The Future of Maintenance: The 1% Fix with Guillermo Salazar

Rory Anderson: Welcome back to the Playbook, the property management podcast that unlocks leadership lessons from experts ⁓ in the trenches of ⁓ Today I'm on site one of our beautiful properties and I love being on location with our property management teams because ⁓ I learn ⁓ so from them. are the experts on their properties and I love that they ⁓ know the residents and love coming and learning from them and just seeing the flow of everything. and how the property is doing. So today I'm on site and on location, which is a little bit different. You can see the pool behind me. a beautiful, beautiful ⁓ property. Today's is someone I'm really excited to introduce you to because he has spent his entire career ⁓ at intersection of operations, ⁓ technology, one of most overlooked but critical ⁓ areas of business, which is maintenance. Guillermo Salazar is an industry principal at Venderoo, where he's helping push forward what's next in agentic maintenance, triage, and coordination software, and essentially how work actually gets done on site. Before that, he served as CEO of IrisCX, an AI-powered inspection and maintenance platform. And to that, he spent more than two decades implementing maintenance and procurement systems ⁓ across industries. He's also four-time founder with three successful exits. So he's not just talking about change. He's linked it, he's built it, and he's scaled it. And on top of that, he hosts the LinkedIn live show, Getting to Hell Yes. I don't know when you have time to do that, but he does. Where he goes deep into what's really driving change and how great operators and leaders actually capture it. And when he's not thinking about systems, efficiency, and the future of maintenance, you'll find him out on the golf course, skiing in the mountains, or spending time on the lake with his wife and their three near- grown kids. He must have like 48 hours in a day. I don't know how you're doing this, Guillermo.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: I do a lot of things at the same, I do a lot of multitasking.
Rory Anderson: must, you must. So really happy to have you on the Property Playbook. Thank you so much for being here.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: thrilled to be here. I've had a chance to listen to bunch of your shows and most recently caught the one with Shelly Robinson who's outstanding. And that guest, wow, that was a good show. I hope we can meet the standard of that show because it was well put together and geez, Shelly is such a good speaker and I was writing notes down. I'm ambitious. We've got a high standard to make. We're gonna do it.
Rory Anderson: Yes, I have no doubt. I have no doubt that ⁓ you'll meet bar here. But she, yeah, she had, we had a great episode. If you haven't listened to her episode, it is a game changer for sure. So ⁓ yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: takeaways all over the place. It's good.
Rory Anderson: It was so good. So tell us one story from your life in property management or maintenance. ⁓ unusual, how did you handle it? What did you learn from it? ⁓ know, ⁓ a learner. We love to learn on this show. ⁓ ⁓ us about your experience.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: I think it's interesting to kind of think back, especially since you're on site today. I would say the best learning I've ever had is being on site. And I had a chance early on in my career, and this really wasn't by design. This is just, I was working at an industrial site, imagine with those big old mines, and there was no office space at all, so we just parked in the fire hall. And we sat in the fire hall for almost a year, just in an open, in an open Bay with tables. We had basically saw horses with like doors on top of them. That's where we worked. And, um, we spent the whole time just working away. we just kind of worked away because we're in the middle of the fire hall. saw all the things that went wrong, all the emergencies. Cause you call a fire truck out for any sort of like any sort of injury that has, uh, that requires a heavy lift. And so we got to learn a whole lot of things about. industrial accidents and when things go wrong. And in maintenance, like the worst thing that possibly could happen, this isn't a problem management specific story, is get hurt. so learned a ton around the things that you need to do around people not getting hurt. Now what's really interesting about safety in industrial. And again, not a property management story, but analogs are going to come through in a second. If you just hang on for 30 seconds. We worked with in industrial sites. We also worked with NASA and working alongside NASA with safety. Obviously safety is an important thing there. And the things that we learned when you talked about operational excellence, which is talking about, you know, how to optimize your operations, safety and the culture around safety had a high correlation to really high performing organizations from an operational perspective. So here's an example.
Rory Anderson: Hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: how kind of just prescriptive it could be. If you're getting off of a train, as an example, and you only get off the train on the right side of the train, you never get off on left side of the train, because that's where other trains are coming, right? So since you only get off on the right side of the train, and you have to get off with your left foot first. is how detailed it is. Because if the train does shuttle forward, you can catch yourself with your right foot. That's how detailed the operational SOPs are in some industries. And so that's, and when everyone is marching to that same SOP, Standard Operating Protocol, for how you do certain things, it's incredible how things can actually happen. So I'll say the story that I learned around SOPs was around how you can begin to super prescribe exactly how things are done, like you get off the train with your left foot. here I'll this, an is kind of like a hypothesis statement. It's like, this is how I think it might work. And then when you put that SOP together and you begin to watch the people like you're on site today and watch people what they do, you start to understand the difference between what you think is gonna be happening and what actually happens. And I would say going on site is one of the most, and I'll tell you another story, a funny one, is one the most interesting things about. about designing technology for industry or for site folks is that you've got to make sure you go down there and see what's going on. I'll give you a second story, and this is a little funnier. So we were deploying technology to this agriculture side of things. And had agricultural depots in all these different parts. Imagine the size of France, right? There's agriculture depots all over the place. And were setting up servers and doing all these kind of things for technology. ⁓ And one site, they just kept on going down, site down, site down, site down. ⁓ doing agriculture and it's like in the spring you realize that wholesale agro like that's what everything has to hum like that's your term season right if you're in student or that's your everything has to be clockwork and this season this site kept going down keep going down going down
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And we were talking from headquarters, like, what's going on, what's going on, have you tried this, have you tried this, have you tried this. Finally, one of our guys said, forget it, I'm just gonna go. And they drove out three and a half hours, middle of nowhere, in this site, goes to the depot. And they walk out to the depot. And they get to the depot and they look around and they're like, everything seems fine, nothing's going on, follow the wires, right, literally follow the wires back when everything was wired. And they get to the server stack. and the server stack, is sitting there and server is just smoking. It's like ⁓ actually smoke is coming out of it. we're what going on here. Open up the server box, grab a screwdriver, open it up, and sawdust just comes pouring out of the server box. And we're like, how the heck that happen?
Rory Anderson: You
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: they go look back and the wood shop was like right next to the same spot the server box is in. And so the server who's got a fan on it was inhaling all of the sawdust from the wood shop and it was just basically filling up the server box. It's not unlike when you look at filter units and ⁓ know all the air conditioning units that we have that sit there and that they could be in same environments when you look at different equipment again going on site you look at different equipment that's sitting next to one another or near one another ⁓ how the equipment if it's co-located can begin to affect the operation capacity of the other equipment and so obviously we did we replace the server put the box inside the front spot of the office but going on site is so important to begin to understand how things actually work and there's things that you can do to really understand learn to operate better. So here's the third example we did, and this is a machine shop. And so this machine shop, they replaced like these big, huge tractors and trucks and mining equipment, right? So imagine like a truck the size of a house. And so if it's offline, it's like a million dollars a day that's offline of lost production. And so it's very important this thing goes in and out. And so, if it goes out and it fails again, ⁓ Right? So like a second trip when it comes to maintenance, then all of a sudden you're down even more money because it's gone in, it's been refurbished, it goes back out again, and it's not operating effectively and safety and all those things. So we painted the floor white in this machine shop. the of painting the floor white was so that when every truck left, we could see if there was a drip of oil on the ground. and we're able to understand if there's any sort of fluid leakage whatsoever in this machine shot by what was on the ground. ⁓ an unintended consequence for that one is we're able to figure out by at the footstep marks. that would eventually form on the white floor where all the work was being done and how people were moving around the shop. This shop, imagine the shop's like 20,000 square feet, right? It's big. And so people are moving around all over the place and you can begin to observe all the wasted time that people were taking by going just because the toolboxes, the compressors or whatever, all the equipment was not really thought through as to how we do work.
Rory Anderson: Mmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And so we began to reorient the shop based on how work was being done. So all three stories, right, about observation on site and being intentional about what is happening on sites, because when we're designing systems, we often like to think about how it should work, but that's not necessarily how it actually works. And the nudge we've got to make when we're doing technology and change is not so much completely disrupt the way things are doing things, but we've got to think about how work is done at the site level and then design a system, a process, a technology or whatever in such a way that it enhances and makes life easier for the people in the field. Because if we think of things and design it from a, you know, literally an ivory tower, we're going to think of things in kind of like. theoretical or academic or non-practical use cases for people that are hyper practical. And so just that'll be my kind of three stories that kind of hopefully I'll knit together in the conversation around your situation today. Being on site is so important when you're designing technology for folks that are in the field. And so I strongly, you know, in all of my experiences, there's never been a moment where it has been invaluable to go on site and talk to customers, talk to prospects, follow them around and see what they're doing.
Rory Anderson: ⁓ my gosh, so true. And you know what else I think when I step back and look at businesses I've been a part of, the ones that were the most successful were the ones where they took ⁓ people on the ground who were doing the job ⁓ they... Like you talked about being in an ivory tower and making decisions. They took those people that were doing the job plus some good best practices But also but had a conversation will this work for you? How does this if we put in this SOP? What like where are the holes in it for you and your process and what is actually happening on the ground with customers or ⁓ actually happening when you go in let's say into a Into a unit ⁓ you're talking with real residents, you know, think
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yep.
Rory Anderson: a back and forth conversation that has to happen. You can't just go in and take your Six Sigma and be like, you know what, we're going to do this, this, this, this because this is the best way to do it. might think it's the best way to do it, but unless you talk to the people who are actually doing the job every day, you to get that insight and those nuances that will ⁓ make a better experience, not only for ⁓ the but for the end customer, the end user, the resident, whoever it is, right?
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And there's important language that you can use to kind of open up that conversation, right? To keep the conversation going. Is he presented an SOP, a proposal, anything that is approaching finality or I like to frame it as a hypothesis statement or draft. for everybody out there that's listening, if you have an idea that you think is rock solid and you want buy-in, put the word draft on it. and that one word will change your success or failure. Because you put the word draft on it, what that says is, this isn't done, I need your input. But if you take away the word draft, it's this is final.
Rory Anderson: Exactly. Yes.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Now absorb it, take it, eat it, whatever, right? And I was explaining this to a site tech who's trying to get some ideas pushed through within his organization. said, just do me a favor, put the word draft in the subheader, put in the subject of the email, as a watermark if you know how to do that, or just put in draft, the bottom of it. Call it draft, and you will be amazed at the buy-in that you get, because you invite people to collaborate in the outcome, instead of saying, this is fully baked, ready to go. ⁓
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. You know what, that was one of the biggest lessons I learned in the last company that I worked with because there were a lot of inefficiencies that I could see and there were times when I was just like, guys, we just need to do this, this and this. And I learned really quickly that I needed to listen before just presenting an idea and I needed to take feedback from other people. everyone the table was actually really important. ⁓ so I'm in my head right now, ⁓ having the manager, having the maintenance supervisor, having the maintenance tech. When you're going to have a discussion about maintenance, it can't just be the property manager saying, hey guys, you need to do this, this, and this better. And this is how I think you should do it. No, you need to listen to them. You need to see what their process is. And yes, there probably are refinements that we can make, but we've got to work together and collaborate together to do that. And I have learned, and I will bear testimony of this, like,
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Mm-hmm.
Rory Anderson: the outcome is better ⁓ when you collaborate you counsel with each other and talk through things ⁓ and then decide that SOP should be for your specific property or your specific situation.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And kind of the classic example is you can walk into two places that are the worst places to walk in first, right? If you walk into the supply room or you walk into the package closet, like they're gonna be unorganized. And when you see one that's super organized, you kind of like. are taken aback. You're like, holy smokes, like everything here is clean, labeled, everything is tight and tidy. I've some supply rooms that are, or packing rooms that are just like, what is going on here? This feels like an accident happened, you know? sometimes it's very quick to jump to conclusions as to why that happened. And ⁓ can take a little bit of just listening and observation and asking like, It's difficult to not observe the truth, right? Man, this place is a mess. And then the person you're with will go, yeah, yeah it is. And then you go, I'm just curious, like how does it happen this way? Well, this, this, this and that. Okay, I get it, I understand. And if you just demonstrate empathy and use words like I understand and what else, and you can begin to kind of like.
Rory Anderson: you
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: curate the conversation and bring it forward and get better information. like, think one of the things that, well, no, I know one things that we do in technology poorly is you make a lot of assumptions about how things should work, as I said earlier, and going on site helps you kind of airtighten out your hypothesis. and for everyone, hypothesis is basically your guess. It's a guess, right? I mean, to kind of like take the academic out of it, I've got to guess that this is how it should work. And
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: you know, I want to get some validation or some input of what might work and let's kind of work together on that. And that is like seeking what the site is doing and asking questions. You begin to understand them and begin to understand the things that they have to offer for improvement. Because I find that like you're on site today, ⁓ the opportunity to learn about how things actually work and test drive that you can just talk through. It's remarkable. And you can begin to see and empathize and understand. why things are happening the way they do or they are and then I find that you take the blame out of the people.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Like if you go look at how things are being run, you realize in many cases it's not the people, ⁓ the process. And hey, let's pause for a moment here and take a look at how the process is being run because I think there's some simple, know, if we're going from point A all the way around to point B, sometimes it just takes an outsider to ask the question, why aren't we just going straight line from A to B? Right? ⁓ that's...
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well the other thing is I was just thinking the other thing is ⁓ you have ⁓ a job ⁓ so long or been at a site for so long and you it's just your You kind of get into normal routine ⁓ and you maybe haven't been other Operators and you so you're just doing your own thing ⁓ when you're kind of in that bubble a little bit, you don't know what you don't know. And so having somebody come in and just be like, so Telly, why do we do it that way? Is there a reason? ⁓ And have you considered maybe we could try it this way? Just being open to that is ⁓ important as ⁓ And I'm right now, like when you talked about the maintenance shop. ⁓
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Mm-hmm.
Rory Anderson: That's one of the things I love to look at when I go visit a site or we're acquiring a property. I want to see the maintenance shop because guess what? I can tell a lot about a site if I go into the maintenance shop and I see and I have seen some ⁓ my gosh, well you've probably seen more than I have but ⁓ I seen somewhere ⁓ it I like I don't know how any work is getting done at this site. There is there were leaks in the maintenance shop. There were things ⁓ spilled everywhere.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Mm-hmm. Do it. ⁓ yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, go to the pool room, right? Go to the pool room, Go to the pool room, like the pool maintenance hot, yeah. They got chemicals in there, right? chemicals aren't labeled right, and it's just like, it just takes a little bit of work to, like I really think that there's a truism around like running at 90 % in a snapshot is kinda like, okay, right? Oh, we're at 90%.
Rory Anderson: What's Yes. ⁓ Exactly. ⁓ ⁓
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: But when you realize that that 10 % of leakage is kind of waste, is it compounding? And that compounding can grind down the whole organization. Like ultimately, you know, the 10 yard line is not a touchdown, right? it's 90 % of the way, but it is not a touchdown. And so ultimately, if you can architect things that kind of get to 100 % and figure out how you can begin to put together systems and processes and checklists and a discipline around execution, then that becomes the culture. And this is like the NASA thing about safety, ⁓ the railway example I was giving, is a discipline around operational excellence and culture. When you lay that out, ⁓
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: What you'll also be surprised to get is all of the things will bubble up from the site level about how to improve because you've offered a direction where we want to be in terms of operational excellence and site will feed back. because they are intentional about excellence. Sometimes they don't know how to do it or frame it or articulate it, or maybe there's no offer for a conversation. But if you lay it out in terms of what we want to do and how we want to do it and make sure that it's drafted as an offer and a point for a conversation, you will get specific feedback. ⁓ say, for example, you are ⁓ tier one operator from Texas, and then now you're dropped into Utah, right?
Rory Anderson: Yes.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: The things work differently in Texas than they work in Utah. Like the thing I learned a lot about, bugs and mold, I'm from the north, and so bugs and mold aren't really things that we worry about.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: too much, but you get it in Atlanta, you get it in Dallas, bugs and mold are a big problem. And so how do you begin to, I don't even know about bugs. The bugs that they have in Texas, I didn't even know were invented. And the size of them are like, I didn't even know that could happen. And that took site visits to go walk around and go, oh, okay, I get it now.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. You you you
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Like that's not a beetle, that's a cockroach. That's a different thing. that's again, site visits and understanding. We need a whole lot more. As we're moving so fast with technology right now, we do need to take a beat and walk the site and see how things actually work. Because when we deploy the tech, it's got to work in that site at that environment.
Rory Anderson: So okay, this is a perfect segue because I want to talk to you about AI and and how you know Everyone's looking to AI to solve problems, but you said real issue isn't AI It's the current state like what are we missing when we jump straight to tech ⁓ of fixing? ⁓ and maybe tell us a little bit about your company and what you're doing
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Sure, love to, thank you. So AI is interesting. AI, and I said this a hundred times, AI is a power drill to a screwdriver. It's a catalyst to speed things up. It's horsepower. And often would you've got three things to win a car race. You need brakes, you need speed, need steering, or horsepower and steering. The thing that AI is interesting now is it's moving from just being just horsepower to being also steering, having some intelligence to it. And the intelligence needs to be taught, right? It's cognitive. And when we take a look at the problems we need to solve with AI, just because you can solve a problem with AI doesn't mean you should. You should stand back and go, what's the overall problem we're seeking to solve at this site level? And I think what's repeating itself over and again is we get really excited about solutions. rather than having a deep understanding around the problem or trying to solve. So an example around the, and this took me probably 20 years ⁓ get it out of my system, was offering a solution, because I'm a solutioner. I love solutioning things. And so I like if I'm having a conversation with somebody, ⁓
Rory Anderson: Your wife loves your solutions,
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Oh yeah, actually now, so it's my 25th anniversary next week and like I'm just coming around, I'm just coming around to do you me to listen or do I try to solve the problem?
Rory Anderson: Congratulations. Hahaha!
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Now I'm actually, even getting next level on that where I don't even offer that anymore because now I know that's also condescending. So just listen until I'm asked to solve the problem, then I just kind of let it go. ⁓ that's, hey, that's taking 25, 12, 27 years to figure that out. So there's still hope. ⁓ like, I think the thing about offering a solution is that often we'd like to jump to a solution in technology prior to actually fully understanding the problem.
Rory Anderson: Smart guy. You
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: and stepping back about the impact of problem. And I think that things that we need, and I call it the unavoidables of each problem. Because like we're thinking about the to-do list of things we need to solve. If I start telling you to force rank something that is avoidable over something that is unavoidable, then I'm just kind of getting the way you get in your job done. And so there's things that, a way to think about it, and I read this in this, I can't remember the book right now.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: But this talks about it called the not not. And bear with me because I know it's like bad English. But like the not not meaning that unavoidables are things you can't not not do. Right. You can't not not turn a unit. If it's an unit empty you can't not not do it. You can delay a work order.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Right. But a vacant unit has to be turned and that is priority number one. And so I find that really interesting. We take a look at the competing interests of work orders on the site. Let's just talk about like three kind of classic work order types. An inspection, a turn and a reactive maintenance. I'll say all four. an inspection, a maintenance work order, an inspection, a turn and then a reactive maintenance work order. All four are legitimate. of good time, good uses of time, but we tend to drift towards the one that has the highest not-not assigned to it, right? And that's the, the turned unit, maybe the reactive maintenance. And then what happens? We don't do preventative maintenance work and we don't do inspections because they kind of get punted because they don't fall in the not-not category unless you got to go for a refi or if you're an affordable and you've got like a reactor-inspired inspector come along, which point that becomes a higher, a it becomes an unavoidable. So what I'm getting at is that we're talking about
Rory Anderson: Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: making recommendations to the site, let's talk about that supply closet or the supply room or the package room, that is an avoidable body of work, right? And so having empathy over the entire body of work that needs to be done and understanding that some things are just avoidable. And so the messy storage room, the kind of like leaks inside the supply room,
Rory Anderson: Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: That's an indication that something else is actually not being done. Like I've rarely, rarely, rarely seen it's because of lazy people. I just have not seen a lot of lazy people in my life. I've seen a lot of people that are working with low effectiveness, but I've not seen a lot of lazy people. And there just isn't, it just isn't the story of the guys are outside having a smoke or a cup of coffee or whatever. It's just not that. It's the fact that they're running around, you know, building the building and spending all this time. Maybe their workload is architected for a 300 unit vertical, but they're at a low rise with like everything's all spread apart. And there's actually a thing you got to think about and time to go from building the building. And, and maybe there's no entry. Like you got to, maybe there's no permission to enter. Maybe there's no smart lock system. Like when something out of order, it's important to understand that's a symptom of something else. And to take that all into consideration. Cause like, ⁓ like, know, I would. ⁓
Rory Anderson: Yes.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: tend to, and again this took me a long time, I'm still working on it, to start solving solutions when I see a messy room or something that's out of place. I don't stand back and go like when I talk about that the paint in the floor white, right? We had trucks that were going out million dollars a day if something's not working and are coming back. So now you're three, four, five million dollars a day of lost productivity. So that was the issue we were trying to solve was productive trucks like production, producing oil. When ⁓ we're about the ⁓ left leg leading at in the railway is because we didn't want to people to hurt because if people get Hurt the railway stops, but the railway stops if someone gets hurt
Rory Anderson: Okay. Right.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Right? So production stops. So when we think about leasability and operating these buildings, we need to think about, what is the core business here? What are we in business for? And don't feel that there's consistency in understanding about the larger problem we're trying to solve at a building and have that consistently cascaded down to all people. And when I by the larger problem to solve, I mean like, what's the goal here? What are we trying to get to? What's the to do? And the do ⁓ to and operate, and you guys as asset owners, you kind of in the,
Rory Anderson: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: interesting like how many people I talked to that they're fee managers and they're like owners are coming today I've got nowhere to walk I've got nowhere to walk I've got nowhere to walk like it is like you know I you ever seen the movie Waiting for Guffman so there's a movie called Waiting for Guffman you should watch it you love it it's Christopher Guest and it's a show about this like Missouri town they're doing a play and this they're getting all kind of like caught up about it and in that play there's a moment where Guffman who is a Broadway ⁓
Rory Anderson: No.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: ⁓ Broadway critic is going to show up and everyone's kind of going bananas because they're getting everything tidy and everything like that because Guppin's gonna come but Guppin never shows up. That's the end, that's how the movie finishes but when the owner comes to do the walk everyone loses their mind about tidying and polishing everything up and they they allocate so much energy to getting ready for the owner walk. the regional VP comes in, everyone comes in from the fee manager site to show you what's possible.
Rory Anderson: you
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: but not what actually is happening. And this is kind of where you talk to a lot of folks that do secret shops. I think Shelley does some of those sometimes. And you see what's actually happening and that's kind of the data that we need to kind of reconcile with is there's like prom night, which is like the owner walk. And then there's like what day to day looks like. And we need to reconcile those two different things. Cause when the owner does the walk, it's a fabricated reality around what's actually happening. And I think that there's...
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: A lot of energy goes into that because that's unavoidable, right? The not not. The owner is coming, we have to present well, we're gonna tune things up. But it should be that the owner's arriving, it's just business as usual, but it's not. And so it's like all those different things are consuming people's time and the resources of the building. And that's kind of like where AI can start helping out. If you start thinking about, okay, what are the things that are unavoidable that are part of the to-do for the building and let's figure those things out so that we've been to prioritize what's possible because the pizza party is super avoidable the other kind of things that are fun to do those are avoidable But what are the unavoidable not knots? What are the things we cannot avoid to do in this building to be successful? and let's force rank those things first because guess what you can live with a supply closet that is Our supply room that's a little messy and have a perfectly running building. Now it is a little bit better if you've got a supply room, but then you know understand that that's the trade-off that somebody made to enable a better resident experience or whatever, maybe even better employee experience. Maybe they just wanted to go home at 5 p.m. on Friday, right, rather than set that up. But if no one's gonna make it a priority, then it's not a priority at the building. That's a part of thing that I find like...
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Like a word I kind of figured out, two words that I thought were the same word for a long time, but I realized they're not. I thought care and priority were the same thing, but they're not. I can care about something, but not prioritize it. And so you ask the question, do you care that this room is messy?
Rory Anderson: Hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: That's like kind of personal question. But if you say, you prioritize that room is messy? Then you're challenging their brain to think about all the things they've got to do. And it's helpful to kind of like when we're doing these site walks, understand the difference between care and prioritize because they're making trade-offs every single minute of every single day. And where AI can help and what we're doing with Venderoo is AI can help all the mental overhead.
Rory Anderson: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: that goes into making those decisions. Because what we don't see from afar is we don't see the difference between the admin time, the decision time, the travel time, and the actual tool time. And what's funny is when you go hire a third party, like this is kind of a crazy fact. It's like you could have a tech, a maintenance tech that you pay $30 an hour for and maybe you get 30 % of their time is on tools, right? So let's say the effective salary of that person, actually I'll just do easy math myself, let's say it's 50%. You're paying 30 bucks an hour, they make 60K a year, so their effective cost, and they're 50 % productive, their effective cost is 120,000. Follow? Now if I go look at and get a third party to do it, they're gonna charge me like $120,000 equivalent, and they're gonna charge me $60 an hour.
Rory Anderson: Gotcha.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And you kind of go, well, he'll do the math and go, well, this person who's doing it third party, vendor, is gonna charge me $6 an hour. That's twice as expensive as the people that I've got that I'm paying $3 an hour for. But the reality is that that person who is the vendor, you're just paying for tool time. You're not paying for all the other stuff.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And so when we think about the productivity of our people and the options that are available, the higher, the do-it-yourself, the higher, the vendor, the technology, we need to think about the overall thing that we're paid for from a productivity perspective. And when we talk about AI, bringing it to a close here, AI is really interesting because AI can take that. tech that you've got, you're paying $30 an hour and make them as productive as that third party or vendor who you're paying 60, 70, 80, $100 an hour for. Because what AI is gonna do is take out all of those distractions that your team members have to deal with. administration, calling residents, calling vendors, coordinating, pricing, even ⁓ ranking what work to do, triaging ⁓ calls, answering the phone after hours. All of stuff can be done by AI. And so we take a look at the work week. This goes back to my whole observing what people do. You follow people around for eight hours. on a site and you're gonna realize that there's a lot of time that they're spending that is wasteful and you know the thing that I kind of like started really leaning in on I don't know where it came from is really how can we get rid of the waste in people's lives because like waste is friction waste is like we only have so much time on this earth and we shouldn't be doing it doing wasteful things because that's the grind the grind is waste
Rory Anderson: Mm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: If we just went from tool time to tool time to tool time, that's fulfilling work, because that activates the unique ability of the people on site. But when they're doing the administration, when they're doing the callback, all that stuff, all that extra work, that overhead, that is what kills people's soul. And so if we can kind of like eliminate all that soul sucking work from people's jobs, two things happen. They're going to be happier at work and we can pay them more. when they're doing the administration, ⁓ when they're doing the callback, all that stuff, all that extra work, that overhead, that is what kills people's soul. And so if we can kind of eliminate all that soul sucking work from people's jobs, two things happen. They're going to be happier at work and we can pay them more. And wouldn't that be awesome? Right? Wouldn't it be awesome if I can buy a technology that takes out all the soul sucking work and gets rid of all the interruptions, distractions, and I can pay people more. And wouldn't that be awesome? Right? Wouldn't it be awesome if I can buy a technology that takes out all the soul sucking work and gets rid of all the interruptions, distractions, and I can pay people more. Cause all of a sudden you're getting rid of all that waste at a property or any operation and, um, and the work is better.
Rory Anderson: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And you find, I'm not gonna say you're gonna find gold bricks under the pillows, but you're gonna have enough resources around because your people are hyperproductive at doing the work. So like, that's the thing that I find really interesting is when you add up, like we used to call this bottoms up, do bottoms up math on the work that needs to be done and then do top down math about what you're paying for. So as an example, bottom up math. How many work orders do we do? How much time does it take to do a work order? How many, you know, the math can be something like this. I've got 300 units, we've got 50 % turnover, so I've got 150 turns. 150 turns equals about 10 hours of turn, so that's gonna be 1,500 hours of turns a year. That's basically a full-time equivalent, just to do turns, right? There's some math, there's some bottom up math. Bottom up math, we got 300 units, average three work orders a year, maybe four work, sometimes, I'll say it's multi-family, sometimes it's around six to seven. So 300 units, seven, so I do 21,000 work orders a year. 2100, thank you. 2100 work orders a year. Let's say it's an hour and half for work order, then this is how much time, this is how much demand I have for services. And you reconcile your demand with your supply side.
Rory Anderson: Only 100.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And I know this kind of feels very mathy, but it's just the bottom up approach to figuring out how much work needs to be done. And know that the gap between what you're paying for supply and the amount of work that needs to be done is just overhead and admin. And that's the stuff that sucks people's lives. And so I don't think that's the opportunity. Like people are scared that AIs can take their jobs. think I just, I...
Rory Anderson: Hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: I understand the fear of change because I've lived it my whole life and I'm kind of bit bulletproof to change because I've lived in my whole life. But I really hope people get a chance to look at their body of work they do every day and know we're going to eliminate the soul sucking parts of their job with AI and automation and make their jobs better. Because like how vendor who works as an example is it will be an agent inside your PMS. If you're running yardy real page and Trada at Folio, it's like a user. inside your system. So it logs in.
Rory Anderson: Okay, so explain it. Like, explain it from a resident a maintenance ⁓ standpoint. Like, ⁓ a resident. I call him because I have a clogged sink or a
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Sure. Yeah, yeah, you got a clog sink. And from the outside, looks like, you I'm gonna res, I'm gonna clog sink, right? You're gonna either call in and there's a, so let's actually, once, this is the problem we do in maintenance, we tend to think of it in just scenarios. So let's set the frame. I've got 300 unit building, turn 150, 150, let's say 50 % turn, so I do 150 turns a year, so get 11 turns a month, right? So 11 turns a month, I've got somebody who's painting a wall.
Rory Anderson: Okay. Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: So that's a scene. The scene is someone is painting a wall and then the reactive maintenance work order comes in. And it's like a clogged sink in 301, right? Because it's not fair to just look at it in the clogged sink context. You got to know what that person who's doing the work, what they were doing before. Well, they were painting a wall, right? They were painting a wall, but all of a sudden they get a buzz and they already app or whatever on their phone and they pick it up. They put the roller down and they got to go to 301. As they go to 301, they unclog the sink, which is just a hairball or whatever it was, maybe it wasn't even anything. They go back, rollers dry, and they stop by and as they're going from the unit they returned to 301, they talk to somebody else. Roller's dry now. Walls kind of half painted, and if you've ever painted walls before, you know that once you half paint a wall, you gotta repaint the whole wall again, and you gotta open up a new roller, right? All that happens because that person had got a call. And we've kind of engineered that as the way we're gonna do work, because we think about it in blocks of turns and blocks of reactive, but that's not how it works in the site. And so at that point, AI could do is the AI can receive that.
Rory Anderson: you
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: call from that resident about a clock sink and it can triage it before the work order is even created and then if a work order needs to be created it can take that, can prioritize it, high, low, like... and it will assign it to either your vendor pool or your internal staff. And then that'll sit in their queue of work to be done. And then it will also communicate back to the resident saying, yes, it's been assigned. And it's kind of like the Pizza Hut pizza tracker. You kind of know where everything's at. As a resident, anxiety has been, temperature has been taken down the room, because you've been heard. You did some triage to try and debug it. You've been communicated with.
Rory Anderson: You've been communicated with, which I'm going to say right now really quickly, communicating with residents is probably the number one... shortfall, I would say, that we have in this world of property management because we're thinking it, but we have all these things to do, but we just don't communicate it all the time, whether it's through a text or a voicemail or an email. And so yes, I agree with you. That takes out that step, but it's a crucial step if you miss that step. That completely changes the customer experience.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Right? the customers informed. The thing about humans that needs to be appreciated is that, and here's experiment for everybody to of like, ⁓ I get it. Go to an elevator lobby and watch when an elevator is slow. After about 45 seconds, people start showing signs of anxiety. They pull out their phone, they start pacing back and forth. They start getting anxious because of information they don't know. Right? So that's the same thing that happens on the site when a resident puts in a work order and no update is made. And you think about the people who are supposed to do the updates, they're the ones that are to paint in that wall. So they've got to make a trade-off. I mean, they're going to paint that wall for the turn.
Rory Anderson: Bye.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: or I'm gonna go and log in and update that resident. Well, updating the resident is kinda like, it might take two minutes and that's what everyone says, it just takes two minutes, but it's like, it actually takes like 15. Cause they gotta open up their phone, they gotta do the thing and it just takes every piece of work, every email you respond, that takes 15 minutes of mental time. Cause you gotta stop doing what you're doing, you gotta do what you're doing, and you gotta think about what you're gonna write it, and maybe your language isn't your first language, and all that stuff, all taken care of AI. So like the thing that I'm inspired by with AI when I see it and see it work in practice is that what AI can do is it can keep the people who want to be on tools, keep them on the tools. And that is gonna make them happier and help them get paid more. And I really care a lot about making them happy and making them get paid more. Because I feel that the big gap we've got right now is that we can't pay them more because there's not enough money because they're doing a lot of work that...
Rory Anderson: Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: doesn't move the ball forward. They're doing a lot of sideways work. A lot of east-west, not a lot of north-south.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. That's really true. Well, and I think I was just listening to a podcast the other day and they were talking about how, you know, when in the early or late 1990s when the internet was coming out, everyone was like, oh no, now we're not going to have jobs. And no, it was just that the jobs shifted and changed. Right? I think it's the same thing with AI. No one's, I'm not saying no one's going to lose their job, but.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yeah.
Rory Anderson: The reality is there are going to still be jobs that need to be done even with AI in our world, but they're going to shift and be different. They're going to look a little different.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: It has happened like it has happened over and over and over and over and over again. Like if you look at the US economy in the eighties, right? It was like.
Rory Anderson: Yes, history repeats itself.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Like in the Reagan era, was like, I think the numbers were like 55%, 60 % manufacturing and agricultural based. was like largely about making things, right? And then as technology, and that was like, that was the thing. And that's what people voted and et cetera. And then you look at the economic shift from a production economy into a services economy and then into a technology economy. And the GDP went like this because it became more effective with our time.
Rory Anderson: Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Now jobs changed but GDP went up, wealth went up, people made more money. And so like if we think about what's possible with technology it is shown over and over and over again. Needle and thread, sewing machine, screwdrivers, power drill, like horse and buggy cars, like it's all changed jobs. but our productivity has gone up because we've eliminated the things that were holding us back. And I really think that like to think about technology, isn't about what you can do, it's the things that are holding you back that you can get rid of. And that's, know, it's like anything, like when you hold somebody who's really talented and they're stuck in a job and they can't... out they can't perform they're being held back and that's wasteful right that's like their life is their hours on earth are being wasted because they're not optimized for what they're best at so set them free right so if we can set the people at the site free by eliminating all those things that holding them back from being excellent then we can make them so much more again happier and better life and get them paid more i'll say it over and again if we do this we can pay them more if we don't they got to get paid they're going to get paid less
Rory Anderson: I love that. Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: That's the problem, is that we don't go this way, we're gonna get paid less. And what happens when you are only available to pay people less? You get less quality people, which creates this vicious circle at the property level around the asset. And so I'm inspired by that, we can, we've been in this vicious circle, like a death spiral, of not people, not enough money, not enough people, not enough money. and I'm inspired by the fact that AI, specifically agentic, is gonna break that cycle where we're gonna have enough people, the workload's gonna be the same. Like that's a part that people don't get. They often talk about AI maintenance, people are like, ⁓ AI's not gonna fix the toilet anytime soon. It's not. It's not gonna fix the toilet anytime soon. But if you look at your day, your day isn't eight hours of fixing toilets. Your day's like four hours of fixing toilets and four hours of updating the fact that you fixed the toilet. And so, If we can stop that, then we can double the productivity of people and it's only fair that if you double the productivity of people, you get paid more.
Rory Anderson: I love that. So this is reminding me a lot of the book Atomic Habits. I wanted to, ⁓ know you and I both are fans of that book. Tell me, ⁓ it's James Clear, tell me somebody wants to get 1 % better, okay, in maintenance operations tomorrow, ⁓ where would tell them to start?
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yeah. There, yep. Mm-hmm. So of ⁓ Clear's kind of like biggest quotes is the one around, I'll it wrong, but you get the point, it's like you don't rise to level of your goals, you fall at the level of your systems, something like ⁓ implementing a can be very, very easy. And I would say the first thing that you can do, this is like 20 minutes, is do something that's called a retrospective. And a retrospective ⁓ is ⁓
Rory Anderson: Yeah, yeah, close.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: structured observation. And so what you do in an observation, in a retrospective, is you gotta open the window to hear things you don't wanna hear. And they do this in technology, it's an amazing thing, and it's called the 4Ls is a retrospective. And you can look at or two ways. You call it start, stop, continue. Hey, what should we start this week, stop this week, continue this week? I like the 4Ls because it offers one more lens to it that can really kind of unload on people, ⁓ the space to unload. This goes into listening. The 4Ls what did you like? What did you learn? What did you long for? And what did you loathe about this past week? Right? And opening the door for loathe, people leave because of what they loathe.
Rory Anderson: I like that. Yes, right.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And so you gotta create space for that conversation. So four L's, look it up, it's everywhere all over the internet, and you put up a board, and if you got a whiteboard, that's all you need. A whiteboard, some stickies, coffee, donuts, beers, whatever, and put an X in the middle of it, or a grid, one in one, and write, what did you like this week? What did you learn this week? What did you long for? What did you love? And give people stickies, and the key thing is a sticky. Because then they can write it down. without everyone being influenced. And psychological, but if I set up at a board and I walk around a room of 10 people and I say, what did you load this week? No one's gonna say anything. But if I say everyone, ⁓ a sticky, grab a pen. This is a... ⁓ I'm talking about a $10 thing that you can do. Everyone's got a whiteboard because all of your make-readies that are late are on it. And so go to the whiteboard, draw an X in the middle of it, left-hand corner, like, learned, long for, loathe, write it up there. Everyone get a sticky, put down, what did you get this week? Put it up there. Take a picture of it so you have it and put that in a folder and then take those things too and start fixing the things that people loathe.
Rory Anderson: Thank That is such a great leadership principle, Garamel. I mean, that's really leadership, right? Because if you're opening the conversation to talk about those things in a work setting, that loathe category, if you create the space where people can talk about that in a problem-solving way and not just a gripe session, right? It's got to be productive.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: because by removing... 100 % Not a bitch session, yep.
Rory Anderson: Yeah, got to be ⁓ it in a way that creates productivity and solutions. ⁓ when you do that, just, that's what I'm talking about, that collaboration can happen. And that's where successful teams win.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yes. Yep, 100%. And if you don't know what your team loathes, right, you are not leading. avoiding, ⁓ And it takes 20 minutes and 10 bucks. This is not technology. ⁓ the thing about the sticky thing, it's totally, this is, talked to me a few years ago. The thing about the sticky.
Rory Anderson: You're right.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: actually, at the very first jobs in life, is it allows people to put down their opinion without being judged.
Rory Anderson: Yes.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And as we said halfway through the show, you avoid solutioning. And then what you'll find is many people have the same things that they loathe. And so the sticky board looks like you stack those on top of each other. I'm talking $10 and ⁓ 20 Can change company. You stack those on top of each other. And if there's four people or five people or whatever ⁓ have stacked that they in the loathe bucket, you pull that off and that is a priority for next week. Otherwise those people are going to quit for everything that's in that load box. And why you take a picture of it? I mean, this is really cool with AI right now. You take a picture of it and you put that into Cloudbot and it will organize all that stuff for you. And it will make sure that when next week you ask, what do we address? And the 1 % theory, you get 1 % better every single week by tracking where you were at.
Rory Anderson: I love that.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: If you do not step on the scale, you're just kind of like philosophical about it. You're not actually doing it. And that's the cheapest and best data you can get as a leader is ask your team, like learn long for loathe. you will find that you can correct things. ⁓ it's, it's wild. It's, it's wild exercise.
Rory Anderson: Yeah, you're not actually talking properly. I love that. You know what, I think everyone individually, actually when you're looking at, in our company and whenever we do what's called an ILP with each one of our employees, it's an individualized leadership plan. And if took those four categories ⁓ and talked to people about that in their individual lives, ⁓ personal professional life, and ⁓ asked to do that exercise, ⁓ that inform ⁓ maybe those atomic habits need to be or what we need to change. about our lives, about our days. mean, what a great exercise for all of us to do because that helps us be more self-aware. It helps us understand ourselves better and what kind of work we like or don't like and what we need to do to change that situation. do we need to reach out to to find other solutions to help us become better? Love that.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Exactly. what I find about the exercise is you'll spend 20 minutes in the exercise and it is a it is like an architected it's designed listening right and after that the air in the room lifts because people have been able to put the negative things somewhere and they know they were heard it's just remarkable the psychological impact of creating a listening space. And again, this gets back to the very first part of the conversation around observation and being on site is that if you don't create that listening space and you can't go to somebody and say, tell me what's going on. That's not fair. Cause you're going to get whatever's top of their mind. But by giving them four quadrants and we do this with our customers as well. They say, what'd you like learn long for load? You're going to get things that in that order, kind of like long for is why they're going to quit. Why they're going to quit.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm. Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: They are giving you the leading indicator of why we're all going to quit here. Address that. Longed for is the things that they would make their job better and make the building better. The ideas, that's idea generation. And those are things that start parking on things to do, right? Let's figure this out, right? I wish we had this, I wish we had that, I wish we had this, those are long fors. The learned is the development of your people, right? That's the proof that they're learning about how to do things.
Rory Anderson: Yes. Yep.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Hey, this week I learned how to fix a boiler unit. I never done that before. This week I learned that you can just unplug an AC unit, wait four hours when turn on season is, because dirty filters are going to make the thing freeze up. And then the light part, that's why they stay at the job. So light is why they stay, learn is how they're developing, long-fore is how they see the future, and load is why they quit. If can capture all that data, ⁓ you architect a healthy, happy building.
Rory Anderson: That's so good.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And it's not that hard.
Rory Anderson: I love that. I love that. That is such a great exercise. I'm going to think about that and ponder that and see how I can use that better in my own life and with my teams. along that vein, I always like to ask our guests, what's a leadership principle that you believe in and you try to live by and why? And maybe how that principle has helped you in your professional or your personal life.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yeah. This one came to me late in my life. Again, like a lot of things, I'm a very slow learner. Very slow learner. I don't get a vote in my success. Let that sit for second. I don't get a vote. It's everyone I work for and work with that gets the vote. I can just be an energy source, right? And what that means is, is that my ideas interesting but don't move the needle. It's my understanding of other people's needs that move the needle because I don't get a vote.
Rory Anderson: Hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And so I can't buy our own product, right? I can't have someone choose to work a Saturday or work late one day. I have to understand what they're seeking to achieve and work to make them successful. And then I will be successful. It's a reciprocal rule. If I think that I have a vote, I'm arrogant. I am generally going to be a bit selfish probably.
Rory Anderson: Yes. .
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: but I can influence, but I do not get a vote. So that'd be the thing that I learned late in life, is I don't get a vote in my success. I can just enable my success by getting out of the way of myself. This is why listening is so important.
Rory Anderson: I think you're right, you know when we become selfish I find that in any relationship we have ⁓ when we selfish about something that actually triggers problems ⁓ in relationships whether work, family life, parenting, ⁓ if you become about something ⁓ that's where most the root of all problems happen. Isn't that interesting?
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: emotional, personal. And it's and what's interesting with the word selfish is it's got a really it's got a real negative and derogatory term for it But if you look at the definition of it, it's just think about yourself first That's all it is, right? And that's not that's a human condition like we're naturally selfish people like that's why we're the biggest species Well, not the biggest but like that's what the most dominant species on the planet But like is because we are naturally selfish. We are natural narcissists. And so it's like understand that that's kind of like where a lot of our decision making comes from and we're designed to survive, right? Feed and breed, fight or flight, rest and digest. Like those three things dominate our decision making ⁓ criteria. And so like, how do we begin to understand those things? again, that came late in life for me, but I don't have a vote. That's my leadership lesson.
Rory Anderson: Yeah. ⁓ Gosh, there's so many good takeaways from this ⁓ I think if there's big idea here that we've about, it's the challenge. in maintenance isn't just staffing or budgets or even technology. It's the waste baked into the way we operate every single day, ⁓ whether it's miscommunication, poor triage, unnecessary trips, ⁓ or even the mental like you talked about that we're putting on our teams. All of that friction ⁓ really adds up and time it doesn't just impact your operations, it impacts your people, ⁓ your resident experience, ⁓ your bottom line. And what I love your ⁓ perspective Guillermo is that it isn't about some massive overhaul. It's about just getting that 1 % better, fixing the fundamentals, paying attention to the small things that compound into bigger results. So here's my thought, I guess, and challenge to our listeners this week coming out of this episode. Take a hard look. at your operations this week? It can be maintenance, can be maybe the way you're doing your turns, it can be something else, but where's the friction? Where are things getting dropped or delayed or duplicated? ⁓ one small change that you can make today ⁓ moves your team in the right direction? Any other thoughts on that, Guillermo? ⁓
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Could it offer us a subtle change to that?
Rory Anderson: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: take a hard listen at what's happening in your operations, And the difference is that like, it's the source of the Because when I take a hard look at something, and I just wanna just challenge the language a little bit, because it ⁓ means a lot to When I take a hard look at something, it's my perspective. When I take a hard listen for something, it's someone else's perspective. And I just wanna kinda like,
Rory Anderson: Mm. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's you're going. Yeah, you're right.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: offered just a subtle shift in that because the subtlety is everything that's different. Hard listens, and that's taught to me by a partner I worked with years ago and she's like, we need to go give them a hard listen. And it probably took me five or six years after working with her to really understand what that meant, to give someone a hard listen. And it's not a hard talking to, you need to get a hard listen. And learning how to listen is really hard.
Rory Anderson: I love that. and look. I love that, but always so rewarding. mean, for me, I think when I listen, when I truly listen to people and try to understand them, it makes my life ⁓ better. And even today, mean, just our conversation today has changed some of the ways that I think. And it's something I'm going to learn from. And I want to just sit in it for a minute and think about, okay, what can I, what have I learned today from Guillermo that is going to help me change the way I look at things and the way I listen other people. So I love it. This has been such a valuable ⁓ ⁓ for me, Well, and you know what? I've come to the knowledge too that if I keep all this information to myself, all these great things I'm learning, that doesn't really do much to change the world. But if I share with other people, if I can share who Guillermo is and what his principles are, that does help move the needle. Because then other people are exposed to that. And then we can all get better. And that's what it's all about. It's not about me getting better. It's about everyone getting better in this industry and helping each other to bolster each other up and share good principles and best practices with each other so we can all become more successful in our lives and be happier. So thank you.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: It's totally, totally agree. mean, goes back to, And that's the part that I'm really thrilled about to kind of bring to a close on technology is that we have an opportunity to get rid of all the soul sucking work and make life better for people at the site.
Rory Anderson: Yeah, yeah, good point. So let's do my favorite part of the show, which is an unpaid advertisement, because I love to hear what people love to use or a brand that they just love. So what do you got for us?
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, can't even, it's so cheesy to say Claude. I love Claude right now. I'm really jamming on it. Yeah. But I'm going to, ⁓ it's kind of my application of it. So I took Dan Sullivan's course last year on, ⁓ strategic coach and loving taking kind of formalized concepts like EOS and all those things and putting them into Claude so that, so it's not Claude.
Rory Anderson: I'm hearing that all over the place right now. Okay.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: it's applying Claude for thinking. And so I now have a weekly check-in that I've designed based on what Dan Sullivan teaches. I've taken kind of like coaching principles, put it in there, so I have a weekly interview. And I interview myself on Monday and I interview myself on Friday and I go for a walk and I just talk to Claude about my week, what I wanna do, what I wanna accomplish, and it helps me stay accountable. So it's not a single thing. It's the application again, like I'm a mashup person. It's mashing up kind of the principles of accountability putting that into a way that's really easy for me to do. Cause I used to come plan my week and stare at a blank sheet and freeze up and just go look at my email. ⁓ now I go for a walk. And that helps me think about my week. And then at the end of the week, I have accountability to myself with things I wanted to accomplish. Cause it is true. Atomic habits. Bill Gates talks about it is that like the things that you can accomplish ⁓ week feel overwhelming, ⁓ the things you can accomplish in a year are exceptional. And you just got to kind of, I got that backwards I think, but it's just, important to map out ⁓ you want to do and then, and then making yourself accountable for it and in a way that's really easy to do it. And I think that's the thing that I'm really excited about right now is I love chatting about my plan and being intentional.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: about my plan for my personal life and my professional life. in the last year I've realized that those two ⁓ are not independent, they are dependent outcomes. I am a person when work's going well and I'm person when work's not going well and I bring that home and wear that to everybody, everyone gets to know, right? I don't really hide much. so, but being able to put structure. to the thinking in a really easy way that's conversation. Like I really do, I'm that weird guy who's got a dog and earphones and he's talking to himself while he's on a walk. And that's what I do. And so the exercise, the away from the screen, but still activating structure of my brain, I'm really enjoying that. And it's helping me eliminate clutter and the distractions and help me focus. taking... ⁓
Rory Anderson: Hahaha So good.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: coaching, putting it in a little tiny cloth thing, talking to it every day and every week and being accountable, self accountable. It's become very easy for me lately with these tools. So I'm pretty excited about that. That's a unpaid advertisement. And again, I think that if you are an entrepreneur, is the formal unpaid advertisement. I really recommend checking out Dan Sullivan's writing. It will ⁓ save life, change your life. It did for me. ⁓ And the stuff that he talks about around understanding what it is to be an entrepreneur, the wiring of an entrepreneur, how that is different. I recommend you do it. Just, it's so powerful in terms of a mind shift, being able to say it out loud. I am an entrepreneur and I am wholly accountable for my outcomes versus someone's going to take care of me. Cause no one is going to take care of me because I'm an entrepreneur. And so I've got to create my own outcomes.
Rory Anderson: Mm-hmm.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: And that is something that is, I need to be accountable to that for my family and for my wellbeing. And that's something that I became wholly aware of through his coaching program. So I really recommend it. And I had been listening to him podcast for like five or six years and avoiding the calls and all this stuff, reading the books. And it wasn't until I went there and I sat down and dedicated the time for self-improvement that I gained an awareness that I didn't have before. And it helped gain clarity about where I want to go and what I want to achieve. And that's super empowering because I feel unstoppable right now.
Rory Anderson: That's amazing. you much for sharing that, Guillermo. that personal side of you. It's so neat to learn from you and to hear what you're doing in your life and how it's affecting you. ⁓ our listeners, if this conversation got you thinking, ⁓ I would recommend connecting with Guillermo and following his work. There's a lot of wisdom in how he talks about change in systems and actually ⁓ executing at high level. Guillermo, how would they get a hold of you?
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: I mean the best way is really LinkedIn. So Guillermo Salazar on LinkedIn, there's a few of us. But if you wanna look at one Guillermo Salazar, all one word, or look up on Venderoo or and you can find me there. ⁓ is the best way. You can shoot me an email to Guillermo at Venderoo.ai or alternatively I've got another one, it's gsalazar at palmco.ai. either way, shoot me a note. I love the chat with you. ⁓ specifically if you are struggling on the site level or with your operations team, we've got an incredible solution that is just, just the cleverness that how they built this thing really drew me to this company in terms of solving the problem of change and then enabling the application, the, the improvements in the organization. I just hadn't seen it solved this way before. And I hadn't, it was a bit of a frame bump for me because I didn't think of it that way. And I was like, That was part of when was like, I'm not the smartest guy on the planet, but like, I do like to think about things a lot of way. And when I saw how they solve this, I was like, that's brilliant. And I just like, stopped, dropped the mic for me. And I was like, I gotta go join this company. Cause this is, this is where the world, how the world's gonna change. And then, and yeah, if you're curious about, if you're a founder and you're starting your company and you're trying to figure out how to get started, shoot me a line. I help a lot of founders kind of get out of the stuck, the stuck box and get, get some learning going.
Rory Anderson: Yeah.
Guillermo Salazar - Vendoroo: around how their product could or could not save the world. yeah, happy to help there. I love founders. ⁓ world needs more of them. And I really believe that there wasn't founders on the planet, there wouldn't be much. And so the needs more of us. And I'm happy to help because I've been there.
Rory Anderson: I love it. Also, if you're enjoying this show, would just mean a lot if you would subscribe, leave a review or share this episode with someone on your team, especially your maintenance leads, your property managers, or even your regional teams. ⁓ are the conversations that can truly change how we operate. ⁓ don't forget to check out our new website at property playbook.riverside.com for more episodes, resources, and content designed to help you grow as a leader in this industry. ⁓ next time, keep building great teams, keep leveling yourself up ⁓ go be a light and a blessing to somebody else.