Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Stacey Salyer Show, the podcast for property management leaders ready to think bigger about growth. I'm Stacey Salyer and the only acquisition strategist in this industry who sat on all sides of the m and a table. I've been the buyer acquiring a 370 door competitor during CO using seller financing.
I've been the seller building and exiting a seven figure business. And I've been the corporate evaluator as director of acquisitions, assessing over hundreds of companies nationally. That means I know exactly what you're thinking, what you're missing, and what actually works when it comes to buying and integrating in this space.
On this show, we dig into acquisitions as a real business tool. Not luck, not someday. You'll learn positioning, strategy, numbers, and integration from someone who's actually done it all. Let's go.
Stacey Salyer: Well, thanks for coming [00:01:00] on.
Pablo Gonzalez: Mm-hmm.
Stacey Salyer: Is there anything in particular you wanna talk about?
Pablo Gonzalez: You know, I'm pretty hot on this idea that, you know, advice around AI is being largely informed by the over exposure of mediocre ai. So it's like most property managers have either, like they've played with Chad GBT, or the first thing that they'll like.
Mess with is whatever AI is being put out by the existing players. And those existing players have existing relationships, so like the influencers are more exposed to those things. So that part of it is something that's interesting to talk about. The other part that I find really interesting to talk about is, a derivative of that, which it's kind of like what I put on, on Peter's post, right?
This idea that there is, that belief of if you adopt AI before your processes are ready, you're just like pouring gasoline into a fire. But that's for that other type of ai, right? Right, like there is you know, like that piece of it is really interesting to me this once why it's different.
Like what? [00:02:00] AI as a teammate is very, very different than AI as a tool. Right. And how, to understand if you're gonna pour gasoline on the fire or if you're hiring a teammate that can make yourself better. Right. Yeah. And then agent versus regenerative, like all that stuff. Right. Whatever.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well,
Pablo Gonzalez: and then just the overall kind of thing that I don't think people talk about enough is just like the idea that at the end of the day, the market has been telling property managers that they're not good enough, right?
Like the stats are, they want faster responses. They want, you know, like more control, and things like that. and all you've been able to build around so far has been like, this is the best process I can do if you don't like my process and you're just not, not like my client, but like this idea of AI as a teammate, And that leads to burnout, right? Not being able to like ever finish your task list. Only having bad experiences with your clients and your stakeholders leads to burnout. And what people are failing to understand. Is that yeah, while AI is coming for a whole bunch of other jobs, [00:03:00] like for property management, the jobs that we have aren't working for us as humans.
So like this has the opportunity to give us like, really good jobs in property management. Not this like FOMO rhetoric and , not this other stuff. So anyway.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. We can just jump in. Yeah, I mean, unless you wanna introduce yourself Pablo, who doesn't know Pablo Gonzalez, my good amazing bestie from oo.
Yes.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yes. Uh, thank you. My bestie. Thank you Stacey. I, uh, I, if you don't know me, believe me, I want to know you. 'cause I desperately wanna be everyone's friend. It's, it's at my coworker.
Stacey Salyer: You're like the Labrador of property management.
Pablo Gonzalez: I wish somebody would just give me that title, right?
Stacey Salyer: I mean, I can Do you want
Pablo Gonzalez: Labrador?
You can. You, as the queen of the chess board can absolutely bestow the Labrador, the golden retriever title upon me.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Golden Retriever. There we go. That's what I meant. Golden Retriever of Property Management. My bestie Pablo with Bender. Roo. So that can be [00:04:00] your opening now. Cool. As you go into 2026.
Love. Uh, yeah. So why don't we just jump in. I would love to talk about kind of the, I'm gonna call it the old school thought leadership, uh, ai where everybody, well, you can eloquently say it better, but like what you're kind of been talking about lately is, you know, everybody's looking at AI as like this tool like chat or Claude, right?
Mm-hmm. The process thing versus agentic. Yeah. And I have some thoughts on that and I would love to talk about what I consider the old school thought on that and, uh, what I consider also the new school. Yeah, the new school. I'm part of the new school. If y'all don't know
Pablo Gonzalez: For sure.
What I identified in you immediately is this idea that you're a trend spotter that isn't just a trend spotter, but an action taker in the trend spotter. And because of that, you have all these receipts of understanding how big context shifts create giant opportunities for people that take action on it.
Right? Like that's, that's kind of the story that I tell about you all over the place. But you're right. I can't blame people for it. [00:05:00] don't think we've ever been exposed to something that moves so freaking quickly and is so like profound, right?
If we look at how different the world was 20 years ago in 2005. And you're running a property management company, you're probably debating whether or not to run a yellow page ad versus a versus versus something else. Right? Facebook hadn't even been existed, you know, like versus Google, PPC, right?
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: So,
Stacey Salyer: yeah. Yeah. Well, we were, I was in property management and we faxed over our little, our little ads, and we did debate. Was it the Everett Herald, or was it Little Nickel this week? I don't know. Yeah. And we faxed it.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. Yeah. Or do I do even need a webpage? I'm like out there shaking hands.
If you think about , the rate of change of technology over the last 20 years, what they blame is Moore's Law, right? The idea that microchips doubling capacity, , every what is it, every two years? So like technology basically doubles every two years.
Uh, and what we know to be true about ai. Is that [00:06:00] AI doubles in power every six months to eight months. Right? Right. So it's four times faster than this old rate of change, which if you just do the simple transitive property of mathematics, uh, how different the world is 20 years ago, right? This, like Yellow Pages world to the world we're in today wouldn't be crazy to believe that in five years, in 2030, the world is gonna , feel equally as different based on like the technologies and the channels and the tools that we use.
It's already hard enough to comprehend the fact that if it would've done back to the future two right now, it would've been in the year 2000. Right? So, right. So, so to then think that by the year 2030 we're gonna feel equally as different is, is really hard to comprehend on the human scale.
Right? So,
Stacey Salyer: right.
Pablo Gonzalez: This old school thought leadership around AI really comes from the fact that. People get asymmetric information. if you just think logically, the majority of folks are gonna test the AI tools that are [00:07:00] coming from the big established players. and those big established players have pre-existing relationships with the people that have preexisting audience distribution and these kinds of things.
Right? So really the, the majority of the narrative is gonna come from these, like established companies, right? But that's the equivalent of saying in 2005 that you're gonna get all of your, uh, movie rental advice from Blockbuster instead of getting it from Netflix. Right. 'cause what we know to be true is that is in these like periods of like rapid disruption.
The incumbent, the old player has all this attachment to the past. So they're trying to bring the past forward as opposed to the new challengers that show up and are reverse engineering the future. So listening to those folks right now is particularly important so that you're not anchoring your beliefs to like, what was possible two years ago versus what is possible right now in a state of really rapid change.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, I see it kind of almost as a, I mean, I don't know if scarcity mindset is the right way, but kind of [00:08:00] that scarcity, scared mindset of, well, it's always been this way. You know, 'cause a lot of those platforms have been around for a long time and they have kind of the, specific like thought leaders that represent them, if you will.
Yeah. Instead of looking at it in that, that new way of Hey, there can be change, and the only constant is change. Right. It's also kind of that category design. I mean, I know you're, you turned me onto category design and, uh, pride in that. Yes. And right, so like when a new category is being created mm-hmm.
Isn't it like the, the people in the old category original, isn't it kind of their, their thing where they kind of like go after the new category, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is that kind of what you're seeing a little bit, or,
Pablo Gonzalez: I mean, that's, that's exactly what I'm explaining with Blockbuster, right?
I think the best way to put it's, I have this attachment to the past. the story I like to tell about Blockbuster and Netflix is that like, when Netflix first started and was doing DVDs by mail, blockbuster saw it. They had the opportunity to buy Netflix [00:09:00] for a million bucks.
They didn't do it. Not because they didn't think that what Netflix was doing was a bad idea. They did it 'cause they're like, dude, we can do DVDs by mail. No big deal. I'm the big player. And then once they started doing it they realized that their revenue per square foot of commercial real estate started going down.
And then internally they started having conversations saying, we're cannibalizing our business. Let's kill DVDs by mail. And we all know what happened next. Right now they're all
Stacey Salyer: gone.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. Now they're, now they're all gone. And that's, that's what you see over and over in these periods of technological disruption, where the old kind of like CRM that used to come on a hard drive thing versus Salesforce and what that became, or Blockbuster versus Netflix or cabs versus Uber or these kinds of things. It's just like attachment to , bringing the past forward as opposed to thinking where the world is going and building towards it, right?
So , these established players, these big PMSs that [00:10:00] now. They've grown so much, they have so much market share that they need to still tell a story of growth. They're not gonna tell their investors, we're gonna get this many more clients. They're gonna tell investors, Hey, we're gonna build some ai, we're gonna sell to existing clients.
That's a great story for them to grow revenue for sure. But they're gonna be beholden to this old infrastructure and these old kind of like KPIs and architecture and things that worked for them in the past as opposed to truly being like free to build under the new philosophy. Right? Kind of like Rosetta Stone used to be the software that we all understood to learn a new language.
Duolingo saw, oh, hey, you know, mobile is becoming a thing. Instead of building, a way to learn new languages via my laptop. I'm gonna build it via cell phone. And now nobody knows who was at a stone. And everybody talks about Duolingo, right? Like it's those kinds of things.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Yep. Yeah, that's very interesting. So what do you see in like 2026? What do you, do you see a shift coming? I [00:11:00] mean, do you see like new thought leaders popping onto the market, or maybe some of the thought leaders that are out there who are kind of like in the middle and they're gonna be like, oh, okay.
I, I do see kind of what you're saying. I don't know. What do you think?
Pablo Gonzalez: I really haven't thought about it that much from a thought leadership standpoint. I am betting on this idea that, like you said, in categories, design new categories create other categories, right? So it's like the face of thought leadership is already changing.
If you look at where all the thought leadership came from, not that long ago, it was kind of like, bum, and that's it. then the internet came around. Now a bunch of people with their own audience are able to sell their own courses and their own community. And now that's become a big center of influence as well.
That can rival n 'em, right? So so that becomes that center of influence. I think that as we carry on here, because AI is moving so quickly and because in order to keep up with it, like some people are gonna get these extraordinary results and these like big centers of influence that don't [00:12:00] wanna break their past relationships.
Mm-hmm. You know, there, there is gonna be more opportunity for someone to show up with like ground up insights that's figured out a, like a different way to do it and grow a following around that based on these new tools and how this stuff happens. And I just think it's gonna be a little bit more decentralized.
As far as that happens. I think we really need kind of like a ground up insights megaphone that isn't. Controlled by an association gatekeeper or some kind of like membership community or something like that, that says who's in and who's out. I'm not really sure what that looks like, but I think that that's coming in the next couple years.
Hmm.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. I would, I would see that. So I know you've talked a lot about like AI as a teammate. I've even used that term. So do you wanna talk more about that and what that looks like?
Pablo Gonzalez: sure. I mean, I, you know, there's, there's two kinds of ai, most of us, when we think of ai, we think of, uh, right?
That was like the big viral moment of ai, right? That's a type of AI called generative ai. I describe generative AI as a [00:13:00] genie. You rub the lamp, you get a wish. It's magical. It's really cool, right? Like I am, I have a deep relationship with my chat GPT account. Uh, but it always comes back to me to then rub the lamp again and continue to do it.
Agent AI is essentially a new form of AI that's been made possible by generative AI against new categories, create other categories, and it's how you link this, like generative AI workflows to like, make decisions and challenge you and do all these different things so that instead of a genie, it's more like a terminator.
You give it a job and it's able to continue trying to do this job in a way that's a person would try to do this job, like these things built correctly. Have a certain skillset. So they're able to perform things. They also have a certain judgment, so they're able to not do certain things if they're not sure that, you know, like this is how you want it done.
And then they also have another like layer that's gonna continue to happen of experience where it knows how to do it. It doesn't know exactly [00:14:00] if you want it done, if you don't know how to do it. It can give you advice on how to get in between those. So how you string these things together, there's the data that we've always had, but then there's kind of like how you structure the AI and train it in a way that uses the data to do a job.
So it's like the difference between like textbooks, which was the data and a school, right? Like how do you actually raise an intelligence to uh, perform a certain way? That's what's being developed right now. And we're starting to get that really, really right, right. Like right, and we're only on day one, and it really starts to behave like that teammate, right?
Like it really starts to go from being a tool to being like a resource that has judgment that actually helps you and prevents you from doing certain things. And it isn't just kind of like up to you to either do the homework or make sure that you're supervising at all times. It works as, as like a mirror and like a way to self-examine so that you can continue learning.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. And you guys have, I mean, you're solving maintenance, which [00:15:00] is like the hardest thing to solve in property management. I mean, I've done it right for over 20 years. So I mean, a maintenance is the hardest thing to solve, in my opinion. And I think probably everybody would agree with that. So have you seen success have you seen companies where they've, maybe, I don't even know if they've gotten rid of their maintenance coordinator, like their human one, or maybe they've promoted their maintenance coordinator to something different.
And I guess you've also kind of talked a little bit about like processes. Should you use that kind of AI before your processes are totally built out or not? Yeah. Do you wanna kind of go through all that?
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah, I would love to talk about that. Yes. We deliberately decided to tackle the biggest problem in property management, right?
I think it was. as a founding insight, it's if you can do this, then you can do anything kind of thing. Yep,
and we had to build it a completely different way where if you're gonna do that right. Like if you're hiring someone to do a job for you, it's a great hire.
If you're like, oh, I put [00:16:00] Stacey in charge of that, now I don't even have to worry about it. Right. That's, that's the sign of a great hire. Right.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: Exactly. It frees it doesn't help you do a job better. It frees you up to go do something else.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: And, in order to do that, in order to be able to start with that, we had to start with that outcome.
Like we had to start with how do we completely own the outcome of maintenance coordination as opposed to just like slicing little pieces off and, and like what we can do, which is generally the software approach, right? Exactly.
Stacey Salyer: Yep.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. So, so we had to start off with a remote team, maintenance department, right.
That was using, uh, a brand new AI that we had been training and doing it that way, right? And the product was really just yeah, no, we're gonna coordinate maintenance for you. But it's really mostly a human that we've trained that is using this tool that we've created. Okay. Knowing that as the tool continues to get better and better, eventually it becomes.
A human that is being informed by the tool and eventually [00:17:00] that AI itself becomes the combination with just like a certain amount of oversight in the background as well, right? So so we had to kind of like own the outcome in order to be able to build something that could really take work off of your plate.
And so early on it's yeah, cool man, I, I feel like I just hired a super va. And, and that's how it felt, right? And then slowly but surely it's really become this thing where now that AI's being directly used by the property manager. and we have people that.
Like you said, right? Like they've gone from being maintenance coordinators mm-hmm. To being AI agent managers that are managing maintenance. Right. And I get texts regularly from people saying dude, oo automated 98% of my maintenance this week. This is what I did with my job. Right,
Stacey Salyer: right.
Pablo Gonzalez: And, and, and it's no longer like putting out fires and stuff like that.
It's oh, hey, we had this one quote that was 12 grand. So I I, I spent a whole bunch of time researching and putting this presentation together for the owner to feel [00:18:00] like we made the right decision. Oh, I realize that. Because the AI is coordinating that I'm not super pumped with like my, like secondary plumber.
So I went out and talked to a bunch of other plumbers. I gave him a couple of work. Right. You're really kinda like managing the forest instead of the trees. And that's really happening to the point where we now have people that are.
You know, joining and in like as little, this isn't the typical scenario, but we had a thousand door property management company come on, and two weeks later they were at 95% automation. Really? Yeah. Wow. And being able to show that, right? So that's insane. Right. Obviously they had great processes always.
They had all these other things, but what we've realized is that you had to have this tool be able to show you the way as it's doing the result. Right? So creating an onboarding process that if you think about a great hire, right?
60 days in, you're not wondering, we're like, uh, is Pablo really good at his job? Maybe we gotta give him a little bit more time. Right?
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: And that hire, came in with a certain skillset. Again, that could do the job immediately to a certain level, [00:19:00] a certain judgment that could stop themselves if they needed your help.
And a certain bit of experience to be like, oh, okay, well yeah, I need help. We're not really sure. Let's figure this thing out together. So, you know, building this thing out in a way that can like not just. Take the reins on day one to a certain extent, but also be able to guide the property manager of what are the things that are missing as they're coming up in order to get through as quickly as possible.
We've gone from a handful of people that are having this, like extraordinary UMIs are success to, I think James from PMI at s FFR West came up to us like, Hey guys, whatever, whatever you guys are doing, like in this last, kind of like, round of what you're doing, right?
'cause we had just come off of their their big event. He's keep doing that man. Like the, the stories we're hearing inside the community are insane because this, you know, from a, from a technology standpoint, from a company standpoint, what we are reporting. To our investors is we have under 2% churn, right?
Right, like less than 2% of people are failing when they're, when they use their [00:20:00] product. It means that these results are becoming more and more common. And as, you know, as we just said, we're just on the first date with ai, right? This is, you know, in six months it's gonna be twice as good.
Someone else is gonna also build tools that are gonna catch up to this stuff. This is gonna be the new norm faster than we think. Right. So, yeah, there's a, there's a lot changing. It's crazy.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, no, it is crazy. I think it's super exciting. I mean, I think there's huge opportunity, you know, whether you're, yeah.
Building PMC or buying one or whatever. Do you see property management companies being able to run primarily with AI agents in the future? Agentic.
Like maybe over, you know, maintenance, leasing, you know, a lot of the. Tasky type stuff and then maybe like less humans or what do you, what do you kind of see with that after you've been in property management for a little bit?
Pablo Gonzalez: I love how full circle this is Stacey. 'cause I remember the first time that you and I talked on camera was me asking you this at broker owner, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And we came up with this vision, right? I remember your vision it's a beautiful [00:21:00] vision, This like vision of kind of like a property management company that's really more a community builder and like a value aggregator in the community that has way fewer people because you're able to do these tasks.
I think, I really think we're, we're really on track for that. Here's what we are seeing. We used to think that you needed a, a maintenance coordinator per maybe like a hundred to 200 doors. Okay. think about the cliffs in property management, right?
You get to somewhere around 50 doors, you gotta go hire somebody, right? You get somewhere around that 250 door threshold, you gotta have a team to get you to that 600 door threshold. And at that 600 door threshold, you gotta go hire a whole nother team to be able to like, get to that thousand door threshold kind of thing.
Right, right. Like you're, you're doubling in head count.
008 Why AI is important and scaling a Boomer Biz - Pablo Gonzalez - Copy: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: The old school. Yes. The old school thought.
Pablo Gonzalez: The old school thought
Stacey Salyer: the, the suit and tie.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. The suit. And you know, like what we're seeing right now is you're gonna be able to manage one to 2000 doors with two or three people for sure.
In the old school way. If you are. [00:22:00] Employing ag agent AI in, in this kind of way. Right. I would say, you know what we don't say, which, I'm officially not saying this, is that what we really believe, it's more like $4,000. Okay. With a very, very small team is very possible today.
If we're really gonna look out there and think about what the jobs that we're doing there is gonna be, you know, a person that is really in charge of kind of like. Managing the AI agents, right? Like you'll probably have an AI agent for each kind of task heavy coordination, heavy department, right?
Like these, like non-value add things. Right? Where what you continue to do is add discernment to it, right? Like at, you know, there's always gonna be edge cases. There's always gonna be a moment where the AI is gonna raise their hand, says, I've never seen this before, right? Right as, as we build our product, we build that in-house, right?
Like we realize that we need to have a human overseeing kind of like every edge case or else we're not gonna be able to like, fulfill this process. Luckily we started with a team of experts that we're using this thing and they've, they're still here, right? So like we can continue to do [00:23:00] that, right?
But, in a relationship business like property management that has such a long duration. The, I think the jobs inside of property management are gonna be greatly turned into relationship building, experience making, you know, like it's gonna look much more, uh, hospitality. If we want to talk about asset management, right?
Like what does, what does your financial advisor do for a living? They don't sit there trading stocks, right? They take you to lunch.
Stacey Salyer: Right? Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: And they host luncheons, right? It's gonna look much more like that. Right. While the machines are doing the doing and the analyzing and the coordinating in the background, you'll need people that like know how to network and know how to build a great vendor network that'll never go old, right?
Yeah. You're gonna need people doing the things with their hands on site. So maybe you vertically integrate because now you have all this capacity and you can, you can bring on your own plumber and your own HVAC, right? Maybe it's that, but it's really gonna, be like the stuff that you need to do to take care of [00:24:00] the property hands on.
And then the things that you need to do to make people feel, uh, like they can trust you, right? And other ways of building credibility and deep relationships with folks. It's gonna be even more of a relationship build business, which I think is cool.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, yeah. No, I, thousand percent agree with you.
I think, and one thing you and I have talked about before, and I think you even mentioned this elsewhere, is that we'll be able to manage more by exception, because I know, I mean, even me coming from, you know, pm I actually taught my staff not to manage by exception. Because what happened was when we managed by exception.
We were all humans, right? Yeah. And so it took human to look in the platform, look into buildium, can we do this? What? Mm-hmm. You know, what does this particular client want? And so I said, no, no, no, we can't do that because now we have way too many doors. And if we manage by exception, we'll mess up.
But I think we've talked about this, where using the agent AI agents, we essentially could pretty easily manage by exception, right? I mean, like [00:25:00] somebody wants to be called about every maintenance request. Okay, sure. My ai, my AI guy can call you. Okay, not a problem.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah,
Stacey Salyer: right. Yeah. I mean, do you foresee that happening?
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah, I think that's spot on, Stacey. Like I, you know, I, you know, when I, when I think about management by exception today, I think about property managers dying by a thousand cuts, right? Yep. If you're gonna go out there and listen to the market, owners are like, I want more control.
I want things done more my way. I want, you know, responses within an hour or two. What they, what they don't realize is like a question that they ask may take you three hours to answer when you're like putting together work orders and text message chains and looking inside of a PMS system and calling a vendor and doing these kinds of things.
And like you're taking phone calls and, people are worrying about that. If you have an AI that is like answering the phones for you, you have an AI that is like being able to figure out what the issue is and really understand the issue, prescribe the solution for 90 to 95% of [00:26:00] situations.
Okay. And then kind of like coordinate the, multiple parties of like when people need to actually talk. Right. You know, you, you're really opening up a whole bunch of bandwidth to start doing other things. And then on top of that, if you have an AI that you can say, Hey, you know, we've always done the process this way, but for these three houses, like I just want it done like this.
Mm-hmm. And that AI can then create a workflow, implemented for exactly those three houses and now do that every single time. You start to really be able to like mass customize experiences,
Stacey Salyer: right?
Pablo Gonzalez: So that the exceptions are the things that really, really matter, right?
Like that super high bill showing up, you know, with showing up with a beer till they'll be like, Hey, let's talk about this bill. As opposed to just like having five minutes to like, make a phone call and be like, Hey, this is what's going on. I just wanna keep you abreast and they're gonna be what, $7,000 Whatcha talking about?
They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we've got it, but I've gotta go make these other calls so that stuff happens. Right? Right. Having, having the [00:27:00] capacity to have these like really human conversations starts to be opened up, right? It's not just are we able to show up? It's are we able to show up fully?
That's what I think of when I think of managing by exception. It's like most of these like task checklist things don't really move the needle. They just have to be done. And then there's 10 to 20% of moments where if you show up, man, you are really moving the needle.
And if you show up with the full capacity and you're like, you're fully prepared for it, that's where you build these customer loyalty and like sense of, you know, whether it's I'm never moving from this house or I'm never changing my property manager. Right? That's kind of like those moments where you build deep, deep trust and relationship and as a business owner, lifetime value.
Stacey Salyer: I think the challenge right now well those who aren't even, you know, incorporating any sort of ai like what you guys have, but you know, when we look at managing by exception, we're just thinking, you know, kind of like what I described, but we also don't have the time to build the relationships that we really want.
Doesn't mean that we don't want to, I mean, of course I wanted to, I [00:28:00] mean, I would love to just to take people out to lunch all day long or I meet for coffee. Or go golfing or whatever it is you wanna go do, play pickleball, whatever. Yeah. But I mean, you know, the average property manager and then the business owner, I mean, it's like fires every day.
So having that really, that teammate would just be able to just get you back into that. And then managing by exception wouldn't even really be a thing anymore. It would just be, oh, I create this particular experience. This is what Pablo wants. Yeah. Like I have, you know, I know him and I know exactly what he wants.
And now he also trusts me because we have this relationship. It's not like I met you one time at your house. I stood there for 30 minutes, explain who we are, what we did, all the exciting things, and, and then had you sign an agreement and then we never talked again. So
Pablo Gonzalez: Cici, have you read Unreasonable Hospitality?
Stacey Salyer: I dunno if I've read that one. I should.
Pablo Gonzalez: So it's a book about, I think it's called like 11 Madison Park or something like that. It's a restaurant in New [00:29:00] York that won the designation of the best restaurant in the world at a certain point. And really what they did was, you know, fine dining used to be a, a type of category, right?
Mm-hmm. Well, it is, it is a category, right? But the, the category of fine dining was really just like every restaurant looks the same and it's just all about how good the food is, right? That's it, right? What these folks did was say, yeah, we're gonna have the best food, right? It's gonna taste amazing.
The technique is gonna be great, it's gonna be well plated, all these things. But we're also gonna really obsess over experience. Mm. And we're gonna, we're gonna add that to the mix, right? So they built this culture around that they systemize this thing. They have at this restaurant. They have a role called the dream weaver.
That person's job is to float around the dining room to listen in on conversations and based on what they hear, go create a one-off experience for people. For example, like this is in New York, right? They overheard somebody saying, man, this is like the [00:30:00] best meal I've ever had.
This has been such a great trip. The only thing I didn't try was like a, like a street dog in New York that everybody talks about. That person went out to a hotdog vendor, brought it to the chef. The chef like plated it in a specific way, and they're like, Hey, we just want you to have the full experience here.
Here's a street dog. Right?
Stacey Salyer: Right, right.
Pablo Gonzalez: That's like a one-off thing, right? But they were able to systematize this whole like, dream weaving thing. They started thinking about well, you know, this is a super fancy restaurant.
Many people are gonna get engaged here. What's the exact experience we wanna create for that? They created a partnership with Tiffany's across the street, so that like, when they bring him the champagne fluid, they get 'em these like Tiffany's glasses, and then they can keep him and whatever. They knew that there were some people that are like, this is the last stop before they go to the airport.
So when they heard that they had like a design experience for that. So they categorized experiences from like, happens often. Happens sometimes one-offs, right? And then they systematized it. Mm-hmm. And then they won best restaurant in the world because of this thing.
And now that's like a whole thing, right? Like your experience they have in a restaurant is real. I think we're gonna head [00:31:00] that way so far. Property management has only been able to focus on the meal, right? Like, how does the asset perform? Right? But as we, as we start to bring these newent AI tools to get us, you know, like out of the weeds of just the infinite complexity of how to actually get somebody to , like living in a house that they don't own and pay rent on time and feel seen and feel taken care of this like ability to focus on hospitality and experience making and all these different things is gonna, when is gonna start differentiating us, which is I know, something that you really like.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, I do. So what about, I mean, 'cause you haven't been in the industry for very long. So when you came in, did you see a lot of people kind of almost I don't know if I wanna use the word jaded, but just kind of like
Pablo Gonzalez: Yes. The answer yes. Jaded.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Yeah. It's because if you really boil it down, like I've been talking a little bit about this, um mm-hmm.
The last few weeks is we really [00:32:00] actually serve our community, right. So wherever we have our business, we're providing housing for people.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yep.
Stacey Salyer: They're not our enemies.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Our residents are not our enemies.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: But I feel like in the industry, that's kind of the thing. And I don't know, and it's not necessarily like everybody, but I feel like there's a lot of that like animosity uh, you're a tenant, you know, uh, you know, like this negative, right?
But it's but you're providing housing and they're, you know, living in the house and they're paying rent.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: But I don't know. I feel like you know, as we move forward, there's probably some pretty cool ways that people could create some amazing beautiful businesses that really kind of take it up.
Like more notches than we probably even can think of. Right?
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. I love that you brought up the jaded thing. 'cause I think the jaded thing is pretty pervasive in property management. And I don't, blame property managers, right? You are doing a super tough job to provide housing for someone.
And in general, you're just getting cropped on by everybody telling you that what you're doing isn't good enough, right? Yep. That's what the statistics say, [00:33:00] right? That's what the market has told us. So of course, you're gonna get jaded with some of that stuff. And then on top of that, you have vendors that come into the space saying, oh, I'm gonna save your life, right?
I'm a software developer and I'm gonna make this thing go away. Or you have property managers that create a solution that, you know, and they're not tech vendors, right? Like they they don't know how to build a technology company. They just figured out how to do something themselves.
And they're like, all I can turn it out to you. You know? So like the space has been largely ignored. By anybody other than that for a really, really long time. So when you're a scenario where like your stakeholders are consistently telling you you're not good enough and the people that serve you are consistently overpromising and under-delivering, I think it's the perfect recipe to be jaded.
it's so funny 'cause Reza has been, Reza, our founder at Vanu has been like really challenging me to establish more of like our own credibility. And I think I really underreport the idea that you know, like David Norman, who's like the sole of our product is a [00:34:00] guy who.
Built up a 600 door property management company. Um mm-hmm. Basically him and one other person until he just couldn't, couldn't do everything anymore and burned out. Then he went in-house for Fannie Mae to manage the distress REO portfolio, and he became like the service provider , for Fannie Mae post economic crash when they were like managing all this stuff.
And then, you know, like he paired with Reza, who's like a guy that's built a hundred million dollars technology company already. And then we've hired like a handful of guys that have bought, scaled and sold their property management companies that want to come work for us in-house. Right? I think the.
What you really, really need is the combination of both, right? In order to like really understand the problem and be good enough to create a solution that I can actually do it and a business model around it that works. This is a really difficult game. Right. So, so I understand the jadedness of it, right?
I don't hold 'em against it. But yeah, I definitely experienced that. It's oh yeah, another, you know, another something this, right? And the SAS [00:35:00] world like this, this like technology world that we've lived in for the last 20 years they by definition have automated little slivers of things and purposely not owning outcomes in order to like reach scale, right?
Like the beauty of the SaaS business model is this like scale without ownership of something that has been the thing. So obviously, if that's what you see a technology provider as, like that's their ultimate goal is to just give me a better tool that's 2% better than what I'm doing right now, but promise me it's gonna change my life.
Like you start to get more and more jaded right. I don't blame. I don't blame. I don't blame property managers for it. I feel for 'em. I think it sucks.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Well, and it's fragmented. Nothing plays really well together. And it's expensive. It's oh my gosh, what do I need?
And then Yes. And then you have the human component and you're trying to train everybody and, you know, where do you go to find this or that, or yeah. Oh no. It's very real. Very real.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah. And, you're setting up your employees to be jaded about you.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Pablo Gonzalez: If you go to Google and put property management [00:36:00] memes, it's essentially a celebration of poor mental health.
Man. It sucks.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. You
Pablo Gonzalez: know, I get it, man. Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's why there's memes about All we do is drink or things are on fire. Dumpsters. Yeah. I mean,
Pablo Gonzalez: yeah, it's a celebration of poor mental health. It's, it's, it's,
Stacey Salyer: yeah. I mean, I'm surprised that they don't offer you know, Botox parties at the conferences or something to help us with our wrinkles.
Opportunity.
Pablo Gonzalez: Opportunity.
Stacey Salyer: There's opportunity for vendor. Yeah. I'll just, uh, I'll just start that company next month. You,
Pablo Gonzalez: can just have a Botox as a trade show booth, uh, activation.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah, I should, uh, so, yeah. Well, I am curious. I know 'cause you know, my focus is teaching people how to acquire instead of at least it is such a hustle business. Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm anti hussle culture, I'm not anti hussle. But I love to be efficient, right? So instead of hustling, you know, five doors a month, 10 whatever, why not [00:37:00] go out and buy 200? Do you guys have anything that helps acquires, go in and be able to I'm gonna look at maybe a boomer business or a semi where I can kinda use an AI agent to help cheat code me faster to through due diligence?
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah, for sure. For sure. So funny because we've had to solve for this just to not be part of the people that are dating people, right? Like we've had to completely rethink our onboarding in a way where, where it feels like a teammate, like I said, right?
It has knowledge, blah, blah, blah, all these different things. And it doesn't feel like before you actually feel any kind of like success you need to give me a whole bunch of homework before you can like actually get benefit from my tool. Okay? And , what Nick on our team created is an AI agent that will go.
Through someone's property management system or, you know, 2, 3, 4 years of data and then spit out, you know, based on performance and based on what's happening. Mm-hmm. [00:38:00] These are the actual living policies of this company. This is how they are doing maintenance today. And then you can compare that to like the document that you have and say, Ooh, you know, and, and well to us that's an onboarding tool I think for acquiring property management companies.
I think that's a badass tool. Like of, of being able, yeah. Being able to do due diligence in that way. So we haven't productized that. I think , you and I have talked about this idea of how do we help you with, with the companies that you're helping, right. But I, I think that's a, if you're listening to this and you're another vendor, like you can make that as a business by yourself, right?
That AI agent by itself can be a product all into itself for companies acquiring , other businesses and stuff like that. And I think that that's gonna. Continue to happen, right? Like these, like AI agents that are able to go through actual past performance and tell you, you know, Hey, you might say that this is what you do, but this is what you actually do on paper.
I imagine that that's gonna completely not just shorten , the amount of time for due diligence and allow you to make, [00:39:00] offers quicker. It's gonna greatly de-risk the offers that you make. Right. And your level of confidence in that.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah.
Pablo Gonzalez: And then, and then beyond that, I just think as you acquire again, we used to think that if you go from 200 to 500 doors, you gotta hire a whole new team. You know, having AI agents running it is gonna allow you to acquire other property management companies and bring 'em in the fold and When it's an AI agent making the decisions, then you're not having to like, retrain all these other people.
Like you can overnight kind of like flip the switch and it's no, this is how decisions are made today. So I think it's gonna bode very well for folks that are out there growing through requisition.
Stacey Salyer: Oh yeah, no, a hundred percent. I can see that in various ways. Is your particular AI agent, is it only maintenance based or would it be able to go in and even check out like property management agreements or leases that were uploaded or anything like that?
Pablo Gonzalez: The one that we've created is, uh, is maintenance based.
Stacey Salyer: Okay.
Pablo Gonzalez: But. It's the same thing, right? Somebody else can build, right? I feel like every other problem in property [00:40:00] management is simpler than maintenance. We can go solve other problems that we really wanted to.
We just want to be in the one with that nobody has figured out yet. For example, , our AI voice receptionist right now is starting to also handle ma leasing as well. 'cause it's just like leasing. Okay. Yeah. Way easier to add that piece than it is for a leasing one to handle maintenance.
Right. So oh, a
Stacey Salyer: hundred
Pablo Gonzalez: percent. That's starting to happen. So like right now , when people train , their AI voice agent, their receptionist that we call her we upload a blank property management agreement and now anybody calls in, they can ask questions about you know, what are my fees and what are whatever, and she can answer that immediately.
Stacey Salyer: Very cool. Yeah. I could see that being a really cool. Feature to offer should people need something like that. And then just the overall, yeah, as far as like adding the teammates or not adding the teammates. I mean, I teach a lot about that. As far as, you know, do you take on the staff that they have and or not?
I mean, obviously I'm a huge fan. I have clients that use Beru and they love it. And it's helped them immensely. Like they don't even complain about maintenance. That's not [00:41:00] even on our radar when we're talking. It's other, other things.
Pablo Gonzalez: That's amazing. Is that rare? Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Is that rare?
Pablo Gonzalez: Is is it rare for a property manager to not I'm so dialed in on maintenance and like that world that I don't know how much people complain about other parts of the business. Right. And I don't know how much like maintenance drives complaints versus other things in the business driving complaint. So that's, that's what I'm asking is the amount of complaints coming from a property manager that you tend to coach coming across a whole bunch of things? Or is maintenance like a main driver of the pain around things? Like how would you categorize those pains?
Stacey Salyer: Hmm. The ones I work with, probably not maintenance. No. Probably more just people in general, like HR and then like their organizational charts.
So a lot of times people will come to me because they do want to grow, so they wanna double, triple their size. And so we actually usually just start with the org chart and then if they're not using like a vendor, oo, or you know, something like that, then we'll start building their org chart out so that they're not necessarily hiring more [00:42:00] people.
Yeah. They might be reconfiguring. And then yeah, that kind of thing. So That's cool. It's pretty fun. So yeah. Have you ever thought about buying a property management company and then making it,
Pablo Gonzalez: I
Stacey Salyer: have the vision, the vision of
Pablo Gonzalez: I've man, I've thought less about that and more about, well, you know, I own a, you know this, right?
Like I have a five door portfolio that's, I have two different property managers 'cause they're kind of like two different types of asset classes within it. But I have, I have really thought, obviously like every other property management client you know, I'm like, well, you know, maybe I can save this like $8,000 a year I paid to my property manager and have AI kind of like running my own portfolio outside of a couple of other things.
So, I mean, that, that obviously crosses my mind. I'm a little bit somewhere between like too lazy and too like busy with, uh, with oo and plus my marketing agency. Like I already, I already have my hand in enough pots. and then I'll be a hundred percent like vulnerable here.
Like it is not easy [00:43:00] to build a startup in like a new emerging technology where it feels like you're in a Mortal Kombat tournament all the time. And when things are really hard, I, I have been known to look at other people on my team and be like, why don't we just build a property management company with our technology?
Why don't we just build a giant real estate portfolio? Isn't that a more certain path to winning here? So that's, you know, at my low's I do that. Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Right At your low's. At your low's, you're like, yes, I would love to build or buy a property management company because you know, when you're low, why not just go a little bit lower?
I'm teasing. But, uh, no, that's fun. Well, I mean, if you're team would like consulting on how to buy one, I'm happy to provide that. 'Cause there's part of me where I know I will buy one again in the future. And I'm sorry you said that. Yeah, there's part of me that's I'm kind of chomping at the bit because I really, I have like this vision.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: And I, I just wanna do [00:44:00] something that I,
Pablo Gonzalez: what's the vision? Stacey, tell me the vision. I want you to put it, lay it out there.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's kind of what we've talked about before. But, but I want it on
Pablo Gonzalez: your content stream.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay. On my content stream. Yeah. So my vision would be, I mean, we're talking several hundred doors and let's just say like a thousand doors.
Pablo Gonzalez: Mm-hmm.
Stacey Salyer: You know, you need your top leader your licensed property manager, maybe two. We'll see. Definitely your, community Dreamweaver. And then I think, you know, just AI agents with all the things. I think Well, and then definitely like an AI manager, I would say.
Yeah. Like that tech manager. I think that's where the younger generation's really gonna come in and help us out. I mean that, that Gen Z generation. Mm-hmm. And they're gonna be able to come in and they're a really cool generation. Maybe it's 'cause I raised three of 'em and I think mine are cool.
But I think they're gonna be able to come in and see things that like my generation can't. Right. Yeah. And they're gonna look at things differently. They're also very much about experience. Yep. [00:45:00] And I think they're gonna teach, like I'm Gen X, like we were ignored and we had no experience. Our experience was like negative.
So, so we're like happy if something's kind of okay. Yeah. But that younger gen is gonna come in and really I think help make things really beautiful. So I would love to do something like that. I think it would be really cool. And, uh, I'd like to prove that I'm right, so. Yeah.
Pablo Gonzalez: so, but what's your vision as far as, so this coaching business and this acquisitions business versus being an operator again, what's your dream state for what you are building currently right now?
Stacey Salyer: Oh my dream state. Well, I, so I love teaching people to grow their wealth through acquisition, honestly. When I kinda landed on that this year. Also, thank you for pushing me in your, in your, uh, at mastermind that I was part of. Give
Pablo Gonzalez: you a couple of pokes. Just a few
Stacey Salyer: pokes. I know, I know.
You're like, that's so boring when I was talking about operations. Yeah. Yeah. You know, [00:46:00] ultimately I am going to be on stages and I'm gonna be teaching women how to acquire businesses and build wealth. So I look at my journey and I look at how I did it. Mm-hmm. And I, you know, I started kind of the old school way.
I started, you know, I started a business from the ground up. I hustled, I, you know, got doors and then I did an acquire. I acquired doors, which took my business from, you know, good to amazing. Yeah. And. I look back and I'm like, wow, that was really cool. How efficient. Right. And so we don't have enough women leadership in property management.
Mm-hmm. Uh, property management's dominated by women, but there are a lot of the doers, like the worker bees. Mm-hmm. But when you get to that owner broker level, there's very few women that are sole owner broker. Mm-hmm. So it is my passion to bring more women into that. I think that women are great leaders.
I think that we bring kind of a different outlook overall. Mm-hmm. And uh, kind of more holistic type look. Yeah. And I [00:47:00] want to teach women how to be super efficient with their time. So women, why are you trying to go out and grove five doors a month? Yeah. Let's, you know, come learn with me and I will teach you go by 200 or 300 at a time and then I'll teach you how to make it even more efficient by incorporating like the AI and all that kinda good stuff.
So that's really what I look forward to.
Pablo Gonzalez: Here's what I, what I think about often.
Stacey Salyer: Okay.
Pablo Gonzalez: A generation of women of my age are the first generation that I think are en masse raising other women. Without having been imposed those limitations that they were raised with before. Right. Like our age, you know, like around there. Like the, since you're a, young girl, you can be president.
Mm-hmm. It's something that kind of appeared as oh, we can have that conversation and then not just be a joke. Right. Or even just have the conversation. Probably. feel like appeared somewhere [00:48:00] around like my youth. Mm-hmm. But then as they come up, I feel like they are overly informed by the woman that we're told that wasn't true.
Right. So that kind of trickles down. So like the generation of like your daughter has the first shot of, you know, being raised by a woman that doesn't accept those limitations and therefore one more generation below that, it'll be completely normalized of that.
Mm-hmm. Is there any way to. Accelerate this idea of women taking on these leadership roles without having this like gravity around them that seems to exist. And is that even, am I just thinking like a guy of well, they need to be CEOs, or what's your best view of how that starts to really balance out some? 'cause I agree with you. It feels that most of these property management rooms are women and yet the people that are like the speakers and the influencers and the whatever are all dudes.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. It's very true. I know, I think I'm one of the only female influencers. I mean, there's, there's more than just me, [00:49:00] but
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, that's a really good question and good thought. I think You know, this is probably gonna be a weird answer and people are gonna think I'm kind of insane, but they usually think I'm crazy anyway, I actually think that with the new technology, like with AI and everything coming on, it actually will enable women to have more time and be more efficient. Because I will say being a mom, so let's say I became a mom at age 29, and then, most of my career has been, you know, through my thirties, forties, and now I'm 50.
Mm-hmm. It is not easy. I mean, I gave up a lot, right? Because I had three kids. I ran companies. I started a company. I bought a company. I mean, I've done all the things. I've sold them, I've, you know, bought whatever, all the things. But with that came a lot of sacrifices, like personal life. As far as just even myself, but I look at the future and I look at, okay, so we could start being even more efficient mm-hmm.
Whether it's in our personal life or professional life. Yeah. I mean, even the thought of acquiring, like even that's just [00:50:00] more efficient. I mean, sure it might be kind of harder, you know, maybe to assimilate 200, 300 doors into your business, but also not if you're really looking at it like big picture and you're not just like looking at it like old school way.
So I think as time moves on and, you know, AI just keeps multiplying and multiplying. Yeah. I think we're gonna see so many things come in on personal level and professional level that can probably take away a lot of the minutiae that women have to carry because we do carry a lot. And again, I'm not bashing my, guys, I mean, you're like one of my besties, but generally speaking, the moms especially yeah.
We make all the doctor appointments, we make all the dentist appointments. Oh, when's your haircut? Oh, have you had your shots? Oh wait, back to school shopping. Oh, and then you're running a company. Oh, I'm gonna go buy one. Yeah. But I think, that we'll make a big difference. I don't think we're there yet.
I thought we would be there by now.
Pablo Gonzalez: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: But [00:51:00] I haven't unfortunately seen it yet. But we will, and it's one of my passions. I dunno. What do you think?
Pablo Gonzalez: I like your take on. If we can solve for efficiency for women, then we can unburden them from these other expectations.
growing up in a Hispanic household, I just thought the expectations of women versus men in a Hispanic household that I grew up in were just very unfair. and like to me it's like, how do you, how do you. How do you get to the point where these expectations aren't the things that are making you drown?
But I like the idea that, oh, if the expectations are that you just have to be able to like, do all these little tasks and do all these other things, AI is gonna be able to handle that. So you're gonna be able to meet the expectations through technology, and then you can go off, do your thing. Yeah. So I hope that that's true.
I like that. I like that a lot.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope that one day I have an AI agent working for me, doing my job
Pablo Gonzalez: mm-hmm.
Stacey Salyer: And making me money. And then I'm just gonna be on the beach with my dog and my husband.
Pablo Gonzalez: It up.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. That's what, I hope. And I mean, I do think that will happen.
Pablo Gonzalez: What's the name of your, uh, your puppy Corgi?
Stacey Salyer: well, [00:52:00] so we have, uh, little Joie Bear is my baby, and then we have Vinny, Vinny, the Corgi.
Pablo Gonzalez: Vinny. Vinny. I think within Vinny's life, it'll be true.
Stacey Salyer: Yes. Well, uni is only three years old.
Pablo Gonzalez: Just a couple of dog years away.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And then you have your sweet dog as well.
Pablo Gonzalez: Mm-hmm. Miss Piggy.
Mm-hmm.
Stacey Salyer: Miss Piggy. She's so cute. Yeah. So, well, this was so much fun. And I really appreciate you coming on.
Pablo Gonzalez: I don't know if you saw how big my smile got every time you call me your bestie. Anytime you wanna just keep doing that, just totally make it my day. I'm into it. I really love being your bestie, so thanks for having me on.
And and you know, like really just sincerely there's been a lot of challenges for me in coming into this space and like I know that it's, I know it's a space where you gotta pay your dues and you gotta do all these other things , to be able to like, to navigate it and, and keep my sanity, I have really counted on you , the way that you have shown up for me and, and our friendship and the support that you've given me through the hardest moments in all of this have been incredibly meaningful [00:53:00] in one of the.
Both most challenging and most like rewarding years of my life. So I just greatly, greatly value you and the way that you show up and our friendship and that you call me your bestie and you're my bestie too. So
Stacey Salyer: thank you for that. Ah, I know bestie power, so yeah. Well, thank you. I know you're awesome.
You're a connector. We are very lucky to have you in our industry and I think, I think you're rad. So cheers to 2026. It's gonna be an amazing year and we're all gonna kick ass. Let's go. Yeah. Alright. Okay. Well thanks.
Outro: Thanks for listening to the Stacey Salyer show. Here's the deal. You can read about acquisitions anywhere, but you can't learn acquisitions from someone who's done it the way I have as a buyer, a seller, and from the corporate side evaluating hundreds of companies. That's why I need you to subscribe and share this with someone in your network who needs to hear it.
And if this episode landed, leave a five star review. It's how more PM owners find the only acquisition [00:54:00] expertise in the space that comes from all sides of the table. And while you're at it, grab my Acquisition Readiness checklist on my website at staceysalyer.com. Then when you're ready to move from Growth Thinking to Growth Building, explore the Built to Acquire program.
Don't leave it on the table. See you on the next episode.
