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: Today I have on [00:01:00] a great guest. We have been friends for a while in the industry, and he is the process guy when it comes to property management, so I want to welcome Ben with Black Sheep Global to my show today
Benjamin Serven: Thanks, Stacey. Happy to be here
Stacey Salyer: Yeah.
Awesome. So Ben, why don't we dive right in? For those of my guests who are listening who don't know you yet, I'm sure they would love to know a little bit more, like Black Sheep Global, what is it? What do you do? Where do you come from? Why are you the process guy?
Benjamin Serven: Sure. So maybe I'll start with the beginning and when we get to the end, I'll stop. How about
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, sounds great
Benjamin Serven: a very vague reference to a movie I can't remember the title of, but all right. So, processes. So I've been in the property management world for the last six years or so now. And like many I entered the property management world unintentionally.
But perhaps like few it was not because I was a realtor who happened to start managing some properties. Rather, I started working for a vendor in the [00:02:00] property management space and just kind of fell in love with the world of property management. Interestingly, I had actually tried to manage my own properties and found that I was horrible at
Stacey Salyer: Okay
Benjamin Serven: I tried that once and I'm like, "Okay. Nope, this is not my forte." And then, invested in a few properties as the, the financial guy and helped start up a small management company that's still running today up in northern Wisconsin. And then transitioned fully into the space of being a vendor.
So yeah, I've been in this space of process, nerdom, technology, everything related to building tools and technology for property management companies for quite a while now. And yeah, I've worked with about 250 different companies. As far as more about what we do to be a little bit more specific about that I know saying process is kind of a buzzword and rather unspecific.
To, to bring that a little bit more together, we help businesses that are experiencing the chaos that is small business ownership build structure and [00:03:00] systems to run the company that allow you to have consistent outcomes, great accountability within the business, and really help you to plan longer term
for your company so that you have a stable asset, which is what a business ought to be
Stacey Salyer: Awesome. I love it. Well, I know I talk a lot obviously about buying and selling on the show 'cause that's what it's about property management companies. But I am a huge proponent of making sure that your, your foundation's really good, right? I mean, I'm, I love a good SOP myself. I've even said that.
So I thought it'd be fun to have you on today to kind of talk about, maybe what you've seen with some companies you've worked with that have worked on acquiring or maybe acquired or, share some really fun, gory detail stories. Everybody loves a good story. So and, and, kind of why it's important to have things documented.
I mean, I know, myself, I can attest, raise my hand, it's really important to have everything super documented and, communication and have things flow. But and maybe we'll dive into a little bit [00:04:00] more too of how your valuation can rise if you've got things flowing smoothly and documented and all that kind of good stuff.
So, yeah, we do wanna kind of dive in a little bit and tell us maybe some areas that you've seen that have worked really well and what happened when you worked with some different companies.
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, so there's a couple of things that I observe about the owners of property management companies, and I think this is true about most owners of any companies. And that is that they typically are pretty aggressive people, right? Not a bad thing. It's really necessary in the world of, of business ownership.
You have to take risks and jump into things, and sometimes you don't think through all the ramifications of that. But it leads to opportunity, right? Because you're willing to take the risk. Now from the operator side of the equation, obviously risk equals bad. So we're not going to fall to the side of of making the complicated, risky choice very commonly.
But in order for your business to sustain growth and, become more [00:05:00] valuable time over time, it is necessary for there to be some kind of stability. So just to bring in maybe some, some stories and ideas here. I have a client who started with us, I want to say about three years ago. And at the time that they they joined us, they had about maybe eighty-five ninety doors.
So on the smaller side, established, growing definitely making things happen. But they had realized because the owner was not only aggressive but also an engineer, which is an interesting side note that they had to have processes. And in this case, they had brought on LeadSimple and that technology was exactly what they were looking for.
They just didn't have the time to build it, right? They knew they needed processes. They already had that. They had crossed that bridge, right? There wasn't a do we even need technology in the business kind of a question that was outstanding. They knew it. But they needed someone to really hold their hand through that process.
So we started working with them and began building out [00:06:00] processes for the eighty-five-door company that they had at the time. Now, I didn't know it when we started, but that owner had very aggressive growth plans and as we worked with them up to, I think it was about a hundred and twenty doors he reached out to us and said, "Hey, I've got a deal coming up and we're gonna buy another company, so we need you to help us get ready for that because we know it's gonna be chaotic."
And again, he had the wherewithal to know that things were gonna be challenging. So what we ended up doing for them is really just focusing in on onboarding. And ultimately what ended up happening is they were able to go from a hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty doors through that one acquisition. And they
did that with three team members because they had the processes in place.
Stacey Salyer: Really? Wow. Now, do you remember if they had any high churn or anything? 'Cause I hear that all the time, the myth of "Oh,
Benjamin Serven: You know what? That's an excellent question. I don't remember specifically, but the fact that I don't remember specifically I think is probably a good thing because if it had been bad, I would've heard about it.
Stacey Salyer: [00:07:00] Right
Benjamin Serven: In my opinion, that high churn comes from friction, right? If you have a friction-full process, you will lose clients.
And what we did with that, with, with our client was to make it as friction-free as possible. We remodeled their existing onboarding process. We basically created a second version of it for all of the new properties that already had, existing ownership agreements and, tenants in place and, like, all of the chaos that happens when you are taking on an existing book of business.
And because of that, they had a, relatively speaking, pretty seamless transition to dramatically increasing the number of doors under management. And because, of course, they're kinda bringing everything on, some of it's mid-lease, some of it's at the end of the lease, it was able to fall into the rest of their processes, which already accommodated for, lease turns that happened, every 12 months or so, and all the other processes just clicked in place because we had set it up-- we, we had set the board correctly for them to be successful.
So yeah, that's one, one example of some of the work that we do, and [00:08:00] that company has continued to do additional acquisitions. They've grown a good bit now. I think they're closer to 300 doors now, and they have a few more people on their team, but they're positioning themselves for another big
sprint in growth, and they're working on doing other acquisitions in their market.
So it's pretty cool to see.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, that's really cool. And so
again, they went from how many doors to, what was
it?
Benjamin Serven: I think their, their acquisition point, they were at about 120 doors and they went from 120
to 250,
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay. Wow. That's, yeah, basically doubled three people, but what I'm hearing you say is that they had a really good solid foundation already. You were able to basically go in and duplicate their onboarding process, but tailor it to just acquiring, which-
Benjamin Serven: That's right. And I think what's really important about that is that they overbuilt the system because they knew there was gonna be a future stressor, right? They didn't just build the business for, "Here's where we are today. Let's fix these problems that we're feeling right now." We did that, but then we built things for stuff that we knew was
going to happen because it was the [00:09:00] direction the company was going, and I think that made a massive difference
Stacey Salyer: Okay. And so when you're working with somebody, if like I was gonna come to you as a PMC owner, are you actually kind of working in more of a consulting type role? You're gonna talk with me, maybe interview me, talk about okay, well, where are you now? What are your future plans? What, what's your one, three, five-year goal?
Or, that kind of thing. Is that something that you incorporate into your process?
Benjamin Serven: Great question. So our
typical sales process, if you will, is much more about investigating the culture.
Stacey Salyer: Oh, okay
Benjamin Serven: And so we dig a great deal into the technologies for sure, right? We need to know kind of what's the playing field. But what I've observed in this space of systems building is that culture is usually the root issue.
Stacey Salyer: Hmm.
Benjamin Serven: And oftentimes there is a culture that is unintended because it just happened, right? And again, this is super typical. You have your your property or your, your management company [00:10:00] owner who is the entrepreneur who has the, the guts and the grit to go try to do something hard, right? And their attitude is usually, "Come what may, I'm gonna make this happen," right?
Which is the right person to be in that seat. Usually their number two is the operator who might be a little cranky, a little bit mean, really holds the line and makes things happen. Also very important person to have in that seat. And then once you have those two people, then you need people who are just operators who get stuff done.
And obviously, the game changes as you go along and you need to bring in, someone who's really hungry for sales and someone who loves people who can handle all of your HR needs, and someone who's got their, their nose to the grindstone on all the numbers. Like all these people are necessary.
But in that early stage, you usually have your devil may care owner and everything is a little bit crazy.
Stacey Salyer: Right, chaotic.
Benjamin Serven: So... And, and it's okay, right? This is just the, the initiation of a business. It's, it's how businesses are born, [00:11:00] right? It's chaotic. But in order to go from chaos to order, there has to be some sort of outside motivation for order
to exist, because otherwise it's just gonna continue to be more and more chaotic.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. And so when you're meeting with like the
chaotic.
entrepreneur, I mean, we all know and love them ourselves, ourselves even. Most of us probably looking in the mirror. Is... Do you find yourself kind of, is it easier to maybe work with the operator type person, like maybe once you kind of get set up?
Or is there an easier personality to work with in regards
Benjamin Serven: a good question. Again, you kind of need both. And I know I, I, I apologize, I didn't really answer your earlier question. You asked about, do we get into one, three, and five-year plans and all that. Yes, we do talk about that. But when we're talking about the origination of, of the idea, there's so much of it that is tied to how does the business run and who do-- who does this business want to be that often isn't defined, right?
[00:12:00] Most, and I, I hate to say this, but I've spoken to many different groups of property managers, and I try to ask them, "Who in this room has a five-year plan?" And without fail, it's 10% of, of people, if anyone. And that's not to, to, to be a diss at all. It's really hard to have all the plans in place.
Personally, at Black Sheep, we just about six... No, about nine months ago we finally got our three, five... I'm sorry, one, three, and five-year plans in place, and then we have our big 10-year vision that we're shooting for. And it takes a lot of oomph to make that happen. So again, no, no disrespect there, but it is, it is a challenging thing.
To answer your question though, about, who we like to work with we actually really like the chaotic entrepreneur because we feel like we can help them capture that energy that they bring and turn it into something that's really directed
Stacey Salyer: Mm. I love that. I love that
Benjamin Serven: And we don't see ourselves as a [00:13:00] replacement for having that person on the team who's kind of your, hard-nosed statement of policy person.
That's kinda-- You need that person. But where we see ourselves fitting is really in the technical executor seat, if you will. and honestly, we do work in that type of relationship as kind of a fractional CTO for a lot of our clients, where it's, they come to us with, "Here's a problem. We need you to fix this, and let's brainstorm until we figure out a solution."
And more often than not, we're able to apply some type of
technological solution to those problems. And uh, yeah, that's, that's often how it ends
Stacey Salyer: Okay. I love that. That's cool. So
if you've got a story, maybe tell us a very challenging one or something where in hindsight, if you could go back in time and maybe meet with that client before they made some crazy decision or some- something like that. I don't know if you've got something where, whether it's around acquisition or just, growth in general.
I'm kind of curious 'cause I know, on the flip side, like I talk to [00:14:00] obviously a lot of PMC owners too, and sometimes I'm honestly quite shocked and amazed at how people are running, their processes and, on really large teams. And I just kind of wonder, I'm like, "When are those wheels gonna fall off?"
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, I think it's really-- I, I agree with you. It's, it's fascinating to see how so many operators, again, regardless of whether we're in the property management world or not, I know we're talking about
property management, but I want property managers to know that they are not alone in this.
Stacey Salyer: Any small business for sure
Benjamin Serven: any small business, it is amazing how growth can happen despite the owner, when you're at that beginning, right, and it's all guts and grit and, we're just gonna force this to happen, it's amazing, right? But as soon as there's any level of consistency needed, then that's not so amazing. It's a lot harder for most entrepreneurs to fall into a consistent, I do the same thing day after day, month after month, year [00:15:00] after year, and achieve steady growth out
of that.
We're, we're typically, I say we as entrepreneurs are typically much better at sprints.
Stacey Salyer: Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, otherwi- we'd get bored, right? I mean, we're always off onto some new idea.
Benjamin Serven: yeah. And I think that, that actually leads into the, a story I'll, I'll share with you here because I, I think it's pretty relevant and illustrates the point well. So we had a client who came to us, I wanna say about two years ago.
And at the time, I think they had about 1,000 doors under management. And interestingly, this company
at the time, I wanna say they had close to 40 employees
Stacey Salyer: Hmm. Wow. That's a lot
Benjamin Serven: It was a lot, right? And what I learned as we talked with them through our sales process is they had effectively no systems that were documented.
Everything happened in spreadsheets that were owned by individual people, things that are not shared on on whiteboards on sticky notes, in people's email inboxes. And [00:16:00] the, the beauty of this was, again, they had grown to this level despite their inefficiencies. And and the, the how for that is that they had hired really, really excellent people.
And that is the, the patchwork that allows businesses to go from little bitty business to much bigger business without having systems. You hire really great people. But the problem with really great people is they're irreplaceable,
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Benjamin Serven: right? So in the case of this company they had built to about a thousand doors.
They had a large but wonderful team of great people. But they were starting to feel the pinch of of growth making things a lot more challenging because the owner, in a typical aggressive entrepreneur mode, was literally buying new businesses probably once a month. And small acquisitions, right?
Nothing massive. It would be, 10 doors here 50 doors here. As much as, a regular, some, some typical client might bring in. It wasn't a, a huge deal, but it was just enough friction [00:17:00] that it was causing his onboarding team to just be mad all the time because there was no smooth onboarding process.
There was no smooth sales process. There was no clear way for those new deals to enter their pipeline, get assigned to the right person, make sure they were onboarded properly, all the right information is collected, new leases are put in place. Like, all of those things, while they needed to be done, and in some cases they were being done, it was just done in the most, friction-y possible way that could be done.
Stacey Salyer: Right
Benjamin Serven: And so, the conversation with that business owner when I initially talked with him, was like, "How do I keep my team from, from murdering me," right? "'Cause I am trying to grow this company, but everyone's really mad at me right now, and I need to keep growing because how else do we keep the business alive?
But I also need to take care of my team. How do I do this?" So it really, again, kinda came back to culture. Like, how do I create a culture where we can grow? [00:18:00]
Stacey Salyer: Right
Benjamin Serven: And the answer was they needed documented systems, right? They needed tools that the the frontline of the company was able to rely on that allowed them to handle those new deals every time they came through, whether it was a new owner or another company that they acquired.
And they've continued on that acquisition mode funny enough. But there was a point there at the beginning of our relationship where I had to say to that company owner, "You need to stop buying new companies." And that was a funny thing. I never thought I would have to say that to anyone. It's when your kid says something ridiculous, it's like, "How are these words coming out of my mouth right now?"
Right? And it was a, a very... I think it was a bit of a lightning bolt realization for him of "Oh, I'm the problem."
Stacey Salyer: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah
Benjamin Serven: And all of this friction would go away if I would stop behaving the way that I'm behaving, right? And so ultimately what needed to happen was that behavior needed to be channeled, and it needed to be channeled through a process.
So [00:19:00] we built processes for them, and I'm, I'm not sure the current door count. I wanna say they're somewhere about 16, 1700 doors now. But that company has continued to grow. Right. They did take a break from doing any acquisitions. And we have continued to work with them to build out their systems.
And they interestingly kind of restructured how they were set up internally. With that reliance on great people, their model was a portfolio model. And so they have switched to a departmental model, which in my opinion, works a lot better as you're scaling a company. And that has allowed them to receive the new business
and to be much more efficient and to have the
systems that supported the growth.
So yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, and I bet the team feels so much better going to work. I
mean, 'cause
Benjamin Serven: So much. It's the '
Stacey Salyer: you just wanna do a good job no matter what you're doing, whatever your role is.
Yeah
Benjamin Serven: And, and it's a night and day difference in the relationship because in that sit- situation and for many of our other clients, we try to have conversations with the team too before we move forward with [00:20:00] working with anyone. And the culture truly has changed. People are happy and not stressed.
And yeah, there's still things that happen, right? It's property management. Peop- You're dealing with people, you're dealing with houses, stuff goes
wrong. But comparatively to two years ago, night and day
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, and it sounds like the
owner just had to take a short pause on acquiring because ... And that, that is a smart thing to do. I mean, the last thing you want to do is go out and sp- spending money, whether it's like door by door and you're still spending money on marketing and time, or it's, you're acquiring 50 doors from a realtor or whatever.
I mean, it still costs you time and money. And to take that little pause, get everything in order, get your team happy again, probably reconfigure, I mean, even staffing. I mean, I don't know if they still have the same amount of staff, but and do all of that and get everybody not hating the owner but loving the owner
Benjamin Serven: It's a very important component of building the business. You can't have your team hating you, right? There needs to be some good
copacetic [00:21:00] relationships, but it doesn't happen if you don't have systems in place.
Stacey Salyer: 100%. Yeah. So I think I, instead of
calling you the process guy, I think I'm gonna start calling you the culture guy. You're the, the culture company, which is actually really cool because I think that that is something that, I mean, even talking to you now I don't think a lot of us really dive deeper into ourselves and think about, oh, well, our company culture actually is probably the most important thing 'cause everything else just is kind of a result of that.
And it really makes a big difference too when you're acquiring, because it sounds like that particular client really didn't know what his company culture was. Like his identity, he didn't
Benjamin Serven: He was disconnected from it completely
Stacey Salyer: didn't know his company identity. He probably, I mean, He probably knew his identity somewhat.
But then, being able to figure that out, because then when you're going out to acquire, you need to know who you are and what your company is before you go out and buy something else, 'cause otherwise you might be buying something that doesn't even match.
Benjamin Serven: Yeah. A good friend of mine gave me a book many years ago. I think it was the [00:22:00] Harvard Business Review's Guide to Buying a Small Business. This was before I was in any meaningful business anything. And I remember reading it, and it talked about planning and building a business plan and all these things about planning.
And I was like, "Whatever. I'm just gonna go do the thing that's gonna make me the money, and that's gonna work out great," right? And the reality of all this is as you go in and you start making the money, it becomes very relevant to have a plan all of a sudden. And there's a, there's a level of growth that will never be achieved without significant thought and investment of time.
It just, it won't happen, right? You'll hit a ceiling, and you will go no further until you force that level of growth to happen. I think that's a much more personal thing than it is a business thing. Just the act of disciplining yourself to put your thoughts into a cogitated form that makes sense, that can be executed
upon.
Stacey Salyer: Right. 100%. But how cool is it, yeah, to intertwine all of that and really Yeah. they-
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, actually, [00:23:00] side note y- I mean, you, you said it here, right? We're, we're doing more culture things. That is one of the, one of the offers that I wanted to mention on this on this recording is we're actually doing a process culture workshop. And if that's something that listeners wanna find out more about feel free to reach out to me.
We'll make sure that my email and contact is in the show notes and everything. But I'd love to talk
to anyone who's interested in that more. I think it's just incredibly, incredibly important
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, that sounds really cool. So a process culture workshop. Is that gonna be offered online?
Benjamin Serven: Great question. Yes, it is 100% remote. It usually takes place over two calls. We have some extended conversations, typically about hour and a half to two hours, and we do two of those. And you walk away from that conversation having a, a 90-day plan to change your company culture. And it's, it's very tactical, right?
It's not just, "Hey, here's some, woo-woo stuff that we wrote down that makes you feel good." There is some of that because I think that's important too, but it needs to have a here's a plan, now execute on the plan, right? So yeah, [00:24:00] every, every one of those you get all the woo-woo and you get a complete 90-day plan that talks you through here's what you need to change, here's what you need to do actually to achieve the company culture that you're looking for.
And to be clear, it's not me telling you this is the culture that you should have. Rather, that workshop is about defining what's the culture that
you want and then how do you get to that.
Stacey Salyer: yeah. Identity. I, I always call it identity. The identity of yourself, right? And then, but really your business, because your business is an asset. It should have an identity to it. So that's so cool. Yeah. I love that. Well, yeah, we'll make sure all that information's in the show notes, so people should most definitely reach out to you about that.
So yeah, kinda segueing into some other stuff that you and I are working on. I'm a huge proponent of, connecting with other awesome, people in the space, and so Ben and I have, I mean, we've known each other for a long time. But we talked earlier this year about doing some different things together, and so I'd love to talk a little bit more about what we're doing together in [00:25:00] Portland, Oregon, July 16th.
It's an all-day event, plus dinner. It's pretty cool. So I'd love for you to share kind of what, what you're gonna be offering at that one-day event. It's you and I together. So you wanna dive in?
Benjamin Serven: talk about what that event is, right? So the, the-- We're titling this event The Acquisition Blueprint, and the intention of this event is that for anyone who attends, you are going to walk away with a blueprint to do an acquisition, right? Now my approach here is really gonna be focused more on the preparing to handle what an acquisition is going to give you, right?
Putting yourself in the position kind of the, the planning and the systems building and creation of that, all the things that need to exist to actually handle
the,
The new business itself. Now, Stacey, what are you gonna be talking about?
Stacey Salyer: Well, kind of the same thing. So, kind of how
you talked about like a roadmap for your business. So I'm gonna be talking about the roadmap or the buy box, I like to [00:26:00] call it, for acquiring. Because you really can't go out and start doing those activities until you're really clear on, like who you want to buy.
'Cause I've worked with several different clients. I do have people in my sprint program, and it's interesting because every single one they all wanna grow through acquisition, but they're all a bit different, like on, on their method, so I call it the map. So, that's what I'll be going through, and it'll be a workshop style.
So literally when you leave that day by the time you get to dinner, you're gonna have your buy box, your roadmap, and you could literally go out that, that night even if you wanna start making some phone calls, maybe after dinner
Benjamin Serven: I love it. And I think a key differentiator here in what we're talking about is that what I'm hearing from what you're gonna be talking about, it's kind of the big picture, right? Here's the things that you need to understand. Here's the things that need to be true, and like some of those business planning things that need to happen for you to actually even find a deal, right?
To get clear on what you [00:27:00] want. Whereas what I'll be talking about is a little bit more nitty-gritty. It's okay, here's how to plan for the specifics of, oh shoot, I have 50 doors that I'm now onboarding into my company. What do I do now, right? So there will be a, I think some really high level, like 40,000 foot, the big picture planning things that have to be in place, and then we're gonna get down into the dirt a little bit and look at some of the
things that have to be in place for those those new properties to actually work in your business.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. No, I think it's going to be a really, really fun time. I know we have... We- can we name the sponsors? Who we have? Yeah? Yeah.
Benjamin Serven: we definitely need to name the sponsors. Yeah, we've got Column Bank is gonna be sponsoring part of the event. I'm not sure who will be speaking yet from Column Bank, but they're absolutely amazing. If you're not familiar with Column Bank yet just to give you a brief overview, I think Column Bank is absolutely freaking amazing.
And the reason why is because they are a tech company, right? Now, I'm a tech nerd, so of course I think they're cool. But the reason that it's so impactful is they're not looking [00:28:00] at banking like traditional bankers, right? They are looking at it from a very AI forward, tech forward, how can we make all of the functionalities that one can possibly have to handle money and make it really, really easy?
So just as an example their product exists in an API, an open API format from day one. That is how they built everything, which is super meaningful when we're talking anywhere around automation or AI being able to talk to your tools or any of this. So,
Really amazing there. And then what about our other
sponsors,
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Then we have Live Oak Bank who they specialize in giving money to people who wanna go out and buy property management companies or, books of business portfolios. So, both of those experts will be there. I know Live Oak, they are kind of the lender in our space for property management businesses.
I've worked with them quite a few different times with several different clients. So they'll be there. They have [00:29:00] a 45-minute time slot to do a education session, which is, we really wanted to have everybody walk away with really being able to walk out of that room and feel super confident that they could start to go do those activities to purchase something.
They're gonna have two amazing people backing them, two different banks that do different things. And then your, like with Ben's stuff being able to feel confident that, hey, if I did start those activities to buy something, I'm gonna be super confident to be able to actually execute it and not turn out.
Right?
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, 100%. I'm really excited about this. I think this event is gonna be so cool. And it's gonna be limited space, right? So there's not gonna be that much availability. It's gonna be a small room. So if this at all sounds interesting, jump on it. We're keeping it super
economical so that really anybody can come and it should be absolutely
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, and I, one
thing that I started kind of promoting out there too is if you have a team, so let's say you own a [00:30:00] company and you've got a biz dev manager or, maybe a head operations manager or director of ops, I would say bring them. The tickets are only $197 for the entire day and dinner.
And we're also including breakfast and lunch.
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, all meals are
Stacey Salyer: yeah, so really cool. So I think with that it would
be, if you've got team members, that are gonna help you do some of the activities, I think it would be really cool to bring them as well. But yeah, space is limited. We don't have a lot of space, so
Benjamin Serven: Great. I'm excited about it
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, no, me too. So July 16th, that's a Thursday. It's going to be in Portland, Oregon. We'll have I do, in, in fact, the show notes, there will be a link to a landing page where you can read more about it and actually sign up and pay for your ticket and get registered. And like I said, we like to be efficient with time.
So we really wanted to make this an event where you could actually like, get work done versus just come and listen to us blab on and yap all day
Let's see here. Is there anything we didn't cover that [00:31:00] you wanna share about your business or things that you wanna do or highlight
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, I think the only other thing that I want to mention is we are, we are running a special offer here when this podcast launched, which I think is going to be next week. I believe it is going to be on the 16th. When it launches on the 16th, we are also dropping a promotion. And I was trying to think of a reason for this promotion beyond the fact that we want to do more promotions and we're, we're experimenting with that.
But it's going to be a limited time promotion, and it's actually my birthday on the 15th. So it's going to be the Benjamin's birthday promotion.
Stacey Salyer: I love it
Benjamin Serven: And we're, we're opening up five slots for a free workflow diagnostic. It has to be booked between June 16th and July 1st. And what's included in this, this is 100% free.
We will evaluate an existing LeadSimple or Apptly process that you have in your in your business identify any bottlenecks that we see, any holes, any issues. And then we'll also create a roadmap for how to turn it around. Right? Here's the [00:32:00] specific actions that we would take in order to flip this upside down and make it work exactly the way that it ought to.
And if you want help implementing that, then awesome, we'll put together a fixed scope. But we're only doing this for five property managers and this will be over as of July 1st. So, if you want to get some expert eyes on your systems, we would love to take a look. Just reach out. Again, we'll have links in the show notes where you can book a call.
But make sure to hop on this as soon as possible because we are just going to do this for the first five people
who, who book.
Stacey Salyer: That's cool. That sounds really good. That's a huge value for sure. You guys are experts in in all the things, so, love that. But yeah, I think, I think today was good. I think again, kind of like wrapping up I hope that our listeners were able to kind of tie in why it's so important that, you have a really good solid foundation.
If you feel like you don't, but you want to go acquire maybe like that one client you want to just get on top of it sooner than later. And then of course on the flip side if you're, hopefully you're building your business as an asset [00:33:00] or if you're listening and you're thinking, "Oh gosh, I do want to sell in a year or two and I'm not quite there yet," well just start now.
I mean there, there's... Yeah. It's, it's really important and I, and I would say, back in the day when I had my PMC it was really important to me. I had actually used monday.com. I called it my business brain. We had boards for everything. Every process was built out and really the biggest thing was about the experience.
I really wanted to make sure that the experience for the client, the resident, or my team and all of our vendor partners was really a great experience. So, I think keeping that in mind too even if you're, not really into processes, you should be because of the experience.
Benjamin Serven: Yeah
and having the, the experience planned allows you to do it consistently, right? I think our, our default is like, "Oh, well, I provide a great experience because I'm an awesome person," or, "I'm super nice." And that may be true, but you're not always gonna be there. Someone else needs to be an [00:34:00] awesome person who can do what you do, and that's why we have checklists and why we use monday.com or LeadSimple or Appli or fill in the blank, whatever software or tool you wanna insert.
It doesn't really matter.
You just have to have a system. And as long as you have a system, you can be successful
Stacey Salyer: and your company will be worth a lot more. Your valuation
Benjamin Serven: Oh, we were gonna talk about that. Okay. So this is an area where you have a lot more expertise than me. So tell me about valuations on a property that doesn't have systems
Stacey Salyer: Oh gosh. Well, I mean, if you're a buyer, that's a great deal because
Benjamin Serven: Yeah, exactly.
Stacey Salyer: you're gonna pick, pick it up for cheap. Yeah, I mean, so number one, I mean, like I've talked about this several times of, big red flag. Again, a red flag doesn't mean it's a no-go, but a red flag means stop and let's take a look at what you wanna pay for that is if everything lives in the owner's head, that's bad.
And then number two though, and I've seen this before as well, is might not live in the owner's head, but if it lives in a key person's head, also [00:35:00] bad. So, you're not gonna be worth as much. So if you're buying, that's great. But if you're wanting to sell, that's not great. And then even if you're buying, it's not necessarily great because you also have to evaluate okay, well, do I even have the bandwidth to buy that?
Depending on, how many doors it is and, what, what would that, how would that affect my team? So there's a lot of like strategy and everything that you need to be looking at and evaluating. So that's, that's a huge piece right there for sure.
Benjamin Serven: Yeah. And candidly, again, just jumping in here to, to toot my own horn. If you're thinking about buying and you wanna move forward with one of those really crummy companies, call us, right? We can help you build your business so that we'll be able to handle that, because it will be chaotic otherwise. It will be so much more challenging than it has to be.
It's gonna be challenging either way, right? Nobody says taking over a business is easy ever. But if you want it to be more streamlined, you've gotta have systems
in place, and there has to
be an overarching
plan to handle that entire transition
Stacey Salyer: Right. For sure. [00:36:00] Yeah. So, and then again, kind of going back, if things are like kind of halfway documented or, there's some stuff, some resemblance of some sort of documented processes, I mean, obviously the, the better it is, the, the more it's worth
Benjamin Serven: Yeah. Can we, can we talk like some actual numbers here? If, if we're talking multiples, what does that look like on a
bad company versus something that is really well-established?
Stacey Salyer: Oh, I mean, it's gonna depend. I mean, 'cause there's so many different factors for the overall multiple. And most companies are based on a SDE, which is your seller discretionary earning multiple. Out there in the world, people are always like EBITDA, but that's actually really for the larger corporations.
So,
Benjamin Serven: So let me ask you this. What would you say are the top three things that a property management owner can do to help their SDE to be a good number that really values their--
makes their company more valuable? What are the top three actions that they could take?
Stacey Salyer: Ooh, that's a really good [00:37:00] question. Okay, so top three, I mean,
the obvious is revenue. I mean, so if you're only charging a management fee and a lease-up fee, I would look at that immediately and see what you can modify within your business depending again on what market you manage in. Two, I would look at...
Oh gosh, I mean, there's so many. Now I'm trying to think. Sorry. They'll have to edit some of this.
Benjamin Serven: Again, again.
Increased revenue
Stacey Salyer: revenue. Yeah, I would look at two, I mean, you're gonna... Definitely processes, systems, like what you're using for a tech stack, if you're using any sort of tech stack, 'cause that's all gonna kind of play into efficiency of your company which is also kind of your payroll.
So it's kind of all together, I guess. You could look at, you would look at that. Other key factors would be, you know, your vacancy rate. And then of course, making sure your vacancy rate is good. In fact, I just dropped a show, well, it'll be a week ago by the time everyone listens to this one with Amy Reddick, who talks about we talked [00:38:00] about the accidental landlords and how you can teach them how to do some occupied staging to make sure that their pictures and everything in the home shows really well.
So there's some little tricks that you could im- you know, implement pretty quickly on that. So I would say, I mean, those are some big ones. Is there any other, any others that you were thinking of that I did not name?
Benjamin Serven: No, I think those would be the... I think what, what I, I typically go big picture because this is an area, again, where I have less expertise. So I'm like, okay, we need to make more money, we need to spend less, right? So that's number one. And then we need to build efficiencies, right? Which is typically most easily done by looking at systems, in my opinion.
And then you need to look at performance, right? What is your team doing or not doing? Are they in adherence to the the minimum requirements for their job description, right? And if they're not, can you either correct that behavior or can you find someone else who can achieve that behavior? Those are some of the things that come to mind really quickly.
And again, [00:39:00] less of my area of
expertise, but I think all those, all those
pieces still
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, 100%. And yeah, definitely, labor efficiency, especially with AI. I mean, there, there's so many different things nowadays too. I mean, it's hard to just pick three. But so, but those are things that we work on inside my program as well. So I do have a, my program, the four-month sprint program, because, entrepreneurs love to sprint, right?
Benjamin Serven: Yeah. Tell me, tell me more about the Sprint Program really
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. So it's four months. You walk
in and when you leave, you leave with your own personalized roadmap as far as where you start, all the things that you need to do in the middle, and then where you, end up. And you learn everything in between.
So the biggest piece is I teach what I call the messy middle. So number one, I'm teaching you how to build out your acquisition engine. So I think 99.9% of all PMCs have a like door-by-door growth acquisition engine, right? But I'm teaching you actually how to build out your acquisition engine as far as like go out and buy companies.
[00:40:00] Yeah, And so when you walk in you basically, you have a specific goal for yourself. We narrow that down. We do a one-to-one kickoff call, and then we do two group calls a month where we teach a lot of what to look for, what are red flags, green flags, how to really dive in, how to do a proper evaluation.
What does SDE mean? Do you actually use EBITDA? are you looking at top-line revenue? So all the things that people ask on Facebook but you actually get answered by an expert, and I teach you how to do all that. So when you, when you walk out and leave, people have already started the activities.
It's not a program where you come in and listen to me for four months. You actually start day one and starting to make calls and book meetings, and you have me by your side and go from there.
Benjamin Serven: And with that program, do you find that most of your members or attendees are purchasing a company during the period of their relationship with you? Do you offer like coaching beyond the four-month program? Is there [00:41:00] like the hand-holding version where you just walk me through how to buy the company and help me do it?
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. So that's a good question. So the Sprint is a new program so I've just launched it?
So once people graduate, I will have a specific Sprint graduate community that they can join for a monthly fee, where they'll still have access to me and be able to, ask general questions, and we'll do a call once a month just to kind of keep updated.
And then I do have a opportunity for my Sprint graduates to work with me on a one-to-one case-by-case basis if they get into a transaction and they want my guidance. But, due to my limited time and bandwidth, that will be only reserved for my Sprint clients, my former Sprint clients. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Benjamin Serven: Nice. Cool. Love it
Stacey Salyer: Awesome. Well, I wanna thank you so much for coming on the show today, and I'm really excited about our event. Sounds like you have some really cool stuff coming as well. Your birthday next week. That's exciting. 36. You're [00:42:00] still so young. So yeah. That's awesome. And, thank you everybody for stopping by the show today and taking a listen.
And like I said, we'll have all the information in the show notes about all the awesome stuff that's happening this summer, and I would say just get right on it.
Benjamin Serven: Thanks for having me,
Stacey Salyer: All right. Well, thanks so much for coming. All right. Have a great day
Benjamin Serven: See ya.
Stacey Salyer: Look, there's the piano right at the end. That's awesome.
That's so funny. It sounds good though
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 [00:43:00] 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.
