How Terry Campbell Is Helping Operators Fight Back Against Soaring Insurance Costs

THE SELF STORAGE REPORT — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode: How Terry Campbell Is Helping Operators Fight Back Against Soaring Insurance Costs Guest: Terry Campbell — Self-Storage Insurance, Johnson Insurance Services Host: Chris Berg — Abernathey Development Recorded: October 15, 2025 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trzxAw75OdQ Key topics: Terry Campbell of Johnson Insurance Services on self-storage insurance; premium jumping from $4,000 to $12,000 a year; underinsured replacement costs; customer goods legal liability and sale-and-disposal coverage; Terry's Live Oak Bank legacy and record 2024; NYSSA fall show insurance panels; SmartStop's $21 million cash plus 324,000 OP shares acquisition of Argus' management platform; Ben Vestal and H. Michael Schwartz; Neel Kashkari on rate cuts not unlocking housing; the 10-year Treasury near 4.12%; Scott Bessent, Basel Accords rollback and bank deregulation; Philip J. Anderson's 18.6 year real estate cycle and a mid-to-late 2026 land market pop; gold above $4,000 and Bitcoin above $125,000; Thaddeus Campbell's $2 billion small bay flex plan at 1.15 DSCR; Ryan Pineda's $6,000 rent vs $12,000 mortgage Las Vegas listing; using ChatGPT deep research and Tract IQ for feasibility studies Note: Speaker attribution reconstructed from raw captions. Light cleanup of transcription errors only; wording preserved. Timestamps and YouTube chapter markers removed. Turns marked [attribution inferred] could not be attributed with certainty. ————————————————————————————— Chris Berg: The Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, actually speaking today at a community bank event. Deregulations are coming. This is critically critically important to the 18.6 year real estate cycle. Going to explain to you why you have to be aware of these deregs, what it means for you coming up in late 2026. Welcome to the Self Storage Report. I'm your host, Chris Berg, also known as your AI storage guide. Do land acquisition for Abernathey Development here in the great state of California. Is with me as always, the one and only Rad Thad, Thaddeus Campbell with SS3 Partners. Thaddeus, good morning. Thaddeus Campbell: You were gonna say Slytherin there for a second, Chris. I was getting a little bit worried. I'm doing great, man. I've been so excited to have Terry come and join us. I dressed up, man. I put my Sunday finest on because uh Terry is royalty in the self-storage uh community, and we certainly have been looking forward to him joining the show as our insurance partner for a while now. So, Terry, thanks so much and and welcome to the show. Terry Campbell: Thank you guys so much and I appreciate the opportunity to partner with you guys. And Chris, I'm sorry you're being outnumbered uh 2 to 1 by Campbell today. Chris Berg [attribution inferred]: The clan wars are on, man. Thaddeus Campbell: That's great. That's great. Terry, man, we we're we're so excited and it was kind of interesting. We talked about this a couple months ago. We've been planning this you joining the show and we started it off for the beginning of the fourth quarter. Just worked out very smoothly. But we've known for a few weeks. I thought it was very interesting. I was up at NYSSA last week for the New York Self Storage Association fall show and insurance was a massive topic on two different panels that they had, both the operator panel and the banking panel. Um, how critical of a role insurance is playing in self-storage right now. I thought it was kind of cool that in the leadup to you coming and joining the show, we're hearing so much about how insurance is playing a a big role, the increases in premiums, the increase in cost, and and really challenging self-storage owners to keep their NOI where it's been over the last couple years as these premiums are increasing. So excited to get your take on what's going on in the market, why that's happening, and maybe more importantly, how can people help themselves kind of curtail some of that pain. Terry Campbell: Sure. Well, it's definitely been a topic uh for a lot of folks, for the banks, for the borrowers, for the sellers, you know, for everybody involved because uh it is definitely affecting deals and making them not work anymore. It it's crazy. I remember just a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, the the part portfolio that I'm part of, they were looking at a a facility that the current owner was paying 4 grand a year. We put in 8 and ended up at 12. Uh a little bit of what's going on and what's driving that is, you know, there for a couple of years there was just like unprecedented losses from from um catastrophic events, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes. It was just so much of that going on. And you know, some of the things leading up to that is you you had folks that were uninsur uh I should say underinsured. They did not have replacement costs as they should be because prices have gone up. You've had inflation. You've got such a litigious society out there now that drives the cost up as well. There's so many things that happen. So take those things and add to it the fact that the insurance industry much like the banking industry you've got to have a certain amount of cash reserves to satisfy the government. The cash reserves were getting depleted because of all the things I just mentioned. So um you know how do they increase their cash reserves? By increasing rates. That's how you do it. So you had sort of a perfect storm. You've got all these things that were driving the cost that number one, like I said, to get properly insured, they were having to raise their replacement costs. So they needed to be covered for more than they were. Uh the expense, the the um cost of things just going up and then you had the rates. All these things kind of hit at one time and then the rates have gone up, you know, steadily for the last few probably three years. Now, the good thing, what we're seeing is that we're starting to see signs that the rate increases are starting to level off. Doesn't mean they're not going to go up anymore. It just means they're starting to level off because things are getting back to sort of where uh they need to be. So, that that's going to be very helpful. Now, you know, people shouldn't expect that it levels off and now your insurance goes down because you're always going to have uh appreciation appreciation. So, your your replacement cost is going to continually be higher. So your your cost is going to be higher. Even if your rate stays the same, your cost is going to be higher. So these are some of the things that have really increased the cost of insurance over the last, you know, let's say three years or so. But the good the good thing, like I said, is on the horizon. It looks like the rate increases are slowing down and getting closer to level. I'm not sure saying they are. We're just seeing positive signs in that direction, which is going to be helpful Thaddeus Campbell: for us as developers. You know, where Chris and I are in the development game, but even people doing acquisitions, having a target at least helps, right? It's when you don't have a target to aim for, as you said, you you underwrite to 8,000 a month and all of a sudden it's 12,000 a month that that takes a big hit out of your profit. You and we're going to talk a little bit about your experience in the self-storage industry, but you decided to go down this road with Johnson Insurance Services. We're certainly really glad you did. You're building yet another vertical in the self-storage industry. As you've been talking to owners and developers and and people that own portfolios over the last year, what have you found has been the biggest issue that people are facing in their current coverage and how can you help them fix that? Terry Campbell: Well, some of the things that we've been finding is number one, they're just not insured for the proper replacement costs. They've been underinsured uh in a lot of cases. Um, some of them also have unknowingly uh or knowingly been not in not they didn't have customer goods legal liability coverage or sale and disposal uh cover. I will never recommend someone not have those because those things um it's not necessarily if there's an award given uh for a certain amount that the customer is has lost so to speak through uh some issue of negligence. It's the attorney fees. It's the legal fees and costs that you can really incur. So underinsured um not having all the proper coverages. Those are some of the the bigger things that we we've been seeing. Thaddeus Campbell: Listen, you guys are going to be able to reach out directly to Terry anytime you want. You'll see down at the bottom how to get a hold of them and you can set up time to communicate with him at Johnson Insurance Services. Certainly encourage you to do that if you have questions. He he's an absolute, as I said, he's an icon in the self-storage industry. I'm going to pivot a little bit and I'm going to kind of show people how much you know. You're not only someone who's doing insurance. You obviously the the people that know Terry know he's the guy responsible for Live Oak Bank being such a major presence in the self-storage industry. Had their biggest year ever in 2024. The the mentees of Terry Campbell that he brought into Live Oak Bank. You really were well-rounded in this industry. Something happened a couple weeks ago that that Chris and I found fascinating and and sort of is a trend in the industry. SmartStop acquired Argus' self-storage management platform. It was a $21 million cash upfront deal. Another 324,000 uh shares, OP shares of SmartStop, around another $11 million in current day value. I'm interested to get your take on that merger, that acquisition, whatever you want to call it, however it's structured, and maybe what that portends for the trends going forward in self storage. Terry Campbell: Well, I don't know much about the details. I I did know that that that had happened. Um, and it kind of caught me off guard because I know you know Argus has uh built a really nice portfolio and to be purchased like that um it it was a little bit of a surprise but you know that's the way the industry keeps going. It's what we've been seeing the last several years. You know, when I got in this industry, it was almost all mom and pops and Public Storage. And now there's so many so much acquisition going on and uh the the companies keep gobbling up the the companies like like Argus and obviously they saw that as a good play uh because of the the structure of the portfolio, the size of the portfolio. It wasn't small and I'm sure that there are really good assets in there, too. Thaddeus Campbell: I think it was it was fascinating. I mean, I think I think Ben Vestal, shout out to Ben Vestal and congrats. He was the the gen who started very close friends with Barry Sherman, the president at S3 Partners out on the Colorado SSA board. Um, I think they were managing somewhere in the 180 facility. I was kind of shocked by the deal and that Argus didn't actually own any of those facilities. SmartStop, we have Chris and I have great regard for H. Michael Schwartz and what he's doing at SmartStop. But, um, you know, $33 million, 21 million in in money and another 11.5 of of shares uh for the the management portfolio kind of speaks to what's going on in the industry. Chris and I have been talking about a lot of the headwinds and some of the negative headlines we're seeing for storage, yet you're still seeing these massive acquisitions happening. Yeah, I guess speak to that a little bit from your your experience also because you're involved as an investor in a portfolio and a couple of other facilities as well. Chris Berg [attribution inferred]: It's not like self storage is is in in serious trouble right now it seems. Terry Campbell: Right. Right. And uh you know buying that um like you said just the management portfolio that's not terribly common. Uh so obviously they they they have some plans and they see some um good opportunities in there and as you know speaking to the portfolio that I'm part of I'm a part owner in a in 11 11 different locations myself or an investor in 11 locations and they have for the most part I have got one in particular okay I'll just mention it the one in particular which is I call it the crown jewel for me because it's it's a CMU uh it's three-story building we have it it's actually managed by Extra Space. Um, and that thing has been just a phenomenal asset since the day we opened. We actually uh hit our break even numbers a year ahead of time. And it's continued. I mean, there's just not a lot of great places to build in that actual market that we serve. In fact, I don't think there's any because we've tried to find them to expand and it has been fantastic. So, that one's been great. You know, it's down a little bit from what it was at the peak a couple of years ago, but it's still doing great. And across the rest of the portfolio and talking with our guys that actually run them, they're saying they're doing good. They're picking up. Uh occupancies are coming up, rates are coming up. So, we're seeing signs of coming back to life and moving back in the right direction. Hopefully, we've seen the bottom. Uh but, you know, I think a lot of that is still in my mind determined by when mortgage rates go down and people start moving again. I think that's the that's going to cure a lot of ills in my mind. Thaddeus Campbell: Terry Campbell, again, thank you so much. Such a pleasure. We're looking forward to having you on every quarter to come and share your knowledge, especially as it pertains to insurance, but obviously your knowledge of the whole industry. We're excited to pick your brain as things come up and and look forward to having you back on. You can see the link to go Johnson Insurance at the bottom. You can reach out directly to Terry as well. If you do reach out directly to him because you saw him on the podcast, we please ask that you reference the podcast for us. We Chris and I would appreciate that. But Terry Campbell, look forward to having you back soon. Terry Campbell: Thanks guys. Chris Berg: One thing, Terry, if you can just stick around for a moment. Um, and just because of our tech here, you may not be able to stick around for this clip, but Thad, it's unbelievable. Like Terry has no idea what the rest of the rundown of the show is. He just did a perfect lead in because we're about to play a clip from Neel Kashkari, Terry, that talks about, hey, even if the Fed rate goes down, the 10-year might not. And so, thank you for that perfect toss to our our future. Thaddeus Campbell: I can see you in the future. We call this the Nostradamus Report. So you're a good addition to it, my friend. Thaddeus Campbell [attribution inferred]: Terry Campbell, thanks so much. We'll talk again soon. Terry Campbell: See you. Take care. Byebye. Chris Berg [attribution inferred]: Terry, Chris Berg: I mean that that was unbelievable. So great job. Thank you, Terry, for joining us. And as as Thaddeus just mentioned, you know, the Nostradamus Report that a while back, you know, talked about, hey, one of our concerns here is even if the Fed rate does go down, what is it ultimately going to mean for the 10-year? There may be mixed reviews here. We're going to talk some more about some of these deregs and how it could impact some yield curve control. And Neel Kashkari from the Min Minneapolis Fed spoke, I think it was earlier this week. Um, and he said exactly sort of what Thaddeus was alluding to earlier. Let's play the clip. Neel Kashkari (clip): A lot of people are saying we want to see the housing market unlocked. They're hoping that few cuts to interest rates are going to do it. I'm not convinced that a few cuts to interest rates are going to translate into very much lower mortgage costs because so much of this investment capital is going outside of the housing sector or the apartment building sector. Chris Berg: Your thoughts? Thaddeus Campbell: You know, spot on. And again, we were joking about the Nostradamus Report, but we've seen it play out, right? I think I I haven't checked the 10-year Treasury today. I checked it if if not yesterday, the day before was at the four 4.12 I think it was at has stayed pretty steady or even risen a little bit since the Fed cut back in September. A lot of talk now about whether there's going to be another one this month or if they hold steady. Um, you know, I think that's a fear that the Fed has to really be paying attention to that if we if we continue to cut I saw something today where they're talking about having it down to 3 by the time we get to the 2027. Well, is that really going to accomplish the goal that the cuts are are aiming to do, which is to right they're they're saying they're cutting rates because of the lack of jobs. Obviously, housing is is a piece of that in the background, but I would say this, if the if they cut again and the 10-year starts to trickle up more, it's going to be really hard for him to keep cutting the Treasury rate. Chris Berg: I would normally agree with you. And then when you think about what what presumably is going to happen come May, Powell's going to be out obviously in the interview process. I mean, Trump is basically saying, "Look, I want the rates down to at least 2. Are you going to do that or not?" And if you say yes, you got a chance to go to the next round. If you say no, you're out, right? So, I mean, that one's going to be pretty abundantly. You better be a talking head for President Trump. And I bring all this up because I started the show talking about the deregulations. It's really hard to measure those, but you can start to see that as community banks or other liquidity comes in the market. And I want to sort of lay some context here, Thaddeus, and then get your reaction to this because one of the really critical things that if you read the book again that Thaddeus and I talk about a lot. It's about the 18.6 year real estate cycle by Philip J. Anderson. He says, "Look, every single time it gets really frothy." He calls it the winner's curse and then things go pop. Well, what he talks about is that every time this has happened, typically there's been a GOP administration. They go back in and they do all this dereg that obviously the other side of the aisle was put in place. And that's exactly what's happening right now. They're trying to get rid of what called the Basel Accords. This is not my expertise, but they're trying to load the leverage at the banks. I think what they're going to start to do is say, "Hey banks, go get more aggressive." In fact, today Secretary Scott Bessent spoke at this community bank event. And basically, I mean, when you listen to it, I've got it up on my LinkedIn page. He's like, "Hey, go get offensive." He didn't use the word aggressive, but he definitely said, "Go get offensive. Get out there." And I was talking to a guy in the capital markets earlier this week, and he says, "Look, what's happening right now is these banks are coming out. They're they're putting more liquidity in the system. They obviously can do incredible rates and 35-year amortizations and some other things that these other capital market guys just can't compete with." And so he says what's happening now is this other capital is starting to move out on the risk curve. And then if you follow what again the thesis is around the 18.6 year real estate cycle, this is where Thaddeus and I believe come the middle end of 2026 things start to go pop in the land market. Not necessarily the the real est I mean excuse me the stock market but in the land market. So, I just want to get your takes on on how you're processing what you're hearing as far as these deregs, liquidity, things moving on the risk curve. What say you? Thaddeus Campbell: I am uh obviously, you know, my one of my goals, we're in self storage heavily, but I'm I'm setting out to build $2 billion in small bay flex. And as I have these conversations, that's going to take some serious debt, right? You know, you're talking a billion plus dollars in debt that we're going to have to go secure for that. Um, one of the conversations I've had recently is about a program that's being rolled out for community improvement type uh, opportunities and small bay flex is a place for small business owners to get out of their house to start growing nascent businesses. Kind of fits into that wheelhouse. Well, get this low sixes on a construction loan. Three years to lease up to get to economic stabilization. No interest. 1.15 DSCR. That's the That's what you have to qualify for with your underwriting on a model. And and for those of you who aren't super into development, let me tell you, those are extremely low thresholds. High on the lease up side, getting three years to lease up instead of two. And so, you're just like, as you said, this desire to get more capital into the market at lower interest rates. The question is in the long term, is that something that's sustainable? And you know, every time we've gone through a a re a real estate cycle, I've been alive for two of them. I was born into one of them. Um late 80s, early 90s with the savings and loan crisis and the early 1970s it was the gas crisis. Of course in 2008 the GFC um it's hard to imagine that we're not coming up to another cycle quite frankly with what we're seeing happening. Chris Berg: We'll see. And I think part of what is important to note since you were talking about the 10 years is that when you start to eradicate or change these Basel Accords which are the leverage ratios within the banks now that the obviously Secretary of Treasury the Fed can start to I don't want to say push the banks but happily nudge them towards hey now they can hold more Treasuries on their balance sheets thus potentially trying to drive down the 10-year. And look, Scott Bessent is a financial wizard, right? The guy's brilliant. So, I'm sure he's starting to pull some of these strings. It's, hey, this is what we can do with some of these banking situations to help drive down the 10-year, make the housing market more appealing. The concern is going to be, as you're suggesting, a 1.15 DSCR. All of a sudden, there's more people unemployed, not necessarily in your asset class, but housing and whatnot. The mortgages can't get paid. And poof, here we are again. You know, things blowing up. And the one thing that stops this, as we've talked about before, is World War II, which is, you know, there's definitely a probability like what's going on across Yeah, we don't want that to happen, but that's the one thing that could sort of squash this thesis. And then we say all this because I'm sure some of you have been watching the Wall Street Journal or whatnot, but there's now this thing called the debasement trade. I think we've got the graphic, Thad. We want to bring those up. Um, if you haven't been watching, you know, Bitcoin all-time high, gold all-time high, silver today hit 50, which was another ATH at least from for a very, very long time. Um, so when you see all this capital moving towards either a Bitcoin or precious metals, uh, I think it can create some concern about, hey, who's going to start buying up our debt? Thaddeus Campbell: Chris, I'm trying to find your graphic, my friend, and I'm not doing a very good job of it, so I apologize. My my job as the backend producer is going to get taken away from me here. This is not what you're looking for. Chris Berg: It's all good. I thought that maybe you had because I know you'd sent me some stuff over the through the week about gold and Bitcoin. So, I didn't know if you had those made into graphics or not. Thaddeus Campbell: You know what? I didn't. That's my fault. I was supposed to and I don't have them. So, I'll take the I'll take the blame for that. To the point, and I'll I'll say it, right? On the same day, we saw gold break $4,000 and Bitcoin break $125,000. Right? So, they both hit all-time highs. I think it was two days ago um together almost at the same exact time. And so, we've been talking for a while about the volatility of fiat currency. You're talking about Scott Bessent and great, he's a financial genius. That's fantastic. What I don't like as an individual citizen of the United States or the world for that matter is that one or a few people, however smart they are, can pull levers in currency that affects the value of my currency that I currently have. Right? So, this is the danger of holding currency. And it's why Chris and I obviously believe so strongly in holding assets, whether that's real estate, whether it's crypto, whether it's and of course we know now the central banks and the the US government, they're all trying to get cryptocurrency that they have control over because they don't want to lose that ability to pull those levers. So listen, it as we say every week, educate yourself, understand what's going on. You know, we may not be right about the 18.6 year real estate cycle. One thing we are absolutely right about is that fiat currency is you aren't in control of what the value of your money is. Period. End of story. Chris Berg: I want to get your take on something around this because I saw this as well where there's so much capital now going into like a gold, a silver, a Bitcoin or these other, you know, we'll call them alts if you will that there's a really low demand for people putting money into real estate, you know. So just typically you're like, "Hey, I'm going to hedge inflation. I'll go buy some real estate, especially from a residential standpoint, like maybe a few more rentals or whatnot." But I think people, and you and I have had this conversation, I'm starting to go, why would I go buy a few single family home rentals where I got to deal with tenants and duh when gold's hitting an all-time high? All I got to do is sit on my couch and eat Doritos or I can buy Bitcoin and sit on my couch, you know? It's so just um How do you Thaddeus Campbell: I want to show you something that's absolutely crazy. I did my job as the producer on this one. So, I'm I'm going to pull this up. This is a a gentleman named Ryan Pineda. I've had the the good luck of having met him live and in person at an event. Really down to earth guy. Christian, if you're if you follow Chris and I, you know what our thoughts are on that that front. I highly suggest you follow Ryan Pineda. He makes his living flipping houses in the Las Vegas area and really has transi transitioned now having a hard time talking today. Transition does a lot of education and his education is in the flipping single family residential house space. Here is an Instagram post that he did a couple days ago. There were multiple slides and I'll give some context to this. He came across a listing for a rental in Las Vegas for $6,000 a month. He knows that that house is worth $2 million, which means that the mortgage alone without any HOA fees, any upkeep costs, nothing, $12,000 a month. So, if you can rent a house for $6,000 a month, that you have to spend $12,000 a month in base cost just to buy, why buy a house? Why invest in that single family real estate? And so, you see this from him. Truly believe that many people would be better off renting their primary home instead of owning. To your point, what creates that environment where you can rent a home for $6,000 that the market has gone bonkers, right? And and people have overpaid for homes. Chris Berg: Well, and I guess again, if you go to you just said, hey, buy assets, right? So yeah, I can I can use my home as a store of value, but also if I just think about time and money, like the average is what a 3% growth rate on my home, but then I've got insurance costs that could go up and upkeep and all these other sort of variables where again I go to you look at the CAGR of Bitcoin. I don't have off the top of my head, but it's a lot more than 3% a year. I know that, right? Thaddeus Campbell: 100% significantly higher. And so this is one of those challenges that's being posed to the single family house. You know, it used to be you would think of the equity in your house like I have to pay for somewhere to live. So, what I'm paying for my mortgage is a necessity and then the increased value over time is the value. The problem is there's no cash flow being generated from that house. What you're seeing now is if you could start going and renting a house for significantly less than it cost you to own it, the long-term increase in value play is nowhere near as beneficial to you. Chris Berg: Well, especially if you're taking that spread. And look, I'm not promoting any particular asset class. This is not financial advice, but if you're taking that spread of what it costs for me to own versus what I'm renting, let's just use a grand a month for easy math, right? And I'm putting that into QQQ or Bitcoin or whatever it might be. Thaddeus Campbell [attribution inferred]: Seems to make sense. Chris Berg: And so with that being said though, I I do think that there is and I'm hearing more and more resi guys going commercial, commercial, commercial. So hopefully we've got the graphic of the one that shows the the self storage and how it's been a really steady asset. Thaddeus Campbell: That I do have, my friend. Chris Berg: To show this to people to kind of um you know pat ourselves on the back here that are in the industry. This is um a recent study that was done shows the trailing three-year returns and I just think that graphic look a picture is worth a thousand words. I can't wait to get hear your interpretation of it, Thad, but when I see you know number one self stor self sorted self okay okay dipped for a little bit but now it's you know back up doing extraordinarily well in comparison to maybe industrial just been crushing when you've got Amazon and those kind of things going on but I I to see the steady performance and again if you're going to invest in real estate I think most real estate people are saying hey where can I put this capital get some tax breaks but just know that it's going to give me that consistent return consistent growth it's sort of like buying a bond. To me I was very excited to see this. Thaddeus Campbell: Yeah, this is a statistic that I've known for a while now. You know, the first time I interviewed Alex Burnham back in 2023, he mentioned that self storage was the highest performing asset class of the previous 40 years. Hard to fathom. Right now, that did not account for some things that didn't exist 40 years ago, like web stocks and and Bitcoin and the like. But when you take a 40-year time period and you are the highest performing asset and not just real estate asset by the way, but asset period um that speaks to the longevity and the power and and it's one of the reasons we're seeing things like SmartStop acquiring Argus' management company because the the returns have been proven out over a long period of time. Chris, I don't think there's any reason, and we've talked about this, to believe that that trend is going to change uh markedly. Even though, as Terry Campbell mentioned earlier, we'd love to see an increase in the in the housing market and movement in the housing market. The reality is if we start seeing less people buying homes and renting becomes more of a a common factor, people rent smaller places than they buy. Typically, people move more frequently than they're renting. There's still going to be reasons to believe that storage is going to be okay long term. Chris Berg: Well, and I want to um share some with everybody here because I do want to get into the the AI storage guy aspect of things, but but also if you're someone out there who look, you've got a bunch of liquidity, you're looking for some good assets to buy, I would encourage you to start looking around and kicking around, you know, what's happening in the in the world of self storage. I think you can, again, this is not investment advice, but typically um if you've got a good operator, a good GP, you're going to see some fairly at least steady returns depending how things go in the economy. I want to share this with people because as you you've heard me introduce myself as the AI storage guy. You know, I've been using AI a ton as we're going out and looking for acquisitions and trying to find good pieces of dirt that work. Well, I think one of the most challenging things before I got more adept at AI was, okay, now I found this piece of dirt. What's the zoning? What's the f like how can I build here how high what can really get done? So I just want to encourage people if you've got ChatGTP I've got the pro um there's a thing called deep research that is like having Thaddeus Campbell: I'm going to break you of the habit of calling it ChatGTP or I'm going to rename you from the storage guy. I busted Chris's chops earlier this week. Chris Berg: Did I say it right that time? Thaddeus Campbell: You got it. The P before the remember physical therapy for your brain. It's ChatGPT. PT, Chris Berg: That's great. I feel like I say it right every time, but apparently not. So, you can see it up there in the corner, but it is what it is. So, point is, and even if you don't use chat, there's obviously other, you know, ways out there you can utilize this is that it it is so powerful, especially if you use this deep research thing where you can go in and give it some really powerful prompts. And you can see my prompt here. I have to do actually a full feasibility study. I want to see, hey, if you were going to underwrite this based on the last 24 months, what would you underwrite a 10 x 10 C by C by CC for climate control? Um, it can talk about what's the uh demand within the market. Again, it's it's AI, so I wouldn't trust it 100%. And yet, it does start to at least give you some parameters, some ways to look at the assets. Then you can go in. I think what's really powerful as well, and I'll share with you how robust this thing is. So, it asks you some follow-up questions and then you come in here and it gave me this local site and overview. I think what's also really good, Thaddeus, is you can go in and say, "Okay, now give me, you know, 5 or 10 reasons why I should do this deal. Give me 5 or 10 reasons why I shouldn't do this deal." So, you start to treat it almost like your investment review committee. Um, but you can see it gives you the dem demographics like what's the demand based on population. You can ask obviously how to hey go scrape all the city documents and tell me how many housing starts can I expect over the next you know 12 to 36 months and so it is very very robust. I don't know if you've seen something like this that is yourself um but I think it's really powerful we can start to leverage basically your own like feasibility um entitlement assistant to go do a bunch of work while you're doing something else and then come back to something like this and go okay this makes sense now let me do some more homework maybe reach out to the city find out what actually done, what's not, but it gives you a really powerful base to start. Thaddeus Campbell: Yeah. I I think to your point, it's it's the speeding up of your time, right? We're always searching for more time. And the ability to utilize AI to help compress decisions in time is incredibly valuable. Of course, if it's telling you that this is a go, you're not going to forsake all the other things that you were doing before we had AI at our fingertips to verify what it's saying. What I think you're going to find over the next year, maybe even quicker than that, but definitely in the next year, two years, three years, is we're going to start to have a track record where we're going to be able to trust this that much more because of the the non-stop success rate. Um, it's not going to be perfect at the beginning, but it learns and it learns very quickly. And so, I mentioned this to you earlier this week. I put posts that I write for LinkedIn into ChatGPT every GPT every day and have it edit them for me. When I ask ChatGPT now to do a thesis for me without inputting something first, it writes exactly like I normally write. Chris Berg: Wow. Thaddeus Campbell: So the the level of learning that it's doing it it's you'd be crazy not to be using it. There's some great people in the AI space in self storage now that are really assisting. I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out our friends at Tract IQ and what they're doing in this space. They're We're not going to tell you guys what it is they're doing, but they're about to launch a a new uh service on their platform that's tapping into this. How do we compress time? How do we get you to a no quicker? Maybe not a yes quicker because yes, we're going to get it through the filter, but you're still going to have to do your real deep work on a project that might become a yes. But man, the quicker I can get something into the no bin, the better. Chris Berg: Thank you for bringing up our partner, our data partner, Tract IQ. Again, if you want to find out more, go to tractiq.com. What I would encourage you to do as well as you can go in there. They've got these really powerful executive summaries. And so, one way to help enhance, if you will, the use of AI is you take this executive summary, put it into ChatGPT, and then you can say, hey, start asking it questions, ask it to do a feasibility study. And I think that you speak to this really well from a standpoint. Look, we're not suggesting you can take a ChatGPT feasibility study and go to a bank. That's not it at all. But again, it's just a foundation to help you use it as almost an investment review committee and go maybe I didn't think about this. You know, I've used it in the past, Thad, where it's shown me, hey, there's actually a potential site that's being planned here that, you know, none of the other tech I've got has shown me or told me about. So, it gives me another variable to go, okay, you know what? Maybe this isn't the right location because there's more supply than I thought coming on. Listen, a a well-regarded feasibility study in the self-storage space right now is is low five figures, right? So, you're going to drop 10 grand or a little more on that. And so, you want to do everything you can before you write that check. You don't want to write that check, you know, when you saw a site, you think it's okay. Um, so be $20 a month for ChatGPT to be able to utilize the the the service. Uh my friend Eric, who's our producer behind the scenes, many of you guys know Eric, uh he uses Gemini because it's only 14 bucks a month. So you might be you might be using Google's version, too. That's okay, too. Uh but you'd be crazy not to utilize the level of depth and the amount of research that it can do. As a human being, you just cannot scrape the number of of sites and and do the research that it's able to do for you. So really crazy to see what's happening as a 52-year-old who grew up without a cell phone and without a computer. And I got my first email address when I was in graduate school. It's it's it's exciting to see, but it's really crazy to see how quickly it's taking a hold. Well, and and again, as you talked about leverage, right? Every person that's wealthy understands leverage and so I can go put in this prompt ChatGPT and deep research will go do its work for 10 20 minutes and then it pings me when it's done. So, I'm off doing other emails, doing other things and all of a sudden ping like now I can go take a peek at this thing. So, very very powerful. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me as your AI storage guy. And I want to wrap things up. Thad, I know you got a great story you want to share about a buddy of yours. Thaddeus Campbell: Yeah, I just had a came across this. Chris, you know, you and I know that our faith is so important to us and we're both driven to mentor and to to motivate other people to live a better life, to live a happier life. I have a very close friend. A lot of you guys know that I was a former martial artist and spent a lot of time in the Tiger Schulmann's organization. When I was 33 years old, I started a amateur kickboxing career. My very my second fight that I ever had. On the card with me was a young 17-year-old named Nick Pace. Nick Pace would go on to fight in the UFC. Actually fought one of the handful of guys in the world who's considered the best MMA fighters of all time, Demetrious Johnson. I thought he won. I wasn't the judge. So, unfortunately, Nick didn't come home with the win there. He now runs one of the most successful martial arts schools in the country out in Staten Island, New York. Um love the kid and I got a clip from him teaching a class and I just wanted to share with this the audience an example of how one human being can help other people in a really profound way. Forgive me because I had this halfway through the clip. So we're going to start again. Nick Pace (clip): and someone comes up to you and they're like that was amazing. You did awesome. Then how do you feel? Student (clip): You feel good. Nick Pace (clip): Just good. Student (clip): You feel awesome. Nick Pace (clip): Feel awesome. But when you do something really well and someone comes up to you and they tell you great job and how good you did, it makes you feel even better, right? Wait, what happens if you do something and you know you did it wrong or maybe you failed the test or you lost a baseball game? How do you feel? How do you feel if you lose, Parker? Parker (clip): Um, sad. Nick Pace (clip): Feel sad. How do you feel if you lose or you do something bad and then somebody goes, "You lost You lost then." How do you feel? Parker (clip): Even more sad. Nick Pace (clip): Even more sad. But what you just did with your partner right there, telling them, "Good job, even though I told you to do it," is something that you can do to build someone else's confidence. You build your confidence by achieving things, but you can help build somebody else's confidence by telling them how good they did or if they mess up, telling them it's okay. Do you understand? Student (clip) [attribution inferred]: Who says? Thaddeus Campbell: Shout out to my friend Nick Pace. I just thought that was so motivating and so uplifting. I wanted to share it with our audience. And listen, say a kind word to someone today. Give them a pat on the back. Let them know that their work is noticed and appreciated. And if if they're failing even more, reach out a hand and help them out. See what you can do to inspire instead of put down. We have more than enough people in the world putting other people down, dragging people down. Um, one kind word goes a long way. So, I thought that was really powerful and wanted to share. Chris, Chris Berg: Thad, good job today, bro. Good job today, man. I appreciate you, my friend. Thank you so much. And to Eric, I mean, Eric, I just, you know, you don't get a chance to meet Eric, but he does an incredible job in the back end with the production and the short clips he puts out. And so, just um to both of you guys, thank you. Thank you very much. And of course to Mr. Campbell, uh the famous last name Campbell. We appreciate his insight today and our one of our new partners here on the Self Storage Report. I'm Chris Berg. Thad is Campbell. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you back here Wednesday instead of Thursday next week. Be sure and join us live uh this coming Wednesday here on the self storage — END OF TRANSCRIPT —