A Book For PMs (In a World Moving 4× Faster)

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I want to take you behind the scenes of the book I just published, because while it ended up going really well, I was a bit of a disaster coming up to it.  This is a story of curiosity, creativity, service… and a whole bunch of imposter syndrome.

But before I go into it, I want to thank you.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, replying, reacting, and thinking with me over the past year, this book exists because of you.  You helped shape what made it in. You helped me figure out what actually mattered.

This isn’t just my book. It’s our book. And here’s how it happened.

What This Book Is (and Isn't)

When the proofs showed up, I opened the box, held the first copy, took a pic of it, posted it, got a bunch of encouragement and praise, and really nice things said about me by people I really admire…. and then the spiral started: “Do I deserve to call myself an author? Is this even a book?”

Being called an incompetent grifter shitbag because of the title didn’t help, either.

But here’s the truth: this isn’t a typical book. It isn’t a slow-baked formulation of ideas, grouped together, and written about..

It’s ideas that were flash frozen, packaged individually, and then retroactively woven into a narrative about the problems with property management and new promise, understanding AI, building a business around AI, wealth creation for property managers in the age of AI, and what's next.

It’s really more of a living archive than a book.

A year of podcasts, trade-show conversations, field notes, read by a custom GPT trained on my voice, iterated on between us, then pressure-tested through the newsletter. Some ideas landed, some didn’t.

This book is simply the ones that resonated most, pulled into one place, and organized into a fully formed point of view (POV).

I co-wrote it with AI and co-created the ideas with my podcast guests.  That’s not what I’ve been taught makes you an author.

But honestly, I’ve come to love the process. It let me keep up with the speed of change we’re all feeling. In a way, the book had to be “weird.” Because the moment we’re in is weird. And the only way it wouldn’t be obsolete on arrival was to make it this way.

In fact, I would argue that if you are going to collect and distribute ideas about how AI is impacting the world via the book medium, this is the only way to do it.   The old way of researching a topic for 2 years, writing for a year, editing for 6 months, and publishing is dead on arrival when AI doubles in power every 6 months.  

Then I got to NARPM Florida State for the launch.

The Moment It Finally Made Sense

Walking into NARPM with a box of fresh books was nerve-wracking. I’d been living with this thing in late-night drafts and doubts, and suddenly other people were about to have a real opinion on it.  Every time someone grabbed a copy and told me they couldn’t wait to read it, I felt more and more exposed.  My value was about to be judged at scale.

I had come with my talk ready, but I didn’t love it.  Add that feeling to the nerves of having my book in people’s hands (for the first time) and Jonathan Cook telling me they were going to read the entire thing over the weekend and give me his thoughts…and I was left with no other choice..

That night, I completely redid my presentation to tighten the narrative, minimize the fluff, and make sure this audience could feel what I learned over the last 12 months.

As soon as I got in the car with Nick Jacobsen, I started freestyling the talk I wanted to give.  We got back to the Airbnb, set up a recorder, and I started over and freestyle it to the finish in front of Nick and James.

By the end of it, their eyes were looking at me wide open while they nodded their heads, and I knew I had the right narrative.  All that was left was to ruthlessly edit my slides to adapt to this new presentation, then pray I get the timing right (something surprisingly tricky in a 55-minute keynote).

My friend, I can honestly tell you I delivered the best presentation I’ve ever given. So much so that there was a line of folks about 9 deep waiting to get me to sign the book when I got back to the booth.  COMPLETELY SURREAL.

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Watch me land the point and throw a book in the crowd in this amateur video.

The TLDR: What This Book Says

Property management is in a boom, but it’s a boom happening under intense pressure. Regulatory shifts are changing the rules of the game, a generational wealth transfer is reshaping the clientele, and AI is moving faster than anything we’ve ever seen in this industry.

The real pain most people feel isn’t about technology. It’s about not feeling valued. It’s the exhaustion of constantly putting out fires, chasing down tasks, and trying to meet rising owner expectations without the time, tools, or team to do it well.

Churn is becoming the silent killer. At around 600 to 700 doors, many companies hit a wall, not because they can’t grow, but because they can’t stop the leaks. And for those trying to scale through acquisition, the churn numbers there are often worse. It’s demoralizing, it’s bad for owners, and it’s bad for teams.

Meanwhile, owners are asking for faster answers, quicker resolutions, and more control. But for most property managers, that’s an unfair ask. The current systems are too rigid, too complex. To meet every variation in owner preference, you’d need a hundred different workflows and someone who can remember them all.

That’s why we’ve defaulted to building the box and forcing owners to fit into it. But that’s not how the next generation wants to be served. And frankly, it’s not how most of us want to work either.

The promise of AI is that it can finally break that trade-off. It can give you 24/7 responsiveness for residents and vendors. It can automate communications and troubleshooting. It can remember preferences, build custom processes on the fly, and only involve your team when it’s truly necessary.  

In short, AI can rightsize the job to fit the human.

This means less burnout, less churn, and more space for your team to do fulfilling work. While the rest of the world debates whether AI will replace jobs, property management has a different opportunity: to use AI to finally make the job sustainable.

That’s what this book is about.

100 Copies Gone. Here’s What’s Next.

The response from the book has actually been incredible, and as a result, the first edition is now completely spoken for. We only made 100 copies for this initial run, and we have officially run out.

But the conversation is just getting started.

We are now opening an official waitlist for the second edition, which will be launched on Amazon. To be the first to know when it’s available, you can either shoot me an email at pablo@vendoroo.ai to be put on the list for the second release or you can sign up directly here.

If not, we will also have some copies with us at the upcoming PMI summit, the RPM reunion, and at the NARPM Nationals.

Let’s build what comes next, together.

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Pablo Gonzalez,

Chief Evangelist at Vendoroo

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