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 COVID 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: Welcome back my friends [00:01:00] to the Stacey Salyer Show, where we talk about buying and selling property management companies. And today I have a very special guest with a amazing first name that I had to practice saying over and over. Guillermo Salazar. And I am super excited to have this conversation today because we are gonna dive deep into acquisitions. We're gonna talk about PE funds, VC backing, what it looks like to set up your company, to get it to sell, what it looks like to buy companies, and of course, the all favorite topic of 2026, AI, mingled and sprinkled in there.
So welcome so much to my show.
Guillermo Salazar: Oh, thank you for having me. I love the conversation you're talking about. I think that the, the permission for the conversation about what your exit looks like is so important, and what your ac- and what your growth plan looks like is so important. And the beauty of property management is that there is...
You know, you have to be managing both sides of the funnel all the time, and [00:02:00] being aware of that, potential, given that, you know, there's no, you know, 401for a property manager. You've got to create your business, and that's worth something. And knowing how that's going to be acquired and it gives you clarity on the things you shouldn't be doing and the things you should be doing with respect to your day-to-day operations.
Because ultimately, I think the thing that as all entrepreneurs, we get caught thinking about getting caught in a job versus getting caught in a business. And so how can we begin to structure the organization, structure the way we do things so that you know, we n-recognizing that it does, it is a job to start out with, but ultimately you're not in this to create a job for yourself.
Well, for many people, you're not in this to create a job for yourself. You're in this to create an, a business. And a business is different. You know, I said this like a thousand times, businesses are not babies, right? They're two different
Stacey Salyer: Yes. Yes
Guillermo Salazar: And if you grow a business and you understand how to grow a business and how to sell a business and how to acquire businesses, then like you, you can begin to start creating a system around that.
And that is where, you know, [00:03:00] we get opportunities to create wealth moments in our life around ac- both the acquisition on the path to an exit and then the exit. And that's, that's it. Th-th-there's no greater opportunity in a person's income generating career than an exit to move the needle on your wealth creation.
Stacey Salyer: Yes. Well, you just said a ton of things that like warm my heart, which your business is not your baby. And hey, I was there. I actually used to call it my fourth child. I know I wrote about that recently, and I think I was on your show recently,
and I talked a little bit about that. But that's actually not a healthy way to grow your business. And once I realized that and I realized, "Oh, wow, this is actually a huge asset that I'm building,"
it completely changed my life. And so that, that's one piece of it. I feel you know, I have been in property management for well over 20 years. I know you're newer into property management, so I'd love to kind of get your take on what that looks like for you compared to like where you've been before.
But I feel like it's kind of in the PM world, we've kind of shifted [00:04:00] into that. Like forever and ever, it seems like a lot of people just kind of started a property management company to
kind of like service their clients that they had in their real estate firm, or maybe they just wanted to manage their own stuff and they did it at scale. But there's this whole new wave of "Hey, let's build an asset and then let's, you know, then utilize that asset for additional things in your life." So do you mind sharing like maybe a little bit kind of where you've come from and maybe we can dive deeper into you know, maybe some PE funds,
VC-backed, like what's the difference and, and all that kind of good stuff, and then we'll kind of more go granular into
Guillermo Salazar: For sure. So my background, so I've been an entrepreneur. I say this is like a therapy session, but I've been an entrepreneur my whole life unknowing. I, I didn't admit to it till about last year until someone like almost smacked me in the head and said, "No, you... You are an I have started four companies.
I've exited four times. I have also had a bunch of side gigs along the way. I help people starting companies get their first revenue as a little consulting business 'cause I just love helping people and it gives [00:05:00] me a ton of energy. Along the way, I found that I've worked in a couple different models.
I ran a consulting company, so all services. Started that company in '09. We exited that to Deloitte in '13. Grew that company from four consultants to 65 consultants in four years. It was exhausting. It was... It killed me. It killed all of my partners. And we had healthy exit and especially given the, what the time was.
And then I worked for that company for like three and a half years. That was a change for me from with respect to, you know, where we were going and what was happening then. Along the way, I've, I've started a product company and at one point in time was the fastest-growing hockey business in the world.
Certainly the most profitable for a while there, and that was interesting in terms of growth of that business. And then started a technology company. This is my second technology company that I'm working with right now at Vendoru. And I'm working as a principal there. I'm not a founder. And I was previously that, I was founder at IRCX.
So all those different kind of stages worked with. And then along the way, like the product company dealt with private [00:06:00] equity a lot in terms of exiting from that business, dealt with private equity buyers and along the way, kind of like just different sort of acquirers and what they're trying to solve for.
And understanding what the people are trying to solve for can often be the most important thing when you're seeking to maximize your multiple and your returns. And how they buy, right? So a services business, they're gonna buy based on top line revenue of your employees, not necessarily of your subcontractors.
They're gonna net out your subcontractor revenue to give you a multiple. A product company, they're gonna multiple that based on your EBITDA. And then in a software company, you're gonna get multiple based on revenue and revenue growth and account retention. So all different sort of multiples in terms of how things are measured.
And and along the way, I've had private equity capital involved, I've had VC capital involved, and understanding how they play the game, what they're trying to solve for is important with respect to how you're gonna position your business. In all cases, like what I've become really kind of tuned for is looking how to run an acquired company or how to acquire other companies. having started [00:07:00] these companies and gone through the cycle of the job part and forgetting that this is, you know, there's a reason for this, not just about the job, then that helped me I'll say restructure kind of my operations and my actions and my duties in terms of what I'm trying to do in terms of setting up systems.
'Cause like the thing that is never gonna be wrong is that we do fall to the level of our systems versus the aspirations of our goals. And so like you can set goals all day long, but a goal without strategy, my word of the day is hopium. If you've just like planning thing, hopium, if you are planning out goals and not setting out a strategy, that is hopium, and hopium is very addictive, and it can ruin your life.
And so I would recommend that if you find yourself in a hopium state figure out as fast as you can to get your way, get a way out of that and, and acknowledge it. 'Cause the first part is acknowledging that situation. It's just like an addiction. I mean, you get caught up in your dreams, not in the reality, and that's where you find yourself in a job.
And for those that are property managers, [00:08:00] you, you may have taken this on as a means of making personal income, but as you begin to understand what's possible, you're gonna find that the greatest, possible wealth creating moment in your life can be when you exit that company, but you gotta exit it right.
And that takes a lot of structure, practice, discipline because the company worth buying is a company that the owner or the founder is not in day-to-day operations. That's where you're buying a series of assets and systems that can, you know, create value for the acquirer. And to the whole thing about business and a baby, business and babies, like you're not a parent either, right?
And so if you think yourself as a parent in that situation, you're going to probably make things a little bit more casual, a little bit less built to buy than if you were structuring it as an asset.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Right. Right. Right. Wow. Okay. That is a lot to unpack.
So first, first hopium.
I love that word. That, that [00:09:00] is amazing. Yeah, you should copyright that or
Guillermo Salazar: I still open to somebody else. I still open to somebody
Stacey Salyer: You did? Okay. Okay. Well, we'll give credit to
whoever that somebody is. So tell me what would that look like in the day-to-day?
Maybe kinda in the property management world
Guillermo Salazar: I think, you know, hopium
Stacey Salyer: owner look like?
Guillermo Salazar: you know, and you talk about it quite a lot, right? Hopium is the, "I'm gonna go door to door and grow the business that way," right? you can grow part of your business that way, and that's important to kinda understand how that works. But ultimately, if you're not thinking about how that business is gonna scale and how you're gonna...
You know, what that means. 'Cause like there's a point in time where the door to door is what you gotta do at that stage. And so I think that thinking about your business in stages and what that means in terms of how you're gonna get to where you gotta go. So I like to talk about laddering up, 'cause it's hopium is thinking that you're gonna go to 100,000 doors and you're like 1,000 doors right now, and not having an understanding of how you're gonna get there.
So that's hopium. A laddering up or a strategy is putting things [00:10:00] on paper that you can begin to test. And I'm a big fan of the thinking of like it's a hypothesis statement. E- every plan is a hypothesis statement, and putting out that hypothesis statement, it's like a scientific experiment, like you learned this in grade four.
These are the things that, that I think to be true. Here's the things that I'm gonna do. Here's the things that need to be true for this hypothesis to be true," right? And then I'm gonna repeat it or I'm gonna learn from it. Practically speaking, you're gonna learn from it.
And then you're gonna learn, and then you're gonna learn and learn. 'Cause like if you're just thinking about door to door, then you're usually thinking about just competing with other people,
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. A
Guillermo Salazar: which is really hard to grow your
Stacey Salyer: bottom.
Guillermo Salazar: And it's a race to the bottom. 'Cause if you can't compete on like the three different ways of competing, generally speaking, is like on price, on customer intimacy, or on product innovation.
And price is the most expensive way to compete. And you're going door to door, you're often gonna find you're competing on price. Not only are you spending a lot of time and energy and effort in that cost of acquisition, [00:11:00] 'cause your cost of sales is high 'cause you're doing door to door, but then you're also like, your reward for that hard work is a price-based competition, which is like really expensive way, and I use this word all the time, to spend your time on Earth. Your time on Earth, really think about how you can create value for other people, and then how you can ultimately find new ways to create more value.
'Cause if you can be more effective and efficient with your time as a, as an entrepreneur, as a property manager, as an owner of an asset, you're going to find it is inevitable. You're gonna find new opportunities. They're gonna come to you 'cause you will just attract them 'cause you have the head space for them, and those new opportunities are gonna help you see a new path forward, and you'll just be constantly reinventing yourself.
Which is really exciting because that every time you reinvent something, you're usually leaning into where there's some value to be created that you can get I call it an unfair advantage or an unfair win. And unfair meaning you're getting more than you deserved, and you're getting more than you [00:12:00] deserve at a price that maybe you don't qualify for, and that's good stuff, right?
Keep that going because otherwise it's, it can be a bit of a grind.
Stacey Salyer: Right, right. Well, and I know when I was on your show, we talked a lot about that, like the identity
and, you know, moving into new identities and giving yourself permission to accept those new identities. I think sometimes we'll go to conferences and some, you know, I'll hear kind of almost like negative things.
Even when I sold to Pure property management, I actually-- you know, people were kind of rude to me. Not, not everybody, but
some people were like, "Oh, you sold out," or, "You did this or that." And I'm like, "Well, actually, I made some really strategic moves, but, you know, and if you'd like to have a conversation about that, we can definitely talk about it." But, you know, kind of thinking beyond, yeah, just like the day-to-day. And then the door-to-door growth is a killer. I mean, it's a killer on your team. a killer on yourself. It's super stressful, right? So let's say you're like, "Oh, my goal is to, add," I don't do math in my head, but let's say 60 doors for the year.
I mean, you're [00:13:00] continually having this mental grind of, "Oh my gosh, you know, I have three clients that are leaving 'cause they're
selling, and ugh, now to get to net 60, you know, I have to grind even more." And, and you know, it's interesting because in property management we hear a lot of like, "Well, it's not very expensive to grow that way because I'm not spending any marketing dollars."
But what kind of dollars are you spending For yourself, right?
Like on yourself. Like how stressful is that? Like all that stress that's compounding, plus then you have the operations piece of it and everything. And I don't think enough people have really stopped to think about that. They just think, "Oh, well, that's just kind of how we've always done it."
But what if you can shift your mindset and step into that identity of be- also being an acquirer and go out into your market and 10X it, right?
Guillermo Salazar: Well, and I think that's the thing that like-- and I, I fall in this trap all the time, is that just because I can do it doesn't mean I should do it. And I'll give you an example. I try and make sure that I'm doing things like this podcast or other podcasts to try and attract, you know, leads and attract, you know, [00:14:00] revenue generation.
And the that's the balance and the trade-off. I still do direct outbound. I still reach out to people one-on-one, but I try and do it very deliberately and directively 'cause I know I still have to do that skill. But ultimately, I'm not gonna spend eight hours of my day doing direct outbound because that's a very poor usage of my time.
Now, one of the things that I love, like this whole this... You know, if anyone listening to where the Hopium idea was stolen from was a guy named Dan Martell, who writes a book called "Buy Back Your Time." And I really recommend anyone read that book. And there's... If anything, if you don't read the book, here's the punchline figure out the cost of what your salary is, all right?
And then figure out the cost of a task. And if you don't know what the cost of a task is, then you're already giving your w- time away for free. And so if you figure out the cost of a task, let's say it's like sending emails out or responding to emails I don't know, let's just use a m- number of 100K.
It takes 15 minutes per email. So then you can do the math and figure out what that email cost you, your company, et cetera. And if you consider what a VA could t- cost to do that, let's go [00:15:00] five bucks an hour. So if I take 100 grand and I divide that by 2,000 hours, that's gonna tell me what my hourly rate is, and that's about 50 bucks.
if I'm spending $50 for $10 work or $5 work, or actually, if you think of a VA, you can get VAs for six, seven bucks in the Philippines. if I'm spending $50 for $2 work, how long is that gonna last in your business? How long is that gonna get you? How, h- how far is that gonna go?
And so the goal is to figure out what's the cost of my time. Martell talks about this quite a bit. And so if you think about, as the leader of your company, if you're running a million-dollar property management company, what's the value of your time? And thinking about and being really critical about your time will force you to do two things.
This is the part that really flipped for me, is if you start thinking about the q- value of your time, and then you go and act on it, you're gonna realize your systems are totally destroyed. They're all like everything is random. Everything's playground football. There's no set plays, no set [00:16:00] playbooks.
It's "Stacey, you're the bottle cap. We're gonna go this way to the dirt line." You know, whatever. It's like that, and that is not a way to run a business. That's living in chaos. And living in chaos is not a happy place to be and is not worth buying.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Guillermo Salazar: if you have a great assets nobody will go near that business, that chaotic business with a 10-foot pole because it would take too much time, energy, and effort to integrate.
And so they're going to go and, and undo all the damage that you're kinda doing all the, all the time. It's kind of funny. You talk to folks that do a lot of work with entrepreneurs, and is that... And this, I would, I would look for this if you're, if you're a property manager or a leader, an owner. Look for your behavior.
If you find that things are going really well and smooth, but you find yourself starting to be a saboteur to your own business because it creates more attention about the things that you think you're really good at,
Stacey Salyer: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar: that that's like a get help moment where you [00:17:00] should be talking to Stacey about, "I need to change the way I'm doing things," because you'll find that you're des- destroying your value of your business.
You're destroying the relationships Of your family and your friends, and that you need to start allocating your time in a way that creates a higher value outcome. And I know that sounds so obvious, but I really do encourage everyone to take the amount of money they would like to make this year, divide it by two thousand, figure out what that number is per hour, and figure out what the price is to get someone else to do that work.
And you'll find real quick that I'm doing five dollar an hour work, I'm robbing from my company, I'm robbing from my investors, and I'm robbing from my family. And I use that word robbing intentionally because you're being really selfish with your time to do something that's a distraction rather than doing the hard, heavy lifting work.
And so that's something that I just cannot unlearn is the value of my time and the value of the work that I'm doing, and then how can I begin to allocate that in a way that makes for better outcomes for everybody who's [00:18:00] invested in me, family, friends, customers, employees.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Yeah. No, I love that. And I think... So I call that fiddling. I am
a huge fiddler. I will
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: I will dive into my business, I will change things, it seems like on a whim, but, you know, I have a strategic plan
in my mind. In fact, I did that with my property management company. Things were running great.
We had amazing systems, processes, teams, all the things. Things were automated, and what happened was it was running really well. And so then, you know, the tornado, that would be me, comes in
and it's gets into the system, and it's like start pinging people "Oh, did you do this? Oh," you know. Yeah, like just...
I wasn't letting the system work. I was like being a tornado, and I was causing chaos, and my team thank goodness they had enough... You know, they knew me well enough that they knew that they could come tell [00:19:00] me and say, "Hey I don't think you realize, but you are actually creating chaos. You are ruining what we've built, and you're actually giving anxiety to the team." And that was like, like I was smacked up ag- you know, the head. Somebody did that, and I was like, "Oh my gosh." I felt so bad. I literally was like, "Oh my gosh, I, I am so sorry. I've undermined all of you and your ability." And so I, I said, "Okay." And I like signed out of everything, and I was like, "Nope, we're just gonna let the system run." And I'm very thankful that my team did that, and I'm very thankful that we had a really good team that felt like they could tell me that. And then, you know, we went on and grew. And then I realized for myself, okay, that's fine to be a fiddler. It's okay, 'cause a true entrepreneur, I think, is. We're always like, "Oh, let's create this.
Let's do that." But then I was like, "Oh, well, obviously I just need to have other projects."
And put the... Take the fiddle
over there and, and play with that, right? Instead of taking what's you have that works well and like continuing to [00:20:00] break it.
Guillermo Salazar: We used to-- I used to call that at Iris, we call it the dead bird moment. Like everyone's seen a picture of a cat that presents a dead bird on the doorstep, and like the cat is very proud of the door-- of the, of the, of the dead bird, and the, the owner of the doorstep is like, "That's disgusting.
Get that out of here." And that's kinda what I feel about those dead bird moments is like the CEO's gone off and maybe gone to a conference or read a book or heard a podcast, and then went and just ogred on that for the weekend and then come back with this dead bird to present to staff and say, "Hey, here's this great dead bird."
And the staff's "We don't want that." And then you're like-- Then you feel hurt and insulted and you feel, you know, you feel pun- I don't know, all those different things, but then you're like, "Well, how can I get this thing better?" And so I think it's, it's interesting to have conversations around what is the-- One of the, one of the most powerful statements that I, I began to understand, understand and, and work towards is what's the problem we're trying to solve here?
So rather than giving direction, I'll often... Because, you know, if you do it right, you're not the expert in everything. And you kinda articulate, "Here's a problem I'm trying to solve," and then you list it [00:21:00] out and then, "This is what I'm thinking. Do you have any other ideas?" Can create a counteroffer dialogue where you begin to solve some of those problems.
'Cause what, what we do know is that no one wants to go buy a tornado, right? Acquiring a tornado is a nightmare. And so you're not ready, they're not ready, it's never gonna work. And so when you get into systems that you need to put in place those systems can really help you figure out what you shouldn't be doing.
And I think that's the thing that we always mess up when we're trying to grow these businesses, and it is any business, is we end up doing things that we shouldn't be doing, and that's part of the, the discipline of understanding how you're spending your time, is beginning to get really judicious about the things you should be doing.
And sometimes like it's, for me, like I'll be like, I don't know, like it's about seven o'clock on Wednesday night and I'm like, "Why am I doing this work? There's a better way to do this." And I'll package it up and put a system together. And I think what, what everyone should hear is that the ability to create these systems now is so available that you can get a VA, you can get an outsourced company, you can get...
You know, should you be doing your [00:22:00] own bookkeeping? All that kind of stuff. Get someone to do it who is w- No, you should not.
Stacey Salyer: think you said not.
Guillermo Salazar: so you can grow your number one thing that's most important to you, right? And that's... When we talk to customers right now, we ask them two questions: Are you looking...
And you gotta choose one. Are you looking to to scale and grow, or are you looking to scale and optimize? So you're looking to scale and grow, meaning do you need more doors? Or scale and optimize and look at more profit. 'Cause you can't have both. It's tough. You can get to both, but you can't have both this quarter.
And then we kind of start the conversation that way so that we can understand what priority they're trying to seek and how we can begin to position the solutions that we deliver. 'Cause otherwise, if we're not trying to solve a problem for you, the vendors, the technology, the hires, all those people, it's just gonna create more work for you as the owner and the, and the property manager, and it's gonna make your company less attractive to buy.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Right. Right, for sure. Well, I think this would be a good segue into AI because obviously, you know, we've been, you know, using VAs, remote team members for several years. That's [00:23:00] actually how I built my company, was on global talent.
But with AI, I mean, gosh, I mean, it's just moving so incredibly fast and I-- You're...
You know, if you wanna tell us a little bit about
what Vendoroo does, that would be awesome, and then maybe we can even dive a little bit deeper into some of the other things that are out there. So,
yeah.
Guillermo Salazar: Venderu, Venderu is, is a, is a an AI agent that sits in your PMS systems. You don't have to change your PMS, and it works with your existing systems, processes, and people, and takes out all the soul-sucking work. But I'll leave it there. So triage, after hours first touch with a resident, coordinating vendors, assigning W-2s all of the, invoice collection, all of that stuff times a thousand times is what how your day feels.
All that is low-value work when it comes to creating a wealth within a property management company. So if you're a property manager, a property manager... If you're a property management leader and you've got your PMs and your PMs are doing all that stuff, none of that stuff drives your door count up.
[00:24:00] None of that stuff. All of that stuff chews away from your profit. So you're allocating your, you know, a PM could be seventy-five thousand dollars a year, eighty thousand dollars a year. If you're allocating that resource to do that low-value work, you're actively robbing from your personal wealth creation, and you're actively robbing from your personal profit and loss statement.
And guess what? If you've got a lower EBITDA and profit and loss, and you're actively robbing from your door count creation, is that a fun company to buy? Not a chance, right? Not a chance. And so I think the opportunity for everybody in the property management space is you need to think about AI as a catalyst to drive your door count and drive your profitability.
And those two things, are always your priority. And the conventional approach to solving a problem might have been do it yourself, meaning my PM's just gonna do more work. Or I'm gonna hire another PM or hire another coordinator, or I'm gonna vend it out, right?
Those [00:25:00] three things are basically moving the dirty water around the floor, right? With a mop handle, 'cause you're not really changing much. You're just having someone else do it for you. 'Cause let assure you that the bookkeeper, they're using AI They're optimizing for what they need to do on a repeatable basis.
So when you're looking at the work that needs to be done and the things that consume the amount of time in your people's... And I call it, it is the soul-sucking work.
Stacey Salyer: It is.
Guillermo Salazar: nobody says, "Hooray, I get to spend eight hours in my PMS today. I can't wait for this day to start." Nobody ever said that ever on the planet.
Stacey Salyer: over and over how to unclog a garbage disposal after I've argued with a tenant that, "No, it is not broken.
I just need you to follow this process
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah. Yeah. There's an
Stacey Salyer: And then back and
Guillermo Salazar: it, write it out.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, back and forth, and then, you know, they originally contact you when they're on a 15-minute break, and then you get back to them, and then they can't get back to you until they get off work.
But now you're already off work, out of your PMS, and so then you come back into the morning, and then it's the [00:26:00] same shit
over and over nobody wants to live that life.
Guillermo Salazar: And like everyone to understand that it feels like it's one minute of work, but it's actually 15 minutes of work. So every single time your PM is interrupted from doing their core business of running a more profitable business me- or growing your account, you are...
that costs you 15 minutes. It doesn't cost you two minutes. It never costed you one minute. It never cost you 30 seconds. It costs you 15 minutes. And that distraction of one quarter of an hour, right, prevents them from doing the work that they were doing, which is growing your business or making it more profitable.
And that every single one of those, those interruptions, you see it when you talk to prospects. They're just like, "Oh my God, I keep... It keeps up- keep, keeps coming to me," or, "I've got to manage this." And, and I find it really hilarious that we've actually trained property managers and residents to delegate upwards.
Stacey Salyer: Mm.
Guillermo Salazar: if it's a garbage disposal problem, right, the [00:27:00] resident's gonna raise that to the PM. Now the PM raises that to the owner of the organization, and the owner of the organization or the PM organization is the one that's fixing the resident's problem because we rewarded the resident for bringing up the issue and bringing that to the PM, and then we rewarded the PM to delegate that up to the property management owner.
And that's not how it's supposed to work, right? It's supposed to be the other way around where the PM has a ton or technology helps address that resident's issue before that gets up to the... everything should have to, have to survive a, a, a filter to be able to get to the next level up. 'Cause when it's talking to the owner, let's say you're running a million-dollar business, 2,000 hours a year, so every hour is worth 500 bucks, and all of a sudden you're dealing with a, a $20 problem, that's a bad use of time, money, resources.
And so it's that kind of thinking and awareness that helps build businesses worth buying. And then also, other side of the coin is it puts you in a position to buy businesses, to buy PMs. 'Cause to your [00:28:00] point earlier, if you can't And so your experience, if you're running a door-to-door business and you're responding to all the midnight calls, you are in no position to acquire another company.
You're gonna just waste your own money. And if you've got to borrow that money and maybe put a personal guarantee on it, you're absorbing an unnecessary amount of risk for you and your family. It's, it's irresponsible. So if you want to have access, like the key to that door of wealth through property management, if you want to think that way, you gotta start thinking about systems, and the best system right now is AI-driven.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Right.
Right. Oh, 100%. 100%. Yeah, and what, what you guys do on the maintenance side is amazing. I've seen the back end. I've been invited to different things. It's really cool. And then within that, I mean, 'cause there's some people that are starting to embrace it are you suggesting that people also go out and maybe use Cloud Cowork and just kinda do some other things?
Or what do, what do you think if you could give advice to a, a [00:29:00] PM, a business owner
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah. Like I, I, I use Claude Cowork all the time, right? And I'm sure you do as well. And there are things that you can begin to optimize that are low risk. It's kind of like that classic two by two of what's the cost of it and what's the risk of it, and just kind of match it up. There are certain things...
And then what's the repeatability of it, I guess, is the other one. There are certain things like email replies, right? I can get-- I've got my Claude Cowork, it drafts the email reply for me, but I still review it and send it out. I'm the human in the loop, right? But it's great. At the end of the day, at 4:00 PM, I've got a half an hour block of time, I review all the emails that it created, and I send them out.
And there's two things that happen when I do that. I'll go and update the prompt so the prompt is tuned a little bit better for how I want, 'cause the first email was never good. And that's just for email replies. So really low risk. Urgency is important 'cause I wanna get back to people as fast as possible.
I have a certain way that I like to have my stuff structured for me in my reply, and it's [00:30:00] great. It does that automatically. And so then I just tweak things a little bit. So this is again, Martel, 10%, 10% of ideation around what should be done, 80% horsepower in the, in the AI space, and then 10% on my end of it to kind of make sure things go.
And then ultimately I find things that I can just get out of the way. And then it's just like 10%, 90%, and I let that thing just run. But when you first set it up, you know, you start kinda getting... You gotta learn a little bit along the way. Now, in property management, that works great for certain things 'cause they're really low risk.
The problem with maintenance is that the person who is giving you the information is usually the least qualified person to assess the problem, being the resident Right? They are talking about the, the food disposal doesn't work, my windows are crying, the bird's nest in the, the, the dryer vent ex-exhaust, like all that sorts of stuff like that.
And they're giving you words that aren't really, don't really make sense. And so often you have to have a lot of like context or [00:31:00] understanding about that specific problem set to be able to make a predictable AI recommendation/decision. And that's part that I think we're getting to, we do really well at Vendero, is like we begin to understand a higher degree of those problems because we just see so many of them, right?
So like million work orders with the system, two million plus audits. So not only have we like processed all this vertical data that relates to work orders in different systems in different parts of the country, we're able to kind of take that body of knowledge and be really, really good at triage, coordination, and ultimately invoicing.
And that's the thing that like that you just have to have the breadth of data to increase that confidence interval. 'Cause which even in my email example, like every single email I have to review,
Stacey Salyer: right? Right.
Guillermo Salazar: management business, and using the vendor as an example, is that how you want to...
Is that-- Do you want to solve the most, the hardest part first or is it better to [00:32:00] take something that's a little lower risk, but maybe it's replying back to residents, maybe it's just like automatically I don't know, acknowledging something or lease processing or rent collection or all of that, that is a lot more a lot less variability to the data, a lot more predictability of what I'm going to get.
Your bank reconciliation, like all that stuff, like maybe DIY that yourself. But as you get into things that have a lot of a lot of unknown to it, then I would you know, obviously recommend to use, use professional services for that or a professional solution for that. But I do... I mean, there are people that are out there creating cloud co-work for their maintenance triage, and I'm thrilled about it.
I encourage it. But I do know that when you get to a certain limit, ultimately just like my email story, you're going to be still having to do that, that look and that validation. And if you do want to get to kind of a, a light side operation where no one's touching anything and you decide that's where you want to compete, you're going to find that it's better to just have that, you know, move to a a company that does that for a [00:33:00] living.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Well, I think you bring up an interesting point that maybe it hasn't been pointed out so much in the, in the world is that, again, that almost if you're starting to vibe code or whatever and create your own thing, and you're taking that time, is that the best use of your time? Is that truly
building a really good asset?
Like again, you know, any way you slice or dice it, you're gonna have to pay for
the service, right? And, and I think a lot of times people forget that. They look at "Oh, well, I'm just gonna go do this." Okay. Yeah. But when are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it Monday through Friday, like from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM and you're gonna miss out on your family time and maybe dinner or watching your kid's sport game or whatever 'cause you're
gonna vibe code this...
You're gonna create your own solution versus going out and using somebody else's solution when if you go do that, whether it's Vendoru or you, you know, another AI platform for, you know, leasing or whatever now you could [00:34:00] instead use like your brain or whatever for like even bigger things, right?
Like to
Guillermo Salazar: this is the
Stacey Salyer: drive
Guillermo Salazar: This is exactly what kind of what you're getting at, is that if you start using it... So let's, let's just assume, okay, there's 40-- we're working 48 hours a week this week, right? And so 48 hours is consumed, and you're all just kind of grinding it out.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Guillermo Salazar: to think about how to get wealthy when you're grinding out 48 hours a week.
And so, you know, and entrepreneurs, we're tend-- we're... And, and guess what? If you own a property management company, like me, it took me 20 years to acknowledge it. I'll just tell you right now, you're an entrepreneur, you just don't know it yet. And if you're caught in the job part of it, you're missing the best part about entrepreneurship.
And so, if you go become where you're in control of your time, you have freedom from time, freedom from money, freedom from relationships, freedom from work. And so, the goal of it all is that if you can sort of figure out how to be... If you acknowledge you're an entrepreneur and that you're in control of the, the...
You're, you're... I'll say it. You're an entrepreneur, and you're wholly accountable for your outcome, right? No one else is gonna help you out. In fact, the world's trying to prevent you from being successful, [00:35:00] to be honest. And so, if you understand those two truths then or accept, accept those two truths, then you're gonna realize that I need to do this a better way.
Because what you need to create is you need to create a world where you're working 30 hours, and not because you're gonna spend those time with the company, with your friends and family, et cetera, 'cause you need to think about how to do your business better. And so you gotta figure out that work that's filling up that 48-hour-a-week bucket, that's gotta get consolidated into minimum, in a, in a max 30.
Hopefully, you can get to 24. And then you need to start thinking about how you can start growing your business to achieve more doors, more profit. 'Cause you, you gotta... You, you... That takes some thinking. And if you're just doing the same thing you're doing every single day, and I've been there, I've done this myself, you're, you're just not gonna get there.
And there's a moment when you realize that, "Is this all worth it?" And that's the part that's really difficult, especially in our business, because the is it all worth it thing doesn't stop Friday 5:00 PM.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Guillermo Salazar: of work orders. [00:36:00] So not only are you working 48 hours a week, but let's just tack on another 96 hours of coverage, 'cause you're the on-call person, because you train your residents to escalate everything past your PMs right to you as a property management owner.
You're going it's, it's backwards. And so I would say like the opportunity to use AI and especially things that can rob you of being able to grow your business, grow your doors, grow your profit, is things that you should really be... Give that to somebody who's doing this as a business. 'Cause no matter what you vibe code, you might be able to vibe code 80%, even vibe code 83%, 84%.
That thir- 17% that you weren't able to vibe code through, that's the stuff that's gonna create problems for your life and for your business. Because it's it's still not a touchdown if you're on the 13-yard line. It's still just like 87 yards of offense and energy, but but no touchdown. And so when you gotta think about "How can I get across that goal line?
How can I structure what I'm doing to get there?" It's all about understanding what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing. I really, I really... Obviously, I've got [00:37:00] conviction with Iris and now with Nderu, that maintenance is something that should be done by people who are designing systems for the exceptions.
Because guess what? We saw one last week, there was a mouse in the food disposal, right? Did you plan for that? I know. Did your, did your SOP vibe? Did you...
Stacey Salyer: Oh,
okay.
Guillermo Salazar: It was live 'cause it was not on, but there's a mouse in the food disposal, right? Of course there was.
There's food in there, right? And it scampered across the countertop and went in the food disposal, tried to eat some food, right? And so that's scary and gross, but it wasn't part of your SOP. You didn't plan for that.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Guillermo Salazar: and you may never see that as a work order 100,000 doors.
But because we manage like that many doors, we see that sort of stuff and we think about that 'cause we were the ones that, that caught that, and we had to deal with that and manage that, not the property management. But now we've kind of created a rule for it. Every property manager that we serve, they all benefit from that consolidated information 'cause we understand it better.
And the same goes for like your taxes and all that [00:38:00] stuff. There's things that you can get distracted by. And I, again, I'm a full proponent that everyone should be vibe coding a little bit just to understand what's possible. But ultimately, that innovation, when it becomes something that you're gonna rely and bank your business on, do you want to be a technology company or do you want to be a property management company?
'Cause it's not all fun and games being a technology company if it's all homegrown technology. 'Cause like eventually you're gonna want to take a month off or you're gonna want to take a break and someone's got to manage that, and now you're still managing that 'cause technology lives 24/7. And like I've been on that end of the call my whole career where it's like something went wrong and now I gotta fix it, and that's the path that I chose.
But I'm not building a property management company. I'm not trying to grow doors or grow a property management profit. So that's, the thing that people gotta realize is that learn how it works so you know how to buy it
Stacey Salyer: Right.
100%.
Guillermo Salazar: why people should be vibe coding. If you don't know how it works, you're vulnerable on how to buy it.
But if you learn how it works, [00:39:00] then you know how to buy it and maybe know what to buy.
Stacey Salyer: Yep. Yep. And who to work with, right?
Guillermo Salazar: to work with. Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Yep. Yeah. And, and really looking at the cost. The cost is always a bit beyond the actual cost. The cost is just
Guillermo Salazar: the easy...
Stacey Salyer: the money is not even the cost.
Guillermo Salazar: No, like a CTO, this is like in the, in the mid eight- mid tens, was talking to me about, we were doing a database recommendation, boring snoozer. But like th- there was a free solution out there called Linux, right? And Linux looks free on a licensing basis 'cause it's open source, right? So it's free. But what does it cost you?
Well, now you've gotta ma- maintain it, now you gotta patch it, now you gotta do all this stuff. And so you could buy... And then you buy services to do that for you 'cause no one wants to do that. So everyone bought this you know, free license, but now you gotta buy all these services to be able to keep it up and running.
That's the same thing. And then what's worse is you end up having to hire people to manage that custom solution, and now you're paying a salary plus 40% [00:40:00] benefits cause you chose the cheap license. So understanding total cost of ownership, number one, and then understanding your total cost of distraction.
Stacey Salyer: Yes.
Guillermo Salazar: management company with 12 people or 15 people, and you got two people are just working on this code stuff and they're, they're working on it noon, you know, morning, noon, and night because they love it, but eventually they're not gonna love it anymore. Eventually they're gonna be like tired of it.
They're gonna be bored of it, and then what do you do then? 'Cause now you've got all of your infrastructures all knitted together based on this one solution, and it doesn't work anymore. So it's It works, but it's not innovating. It's not moving forward. And so it's just just understand the business that you're in and figure out there is trade-offs you gotta think about.
Understand how to use vibe coding and code and cloud code, et cetera, so you know how to buy it and what to buy. 'Cause you might find that there's things that you can have it do for you that are like really easy and low risk, and there are certain things that can create a bit of calamity if you had that, you know, had that done with a, a, homegrown solution.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I love all that, [00:41:00] for sure. I'm sure you and I could talk for hours and hours.
Guillermo Salazar: I mean, and again, I, I create my own stuff, but this is a history repeating itself thing over again. If you grew up in the early 2000s, you at some point in time opened a spreadsheet that was like a monster, right? And you didn't know what to do with it or how to fix it or, and it was wrong, and that person quit.
And you're like, "What do I do with this?" And they're like, "I don't know. Start again?" 'Cause you can't pull it apart 'cause it's like a plate of cold spaghetti. It's just gonna break. And so, you know, I built some of those. And so let's not do that over again It just, it takes a lot of work. And I just I, I do recommend that if you are thinking about it learn a bit about it so you can be a good buyer. But there's certain things you just shouldn't-- you should just, you know, recognize what has a lot of data and variability to it and just-- and know that's the key thing for AI is how predictable is the data.
Stacey Salyer: Mm. Yep. That makes sense. I love that. So cool. Well, before we wrap up, I'd love to kinda get your hot takes on what do [00:42:00] you think makes a really good company, like a property management company, sellable? And then if you were to go... If you-- Or maybe even we could talk about like, if you were gonna go buy one today, 'cause that, that will answer that question, too.
If you were gonna go buy a property management company today what would be, like, your top list of things that it should have? Or what, what should it look
Guillermo Salazar: Definitely. I would definitely look for doors per FTE. So how many doors you have per FTEs in a matter of FTE per door, however you manage that, but whatever that ratio is. So how many people it takes to run your-- to run that business on a door basis, one, 'cause that tells you how much productivity. Every business has a per FTE business KPI, or EBITDA per product, per FTE, whatever it is, something per people.
it can feel like a people business, but that can be a really good waste of people's time. So a per person business, and that includes everybody. If you're using a vendor at 100% or 40 hours a week, that's an FTE, number one. Number two, 'cause that's representative of how productivity are. Is it gotta be your door growth?
And so what's your sales pipeline look like? So what does that acquisition and sales pipeline look like? [00:43:00] If your pipeline looks like a lot of it's happening to us, not we're making it happen, I would downgrade that acquisition multiple because it could be just like a lucky thing that happened.
Maybe they absorbed something or something happened. They don't have a repeatable way of solving that, that revenue and door growth problem. So I mean, like I said earlier, like it's a-about like show me you can grow doors and show me you can run the business properly. And the number one expense in all these businesses is payroll.
So show me you're doing it with less people. I would filter on that. And then if you can-- 'cause the things to get there lower people and have door count requires discipline around your choices and your just, and your what you say no to.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Yeah. No, I love that. Well, that's awesome.
Well, yeah, I-- like I said, I'm sure we could talk for hours and hours. I'll have to come, have you come back on.
Um, maybe we can dive- Yeah. Yeah, maybe we can dive deeper next time into your experience with PE funds and VC-backed and, you know, the, those terms are thrown around in our property management world and you know, very [00:44:00] different than,
Guillermo Salazar: you'll find, I mean, you'll find that PropTech companies will be VC-backed, and you'll find that property management companies will be PE-backed. And they're both looking for one thing, right? A return on their investment. And you're gonna get a lot... If you're a property management company and it's PE-backed, you're gonna get a lot of pressure for time to get a, get a multiple in four to five-year window.
And then, I mean, you'll feel the same pressure on the VC side of things. But they're just looking at their-- they're looking at their numbers differently. You'll get a lot more attention in a PE firm, and in a VC firm you'll get kinda monthly monthly or quarterly, but it's gonna be like it's sink or swim in VC.
Whereas PE, they're gonna be in your business.
Stacey Salyer: Right. Okay. Well, that's a really good, good determination. And then, you know, what I teach is the business owner to go out and acquire in their market, which really there's way more of that happening than there is PE and VC.
Guillermo Salazar: Oh, 100%. And
Stacey Salyer: It's just not splashy. People don't talk about it.
Guillermo Salazar: No, they don't. And it's, it is the way to create an exit for [00:45:00] yourself, and it's a way to multiply your business. And so do it... And it's a way to get into a lot of trouble. Like judicious, do it judic-judiciously, so that you're intentional about who you're buying 'cause you don't wanna buy someone else's problem.
Stacey Salyer: Exactly. Yep. Yeah, there's all the tactical stuff in between. That's what
I teach, as well as the mindset piece of it. So
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a discipline that has to be considered 'cause it's, if you're gonna go door to door on a, the, the... I mean, as you teach, there's just opportunities to capitalize on a situation.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah,
Guillermo Salazar: And you gotta be able to look... You gotta know what those look like
Stacey Salyer: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar: and be ready.
Stacey Salyer: Yep, absolutely. Well, this was good.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for, for coming on and tell us what, what you guys are working on this year. Anything you want to share
about VetBrew or any- anything else?
Guillermo Salazar: ton of folks at Vendoru are gonna be at Broker Owner in the next week here. I'm gonna be in Dallas next week. Yeah, next week I'm gonna be in [00:46:00] Dallas doing a big thing at Apartmentalize. I think what you're gonna see from Vendoru, what to expect from Vendoru this year is a lot more conversations around what's possible with like commercial AI or vertical AI.
We're growing our partner set out, so we'll have more partners within the PMS's community, so we'll be more available for even more property managers that are out there. And I think you're gonna find like from us what you should expect is a, a broader, deeper conversation on door growth and property manager, property manager profitability and how that can affect your daily life, right?
What we can do to improve the people that are doing your business and growing your business, and how we can make that a much a more predictable way to run the business. And all using AI, right? As the, as the horsepower.
Stacey Salyer: Yep. That's awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing all of you
on the road in the next few months, and of course, continuing the conversation online. And everyone can find you on LinkedIn. We'll put everything in the show notes as well.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah. Yeah, [00:47:00] Guillermo Salyer on LinkedIn. There's only a couple of me. The only one that works for Vendoru, so you can find me there or [email protected] if you need anything else.
Stacey Salyer: Awesome. Okay, cool. Well, thank you again for coming on. It
was
awesome, and
Guillermo Salazar: me. Thanks, Stacy.
Stacey Salyer: a wonderful week. All
Guillermo Salazar: You too. Take care.
Stacey Salyer: Bye.
Guillermo Salazar: Bye-bye.
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 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, [00:48:00] explore the Built to Acquire program.
Don't leave it on the table. See you on the next episode.
