people who support you, have the same vision as you and will always push you to do your best. 

5) Be aware of your audience when drinking with co-workers

Ah, the good ol’ after work happy hour. One drink turns to five and all of sudden you’re twerking on the table and spilling your deepest darkest secrets with your co-workers. While it’s definitely okay to have fun and indulge in a few drinks with your co-workers (yes, even as a manager), Luisa has three main points of advice in this slippery sector: Don’t get too drunk (NO BLACKOUT ZONE), be aware of your audience/the topics that are being brought up, and be wary of what you say.  “The last thing you want to do is wake up on Monday and realize you said something could tarnish your relationship that’s important to have at work.”

6) Don’t feel guilty when you’re not busy

It can be easy to get into the worker bee mindset and feel a little useless or guilty when you’re not as busy as normal but the reality is we can’t expect to be busy 100% of the time in our roles. Luisa’s advice is to take advantage of these downtimes by seeing your friends and family more, working on personal projects or doing those mundane tasks like doctors’ appointments you’ve been putting off. EMBRACE work-life balance-it will actually make you more productive because you will avoid that burnt out of work feeling.

7) Mindset over Skill

Luisa kicks this one off by saying, “We talk about this a lot with hiring, to always look for the best mindset, but I want to talk about WHY.” She goes on to use an example of football (the game and the athletes.) She understands she can’t walk up to the CU football coach and have him give her a spot on the team only due to her mindset because she would get laid out and probably end up in the hospital after the first play due to lack of skill. But she also understands that just because someone is a great football player doesn’t mean a tragic injury could end their career. This where mindset over skill kicks in. “In these moments of tragedy, we have to remember the one thing we can control is our mindset. We have a responsibility of how we react to those situations and our mindset is going to determine if that’s a positive or negative reaction.” If you can grow through these experiences, you will become a stronger person. She was inspired by another Tony Robbins podcast: Could Tragedy be Your Greatest Classroom? Discovering the gift of growth which mains points were that success is not about the things we obtain but the person we become. Your mindset is your biggest asset when it comes to life and it will make or break you.

8) Use a planner

Luisa is a huge advocate for planners because it allows you to organize your day and put some intention behind it. She uses the High Performance Planner which includes daily, weekly, and monthly check-ins. She always puts aside a few minutes every morning to journal out her thoughts, intentions and her top priorities/tasks for the day. This ensures that no matter what other meetings, tasks, etc get thrown her way, she always completes her necessary tasks for the day that absolutely can not be put off.

9) Don’t stress about things you can’t control

We’ve all heard this one, but it can be easier said than done. When something doesn’t go as planned (as it often does in the new construction industry that Luisa dominates) there are always those people who get uber stressed and telling them “Hey, dont worry about it! It’s not in your control!”, doesn’t always work to soothe their uneasiness. So Luisa makes sure to come up with things she CAN control and offers solutions that she can delegate to her peers so they all feel like they gain a little bit of the perceived control they lost, back. 

10) Done is better than perfect

Inspired by a sign in Facebook’s headquarters that reads “Done is better than perfect”, Luisa wants all boss babes to know that not EVERY task needs to be perfect. Some tasks need a lot of attention, detail, and extra work, while other tasks basically just need to get done. “I think I did this a lot at the beginning of my career. A superior would ask me to get them a report and I would think ‘oh my god this needs to be perfect’ and go above and beyond what they asked for.” She soon realized by the lackluster responses of “Great, thanks.” *cue next agenda item* that the report didn’t need to go above and beyond, it just needed to get done. Once she realized this, she was able to improve her time management since she wasn’t stressing about making every single task throughout her day perfect.

11) Tackle tough tasks first thing in the morning

Get your tough tasks done first thing in the morning so you don’t go through your day: dreading it, putting it off, not completing it and losing sleep over it. Mark Twain’s quote “Eat a live frog in the morning, and nothing worse will happen the rest of the day” still holds some power even in Luisa’s business of managing brand new skyscrapers (something I don’t know if Mark Twain even dreamed of) and she uses this mantra to help herself get those tough tasks done in the am, in the hopes the rest of her day will be smooth sailing.

12) Establish process/progress goals

1) Are you emotionally resonating with your goal? 

If there’s no emotional connection to the goals you want to achieve then you are more likely to be distracted and not achieve this goal and possibly forget about it entirely.

2) Should you change your plans? 

Establish process and progress goals. When you first set a goal you are usually setting an “outcome goal” aka the grand finale. But to do this you need to set a process and have some progress benchmarks/goals along the way.

She uses the example of a marathon. The outcome goal is to run a 12k marathon but to get to that outcome you need to set process/progress goals as well like adding 1 mile to your run every week until the marathon. This will help make your outcome goal more digestible as well as help you stay on track and therefore make you much more likely to achieve it. 

13) Managing emails

If you’re like Luisa, your inbox gets flooded with emails and you could easily spend the remainder of 2021 spiraling down the abyss of unread emails. But if you do that, there’s no time for...well, anything else. So what’s the advice? Time block. Give yourself 30 minutes to check your emails and whatever you get through, you get through and then you stop when that 30 minutes is up. If you need to do an hour on Monday or multiple 30-minute blocks throughout, that’s a-okay but giving yourself that hard start and stop time makes it so that you don’t get completely caught up in your emails and lose track of time and other, equally important, aspects of your job.

14) Be a decision-maker

“Confidence is key!” is the theme of this boss babe tip. If you’re doing things at work with integrity and with the business’s best interests at heart, you are probably making the right decision. Luisa often sees people who are 95% confident in their decision but decide to go to their manager to get that extra 5% and their sign off. So before consulting your manager for their sign off, think to yourself, is that really necessary or do I trust myself enough to go through with it without taking time out of their day? When you have integrity and are confident in yourself and your decisions, your peers and managers will see that and gain more trust in you which will further your confidence. “You don’t need to be a manager to boss up!”

15) Stock up on grace

Now more than ever is an important time to give ourselves extra grace. This can be easy when you have a kick-ass day at work, get your workout in, cook a healthy meal and read your book. When you feel like you’re showing up as your best self, a pat on the back is a no brainer but Luisa reminds us that in the midst of these unprecedented times our best self changes from day to day. There are a lot of new things being thrown at us that we weren’t prepared for like working from home with our screaming kids in the background of our Zoom call, being stuck inside for the majority of our day, or dealing with new stressors and anxiety. So remember to give yourself grace! Luisa also wants to remind us that we live in a comparison culture and your best self is different than someone else’s. “Maybe your best day is just the fact that you got out bed and brushed your teeth. Maybe you got right back in bed and drank your coffee and ate your takeout in bed and watched an entire series on Netflix. But maybe that’s what your best self looks like today, and that’s okay if that’s exactly what you needed in these trying times. The fact is, it’s not the time to be hard on yourself. It’s the time to know what you’re doing is okay and give yourself extra grace. Based on the circumstances of today, your best self is going to  look very different and that’s okay. Love yourself for whatever you’re doing and just know that if it doesn’t feel good enough, it is.”