Transcription
So, it was doing about 1,500 a month when we first took it down. It's 240,000 was the purchase price. Revenue went, we got up to 5 grand at first.
Jeez. 1,500 to 5 grand in a short period of time. How many facilities you guys have?
Yeah, we've got uh 19, I guess, separate locations, but they're all like, they're 20,000 sq ft. You know, I think we accumulated everything for 1.1 million and how was the purchase price like 3.2 million in 5 years.
What was it with you guys that you said we would make a good partnership?
Bill, he's he's the one that's kept us clean out of bad deals, out of bad opportunities because I'm just like, "Let's go. We got to do this. Let's go." You know, and that's been really helpful to have that contrast. Yeah. And find a partner, right, that has something different from you. If you're just both yes men, you're going to get yourself into a bad spot.
All right, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. So, we are actually at the self-storage income event and we are having conversations and we have operators here that we are interviewing. We're excited to dive into it. We actually started the podcast just straight going into it because we are already into conversations and they were a great conversation so we didn't stop. Um, but before we jump in and start playing that, you guys want to introduce yourselves real quick because obviously the podcast just started out with us going. So, why don't you guys introduce yourself real quick before they hear our immediate non-stop for the next hour and a half?
Before they start playing? You want to go?
Yeah. I'm Corbin Smoot with Better Self Storage. Uh, we're, yeah, owner-operating facilities and and love storage.
Yep. My name is Bill Diwal out of Utah. Corbin's out of Idaho. And again, yeah, we're with Better Self Storage. And um, trying to trying to make things happen in this industry.
There you go. Anybody that's looking at growing, starting out, this conversation is amazing. It's a long one because it is just packed full. So, hope you guys enjoy.
How many facilities you guys have?
So, yeah, depends on how you're counting.
How do you count yours?
Depends on who's asking. Yeah, we've got uh 19, I guess, separate locations, but they're all like 20,000 square feet.
Per average, right? So, we've got, you know, and so if we're talking about what we're operating as like one, right? We got, you know, a couple of twos and we got a seven portfolio and a five, right? They're all close by and
Okay. So, that way 17 locations, right? Operating some of them together. And when was your guys' first deal?
2017. Yeah. Ogden. We've since sold that one.
Okay.
But uh that was a deal I that was when I started uh just started driving around looking at opportunities and deals and uh Bill worked with my my dad and his partner.
Okay.
For a long time and this is I just started started doing some brokering came in the office with these guys and so I started driving around and they already owned some storage.
That was in Ogden.
Ogden. Yeah.
Yeah. And I had owned one with them prior to him coming on and cross.
They loved storage. They always talked it up. So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go find every storage facility anywhere, right?" And I started in Utah and then it's branched out and now, you know, nationwide now that we're looking. But found that deal in Ogden. It was literally probably my first couple of months that I called the guy and it was a Yeah. a guy that thought that people in Ogden couldn't pay, you know, couldn't pay a certain amount or whatever. He was renting his, you know, 8x8s for, you know, 30 bucks a month. And so yeah, we we got in there and I uh we leveraged our way into the deal by finding it, right? And then my dad and his partner, they they came in and kind of fronted the money and we got our ownership percentage there.
Yeah. And then we actually accumulated a few other properties around the house as well.
So they were all within a block of each other with kind of an office warehouse building, the one down the street and
Sold that one right in time in 2022.
Yeah.
Right. Right where you know.
Yeah. We bought a couple.
If we could go back, we'd sell everything right then and then turn around and start buying all again, you know, later. That's how it works.
Like it went from, you know, I think we accumulated everything for 1.1 million and then what was the purchase price? 3.2 million in five years.
Jeez.
So that was Yeah, that was a great great deal.
So then now you were working with his dad.
His dad and his partner. His dad's partner.
Okay. And then you guys came together and were like, "Let's go out and buy them, right?" So you were you were a broker and then you wanted to actually be owner operators.
Yeah. So I had been working with his his dad and his partner since 2007. I started with them in 2007 doing brokering. So I was doing just commercial brokering is all we do.
Um, we still do a little bit of that, but that's what I did for a long period. And then Corbin, you know, grew up. He's a young when he first got involved, right?
Yeah.
So, uh then he came Yeah. started working in the office and uh shortly I mean honestly to just to be honest and I've already told this is just saw the fire in somebody that would have been you know would be a good partner and uh so I kind of you know left those guys and we we started working together and really starting to you know pound the pavement on while I was still going forward with brokering while he was out you know looking for properties for us to buy.
So funded a lot of the immediate needs of money and everything else that early stages.
Pounding.
Make calls and you were finding the deals, you were packaging them, you guys were coming together.
And when you started out owning and operating them, did you did you get a third party management when you started out or did you guys actually do that? How?
Right here?
Well, yeah. So I mean with with that Ogden deal, right, we had uh
Oh, that's true. They yeah, they have they had their operation went under their stock and lock self storage. Yeah, that's that's kind of their brand. They own a few in Utah and then I think I think Florida and Idaho Kuna as well, Idaho.
Okay.
They have one random one out there.
Um, they have a, a great manager. She's been incredible for them. Right. She's been with them for 15 some years now. A long time.
Knows it inside and out.
Yeah. She's she's awesome. Uh, and and so she took over that Ogden one. Honestly, I wish we had gotten more involved in that one.
Yeah.
And and done more ourselves.
Yeah.
Um, but where I actually started to learn the process of managing these things is that I I had previously uh before in like 2016, I had put something out on Indeed. I was looking for maybe management positions at storage facilities to kind of learn things. And some guy found it somewhere. I didn't even know it was out there still. Uh, he's one of our partners now on a on another deal which I guess we'll probably get to, but he had a facility in Sunset, Utah. It was a 17,000 foot facility. His uh his sister had run it into the ground for him and so she it was like there's a ton of units full of crap. Then we went in and and were able to or I went I guess I was just managing at that time. You weren't even involved.
I wasn't involved.
This was like extra income for me. Hey, I'm just starting out trying to get things happening. And this was I think this was in 2018 when I started managing this one. And yeah, got it all cleaned up, got everything out, had to figure it all out. That was really painful. Everything was scary, right? I was like, how do I auction things off? How do I do this? I even like delayed and put off auctions and put off things. I didn't know.
He didn't know how to do it.
Yep.
How to do what to do, right? And it's like, so that that was a big step for me to have some confidence there. Uh, but then as brokers, we sold that for him. Uh, we took it from we initially had given him an offer on the facility when he first got in touch with us. We tried to get it for 650 uh and and we we turned it down I guess in the end or we yeah, we it ended up didn't not happening on mutually right and then we managed it and but then yeah, we were able to sell that facility for him for like 975 just a few years later.
Yeah.
Right. I got 975,000. He was contemplating 650 before.
And then uh when we sold that for him, we 1031 exchanged him down into a facility in Karns, Utah in 2019.
You learn by getting your hands dirty jumping.
Oh, yeah.
It's kind of funny how that works, too, because especially, you know, when we got started, there wasn't even if we wanted third party management, that wasn't available. I think they had some in like first tier markets and but nothing. I mean, you're talking Southern California. They that wasn't even remotely close to available in any of the markets, even the big ones we were in. And when we got into it, there was also no there's no podcasts, right? There was no it it was like you're saying just uh figure it out like well hold off auctions cuz how do we even do this? Like who do we call? It was like call up a local like attorney or something cuz we're just like
How do we legally do this? And then literally just oh, we made a mistake, okay, we can't do that again, gotta fix it. And it it was trial by error like nonstop. I think that there there's so much good about that even though we were at such a a disadvantage. I often say, you know, if we could go back and I had all the resources we had today, holy cow, I you know, I could do 10x as much. One of the problems though with all the resources is you have so much available that you don't move because you're like, well, I can always learn more. Where for us, it didn't work like it was, no, you have to move. There's nothing even available.
And so that really allowed, even though that was scary a lot of times. Our first big facility that we bought, which was, you know, at the time $3 million was so scary to me because we looked at it, we're like, this cash flows, you know, all that good stuff. And we had our basic understandings. We didn't really I didn't know what a cap rate was. Um, there wasn't even something I we really used at the time, but outside that there was no there wasn't even really anyone for us to go to that was like, this is a good deal. There's no confirmation. The banks were like, "Okay, we got to cross collateralize." Like you really had to try to make it work. And uh the idea of where things would go and how it would work, it's just so different. And I'm grateful that I had that even though obviously today with the resource and tool we had, holy cow, we could have done so much more. Um, but I love hearing that just figuring it out. Like the amount of times that I was on facilities digging out rains because I'm getting calls, they're flooded, we're having snow issues, we can't get. We had we had a massive snow year and the snow plows would come, but the snow was piling up. So the snow plows, we're putting it in all our spots. All of a sudden, the facility, the the middle, all the aisles, towers of snow. We had to get them removed. And we didn't know this, but that is expensive.
Like, we spent $150,000 in snow removal and one month.
Wow.
Holy.
Wow. Freaking.
And then you got to repair your fences cuz they're pushing the snow up against your fences.
Smash the fence.
So, they're laying down flat.
Yep. Oh, yeah. They hit the doors like. And then the snow falls off the building and then piles up. We have four feet because it just comes off the building. And then when the when it melts, you have a dam in front of all of the doors, the water comes down and flows back into the units. Like
Man, what snowageddon, right? I've heard about that out there.
Yeah. Crazy. It was wild. We're just like, please stop snowing like every day.
It's invaluable to go through that, right? I mean, to have to be able to deal with that and understand that the issues that can affect the property.
Yeah.
Right. And like a lot of I mean sitting in this conference, I've had we've had a couple people come and ask us like, what do you guys think? Should we hire a third party manager? Should we do it ourselves? I'm like, off the out of the gate, try to do it yourself.
Try the education you'll get off of that first facility of trying to manage that on your own.
Well, and how do you effectively manage a manager if you have no idea what's going on?
Right?
Then you're just simply at the disposal of whatever they tell you. Lots of people are out trying to buy facilities, small ones that range everywhere from $300,000 to $45 million. They're worried about getting the money or having the financing. This is why we team up with Live Oak Bank because they get this. They understand storage. We have them help us underwrite deals for our students and others. They are one of the best people in the industry when it comes to getting loans, especially small business loans. They can actually help the customers when they find the asset understanding how much debt can I get. What's it going to look like? That changes them from being a bank to being a real asset to the customer. We recommend Live Oak Bank to our students as well as others that are trying to get into the storage business. They have an in-depth knowledge of this asset class. It's more than a bank. It's more than simply getting money. They're actually an asset and a partner to them, helping them go through all the things that they don't know and understand.
So you guys bought the first one and then you bought two more in Ogden.
Yeah. Small property, then another storage facility down the street a little bit. Yeah. So I think it was a total of 30,000 or something something like that with with warehouse.
When did you leave your backyard? Cuz at the time you were both living in Octa, right?
I was in Bountiful. Yeah. We
Were in that area.
And then you're still there and you're up by me now. Um, when did you guys leave the area and start looking for other deals? cuz obviously you're quite a ways from your backyard now.
So we did one more deal in Karns. We only took a little percentage of that and we still manage that today. And then I think Casper was our first leap and it was our first one we did on our own seller finance deal. $18 a square foot. It was uh that one that one was scary, right? It was 30% full. Um, but yeah, that was leaving the backyard, right? We thought I know things flashed through my head there that was like, where you get anybody make money in Casper? I don't even know. I don't know that area. I don't know what what goes on there.
So, it's Yeah, but we we put like $50,000 down seller finance deal with some lady who didn't really want to deal with it. She hated that facility and and uh we came in and we we essentially used spare foot to fill that entire facility.
That's it.
Just filled that thing up and I think 6 months and it was that was 13,000 square feet. We've since put some more box wells on there. I think we're up to
Yeah. 15,000 or so square feet there. And
So what's the revenue do in that 6-month period of time?
So it was doing about 1,500 a month when we first took it down. It's 240,000 was the purchase price. Revenue went, we got up to five grand at first and then slowly were able to incrementally raise to five grand.
Yeah.
Right. In a short period of time.
And and I mean really since, you know, we did buy another one in Casper recently, but before that, we were doing about 10 to 12 grand a month uh before we took that other one on uh with the expansion, everything else. And so now it's yeah, it turned into a really good deal for us. So we only put 50 grand into to begin with.
Let me ask you this before we keep talking about facilities. You mentioned partnering. You know, you you wanted to partner with somebody that had kind of that buyer. Everything I do, I have partners. I love the ability for me to leverage the areas that I'm not good at and I don't know and then that activity that but partnerships can also be difficult um especially when they're not done properly, you're not aligned. But when you have a partnership where you guys kind of bring different things to the table. So walk me through that. How did you guys decide like, hey, no, we're going to come together, you know, we're going to partner, there's some opportunities. Of course, you have the financials, the opportunities, but what was it with you guys that you said we would make a good partnership?
Yeah, I think, you know, like I said, right off the g bat, I could see that Corbin had, you know, a desire, right? And then I think one of the biggest things that I actually, as far as a partner goes, is that I I I trusted him. I I knew he was an honest as can be. I'd been watching him in the office dealing with people. He wanted to deal honestly with people. He wanted to deal fair with people, you know what I mean? And so I knew he would do the same as a partner.
Yes.
Right.
And how they treat others is how they'll treat you.
Yeah. And so it was easy for me to see that this is a type of partner you want to you want to work with. And obviously I knew his dad. I knew what kind of upbringing he had, which he's as bad, you know, good a guy as you can you can know. So,
Um, and that's not to say, you know, we we definitely do bring different, you know, gifts and talents in the way that we work, but, um, that's not to say we haven't had, you know, some frustrations with each other either, right? I think part of it, right? And the key is like just the other day Corbin sent me a text and we got on the phone and talked, you know, and
And uh you got to be willing to chat, you know, talk it out and
And it's not that you won't have disagreements and arguments, it's how you handle them because there's there's no partnership obviously that you're not only the same, you think about everything the same, but you don't have beliefs or that you have beliefs too that are contrary. Like you can have areas where you really feel strongly about one of like, no, I believe this is going to be the outcome. I believe that this could be dangerous one and then you could have the other one taking another belief by the same metrics, you know. So it it's more than just I think a lot of people think of it like, oh, we can come to agreements. You actually have fundamental beliefs that are different sometimes.
Oh, totally. And understanding though too, that that's also the the strength. Like if you look at my partners and especially my uh operating partner who who was Sam, we act like, you know, ying and yang where he was okay, hold on, we got to back these rents off. We can't achieve that. No, we got to do this. I'm like, no, we can. And like, so we're sitting there going back and forth and debating and everything else. And he's contrary to me in a lot of areas where I'm more of that, you know, go. And I look at him, I'm like, you keep me in check, right? Like you keep me in check. And he's like, yeah, if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't do anything.
We've had this exact conversation. He's he is definitely you and I'm the other guy.
Yeah, that that's the funny thing is that's exactly what that's exactly what I was going to say. You know, I got turned to speaker. I was like, "Bill, he's he's the one that's kept us clean out of bad deals, out of bad opportunities, cuz I'm just like,
Let's go.
We got to do this. Let's go." You know, and
Yeah.
So, it's that's that's been really helpful to have have that contrast. Yeah. And find a partner, right, that has something different from you. If you're just both yesmen and you tell each other, you're going to get yourself into a bad spot.
I love that. Now, walk me through the partnership today. How you guys how you guys work together? Like, what are the roles? How do you view those roles? And then how do you guys make decisions when you're underwriting, doing deals? Like how do you go about that that process of what's a go, what's a no-go, and what part are we each playing in this?
I mean, that that's always es and flows. I mean, it's definitely flowing for sure as we hire new people on, pull ourselves out of roles, and, you know, we definitely address switching up those hats all the time. So those those do change, but I would say what's consistent is Corbin being the gunslinger in the relationship is definitely more on the acquisition side in digging, you know, and we have a team that's that's doing a lot of that behind the scenes as well, but he's working closely with them. And then as deals get closer to being, hey, this is interesting, I slide in and we start we start working the deal through together, right? We we'll get on a phone call and we'll we'll look all the numbers over together and make a decision based uh based on that. But he's definitely on the acquisition side for sure. I'm more on the side of the capital, raising the capital and more on the financial side of the business.
So that makes sense. So now Casper, that was your first deal that was more or less out of your backyard, right? Which was obviously a huge success. 1,500 to 5,000. That's that's awesome. Now, where did you guys keep in Wyoming or did that open you up for farther? Did like that experience and doing that deal? Did that really open up your lens and say we can go other places? How did you define the markets as you're growing?
Really? We, you know, to be honest in the beginning here, we we haven't we didn't really do a ton of analysis on the market, you know, in talk about like really neither did we when we did. Yeah. It was like we just jumped in. Yeah.
It was this is obviously a deal. We're going to obviously make money here, right? We check the rents around, figure out that sort of the market, but it was just like, oh yeah, obviously this is going to be a deal. We know we can do better here. But, um, yeah, going to Casper, that opened us up. We bought a deal in West Richland, Washington, the Tri Cities area over there. Uh, from there, and it was we were doing about a deal a year for a few years or so. We went from there, then Pocatello. Uh, and when did Burley come in? Burley came in after that. We 1031 from Burley, my hometown part. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it actually went Bur It went Ogden, Burley, then Pocatello.
Oh, yeah. We actually Yeah, we actually sold off part of that that Burley portfolio, the Rupert part of it.
Yeah.
And then uh rolled that money into Pocatello. And yeah, so it was the Casper. It was it was eye opening, right, to see that, oh, we can do this. We have out of our backyard, right? Because I know that my dad and his partner, right, and that was a lot of where our beliefs came from and coming from them, which was awesome, right? We learned so much from them. But they were they're more like my backyard, right? So they do all kinds of different type. They're not just storage, right? They're and they just stay in their backyard and they do great there.
Um, but yeah, for us it was
Yeah. It was eye opening that okay, we can make a thing out of storage. If we can go other places, make it work, we can. Yeah.
That was a lot of my So when we got started, same thing. It was very deal-based as in is this a deal? So we looking at that spread of what we can do more than what the market's going to do that really drove us. So it that changed a lot of the way we looked at markets because markets were lower on the priority list where the most was the spread between operations. How can we improve this asset based upon today? What we actually know what's going on as opposed to oh, this is a great market. we're going to buy here and things go up. That market-driven value appreciation. It was very much focused on no, this is the delinquencies, here's the rents, we know how this is being managed, this is the vacancy, can that be changed? And so with that said, we were more open to going outside because I cared more about the deal. And there were benefits to that. Obviously, a lot of benefits. There's some drawbacks. You don't understand maybe the markets as well. But I think in storage, it can be very different than a lot of people because if you're let's say you're doing all commercial real estate or you're doing housing, right? You can stay in a backyard and have lots of opportunities, right? But in storage, like there's only so many deals in and around Ogden and you can't control if they want to sell them to you, right? You can't make them, you can't do it. So, you know, the deals, especially in storage, I think they they are a little more. You need to be more flexible, right? What are you guys looking for today in markets when you're going? Are there any things that you guys are looking for today from your experience that you've learned that you're taking away that go, okay, we need to spend some more time on this part of it than you did before? How has that changed or has it at all?
Are you a new self-storage investor and want to know what that facility is worth, what the risk is, how to underwrite it? Well, that's exactly what we do in a feasibility study. A feasibility study, we actually look at the market for you. We look at the finances, the underwriting. We show you where the upside is, the downside, and all the risk. That is actually what you can provide to banks to get capital and investors. It's a big worksheet which most banks actually require. So if you want to know what a storage facility is worth that you're looking at, come to us, follow the link in the show notes and we will tell you.
It's changed a lot and I think being part of the inner circle and uh listening to podcasts and all that. I know I have you in my ear a lot.
I was going to say I was going to say you've made this guy's dream come true. This is great. You're like, I get this.
I'm going to listen to this one like you're like sky's.
You came by and could you be I just he was just like, oh yeah.
Oh no. But it uh that that's something that we're battling with right now.
Yeah.
Is we're we're trying to figure this figure this out because I know we listen to you. You're saying there's so many opportunities out here. I'm like, yeah, I know. But like, you know, because we I mean, we just did two deals in the Midwest, right? where now we're looking at them after joining, you know, like we had these under contract before we joined and then uh and now we're now in in the process of learning all this. We're like, "Wow, incomes are really low in these areas." And those are challenges, right, that we're facing right now in some of those deals. And and so now now while we're analyzing, looking at deals, we're actually looking at the income in the area and the population growth and and putting a little more weight on those things.
Yeah.
We've always been we've always bought these deals that are 100% full.
Yeah.
Right. And we just have to raise rates.
And that's that's what we've dealt with.
Yes.
But now it's
That's not
Yeah. We're having a hard time cuz now we just bought a deal, you know, in Topeka, Kansas, and West Memphis, Arkansas.
Yeah.
And they, you know, one was, I think, 40% full when we took it over in West Memphis. And the other one was 30% full, you know, RV storage stuff in a warehouse.
And it was kind of slow coming out of the gate.
And we got worried. We're panicking, right? And it was like, man, how does Yeah, we can't It's not going as fast as we'd hope, right? It's just it's a new thing.
It's a new totally new cycle.
This this market, honestly, it's kind of scary for us. Yeah.
And so, we're
Yeah. We're trying to just get in better areas so we can better predict the ability to fill up and all those those type things. Yeah.
And I I think, you know, being part of the inner circle and everything is we think we're getting better at analyzing deals.
Yeah.
You know, or or markets, I should say, right? in being able to understand a market better and uh be able to understand potential in a property rather than like I said, we go into Casper knowing this is a deal. We know it's a deal where being able to now go into West Memphis and say where most people would go, "I ain't going to touch that."
Yep.
We can look at it and go, no, there's there's something here. There's there's a lot here.
Um, if we do this right, there's some opportunity here. And so that's that's really helped us in being able to understand the markets better like like we we weren't doing a good job at before. And that's definitely changed.
I think everybody and I and I talked to a lot of people about this cuz they're like, "Well, how did you do?" And I I didn't do a good job. And like when we run up that time frame from 2017 to 2021, there was nobody that did a good job. The reason why, and when I say this, I I mean nobody. And the reason why was you couldn't see. So like, well, how did you understand demand? There there was no way you could. Everything was full. There was no difference. You couldn't see customers choosing and picking because it was just, "What do you have? I don't have anything. Do you have a waiting list?" Right? And that skews things wildly. And it can make it very difficult to then understand what you know I call true demand is as opposed to transitory demand. And when we were after 2008, we were in that part where we're buying deals that were 60, 70% full, right? And it wasn't just, "Oh yeah, we'll just fill them up." Right? It was a lot slower. But as markets stabilized, obviously those things that we were learning in those slow markets, they are like superpowers when market changes because then we know, oh no, here is where demand is. These units, we can push way higher. These, we can't. Whereas before, when everything was full, it was just like, "Just raise rates." I don't like I don't even know what to do here because it doesn't even matter. Everything's full. And so in the struggles, there is so much growth of knowledge and understanding. When we were during that time, you know, 2015, we became really good operators cuz we had to. You were fighting over tenants, right? We had to change all these things. We started changing the way that the assets looked. We started looking at data on like who was running, which we'd never done before. But now we're like, who is our customer? And we're like, "Wow, 65, 70% of the decision makers is women." So then we rearranged how we did the offices. And we put like popcorn machines in so they'd smell good. We had like a little area where they could sit down and, you know, play with toys if they had kids. It was we started to cater to those things so we could have our close rate go up. 2017 to 21, I think everybody in the industry, you didn't need to work on your your acquisition and your close rate because it was just, we either have it or we don't. So I when looking and seeing those markets, you know, yeah, we're kind of struggling and everything. What happens though when it turns? Those things that you've learned, it it just juices up that revenue and that portfolio because you understand those assets, that market, and like true demand. And when you're applying those as opposed to just more sitting and holding, which that's the kind you're buying from people, right? And you also have a lot of people that it was so easy that today, you mentioned this and I thought this was really important, somebody like, "I'm just done with it." We're seeing so many people today that are like, "I'm just done with this. I think I thought it was going to be easy that we wouldn't have to do anything. I bought it. I have delinquencies. We're not doing anything with it. I'm tired of this." And they're ready to move on because the struggles just kind of worn down. They're not really reiterating. They're not really building upon. And so I find times like this either makes people exit or it makes people really grow. And it's not because one has difficulties and the others doesn't. It's cuz one takes those difficulties and turns them into assets. And uh after we get through this period of time, like the operators that came out of the 2008, there was like a whole bunch of us. They just boom boom boom assets went, you know, huge. And it wasn't because they were buying during that. I'm talking they they really grew after 2015 when markets started to get better because they could leverage all of that. So, it's, you know, I totally feel you. We because we have those too where we have in Oklahoma and we have some other ones where the market just didn't produce what you thought it would, you know, and looking back at it, it's like, how did I miss that? And the thing was, you're like, 5 years there was no data. What it was, it was just what it was. So then once that market, you couldn't have even known because it didn't exist. And so you're finding out then after as those market and those cycles change, how the operation methods have changed. How have you guys changed your operations since 2019 to today?
Oh man. Yeah, that's that's where I was really diving in and doing everything, right? And 2019, I was taking all the phone calls, doing doing all that stuff. And it was in uh oh, it was finally in Karns, right? After selling off that facility in Sunset and going into Karns, that's where I started to really hone in those operations and get Yeah. get like regular auctions, right? Have a regular lean process situation, right? And I was just doing like before that it was just the wild west. And and and in 2019, right, things were actually kind of slow on this property. It's a junky property. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't great. And and so yeah, I was I I I started I read a book, right? I read I think it was Jim what's his f, you know, Three Mile Storage guy. I like read this book and I implemented everything from that book and I that was yeah, that was a moment where I kind of honed in operations and did it the best I could.
Um, which still doing everything wrong, but but yeah, it's like it was functional. It was good and then obviously 2020, 2021, that saved me. We went to 100% even though the facility was looking real good.
It was a chunky facility.
And then I thought I was really awesome and cool and really good at everything and it was because I you know, I was working so hard that I was yeah going up. Um, but from there it was like I we kind of plateaued and went stagnant for a little bit like with, you know, we picked up some other facilities and it was still just kind of easy.
Um, and then recently we hired on uh just an incredible director of operations. She Sandy, she has completely revolutionized everything, right? So big game, right? Like when we hired her on, I was like, oh my gosh, and I I've told her this, I'm like, I thought I was good at this and then I'm like, wow, I I was doing this all wrong. She like walks in and she's finds you were doing this. Oh my gosh, we get sued here. We get, you know, like, oh, okay, let's change that. Let's get it out.
As far as, you know, managing VAS, right? I think that's a big part of what we've leveraged.
Right. I finally once we bought our facility in West Richland, that's when I was, you know, listening to the Nick Huber podcast. He talked a lot about VAS.
Yeah. A lot about VA.
And uh so I I looked into it finally. That was scary, but I was like, how do I even know these people are real people? we're just going to take all our money and take credit cards and do all this stuff. And
So I was really scared there and we hired on some VAS that were really awful that were just like they weren't good at all. But I was thrilled with them. I was like, "This is great. They're taking they're taking work."
They're taking work off my plate.
I don't have to do it. So we hired one to take like half the day and then we hired on another one to take the full day. And then then we actually ran into some really good ones, right? Some really good VAS that we brought on. Um, right? And these are they're all out of the Philippines. I'm so impressed by like what you pay them versus what the effort amount of work they're willing to do.
They're so good. And I know we we hired one on and she's been she was with us for a couple years. Um, and she was she was really good like the the value that they can create, right? And the way that she even like the suggestion she gave, right? the revolution like our acquisitions process and how we identify who the owner is and what phone number is the right place and then we can have our you know, our acquisitions manager make the call to actually see if they'll sell and
Uh, just invaluable. Right. And and here we are paying her $800 a month.
Yeah.
Right. And it it's it's almost humbling to to see that. Yeah.
Right. And they're thrilled. They're happy.
Yeah. Yeah. They're And you're paying them, they're making a ton of money down there. Um, I actually went to the Philippines and my buddy has a VA um, like business and everything out there and we got to see and you know, I've used, funny enough, I don't know if you know this, George, you know, that runs my partner runs SSI. He's a VA.
Yeah.
Oh, really?
Yeah. That's how I got him. Hey, who's a VA? I'm like, I need help with a bunch of stuff.
And I and I hired him up and so and then he grew and so obviously had very good success with
So, and rolled them over. But when you get especially that um I don't want to say monotonous work and work that is really important but it's time consuming not bad monotonous necessarily but it it's necessary everything from market research to on and on and on to hire here for that work. It's not a for it's just not I mean and then to hire VAS who do better work, work twice as much, and you can get that talent, it's a big hack especially when you're starting out. Hence the reason like George and others, that's how I did everything, even starting the podcast, I b cuz I didn't know I needed to leverage that knowledge and then I needed to leverage work and good quality work. And like you mentioned, you brought in not a VA, your director of ops, and how that just took you to the next level, right? You're like, "Wow." And that is my favorite thing when I hire people is that when I hire them, I go, "Oh, wow. I was doing a really bad job."
That's how you know it's a good hire, right?
And and that's what I love when I hire him. I'm like, "Wow, I should not have been doing this." Like, I'm so like it really does take you up. And you know, we've obviously had big moments like that in the company and those individuals, whether that's a VA or a new hire. Um, it it it reshapes the organization, it reshapes how much capacity you have to take on. And then your performance. The great thing about VAS is that you can do it just starting out, right? And you can hire them, leverage them. Really, really, really important. What about technology? So, how has that changed in your use and how you think about it and what you're trying to do?
You know, getting all this remote has definitely changed our tech stack, if you will. Just being able to communicate in that manner, you know, operate in that way. And that's been a learning curve like you wouldn't believe. I mean, you know, trying to figure out what's a good software to manage our storage facilities, to figuring out what's a good op, you know, communication tool, task management in tech. And so it's it's amazing how crucial it's actually become to our business, right? Especially when we talk about, you know, with uh Sandy, our operations gal, that just she she needs these tools and, you know, we've we've strived to to give her what she needs. But the tech side of thing, that's where we've kind of battled a little bit.
Yeah.
Right. Because it's so expensive and I'm on I'm on the financial side of things going, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We can't be dropping this."
Yeah. But uh it it does seem, you know, truthfully, you you can't be afraid to get into some of these tools that are necessary for, you know, for today's industry.
It is and a lot of it you think that oh, it's competitive. We our customers are driving it. So it's it's not even it's the customers like and I think a lot of people were really slow to realize and we used to talk about this a lot where we're like, you don't understand, you're saying you don't want to do these things because they're either not necessary, but the customer is demanding it. When you're in a world of one click and you operate everything on your customers do everything on the phone, if you are not where they're at, you just don't get them. Yeah.
And if you don't have their expectations and the technology expanse and what has changed in the world since, you know, the
Last 10 years alone, we have had as an industry to try to catch up to where the customers were. So, the first time that it happened, which this makes me sound so old, but um, I'm not. So, I, I just got to preface this. The industry was really far behind everybody. It was, it's not going to well, get a little, but [laughter] uh, "I always feel like I'm old." The websites when they were coming out, operators were adamantly against them. They're like, "We don't understand them. That's not how our business works." So they didn't want to put websites up.
"Wow." And us going in, purchasing a facility, we could remove what was 15, 20,000 a year in yellow pages. We're talking 2014.
"I don't think Corva knows what the yellow pages are." 2014. [laughter] "I'm not talking about the '90s." So, um, and you know, 2007 and '8, this shouldn't have been a thing, but it was. So, um, but that was so expensive. And then we could put up a website. Our traffic just skyrocketed. Our rates went up. So, it was a huge effect on net profit because we could lower one of our biggest expenses and yet we saw massive increases with it.
Um, I think one of the issues that we have today is when you've been in a cycle, which, you know, we believe has changed and we talked a lot about that. I talked about that last night, but the last three years, it has been in a cycle coming off the craziness where you have occupancy and rents lowering. It starts to become really hard to see that ROI in technology.
"Yeah." "Because..." "Totally." "...we've been in an inflationary period. Expenses have just been rising."
So to add more expenses, especially in a market cycle where rents are down, and occupancies down, that makes it really tough. It's not like when we're going, "Oh, we'll just get rid of an expense and add technology. We get this benefit from it, right?" But there are other benefits outside that, like operationally, uh, the use through really doing a no-key type things, and I mean, just a handsoff free, and you can manage the customer experience all the way online that, uh, uh, makes it easier for us to automate. Then you can lower, right, your man-hours, your work hours.
Um, when you guys are looking at your sites, do you have any full-time managers on or your sites that size? So, walk me through your operations per facility or your average one.
So, we do have one. So, our Burly portfolio, which we, you know, we've got like 20% of that one. So, we're, we're not the majority partner. So, we're not, we're not operating, running that ourselves, but we do have, we have an on-site manager. Actually, got seven of them all close by. So, she manages and operates those. She's great. Um, and then our only other onsite person we have out in West Memphis, right? Because we got five facilities there. But he's a full-time maintenance guy, right? Like he's a full-time boots on the ground guy. That was kind of our idea, cuz we don't want to have to deal with watching the cash and...
"Yes." "Yeah." "...dealing with all the things that could happen there, especially in an area like West Memphis."
"Yep. Yep." "And so, yeah, the idea is that we have him go out and do projects. He can do painting. He can do other things. And we can, you know, uh, yeah. And that needs a lot of work."
"Facilities, one person. So then they spread it around. Yep. We do a lot of that." M.
Um, we even at sites, you know, our average site is probably 85,000, uh, net rentable square feet, and we have paired back the management overall and we've utilized the same tactic where you buy a bunch in and you fractionalize it over, and then we use technology to fill in, obviously, all those gaps, not having managers there, uh, and that's worked pretty well.
How's that? Is that something you guys are continually trying to do? Group assets together like that, or is it, we can, we have them one-off and remote manage them, and that's not a problem either?
It's, it's a mix of both, right? So it's, yeah, I think that's preferable, right? Is to get more closer together. Economies of scale, you kind of be an anchor in that market. You get people see you everywhere.
Um, so that's, that's definitely preferable, right? But, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll pick up a, you know, we probably pick up a 20 to 30,000 foot facility one-off somewhere for the right price and in a market and do remote operations with it.
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, like Casper, we would have never picked up the second facility in Casper had we not already had the facility in Casper. [laughter] It's too small. It's not something we ever would have bought, but it was just a simple purchase of, you know, we've got the, we've got the operations put in place already. It is almost nothing for us to add this other property in the same market, you know.
"Yep." "That was the easiest onboarding process we've ever had, right?" "And our VA took care of all of it, really. Like we didn't even have to look at it. We're just like, 'Let's go buy it.' We didn't even look at the property before we bought."
I think there's, I think there's a ton of value in that, right? You, you've learned the market. You've learned your customer base.
"Your underwriting is like, 'Well, what's the rate? It's here. I know.'" "Yep." "Very, very easy to do." And, and I think, uh, that's definitely something that, you know, we, we should be doing more of, frankly, in the markets that we're already in. Um, but yeah, huge value in being able to buy properties that are in current markets that you're already in.
Walk me through your underwriting. What are you looking for when you're looking at a new deal? You're moving into maybe a market you're close to a market you've been in or a new market. What are you looking for?
Yeah. Yeah. When I'm looking at underwriting, this is, this is a lot of what we're refining and trying to figure out, really, where do we want to put our, our buy box, right? Our buy box used to be, let's do perform, throw 35% expenses in there, and oh, this is going to be worth double. Obviously, we're going to do that deal. Obviously, even if we're way off, we're good, right?
"And we got lucky a couple times, right? Just like grandma." "Yep." [laughter] "Right. But yeah, so it's, it's now we're trying to refine and look at, okay, what is the income, right? And as we've refined our buy box going through, you know, going through the inner circle, uh, we're looking for, yeah, 50,000 plus on income, right? We want to get a little higher income, you know, at least some income, right? Not a bunch of unemployed people. Um, and then, you know, looking at populations, right? We don't want to go under, you know, really 20,000 in population. And, and but this has been the hardest thing for me is because I, I'm a very thorough person. I'm like, well, there could be a good deal in a 5,000 population or whatever. I always find myself going outside my buy box and wasting time."
"Yes." "Right. And so it's, I have to keep reminding myself that like, just stay in this and you'll find a deal. More focus will bring, you know, more clarity on deals and bring more deals to the table because you're focused on something rather than just shotgunning everything and, and you don't get anywhere, right?"
So, how are you looking at it when you go in? We think we have a good, good deal maybe. What are the things to you that make, are you talking just price to revenue? Is it, oh, there's good delinquencies, there's upward side on the revenue, or is it, you know, like, what is those opportunities that stand out to you guys that you go, "If we bought this, we could improve this or we, it's a good asset. It's getting a great return at a great price." How's that look when you get that information in?
Yeah. I don't, I don't think at this point we've really taken down a property without, um, seeing upside, right? I mean, blue sky is huge to us. I think that's a, and, and I think that is to any investor, right? But I, I do think that that's one of the driving factors of most of the deals that we've taken down is, is it poorly managed, right? And can we do a better job? And, and does the market allow us to be able to bring those tenants in, or is this really what the market is?
"Yeah." [snorts] "But you can find that out pretty quickly by calling around other facilities and seeing what, see what, you know, occupancies are and things like that."
Yeah, we're, we're doing proformas, putting them down. We, you know, we used to have this number that 14% cash on cash return gives us enough, uh, to to really get into this. But now I'm thinking, I'm thinking we're maybe a little too conservative on our underwriting. I think that that can be something that we're, we've been dealing with that a lot. We're finding opportunities and, you know, I, I, I've said this, we've basically, we're taking exactly what we did from 2013 to '15 and we're literally just going to repeat the portfolio strategy, everything else. And we can do that because we're finding deals that are discounted. But that doesn't, when people, "Oh, well, I just don't get any good deals, right?" And deal, good deals are created. They're not given. But also, good deals usually are good deals for a reason. They're not perfect.
So, when you look at that, what we found in having a conservative underwriting, we've been going back and forth. Are, are we too conservative? Because, you know, everybody feels burned. So, all right. But what we, that leaves off a huge portion of the upside, meaning this, we, we are buying deals that are class A multi-story facilities in areas right now we have under contract and are buying and have bought in places like Fort Worth, right? They're selling at below $100 a square foot, which in that market, two and a half years ago were 200 plus, right? But they're empty. One of the reasons obviously that we're buying is we know that that will change. We know that, no, it's not going to be a seven and a half cap, right? Interest rates, cap rates correlate exactly. We're on a downward cycle. If interest rates go down 100 basis points, cap rates are going to move down. So, if we just looked at going from a seven to a six, right, or five and a half, the value creation is immense. And it's one of the buying reasons. It's one of the reasons we're going to buy it. But we don't want to present or sell that, right? Necessarily, because we don't know...
"You can't control it." "You can't control it." "So, it's always been an internal thing lately where we're going, 'Are we being too conservative in our projections where we're sitting at a point where we're going, a very little change due to lower interest rates could drive way higher returns, which we're not putting in?' And should we be buying more aggressively? And we've decided we're not going to buy more aggressively. And we're also, you know, we're trying to do it. But it, this over the last four months, this has been a defining factor within the team, underwriting, management team, um, and then the property management team going back and forth on these underwriters. We have, we have amazing underwriters. We have amazing team that looks at this, but are we being not aggressive enough? And are we being overly conservative?"
"And so I feel that like..." "We're in that same boat." "It, it, it's, you don't want to be, and we don't want to plan for something we don't know. I think we've kind of gotten to the point where we're like, 'All right, a good deal is a good deal based upon what we can measure into.' Right? If that's there, then we know anything else is given. That's just cherry on top. Right? So then when we look at it, that's we can start to compare different properties. Will that market deliver it? One thing we're not doing though is in markets that don't and haven't historically driven lower cap rates outside a very select period of time. We don't, you can't even, we can't buy for that."
Have you adjusted your underwriting though as deals have started to get better over the last three years? And by better, I mean you're getting better prices walking into them and maybe higher, higher cap rates. Are you planning exits at lower cap rates? Are you, how do you go about that future projections? Like what are you adjusting increases in your rents? Are you saying, "All right, over a five-year period of time, we're going to average a five% increase a year?" And that may be obviously different if you have a storage facility that's full versus empty. But that future, future projections, the future rates, the future cap rate stuff. How are you guys handling that? And how are you looking at that right now? I, I, I think a lot of people are struggling with this.
"Yeah. Across the board. I, I..." "I keep cap rates the same." "I was going to say, we don't invest because you don't know." "We don't know." "Yeah. Don't, don't touch the cap rates." Um, go, and this is part of what we're honing in and trying to figure out, right? Like I said before, right? We just, simple. We didn't even project out for the next five years or so, right? It was just like, obviously a deal now, and I'm sure five years will be wonderful, right? But, but yeah, in this market, that becomes, uh, a lot more important, right? When you have a fill-up, you have to project that fill-up, when that's going to happen, and, uh, and doing all that, uh, at what rates you can fill it up. Because we were having that conversation, we had to go back and we're like, "You're seeing, let's say, a $100 rate, but you're seeing a $100 rate on a facility that's full. If you're not full, we have to discount to fill up. So, we can't get to that rate until we're full. So, you have to go back and discount those years over the two, three years to get fill-up, right?"
Especially when you're competing in markets with the rates or whatever in the game they're playing. It's kill. It's just killer.
"Yeah." "It's so funny. My, my son..." "Brutal." "He, he worked part-time in the summer and he called up facilities and so he secret shopped and he was pulling out a lot of the numbers and everything. He's 15. Um, and so he'd come into the office and run up, and you know, he was came up to one day he's like, 'Man, I really don't like Public Storage and CubeSmart.'" [laughter] "And I was like, 'Why?' And he goes, 'They're just killing the markets.' He's like, 'Dad, you go in and, and they're dropping rates by like half.'" And I was like, "Yeah." "Yep." [laughter] "That's right, buddy." "My 15-year-old son's like, 'I don't this, you know, this crap.'" But it, it's so evident that the 15-year-old son can go, "This is wild." Like, you know, that's a major aggressive that makes it really hard to underwrite. We got burned by that. I was just going to say, to underwrite and to look projections has been because of that has been hard to look at a deal and go, "What are the rates? I mean, these guys are down here and these up here, they're all over, and most their tenants are up here, but I don't know what that is."
The rate that they're discounting by 50% doesn't mean their in-place rate is that. That conversation's hard enough having a conversation with a bank where you're like, "Yeah, but just cuz they're selling it at 50, they're really getting 100 foot. Good luck with that." Right? And you can't really do that. So you have to take it what it is. Um, and that's killing, uh, you know, kind of the development. But I speak of this because, you know, I, I got burned by this. We, we were in a market and $200 rate went to $65, and they wanted to fill up, and what that did to our projections, it, it killed us, right? It because when they did that, obviously all the other facilities, because you're dealing with smaller demand, right? They do it. But other people aren't going to be aggressive like them. They're not going to get them at 65 and three months later put them at 150, 200. They don't want to do that. They don't want to spike up the rent three months. So, they're also playing a game that a lot of operators are going, "I'm not going to triple somebody's rent." "I'm not going to do it."
And then you run into the problem that what do you do? And I naively in 20, jeez, it's 25, so this three, I'm at the location, right? This, it's explaining this to customers and I'm like, "No, no, no, no, you don't understand. It maybe that they're going to jack your rate up three X, three, four months." And I thought, well, people get that and they don't want that, so I can convince them of that. Oh, no, they're like, "Ugh, their rate is still $60 and yours is a hundred." And I was like, "And they're not going to be in there, or we don't care. It's still cheaper." And I literally, it was then that I realized I'm like, "They don't care." The economics of a, a street rate where they decide to purchase is extremely different than the economics of an in-place rate.
And [snorts] not to mention, we're comparing what I found hard is you've got a class A facility that they're getting this rate at. Mine's a C or a D. You know what I mean? And I'm going, "How?" [laughter] "And your rates higher than mine? I don't even have asphalt."
"Yep." "How do, how do you justify that?" And obviously they've learned that, and that's what they're doing. They're buying market share. They're discounting rates. They're hurting others. And then that provides buying opportunities for them, everything else. But it totally screws up the market and it makes it really hard to underwrite for. The spreads are wild and two, they change. Like we've had underwriting. We're like, "Well, the rates 150 bucks." I'm looking online right now and it's 90, and they're like, "No, no, here, look, we have this thing. It was, yeah, that was two weeks ago."
"Yeah." "And so when you guys are in situations like that, when you have these volatility and these spreads of rates, how are you guys, how do you decide that you have one competitor that's this, you have a big boy that's dropping the rate like a rock. How are you guys deciding street rates moving forward?"
We always underwrite very conservatively, right? And we said, even to a fault, right? It's, it's like we're going to go to the lowest person in the market and put our rates at that or lower, depending on what kind of facility they are.
"Yep." "And, uh, and do that. I mean, unless obviously it's a mom and pop run with no website or whatever, right? Then we can underwrite a little higher than that. But yeah, we, we just, we do it really conservatively to, to feel safe in that kind of environment which, we just have to stay away from a lot of markets, right? When we're, it just doesn't pencil. It doesn't work out because we're, yeah, looking at Public Storage and Extra Space and, and, and SOA, they're the worst. I got $5, 10x10. I'm like, "You..." "They're just dropping it to nothing." "It's like jacking up the rates." "How do I..." "Yeah." So we've had to avoid a lot of markets because of that. But I, I keep in internally, I'm like, "This is probably, this might be a good market. This might be a great market. But I don't know." "I don't know. And I can't make it and underwrite it." We're, we're doing the same thing. Code. Yeah.
I, I think honestly, the sellers are getting killed by it because a seller is coming out and they're like, "Well, no, we could get this. Doesn't matter. This is what the market rates are today. So you're worth $2 million less."
"Yeah." "And banks won't sign up on it and everything else." Yeah. And so it, it's exasperated that value change, um, because occupancies are high, but in a lot of those markets, then the rates have dropped so low that when you're future projecting and you're looking at a facility and you're going, "Every tenant that you change, you're moving from a $100 rate to a $60 rate because that's what the market is." That's like a downward then trend in revenue. Now, whether that stops, turns around, like you said, we don't really know, right? And I think there's been a lot of discussion whether these big guys will, they ever stop that? And then if not, and this just becomes more and more standardized, you know, how do you underwrite in-place rates versus street rates? I don't have an answer for it. I, you know, that's the reason we're all having this discussion. We don't, so nobody [laughter] does. But I think the idea of then saying, "It doesn't matter, we're just going to be conservative." What that does is that actually makes the deals that you're getting way better and in the future way better because you're building in that, and you have to lower it.
Whether or not the in-place rates actually are up, and whether they do go up and over time, obviously that will change because their rate only matters based upon how much availability they have. So, and I was talking to the team about this. They have a $60 rate, but how many units do they have? If you have a hundred people that want that 10x10, they have a $60 rate and they have two units. Then the $60 rate only matters to two people.
"Yeah." "Right? The rest of everyone doesn't matter. So that, that, that shift takes place in the market as people start to rent more, interest rates go down, housing trust, it okay, you have a $60 rate, but then it's gone and now nobody has it, so it doesn't matter anymore, right?"
"Yeah." "Be interesting to see." And I, I haven't looked at these numbers of, is their turnover higher than what our turnover is, right? With the, with the rate game that they play.
I don't know. I mean, are we picking up long-term, are we picking up long-term storage tenants, and they're picking up short-term storage, you know, um, because of the game that they play. So, you know, they go there, there for their three, four-month period, the rate goes sky-high, they come down to us and it's $10 cheaper than what their street rate is, you know. I, I don't know. I don't, I don't have any statistics for that, but I've often wondered that, you know, are we picking up, you know, because the longer we sit in a market...
"Yeah." "...the the better we get." "Yep. Absolutely." "And so I don't know if it's because, you know, there's overturn happening in these, in these, uh, these type of facilities and we're, we're longer term. I don't know."
I mean, we've, we've had to play the game a little bit, just to a lesser degree, right? It's, I, I don't feel comfortable doing what they do, but...
"Yeah." "Yeah." "Well, that's how we were in Oklahoma. I, I, you know, and I, I was, this was my mistake. I didn't want to play that game at all. And we did not rent. And it got to a point where even trying to, you know, convince customer stuff, they didn't want like, no, we have to at least partially play this game."
"Mhm." "Because it doesn't matter. That's now the game, right? And that's customers are choosing that. And that sucked going drop the rates. And they're like, well, but if we can't get, we'll get them back up. But that is now, that's the market. That's the, our three-mile radius. That's where we're at. And so we, we, we won't do it like they do. Not even close. But all of a sudden, we're going, okay, we've got to get the rates back up over the certain period of time."
Does that make you want to avoid markets? And are you actively avoiding markets where people that play that game are?
Naturally, we're avoiding those markets. It, it, it's pretty natural, right? Because...
"Yeah, it's your underwriting." "It doesn't, yeah. It doesn't punt. It doesn't pencil."
"Yes." "With that. So we, we, we do need to wrap this up because I'll just keep going and I, you know, obviously enjoyed this conversation. Could talk about this all day. So [clears throat] before we go, guys, you know, you're still actively buying, right?"
"Mhm." "You want to buy more. You're still in it. You, how do you feel about the future of storage and where are you aligning your business with that?"
We're going, we're, we're buying and, and, and I love what you talk about, right? You, your buy box, right? That times the market for you, right? You get emotions out of it and just buy good deals at the time you can get good deals and set up your company in a way that it can last through all of that.
Don't do crazy underwriting, you know, don't, you know, run up your expenses so that when you're in a downtime, you can't afford it, right? You got to charge the right fees. And that's the kind of structure we're trying to set up and get, get going, right? That we haven't done well up to this point, but that we're trying to get put together so that, yeah, we can afford all this through the downtimes. We don't need extra fees in order to keep it and run it and operate it. Um, but yeah, we're, we're buying. We love storage and, and, uh, yeah, we're, we're continuing.
I think it's, it's crucial and you've talked about not to fear the market, but to take advantage of what the market is, right? I mean, and a lot of people fear the market.
"Yes." "And guys like you and I that went through the 2008 period. Corbin didn't go through it, right? And that might be part of the whole thing." [laughter] "That might be part of the whole thing of my, you know, me being way more like, whoa, let's hold back and look at this a little closer. Go having gone through that time period. But yeah, you can't, you can't fear the market. You've got to be able to, if you're in the storage industry and buying storage units and being in this industry, you got to, you got to work with the market."
"Yep." "And, uh, and make decisions based on what it currently is and where you see the trends going. And so, yeah, definitely we are, we are moving forward with what we see the market will bear. And..."
"Awesome. And give us. So..." "I love it." "Now, guys, where can people go to learn about you, reach out, where can we send people?"
So, our, our business is Better Self Storage. Uh, that's what we're kind of rebranding, putting them all over to. Uh, and I guess personally, reach, reach out to me at CorbinOod@gmail.com or, I mean, my personal cell is 801-505-2334, right? If anybody wants to reach out. We're happy to look at...
"Deals and opportunities, anybody." "But [laughter] nobody's going to want to reach out to me, but..." "But yeah, seriously, it's like at this conference, we're talking to a lot of people and, and, and we, you know, talking to people about their deals they're looking at. We're like, 'Hey, you want an operational partner? We could..." "Totally step in. We've got the operations set up that we can take on deals and..." "Take a load off of some of these first-time investors that find great deals and are scared of something." "Scared to not know how to do it."
"Yeah." "Yep." "Mhm." "Love it. Is that the same? Go to the website. Yeah. Yeah. Website obviously and same, same self storage.com. Yep. I you'll get our VAs from there, but [laughter] they get directed."
"They'll get back to you." "Yep." "But yeah, same as far as, you know, contacting us personally. It's just that we think that's the best way. And, uh, my personal cell phone's 801-910-594."
So I got to tell a funny story now.
"You got us against doing that. We'll edit that out." "Send us [laughter] a text." "Send us a text." "Yeah, exactly. So, I was doing the podcast and it, it literally had this little mic and I plugged it into the computer and that was all I did. Um, and it was starting to grow and everything and I'm like, 'Oh, I wonder how you get reviews.' And I go, so I'm on one of the podcasts too and I'm like, 'Hey, you know what? If you guys leave me a great review, I want to support you guys. I'll even jump on the phone and talk to you. You can send in a message in.' Holy crap. Because when I did it, the podcast kept growing and people were going back to that episode. I had a summer where every day I was doing 10 to 15 minute phone calls."
"Oh boy." "For hours a day. Like it was, it became like just hours a week. And I'm like, I did not expect that. Um [laughter] but..." "Maybe post-edit that out. Yeah." "Yeah. Yeah. I was like, holy cow. Um, so it was awesome. Kind of like, we're not that smart, you know. We might be one of the guys calling you, AJ. So, [laughter]"
Well, guys, thanks for being here at the conference, obviously, and, uh, jumping on the podcast was great. I appreciate it.
"No, you guys put on a good conference. This is great. They would, anybody that wants to come should, I mean, is interested in storage should seriously consider it." "Thanks. Very valuable. Yeah."