Insider Secrets Podcast Season 2, Episode 37
Guest: Guillermo Salazar
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Guest Bio:
At the helm of IrisCX, I spearhead the evolution of customer experience through visual and AI-driven solutions. Our mission is to enhance product interaction—from selection to support—transforming clients into enthusiastic brand advocates. In my leadership role, we have seen the seamless integration of visual guides that significantly boost conversion rates and create memorable first impressions.
As a Board Member of the US Proptech Council, my focus lies in fostering collaboration between real estate technology, investment, and innovation, with the goal of driving profitability and growth. My expertise in business process optimization and strategy, honed over years of industry experience, informs my approach to both executive decision-making and my commitment to mentorship in the tech community.
Experience
IrisCX
Chief Executive Officer
August 2019 – Present (5 years 7 months), Calgary, Canada Area
IrisCX is a visual customer experience platform. We use guided/self-guided visuals, embedded guides, and AI to simplify customer experiences. Now, product companies can use rich visual interactions to help their customers choose, set up, and support products—improving cart conversion and creating amazing first experiences.
Accelerator Alumni:
Forum VC (Acceleprise) – TO2
Google For Startups – Summer 2021
Stage2Capital – Summer 2022
US Proptech Council
Board Member
May 2024 – Present (10 months), Austin, TX
Bringing together real estate tech, real estate companies, and investors to drive innovation, enable ideas, and multiply profitability.
https://youtu.be/szmFuZyU3D4
SHOWNOTES
Key Takeaways
Reduce maintenance costs and improve NOI by diagnosing issues remotely before dispatching technicians.
Implement a remote triage system to avoid unnecessary truck rolls and accelerate response times.
Focus virtual maintenance solutions on properties under 100 units that lack onsite staff.
Allocate dedicated time slots for maintenance teams to conduct remote diagnostics efficiently.
Don’t ignore low-priority service tickets, they still drain time, money, and resources.
Use trained virtual assistants with pre-built scripts and video tools to handle basic maintenance requests.
Standout Quotes
“We create NOI by removing unproductive expenses.” — Guillermo Salazar
“Maintenance is going through the same revolution as medicine did with telehealth.” — Guillermo Salazar
“The resident wants it fixed fast. You want to spend less. We make both happen.” — Guillermo Salazar
“You’re spending the same dollars to fix a tier-0 problem as a level four emergency.” — Guillermo Salazar
“The real cost is not always the labor—it’s the drive time, scheduling, and miscommunication.” — Guillermo Salazar
“We’re not replacing maintenance staff. We’re helping them focus on what they do best.” — Guillermo Salazar
Episode Timeline
[0:00 – 3:00] Introduction to Guillermo Salazar and the IrisCX platform.
[3:01 – 7:00] Guillermo’s background in consulting and how he transitioned into real estate tech.
[7:01 – 11:00] Identifying inefficiencies in maintenance workflows.
[11:01 – 15:00] Remote diagnostics vs. traditional service methods.
[15:01 – 19:00] Targeting properties that benefit most from virtual maintenance.
[19:01 – 24:00] Real-life impact: IrisCX results from 5 properties and 315 units.
[24:01 – 28:00] Redefining service expectations with virtual triage.
[28:01 – 36:00] Final thoughts on the future of multifamily maintenance operations.
Contact
LinkedIn: Forrest Corral
Company Website: LTL Investments
TRANSCRIPT
Kristen: [00:00:00] Welcome to this edition of Insider Secrets, the weekly podcast that turns real estate investing goals into reality. Each show we interview guests who are seasoned real estate professionals, actively closing and managing real estate deals. Mike is the founder of My Core Intentions and would like to help you make your real estate investing dreams a reality.
Mike coaches you to buy investment real estate, creating short term cash flow and long term wealth. Your host and real estate coach, Mike Morawski has more than 30 years of real estate investing and property management experience. Here’s your host, Mike.
Mike Morawski: Hey, good morning everybody. I hope you are enjoying your morning and, I really hope you had a great week and it was productive for you. Here we are into the second quarter of the year already, and one of the questions I’ll ask is, Hey, how [00:01:00] productive were you the first quarter?
Are you on track? Are you working towards your goals? Have you been intentional about what you’re trying to accomplish? By this time you probably are thinking, wow, I might be a little behind or a little bit ahead, whichever side of that aisle you fall on, there’s always time to make up and catch up.
And so I just wanna encourage you, be intentional as you set your tasks for today. Hey, if you’re new to the show, I appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank the person that told you about us or invited you. Do us a solid. Would you please smash the subscribe button? Like us, love us, help us grow. Tell somebody else about it.
Today we’re gonna jump into some really fascinating thoughts around maintenance on your multifamily project. Hey, my guest today is Guillermo Salazar. He’s from Calgary, and he is with IrisCX. And they solve the [00:02:00] maintenance problems on your multifamily assets.
So we’re gonna dig in today and talk a little bit about what some of those problems are. ‘Cause being an owner operator, I have some of them. And we’re gonna talk about the solution that Iris CX has for those issues. So let me bring our guest in.
Guillermo Morning.
Guillermo Salazar: Morning, Mike. How you doing? Good to to see you.
Mike Morawski: I’m good. I’m good. Good to see you. I know that we’ve been on and off a couple times. I was just on your podcast a week or so ago. And, we get to continue to build that relationship. I always tell people, I say, Hey, we’re in a business that is all built on relationships.
It’s about who you know and the systems and processes you can help others with and gain from others. So, I’m excited to talk with you today about what Iris offers and what you guys do in the marketplace.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah, I mean, we’d love chatting about it, obviously, and appreciate you and all the work that you do to kind [00:03:00] of just raise the floor on everybody that’s following you and that you coach with. I mean, people have such untapped potential. And we just need a little bit of guidance sometime. So thank you for all the work that you do for everybody in the marketplace.
Mike Morawski: Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Hey, so before the show, we were just talking a little bit about your trip to Tennessee. I know you’re up in Calgary. But your trip to Tennessee, you kind of avoided the tornado alley a little bit, huh?
Guillermo Salazar: I think so. I mean, well we were a little bit, there’s certainly some weather that’s hitting down the area right now and my in-laws are still there. We were down there. My oldest plays college golf. He’s playing in a tournament on Monday, Tuesday, so we got a chance to watch him. Try and watch ’em once or twice a year.
But the weather was terrible. It was like 45, 50 on Monday. It was miserable. And, that’s not the weather we were prepared for. And then the turnaround is, it was like 80 yesterday and then towards the evening it was dropping fast.
You could just feel, you could feel the humidity coming in. And when you look at those [00:04:00] clouds, the clouds were still on the surface. The clouds are racing across the top. You’re just like, oh boy, this looks ominous. And then you get the news alerts and you’re like, oh my, what’s gonna happen here?
And so of course we were flying last night and, we were just happy that the plane landed. And so was the staff. The plane, the flight crew. And then we were happy to take off. And so was the flight crew.
Mike Morawski: I bet the pilots get a rush out of that drive. I have a tough time with heights, but I don’t mind flying. And I have to imagine the pilots get a real rush outta driving through that.
Guillermo Salazar: Oh, yeah. They’re expecting like seven to 10 inches of rain.
Mike Morawski: Geez.
Guillermo Salazar: That’s crazy. And then the winds and everything. So we were quite happy. When we landed, three tornadoes had touched down the day before, and so we were just kind of feeling lucky to find that bucket of window, whether it was cool or not. That though the boys could play golf and then everyone got in and out safe. So that’s the important part.
Mike Morawski: So your son plays golf, is he at Tennessee?
Guillermo Salazar: He’s in Pennsylvania.
Mike Morawski: Okay.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah.
Mike Morawski: But he played in a semipro [00:05:00] deal or?
Guillermo Salazar: No, it was a college tournament. So college golf is split into two seasons. There’s the first half you play in the fall and second half you play in the spring. This is their second tournament of the spring. They played in North Carolina the week before that. And so Tennessee. They play mostly in Pennsylvania area.
They’re part of that North Atlantic conference. And so he’ll play in Connecticut next week, and then I think they’re back to Michigan or Indiana. I can’t remember after that.
Mike Morawski: Yeah. How’d he do?
Guillermo Salazar: The team did okay. He had a pretty good round on the front. He was really good tee to green. Putting was a bit of a challenge and, how putting is it’s a confidence, it’s streaky. And so that affected his overall scores, but generally did pretty good. The one kid on another team shot a 61 and absolutely ran away with the field.
So you got any player that 61 that changes everything. So my oldest finished in the seventies every day in the mid to low seventies. But when a kid shoots 61, that’s the score to beat. It’s tough to come back on that.
Mike Morawski: I usually always shoot in the seventies on the front.
Guillermo Salazar: I know [00:06:00] that feeling. I know that feeling.
Mike Morawski: Hey, listen, as we kick this off this morning, I always ask my guests one question. And I always say, I’m gonna write a book on this because I have a couple hundred answers. I wanna know in one word, what best describes you personally and professionally?
Guillermo Salazar: I appreciate that question in the heads up to kind of think about it a bit. I’m a learner. And I think that that is why things like retirement scare the hell outta me is that like I am a feverish learner, reader, consumer, and just kind of like try to solve the problems that I need to address by talking to other people.
All those things, but every single thing I’m just trying to consume and understand and learn all the time. The status quo is not good enough for me in almost every case.
Mike Morawski: Yeah, I love that word learner. I said I’ve probably asked that question a couple hundred times of my guests and nobody’s ever said learner, [00:07:00] which is interesting. But I’ve been in the real estate space 30 years, residential, commercial, multifamily. And I think you constantly have to be learning, especially the older we get. I think the younger generation comes with more openness, more ideas.
Technology is really changing all things, we’ll talk about that this morning. But, I think the technology and the things that you can glean from that really help you continue to learn. I always tell people, my coaching program, I always talk to people about keep learning. I don’t have all the answers. Go to other people, get other answers. You’ve gotta keep growing personally to grow professionally.
Guillermo Salazar: And I think that there’s the kind of precedent to becoming a learner is being curious. And, I think you’ve gotta be curious. It’s just you’re not gonna survive, you’re not curious. But like the follow through is the learning part of it. Like, we can be curious. But not necessarily follow through on it. And that’s the [00:08:00] part that in order to learn something, you gotta be curious about it.
And so, I like the learner word because I do appreciate the fact that I don’t have all the answers, and I hope I never do. Because the experience and journey of learning has formed who I am today. Certainly the word that you would’ve asked maybe three years ago, four years ago, would’ve been a different word.
But I really am appreciating this time in my life to become a learner and apply those learnings in the work that we do. It just makes it so much more compelling.
Mike Morawski: Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, listen, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you, about your background and what you’re currently doing, what Iris CX is and does.
Guillermo Salazar: Sure. Wonderful. I’d love to share. So my background is again, I came outta university and I really wanted to work. My goal, I wanted to work for Enron. I wanted to be a natural gas trader. I had taken [00:09:00] classes in it, I had studied it, done preliminary work to be in it, and I wanted to work at Enron so bad.
I had heard so many things about it. People said, you should be in this business, so ultimately a commodities trader. And that didn’t work out for me at the time when I graduated, barrel of oil was like nine and a half bucks. Like imagine that, a barrel of oil is nine and a half bucks.
And so energy was kind of going sideways. And then ultimately of course, Enron unwound. But in my pursuit of trying to find that type of career, I ended up in management consulting. And really, it was a bit of a desperation attempt. I tried to find a job for like four or five, six months, and this is back in the day where you walked in and you gave the receptionist your resume and you actually pounded the pavement. And you responded to emails and you emailed things and you tried to make it effective, but it wasn’t really practical. There was no LinkedIn back then.
And that era, I ended up applying for a job and interviewing for the job, and I got hired as a strategic analyst for a consulting company. And then from there, I moved into the consulting [00:10:00] side of things, but I got a chance to learn the consulting business, the dollars and cents of it all.
I built all the models, I built all the budgeting, planning and all those things. And ultimately that gave me tools on how to run a business. And I worked for the founder of this firm. So I did that working for that firm. They were acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. So I worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers for a while, worked overseas, worked all over North America. And then I left that firm and went on my own, independent, to make more money. And did that for a number of years.
Then started my own consulting firm with three other guys. And so we grew that firm to about 65 consultants and exited that to Deloitte in a very quick burn. We did that in less than five years.
Mike Morawski: Wow.
Guillermo Salazar: And it was crazy. It was absolutely crazy. Like to be in the consulting space, you find yourself and this time trade off that you’re constantly deliberating about. I either spend an hour billing the customer or an hour trying to grow the business, and I’ve got certainty around the bill against the [00:11:00] customer and uncertainty around the growing the business. But if I don’t grow the business, then the business doesn’t grow right? And so it’s like, it’s this constant trade off.
Mike Morawski: It’s a constant entrepreneurial struggle.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah, totally. And so we were delivering projects at a consulting pace, so imagine that’s like 60 hours a week, just getting that delivered and then plus trying to grow the business. So it was a lot of work. I was lucky, I was quite young and I had good partners and we had very good customer, very good clients.
And so ultimately that grew, exited to Deloitte, spent some time at Deloitte, exited that, and then kind of started trying to find another problem to solve and figure out what I wanted to do. Ultimately, I was quite unhappy when I was there. I felt like I use this expression all the time. I felt like a dolphin in a tree climbing competition. I was just expending an enormous amount of energy trying to be successful, and I wasn’t moving the needle.
And that created a lot of downward, I would say, downward depression cycle. I mean, in retrospect, I probably had a depression element to it, and really gained a lot of respect [00:12:00] for mental health as a concept and being an actively make myself better from a mental health perspective and appreciate that for what it is. So I could be my best self every single day.
So that meant putting myself in situations where I could be successful, and also being mindful of things that I’m vulnerable to that create downward spirals. And so just being proactive about how I can be present every single day and be the best husband, father, partner or co-founder or whatever, every single day.
Mike Morawski: Yeah. And so today you’re with Iris CX.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah.
Mike Morawski: And what do you guys do?
Guillermo Salazar: So I like to frame the question in terms of the problem we solve. Because without the problem, it’s kind of just pointless. And so the problem that we solve is that when resident requests, mainten requests come in, they’re very vague. They’re like, my toilet’s not working, or there’s a sound. [00:13:00] And the tools we have available today are very limited to try and solve the problem. And so we end up rolling a tech, dispatching a tech, and that could be in a building, like in a multi-family high rise, or it can be on a truck roll, it could be a vendor.
All these things we do because we don’t have enough information. So even if you’ve got a telephone call, you’re still flying blind. And the most common thing we hear all the time is we’ve gotta get some eyes on the problem. And so what Iris CX does is it allows you to see the problem before you dispatch that truck.
The way our software works, everybody here, no one wants a new application. Nobody wants another login. It’s very simple. You send an SMS message to a resident, they click on it and you can see through the camera at the problem. You can hear what’s going on. And when you can do that, you can troubleshoot the situation.
So if it’s my toilet’s not working, now I can start stepping you through, Hey, let’s look at the shutoff [00:14:00] valve. Turn to the left. That’s left, that’s right. You can start troubleshooting these issues remotely. So we solve the problems around that twenty four seven support burden that’s born by maintenance coordinators and maintenance techs.
We solve the problem around the rolling that truck for simple fixes. Like you can’t imagine how many trips are dispatched to change the battery. Change the filter to unhook the chain, to reset the GFCI. It’s disgusting ’cause all of that is waste and all that has a direct impact on NOI. And so if you think if you can go and solve 50% of your resident requests before you roll that trip in about eight minutes, you’re saving all that maintenance expense upfront.
When you roll a truck or send a dispatch attack. They’re only going there the one time. Imagine a resident that shows up when, when the tech shows up and says, Hey Mike, I’m here to fix your toilet. I’ve got the toilet stem that fits your [00:15:00] toilet. I’m gonna be 50 minutes to replace this part and I’m out of here. That’s it. Right? So those kind of situations.
Mike Morawski: So, one of the first questions I have. We know multifamily split up into different asset classes, A, B, C, and D.
Guillermo Salazar: Sure.
Mike Morawski: Does this technology work best in one of those certain classes or can it work across the board?
Guillermo Salazar: I would say it depends on the luxury, I would probably not bother. Because luxury, they’re paying, if they’re paying like $15,000 a month in rent, they’re paying for someone to go solve that problem, and you can afford that onsite maintenance deck.
Mike Morawski: Got it.
Guillermo Salazar: The math gets complicated. I would say more so it’s a density problem more so than a class problem. Like Class Cs, people can be workforce housing, they could be very handy people that wanna solve the problem, and they don’t have the time to wait. Class B, you’ve got a lot of things that are going wrong in these [00:16:00] things.
Like maybe it’s like nineties era, maybe even eighties era buildings, and they’ve got unique problems to them. And then Class A, that’s low density. There’s not enough people to staff it and they expect to have results. So I would say it’s got more to do with the density of the property. So if you can’t afford to have a tech on that site because it just doesn’t pencil in, or you can’t afford to have enough techs on that site, or maybe you can’t hire techs for that site, then you should really be considering a different way of solving the problem.
And that’s where we really thrive. We thrive in a low density environment across all asset classes where you’re competing on price. So if you’re competing on experience like a 17,000, $50,000 rent luxury, you should just solve that problem, the best possible way to solve that problem. But in low density, I’ll say price oriented markets or price takers in markets, we thrive ’cause the resident wants a problem solved.
The management company or the ownership group, they [00:17:00] want to get this thing solved with the least amount of expenses possible, and they wanna make the resident happy. That’s what we enable.
Mike Morawski: So when you talk about low density, do you mean like a 30 unit complex versus that doesn’t have onsite staff versus a hundred unit complex that might have onsite staff?
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah, like the hundred unit concept project is kind of a fun number to play with because like it’s an average number, but rarely does there actually a hundred unit complex. Like they’re 150, there’s 70 fives. They’re 30 twos, right?
Mike Morawski: 93.
Guillermo Salazar: Yeah, 93. The numbers almost rarely pencil out for that one to 100 to be successful. Or even if, let’s say it’s a leasing up scenario on a hundred unit project, that lease up might takes a number of months. So what do you do in between? How do you manage if you’ve got the first 20 residents are moving in a hundred unit complex. Are you gonna staff that with a full-time maintenance tech?
Is that even math? Does that [00:18:00] math work? And so like, can you find the person, is there enough work for ’em to do? Or do you float between two buildings, which makes for a bad resident experience, the one you’re trying to lease up? So the one to 100 model is an average of averages and it doesn’t really work for any property.
But you can make it work if you’ve got, let’s say 80 units, 215 units, you have not enough work or just a little bit too much work. But if you’re in that 50 unit and lower lower density, like especially getting a BTR and SFR. Like in those spaces, you definitely need to be able to figure out how to solve those resident requests to protect your asset.
‘Cause if there’s a leak, you won’t be able to solve that problem as fast as possible, or at least mitigate the damages. If there’s a shortage of people, or maybe it’s a remote location, then you wanna be able to batch up that work. So you’re solving it all the first time. The last thing you want, and I think maybe you’ve said it before, but you hear it all the time, is an windshield time is an NOI killer.
Mike Morawski: [00:19:00] Yep, a hundred percent.
Guillermo Salazar: Because it is so unproductive. So the priority of maintenance organizations could be, let’s eliminate windshield time. ’cause that is killing our NOI, that is killing our resident experience. That’s killing our technician experience.
Mike Morawski: So let me give you a scenario. And I talked early on, I said, Hey, we’re gonna talk about problems, but you’re gonna bring a solution. So let me give you a scenario. I have five assets in one market. Five different properties, 315 units. I have two key maintenance guys and two make ready guys. My smallest unit is 30, or my smallest property is 30 units. I have two 65 unit properties. A 62 unit and a 93 unit.
Guillermo Salazar: All right.
Mike Morawski: So that math should equal 315 right?
Guillermo Salazar: I hope so. I’m not gonna check it.
Mike Morawski: Yeah. And [00:20:00] so, I have a hundred work orders across five properties. And it’s silly stuff. My stove doesn’t work. And I don’t mean silly.
Guillermo Salazar: It’s user error.
Mike Morawski: Right. So I have stoves that don’t work. Hot waters, that’s out. Toilet leaks, faucet leaks, this issue. How do we solve that issue where my maintenance guys focus on this property a lot today, this property tomorrow, maybe they’re spread across five properties in one day.
I think the un productiveness on an eight hour day if I get five hours of work out of a maintenance guy. I think that’s a lot. Considering they’re driving property to property, they have to go pick up parts, they come back, there’s a lot of downtime in the midst of there. How do we make them more productive and solve that issue?
Guillermo Salazar: Sure. So you take a look at the four people you’ve got on your team. So four for 315, so you’re kind of already over allocated, which actually perfectly represents your point of productivity is you’re over penciled [00:21:00] on the one to 100. ‘Cause you’ve got four people working 300 units. I mean, from a staffing perspective. So you’re already leaking there.
So what you can do is you can do a couple things. So with our service, with Iris or our software, sorry. You can take one of those maintenance techs and let’s say you allocate over the course of the week, you’ve got 80 hours of the week for those two maintenance techs.
And let’s say you were to allocate and service requests come in all day long. But they typically come in in batches in the evening, maybe they come in when the residents are there. So what I would consider or make an offer for stage one, so this is stage one and I’ll offer a stage two as kind of the maturity curve.
Stage one I would allocate maybe make available two hours a day of each of those maintenance techs to remotely resolve issues and they’re available to solve problems without having to diagnose it. And how we channel that is your residents can schedule with that maintenance tech [00:22:00] for that time.
‘Cause we wanna drive demand to the availability of your people rather than having your people be on standby all the time. ‘Cause standby is so expensive. And I know there’s plenty of work to keep them not on standby, but it’s because we’re culturally being corrective and reactive that we do not get those efficiencies.
So I would say take those two people and say, okay, let’s call Louise and Ron. Louise, you are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. You’re available to do remote support from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM and then Ron from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM you do remote support. And we kind of barbell it. So, because that’s when kind of things happen.
And so then at that point they would connect with the residents that are available, that have booked with them, and take a look at the problem and seek to resolve the problem before they dispatch. And then they would begin to create the work orders. They would solve the problems all remotely.
We have some [00:23:00] customers that even if they’re in a high rise, it takes a half an hour to go up and down to go look at a problem at a high rise. You gotta stop what you’re doing, go up the highest. Even if they’re in the maintenance office and it’s on 4 22 they will look at the problem remotely before they go up the elevator.
Mike Morawski: So let me see if I understand this and hopefully help our listeners understand it a little bit. So I’m taking my maintenance guys that are on the property to spend time on this app on Iris to look at individual problems with a tenant, correct?
Guillermo Salazar: That’s correct.
Mike Morawski: So the tenant has to be in their unit and my maintenance guy has to be in the office, right?
Guillermo Salazar: And that’s why we allow the scheduling. We kind of like channel them to be able to schedule. So it’s good to kind of contrast it to what happens today. So what happens today, the service request comes in and it says, my toilet’s leaking, my toilet’s not working. And your people, the first thing they [00:24:00] do is they get the service request. They try and make a phone call.
So the resident may be at work, maybe they goes to voicemail, they’re trying to coordinate to get some information. These days, we hear that residents don’t want people in their units unattended. And service techs don’t want to go and maintenance techs don’t wanna go to units that are unattended.
So it’s kind of like becoming very complicated to do this on an ad hoc basis, there’s gotta be some coordination. So that happens right away and that back and forth costs you time, costs you resident experience and it costs you money.
Then, we’ve landed a time with the resident says, okay, yeah, I’m available. I can be there Tuesday at 1:00 PM to come for you to come up and look at the unit. So the resident’s now taking off time. So they’re pissed off. They’re not working. It’s a vacation day. Come take a look at the unit. You get there, you don’t have to park, right? Oh, I gotta go get the new toilet seat or whatever.
I gotta go to HD Lowe’s, I’ll be right back. So now they go, maybe they go to the supply closet at the [00:25:00] toilet seat’s there, or the toilet flange or whatever’s available, running back and forth to try to solve that problem. And they get back to the unit and it’s a couple hours before they solve the problem and they’ve got the part, and now they can solve the problem.
What could have happened is they could have taken a look at that problem instantly from remotely. They could have identified the part that needed to be applied, that needed to be fixed. They could have tried to troubleshoot it. So not getting there and troubleshooting right away. And then they show up with that toilet flusher. And they fix that problem right away.
The big difference being that being able to take a look at the problem first, even with that service request comes in and the first thing you say is, Hey, can I take a look at the problem? You’re enhancing your ability to be able to solve that problem remotely. So thinking about being remote first instead of onsite first. And right now the industry is largely onsite first.
Mike Morawski: How qualified does the maintenance tech need to [00:26:00] be in order to help troubleshoot that problem with the tenant? And here’s why I ask. Could you have a offshore VA?
Guillermo Salazar: That’s stage two. That is step two. Because they are just troubleshooting and we provide all the guides. Our successful customers seek to remove intake and triage to the lowest cost possible resources for the lowest possible risky work. You’re not gonna have the resident like changing the wax ring on a toilet. You’re gonna have them triage the steps 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and determine what’s the best course of action first prior to dispatch.
We are ideally built for that exact scenario. We get a lot of pushback from maintenance coordinators, maintenance techs that feel like their job is being off shored. But at the end of the day, we make the analogy or the analog to telemedicine. [00:27:00] Telemedicine changed the way we consume medicine.
Mike Morawski: Absolutely.
Guillermo Salazar: You do not go to hospital for an earache anymore, and wait behind the guy with the broken leg. But the broken leg goes to the hospital. That is a tier three, tier four issue. The earache gets managed remotely and that has completely changed the way medicine’s delivered.
And this is what we’re applying to maintenance. Maintenance if we take all of those tier zero and tier one issues and offshore them to someone, and then our system also has built in guides so they don’t go kind of off script. Follow the script, follow the lines, and then solve the problem first, and then dispatch.
We solve the problem of getting eyes on the problem. That’s what everybody says. Every tech I talk to, they say that’s great. I’ve got my work in my current state, I get my work order. It comes in, toilet’s not working, and they say the words out loud. I need to get eyes on the problem. I gotta go to [00:28:00] unit 402 to get some eyes on the problem.
They use those words because they know that with vision they can understand what’s going on, but with words and with maybe a telephone conversation, let’s sprinkle in some language differentials there. It gets very difficult to do your job if you can’t see the problem. And then if you think of the problems in terms of like, there’s small problems.
There’s tier zero, tier one, tier two, three to four. You start seeing that 80% of your issues are tier zero and tier ones. And you’re spending full fare for tier zero and tier one issues that are 80% of your issues.
Mike Morawski: So what kind of cost savings can I look at? Obviously there’s a capital outlay for the program and the software. But what kind of a cost savings as a operator can I look at on my maintenance budget?
Guillermo Salazar: Sure. So if you take a look at your maintenance expense right now, we’ve been hearing from the market typically floats between like [00:29:00] 8 to 9% of net rent. Is that consistent with your budgeting?
Mike Morawski: Yeah, I would think we’re probably at least 9%. I have to go look at my cash flow statement, but yeah.
Guillermo Salazar: So if you think of that as your current maintenance expense, eight to 9% net rent, we can get it down to about five. Five to 6% of net rent. So you’re looking about almost having your maintenance expense. So let’s call that a two to three x improvement on your maintenance expense and your resident sea set goes up because they’re getting their problem solved faster. And so those two things begin to work together, that you get a lower variability of your renewals.
‘Cause renters, your residents are happier. You need less people because you’re not over. Let’s acknowledge that these people are overworked right now, there’s 60 hours of work for a 40 hour job. And so let’s take that low risk, full fair task, move it off so that they can focus on the [00:30:00] complex items, the make readies that they need to be on site for. What people don’t necessarily, what we’re used to kind of thinking in terms of the constraints of written text and spoken things over the phone.
We’ve all played the game telephone as a kid. And we all know that things get mixed up. Like if you go into even further about human brain study, human brain is really only good at retaining 10% of what we hear because we forget. And then the human brain is only good at remembering 20% of what we read because we’ve gotta do some comprehension work there.
But if you can see it, that’s like 50% of what we’re built for. And so you think about how humans work and that saying, I need to get eyes on it. So let’s build software that helps people get eyes on the problem.
Mike Morawski: It’s a very interesting solution to an issue and any multifamily operator, I don’t care if you own a four unit or you own a 400 unit or [00:31:00] 4,000 units, has that issue, has a maintenance issue. I see where this could be very productive for the maintenance team. And so two things I would look at solving with my issue. One is lowering the cost of those repairs. And two is increasing the productivity of my maintenance staff.
I said earlier, if I get five hours of actual work out of these guys on a daily basis because they have to drive a mile to a property and jump in the car, and then they have to go two miles to Home Depot or Lowe’s to pick a part up, come back, I’m, that’s lost opportunity.
Guillermo Salazar: NOI, it’s lost NOI in straight language. We create NOI by removing unproductive expenses.
Mike Morawski: And we all know that the greater the NOI, the greater the value of the property.
Guillermo Salazar: That’s right. So you think of a cap rate of [00:32:00] 5%. If you can put 3% on your NOI number, that’s a massive return.
Mike Morawski: Huge return. Hey, I appreciate being here today. What advice would you give an operator today with their maintenance issue?
Guillermo Salazar: Hopefully you have a system that’s tracking your work orders. And just run a list of this week’s work orders and be critical about the descriptions.
And say, could I have solved this? What was this? Take a list of this week’s work orders and rank the issue 0 1, 2, 3, 4. Was it a zero? Meaning it was user error? Was it a one, a user error with a little bit of complexity? Two, I had to be on there to fix a problem. Three, something damaging, like a risk, something significant was gonna happen. Fire, smoke, ice, right? And four, the building was on fire.
But rank them and consider that you’re spending the exact same dollars to solve a zero [00:33:00] as you are solving a three and a four. And how does that change your mindset in terms of the problems that you have before you?
Mike Morawski: Yeah. I love that you are spending the same amount of money to solve a zero as you are a three or a four. No doubt about that. Hey, thanks for being here today. I appreciate that. Could you tell people how they reach out to you and get ahold of you so that they can call with their questions?
Guillermo Salazar: So if you’re on LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn and I’m pretty active. So Guillermo Salazar IrisCX on LinkedIn. My email is gsalazar@iriscx.com. Of course, you can find us IrisCX on the web and those are the best two places to get ahold of me and I would love to kinda hear people from two sides of the coin. I love hearing people say there’s no planet with this being successful.
If you think that I’m full of it. And we’re full of it. Tell me why. That’s where I get to learn more. Like, one thing, and we may have chatted about that, is the [00:34:00] NO’s create the YESss. If you don’t get no’s, you’re just on your own. And so if you’re full of no’s on this, let me know. I would love to hear it.
Mike Morawski: Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you being here. Hey, I’m gonna say goodbye to everybody. If you wanna hang out in the back room for a minute, you and I can wrap up.
Guillermo Salazar: Sounds good. Thanks Mike.
Mike Morawski: Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.
Guillermo Salazar: Appreciate you too.
Mike Morawski: Hey everybody, that was a great episode today. And I’m gonna tell you, if you are an operator or you’re thinking about buying a multifamily and you’re going into the business, take a look at this system.
I’m gonna spend some time and figure out in my own application if this system can be fruitful for us. And as an owner operator trying to increase your NOI trying to grow your bottom line, to increase value of your property for resale, this could be a system that might work well for you.
So, reach out to Guillermo and see how Iris [00:35:00] can solve your maintenance issues and increase your NOI. Thanks for being here. If you’re a passive real estate investor, I wanna invite you to take a quiz. Let’s see what your risk tolerance is. We have a offer for you. Text the word Investor to (224)269-6700 and take the 10 question quiz. Let’s take a look at what your risk tolerance is and whether you should be investing in alternative investments or keeping your capital in the stock and bond market. But take the test.
Hey, look forward to seeing you next week. We’re here all throughout the week. We’re always bringing great content to you. Don’t hesitate to reach out if we can be of help. Appreciate you. Keep scaling your business and look forward to talking to you soon.
Kristen: Thank you, Mike, and thank you for joining us for another great episode of Insider [00:36:00] Secrets. As always, Insider Secrets is brought to you by My Core Intentions. Wherever you hang out on social media, you will find Mike and My Core Intentions. Please like and follow us to get the most up-to-date real estate investing trends. Visit mycoreintentions.com where you can get expert coaching on all things real estate investing and property management.
If you are looking to become an expert, Mike’s coaching will help you scale your real estate investment business. We’re looking forward to having you back again next week for more Insider Secrets.
