BIGGEST RISK with Joe Downs

J Darrin Gross

If you're willing, I'd like to ask you, Joe downs, what is the BIGGEST RISK?

 

Joe Downs

To me, it's, I'll give you, I'll give you, all right, you just want the biggest I'm gonna go right to base. To me, it's change. It's sort of what I just alluded to, if we were, if, if we still thought, because we weren't out there interviewing and investigating other third party management companies. If we refuse to do all that and just head in the sand, we would probably start falling behind other storage facilities, other competitors, who are managing their facilities better than we are. And the reason for that is because of technology. And I alluded to that earlier, and so that's just a small example, but to me, the biggest reason is AI. The single biggest reason is of change. The biggest change agent is AI. So if we're not, and you might say, What does aI have to do with storage everything? Because AI has AI can infiltrate if you allow it and choose to. And I highly suggest you do every, every part of your business in life, AI can have an impact on positive or negative. So you have to be, not only aware, you have to be in tune. So I I worry about, if you're asked, what keeps me up at night? It's not, we're well insured from an insurance standpoint, right? You know, I think when you're in commercial real estate, there's always that lender risk of a covenant and loan doc somewhere, you know, whatever. But that doesn't keep me up at night. It's because even then you could, you can negotiate, and you got attorneys to work you out of it. To me, it's falling behind the AI curve. And because that will directly impact how we find customers, how we source deals and pro storage, I'm using it not only to source locations for properties better and faster than we can do on our own. I'm we're creating a GPT right now to market to the businesses, the 17,000 businesses in Greenville, South Carolina, that are within 10 miles of our facility, that's, I don't think we've gone vertical yet. The grounds cleared and and I think they're, they're getting ready for pad sites. Maybe they started pouring. I haven't seen an update in last in a week, but we've got to fill that facility. So how are we going to do that before all the small bay flex guys get get the word out that they're putting that they're available to receive your business? Well, we came up with an ingenious way to create a GPT that's a relocator. So a GPT is just anyone can create them. If you learn how to win on chat, GBT, it's GPT is it stands for generative now I freeze when I put myself in the spot. Now I'm freezing generative performance transformer. No pre trained generative, pre trained transformer. So it's really just an engine. It's the greatest employee that you could ever have, right? It doesn't need to sleep, eat, take breaks, anything. It does what you tell it to do, but that's the key. It does what you tell it to do. If you don't tell it to do, it won't do it. So we have created a GPT that we will put out in front of every business market, to all the businesses out there and say, Hey, if you're say, Hey, if you're looking for space, here is a here's a simple tool that's free. Put in your name of your business, where you are, where you'd like to be, square foot, square footage you need for space in the entire Greenville market area. It will then, because we'll program it, go out, go on, crexie, loop, net, loop, net, everything. It'll find all the space that's available that meets the criteria for Darrin gross to move his ABC, XYZ widget business, because he's got 1000 square feet now, and he needs 2000 or he's got 500 or no square feet, and he needs something, right? It'll return those results for you, and included in it will be our facility with all kinds of unit sizes. So there is an example of how we're using AI, not only source the location, but also source the customers that will fill the location, right? So and that if we, if I was asleep at the wheel with AI, wouldn't have any of that, maybe I'd be successful regardless. I don't know. Maybe, if, maybe the if you build it, they will come. Principle would happen. I don't know, but I'm not willing to risk it. I'm not willing to risk it with my investors money. So the to me, it's, I'm I'm harnessing the power of AI. It is absolutely incredible. It keeps me up at night for good reasons. And I told you before the show, because it's like a drug. It literally, you know the saying, If you dream it, you can make it happen, or wherever that cliche is. This is literally, AI literally makes it happen. It's just up to you to program it. So I'm excited about it, even though you asked me what's what's a risk, the risk is not staying up with not learning it, not immersing yourself in AI, because if you don't I know everything, I just said, sounds cool and and proactive, but if I'm not proactive, someone else will be, and they might be, and I don't care what you're doing, what business you're in, someone who's doing what I doing, I'm doing, is going to have a direct effect on your business, probably to the negative if you don't not only get ahead of the curve, but keep up. So to me, that's the biggest risk. It's kind of that standing still and not evolving.

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