How Entrepreneurs Use AI to Do Common Things Uncommonly Well

Most businesses are not losing because they picked the wrong market. 

They are losing because they picked the right market and did everything in it just well enough. 

This episode explores what happens when you decide just well enough is not good enough anymore, and you put AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT for business behind every part of your operation. 

Joe Downs and Peter Swain take Nick Huber's core idea, do common things uncommonly well, and show you exactly what that looks like as an AI workflow in 2026. 

From onboarding SOPs to customer service to deal sourcing, this episode is a practical guide to building the kind of edge that boring markets reward and nobody talks about at dinner parties. 

If you are running any kind of business and you want to know where you are leaving money on the table, start here.

Listen For

3:00 Why does Nick Huber say entrepreneurship has nothing to do with new ideas?

6:02 How can AI find the gaps in your business that you've been too busy to notice yourself?

11:19 Is passive income really a myth, and what does Peter's exchange rate theory say about trading time for money?

24:05 How did Peter use Claude to turn one onboarding SOP into 98 specific improvements?

43:30 What is the one AI prompt that shows a 10-year veteran exactly where their business is more vulnerable than they think? 

Links Mentioned

Peter's Free AI Business Audit | Storagemoguls.ai | Nick Huber / Sweaty Startup | Claude | ChatGPT

Email the “Idiots” Joe and Peter

idiots@successfulidiots.com 

Joe Downs

Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Email Joe:joe@belroseam.com 

Peter Swain

Website | Email | LinkedIn | X

Transcript

Joe Downs (00:00):

The businesses that win long term are never the ones with the best ideas. They're the ones with the best execution and AI just made I think excellent execution available to anyone willing to just put in the setup work. Here's something nobody wants to hear. The absolute solid money making business idea you've been looking for the one that will get you out of the rat race and actually put you on a wealth creation path. It probably already exists and it's been around for decades and it's boring, unglamorous and nobody will even care or even ask a follow-up question about it at dinner parties. But it'll print money if you care if you ask follow-up questions, if you do what seemingly most will not do. And there's a guy who figured that out early. He bought a self-storage facility then another. Built a parking business, a property management company, and a real estate brokerage.

(01:04):

His portfolio was worth hundreds of millions. He didn't invent anything. He didn't chase the latest craze. He just refused to play the game everybody else was playing and then won the game nobody else wanted to play. I'm Joe Downs. With me is Peter Swain. We're just a couple of successful idiots using AI to simplify our lives and optimize our businesses. Peter, before I give you the true or false, admittedly, this one's going to be a little harder because I think there's ... I don't know if I gave you enough clues. Would you care to hazard a guess who I'm talking about? He is an author. He might know them.

Peter Swain (01:40):

Well, I was hoping it was you.

Joe Downs (01:43):

Yeah. Did you read the part about the hundreds of millions?

Peter Swain (01:47):

As I said, I know that's a low ball estimate for you, but I was still hoping it was you.

Joe Downs (01:53):

Wow, thank you. I appreciate your level of confidence in me. It is not me. It is Nick Huber. Have you ever read the sweaty startup?

Peter Swain (02:04):

No, but I've heard of it and it's on that and should read this for sure.

Joe Downs (02:08):

It's on my list too. I haven't read it as well if I'm being honest. But it's in my queue. I like that. Admittedly, I'm a little biased here because Nic literally built his portfolio first through self-storage, same as me, but he's gone on to build obviously many other businesses. But I want to talk about something specific from a post he put up this week because it lit up his comments section in a way that tells me he struck a nerve. And I don't mean from just the volume of posts. I mean, it's like World War III in his comment post, so it's interesting. All right. Peter, true or false? In Britain doing common things uncommonly well is already the legal definition of showing off.

Peter Swain (02:53):

You pay us at a bad light, man, but yeah, we are humble to the point of apologetic. Well, not myself, but certainly as a country.

Joe Downs (03:02):

No, it's a strong character trait. All right. Peter, today on behalf of the entrepreneur and the wantabe entrepreneur who tunes into our show, I am going to attempt to tease out of you some very specific AI prompts to help them become the best operator in whatever boring market I hope they're in or maybe they should be in. And I think they're going to feel a little guilty about how much opportunity they've been sitting next to without realizing it. We're also going to talk about Nick Huber's advice to young people, which is what's blowing up his comment string here and some of which is making people uncomfortable. And then we're going to get into what doing common things uncommonly well actually looks like when you put AI behind it because I think that's the differentiator here.

Peter Swain (03:48):

I can relate to this subject. Yeah, I got to a fairly advanced level in rugby, like national call-up type level and it surprised me that the more advanced the training and the trainers got, the more we just worked on the fundamentals.

Joe Downs (04:05):

Interesting.

Peter Swain (04:06):

It wasn't trickery, it was fundamentals. We just drilled, drilled, drilled the fundamentals.

Joe Downs (04:13):

Yeah. And I'm sure there's a lot behind what Nick's point is here regarding that. And what was the book? It was actually about the English, or one of the things in the book was about the English cycling team.

Peter Swain (04:26):

Skysports phenomenon. Yeah.

Joe Downs (04:29):

Where all they did was try to get 1% better every day. They were the worst team in the world and-

Peter Swain (04:33):

Literally the worst team in the world.

Joe Downs (04:35):

And they gave him the best team in the world, but just trying to get 1% better every day in every single aspect. And I think that ties into what Nick's talking about here. So he's the guy behind the sweaty startup. If you don't know him, here's the 32nd version. He built a multi hundred million dollar real estate portfolio through self-storage parking and other businesses that nobody puts on the cover of Forbes. And he posted something this week called My Advice to Young People that is currently lighting up his comments because half the people reading it are nodding along and half of them are furious, which usually means he said something true. And look, I followed Nick because he's doing almost exactly what I've done. He's way ahead of me and at a much larger scale in self-storage, which most people look at as a boring market, unfashionable business, but it's real cash flow when someone who has quietly built that kind of portfolio tells you exactly what he thinks, you tend to listen.

(05:32):

So in a few minutes after we quickly go through his list, I want to go through his list with you and get your take on it. I want to hone in on something specific from his list, which is item number three because it's the thesis that everything else sits on. In that, he said, "Entrepreneurship isn't about new ideas. Don't follow your passion." That's interesting, right? "Do common things uncommonly well. Peter, that's a sentence that sounds simple and is actually a very hard thing to execute on. At a high level, before we really get into it with a few key points, again, I want to go through his list with you in a second, but at high level, what does AI have to do with this? How will it help you do common things uncommonly well in business?

Peter Swain (06:20):

I think the main answer I'd give is AI, and we've spoke about this before, but AI is great at pattern recognition and it's great at finding the gaps. And most of the time it would actually go too deep into a subject to be useful. But in this concept, if you were to say, optimize this SOP and find every single place that could go wrong, every single place it could go right, put in the checks and balances to ensure it is the perfect experience and you defined what the perfect experience was, then AI is going to keep going to a level that most humans would have got bored.

Joe Downs (06:55):

Yeah. I think you nailed it and I'm looking forward to unpacking that in a minute. Okay. So before we get into that though, for the AI angle on common things, that was brilliant. I want your reaction on the list itself because as I read the list, I was going to just focus on what I want the show to be about today, but I couldn't. I got to get your take on this list. So he put out nine pieces of advice for young people and some of it's genuinely good. Some of it's maybe deliberately provocative, but all of it's getting people worked up. So let me just read a few of the ones that had people typing furiously in the comments. He said," All right, you ready? Don't become a doctor or a lawyer. You're too likely to end up unhealthy, unhappy, divorced, and rich. "He said," Getting married young, get married.

(07:49):

"Hold on, let me read them all because they're really interesting. He said," Get married young and have more kids than you can afford. "He said," Passive income is a myth. Trade your time for money. "And my personal favorite, Silicon Valley is playing basketball against LeBron James. Sweaty startups are playing against a fifth grade girl. The choice is yours. Now, I will say this, clearly he does not watch the NBA because if he did, he would know that LeBron James doesn't play defense, but I think we get his intended point and it ties to a point that I make all the time in storage or in any business. If you want to beat Tuggerwood, you can just home play him in golf. So what do you make of the list from the don't become a doctor or lawyer, get married young and have more kids you can afford.

(08:42):

Passive income is a myth. I

Peter Swain (08:44):

Won't remember the law, so let's go one by

Joe Downs (08:46):

One. All right.

Peter Swain (08:48):

Don't become a doctor or a lawyer. Okay. I mean, I agree and disagree at the same time because what I think everybody should do is what makes them happy because what do we ... Some of us believe in a higher power, some of us don't believe in a higher power, but either way this is the one go round you've got on this planet. So it would be abhorrent to me to waste that on something that doesn't light you up. You're going to spend, whether you're working for yourself or working for somebody else, you're going to spend at least a third of your life working. If you work for yourself, you're probably going to spend about half of your life working. So you should at least do something you enjoy. So if you actually enjoy being a doctoral lawyer, first of all, if you enjoy being a lawyer, lose my number.

(09:33):

Second of all, if that's what you love, that's what you should do at the end of the day. Yeah.

Joe Downs (09:41):

I don't know that doctor fits in here because some people are, that's their calling in life, regardless of how much they

Peter Swain (09:48):

Work. And that's the difference, isn't it? If you're saying that you want to become a doctor for the healing nature of it, like my cousin spends six months with the NHS so they can send six months with medicines on frontier in Africa helping people with cataracts and they are definitely a better person than me. It's like fair play. Or if you want to become a teacher because you have a calling towards that, then that's what you should do. But it's the other people that I think he's talking to, the people that are doing it because that's a solid career. Yeah. That's how you earn money. That's how you get respected by your community. Those people are who I would imagine he's talking to and in that sentence, I would wholeheartedly agree with him. Okay. So that was number one. What was number two?

Joe Downs (10:33):

Get married young and have more kids than you can afford.

Peter Swain (10:36):

You see, I got married later in life and I'm really glad I did because we already knew each other by the time we knew ourselves by the time we had to start working out how to compromise with somebody else. There's a fun in being single.

Joe Downs (10:49):

Yeah. And some of us aren't ready. I got married, I was 34, I think. Some of us, there's no way I was ready at 27. Yeah.

Peter Swain (10:57):

Yeah. No, that would've been a terrible idea. However, the have more children than you can afford. Again, having children was fantastic and really fun, but having kids is fulfilling. It is a bigger journey and not say the other journey's wrong. So yeah, I kind of agree. I can see why this list inframe people because if you read into what he's saying, you can agree with it, but the outward flat line sentence is a bit like, F you.

Joe Downs (11:29):

Well, there's a lot of that going on.

Peter Swain (11:31):

Okay. Number three we've discussed.

Joe Downs (11:34):

Passive income is a myth. Trade your time for money.

Peter Swain (11:38):

100% agree. I watched a show with Keith Cunningham once and he was talking about this. He's like, "The merry garround keeps merrier go rounding when you keep pushing it. " But if you stop pushing the merry-go-round, the merry-go-round grinds to a halt. I think you can have passive revenue streams at a later point in life, but that's only because you've put so much momentum into the machine, but even then it's still going to come to an end. The time for money one I love because I think I have a better quote than he does when people say they don't want to trade their time for money, my response is, "That's untrue. You just don't like the exchange rate."

Joe Downs (12:16):

Well, I like it.

Peter Swain (12:17):

And they go, "Well, it isn't." I'm like, "Great, I'll offer you a million dollars for 10 seconds." And they go, "Okay." And you go, "Well, you're a liar. You just said you don't want to trade your time for money. I just offered you a million dollars to 10 seconds and now you're saying yes." Michael Jackson traded time for money. Taylor Swift trades time for money, but just the exchange rate that they're putting on that equation is much higher than the average Joe.

Joe Downs (12:43):

That's so interesting. So W2 nine to five person is trading time for money. They just don't like the exchange rate. That's your point.

Peter Swain (12:51):

But so are you and I.

Joe Downs (12:52):

Yeah, no, I agree.

Peter Swain (12:54):

Like everybody is. When people say they don't like it, I just think they don't like the exchange rate.

Joe Downs (12:59):

And that's my point. We're entrepreneurs. We're still trading time for money. Someone who's nine to five W2 is also trading time for money. That's your point. They don't like the exchange rate as much as we like ours or prefer ours.

Peter Swain (13:12):

My deeper point is that the human brain is insatiably good at answering questions. It's not very good at interpreting whether it's a good question. So if you say to yourself, "I don't want to trade time for money," your brain will try and find ways to stop you trading time for money. Whereas if you say to yourself, "I don't like the exchange rate by which I'm trading time for money, I need to enhance and increase that, " your brain will enhance and find ways to do that.

Joe Downs (13:41):

Very

Peter Swain (13:41):

Good. Tony Robins phrase, "Key to a better life is asking better questions."

Joe Downs (13:46):

That's a good point. Last one, I don't think this is exhaustive. This was just some of the ones I thought I'd want to get your take on, but Silicon Valley is playing basketball against ... I'm going to insert the GOAT himself, Michael Jordan, because I think this is what he meant, who is probably at least a three-time defensive player of the year. Silicon Valley is playing basketball against Michael Jordan. You agree with that?

Peter Swain (14:08):

Yeah. Well, I know a few people that have been like Silicon Valley funded and what most people don't understand is Silicon Valley is only trying to win one in 20 times. They just win to a hundred X degree. So if you've got the powder to roll the dice a hundred times, the Silicon Valley business model works very, very well. If you do not have the powder to roll the dice 100 times, the Silicon Valley business model is not for you. It's a risk reward. It's like people that dump all their money into crypto when they should actually have $100,000 of Bank of America CDs. Now a Bank of America CD currently trades below inflation, but it's still a good idea for your first $100,000 because the aim of that is to make sure that worst case scenario you have accessible funds. Even if it's getting clipped by inflation, until you get to $2 million, you shouldn't be doing anything as stupid as putting money in crypto.

(15:05):

I say that as a crypto advocate to anyone that listens to that and go, "Oh, you didn't know. I love crypto." Just it's an incredibly risky, incredibly volatile play. Let

Joe Downs (15:12):

Me ask you two follow-up questions there on the ... I just thought of one. On the passive income one, do you think he's basically calling out the entire industry of influencers selling courses on passive income?

Peter Swain (15:22):

The wonderful thing about most people that are selling courses via the influence route is none of them have a single class, first class clear what they're talking about. And I say that to somebody that is in the sector where there are lots of people selling courses on blank. My favorite one recently was a guy that had an NA10 course that would teach you to make a million dollars a week from Facebook Marketplace and this NA10 automation would buy stuff from the Facebook marketplace by putting low ball bids in and then as soon as those bids would accept, it would relist them and he was like, "Yeah, I use this to make a million a week." And you thought that the $19 course sale on Instagram was therefore that's what you needed to monetize because if you're doing a million or he's doing 52 million a year.

Joe Downs (16:09):

Why are you wasting time on a $19

Peter Swain (16:10):

Course? Why do you waste your time selling a $19 course, but he sold 12,000 of them.

Joe Downs (16:16):

God bless him.

Peter Swain (16:17):

So he is doing a million a week.

Joe Downs (16:19):

Yeah. Well, that's actually the point I make with storage models. But anyway, all right. And then where do most entrepreneurs do you think go wrong on this is the Silicon Valley, Michael Jordan one, on competition selection. Is it that they don't think about it or that they actively choose the harder game because it sounds better or sexier or is something they can talk about at the cocktail party?

Peter Swain (16:42):

So when you were talking about this, you reminded me of a guy I met once. It was a very kind of high level networking group and we were doing one of these adventure trips and I think we're in Vail and we're on a snow plow going up to this restaurant. I was like, "So what do you do for a living?" And he said, "Yeah, I buy and sell water." I'm like, "You buy and sell water." And he's like, "Yeah, wow, can you tell me a bit more about that? "

Joe Downs (17:08):

Who would buy water from a bottle?

Peter Swain (17:11):

It'd be silly. And he turned around and said, "Yeah, well, about 15 years ago I secured the rights to Fiji water."

Joe Downs (17:22):

Wow.

Peter Swain (17:23):

I've got to ask the question, how much I'm so sorry to be so based, but how much do you do? And he went, "Personally or as a company?" I'm like, "Personally, he went five million a week." I'm like, "Why are you here?" And he's like, "Because you guys all do really fun stuff and I really want to learn the online coaching space." I was like, "I'll tell you what, you can have my whole business."

Joe Downs (17:44):

Let's trade

Peter Swain (17:47):

And I'll work for you for a year teaching you everything you need to know. I'll live in your basement for 18 hours a day. I'll just teach you everything and I'll just take that. And he refused, unfortunately. But I think that we have a desire to do fun, interesting stuff and I think it's a bit of survivor bias because as you said, nobody tells the story of Nick Hoover. Everybody tells the story of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and we tell the stories of the unicorns because the stories of the unicorns are fun. So we kind of get a bit of a skewed model in our head as to where the wealth actually is. Maybe that's part of it.

Joe Downs (18:27):

You know, that's really interesting insight. You're probably right about that and not only that, it sounds fun for us, right? I see him doing it. I mean, not that I'm chasing Elon Musk, or most people are. I could see people chasing the next, who knows, whatever comes around the corner with AI, right? I could see people chasing that instead of using and harnessing AI to actually build or refine, which is really his point in doing, and we're about to get into this, doing things better, harness the technology that's in front of you.

Peter Swain (19:06):

How many people have been through the mastermind or the momentum program now? Probably like a thousand people have been through my programs now and I'd say a solid 10%, probably more have decided that teaching AI is the way for them to go. Instead of listening to what they're absorbing and deploying it in their business, they try and monetize it directly and I find it quite sad really.

Joe Downs (19:33):

That's interesting. All right. Well, that is kind of a segue into the third point.

Peter Swain (19:39):

Oh, and also, Joe, almost everyone I've met that's embarrassingly wealthy, like numbers that you couldn't tell your family type numbers. Almost all of them do something very boring.

Joe Downs (19:51):

That's why I wanted to get into real estate. The two wealthiest people I knew were in real estate, which-

Peter Swain (19:56):

I knew a guy that made the bull bearings that you use for French doors and patio doors.

Joe Downs (20:02):

It's all bull bearings these days.

Peter Swain (20:04):

And he was multi-deca millionaire.

Joe Downs (20:09):

I knew a guy who's a grandson of the guy who invented ... You know that little plastic thing that goes under your shoelace?

Peter Swain (20:18):

You actually met that. I

Joe Downs (20:20):

Found the guy and they're super wealthy from the royalty for it or something. Imagine that. All right. So let's go into the on that I actually want to build the rest of the conversation around because entrepreneurship isn't about necessarily, is not about new ideas. Do common things uncommonly well was his point. Peter, in 2026, what does uncommonly well actually mean when you've got AI available to you? Because I think the definition just changed. Now you gave us thank you a few minutes ago, the 30,000 foot view of what that means. Can we drill down into it?

Peter Swain (21:05):

Yes. How?

Joe Downs (21:07):

So trying to think of a ... Do we just pick a business here?

Peter Swain (21:10):

Well, maybe more a function of a business.

Joe Downs (21:13):

Okay.

Peter Swain (21:14):

Well, let's take customer support.

Joe Downs (21:15):

Perfect.

Peter Swain (21:16):

Because I think that's something that no matter where you're at, what you're doing, everybody has a customer, people have to support their customers.

Joe Downs (21:22):

Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Let's do it.

Peter Swain (21:25):

So my question where you start that conversation is, would it be possible to have a 100% satisfaction?

Joe Downs (21:33):

Yeah, likely. I don't know that you ever will.

Peter Swain (21:37):

So the reason that you stop as a stereotypical entrepreneur on that kind of a journey is that you're in a diminishing return. You reach a point. Yo may or may not realize that's why you stop, but you reach a point where you go, "The juice is no longer worth the squeeze. I'm going to have to put this much more money behind it or this much resource behind it to get to that next stage of whatever it is and the math is mathing, the business is working. Leave that alone." But if AI can look across 10,000 conversations simultaneously and see the patterns in 10,000 conversations and can tell you when a customer is about to churn before they churn and can tell you the thing that you need to put on the table for them to stay and it can do that for the cost of tokens, then why wouldn't you do that?

Joe Downs (22:29):

I'm trying to think, should we take a business that has

Peter Swain (22:31):

Customer service? Well, we also spoke about this a few shows ago. Remember when we talked about sending the LinkedIn message before you send the email? Same kind of thing. When I sit with people who have gone to a conference, my question is about the follow-ups. Nobody ever that I've literally ever that I spoke to has done the research before that they really should do on the people they're going to attend and the speakers to get the most out of it and nobody I ever speak to does the level of follow-ups they should do coming off it on the other side.

Joe Downs (23:01):

That would be a great example then of doing a common thing uncommonly well, meaning ... And this is the part that I think you have to slow it down to understand it. Doing it uncommonly well doesn't mean doing it exceptionally different. It just means completing all the tasks. In this one example, you were on stage with 15 people as an example at some point. Most people would follow up with one or two get distracted, a day goes by, three days goes by, now it'd be weird to follow up. So out of 15, you followed up with maybe three and that's the follow-up is the common thing in that example, right? Doing it uncommonly well would be 15 out of 15. Is that fair?

Peter Swain (23:57):

Yeah. Well, even 30. Even

Joe Downs (23:59):

13 out of 15.

Peter Swain (24:00):

Accounting for the two that didn't pick up the phone because you got the wrong number.

Joe Downs (24:05):

Sure. But-

Peter Swain (24:06):

But most people do one or two.

Joe Downs (24:08):

4X what you would've done without the Assistant

Peter Swain (24:12):

AI. 100%.

Joe Downs (24:13):

Yeah.

Peter Swain (24:15):

I just got back the SOP from one of my team for onboarding somebody into my abundance program.

Joe Downs (24:20):

Okay. So set the stage. We're talking about your mastermind.

Peter Swain (24:23):

So somebody has paid me for my mid-tier program

(24:27):

And they've paid me either 2,000 a month or 20,000 a year. So the salesperson's done their job. The card has been run. The money is in the bank. How do you now get them into the program? How do you get them on the calls? How do you get them the access they need? How do you get them the community they need? How do you put their onboarding call? Those kind of things. They brought me back the SOP for onboarding somebody. I sat with the SOP with Claude for about 35 minutes and I gave them 98 changes that I wanted to that SOP, 98. For example, we send them the email with the booking link to the form to do their onboarding call. I had we send them one email, then another email, then another email. And if we don't hear from them at that point, we send them a voice note because if they don't do the onboarding call, everything else is jammed.

(25:33):

Nothing else can happen. We looked at the first two weeks of their membership as the critical period where we might get a chargeback, where we might get a cancellation, because if we don't get them on the calls, the live calls, they're probably not going to get ... They can't get valu. We went through how do we create a personalized curriculum from them from back catalog content, which is, and we've got 300 and something calls now, quite hard to do, but it's really easy for AI to do it. We've got transcripts of the sales calls that could be fed into an AI process and sent to the onboarding manager to check and balance the notes that come back from the salesperson to make sure that it's actually that what the salesperson's told us matches what the calls were. Not that the salesperson's not telling the truth, but we're going to miss stuff.

(26:28):

So there was lots of what if this doesn't happen and what if this happens and how could we extend this and how could we augment this? And humans are always guilty of linear thinking because we've been trained for millennia as a species to think in terms of is the juice worth the squeeze because it's going to end up needing humans to do the work so it's probably not worth it. So we don't even challenge our own thought processes around whether some of these things are worth it or not. Everyone in my company has a sticky, where I insist they do. I know I do and I hope they do, that says AI first thinking, like literally a sticky on the monitor to remind yourself that we don't live in a human first world anymore. We live in an AI first world and the difference between an AI solution and a human solution is normally just remembering to plan the AI solution, not the human solution.

(27:27):

It's not rocket science.

Joe Downs (27:29):

So what does that mean we live in an AI world, not a human world?

Peter Swain (27:33):

So an AI first world, not a human first world. So what we mean by that is what we should be all planning is can AI do this? So as the first question, like if you've got the decision tree, the first question is, can AI do this role in my mind.

Joe Downs (27:53):

We need the sticky is to build the muscle memory that first I should get one actually because I catch myself all the time 20 minutes into thinking something and realize, what am I doing? In fact, I sent you an

Peter Swain (28:06):

Email

Joe Downs (28:06):

The other night if you recall. So for my storage muggles launch, I sent you an email, you suggested you advised me to change the ebook to a gift for attending and not

Peter Swain (28:18):

Registering. Attendance. Yeah.

Joe Downs (28:20):

And so I went back to Claude, ideated, I said, "This is the change." And Claude came back and said, "That's great, but now you need a lead magnet for registration." I sent you an email that said, "Peter, this is what Claude said. Now we need a lead magnet for registration." I hit send. "What are your thoughts? "I hit send. As soon as I hit send, because it was also late at night and you're across the pond so you're sleeping, I said to myself," Why am I asking him? Not that I don't want and appreciate your opinion, but why didn't I just go to Claude first? "So I went right back to Claude and said," What do you suggest? "So my muscle memory is just, it's not the next day that I think of AI first, but there's still a delay and in this case it was probably about a minute.

Peter Swain (29:11):

Yeah. Well, that's fantastic because then we get to the point where it happens before, not after. Exactly that. I asked you to send some stuff over to me and I knew it was important that I didn't miss it and because I was flying, I didn't know when I'd get it. So my first thought was, oh, I must remember to keep an eye out for that email because my email after being away for a week at a conference is carnage. My second thought is I should ask Allie, my PA to keep an eye out for that email because it's important. My third thought was, why don't I just tell my open claw assistant to tell me when the email arrives and if I haven't received it in two days to give me a nudge. My fourth though fourth thought was for it to keep an eye out for For the next two days for the email, and if it doesn't arrive in the next two days, to give you a nudge.

Joe Downs (30:06):

So it took you four iterations.

Peter Swain (30:08):

Four iterations for me to go ... If I don't get this in two days, I don't need to be the one sending you the email saying, "Hey, where is it? " Allie doesn't need to be the one. The AI can do it. It's going to do it pretty well.

Joe Downs (30:21):

Yeah. It's just habit forming, right?

Peter Swain (30:24):

100%. And which is why that's sticky of just it's not even just developing the muscle memory, it's actively fighting the opposite muscle memory.

Joe Downs (30:34):

Yeah.

Peter Swain (30:34):

We're trying to undo not a bad habit, but what is now a bad habit. My sticky used to say delegate you moron because I put it on my list, not somebody else's list. And just as I started breaking that, delegation is no longer the idea. It's like, no, delegate it to the AI, not even to the humans. But this is a great example of doing the common thing uncommonly well. Even chasing you for the ... Which by the way, just for the record, Joe sent me within seven hours. So this whole thing sounds like it's just slacking off. You already sent it to me. But even just the act of actively remembering there's an email and setting up the chase to receive the email is something that is uncommonly well.

Joe Downs (31:24):

Yeah, good point.

Peter Swain (31:26):

Even that's a great example of this because nine times out of 10, it's like, well, he said he'd send it to me so it's not my problem. Well, we get to make these things our problem, our responsibility.

Joe Downs (31:38):

Without making it our problem, our responsibility, because all you did was ask AI a tool to make sure it was handled.

Peter Swain (31:47):

Yeah.

Joe Downs (31:48):

But that it wasn't also on your plate.

Peter Swain (31:50):

Yeah. Because I also know that not everybody on the call is doing things uncommonly well yet because most people have a digital notes trans ... Almost like the amount of people that have an otter or a fathom or fireflies or read. The amount of people that actually review them.

Joe Downs (32:08):

Yeah.

Peter Swain (32:09):

I know their own data on this sub 5%.

Joe Downs (32:13):

It's because where's the time? I find it ... I go back-

Peter Swain (32:17):

But AI can do that. AI can do that for you and say, "Hey, here are the four actions that I just pulled out of this. Have I got this right? Yes, you have. Great. I'll schedule them for you. Thanks very much."

Joe Downs (32:26):

So that's in the setup.

Peter Swain (32:28):

But again, uncommonly well.

Joe Downs (32:29):

I'm not disagreeing with anything. I'm really just defending myself right now and I don't know why. You're not wrong. In fact, I have found that when I finally bite the bullet and just take the minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minute, and I'm doing that. It's really the ones that take an hour that I haven't done, like the Rosetta Stone and stuff like that, which is embarrassed to admit, but tangential question, just out of curiosity, the sticky note. Does that ever just fade into the background and just become part of the scene? Do you actually see it?

Peter Swain (33:06):

I think I do, but it's a great question. Whether I should actually move it around or change the color or rewrite it.

Joe Downs (33:13):

Because that's what I've found is-

Peter Swain (33:16):

But I don't have 20 of them. I've literally got one.

Joe Downs (33:18):

I put things in certain places to remind me and if they're there too long, they're just part of the background.

Peter Swain (33:24):

Yeah. Well, that's what the reticular activating system's job is actually to do. Its job is to actually ignore stuff that it knows is there. So you're probably 100% correct. It's now just useless. Thanks for that. I'm just destroying my system.

Joe Downs (33:37):

No, I'm trying to help you improve

Peter Swain (33:39):

Your system. No, no. Thanks. I really appreciate

Joe Downs (33:40):

It. I'm trying to make your system working commonly well.

Peter Swain (33:43):

Not having it there is probably actually now going to do more good because I reactivate your system's going to go, where's that missing thing? It's probably actually going to work more. Thank you. Anyway, sorry. You're

Joe Downs (33:53):

Welcome. Along these lines before I jump to the next one, is there a risk that AI just becomes the new baseline, meaning uncommonly well? If we can get to the point where we're humming, is that the new table stakes?

Peter Swain (34:11):

I mean, the answer is obviously and hell yes. Why are you saying is that a risk? That is definitely what's going to happen and isn't it a good thing?

Joe Downs (34:21):

I don't know. Yeah,

Peter Swain (34:23):

I guess

Joe Downs (34:24):

It is.

Peter Swain (34:25):

As a consumer of businesses, I would rather those businesses be able to do things uncommonly well.

Joe Downs (34:30):

Yeah, no, you're right. That's poorly phrased.

Peter Swain (34:33):

Well, let me give you ... I've got another example because this is something I'm raiding against at the moment. I'm canceling my British Airways loyalty membership and I was above gold. I was at the top tier. I'm using this as an opportunity. So BA, if you're listening, you should pay attention.

Joe Downs (34:51):

This sounds like a grief about to come out. Go ahead.

Peter Swain (34:53):

It is grief. It is. I'm using this for my own therapeutic means, but I think it's also got a point. My brother passed away at the end of last year and I scrambled to get myself from Boise to Dublin for his funeral. And in doing so, I didn't even pay attention to what flights I had booked. It was not important to me what I was missing. I just got on plane, literally got to airports and went, "I'll take that one." When I was in the UK after the funeral, I realized that I needed to cancel my flight from Atlanta to London because I was already in London. I called them and they said that because I was calling too late, it was 22 hours to go until the flight that I was supposed to be on, they couldn't cancel, refund or give me a credit.

(35:43):

This was a four and a half thousand pound flight. By this point, I had spent in the last two years over $300,000 with British Airways because of all of my flying back and forth from America. And my point to them was, "I understand that's your policy, but are you really going to tell someone that's paid you over $300,000? You can't find a way to make this work. You can't give me a credit. You can't give me a flight voucher." And they're like, "Well, this is the policy." I'm like, "I understand it's the policy, but I'm expressing to you that I will never fly with you again if on the occasion of my brother's passing, you can't find a way to help me out. " Now my belief is if the CEO of BA heard that conversation or a C-suite person, they would go, "What are we doing?

(36:37):

We're going to throw away a third of a million dollars for the sake, even if they don't agree with me, for the sake of $4,000. Is that really what we're going to do here?" So what if uncommonly well was just AI listening to every customer service call and understanding when an exception should be made because there was always exceptions, you can't policy everything and pushing it to more senior leadership to get involved in the equation. What if that was just uncommonly well? And I think that will be table stakes in the next few years.

Joe Downs (37:14):

And that will be a good thing.

Peter Swain (37:15):

I think it's a good thing.

Joe Downs (37:17):

I was going to make a joke there, but then I realized you're British and probably never watched Seinfeld.

Peter Swain (37:23):

I wish Seinfeld.

Joe Downs (37:24):

You did?

Peter Swain (37:25):

Probably not enough. I grew up in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, so all I had was American TV. Oh,

Joe Downs (37:29):

Okay.

Peter Swain (37:29):

If you ask me questions about Bold of the Beautiful or Santa Barbara, I'm an expert. That's all we had. That's all I had for four years.

Joe Downs (37:36):

Did not watch that. I was going to say, sorry, the card says moops. You would have

Peter Swain (37:44):

To- See, I do know that.

Joe Downs (37:44):

You would have to see the bubble boy episode of Seinfeld. All right, last one on this one. So for someone who's been doing this, doing whatever they've been doing for 10 years and thinks they already do it uncommonly well, what's the prompt that would show them where they're actually vulnerable?

Peter Swain (38:03):

I'd ask AI to argue both sides of the equation on this one because AI can be even clawed can be pleasing and agreeing and slightly sycophantic. Cause the second best of it, grocks easily the best at not being, but I'll slow down. AI is as a general rule, large language models can be sycophantic by the very nature of them in various different degrees. ChatGPT is way the worst. Grock is way the best at this, but even all of them have tendencies. The way around that is to ask them in advance to argue both sides of the equation. So if you ask AI to review how you're doing something, to ask you questions to get the information, give it the data, and then tell it to tell you what you're doing great and what you're doing badly and where there is room for improvement, then the reflection to yourself when you're looking at, "Yeah, I'm brilliant at this.

(38:59):

" The reflection can then make you go, "Maybe I'm not so brilliant at this.

Joe Downs (39:03):

" Okay. So kind of bring this back. So his whole point here is that the boring business is the opportunity and AI is what makes the boring business not boring to run. And the entrepreneurs chasing the sexy startup idea are basically choosing, in his words, LeBron James when they could have just played against the fifth grade girl.

Peter Swain (39:29):

I also imagine he got in some trouble in the comments for the blatant sexism inside that sentence.

Joe Downs (39:35):

Folks, I'm just repeating what he said. I'm not endorsing it.

Peter Swain (39:40):

Yeah. So LeBron versus the five-year-old full stop. We don't need to add in the girl, but I think probably maybe.

Joe Downs (39:48):

I think that might've been part of the deliberately provocative. I'm just repeating what he said. I'm not endorsing it. And I want to be clear because this isn't theoretical for me. I own storage facilities. Self-storage is the definition of boring. It's

Peter Swain (40:07):

Literally an empty box. Yeah.

Joe Downs (40:08):

Not even metaphorically.

Peter Swain (40:10):

It's literally equal.

Joe Downs (40:11):

We try to pump ourselves up in the industry and talk about how sexy and beautiful those metal boxes are. But at the end of the day, folks, come on, we get it to, there's no granite countertops and there's no before and

Peter Swain (40:22):

After pictures. What is the one with AC? What do you call them?

Joe Downs (40:24):

Climate control, which-

Peter Swain (40:26):

Yeah, it's got AC. Which

Joe Downs (40:27):

By the way, technically we have to be very careful with that now. We still say it, that's the colloquial way to say it, but really what you have to say when you market advertise legally is temperature controlled.

Peter Swain (40:41):

Temperature regulated.

Joe Downs (40:43):

Regulated because only God controls the climate. Literally a case was won over this something, I don't remember the details, but I think it was a humidity factor or something like that. And the argument was you didn't control the climate, you only controlled the temperature. I thought, so we don't say climate control. In either case, it's been around since the '60s. There's nothing new about it. And here's what I've learned is the people losing in the market in our market aren't losing because they picked the wrong business. They're losing because they picked the right business and they ran it like it was still the year 2000. And I want to be specific about where I'm actually using it because I think it's more useful than the generic version. The place that AI has changed for us and how we operate at Belrose is on the acquisition side, how my team sources deals, how we analyze a facility in the local market before we ever even make an offer, due diligence, underwriting, how we communicate with sellers.

(41:43):

I think I've talked about this on the show before about how I have AI write the email where I send an offer that's several hundred thousand dollars less than what the seller's hoping for with the intention that they'll open it, see the number and go, "Well, this is still great." And that's AI written and driven. So it's compressed in a way that lets us move faster and with more confidence in every deal that we look at and that's the real edge and it's not magic. It's just better and faster is part of the business that actually determines whether you make money. And I think the whole premise behind what we're building at StorageMuguls.ai is that. And I'm doing it right now. I'm building real education for the husband and wife team, the first time buyer, the operator trying to get their first deal done. And Peter, I was my consultant on it, you've been teaching me how to use AI in the education space in how we develop our education business to teach people how to do all this.

(42:46):

And of course, folks, if anyone's curious, storagemoguls.ai, if you're interested in real estate entrepreneurship and peterswain.com, if you find yourself in a boring business and you want to start doing those common things uncommonly well, I highly recommend you check that out. And look, actually before I close, Peter, is there anything you'd want to add to that? Because what I'm trying to speak to here is the guy that owns the power washing business, the HVAC company, your local, regional, whatever HVAC company, maybe a father-son electrician team. I want this to speak to them. I want them to understand that they need to pause, stop, look around at everything in their business, whether that's just what I'm about to do today or this week or this month, how can AI help me first recognize what I'm not doing uncommonly well? Maybe I'm only doing it commonly well and then what can I do?

(44:00):

What's the prompt that would A, help me find that, figure that out, expose it, put sunlight on it and B, what do I do about it?

Peter Swain (44:09):

Yeah, I think my first would be, it depends how many numbers you have. So it depends. I might be somewhat biased, but my expectation of a father-son electrician is they're not a data led, a data-heavy company. So either anecdotally, qualitatively or quantitatively tell the AI what's happening and allow it to ask questions and interrogate like, "Hey, I want to go through my business and work out where I'm strong, where I'm weak, where I need to improve, where I don't need to improve." Ask me questions, go. I mean, it really is that simple. And if you've got the spreadsheets and the P&L and the cash for the balance sheet, give it to it. And we used to do this for due diligence for investment.

Joe Downs (44:52):

It's more pleasure. And tell it who you are, what you are, what your problems are, what your goals and dreams are. We're a father-son electrician team in this case. We do this amount of business per year. We would like to grow our business. We would like to grow our business without spending more money on marketing.

Peter Swain (45:11):

Whatever it is. Well, it's an example. I consult with somebody at the moment about once a month in the business it really isn't doing very well, but his goal is to do his business with his child. He doesn't care. He really doesn't care. He has his cash flowing businesses over here. These things are going well. This is about actually spending time with his daughter. That's actually what it's about. So any optimization that would remove the him and her working together, he doesn't want to do. And I honor that because he is so clear. It's like, no, yeah, Pete, I could make more money if I go over here and she goes over here and we do this and you're 100% right and I don't care. I want to go to these conferences together. I want to do these things together because the reason I'm doing this is to do it with her.

(46:02):

Right. Okay. He's very clear about what his goals are and that as to your point, that very much feeds what the strategies should and shouldn't be. So yes, tell it who you are, what you are, what you do, what you want to do, give it the numbers and ask it to do the analysis and come back to you and say, "It looks like you're overspending here. It looks like you're not getting the results here that you should be getting." And then go deeper and then go deeper and go deeper until you're like, "Oh, that's the problem." Okay. And then ask it for the 12 step action plan and then do the damn thing

Joe Downs (46:36):

And then execute. Yeah. Look, Nick Huber's not a complicated guy. His whole thing is stop trying to be clever, start trying to be excellent at something boring. And it's really just the blocking and tackling, doing the blocking and tackling well.

Peter Swain (46:51):

Yeah. There was a CEO that I can't remember replaced the whole of the main wall in the main bullpen with ... His point was simplify everything and the mural said simple is one syllable too long.

Joe Downs (47:06):

Too many. I've seen that. I love that. And it's true. The businesses that win long term are never the ones that are complicated with the best ideas. They're the ones with the best execution. And AI just made, I think, and I'm sure you would agree, it just made excellent execution available to anyone willing to just put in the setup work like we just talked about, like you just said with the Father of Sun Team, just have a conversation where you are, what you're doing, where you want to go, what's working, what's not working, what you love, what you don't love. And that's the game. And Nick's been playing it for years. He was playing it before AI.

Peter Swain (47:42):

My goal is always Disney park level execution Because when you start understanding the detail of that marching bands are deployed in order to move crowds around the park so that areas don't get too overloaded, that there are quiet zones where they take the music, they have microphones listening to the music and the background sound and they inverse the sound to push it into quiet areas. So as you walk through Disney, you go through loud area, quiet area, loud area, quiet area so your nervous system can regulate back in before you go back into stuf. The depth of the decisions around it is staggering, but there's a thousand of them. One guy has a job, Joe, of walking around Disney parks to make sure you can always see a you are here, a map sign. There is nowhere in a Disney park if you stand up and turn around 360 that you can't see a map.

Joe Downs (48:47):

That's so interesting.

Peter Swain (48:47):

Nowhere. Unbelievable, but it's such a simple concept and yet it's something most of us go, "That's not important." For Disney, that's crucial.

Joe Downs (48:58):

Yeah, they've definitely taken every piece of customer feedback and executed on it. And look, I think maybe the takeaway here is, well, it should be boring businesses done well are where wealth is created. Like I said a second ago, Nick Huber was doing this before AI. And so we're not even in almost every one of these episodes, we're not even showing you anything new. And maybe we are with AI.

Peter Swain (49:28):

I bet you he's a right pain in the ass to work for.

Joe Downs (49:32):

He probably is. He probably pays attention to detail, but we're not showing people anything new. We're just showing them the AI version of the playbook. And to me, that's so exciting because if you think about Nick, it was probably really hard to be excellent at all of these common things and AI just changes the game for us. Nic is probably compared to most people, you probably just nailed it. He's probably pain in the ass to work for because he is so focused on being so excellent in every aspect that he can.

Peter Swain (50:08):

Exacting was the word I was going to use.

Joe Downs (50:10):

Or exacting, right? Yeah. Because he's so focused on being excellent in every area that he possibly can, that's exhausting for most of us. But AI gives you not just the playbook, the toolkit to actually execute it for you and it just takes a litle bit of effort on your end. So I was really looking forward to this show because of that as well as to get your take on those lightning rod hot takes there. Okay. After this one, I'm going to require that you like and subscribe. It's the least sweaty thing you're going to do all week, folks. And I think we delivered on this show and share this with someone you know who's out there chasing what they would call a clever idea, a brilliant idea when there's a boring one with their name on it just sitting right next to them. Again, if you want to go deeper and you're interested in becoming an entrepreneur in real estate, storagemuggles.ai, and you can certainly enhance anything you do by joining Peter's Mastermind for entrepreneurs who actually want to implement this stuff at peterswain.com.

(51:23):

Keep those emails coming, especially the dear idiots questions, idiots@successfulidiots.com. For Peter Swain, I'm Joe Downs. We are your successful idiots. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.