The Org Chart Is Dead. Long Live the Trust Chart

The Wheel Turned Sideways (Again)

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For hundreds of years after discovering the wheel, our ancestors used it for pottery. We just shaped bowls with it!

Then one day someone - whether he was a mad genius or some weird recluse that remains to be studied - decided to turn it sideways.

Immediately, we learned to carry heavy things further with wheelbarrows.

Then we realized we could have animals carry things for us (including ourselves).

Then we built the car… and it changed how we lived..

Technology has also had its sideway wheel moment:

In the late 20th century, we discovered the power of computing.

At first, it was personal. We typed documents, ran spreadsheets, and played Oregon Trail.

Then someone connected those machines together — and just like that, we weren’t just computing anymore.

We were communicating.

We got the internet. Suddenly, you could read anything, write anything, sell anything. Communities weren’t local anymore. Ideas and industries went global overnight.

And now — that same spark is happening again.

But this time, we’re not just using machines to connect.

We’re teaching them to act on our behalf.

We’ve entered the AI era — and just like the car changed how we live, agentic AI will change how we work.

And when work changes…
The way we build companies must change too.

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Why Task-Based Businesses Are Getting Outpaced

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For the past 15 years,  we have lived in a task-oriented economy.

CRMs. PMSs. Ticket systems. Communication hubs.

The property management industry became a reflection of the global technological trends, where billions of dollars were poured into solutions that purported that more software, more people are the way to win.

E.g. “Maintenance problems? Throw more people at it. Buy more software.”

BUT

The world is shifting around this new technological inflection point.

AI agents have already proven they can manage large subsets of the task a property manager should be doing every day.

Now the conversation will shift FROM TO: how many more people should I throw at this problem? TO: “What new problems can I have my people solve?”

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The Age of “More People” Is Over

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Access to a global workforce & automation tools like Zapier were the prelude to this new feeling of capacity. They provided us with an ability to throw more people at the problem for less capital.

That alone felt like a game changer. And for many it was. It levelled the playing field.

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She Rebuilt the Org Chart. Then She Exited.

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In the mid-2010s, Stacey Salyer — a single mom of three with kids in travel sports — decided to start a business from scratch.  People called her crazy.

Less than a decade later, she has::

- had a successful exit with PURE

- spent a season of her acquiring PMC’s

- is now building her next successful business: a first-of-its-kind digital native coaching program

The same people who called her crazy? They’re now asking the same thing I asked her at NARPM Broker/Owner:

How the heck did you do it?

Here’s what Stacy told me:

She went all-in on remote teammates and process automation before it was cool.

She didn’t hire a COO. She hired a VA out of Mexico. She automated what could be automated.  

It sounds obvious now. But back then? It was radical.

Stacey was doing this stuff way before the words “remote teammate” entered the PM vernacular.  When she was doing it, people thought it was crazy.

But it worked.

Soon, established players started knocking on her door asking for an acquisition price:

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I think in Stacy’s story lies a great lesson for business ownership in general, that I have also encountered in my past as the CEO of my marketing company.

While the old saying that a great entrepreneur/leader makes sure to put the right people in the right seats of the bus rings very true to this day, the world is changing so fast that the better question that we all need to ask ourselves is:

“Is my bus built for this era?”

Stacy realized this earlier than most and began building her bus differently right when the context shift was starting to enter the conversation.

Which led to her building an outperforming business and exiting… much sooner than most.

We are at an inflection point where the seats of our buses are either changing or disappearing.  

The bus that we were building for over a decade was a task bus.

Streamlining operations was the end-all-be-all goal. The mark of a great property management company was how well it handles operations and for how many doors it handles them.

But with operations getting completely automated and Agentic AI handling nearly everything, task-management will take a backseat (pardon the pun)

The new, upgraded bus? It will be more aligned with the position & skillsets that led you to start your business in the first place.

It puts you back in the role you were pulled away from, before the forever firefight took over your day.

I call this one: the trust bus.

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The Trust Org Chart (And Why Most PMs Ignore It)

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On the podcast, I asked Stacey how she’d build a PMC today — starting from scratch, in today’s market.

She said she wouldn’t build it around operations.

She’d build it around relationships.

She’d staff for trust.

She outlined four key roles:

• Someone doing community building.
  

• Someone running marketing.
  

• Someone with high EQ handling difficult conversations.
  

• AI handling leasing, maintenance, basic communication, and scheduling.

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Stacey’s vision wasn’t just more human. It was strategic.

She was designing her company around one thing:
Winning the Kitchen Table Argument.

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The Hidden Metric That Keeps Owners from Leaving

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I’ve written before that the most important moment in your owner relationship is what we call a KTA — the Kitchen Table Argument.

It’s the moment when your client sits down, frustrated about a plumbing bill or a delay in service, and asks themselves:

“Do I still trust these people?”

The answer to that question determines whether they stay.

Not your NOI report.
Not your occupancy rate.

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Trust.

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And here’s what’s changing:

In the AI-powered business of tomorrow, KTAs are no longer reactive moments.
They become your north star.

If AI gives you back 80% of your time, that 20% you reinvest?

It better be into the moments that make a client say:

“I’ll never leave. They actually care.”

So what does a KTA-Driven Org Chart look like?

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• 🫶 The Relationship Seat: A person whose job is to track emotional signals — not just account performance. They build loyalty, not dashboards.
  

• 🛠️ The Local Touchpoint: A field-based ops lead who shows up. For walkthroughs. For stress calls. For the “Hey, I thought of you” check-ins
  

• 🎙️ The Storyteller: Someone managing content and social — not for marketing, but for credibility. Visibility equals trust.
  

• 🎁 The Gifter: A strategic connector managing vendor relationships and surprise-and-delight campaigns that create emotional stickiness.

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These aren’t vanity roles.

They’re the infrastructure of trust.

Because when that KTA moment hits — and it will — your client won’t be asking, “Did they fix the leak fast?”
They’ll be asking,

“Do I trust them before the conversation even starts?”

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Reclaim Your Time. Rebuild Your Role.

Step 1: Ask the KTA Question.
If AI gave you your time back, where would you reinvest it?

• Would you call every client proactively before renewal?
  
• Would you walk a property and win 5 more years of trust?
  
• Would you build a community your residents are proud to belong to?

Start there.
Because AI will give  you the time.
It’ll be up to you to give it meaning.

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Step 2: Recognize That You’re Hiring a Teammate — Not Buying Software.
Most “AI” solutions are just glorified to-do list helpers.

True Agentic AI owns outcomes.
If it can take over your maintenance completely — like Vendoroo’s AI agents can — it’s agentic.
If it just helps you handle it faster? That’s just another dashboard.

Agentic AI handles the mechanics.
You handle the meaning.

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Step 3: Don’t Be Afraid to Build the Bus Differently.
When I asked Stacey what advice she’d give PMs hesitating to leap, she said (paraphrased):

“You can live in the present and fall behind —
Or live in the future and build a beautiful business.”

So:

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Time To Turn Your Wheel Sideways

You don’t need to be early to win.
You just need to stop pretending we’re still in the same game.

Agentic AI isn’t here to make you better at what you do.

It’s here to take over what no longer requires you.

So you can amplify what only you can do.

Let us run the old playbook.

So you can write your own.

See you soon,
Pablo Gonzalez
Chief Evangelist at Vendoroo

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