Beyond the building: A chat with Rob Finlay of Thirty Capital

Rob is the CEO and Founder of Thirty Capital, a cutting-edge CRE investment and advisory firm. In addition to his work in the commercial real estate industry, Rob is also a best-selling author, with his recently published work Beyond the Building: How to Use Innovation to Create and Grow Your Commercial Real Estate Portfolio.

Will just any data-heavy strategy work?

In Rob’s book, he cites a PWC study, which establishes businesses that use data to drive their decisions are three times better at decision-making than those that don’t. However, many companies confuse simply using select pieces of data with having a data strategy. The vast majority of companies do not have a clear data strategy, which makes them much less effective than companies that do. Having a data-heavy strategy allows a company to rely less on human intelligence and hunches, which helps companies make better, more informed decisions faster than companies that don’t.

Getting involved in AI

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic for over a year, but many companies are still on the fence about where they want to go with AI. Some would prefer to try to build something in-house, whereas others prefer to rely on the AI giants like Microsoft and Salesforce.  Furthermore, some believe that AI will be able to help supercharge their company and grow it at scales that have never before been seen. At the end of the day, Rob contends it’s important to think of AI as a tool in your toolbelt. It’s not going to grow your business overnight. However, it can automate time-consuming tasks and parse existing data to help your business make better decisions.

Why change is necessary to succeed in the market

As with anything in life, Rob believes having the ability to change and shift focus is imperative in the business world. Now, more than ever, it’s become important to do so very quickly. As companies scale and grow over time, they tend to become entrenched in the way they currently do business or the way they currently look at data. This tendency makes it much more difficult and time-consuming to change course when needed. Ultimately, those that don’t change will be left in the dust. Rob points out that on the extreme end of the spectrum, there are companies like WeWork that refused to correct course on an organizational level, which ultimately led to its downfall.

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