Operations, Culture, & Chicken Units | Jessie Lamb

Andrew (00:00)

Before Jesse comes on, does anybody want to read the intro script that Brian sent?

I mean, I’m happy to give it a shot, but I just wanted to throw it out there to everybody. Who, me? Sure, I can…

Chris (00:10)

Go for it.

Brian (00:12)

Yeah, you do it. You do it. Duh. You can duh.

Andrew (00:18)

Ahem. Hem.

Brian (00:21)

You gotta do the Do Re Mi thing.

Don’t say nearly 50. mean, know, celebrating 50 years of operational life. That’d be stupid. It’s stupid. Yeah, that’s better.

Andrew (00:26)

Why not nearly 50? 50 plus, how about 50 plus? 50 plus or

nearly 50?

I have to change it because I can’t work on the fly like that. All right.

Welcome to the No Vacancy podcast brought to you by Access Self Storage, 50 plus years of operational excellence. Today, we’re talking about the gap between what your software says is happening at your facility and what’s actually happening on the ground.

Maintenance, audits, vendor follow-up, unit turns, this is the stuff that drives performance. But it’s often the least systematic, god damn it, I knew that was gonna mess me up. Can we synonym that shit?

Brian (01:09)

Yeah, know, we gotta systematize? Systematize? What is it? Yeah, that’s stupid.

Chris (01:10)

Systematized. Systematized.

Andrew (01:12)

System systematized. My god,

But it’s often the least can we say organized? Was that cool? No

Chris (01:24)

I think

this is the introduction.

Andrew (01:31)

But it’s often the least

Brian (01:27)

humble.

Andrew (01:36)

where you two jump in and say a word. ahead. do you got? Systematized? Is that it?

This fucks is systematized.

Brian (01:46)

Yeah,

Andrew (01:46)

Welcome to the No Vacancy podcast brought to you by Access Self Storage, 50 plus years of operational excellence. Today, we’re talking about the gap between what your software says is happening at your facility and what’s actually happening on the ground.

Maintenance, audits, vendor follow-up, unit turns, this is the stuff that drives performance, but it’s often the least systematized part of the business. To break that down, we’ve got Jesse Lamb with us, VP of Self Storage at Notify.

Jessie’s worked across HR, call centers, and multi-site operations. So she brings a unique lens on how people, processes, and execution actually come together at the store level. Jessie, welcome to the show.

Jessie Lamb (02:33)

Wow, thank you so much for having me. feel like after that intro, I feel like I really have to bring the big guns. You’re gassing me up.

Brian (02:41)

Ha ha ha!

Chris (02:42)

See, we just flip that switch from

ridiculous to professional and we’re off and running.

Jessie Lamb (02:47)

Look at that. Good gracious.

Brian (02:50)

Excellent. So Jesse, walk us through your path in self storage, starting in HR, then from the call center lens and then operations. Do I have that? Is that in the right order?

Jessie Lamb (03:03)

Yeah, yeah, I started working for Stratt Property Management with Don Claussen, a lovely human being who many in the self storage industry are blessed to know as his director of HR many years ago. And, you know, I automated a lot of the processes there. I took them digital for a lot of things.

you know, HR functions, and asked him what other projects I could be involved in, and him being the wonderful human that he is. He said, what else can you do? And what else can you help with? And started giving me more projects on the operations side. And eventually that led to me being their VP of operations strategy. So I did a lot of process design and

including some work with our call center, which you called out. And then, you know, the only next natural step was to learn the field and learn field operations from the ground up. So I did that and eventually, Fair BP Self Storage California, and then the vice president of company. So.

From there, I did a little consulting work as many in our industry do. hung out my shingle and I got to work with a lot of really neat operators across the country, kind of doing process design very similar to what I did with Strat and with some of our most renowned tech vendors, healthy lending product and process optimization. And that’s when I got to know the great folks at NIMFA and got to do what I’m doing today.

Now I work for them full time as their DPSL storage and I do a little bit of everything but I help operators on forward to the product and design, repair, maintenance, and graphics programs at scale using our software of course and then I, on the back end, help with product development and

Making sure that our product is aligned with storage operators for you. That’s me in a nutshell.

Chris (05:29)

That is a lot of experience, What a wonderful journey in the industry.

Brian (05:34)

Jesse, how does Notify help storage operators run their business better?

Jessie Lamb (05:39)

think that you hit the nail on the head in the intro that what we do is essentially we operate facilities, right? And at the core of everything we do is maintaining our asset. you know, the renting units,

the these hot topics we talk about every single one of them ties back to how are we maintaining the asset? And I think that we have a lot of disjointed systems that kind of spit and duct tape together for doing that, right? So there are tons of ways that we uncover, issues So we do walkthroughs.

Right, then a lot of times maybe that’s on paper as we’re going and checking walks. We do site visits. We do full on, full scope, full day audits by leaders who visit the property. We have maybe a yearly walk with a bank inspector. We’ve got, you know, a preventative maintenance program where maybe we’re tracking it in a spreadsheet and have…

you know, the elevator inspections and fire inspections and things like that. And in meantime, we are texting, emailing, all of, you know, about the thing that we found that was broken, the thing that we found that was passed to the fire extinguisher with the expired label, right? The project we thought that was repairing maintenance that suddenly turned into a capex beast that we need six bins for and five vendors that we don’t have.

And I think that, you know, there has not been a unified system to bring all of those things together. All of the inspection points where we might identify an issue and then all of the workflow of remedy and communication until that issue is resolved into one place until notified. So that is what we do. are at our core, our aim, maintenance.

repairing maintenance capex, tracking the management system.

A wordy answer for a question.

Chris (07:49)

With the Notify product, have you recommended to your owners and users that you may be looking for a higher quality employee, but you’ll be able to spread them out throughout their portfolio with the Notify product? Is your ideal employee using the system more qualified?

Jessie Lamb (08:16)

Well, yes and no. So I’m so glad you asked that question because a lot of the people who are using our product are part-time 1099 contractors who come to the property as almost like janitorial staff and are turning vacant units at cleaning, blowing leaves, picking up trash, know, things like that. And in the past, we have needed access to the PMS system.

And even though that’s not ideal, especially with high turnover and maybe somebody who’s not actually an employee, but now can use notify scan in when they get to the property, have a list of a punch list, essentially a list of work orders that they need to complete while they’re there. A sign from maybe a call center or another administrative employee and then go through their work more efficiently and also have the accountability of knowing exactly what they did.

they were there to do it. And then on the opposite side of that, you have the more qualified employee who is either maybe an administrative person or somebody who works in the call center who’s assigning those work orders out and deploying those people in the field. And they can work more efficiently. And it’s said that that saves them time and helps them with their communication, kind of centralizing it rather than having 15 text message threads with their contractors.

having everything within one hub in Notify.

Chris (09:46)

Mm.

Brian (09:46)

So sounds like Notify really fills in a gap that most of the property management software that you see kind of have, right? Where they’re great for renting units, dealing with the customer accounts, the customer ledgers, handling collections, auctions, all of those things. the actual, caring for the asset, that part of the job kind of is lost on most of the PMS systems.

Jessie Lamb (09:47)

Yeah, so it’s more.

yes, and our PMS partners do a wonderful job with task management and anything having to do with the administration revenue management, a lot of them touch marketing and websites and, complexity that, we don’t come anywhere near. and then on the, physical operations of the property, we touch.

vendor pool management, asset management and tracking. that’s warranties, the information about the physical locations. all of the contracts, business hours, things like that to centralize all of that into one system that maybe our payments partners. So definitely just a relationship there. And we found really wonderful partnerships with.

SSM, cubbies, storage, I think hummingbird, monument, and have continued to grow our relationships in that way.

Andrew Rockoff (11:10)

Quick break from the podcast. If you’re in self storage and thinking about third party management, here’s the difference. Some companies manage, we focus on performance. At Access Self Storage, we combine disciplined operations, smart marketing, and a strong customer experience that drives results across every location. If you’re looking for a partner that treats your asset like their own, Access is here for you. Now, back to the show.

Chris (11:44)

What else is there? I said the wrong, I said wood shop. Workshop, yeah, workshop. Not going to the wood, I’m Nick Offerman. Give me a slab of bacon and we’re gonna make a roll top desk. Here we go, somebody find my lathe.

Andrew (11:44)

Mr. What?

Work, workshop?

want to leave so bad.

And Lee, I said it to Lee. I swear I want to. And Lee’s like, what are you going to do with a lathe? I’m like, I’m going to make so many baseball bats. And she’s like that you’re an idiot. was like, might be an idiot, but I’m to be an idiot with a lot of baseball bats.

Chris (12:09)

Mm-hmm.

Brian (12:14)

Thank you.

Chris (12:17)

I don’t know how to spell the word finial or really know what it is, but I think that if you come back to her and say, you know, speaking of the lathe, besides baseball bats, I could do so many finials that, you know, it would blow your ass away.

Andrew (12:37)

Finials?

Brian (12:37)

You do know what

it is, because if you set it in such perfect context, yeah, the decorative ornament that marks the apex, top, or end of an object, such as a roof, gable, furniture piece, lamp, or curtain rod, all kinds of shit, just every apex in that joint, mark it.

Chris (12:39)

It’s the thing for the staircase, right? Isn’t it the thing for the staircase?

You could be marking the apex all over your house.

Andrew (12:54)

those were spindles.

Chris (12:56)

Spindles spindle sure

Andrew (12:59)

Vinyl.

Brian (13:00)

Yeah,

think a finial goes on the top of the spindle.

Andrew (13:02)

spindled a finial.

Brian (13:03)

Yeah,

finial marks end of spindle. Findle? Finial? Fuck. I like learning new words, I’m sorry. You know, it’s, I feel like it’s rare.

Chris (13:07)

You

like a lamp base,

could do like a lamp base, a fancy lamp base, and then you could run the wire through that whole thing.

Brian (13:26)

know,

Chris (13:27)

No, no, get the lathe. You gotta convince your wife.

Brian (13:27)

get the lathe. This is how you sell it to the wife.

Chris (13:30)

Yeah. Thineals, and we barely covered spindles, but we know they’re attached, like the femur and the hip bone. And lamp bases, you could, and of course the baseball bats.

Andrew (13:37)

Yeah.

Brian (13:45)

possibilities are endless.

Andrew (13:45)

spindles, finials,

baseball bats. I mean that’s right, you’re sold.

Brian (13:51)

salt.

Chris (13:52)

If you have any more suggestions for Andrew to pursue this leave, let us know what projects he can work on for you and I’ll ship them right out.

Brian (14:01)

Yeah, down in the comments below, please.

Andrew Rockoff (14:02)

All right, boys, let’s get back to this. Jesus.

Brian (14:06)

So, go ahead, go ahead Chris, sorry. No, no, all you, please.

Chris (14:06)

Jesse, go ahead, Brian.

Jessie Lamb (14:07)

.

Chris (14:12)

So a brand new facility opening day one. Have you ever rolled one out completely unmanned? With no staff to deal with the rent up? Okay.

Jessie Lamb (14:19)

I have not, I would not recommend that

Chris (14:24)

So how does that transition from the very successful rent up there at 85%, you know, they’re stable. How have you seen that transition from a manned location that can now put their payroll in other places? How does that transition usually go? And what would you recommend?

Jessie Lamb (14:46)

I think it would depend on a lot of factors. Like, for example, are there several smaller facilities nearby, you that are, you could maybe have been spoken, right? And have the person who, if I had somebody who just successfully leased up to 85 % percent, especially if they were, you know, doing it within the timeframe that, we had projected, that person’s a rock star. So I would probably.

give them a little bit of a pay bump. There’s some nearby facilities that we could hub and spoke out of their locations, since they’re stable, assuming again that they have a manageable amount of foot traffic and we’re not having concerns about break-ins and habitation and things like that if they leave to manage those additional assets. If you’re not in a geographic position to hub and spoke it,

Then I’ve also seen a successful model to be to route some of the calls, the sales queue to that person. So while they’re in the office and they don’t have anything else to do, that they’re in sort of sales calls for other remote locations and they’re renting units because obviously they’re great at it. And we want those people in front of the highest number of customers that we can get them. So.

Chris (16:05)

Does Notify work best on a particular size facility or that really doesn’t matter.

Jessie Lamb (16:11)

haven’t seen a facility that didn’t benefit from having our software. I would say the sweet spot for a portfolio that would probably think about adopting a system like Notify would be once you get to five to 10 locations. That’s when everything on spreadsheets and paper starts becoming a little bit unmanageable.

You know, having spoken to operators saying, well, I’m fine right now. But you have to nail it. You’re growing. You’re not going to be fine in five more. And you don’t want to scale past the point of the infrastructure you’ve put in place and then have to retroactively fix them. Put the system in place to scale as you grow so you have that good tracking, those great systems that you’re rock solid. And then as you’re adding acquisitions, it’s

Yeah, easy peasy.

Chris (17:02)

Great advice. It makes an awful lot of sense. Great, advice.

So what’s next? mean, what do you see tech-wise on the horizon? What are you working on right now that you’re not allowed to share but can share with us?

Jessie Lamb (17:14)

Oh my goodness, there is nothing I’m not allowed to share. will tell you what we’re working on. Um, Jacob Kimmel, our CEO, who is probably one of smartest people I’ve ever met in my life. Um, I’m not going to qualify that he is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in life. cooked up a hub and spoke calculator app. Again, he just did that just for our operators were saying we’re having such a hard time with this particular problem. Which ones do you take remote? Um, and how do you.

Chris (17:18)

Sweet.

Jessie Lamb (17:42)

You know, it’s drive time. It’s number of units. It’s density is in urban area or rural area. Is it, you know, a what kind of market is it sitting in before you would even consider it? Right. So, so, yeah, he built an app for a couple of our, our operators and just gave it to them to put their portfolio in a script, scrape the information from their website and other sources. And then.

Does things like measures, flags, up properties in your portfolio that might be prime for a hub and spoke model or a remotely managed contract model.

especially in larger portfolios. I built a triage dashboard app recently as part of our, we have a hackathon every once in a while where we just like build, we spend a day building, we kind of shut off our phones and get together at the end of the day and say, hey, look at the cool thing I built. You know, and it might end up in the actual product. Yeah, it’s really fun.

Andrew (18:45)

I wanna do that.

Chris (18:46)

Yeah, what’s the…

I mean, you get that catered… Is that a catered event? What happens?

Andrew (18:48)

How do we get that implemented?

I wanna invent stuff.

Jessie Lamb (18:54)

Oh,

yeah. Come bring your happy stock and your ideas. You don’t have to be a tech person to participate. We testers too. And it is very catered. know, free food takes a lot of calories. And we…

Chris (18:56)

I’ll bring my hacky sack. Just hacky sack outside, because I am not tech friendly at all. I’ll be in the hallway.

Say no more. Say no more. I’ll get my, I’ll

Andrew (19:17)

Yeah, buck,

Chris (19:18)

get on the flight.

Andrew (19:18)

Yep.

Jessie Lamb (19:19)

Do it.

I’m not kidding. We invite guests all the time to come hang out with us while we do this. It’s kind of a party. We don’t have a date on the books, but when we do, I will invite you. I’m very serious right now.

Andrew (19:27)

When’s your next session?

Andrew Rockoff (19:38)

And now a quick break. In self storage, the little things become big things fast. Maintenance, vendors, unit readiness, communication. Notify helps operators keep all of it organized in one place, giving teams better visibility and keeping facilities running smoothly. Big thanks to Jesse Lam and the Notify team. Now, back to the show.

Jessie Lamb (20:09)

hackathon. So yeah, we start in the morning. Everybody dresses real casual. have, we bring in breakfast, lunch, dinner, energy drinks. We play music. Everybody brainstorms whiteboards. We choose the ideas that are the most fun. You get a builder who will build things and then a test buddy or a team that will test them and help with the UI. And then the end of the day, everybody presents what they built and the summits.

coolest stuff makes it into the product. Some of the cool stuff that isn’t aligned with our product makes it out to our customers. Just we’re like hey we built something cool do you want to have it? So you know we consider them part of our, we consider our operators part of our team so they get the benefit of some of that. So recently I built an app to do what I used to do as a VPO when I looked at my portfolio which is

in all of the information from Notify, from the PMS, from Google reviews, things like that, and then score your portfolio red, yellow, or green so that you know which properties you probably should be paying attention to most urgently, and then to recommend interventions based on kind of what it’s seeing and the trends, and with some ability to adjust those. So that’s just a fun side project that doesn’t have

anything to do with that, you know, maybe eventually will be available and notify with the Unrentable’s dashboard and the Hub & Spoke calculator as plugins, it’s really just, it really just for fun. So, and to give as a gift to somebody who I thought needed it.

Andrew (21:55)

That’s such a great idea and that must be amazing for company culture to be able to eat. I know you’re inviting others in, but to be able to get together like that and just have people like, all right, whatever you want to try and create, go ahead. We’ll support it for a full day. We’ll, you know, and if you’re serving Celsius as your energy drinks, I think you got Chris on board. There you go.

Jessie Lamb (22:20)

We have a case, we

Brian (22:19)

You

Jessie Lamb (22:23)

buy cases of Celsius in the office. Our CTO just eats the powder packets.

Andrew (22:25)

There you go.

Have you tried that?

Chris (22:32)

that person has a pro- I mean, we have to find them a program.

Brian (22:34)

Celsius problem.

Jessie Lamb (22:37)

I have suggested that the first step is just admitting that we are dependent. We did try an intervention. Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy trying to cut open a Celsius packet. my goodness.

Andrew (22:42)

Ha ha.

Chris (22:42)

That’s right. That’s right.

Brian (22:51)

Yep.

Chris (22:52)

Yeah, that’s a sure sign. Time to bring the family in.

Brian (22:54)

Fantastic. Yeah, I love that. I think Andrew’s segue

perfectly to company culture there. Obviously, everything you just described really speaks to that being, it sounds like a real strength of yours and your organizations. How important do you think that is for self-storage operators as well? Just having a strong culture to keep their team stitched together and everybody working in the same direction.

Jessie Lamb (23:25)

It’s everything.

It is absolutely everything. If you want a team that is more than the sum of its parts, if you want people who are going to, you know, swing big and support each other, if you want people who are going to show up and say, and be vulnerable and say they made a mistake, and then work really fast and really hard to fix it instead of covering it up. If you want to be able to talk about real problems and get to the root of them really fast.

and fix them really fast, which we have to do in the climate that we’re in. All of those things are directly tied to the culture that you’re building and how safe people feel at work and how your leadership team sets the example.

But it’s not top down. It’s definitely not a poster on a wall. It’s, culture is the sum of the way that we do things around here every day. So that’s every person. So I just challenge people to think about, if you have someone who is… I’m trying think of a diplomatic way to say they suck. If you have someone…

Brian (24:39)

Yeah, no, just say it. If they,

Chris (24:40)

Say it. Yeah, there you go.

Andrew (24:40)

Hahahaha

Chris (24:41)

Yeah.

Brian (24:41)

you got it.

Jessie Lamb (24:42)

If you

have someone who’s really great at their job, but they are a miserable person who makes other people miserable and brings other people down, then you don’t. Then get rid of that person. don’t. It sounds like they suck because they suck. But if you have somebody who’s negatively, yeah, negatively impacting other people, you know, I think culture is like a pebble in a pond. Man, it radiates out and.

Andrew (24:54)

Sounds like they suck.

Brian (24:55)

Yeah, it does. They do. They do. Once in a while, you get one.

Andrew (24:57)

Yeah.

Jessie Lamb (25:10)

You can’t, there’s no program, there’s no book, there’s no, it’s the real way people treat each other every day and the real way that they work and how they relate and how they feel about other people in the workplace and how they want to show up for them. So don’t let anybody be a bad pebble.

Brian (25:28)

You gotta protect it at all costs, 100%.

Andrew (25:31)

And like you said, it’s

not a poster on a wall, right? Like you don’t just put something into place and hope that it sticks. It sounds like you and the Notify team are actively and continuously building and moving that company culture forward, which gets lost in some companies.

But that’s pretty cool to see that. I mean, even an event like this where you continue to get together with your team and it’s bonding, everybody’s getting to know each other, maybe even on a personal level. That’s huge. That’s awesome.

Jessie Lamb (26:14)

Well, we are a small team. We’ve tooled a lot on the back end. We have a brilliant VP of Ops and he ex Apple who, you know, a lot of our accounting systems, marketing system, compliance systems, things like that. We don’t have any people for those. AI does a lot of it for us and a lot of it is automated.

Brian (26:14)

Jesse.

Jessie Lamb (26:43)

So our internal systems, all of the people that you see working for Notify, strictly work on customer facing or product facing roles. we’re a small team for that reason, but it allows us to be a very cohesive team. And then also all of our energy and effort is directed towards showing up for our customers. And again, whether that’s in something we actually sell, which is our product, but also in

all of these other ways.

Brian (27:13)

Jesse, we have a segment occasionally, especially when we talk to somebody who has a background in operations. We call it dumpster chronicles. And I read somewhere that you have an interesting story about a chicken unit.

Jessie Lamb (27:29)

Oh goodness, the chickens. I’m like, I was so new. I was so new in operations. I got one of my very first properties. I was so excited. I was like, oh, I’m going to go in. Obviously, I’ve, at this point, automated a bunch of things done, process design, written SOPs. This is the first one. This is my…

Brian (27:32)

Can you tell us your chicken unit story?

Jessie Lamb (27:56)

So rehab, right, it needs a lot of love, it’s a project. So I am going there on the ground and I am gonna personally supervise this property until it is back on its feet. So I’m gun ho and we’re out doing a walkthrough and I hear clucking like a lot of.

Andrew (28:15)

You

Jessie Lamb (28:17)

I clucking and I was walking with a very young assistant manager and I said, honey, did you? I am so sorry, I this is probably, I feel like I might be going crazy. I thought I heard chickens. He said, oh yeah, that’s a chicken unit. I beg your finest pardon. What? He said, oh yeah, that’s a chicken unit. There’s like hundreds of chickens in there. I said, oh, what?

Andrew (28:41)

I

Jessie Lamb (28:42)

He’s like, oh yeah, this guy, imports chickens, this is right by the border, right? And then somebody comes in a semi truck and he picks them up and then he takes them after a few days. And I’m like, you… He can’t do that. He’s like, he can’t do that? Why can’t he do that? And we’re like, old McDonald. This is…

Chris (29:00)

you

you

Jessie Lamb (29:05)

Maybe this

isn’t a farm. This is a self-storage facility. Like, there’s no ventilation in that unit. It’s 100 plus degrees outside. For one, that’s just one very tiny reason why he can’t have hundreds of tickets. But he pays his rent. I mean, he put anything he wants in there.

Okay, well, let’s go back to the office and well, I’m gonna call Mr. Chicken and while I’m doing that, I’d love you to sit and read through our lease, particularly the sections about things you can’t store.

Chris (29:42)

Was poultry specifically mentioned in that particular rental agreement or not at the time?

Jessie Lamb (29:45)

You know what, in his defense,

which he pointed out to me, it was not specifically called out that livestock could not be stored in a…

Chicken unit. call the customer, can’t store chickens in a unit. What do mean? I pay my rent. Store whatever I want. Okay, definitely can store whatever you want after we remove the chickens, which is gonna happen in about three hours when the ASPCA gets here. are you gonna bring the truck and get them or what’s?

Andrew (30:00)

You

Brian (30:15)

Let’s go.

Jessie Lamb (30:16)

then you can

put your Christmas decorations in there and God bless you. So yeah, this wild, wild, and I knew immediately that working in the field in cell storage was very different than working, you know, doing data science in cell storage.

Brian (30:20)

Wow. Wow.

great addition

to our Dumpster Chronicles series. I love it.

Andrew (30:36)

Just a hypothetical. If this customer wasn’t paying their rent on time, how does that auction process go?

Chris (30:37)

Mmm.

Jessie Lamb (30:37)

Yeah

Brian (30:45)

That’s a great question.

Jessie Lamb (30:48)

That is such a great question. I’m not sure that the folks at KFC watch storage treasures.

Brian (30:54)

I think

you’re right.

Chris (30:56)

It’s Friday afternoon. Let’s get you out of here. Are ready for the lightning round?

Jessie Lamb (31:00)

my goodness, okay, whew, I’m pumped, let’s go.

Chris (31:03)

Okay, here we go. Notify is in San Francisco, yes?

Jessie Lamb (31:10)

We are. Yes, sir.

Chris (31:12)

What’s the best sourdough

bread in San Francisco?

Jessie Lamb (31:15)

Ooh, we’re done.

Chris (31:17)

Fair enough. I agree, Bhutan. First concert you attended, most recent concert you attended.

Jessie Lamb (31:23)

The first concert I attended was Disturbed in LA with my big brothers. The most recent concert I attended, not a concert but a music event, I did a screening of a bunch of vinyl records at Barsheroo in Oakland, which was really wonderful. you ever get the chance, definitely stop by and do that.

Chris (31:27)

Yes.

Andrew (31:29)

Nice.

Chris (31:47)

What? All right, I’m gonna stop the lightning round, because I want to explore that a little more. What does that mean?

Jessie Lamb (31:53)

so they have the world’s best sound system at this beautiful little vibey bar in Oakland. And on Sunday, you have to be silent. If you go in there, you can order a drink. just write a note to the bartender and they give you your drink. You sit on a cozy couch in a dimly lit room with the best sound system you have ever heard. They have a collection of over a thousand vinyl records and they screen albums start to finish. So you can sit there for an hour and a half and listen.

to an entire album end to end and it is wonderful. Yeah.

Chris (32:28)

Wow. Do they?

Brian (32:29)

What is your go-to

in that scenario? What album? If nobody else is around, doesn’t have to be, it’s a Jesse pleaser, not a crowd pleaser. Best album beginning to end, what are you putting on?

Chris (32:31)

Yeah.

Jessie Lamb (32:41)

Dark Side of the Moon. Thank you. I think… well, I just listened to it end to end and watched Wizard of Oz on Saturday night and that’s my go-to comfort move.

Brian (32:42)

Hell yeah, perfect choice.

Andrew (32:46)

Didn’t even hesitate, that was great.

Chris (32:48)

Yeah.

Well now I know why you’re such a fan of hacky sack. mean, that’s clear. Favorite beverage.

Jessie Lamb (33:05)

We got hippies in the south too, baby.

Brian (33:08)

You

Chris (33:09)

Favorite beverage in the morning.

Jessie Lamb (33:12)

it’s black coffee.

Like, I’m glad we’re not on video, because my hair today was, it came in with an attitude. Came in with an atti-

Brian (33:17)

Hahaha

Chris (33:19)

That’s what happened to my hair this morning too.

Andrew (33:19)

Don’t even get me started.

Jessie Lamb (33:22)

His was so mad he ran away.

Andrew (33:23)

Nice Chris.

Brian (33:25)

kicked it right out.

So get out of here with your bad attitude.

Chris (33:28)

That’s all I got.

Jessie Lamb (33:30)

All righty. well, gentlemen.

Brian (33:32)

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Chris (33:33)

That’s great, Jesse.

Brian (33:34)

On this Friday afternoon, we appreciate your time. This was fantastic.

Andrew (33:34)

Huh.

Jessie Lamb (33:35)

No.

Andrew (33:38)

Thank you, Jesse.

Jessie Lamb (33:39)

You’ve been. Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate you. You’ll have a great day. Take care. Thanks.

Chris (33:44)

You too. Talk to you

Brian (33:44)

All right,

Chris (33:45)

soon.

Brian (33:45)

bye bye.

Chris (33:46)

Bye.

Brian (33:49)

And that’s going to do it for this episode of No Vacancy. Huge thanks again to Jessie Lam for joining us and sharing her insights on operations, technology, culture, and what it really takes to keep facilities running at a high level. As always, if you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe, follow, and check out No Vacancy wherever you stream your podcasts.