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, to the [00:01:00] Stacey Salyer Show, where we talk about buying and selling property management companies, plus a few things in between. Today, I have a pretty cool episode to bring to you. , I'm very excited because it is one of my favorite topics, although I feel like we've probably talked about it to death, except it's just beginning.
So we're gonna, we're ... Today, I have, David Normand with me with Vendoroo. He is a twenty-plus year veteran in property management, and he's gonna jump in here in a minute and introduce himself. But I just kinda wanted to set the stage for what today's episode is going to be all about. Now, we normally talk a lot about buying and selling property management companies, although I do believe this has a lot to do with it.
But the main premise of our episode is really going to be dispelling the myths of AI and kind of getting to the root of what AI agents really are and what we're talking about at conferences or online or all the places in between [00:02:00] about saying, "Hey, I'm gonna have this AI agent come in and help me," or, you know, take a place and do admin stuff, whatever it is.
But we're gonna let, , our expert today kind of jump in and, , maybe do some hot takes, dispel some myths, educate us, , I'm super excited about this episode. So welcome to my show, David.
David Normand: Awesome, Stacey. Thank you for having me. I appreciate this opportunity to kind of really fulfill kind of like a personal motivation for me, which is speaking to all of my fellow operators in the space. You know, as you had mentioned, I have been in the industry for 20 years. , I started out, , actually as a leasing agent for a 80-door small property management company in Southern New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston.
, Eventually became like, head of maintenance and director of operations, like the typical pathways a company's growing
mo- we... Right? And, , you know, it was really cool. We, we were like young, energetic. We actually grew that company from about 85 doors to just under 600 doors in over four years.[00:03:00]
Uh, yeah, yeah, and, and, you know, our whole, method, and we had this really cool, like, pitch, right? Dave is your guy,
Stacey Salyer: Dave is your guy. That
was it? That, you went out on sales calls, you're like, "Dave's the guy."
David Normand: Here's my cell phone, here's my thing. We can take care of you. Like you, you're gonna have like Dave as your guy type of thing, right? So
I was the operator guy. But, but I say that to, , preface that like eventually I burned out
because Dave could not be everybody to everything, and owners became dependent on "No, I just wanna speak with Dave, and I wanna be with Dave," and residents wanna be Dave.
And I slept with my cell phone next to my head for over five years,
right? And, and eventually I was just like, "I just like need a break," right? "I just
need to step
Stacey Salyer: And how, how old were you during that timeframe about?
David Normand: I started when I was, , twenty-five. I, I
entered into... Yeah, so that was
when I first started. So now, you know, I, had gotten married, I had my first two young kids. [00:04:00] My wife was like, "You're not happy." Like , you know, like,
you know, it was, it was about, you know, now here I am, twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old.
, And then I, I had a really cool opportunity. I was kind of taking a step back and just evaluating, like I learned all this knowledge, what am I gonna do with it?
And I got the opportunity to actually become the director of rental operations for a contract for Fannie Mae,
where I was overseeing all of their foreclosed rental properties throughout like thirteen states throughout the Northeast, right?
Stacey Salyer: Dang, that's a big job, especially back... So that was after the crash, obviously.
David Normand: yeah, we're, yeah, we're talking just
post-crash, you know, the Dodd-Frank Act came in, Cash for Keys is really a big X, like you can't throw people out anymore, honor the terms of the lease, and all of a sudden Fannie Mae found themselves with all these rental properties and be like, "What do we do?"
Right
, So I got to spend some years doing that. , And then, you know, one day I get a phone call from somebody that's like, you know, "Hey, this regional single-family, small multifamily, [00:05:00] like concept of like managing properties all over was kind of like new to a lot of people, right? Everyone was so condensed.
Like I was in my city, I was in my state, and now all of a sudden Fannie Mae's like, "We have a rental portfolio throughout the country." And then that was my introduction to begin working with SFR REITs who were trying to figure out the
same thing. You know, I bought 100 properties in Oklahoma, I bought 100 properties in Washington, and so I, worked with them and did maintenance logistics for a number of years in that
space.
, Managing single-family houses all over the country. , Really interesting, super grind. Learned a lot, but I preface all this always to say to everybody, my fellow operators, you know, it didn't matter if I was managing three hundred doors or thirty-five thousand doors, the issues were all the same.
That's what I
came away with after that journey, right? Stuff breaks, things happen, but the one issue that I always could not figure out, and at one point, Stacey, I had fifty-five maintenance coordinators that I was responsible for,
okay?
Stacey Salyer: 55. [00:06:00] Wow.
David Normand: and they actually asked me, they were like, "Hey, we're gonna give you an office."
And I'm like, "I, I don't want an office." I said, "I need a cubicle in the middle of everybody so that I could like run around and ask questions and help people." Like I had to try to be everywhere, all over the
Stacey Salyer: Okay. So these 55 maintenance coordinators, you're in like a big building. I'm imagining this big building, and it's like cubicles of every, you know, these 55 humans on phones. And I mean, I know. I mean, I've been in the industry too, same, you know, 22 years, right? And it's,
The same stuff
David Normand: Managing work orders, finding whether they, you know, people were
finding vendors, managing work orders. You know, everyone had a kind of a role, right? People were
doing theirs,
Stacey Salyer: Right. Okay. And so you're supervising these 55 humans, and then they, they're like, "Oh, we wanna put you in the corner office because you've earned it." And you're like, "No, I need to be on a, like a stepladder in the middle of the room."
David Normand: Yes. I need a megaphone in the middle, and I would literally
just kind of sit there and people could just raise their hand and I would like run over and like, "What [00:07:00] are you facing?" and I remember back in the day, I actually used to take a piece of paper and I would write on it the FedEx method, and I would
put on it, I would hand draw this literally for everybody, that I would have conveyor belts.
And I said, "At the end of every conveyor belt, you need to have a decision because if not, the boxes start piling up."
Like, that was like the first like AI
Stacey Salyer: Okay.
David Normand: right? right?
Like a piece of paper and I would put on it like ticket comes in, decision, and I would at the end of it like, "Do you know where this is going?
'Cause if you don't, you're gonna have a problem."
Stacey Salyer: Okay, I love that. I love that. And so I love, I love that you've set us up, , because I think a lot of people in the industry, I think there's a big group of us, of course, that love AI, and we're, like, super curious, and we know that it can do some really cool things for our business.
There's also a lot of people that are very skeptical because they've been in the business forever, and they're like, "Well, I know better." , "Here's these people coming in, and they don't know anything about what we do." But obviously, I'll be honest, I have never managed 55 maintenance [00:08:00] coordinators at one time. I've managed a few, but not, not 55 . And definitely not in a big cubicle room. So how did you get into, , working with Vendoroo, and, like, when did you decide, like, "Oh, I wanna, wanna venture off into kinda more the , tech world," right?
David Normand: Yeah. So, you know, I had spent a lot of time, like, you know, like I was saying, working in the REIT space and working with people. I saw that technology was starting to evolve and, , I was like, "I think we can automate a lot of this." And I was kinda doing it myself and, and working with tech providers, and I got a phone call one day from a friend, and he said, "Hey, listen man.
I know you're passionate about this stuff, and I know this other guy," our CEO, Reza, at the time.
"He's like really passionate about this as well too, and he's kind of like thinking about it a different way. And I think if the two of you get together..." And I still remember, I was standing in my driveway at my house, like kinda questioning, "What am I doing the next step in my life?
Like, where am I going?"
And literally an hour later my phone rang, talk about like,
divine intervention. And he's like, you know, he's like, "I think the two of you need to, like, meet." And we [00:09:00] met, and we just like talked for like a month , and he came from, like he was more from the tech side, AI. He, he
like knew about this emerging technology and was really deeply involved in it.
And, , kind of like that was the spark, and now we're here.
So
Stacey Salyer: Okay, that's so cool. Okay, so let's get into what, what does agentic AI really mean? Because I think a lot of times we hear AI and people are like, "Oh yeah, I totally use ChatGPT. I had it, like, make a funny, funny photo for me, and I put it on Facebook." , , you're doing some maybe general stuff.
I mean, I use a lot of Claude personally. I have a lot of... I have, like, now 5 million Google Sheets that Claude has made, and probably way too many. what is agentic versus, like, just the regular AI? Like, what does that do?
David Normand: And, and I love when people ask this question because, like, I always preface again, I'm from this space, I'm an operator, so I'm gonna t-talk terms I hope that people will like, make it real, okay?
!Potential Reel Somewhere in All This!
---
David Normand: Right. So all right, a [00:10:00] chatbot, okay? When you hear
somebody say chatbot, that is a box that has controlled the if-then, yes, nos, and you're really kind of limited to like, "If you say this, I do this.
If you ask me this, I
do this." Kind of like, think like a script,
okay? Like we all know what a script is for an answering service. A chatbot is just like a little bit better than that, right?
Stacey Salyer: So like on that FedEx conveyor belt, 'cause like we'll go back to your FedEx analogy 'cause I like that. I picture that the chatbot as it's very limited, it's got the script, and it's eventually gonna hit a, a roadblock of this is the end of this particular conveyor belt,
David Normand: where now in the agentic AI space,
we're no longer confined,
okay?
We are entering a space of saying, "This is a persona. This is a, , a duplication of myself. This is
if I can think it, I could probably achieve it." Okay? It's expanded, and give you an [00:11:00] example.
I'm gonna give you a detailed example, then we'll jump back out to this conversation so people can follow along with me, right? So I don't have to train agentic AI on how to troubleshoot a 10-year-old washing machine at 10:00 PM at night that has detected the make and model and figured out that the little latch on top of it was just gunked up with soap and grime, and it needs to wash it with some hot water, and then the resident could use their washing machine again at 10:00 PM at night, and that emergency was then resolved for that person, and she was happy as anything.
You didn't have to train that. It's learning. It's growing. It's understanding your outcome, what you're trying to do. It's using wide open source and models to speak to hundreds of other, other agents and figure out, "How can we solve this issue? Because I know that my creator, my person who owns me, their intent is to help this resident at 10:00 PM, not to say if-then yes/no."
Right?
So it's a much different outcome, right? Fiduciary duty, empathy, consideration, resident [00:12:00] support. These are the foundations of agentic AI, not, "Sorry, I can't help you. I know you're mad, but if you don't answer this question, I can't move forward."
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay. So it's really more thinking. I think the debates I get in with my friends is, well, how does that even work? Like, I-- Okay, for ex-- For example, you know, friends I, I chat with, they use AppFolio or, you know, Rentvine, Buildium, whatever, one of the PMS systems, , for their work orders. How... Like, , how does that even work?
How does it know what to do? Like,
David Normand: In that scenario, , there's also a difference there when you're talking about AI-assisted workflows. You're kinda still a little bit in the chat body if-then yes-no confined space
Versus persona, outcomes, intent, right?
, Do I speak in a tone in a conversation that works well for your residents in South Carolina versus [00:13:00] maybe speaking in a tone or a conversation that works well for your people in New York?
Attention spans are a lot different in those two areas, right? So that's when people set back, and then I talk to my fellow control freaks, my fellow operators,
and when I got excited about this, I realized going back to me sitting in the middle of that cubicle, I finally said, "I believe that this is the way that I can actually duplicate myself to be on every work order at once," versus trying to manage everybody to be like me when they're working on the work order.
That's a big shift,
right? You can have 10 Staceys or 10 Davids versus having one of you and then trying to teach everybody to be like you.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
Right.
David Normand: That's the big shift
Stacey Salyer: Okay. So I think that, yes, and I love that. That's like a mic drop moment.
David Normand: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: a big mic, it. , So that kinda goes back to even the [00:14:00] beginning of your career when it was like, what was your saying? Everybody...
David Normand: David is your guy
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, David is your guy. So now you could actually say that, is what you're saying, with
David Normand: I could say that if I had a portfolio of 20,000 doors or if I had a portfolio of 100 doors, I could now say David is your guy. Yes.
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay. Because you've got the agentic. Okay. So how, how does somebody, like, train their agentic AI? I mean, I guess I'm just trying to figure out, like, how to best explain it to my audience and how that, that kinda works, 'cause I'm sure there's probably still people listening that are very skeptical.
So what, what, what kind of things do you talk about?
David Normand: , So this is where I feel that the real next hurdle in our industry, this is where we're kinda at in this journey, okay?
We all know AI is here. We were all told at a conference we have to start using it. This is where the industry is shifting. And now we're introducing AI teammates into our office, [00:15:00] and we're going, "Well, work. Like, go," you know?
, And we're not realizing that what everybody missed out in all those conferences as we're all learning and talking about is no one just said to anybody, "Who is really good at hiring an employee here?" And you see, like, 80% of the room raise their hand. "Fantastic. You're ready for AI.
Who struggles with hiring an employee?" The other 20% raise. "Okay, you need consulting to get ready before you introduce a teammate." No one has ever said that to the audience,
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Okay, so, so what I'm hearing you say is that if you struggle with team building or even recognizing what kind of team member you need or
David Normand: Processes, documentation
Stacey Salyer: That, that really you need to actually step back a little bit before you even add on another layer. Because to me, it sounds like, , 'cause I, I meet with different people all the time that, you know, like, when they get really stressed out, they're just like, "Well, I hired another VA."
I'm like, "Well, what's the VA gonna do?"
David Normand: That's what I [00:16:00] see people doing. I'm throwing in an AI teammate, like just chucking
it in. What are they doing?
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. So it's the same with AI is what you're saying, with the agentic AI. , You don't just start, like, throwing it on top of a hot mess. So if you're a hot mess, a little bit of a fire, we don't just, like, add some fuel to the fire.
We need to
step back.
David Normand: I try to make this really simple for people, right? When I'm consulting with people, and I've done hundreds of these now, people are shocked when I tell them the very first thing that you need to do when you're, onboarding your AI teammate, is
Stacey Salyer: Mm-hmm.
David Normand: give it a name
Stacey Salyer: Okay. Any name? They can name whatever they want
David Normand: Some people give it a name of, you know, Tiffany or Maya or Frank or John. Other people do things like, , Rue something, their name of the... You know, they, they m- come up a name, right? And the
psychology behind that is because they immediately now it helps them go, "Oh, I know how to hire an employee," right?
"But this employee's coming to me with 15 years of maintenance experience. They already
know how to do [00:17:00] all triage. They already know how to do everything I'm asking to do. They know how to work in my PMS system. Now my role is to trust and verify their work, but also then to try to begin to teach them of what's unique and special about us."
Just like if I was working with an employee that I hired who came over from another property management company, I would love their experience, but I'd be careful that they weren't bringing the habits of that other property management company into my business, and they were understanding how we like to work, right?
, Is your company pro intense triage for work order avoidance, or do you want fewer questions and your residents 'cause you want to get that maintenance through and get it dispatched,
right?
Stacey Salyer: Okay.
David Normand: Okay.
, You see now the
thing, right?
Stacey Salyer: so what I'm hearing is the business owner or whomever's in charge of hiring and basically training really needs to know the identity of their business. Does that sound
correct?
David Normand: Bingo. right? Who are you trying to represent [00:18:00] to the world for your business? Okay. Right. Empathy, strong emphasis on customer resident and satisfaction. And you can actually go in and like when you're looking at your agent, and you're looking at the questions that they're talking with your resident, and you could like adjust behavior.
"Hey, just, you know, try to be a little bit more kind and use more thank yous and pleases in your welcomes."
Right? Right? Like, isn't that something you would tell your employee if you were listening to them on the phone, if you were hiring a new receptionist? "Hey, you know, I'm big on customer service here.
You know, when you begin on a phone call with somebody, take a minute to ask them how their day was. Don't just jump right into their issue."
Right? That would be something that a person's doing to try to separate themselves from the competition in their local market,
right?
Stacey Salyer: Interesting. Okay. And so now with agentic AI, I don't wanna use the word assuming, but as you're training, if you were David the, my AI agent, I could tell you that one time,
and then you would now remember, and it would just, you would-- I wouldn't ever have to remind you again,
David Normand: [00:19:00] No, you would go
in and you,
Stacey Salyer: simple thing
David Normand: yeah, you're looking at your things and you're just kind of giving it some like, you know, global feedback. And then, , as you're looking, you'll see it's trying to do it, and then maybe you go into a specific work order and you're like adjusting. Here's a great case.
I would've said here in this situation, like another thank you or we appreciate you, right? , And,
and this is where, and the reason why I'm putting an emphasis on this, Stacey, okay? This is when I see the light bulb moment go off in our control freak nature inside of this industry, and they can really say, "Wow, I can be everywhere at once."
'Cause a lot of us feel that if I handled every maintenance work order, things would go really well,
okay?
Right? We-
But...
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, I have-- Yeah, I hear that all the time from my friends who
David Normand: Yes. We... "
Yeah
Stacey Salyer: the biggest part of our company, and we-- if I'm not handling it, then it's just gonna fall apart." And I'm like, "You're actually really the bottleneck, but hey, , let's keep..."
David Normand: Bingo. Bottleneck of scale and growth and all these
things, right? So that trust phase, so the-- when we're getting [00:20:00] ready for working with agentic AI, what do we need to think about? All right. All right. , Like a new employee, it's gonna take me 30 days to really get to know that employee, right? That takes some
time.
Let's get to know. Let's not judge them. Let's not believe that they have the worst intentions. Let's get to know them, right? And then the next 30 days, I'm gonna spend, like, refining and tuning them in, right? Delegating. And th- that, that last 30 days, now I'm really kind of saying, "I trust you, but I'm just gonna verify you."
Right?
And isn't that the same thing that we have when we hire an employee? , It takes us 90 days to really kind of feel like we trust them,
but now we're just spot-checking, right? So it's no difference.
Stacey Salyer: . So when you are counseling other control freaks, um, I mean, I'll admit, I'm a control freak, are you finding that they resonate more with that? Are they seeing it kind of more like, "Oh, I get it, 90 days, that makes sense for like good training"? And really, 90 days isn't even that much time for initial training.
, Really it takes... I've always thought it takes a good [00:21:00] year for a human to really understand the whole property management workflow, just because usually a lease is a year long, and you know, that kind of thing. , So do you find that people understand that a little bit better or easier when you're
David Normand: Yeah. So what I created, and I'll actually send it to you after this, is we just published our first, it's called the Four Bucket System. It's the first method. And, and now after two and a half years, there is a new methodology for how we manage maintenance, okay?
So where everybody has been stuck in between is they're going, "All right, I know things have changed,
but I don't know what to do."
Okay? , Right? And so in that book, you'll see, for example, there are five very specific reasons why your AI teammate will fail you. Okay
So for example, number one, interruption without context. And I'll give you an example of this, Stacey. You just hired me as an employee. We're not talking about an agent right now.
You hired me, David,
okay? [00:22:00] And you said, "David, every time the phone rings, I want you to use this script. And if it's this issue, these are the questions I want you to ask that person about that issue." And it's my first day and I'm all excited, and that phone call comes in and I'm talking to that resident, and Stacey, you walked over in the middle of my phone conversation.
You hung up the phone, you assigned the vendor in the system, and you walked away because you knew what to do already
Stacey Salyer: Mm.
David Normand: Right?
Stacey Salyer: a not a very good trainer, is it?
David Normand: How would I feel as a, as a human? Let's not even talk about the agent right now. How would
I feel as a human? Insecure, unsure. This is what you told me to do. Now I'm not sure what to do.
Low confidence.
An agent is the same, an agent is the same way. An agent thrives off of positive feedback and instruction, and the more you're telling it, "Good job," you can actually do that in the Root system. You can give it a good job. It knows it's gaining more confidence and more confidence handling that, that I'm doing it the way that you want me to do that.
Okay?
Stacey Salyer: Interesting. Okay. Okay
David Normand: , And then when I think [00:23:00] about that, again, to the eighty percent of the people in the conference that raised their hand, said, "I'm great at hiring employees." Now you know how to onboard an agent. Okay, cool. I know how to do this. This isn't tough, right? Number two, I'll just give you the two top ones as we continue here.
Number two, employee fear. Off the charts, okay? But why? It's not so much that they feel that this teammate is now going to replace them. They are not s- clear and certain of what their new roles and responsibilities are, okay? So I'm no longer asking my maintenance coordinator to see if Tim and Jennifer scheduled a toilet issue.
I'm asking her to monitor the system and detect in real time, is there anybody who's expressing frustration inside of our entire resident community, and can you go help them? Because your AI
teammate just flagged a call that it was listening to and said that this resident just said to this vendor, "Hey, you told me you were gonna be here thirty minutes ago.
It's been four [00:24:00] hours. I'm really upset." Go deal with that. Not the good workflow that's handling over here, okay? So as owners, as leaders in this industry, we now have to take a step back, again, to your point about who's the identity of our company and saying to our team members, "I am pulling you out of quote-unquote low-value tasks," okay?
I want you to focus on experience, vendor reliability, Google reviews." , "This is where I want you to spend your time." And I just think about, , I think we can start attracting a whole new talent to the property management industry because we're not asking them to manage tasks anymore. We're actually to work in their creative space now, which I think is really exciting,
.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, kind of more that concierge creativity, , making people happy. , Almost like a Disneyland
David Normand: Totally. You, you have a Disneyland of insights that you know that, for example, I love the Disneyland analogy. Now you'll know, , customer in row has been waiting three hours, is dying [00:25:00] of thirst. Go bring him a bottle of water and a free ice cream ticket to like, you know, Mickey, and you show up and do it.
That's what Disney does, right? And all of a sudden,
like you're like blown away. We have always been stuck in this industry of waiting until a fire is on our table to find out
about it, okay? An owner has called you 'cause the resident has their phone number, okay? An email comes in or an owner show-- or a resident shows up at your office,
"Hey, I'm really upset."
Now I can see when that spark is happening and put it out before it turns into a fire, okay?
. That's the new identity that agents are getting with us along that. So back to getting prepared and introducing and getting ready for our customer, for our people that are thinking about this.
All right. I'll give you another in the detail to help show you the separation between chatbot and agentic AI. And this
is one of my favorite maintenance notes that I've ever seen out of all the tens and tens and tens of thousands that I see. Inside of our [00:26:00] maintenance notes is how we hold our tribal knowledge about all the little things that we know about residents in our properties, right?
We know these little things or we have them in our head. And this property manager put in the maintenance note and said, "The resident's been living with us for thirty years. She's ninety years old.
Never attempt to triage or troubleshoot her with she submits in a work order. Just thank her for her residency and assign a vendor." Okay? That's agentic AI. I took that tribal knowledge, that fear that I think as a property manager that I'm holding in my head, and I documented it, gave it to a policy. And so if that work order comes in in six months, I know that that's the experience that that resident is going to have.
Stacey Salyer: Mmmm
David Normand: Again, control freak gets that, right?
Those are the little things that we feel that we add value to our property management portfolio.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, no, I love that. So it's really-- And I know I've talked to some of you on your team before in the past about how I believe, , if we haven't already started, but for sure in the future, we'll [00:27:00] be able to change the experience of property management by really elevating kind of more of that concierge-type service.
Because forever and ever, and I'm sure you did the same thing, managed the same way, was like, "Hey, this is my business. This is how I manage. It's me, Stacey. I'm in charge. This is my company. If you wanna be my client, you follow these 25 rules." And, you know. And instead, what I, I believe to be true is that as we move forward and we're able to really start deploying more agentic AI into our systems, and we're able to elevate our real humans, we're actually gonna be able to create some really cool experiences for people and be able to offer, I think, a variety of services because of that reason.
Again, back in the day, you know, when I had several hundred doors under management, I mean, the human brain can only manage so much. So you
can have
David Normand: limited by the amount of processes that we could do, for sure.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. And you can have all the notes you want in AppFolio, Buildium, [00:28:00] whatever, , but at the end of the day, humans are humans, and, you know, it only takes one time if you're trying to manage by exception as a human, and it's very hard to do.
But I believe that as we are using agentic AI more, we'll be able to manage by exception far significantly than we have in the past. And
David Normand: This owner handles all their maintenance,
okay? That's point. And the agent knows
don't assign a vendor and escalate it to the owner or this s-situation here, right? So,
so, you know, I think we've done a good job, right, of laying the fact down of like helping people understand that this is the employee. Okay, I'm understanding its constraints, right?
All right. So David, , then the next question that I get from people, , is like, what do you see that's happening in the marketplace now,
right? Tell us, Tell us, the benefits. Tell us the new benchmarks, right? And I think this is really good, especially for your listeners who are thinking about purchasing property management companies, okay?
!Potential Reel Somewhere In Here!
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[00:29:00]
David Normand: Here's what I would tell them, right? There's, , two significant new benchmarks that have been established in the industry that the person across the street from you is probably operating on now, okay?
Number one, the new threshold for responding to owners and residents is somewhere in between fifteen seconds to ninety seconds
Stacey Salyer: 15 to 90 seconds. Seconds.
David Normand: Seconds.
Okay?
Stacey Salyer: Seconds.
David Normand: Seconds. We have all navigated a changing world where, , instant gratification, Google reviews, and entitlement have been introduced into our renter population, and it has been very hard for us to work as humans to keep up with instant demand, especially as rental prices have increased, so
have the demand for services with them as well.
Okay? I'm paying three thousand dollars a month. I expect my HVAC issue to be fixed in ten seconds.
Okay.
Stacey Salyer: Absolutely. If you do [00:30:00] not pick up in three seconds, I mean, I'm leaving a one star.
David Normand: Yes, exactly.
So this is n- so this is number one is that this is the benchmark now, and I've seen so many times at conferences where people are talking about owners are waiting two days, three days, four days, , for communications. I was just looking at a work order here where the communications at every time that the owner is asking for an update, they average about sixty seconds on this thing.
And
quality updates, not just, "Hey, I'll
get back to you." , Actually telling them the story of what's going on. All right. So communication is one benchmark. Second benchmark. Forever, our offices have been typically open from nine to five.
Okay? We service a twenty-four/seven industry,
so any resident who is not technically available when we are open does not get a five-star experience.
Okay? Fifty percent of all of our work orders come in after five PM. We now, because of the use of agents, our maintenance department is [00:31:00] now open twenty-four/seven. Okay?
It does not mean that we are sending vendors out at seven PM for a non-emergency work order,
but somebody is working with that resident trying to help them solve the issue.
It's gathering the details, it is preparing the work order, it's dispatching it in the morning and reducing all of those twelve, twenty-four, and forty-eight dead gaps that we have. Those are now gone.
Stacey Salyer: Right.
David Normand: Okay? So anytime somebody's thinking about where do I stand, I always ask them two things: Are you responding to your residents and owners on average of sixty seconds, and are you open up twenty-four/seven?
Those are the two new benchmarks that are happening now
Stacey Salyer: I like that. And I think that brings up something 'cause I hear a lot of , "But so I looked at the agentic AI stuff and the cost." Right? Okay. But to your point, if you're open 24/7, really then if you're looking at that... 'Cause if we look at cost versus like average payroll hours, which like one human is what, [00:32:00] 2,080 for the year?
And then you're paying, you know, benefits and all this stuff on top of that and, you know, dealing with sick time and, , vacation and everything. So if you're looking at agentic AI cost, and then you're really dividing it by however many hours are
David Normand: Stacey, I'm getting goosebumps all over that you're talking about this right now because this is, this is to me is where so many people I think that are stuck. So forever, we've always based our calculations of labor between 9:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday,
and either stitched together after-hour services or made people basically work for free in their contract to take after-hours calls.
Okay? That's what we've
Stacey Salyer: free for years. I had the, I had the pager. I mean, I was started in 2004. We had a
David Normand: That's what we done, right? I got like, I got like $25 for an emergency call, but the stress and the anxiety of having that next to me was not worth the $25,
Stacey Salyer: Yeah, I, I didn't get anything.
David Normand: Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: So I mean, that's cool,
but whatever.
David Normand: at the, the equation now. So now,
, Our offices are only open [00:33:00] 33% of the month, okay? If you look at the
hours that are available to us, okay?
So now if I'm bringing on an agentic AI and somebody puts a bill in front of me for $30,000 a year, I'm like, "What?" And then I say, "Okay, take that and divide that by the total hours in the year." And for some people they're like, "Oh my gosh, that's like $4 or $3 or $2 an hour."
And I said, "Yes, for hiring not a person that you may not be able to trust or going overseas, but hiring a highly effective five-star employee that
is answering a phone call for you at 2:00 in the morning."
Stacey Salyer: Right. Well, and if in theory you as, you know, all of us is a control freak, right? I mean, so if we have documented our processes and we have pretty, you know, we're the one training them, in theory we're creating, you know, other Davids and Stacys and other control freaks out there, then wouldn't they be like the A+ employee,
David Normand: Bingo,
right?
You know, like, like it's-- You're not, you're not, we're not judging. We're like, I'm, I'm putting myself on at 6:00 [00:34:00] PM at night or 7:00 PM at night, okay?
So, so this new methodology now that we have is we understand that we've now gone from variable cost, okay? I either have too many people, not enough.
Service suffers, I go up and down.
Now we can know that basically for X dollars per door, infinity, I know that I have 24/7 five-star maintenance department handled, which is 80% of my inbound work that's coming in anyway,
okay? All
Stacey Salyer: Very cool. Okay.
Do you guys have any stats on, like, how many, , like how many doors, , an AI agent can handle? Or what's the threshold for that? Or what, what is your largest company that's using you guys?
David Normand: Yeah. So we have clients with thousands and thousands and thousands of doors. There's no limitation on that, right? The average property management company that's introducing an AI teammate is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about a hundred and twenty-five doors, just as
an FYI, okay?
They're
seeing that this is usually the first [00:35:00] time that they're being faced with hiring a maintenance person or a coordinator or something along that line. , So let's jump into that real quick here as we're kind of coming to the end of this story here. And I was showing a client, , earlier this morning who was expressing frustration about the number of tasks that his team was handling on a daily basis, burning them out, churning people.
"I train them, in six months they're gone," right? Similar story that you and I hear a lot. And I showed him a client. They have eight hundred and fifty doors. They had a hundred and sixty-seven open work orders, okay? Today, the person who's managing maintenance for them only had four activities to do
Stacey Salyer: Wow.
That's it? So what else are they gonna do?
David Normand: Bingo. So then I said, "Go look. Why don't we go look at the health and resident sentiment of our community?" And right here, this room maintenance coordinator flagged that there are two hundred and twenty-eight opportunities for a four or five-star Google review based upon [00:36:00] residents saying, "This was a phenomenal experience.
Great job." We don't have time to get to those because we're dealing in the minutiae of the tasks and stuff. Why don't we have a new goal for our maintenance coordinators that we want to get at least ten or fifteen new Google reviews a week? But now we can do it 'cause we know which people we can just hit send now, and they're like they said, "You guys are the best."
That's when you go get the Google review, right? right? So they focus on that. Or they go look at, their vendors' performances, right? And so now I'm helping people, and this specific client, they have eight hundred doors, and they have one maintenance coordinator for all their maintenance. That's it.
Stacey Salyer: 800 doors, one human and an AI agent.
David Normand: to, and the And the agent sent out 30,000 emails and text messages for that company
in the last 30 days. The
last 30 days
Stacey Salyer: Wow, that's wild.
David Normand: That's what it really takes [00:37:00] to run 24/7 maintenance and be working in real time around the clock. Yeah.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. One, one thing I hear a lot is, "Well, it'll never work for me because I run really large projects," or, "I have a maintenance company and we're doing really, really large projects."
David Normand: I would say to people in that space, continue to allow your talented individuals to work on those big projects and take the 80% of that noise that they no longer need to be involved in and get them out of that noise because those big projects are probably great revenue generators for you, really meaningful impact to the owners.
I believe on a big project, I would want my team on the ground looking at things, giving feedback, working with the owner, you know, "Hey, listen, you know, we gotta get rid of this carpet. We gotta do this." Like we still have a lot of value to add as experts in this industry, okay?
Like a ton of
Stacey Salyer: 100%.
David Normand: So if I can get out of worrying about the toilet being scheduled at 2:00 PM, I can [00:38:00] get out of all the triage and the minutiae, and I can focus on the things that give my owners the confidence that when they're spending 10 grand, they get a person, I'm all for that, right? I'm all for that.
Stacey Salyer: Sweet. Yeah.
David Normand: All that.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Awesome. I love that. Yeah. That's usually my answer too, but
David Normand: , I don't know I want right now my agent to send out like, you know, "Hey, I evaluated this job and it's $32,000, and based upon this..." The, the guy's like, like
Stacey Salyer: Right, right. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah. And that, but that's, but to your point, take away all the little minutiae stuff and use our, our brains for the big stuff. That's what we're, we're there for, that's awesome. So any other like hot takes you wanna add in? Any other like myths you wanna dispel real quick before up to today?
David Normand: Yeah, sure. A couple of All right. , So number one, is agentic AI perfect? No.
Okay.
Right?
Stacey Salyer: Is a
human perfect?
David Normand: No, and I tell
everybody, look at the volume of work that this employee is doing for you. Think about the 30,000 [00:39:00] communications, right? And it made a mistake on two of them. , Okay, where are we at in our threshold there?
Okay? Like,
Like 30,000 great, too bad, like understanding what we're offloading there. All right. Number two, when we opened up insights into why people were frustrated, we studied this for over a year. 15% of all work orders, , had a very frustrated resident attached to it.
Okay? you think about this, if I had a restaurant and 15% of my customers had a bad experience, I'm not gonna be open in six to eight months.
Okay? That's a lot. Okay? That number has decreased from 15% down to about 2.1, 2.3% once people begin to see what was causing the frustration.
Okay?
Vendoroo will highlight that. Listen, this policy you have, your residents hate this policy. It causes frustration every time, and simply because [00:40:00] you don't have any parameters around the fact that if a light bulb replacement requires a ladder or it's over ten feet or something, that you guys are gonna take care of it, and they're only responsible for local, and they always are arguing with you about the fact that they can't change this light bulb, right?
Solve that. Boom, gone. Right? This vendor, every time they go do a job, the residents hate it. Get rid of them. that's a big change. So I, I-- Those, those two there, I think as an operator, , I've been most excited to see that the 94% satisfaction rate and the reduction in people that are frustrated, to me says that this industry is providing value through technology to our owners and to our residents.
Okay? That
is worth the investment to me because it's having a meaningful impact. And we all know that if one of my property managers reaches out to a resident in real time and says, "I see you're having frustration with a vendor," when it comes time for that lease renewal, I can guarantee you that moment is gonna be in their head.
This [00:41:00] is why I'm choosing to stay with this property manager because they know what's going on with me and my property when I'm paying $3,200 a month versus feeling like they need to go somewhere else for a better experience.
Stacey Salyer: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. People really just wanna feel, you know, heard and seen,
David Normand: That's it, right? Meet them where they're at. No, if they work third shift, hey, I don't care. I'm there for you. You work second shift, I'm there for you, right?
So it's all good.
Stacey Salyer: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. That's so cool. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. I think this was really helpful. I hope my listeners were able to get some good nuggets and, , really learn the difference between, you know, the chatbot AI and agentic AI. , So what do you guys have going on?
Do you guys have any, , anything coming up in Q4
or
David Normand: Yeah. Exciting stuff. Yeah, exciting stuff's coming up, right? So, uh, personas, right? So we're teaching Roo to be... It's a persona in agentic AI. It is mastering being a maintenance coordinator. , This year we launched it as a maintenance manager, where it's providing [00:42:00] insights, reporting to owners, showing them what the performance of team members, things that are going on, right?
So it stepped into that operation manager's role as well.
And, , soon coming, from big demand, , it is the dispatcher persona for in-house tech- maintenance technicians.
Stacey Salyer: Ooh, okay
David Normand: uh, Optimizing routing, when does a guy need to go to Home Depot? They have to take breaks, you know, do they...
All those things that we do to make sure that if we have dash time and we have truck roll costs, that we are being as efficient as possible. I love in-house maintenance departments. They crush it for their residents. They do great, but we all know it's very hard to maintain profitability , on those hourly costs, and we're trying to help, , our clients with that.
That is what we are all focused on right now
Stacey Salyer: I love that. That's awesome. And you all are gonna be at NARPM National.
David Normand: , We will be at NARPM National. You guys all know Pablo, my main man, so he
is like my best buddy, my best guy. , He'll be out there. I am trying to make it out to visit. I'm, like, been really on the road consulting [00:43:00] and working with clients and hosting these dinners and doing things I'm doing.
, I may be there, but Pablo and the team will definitely be there representing as always, so
Stacey Salyer: Awesome. Well, I hope I get to see you in Las Vegas, so if not, maybe I'll see you on one of your road shows, wherever that may be. And, , thank you so much for coming. Have a great day
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, [00:44:00] explore the Built to Acquire program.
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