Are you thinking outside the box for investment opportunities? Self-storage could be your answer! Join us as Mike, one of my students at StorageNerds, breaks down the surprisingly lucrative world of storage facilities. He’ll reveal how he got started, strategies for building a profitable business, and the potential for passive income. So, don’t miss this opportunity and learn from Mike’s secrets.

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The Lucrative World of Storage Investing: Mike’s Secret In Building A Profitable Business

Mike has been a student in StorageNerds for a while now. Did you close on your second facility?

We did.

Are you going to go over both of your facilities?

I was ready to go over both if you want.

Yeah, do both.

What do we have time for?

We’ll do your first one. Find them, fund them, run them. I’ll ask you questions and stuff. Introduce yourself first.

A Chiropractor Turned Investor

My name is Mike. I live in Charleston, South Carolina and I am a Chiropractor. That is my day job. I have a small private practice that I’ve been doing for years. I got into self-storage because, as a small business owner, I don’t have 401(k) retirement, PTO and all of that kind of stuff. While I’ve been blessed as far as that’s been going, my chiropractic practice doesn’t give me the freedom I want. I think we all understand what that means.

I don’t have time freedom, location freedom or financial freedom from my practice, even though I make pretty decent money doing it. I’ve always wanted to get into real estate. COVID happened right when I wanted to try to start flipping houses. The market changed and I had two guys that were meeting together every week. It ended up being two years and we’re looking for deals. We couldn’t find anything.

I had a friend in chiropractic school that her dad actually owned a couple of large storage facilities outside the DC area. He started off with a construction company and that grew and he got tired of renting units. He eventually bought a facility. I remember he moved to Wyoming, did well, retired and then got an offer for both of his facilities for $20 million or something crazy. He said, “No.” I’m like, “If you can say no to $20 million and you’re halfway across the country from that business, I want a piece of that business.”

That kind of planted the seed when I was in chiropractic school but I always thought you had to have millions of dollars to get into it. I think a lot of people think that, and obviously, Stacy will teach you that’s not true. I saw Stacy’s post on Facebook. I think it was a Facebook post or ad or something about storage investing, even if you’re new to investing. I was like, “Screw it. We’re going to pivot and do something completely different. I’ve been wanting to get into storage anyway. Let’s figure out what this is all about.”

I bought your course, Stacy, and I started going through everything like a madman, including the DIY part. At some point, we learned about the mastermind and I was like, “If we’re going to be doing this and we’re going to really do it, why not have the ability to ask questions, have a little bit of handholding and let’s cut down on the learning curve a little bit?” My partners and I were happy to do the work, but let’s do it the right way and save some time. That’s when we purchased the mastermind. I forget what month that was in 2022.

If we go into self-storage, do it correctly and save some time. Click To Tweet

It was like towards the end, I think.

I think so. It was about that 90-day mark. You talk about how to get your first deal in 90 days even if you’ve never invested before. It was funny because it was right about that mark, we got our first one under contract and closed it. We found a small facility outside the Columbia, South Carolina, area. It’s a huge growing area. We’re right outside the growth, but it’s coming for us, which is great.

Is it like on the peninsula or outside?

It’s more inland. Columbia’s like an hour and a half from Charleston. It’s a plateau but it’s growing like crazy. My business partner is a professional golfer, and he runs golf camps and teaches lessons, groups, and stuff like that. One of his clients who’s taken lessons is a real estate investor who wants to up his golf games so he can better network with people who have money. My partner was explaining what we’re doing looking for storage facilities and he said, “I think I’ve got one I could sell you.”

That’s how we found it. He said, “You’ve got to be able to close in less than 30 days.” We were like, “Crap.” That was a little bit crazy, especially doing our first deal, not having done it before, not having gone through the cycle. We were like crazy people running around trying to get documents into the attorneys and all of that stuff to get closed on time. We didn’t have time to do any financing. We ended up asking a friend of my partner’s for $50,000 as far as a private loan.

We were $50,000 short, a super small facility we purchased for $106,000, 16 units with extra land. There was room for expansion. It was already occupied when we purchased it. It was making a little bit of money, making $1,100 a month or whatever it was. We bought it. We closed on time in less than 30 days, which is nuts. We took it over, and we’re like, “We’re going to ready, fire, aim,” and we learn as we go.

Share the location of it and then maybe the pictures.

This is the picture. You can see in the background there’s lots of land. It’s an outdoor facility. It’s a long rural road. There’s a landfill across the street in a silica mine next to us. There are three neighborhoods being built within five minutes. They are building in a huge elementary school, like an engineering marvel retaining wall, a huge building five minutes away. There’s tons of growth happening. This is a picture of some of the units. It’s outdoor. It’s nothing fancy to look at by any means.

Talk about buying a small facility. What’s the purpose of buying a small facility? What were you thinking about?

Buying A Small Facility

Our thought process was that we only had so much money and that we had an opportunity to make a deal. We wanted to do one, get on base, and look around. We weren’t expecting to hit a home run on our first deal by any means because I think that’s unrealistic. This was an opportunity that landed on our laps and I was like, “We have to do it.” We analyzed it the best we could. One of the huge things about being part of a mastermind that was helpful is being able to book calls with you and go over the numbers, what it’s making and make sure, “Is this what I think it is? I’ve done your course. I think this is a good deal based on what I’ve learned, but is it a good deal?”

 

You needed a thumbs up.

It was nice to have that green light where it’s like, “I’m not crazy. We can actually do this.”

How much land is this?

I don’t know the exact square footage. I’ve got some other pictures.

You said there’s some room to add on.

Yes. Here’s a picture. We’ve got a U-Haul truck share on the property now.

Are doing the U-Haul too?

Yes. One of their reps came to us, sent me an email and basically, their program is we provide the land, and they do the truck share. They handle all the calls and logistics, and we get 20% of whatever they bring in. We have nothing there. It was a no-brainer for us. This is the entrance here. We’ve got the U-Haul trailers on the side. To give you an idea of the space, here’s another view. We were originally going to add more units back here and along the edge of the property, you can see this on the left side. Keeps going for quite a ways.

It’s got a lot of space in the middle. You could put something right in the middle.

That was our thought, too, to add another row. What we found was the county was very difficult to work with, let’s put it that way. The engineer study was going to be $30,000 just to do the soil study, which we thought was crazy. We got 4 or 5 more bids and we got the same number and we’re like, “We’re not going to spend $30,000 to find out yes or no if we can build.” Our plan B was to do parking instead of more units. I’m measuring out some parking spaces. You can get an idea of the amount of space we have.

What did you all come up with for parking? Just uncovered parking?

Just uncovered parking. We looked at pole barns, different things, and we wanted something with a small footprint so we wouldn’t get in trouble by doing it. We bought these traffic cones. I don’t have any pictures of them finished, but basically, they’re these yellow reflector poles that we put in these stakes to mark off the parking we did. We ended up with thirteen spots, and we’re closing our first parking tenant. That was pretty exciting.

Did you put numbers on them or something?

You can’t see them because it’s not in this picture, but along the fence, we put these big reflector numbers and then we put an orange reflector pole in the center of the back of the space so people can use that to know how far back to go. I think we got eight 12 by 35 spaces and then five 10 by 25s, I believe.

You just do some smaller vehicles.

I think it made more sense for us to have smaller spaces.

What are you going to charge for the parking spaces?

$55 and $65. This back area here, you can’t tell looking at it, but behind the units, there’s room to pull like a big RV in there. We might do 1 or 2 bigger spaces back here. To the right of this building on the right, there’s actually three houses. The previous owner owned the three houses in front and owned this property, too. He sold it to the guy we bought it from.

What size units are those? Are those 10 by 10s or 10 by 20s or what?

We’ve got a mix of both. We’ve got ten 10 by 10 and six 10 by 20s.

What are you charging right now for those?

I believe it’s $70 for 10 by 10 and $130 for 10 by 20.

What’s the total amount of income that you can make?

We made $1,500 in one month, and that was our best month so far.

That’s not including the parking?

We haven’t had any parking revenue yet until whenever this person signs their lease. That’ll be the first of that.

You’re making $1,500, and then you have maybe a little bit more than $500 for parking.

I think we can get about $500 to $800 if we fill it out and then let that kind of hang out for a while. We have no bank loan on this property. We repaid our private lender, that $50,000 plus interest. We own this one free and clear. The only downside is that our capital’s tied up in it, and it’s made money from day one.

How did you pay for this? You had two people that gave you $50,000 or what?

No. We got one person to give us $50,000 at 10% interest only for a year. The rest we came up with ourselves.

You guys each put some money in. What happened with the $50,000 after one year?

We paid him back on time. We made interest payments all along the way, but then we paid him back as principal.

How did you pay him back? You came up with the money and paid him back?

We saved up over time and paid him back.

Now you have no mortgage on this?

Correct.

Now you guys are partnering on it and splitting the income. How do you all split it? Is it on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis? How are you all doing that?

We haven’t actually taken any of the money out of it. We put in security cameras and we’re reinvesting back into it. We installed security cameras, and then we upgraded the gate.

What security cameras did you all end up getting?

We went with Rio Link.

How’s that working?

They’re awesome. Solar powered, all that stuff. Here’s a picture of me installing it. It was super easy to install and I’m not handy at all. It’s always an adventure when my partner and I go up there and we work on the place.

I’m sure it’s fun.

Yeah, it’s tons of fun. We tried to upgrade the gate to a solar powered gate. We got it to work but it was underpowered so we ended up paying to hire that out, too. That’s where the income goes, basically.

What about containers?

We thought about that. Our previous boots-on-the-ground guy passed away. One of our tenants is a contractor who has his own company and he heard about it and asked us if we needed somebody, which we took him up on. He also wants to put a container on the property. We’re thinking about doing that. I looked at some of the numbers. There’s a dealer up the street and I think all in, it’s $7,000 per container delivered and then sectioned into two units. I think you can get $250 a month for him, but they will pay themselves off.

I would look at storage pod. We’ll come up with a couple of names, and then you should talk to Jennifer. I don’t know if you ever talked to her. She’s one of the students. She got Janice to come out and do pods. They built them to look like units but they’re not units. They’re like pods.

Do you have to get the county permitting and all that stuff?

Actually, that’s why I said you should talk to her because she had the same issue as you. She couldn’t build out and stuff so she ended up going and doing that. I’ll tell her to talk to you about what she did. I can’t remember what she did, but it had something to do with Janice. Especially in that middle section right there, there is a lot of space. You might be able to add something right there.

For sure. If the parking doesn’t fill up, there’s a lake like twenty minutes away. We’re thinking it might be good for boats and stuff like that.

You may be able to turn some parking up and then maybe add a row in the middle.

That’d be very doable.

What else?

Let me see. The downside of the U-Haul truck share program is when people park in front of the gate. We’ve had a few instances of this.

How did they park in front of the gate? What gate did you end up going with? Do you use SpiderDoor?

No, we ended up going with a local guy. We started with the Mighty Mule, which literally you can buy at Tractor Supply for $500, all the stuff. We did it ourselves. It was underpowered for the volume that we need. We hired a local guy. We call him Fast Eddie and he basically put in a bigger solar panel, a much bigger battery, and a better arm. He used a lot of the original parts, so we got a pretty good deal for it. It’s his handy work. Basically, he’s an independent contractor.

It’s just a keypad.

Yes but people at U-Haul don’t know that you have to hit pound after your code and so I guess they gave up and left the trucks right in front.

Who answers your phone?

I have a virtual office manager. Her name is Norma, and she does my practice and both of our facilities. She’s been great, especially when I talk about the second property, too.

What management software are you using?

We’re using ESS, Easy Storage.

How do you like that?

It’s easy to use. If you buy a bigger facility, I could see where there are definite limitations in terms of the dynamic pricing and stuff like that. I’ll talk about that with our Wake Forest property, too, because that’s a little bit bigger. As far as user-friendly, it’s great. The customer service, we’ve had a good experience anyway. I don’t see any downside to it. It’s cheap.

 

For a facility like yours, ESS is a good start. Once you started, did you end up going with ESS for the other one?

We did, yeah. It was easier to go with what we knew. This one already had ESS installed when we bought it because we bought it from an investor.

Did you use their website at ESS?

Real Estate Mastermind

Yeah, we put the domain name using their website and this one was much easier to transition because the previous owner had done a lot of that stuff and added it in that tech and then they’d been great. The two investors we bought from have become close friends, and they have their own real estate mastermind, which I’ve gone to. It’s been cool.

How much time and effort does this facility take up?

Personally, I would like about a half hour once a week, if that is the case.

Who’s on the person that goes once a week out or something?

His name’s TJ. He’s there every day getting stuff out. He’s like, “What else do you want me to do around here?” Once the grass grows, he’ll mow the grass. He’s going to take care of the sign, put some flowers in and stuff. He’s a character. We’ll pay him like $150 a month and he’ll do that stuff. He does the red lock.

He’s probably getting out of the house, getting away from his wife, taking a little break.

He doesn’t like people a whole lot so he wants to be doing his thing. He’s been great so far. He took over. Our old guy was awesome. He was another character too. We had the repair guy on the roof one day and I got a text saying, “Somebody’s on the roof. Do you want me to shoot them?” This property’s been a lot of fun and a lot of good learning. Also, it’s been, thankfully, easy for us. We didn’t realize how easy it was until the next one. I’ll tell you about some of the details.

Let’s get to the next one.

The next one we found was from a wholesaler in this investor’s Facebook group. The wholesaler put up a post and I got on his email list. I didn’t like that particular deal, but it was one of the following emails or whatever he sent out. I was looking at it.

You all are trying to stay in South Carolina, right?

This one’s actually in Wake Forest, North Carolina. This one’s a little bit further drive and we’re putting our remote management to the test with this one, which is good. As you can see, it’s two rows of buildings. This one’s 82 units, so a lot bigger. This road is their main street downtown and that’s one of the things we were looking at and excited about. It’s solid construction. It’s about 30-ish years old, and there’s a gate at the front and a gate at the back. It’s one row through.

They come in one side and leave the other? How does that work?

Come in one side, leave the other. There’s another view.

What kind of gate system do you have?

The Gate System

This one is a manual gate. This is where things get interesting. We bought it through a wholesaler. We had no contact with the owner until we closed. When we closed, we found out that the owner wanted to talk to us because there were ten break-ins during that time. Across the street, there’s a huge construction site where they’re building 100-plus condos for people to own, which is another reason we’re buying this. People were coming in during the day and hammering the locks. You can see where they’re cutting locks and breaking into units. We had some move-outs, so the numbers were different when we bought it.

I think you need to talk to SpiderDoor.

We did. We talked to them. The cost was going to be too much, so we went with somebody else. I forget the name of the company. We’re in the process with the gates.

SpiderDoor also offers secure alarms per unit. Are you still having the break-ins?

No. What we did is we sealed the perimeter. We put a padlock on the front gate with a combo and instead of the gates being open all day, they’re both closed and you can only get in and out of the front gate to make it harder to get away.

You should be doing that anyways. Do they have the padlock, and when they pull it up, do they have to unlock it?

That’s correct.

They do have Bluetooth locks, too as well.

Some of the clientele we’re using with this facility are a little older and tech-challenged. That’s another thing about this one. We didn’t realize is there was no website. Everything was handled on Google Sheets and there was no software.

Some of the clientele with this facility are a bit older and tech-challenged. Click To Tweet

That means that they didn’t have anything to show, like numbers. How was it when you were running the deal analysis for this thing?

We had a lot of details, actually. We had their tax returns, we had their P&Ls. We had all that stuff. That was good. As you can see, it needs some TLC, like some refurbished doors and stuff like that.

What income was it making when you were looking at this?

It was making $4,200 a month when we were looking at it. By the time we took it over, it was down to $3,000 a month. There were a lot of move-outs from the break-ins, which is fine. We’ve gotten it back up. I think we did $4,800 in a month.

How did you get this financed?

For this one, we got a private money lender for our down payment. That’s my business partner’s dad. He had to get creative with his retirement account to do that, but we made it work. We’re making interest payments to him for the principal until we either sell or refinance and then he’ll become an equity partner. We went to a local bank right down the street. It’s funny because the original owner of this property used to be one of the big wig bankers in town.

It’s a small town, so everybody knows who it is and all that kind of stuff. We bought this particular property because it was the first one of 9 or 10 that he was potentially looking to sell. We got the first right of refusal in writing for any of the other ones. Once we talked to him, he has nine more properties but he is not looking to sell anytime soon but you never know. It’s actually pretty easy conversation with the banker. “This is so-and-so’s property. He is looking to sell it. It’s right downtown.” The other thing with this one is a railroad track behind it. Wake Forest is putting in high-speed rail and so they’re already surveying for that stuff. I think they’re going to want the land at some point. For this one in particular, the goal for us is more experience and learning, and the storage business on top of the land is nice. I think the real play for this one is going to be the land in the long run.

Do you think, eventually, they’re going to want to come and buy it because of the land?

Yeah. It’s literally right on that railroad track downtown. It’s the perfect place for them to put in a station. If that happens, that’s fine. If it doesn’t, that’s fine, too.

What was the conversation with the banker? The father was lending through the IRA and was he considered a partner and then the bank was still able to take the first lien? How did that work out with the loan?

They didn’t ask a whole lot of questions of where our down payment was coming from, to be honest. That was great. It was a super easy conversation. They did their analysis, but there’s so much growth in that area. Wake County and all of Raleigh and Durham and Winston-Salem, it’s like the Silicon Valley of the East, which I didn’t even know and it’s growing like crazy. It wasn’t a hard sale for the banker.

Was it a local bank?

Yeah, a local credit union.

Did you know that because the guy had recommended it?

Do you mean to go to the local bank? Yeah, that was from your training. It’s work with local banks. We just walked in.

What was the purchase price of this?

This one was $470,000. The wholesaler was able to get it for $425,000. They made $45,000, which is good for them. They did all the legwork. I’m fine with that. We got a letter from the tax assessment. They reassessed it, and they’re saying it’s worth $653,000 in fair market value. That’s going to be next year. We’re going to pay tax on that.

You could also fight it. You could go down and be like, “I don’t want to pay taxes on $650,000. I want to pay tax on $470,000 because that’s what I paid for it.” You have to go back and forth and argue with them a little bit and then after a while, they’ll negotiate some number with you if you think it’s too much. Now, you have two mortgages, one mortgage to your father and then your father-in-law’s friend or whatever. One mortgage to the bank. What are the expenses that you have outside of your mortgages?

Outside of the mortgage, we have electric because there is power there. We have software, we have Norma, which is all of the businesses.

Is there boots on the ground? Who does that?

We do have a guy who lives across the street. I guess this is a thing. Their original guy died, so they had to hustle before they sold it. They found a guy who lives across the street. He calls himself the yard man. He’s another character. He’s been great.

He helps you. He leaves everything locked. Is that what he does?

I even found out he was there at 1:00 AM, checking on the gate to make sure it was locked because somebody had left it open. He’s been awesome. He is an older guy, but this guy has more energy than ten people. I don’t understand it. He wants to seal the concrete. He wants to cut down the trees behind it. This guy’s in his late 60s.

He’s trying to get away from the wife.

He is trying to make some money. If he’s bringing value, I’m happy to pay him.

In one of our facilities right now, one of our boots-on-the-ground person had a hernia and so he’s out for a while. We’re looking for a boots-on-the-ground person, and I posted it on Indeed as a part of going out maybe 1 or 2 days a week and checking on the facility because it’s maybe 60 or 70 units. I got 100 people apply for that thing. I’m telling you, people are looking especially for part-time work. They’re trying to pay the bills and stuff.

I was even talking with one of the bankers, the challenge we had with this guy is he didn’t answer his phone at first. He was terrible about it. We were thinking about replacing him and I was up there depositing checks one Friday at the bank and they were asking me how it’s going. I mentioned it, and the banker said, “Let me talk to Ann down the hall. Her husband’s retired and he’s got some properties. Maybe he could help.” He ended up giving me a call. Super nice guy. He was like, “Anything you need, I’ll go down there. I live down the street.” Our boots-in-the-ground guy ended up getting better on the phone, so we didn’t have to cut them loose after all.

You have a backup, just in case. You have to tell them, too. “You got to answer the phone.”

I think we got that straightened out. Him and Norma have a great relationship now. It’s hilarious. He calls her boo.

The boots on the ground people, when they’re part-time, you have to make sure that they understand that it may not be a priority to them, but it’s a priority to us. This is how we run our facility. I noticed our boots on the ground people, too. They come and go whenever they want. I’m like, “We need to know when you’re going to be there because we need to make sure we’re planning to get stuff done through or whatever.”

 

I’ve noticed, too, with the first property, I would pay the guy a little bit extra if he did anything nice. I’d give him $50 bucks, $100 there, whatever every once in a while. I would always make a point of treating him well. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, too, but they actually get loyal, and they start protecting the place as if it were their own. So far, we’ve been fortunate in that regard. Spencer is the guy that manages this place. We had a couple of auctions, and for him to be up there to deal with the winners and clean out their units, we gave them an extra $100.

The more you experience, the more learning. Click To Tweet

We’re like, “Here, you’re going to be there on Saturday from 9:00 to 12:00. We’ll give you $100, and you have to make sure that this all goes smoothly. Here’s your details and here you go.” That’s in addition to the pay. We let him use the cash from those winnings as his check. He got the cash right then and there in his hand. He was super happy.

You can also do that with Norma because she’s the reason whether or not you get new tenants. Do have the same kind of mindset for her? “This is how many new tenants we got in January and February. If you could be better in March, we’ll give you a little bonus on your conversions.” We do that with our phone people as well, too. We track them every month, including how many conversions there are.

Another thing that you could do is bad debt collection. If somebody’s late, are they following up? “How much money did you collect in January for bad debt in February? If you can collect a little bit more than that, I’ll give you a little bit of bonus for that.” Two things that we’re working on is the conversions and the bad debt and the people that handle that is Norma. Is she the phone person? Work with them.

She’s been awesome. I felt so bad for her when we took over this place.

What’s the first 90 days like when you buy a facility? Just so everybody knows.

Just be ready to roll up your sleeves and get in the trenches is the best thing I can say. You’re taking over a facility that somebody else didn’t want to improve. This was like the stepchild property of this investor. The other ones are super nice, big, and fancy, and this was the first facility he bought. They were letting the tenants basically do whatever they wanted.

 

The gates were open all day, and people were paying cash through the mail slot in the office door. They weren’t enforcing auctions. It’s all kinds of stuff. Obviously, we went in there, changed all that, and got a lot of pushback. People were pretty pissed. Same thing with the gate, having it locked during the day. People couldn’t figure out the combo lock. They didn’t want to go online. They didn’t want to sign a new lease.

They didn’t want to put a credit card on file, which is interesting because they’re sliding checks under the door anyway and they’re talking about security. It was a big change, and we got a lot of pushback for almost 60 days, honestly. We stuck to our guns and we said, “No, these are the rules and if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to leave.” People griped a little bit. We got called names a little bit and eventually they either left or they got on board, but most people stayed.

Essentially, in the first 60 days, you’re getting people into the system into ESS to log in and get the contract signed.

It’s funny because you told me when we bought this one, it would take us 90 days to get our feet underneath us and it was about 90 days to the day. When I was meeting with Norma and Ty, which is my partner’s name, we meet every Monday. After we had that conversation, I was like, “These next 90 days, it’s going to be a what show and we’re going to get our hands dirty and we’re going to do this thing.” Their opinions were, “We’ll have this done in 30 days.” I’m like, “Yeah, we’ll see.”

Nobody ever listens to the coach.

I was like, “No, I think it’s going to be longer than that.” Norma was like, “I’ll do it in 60.” I’m like, “That’s fine if you do, but I’m not worried about it.”

I have ten facilities exactly like this. The first ten facilities I bought are like this one. I know. It takes time upfront to get everything up and running.

Here we are on the other side of that. With about 80 tenants, we only have 3 people late right now with 1 person to auction. We’ve got a few vacancies, but we’ve got a promotion running and we’re filling them. When we took this over, Norma signed up for 1fifteen5 hours a week with me, to give you an idea. I was paying her for 40 hours a week the first 60 days. From day 60 to 90, it went down to 25. Now she did five hours for this and the other facility. I don’t want everybody to freak out. It’s a lot of work in the beginning, but once you stabilize it and stick to your guns, run it, and use your systems, it’s not that bad.

How are you all getting new tenants? What are you all doing? Any marketing?

This one we have luxury. We’re right downtown on the main street and traffic backs up right in front of it. We put up a banner that says half off your first three months. That’s been gangbusters. I got a letter in the mail saying that our banner was an unlawful sign, so we’re going to have to figure that out. We’ll work around it and figure it out. The big play with this one is there are 120 condos being built literally right across the street. None of them have garages and they’re all built to own. They’re not rentals. These condos are going from $450,000 a pop and these people are going to have stuff. They’re going to need a place to put it.

What’s your occupancy now?

I think we’re at a high 80%.

If you’re above 80%, you’re doing good.

We’re in that range. I think 85%, 87%, something like that.

If they complain about the sign, take it down. You don’t need it. Actually, if you’re that high up, you don’t need to be doing a promotion. See if you can get people to come in without the promotion.

It trickles in that way. When these condos are done, I may work with the leasing agent or the agent for the condos. Dale said, “Buy a box truck, get graphics on it.” I agree with you, Dale, but there’s no room on this property. That’s one of the complaints we’re getting. Through the corridor, that’s the front gate back there. You can turn a car around if you do a three-point turn, but some of these people are older and they’re having a lot of trouble with that. It’s another angle.

Are you going to get the gate system on both sides? You need to have a gate. You need something that works with ESS so you can all manage it from the computer. SpiderDoor could do that. It’s a little bit extra but in the end, it would be so you could lock people out. It’s $3,000 each. It’d be like $6,000.

They don’t work with ESS, though. That was the trouble we ran into.

They work with your property management software but they don’t because you have to go into their system to manage everything. We use SpiderDoor for a lot of ours and we go into the SpiderDoor system to manage stuff. I’m telling you, hands down, SpiderDoor is the best one out of all of the gate systems.

We put a deposit down on this one. I think we’re going to be all in for $16,000 for both gates.

That’s about right. I have another one that was about the same price. That’s good.

I think we did pretty good on that.

Now, what are you going to do? Could you buy another one?

Yeah. At least we’ve got some investors lined up that want a piece, so we want to go bigger. We want to go 20,000 square foot or bigger.

If you have some investors, you all could form a company together and go buy something.

I think that’s what we want to do.

It’s hard to find and North Carolina, South Carolina is a little bit hard to find a facility so you need to be looking because this is a popular area.

I’ve got a couple of wholesalers looking. I don’t have a whole lot of time to do much driving for facilities right now. The practice is crazy. I’m also starting a wholesaling company so we can start funding some of the growth of this stuff, including some of the CapEx and payroll and all that kind of stuff. We want to be grown up at some point.

You’re getting there. There’s nothing wrong with buying smaller facilities and working your way up. That is what you’re doing.

There’s a question. “How long will it be before purchasing the first facility and purchasing the second?” We purchased the first one July of ‘22. Second one was September of ‘23. We could have done it a little sooner and that would’ve been fine. I think once we had the first one for about 6 or 7 months or so, we had enough knowledge base where we could have done it had we found a good deal.

That’s how I was. The first year, one. The second year, one. The third year, I bought two. That’s exactly the same thing. After that, I bought a whole bunch of it, but the first couple of years, you’re trying to figure this out.

There’s so much. It’s an inch wide, a mile deep. The nuances of the signage, I never would’ve known that. We had three auctions in one at Wake Forest and then one of the unit owners called us after her unit was auctioned wanting the winning bidder’s information and it’s like, “What’s the rule behind that?” We didn’t even know what that was. Just little stuff.

You can give them the information. Be like, “This person bought it. If you want it, you got to go cut a deal with them.”

We didn’t even answer. We were like, “You’re done.”

Did you all use storage auctions or an online auction? How did you all do your auctions?

We did storage auctions. It’s super easy.

Storage auctions come to the mastermind. Actually, in the next mastermind, that is who’s speaking. You can rewatch that and then also rewatch SpiderDoor if you can because that’s there.

I put my email if you guys want. You’re welcome to reach out to me, ask questions. If you have deals, send them over. If there’s anything I can help anybody with, too, obviously, I’m happy to.

That looks good. You’re on the right track. You’re doing great. I’m sure you’re going to be able to find at least 1 or 2 to buy.

That’s the hope. We’ve got the money lined up and it’s a matter of finding the deals. Right now, the deal is flowing the bottleneck, and we’re working on that.

We've got the money lined up. It's just a matter of finding the deals. Click To Tweet

The hardest part right now is finding good deals. This is a very popular area.

We’re looking in Georgia and Tennessee. We’re looking in Florida a little bit. I’ll go to Virginia, I don’t care, as long as it’s something where we can implement the systems, we have to run it remotely. I go to Wake Forest. I haven’t been there again. I might go to make sure it’s still there. I think I went to the one in Columbia a while ago, and yeah, I think that’s plenty. It’s a 4 or 5-hour drive or even 6 or 8-hour drive once a quarter. That doesn’t bother me.

It was good seeing you again. I’ll see you during office hours.

I’ll be at the Infield training day, too.

I saw that. It’ll be good to see you. I’ll see you soon.

I’m looking forward to it. Thank you.

Take care.