Build the Systems, Scale the Storage Business

3 guys started this company doing literally everything themselves. We were sourcing deals, running numbers, signing checks, fixing gate codes at 9 o'clock at night. Today, it's a multi-vertical platform, self-storage, pro storage, industrial outdoor storage, and none of us are really doing what we used to do anymore, at least not the way we used to do it. And that's not an accident. That's called a system. And one of the guys who helped and was instrumental in building that system is sitting across from me right now, virtually anyway. I'm Joe Downs. Welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. My company's acquired, and I should say our company has acquired, over 20 storage facilities. We've got over $70 million in assets across multiple storage niches, and we've seen this business from every angle, educated hundreds of students, and learned firsthand who succeeds and why. And that's what drove us to build StorageMoguls.ai, which is an AI-powered community With the tools, the structure, and the guardrails to teach people how to buy their very first storage facility. And that's also why we launched this podcast, to bring you the lenders, the brokers, and other industry pros, as well as the real people who have successfully purchased their first self-storage facility so you can hear their stories and learn this business from the folks living it every day. And this is a weird one, my guest today, because he's also my partner. I'm sitting down with someone I don't for the first time need to do research on because I built this company with him. Tim Cain is co-founder of Bellrose Storage Group and the Bellrose Group and Storage Moguls, and he's our head of acquisitions. And Tim sourced— and Tim and I, I should say, sourced our off-market deals. Mostly Tim helped build the systems that let us scale, at least on the acquisition side, past what any of us could run alone. And he's still doing it today, not only for Bellrose, but for TRK Properties and Silver Creek Homes, developing single-family homes in the D.C. metro area and running that business alongside Bellrose. And I'll explain why later, why I'm bringing that up. Tim, welcome to the Storage Moguls podcast. This is actually your first time on it. You haven't even hosted it yet.

I know, I know, Joe. This big day. Appreciate you having me, man.

Foreshadowing there because you will, you will be hosting this someday.

Oh boy.

Tim, As you know, I— and you're, you're not going to get off, uh, not doing what every other guest has to do. So you're gonna answer a couple true/false questions along the way. So before we get into it, Tim, uh, true or false, self-storage as an organized industry is younger than McDonald's?

True.

That is true. The first modern self-storage facilities didn't open until the '60s, and McDonald's was well underway by then. Um, all right, Tim, I wanna— or folks, I should say— I want to back up and tell you the real story about how Bellrose got built, because it wasn't one guy doing it all. Um, it was— there were 3 of us, actually, and we each owned a different piece. And frankly, we all overlapped in the beginning on some of the pieces as well, which was another thing we learned along the way. Tom and I, our other partner, Tom Dunkel, ran more of the relationship and capital side from an equity raising and investor standpoint. And then Tim and I ran the off-market deal sourcing, We didn't even have a broker channel. We just kind of all just responded to emails as they came in, I guess.

Yeah.

But since that time, this is gonna be kind of funny walking down memory lane here with you, and it may be a little embarrassing, but then Tim went and started building an operating system underneath it all, which created division of labor. And that division of labor is the whole reason that Bellrose was able to scale past a couple of facilities and into a real platform. But let's start off, Tim, with, because I want the folks listening to understand who you are, where you came from, et cetera. What were you doing before self-storage? What really, what pulled you toward self-storage?

Yeah, it was a pretty common story. I was Department of Defense. Well, that's not that common. Department of Defense right out of school. But then I, with the entrepreneurial blood in me, I didn't last long there and I jumped ship after I had enough reserves in the residential world. So I came from the fix and flip realtor world as a lot of people do. But what I, we scaled that HomeVestors franchise up to 40 to 50 flips a year. And that's hence, we'll go over that of why we leverage that system into storage. But What I did was I created a very high-paying, high-stress job with no wealth. So fix and flip is all short-term capital gain, and it's extremely transactional and extremely stressful. So I was the smart guy that left the corporate world and built my own job again, right? In the residential space. And when I met you and Tom in 2018 or so, I, that was me reaching out to my mentor at the time saying, hey man, this is, this isn't sustainable. I'm burnt out at, you know, in my early 30s, what can I do? Because I'm working my butt off here and there's no wealth behind this. It's not sustainable. If I get injured, you know, there's nothing here. So he told me, go research commercial real estate because it's the same amount of work with more commas and zeros. And that's what I did. I looked at mobile home parks and self-storage and that's when I met you. And that's when it was clicking that what I knew in residential real estate on the acquisition off market, that was a value add to self-storage at the time. Hence, hence the partnership. Yeah.

It's so funny that you and Christian Blanc, another founder of Storage Moguls, both were doing the same thing, right? In fact, that's how you guys knew each other.

Yeah. That's how we met. That's how we knew each other before Mo. Yeah, that's exactly how. And we vented to each other on this topic, which is funny.

Just a couple of resi folks doing resi things that were very transactional, right? And which is— it's funny, I was— I feel bad. I was, I was a guest on a podcast the other day, and I was— I— you catch yourself beating up, um, residential real estate and the transactional nature of it and all that stuff. And I have to pause and stop and say, look, I know it sounds like I'm beating it up, It's definitely better than what you were doing before, for sure. It's just there's also a better way. And so, yeah, I always have to catch myself there. And some people don't think I'm a huge jerk, a storage jerk. But, um, but it's true. Like, there's a reason people come out of residential, they find storage, and they usually start to sell off their portfolios, fade away, just stop doing it completely.

Yeah.

Yep. Tim, how do you— I'm asking you this question not as your partner putting you on the spot, although you could read into it if you want. I'm asking this on behalf of the listener who's thinking, I'm already in resi or I'm at my 9-to-5 job. How could I possibly have the time to add on whatever in my head I think is required of me to get into self-storage. And so how do you split your time between your TRK Properties/Silver Creek Homes and a full-time operation at Bellrose? So how do you do that?

Yeah, and I love this question, man, and it's so timely and it's, My answer is completely different if you were to ask me in 2018 when we met, right? Completely different answer.

So, give me the 2018 version and tell me how it's different today.

Yeah. So, 2018 version, I would, because I lived it, right? You got to remember before we were making income in storage, there was a buildup. We had some buildup time together, right? Until the first transactions hit, we got our systems in place. So I was still doing 40 to 50 flips a year and learning storage, building out the systems and the team. And I tell you, man, it was not sustainable. Very close to burnout because the AI wasn't there yet. The fractional positions that are out there today, the, you know, the fractional C-suite, the fractional marketing, et cetera, it wasn't there. So I found myself just creating another job at first. But so 2018, it was very difficult. But I, if you remember, we were using Upwork at the time. I think those were our first, like, that was the only thing around, if you remember. Right. And that was just for cold calling transaction coordinators, that kind of thing. And that was like brand new. Right. So in 2018, there was a lot of research and long hours where you really could, and a, and a few CRMs around, but CRMs, customer relationship management tools, they weren't geared towards entrepreneurs yet. I'm talking like Salesforce, which to a solopreneur is, you know, can't afford that. So it was very difficult before leveraging AI. As fractional positions and whatnot were pretty new and we were navigating through it. So it was, it was a stressful time. I'm glad I did it. And I also identified holes that we learned from later on. But now fast forward to 2026, dude, there's— I think we just hit the first billion-dollar one-person company, right? In the last month. Yeah.

The first billion— there's first solopreneur who created a billion-dollar valuation. Dude, on, on his own using AI.

Yeah, man, there's no reason. That's why I'm so excited for this question, 2026. So I'm a big component of automate the repeatable, partner on the technical, and protect the irreplaceable. And what I mean by that, auto— automate the repeatable, that is just, there's so many CRMs that are integrated with Claude, ChatGPT, whatever you want to use. CRMs, they're inexpensive now. and they're automating things for you where you don't have to, you know, keep track of hundreds of leads. You can automate a lot of things, right? Bookkeeping, et cetera. Partner on the technical. That those are things like what you're not good at, right? And you're a big, you know, you're a huge Dan Sullivan, you know, student, right? So focus on unique, your unique ability. So what you're good at and what comes easy to you, That's what you're going to use in storage too in 2026. Don't change anything. If you're good at acquisitions, business development, relationships, automate and, and partner on everything else, leveraging AI and partnerships, fractional roles. That is— there's no excuse why you can't do that now. If you're more of an underwriter or you like raising capital or you're more of a Analytical, deep thinker, building systems. Great, do that, but then go automate and partner your marketing team, right? So there's no reason why you can't do that.

We're actually gonna unpack that a little bit more in a few minutes here. That's great advice. But Tim, what is comparing 2018 to today? What does a normal week look like for you now running 2 very different real estate businesses at once?

Yeah, it's a good question. And it's, it was a tough transition because a lot of us, especially me, you know, we confuse, I confuse momentum with productivity, meaning that I was being busy to be busy. And I thought I was gonna have to do 200 things instead of 100 things being a part of both companies, right? I just thought, okay, I'm gonna have to do double the effort. But once I started removing myself from the day-to-day, especially on the residential space, you know, going full-time into Bellrose was a blessing and a curse because it was a blessing cuz I had to figure out how to systemize and build a team very quickly for a self-sufficient residential business. And that doesn't have to be for residential. That could be for anyone with a W-2 or even a, a, a small business outside of storage, the faster you can automate and systemize your business where you're spending, you know, 80% of the work is done for you and the 20% is the secret sauce that frees you up entirely so you can be doing intentional work. Should only be getting to you when there's an issue or you're growing business, right? So I systemized early on the residential space cuz I had to. And now with Bellrose, I'm finding, you know, most of our time is in difficult conversations that are, you know, spending, spending time in meetings, conflict, you know, solving problems, looking forward, building relationships, and not so much about, you know, putting contracts together and sending out offers and underwriting because we've got an amazing team behind us for that.

That's so interesting. So I think what I heard there was you automated what I'll call your more mature business first, meaning the one you were doing longer. Certainly in the early going of Bellrose, we were still learning. We're always still learning, but we had a lot more to learn than we do today. So you took what you knew And you recognized what was repeatable and you automated that, right?

That's correct.

And that's something I think hopefully if you're listening in your— certainly the layup here is if you're in residential real estate, Tim just gave you the blueprint. You probably know it pretty well. There's probably a lot of things that you're doing that are fairly well or could be fairly well repeatable or repeated. And certainly could be automated. And I think he just, he gave you the blueprint for it. And I think that's frankly, from a personal standpoint, that's probably what I'd feel more comfortable doing, something that I know inside and out and I know I can automate, you know, maybe 70, 80% of it. And if that's the case, then that leaves a lot of time to do other things, which for you meant self-storage. So, I mean, I think that's the part people miss.

Yeah.

Tim never stopped building his own thing on the side, and you don't have to. He provided that, or proved that this isn't an all-or-nothing bet, right? You build the systems and the right team, and you get your time back for whatever else you wanna build, which in this case is storage. And now Tim's actually doing that. We're automating what's repeatable, et cetera. So no, it's, I wanted people to hear that part of the story, Tim. So thanks for sharing that. Yeah, thanks so much.

And Joe, just one last thing on that. You'd be surprised how replaceable you are.

You know, and thank you, Tim.

Yeah, I was the one thing I, you know, how's your partner?

Oh, he's replaceable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, what I mean is that came off so amazing.

I'm glad we got it.

What I mean on audio. Yeah. What I mean by that is, you know, I thought I was the special sauce. I thought if I wasn't involved in the day-to-day on the residential, you know, call it a small business. If I wasn't involved in my small business, everything was a dumpster fire, right? You know, I thought it was gonna go, oh man, if I'm not involved in this meeting, if I'm not involved in this decision. But the second you start treating yourself like a true business owner or entrepreneur and being okay with not making every decision and only making the critical path decisions and give people in your team and systems Responsibility and accountability. You know, a lot of times they'll do it better because I was doing nine things. Okay, now I have six, seven team members, seven team members doing all one thing very, very well, better than I was, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. That's that's what I meant. We'll unpack that here in a minute. All right, let me shift gears here with another, uh, true/false here, Tim.

Uh-oh.

The majority of self-storage facilities in the U.S. are still owned by independent, non-institutional operators.

That, that is true.

That is true. Independent, non-institutional owners hold a clear majority of U.S. self-storage facilities. The largest public REITs combined own a minority of the total national square footage. Here's a fear, Tim, that I want to hit head-on for folks, because it's the one that keeps a lot of people from ever partnering up on their first deal. There's this fear of going from 0 to 1 and thinking you have to personally handle every single part of it. You kind of just I want you to touch on that here because neither Tim nor I could build a financial model ourselves, or at least not a very good one. Underwriting was never our superpower. My superpower is picking it apart, but building it, not for me. I'm your worst critic as a partner if you're the financial modeler. But I live in a glass house because I cannot throw those stones. If nobody in a partnership actually owns that seat, you skip details during due diligence, right? This is the model building seat. And when you skip details, you're more likely to buy a liability than an asset. So Tim, where would Bellrose be today If nobody had owned the analyst seat?

It's scary to think about, right? That, that, that is very scary. And I think it's— we might have gotten away with a few and got lucky with the COVID boom, right? We got into storage in a good time and COVID made everyone look like geniuses, but we would've picked up a few liabilities potentially. And We would not be talking about $70 million AUM on this podcast with hundreds of students and different niches in storage as we sit today. I know that. And oh man, that's just scary even thinking about. If we knew, I think we knew our weakness right off the bat and we addressed it immediately.

Well, we even went through a period where we had the wrong person in that seat.

Yeah.

So we We got a firsthand look at what that looks like. And what— Tim, you were unfortunately up close and personal in that situation. What was— give us a window into— because we're talking about putting people in the right seats. What happens when you put someone in the wrong seat?

You know, and it's— There's a couple different people in the wrong seat because it could be 2 things. So if it's— it could be a culture thing and a productivity thing, but the underlying ones are— this is where it gets scary. We were growing so fast and we thought that, okay, this financial modeler's underwriter, They, they have their credentials. They knew what they were doing. We weren't experts by no means, right? So it was almost like we were taking it at face value. But then when I was dealing with it and it started rearing its ugly head in operations where, wait a second, these rate increases are very high and our occupancy is semi-stabilized, so we don't have the confidence as if we were stabilized. We can't We can't do these rate increases. And then what happens is it compounds. Compounding is really cool unless compounding goes both ways.

Yes, it does.

So the issues compounded and all of a sudden our models, our actuals were not matching our financial models and it was rearing and you're caught in it and it's— and then you're spending a lot of time fixed. That's the other deadly thing that people don't talk about. The amount of time and effort you— it takes to fix these mistakes early on takes away from what you should be spending your time on. And that is the deadly part of growth. Right.

It's a downward death spiral. And the reason I bring all this up is, you know, on these podcasts, you want to talk about everything that's great and glorious, but this is a real part of the business, right? So we had a system, we put a system in place and we put someone in a seat But boy, is it important to make sure that that person is in the right seat. And theoretically, on paper, they were in the right seat. They just weren't the qualified person we thought they were. It's so important. Tim, I want you to speak to that. It's one thing to build a system and create seats and put people in them. How do you go about making sure you have the right person In the right seat. And again, we did. We had the resume. By resume, we had the right person in the right seat.

Yeah.

How important is it to make sure that that person actually knows what they're doing and talking about? And what do you do if they don't? Yeah.

Yeah. And so addressing the first one, that's the tough thing about everyone always says, and I'm a firm believer of partner or hire what you need. Like if you're, Joe, you're a visionary, right? You know your strengths, business relationships, et cetera. So you hire the opposite of an analytical underwriter. So it's tough to check that work, right? So what it's so important of, not only do they, you know, do, do they interview well, their resume looks great, you know, the, the personality tests we can do now, the, the, the things we can build around that, frequent meetings in the beginning. But the biggest thing is KPIs, accountability, and making sure it's a right culture and it's a, it's an intrapreneur and it's a right team member early on and go that extra step. I, I think one of the things that we got wrong earlier is we hired fast and then there wasn't a lot of accountability and front-loading of training.

And that's where I wanted you to go with it.

Yeah.

KPIs and accountability.

Yeah.

It's once we put that in place, it was interesting how the problem resolved itself.

Yeah.

Not necessarily the deals that we had to work our way through, but the people, the person problem resolved itself once KPIs and accountability were in place. So I wanted to illustrate that this in this section and say, you can't just, Build a system, that's important. Put people in the right seats, really important. You can't just do it and then assume everything's great. Your role as the owner here, as the business owner, as the entrepreneur, still needs to be one of those roles. And if it's not you, it's somebody else, is to make sure there are KPIs that are measurable, right? And that there's accountability attached to that. And I guess the first thing is, what's the saying? If you can't measure it, you can't evaluate it. Did I butcher that? What is it? What's the saying?

That's close enough, 'cause I don't know the exact either. Sounds good to me.

Oh, we sound like we know what we're talking about on this podcast.

If you don't, yeah, but I get it, Joe. And I have to say, it starts with us and it starts with like, you set the tone. If, if you're, if we're mailing it in and we're not really looking at the KPIs and we're not making that extra effort to review them and talk through them, then that, that trickles down. Right. And, and I think that it really, the front loading and the bandwidth, the ROI on spending time on the, especially on the front end is you can't even measure that. Right. Because it's just, you set the tone for the whole company.

So folks, you don't need to be good at everything. You can leverage, you can build systems, you can put people in place or agents in place, agents being AI agents. But you do need to be honest about what you're not good at. And you gotta make sure someone owns that and that there is accountability attached to that. Once we did that, once we made that, and it doesn't— that sounds just like it should be that way, right? It shouldn't be. That should not be an epiphany for anyone. But when you're going a million miles a minute and you're growing and you got wearing a lot of hats, sometimes it feels like a relief to just put somebody in a seat because it's now off. It's off your plate, but you cannot rest your laurels there, right? You, you as the owner need to make sure, and this is true whether you buy a facility and you outsource it to a third-party management, you can't just assume everything's going great. There need to be KPIs, there needs to be accountability, there needs to be, um, you know, whatever the check-ins are, which is accountability, of course. But, um, that's still part of the job. And this is any business. And I think that gets missed a lot. And it's part of our story. It's part of what made us who we are. I have these conversations with our kids, my kids, all the time as they're getting older and asking these questions. You know, did you make— was this a mistake? Did you make mix— yeah, they are. Would you do it differently? Yes, I would do it differently. If you could go back in time and change it, would you? No. Because if I did that, then it wouldn't— I would be a different person today. And we're constantly trying to grow. And I know you are. And I know you've been involved in mistakes. as have I. And we, we learn from them, we clean them up, and, and we move forward. And that's just business, and that's life. But if you, if you turn a blind eye to it, then no one's learned anything, right? And if you just point the fingers and blame, no one's learned anything. So, uh, that's, that's why we built Storage Moguls, right?

Yeah.

That's why, you know, that, that— and that's why when we stand on that, on that quote unquote virtual platform stage, we can say we've made mistakes and we're here to, to help you hopefully not make them. We made them. We've got the battle scars. Tim, true or false? Self-storage is one of the lowest historical default rates of any commercial real estate asset class.

That is true.

It is true, Tim. It's even lower than office, retail, or multifamily. All right, let's get tactical, Tim. Let's do it. Because this is a question I get asked more, I don't know, almost than any other. How do you actually define roles before you scale instead of figuring it out under pressure? And I wish I had asked you that a while ago.

I know, right? Well, we're learning now, right? So I think the biggest thing—

Hold on. Answer this for me. What in the— for a first-timer, like, what do they need to know about defining roles before they scale? So whether they're a solopreneur, a husband and wife team, business partners, they're going to need, uh, clearly defined roles, right?

Yeah.

So help us understand what do those roles look like? Um, and also for management, you know, self-managed, hybrid, third-party, Um, they're all possible for every facility. How do you define— that's probably too much. Let's take these in parts. Let's do the roles first, and then we'll get— I'll ask the management in a second.

Yeah, so just the roles, it's very important. There's also— I want to keep people away from our mistake too on this roles. You're not defining roles for your current team and personalities. You're— when you do your org chart, you are calling it an acquisition manager, a CFO, a, uh, a broker, a, um, marketing expert. You're not calling it Joe, Tim, you know, et cetera, right? You're not building roles. A lot of people, including ourselves, built roles for what we already had, and then we were fitting Roles into our, what were skill sets, if that makes sense. Like we did it reverse. So the first thing you want to do is, again, we live in the day and age where you're— I, I'm a firm believer you do not have to go and learn a new skill and get okay at something when you have AI fractional work and other professionals that are already doing it 10 times better. Focus on what you're good at and what you enjoy doing and comes natural to you. That is the secret sauce of you. Then your roles you're describing, you want to go off of your business plan. So if you're a husband and wife and you want to buy 5 facilities in the next 3 years, it makes no sense to hire 7 acquisition professionals in your org chart right off the bat, right? And, and with a heavy payroll and a brick and mortar. So it really starts with your business plan. And reverse engineering that. So that sounds like there's one acquisition manager in a fractional way that could do it, kind of maybe do it for you kind of thing, or at least build out the system, right? And then it's another role, underwriter, due diligence, transaction coordination. If that's not one of your guys' skillset on the team already, then that sounds like a great fractional position too, if I'm using this example of 5 facilities in 3 years. So little by little, it's, it's again, how do we get— it's almost like you're, you know, the, you know, the, the, uh, the Benjamin Hardy book, Be Your Future Self Now, which, right, which we love. It's you're making decisions as your future self owning 5 facilities, and then you build out the team to get there.

Okay. How— so if you're a solopreneur versus a husband and wife versus 2 business partners, How does role definition actually change across those 3 in your, in your mind?

You know, solopreneur, I would say, is the— you focus— solopreneur is the most straightforward to me because that's what I was, right? So 2018, going into this, that was— you focus on what you're good at and what you can do and what your bandwidth— like, be realistic with yourself too. Right? Be realistic with what you can actually accomplish while running another business, right? Don't, don't build out your team on if you are 100%, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, not getting sick, no vacations, cuz that's, that, that's off. That's not the way to do it. I'm a, I, I'm a big believer of build the system that where you want to be, not where you're currently at. So as a solopreneur, Focus on your unique ability and then build out, uh, the skill sets that you're not good at or don't have time to do, you know? So my, for example, mine was lead generation acquisitions, right? So I went and partnered with you guys for capital raising, um, legal, um, put business relationships, you know, more of the maturity of a business, why I was the deal hound at the time, right? Going and sourcing deals for the team. So that solopreneur, I think, has the most flexibility in my opinion.

Yeah, and it's probably the same answer across all 3, right? The husband and wife, what are you good at? What aren't you good at? Although I think those depends on how healthy that marriage is, I think.

Yeah.

Especially when it comes to being honest with each other about what we're good at and what we're not good at. And I think the same is true with business partners. So, and I think your answer's, There doesn't have to be, again, there's no magical answer to this. It's just be honest with yourself. What are you good at? And I think what you find, what I found, and this is what you've referenced, Dan Sullivan and Strategic Coach, what I have found in going to those workshops is you're good at, most likely what you're best at is what you really enjoy doing.

Exactly.

And so this can actually be a fun process.

Yes.

Right? If you were gonna— not if, when you get into the storage business, what do you want to do in it? What do you think you'll have fun doing in it? There's gonna be stuff you won't wanna do and that aren't— that isn't fun. That's where you wanna start to build systems that Tim was alluding to and leverage, right? But you need to identify what you're good at, and that's probably something you enjoy.

And comes easy to you.

And it comes easy to you. That's a basic strategic coach unique ability principle, right? If you're good at it, it probably doesn't feel like work. And if it doesn't feel like work, it's probably fun.

And what a lot of people get wrong with that, I did, is you think everyone else is good at it too. So, you don't think, you know what I mean? Like the business, you know, I'll take you for example, the business relationships and the networking and, The visionary role comes naturally to you. But if you go to an integrator, or if you go to more of an analyst kind of mindset, it's like pulling teeth, right? So people assume that everyone is good at what you're good at, and that's not it at all.

There's— I have been so frustrated over the years, and Strategic Coach has helped me understand this, especially through, um, you know, the personality tests like Kolbe and Print and and CliftonStrengths. I don't understand when the team looks at me sometimes like I have 3 heads, because I'm saying 2 2 4, and they're hearing some algorithm or, yeah, some algorithmic, you know, unsolvable Einstein math equation.

Yeah.

Right? And I don't get what they don't get, and they don't understand what I'm saying. So, you're right. You do think that because it's obvious to you, it should be and will be obvious to everybody. You know, in my case, as a visionary, this is the direction we're gonna head and this is why. And I think that's all I should say.

Yeah.

But what I've learned is if I want everyone to get in the boat and start rowing with me, I need to explain a little more to them as to why. And I have to do it in the way that they understand it.

100%. And to you, it probably feels like a wait— I don't wanna say waste of time, but—

It does.

Redundant, right?

If you're putting me on the therapy couch right now, yes, those words are coming outta my mouth. It feels like I am wasting my time telling these people what I need to tell them because they should just get it.

Yeah. But that goes back to—

Yeah.

Yeah. But that goes back to the front, like the systems, the business plan, the systems, the org chart, KPIs and accountability early on, that will solve everything. And we're not talking a 6-month process and you can't start doing business. That's the other thing too. We're not saying you need to spend 6 months editing business cards and doing this. You can do it while you grow, but it needs to be done in the early stages.

Yeah. And, and, and you're right. You gotta define the roles and purpose and you do it early, like you just said, before the pressure forces you. to improvise. And those are some of the mistakes we made. And, and though the, the decision to do that early, um, saves more deals— I will save more deals, I think, in partnerships, and, uh, than maybe almost anything else.

100%. Because it's usually a partnership, or it's usually not the asset in storage, because we all know how amazing storage is. You just went over the default rate. It's usually the inner workings of a company that can't that did not, did not take the time to do this on the front end and is paying. And it's unfortunate and they're paying for it on the back end.

And it doesn't have to be a heavy lift. And by the way, most listeners don't want to become Bellrose, right? They just want to buy their first deal. So there's— we're, we're not talking about a heavy lift here. No, it's— this is— and I love what you said, Tim, earlier. You're going to do well on the last question, but you have to build a system for what you want to be operating And the way you want to be operating in 5 years. And you can start building that system with one, with one facility, with just you as yourself. You know, you might look at, uh, I would— I want to own a storage facility. You might be thinking to yourself right now, okay, well, and I have a full-time job. All right, so how am I going to do it? Well, your system might be to go to Storage Moguls and learn the business through the education platform. And maybe partner up with somebody through the community. Or it could be, hey, Joe and Tim, I've taken the course, uh, I've got X amount of dollars, I don't have time to do this, but I want to own storage. And then talking to us about how we can show you how to do that. That's actually a system. Even though in that scenario most of it's outsourced, you still had to learn the business through the education. Right. Attend the weekly calls. You're growing and you're able to ask questions, whatever, et cetera. And then your system in that scenario is, I'm outsourcing it. I'm outsourcing the acquisition and the closing and the management, but I own storage and I'm going to manage the managers. That might be your system. Another system husband and wife team that we've, we've educated. He's out finding the deals, doing a lot of work. His wife is very involved, but her role is going to be the one that answers the phone and manages it.

Yeah.

And they've both had that healthy conversation about how that matches actually their— both of their unique abilities. And they're very happy with it. And that doesn't sound like a system, but it is.

But it is. And I love that.

It doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah. Yeah.

It doesn't. It's, and we're, you know, in these days, Joe, with everyone is an expert. As we sit here today, we can be an expert in any field in, in 20 minutes, right? We can, you know, information's free and it's everywhere with AI. It's everywhere. So now it's all about simplicity and authenticity and what works best for you. 'Cause everything is gonna, you know, soon enough, all of our Chores, all of our responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. It's gonna be handled. It's now, we're all craving simplicity now. Simple systems that are repeatable. And I love that husband-wife combo you just described. I think that's the, I, I, I, I absolutely love that cuz your overhead is so low and also just, you already have that underlying trust, you know, and, and that entrepreneurship and team, the right culture. Yeah. I, I love that.

The beauty of it too, in addition to what you said, he's doing what he really likes to do.

Yeah.

He has been tenacious out there finding deals. No one is finding more deals— his name is Mike. No one is finding more deals than Mike right now because Mike is in his happy place. He's not behind a desk at a Fortune 500 type of company anymore doing HR. He's out in the field. He's taking his HR skills Out on the road and talking to self-storage owners who are in their 70s and 80s. And he's loving it. He's having fun. He gets to get out there and drive, you know, an hour here, this, that. And he's got, he's got his wife Stephanie with him. And, and they're a team and they're just in their glory and they're having fun. And, and, you know, some more work is about to happen as things get real. They're closing on their first deal. But they already know how that's gonna be managed and how they're gonna handle it. And he's not slowing down. He's got 2 more he's talking to, right? So, but they built a system and it's not an overly complicated system. It's a very simple system and they're following the playbook. And the point I'm trying to emphasize here is they're having fun doing it. And when it's fun, it's not work. Yeah.

And the trickle-down effect, Joe, like just the last thing on that. You know, with us both being fathers and family men here, their actions that they're showing their kids right now are— you can't measure that. Just them showing what their kids watching them work as a team and going out and crushing it. Actions speak so much more than words. So I just love that story of Mike and Stephanie.

Yeah, absolutely. And they are getting their kids involved. And I know one of his sons at least is following what his dad's doing and trying to get involved. And it's— I wouldn't be surprised as they grow, um, you know, as they acquire, you know, second, third, fourth, who knows how many. It's gonna be up to them until they're not having fun anymore.

Exactly.

I wouldn't be surprised if their kids are involved, uh, pretty probably before they— before you know it. I love that.

Until they're not having fun anymore.

Yeah. Well, if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep doing it unless you absolutely have to, right? Tim, true or false? Industrial outdoor storage, or IOS as we, as we affectionately call it, is one of the fastest growing and least institutionalized asset classes in commercial real estate today.

True.

It is true. IOS has drawn a wave of new institutional and private capital in recent years precisely because ownership remains highly fragmented and undercapitalized compared to other commercial real estate sectors. Um, Tim, I want to talk about where this actually goes once the systems are in place, because storage isn't just self-storage anymore. Um, Tim's been building out our pro storage and iOS verticals, or niches, whatever you want to call it, at Bellrose. Not, not as a separate project per se, but as an organic extension of the same systems conversation we've been having this whole episode. So how did the systems that worked for self-storage, once we made all our mistakes and got put the right systems and people in place and everything, how did the systems that worked for self-storage translate, Tim, into Pro Storage and iOS?

Yeah, and that's, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about because it all starts with the team and systems, accountability and KPIs that is agnostic. That team, that system is agnostic to the niche, the, the asset class. You can take that system and place it anywhere. And when we went into industrial, oh, we did pro storage first. Yes, there was some learning curves on the market analysis. Oh, guess what though? We've got an amazing team and amazing systems in place with Claude as well as fractional roles. to handle that for us. So some basic niche knowledge, but after that, it's the same exact system. You already have it up and running, and it doesn't matter the product, the asset class. You can use that in any system with some front loading on the knowledge. There's little tweaks that you will get through very quickly, but that is That's the, my favorite thing about the right people in the right seats with the systems. You, you can go into any, you can evolve with the industry.

And Tim, um, that's a great answer. Thank you. Um, and, and so right. I forgot to introduce what ProStorage is. So would you, would you mind, uh, while I ask you to tell us what you're actually building on the development side, um, in ProStorage and, um, and iOS, could you Touch on both Pro Storage and iOS, maybe through what we're developing.

Yeah, yeah. I'll give you the 30,000-foot view here. So Pro Storage is a mixture, little, you know, uh, child of Small Bay Flex and Self Storage. Pro Storage is meant for professionals. Uh, think of small business owners, contractors, but also duality with boat and RV and the recreational world. These are larger format storage units and, you know, 450 square feet to 1,000 square feet with 14-foot doors, wide drive aisles. It's built for businesses. And why we love it so much is in the, it's in very high demand. When you're competing up against small bay flex, a lot of people, a lot of contractors, business owners like the flexibility, the month-to-month rent. And we're currently, we just developed and opened up our first development of this in Greenville, South Carolina. It was 90,000 square, 92,000 square feet. And we've got another 90,000 going up in Egg Harbor Township as well as we just acquired one outside of Kansas City. So it's just, it's a niche inside of storage where we found that On the development and the operational and the attractive side, pro storage I think has a long runway, and we're really excited about it.

Very cool. So so like you said, it's the same playbook, the same vertical. Once you've built the systems one time, they travel, right? And that's the whole point. True or false? No single company in America. Not even the largest public REIT owns more than about 5% of all self-storage square footage in the country.

That's a good one. I'm gonna say that's, that's true.

It is true. Self-storage actually still remains remarkably, uh, fragmented at the national level. Even though even the largest public operators each hold only a small single-digit share of total U.S. self-storage square footage. So it's, uh, yeah, that's— and that's the whole, the whole opportunity. One stat right there: nobody owns this market. And that's exactly why the team and the systems around you matter so much. All right, Tim, last question here. I actually think you're gonna do very well. I've already alluded to that based on how you answered a question earlier. Um, Tim, have you read the book Be Your Future Self Now yet?

Yeah, yep, yep. Read read that one. We love that one.

You have read it. I I was hoping you had. Then I don't need to explain to you what it's about. It starts with with Mr Beast by Will for the listener in case it's her first time listening. It it starts talking about the story of Mr Beast now. He became the most followed human on the planet. And so Tim, then you are familiar with the fact that he recorded four videos one night when he was seventeen years old and released.

Yeah.

Into the public, but at future release dates, kind of like Cortés who burned the ships, right? So, he released them at 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years from the night. So, he recorded them all the same night and then set them to release 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years into the future. And, they were for public release onto his YouTube channel. And he only had about 8,000 subscribers at the time, which sounds like either a lot or nothing depending on where you are in the YouTube world or follower world. I think it was a lot because he was a gamer. And so, he had 8,000 presumably kids watching him play video games, which is something I'll never understand. But— What he did was so fascinating that it was It was the subject of this book by Dr. Benjamin Hardy here. And if I could just paraphrase what he did or package it up for you, what he did, well, it's what Cortés did, but he basically said, this is who I'm going to be at each of these intervals and put it out there. And if he didn't hit that, and it had to do with followers and whether he was still YouTubing, he called it, but he put it out there to the public. So, He would have been publicly shamed if he failed, right? So, Tim, I ask of every guest on the Storage Moguls podcast, the last question: where, where are you going to be in 5 years? If you were recording a video tonight to be released in 5 years, what would you say on it? What— who is Tim Cain in 5 years? What is he doing? How big is his portfolio? Let's say you, sir.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a great thank. Thanks for asking that, and that's that's a great question. And I'm I'm actually not going to go the I'm not going to go the KPI you know number route. I I'm going to be you know we've talked about this a lot what true wealth means to us right? And you know that's the you know freedom of time and spending your time with who you want to when you want to. So I would say in the five years it's a lot of the The heavy lifting and the portfolio is healthy. We're at a revenue number that makes sense where the quality of life and focusing on relationships, family and friends, et cetera, travel is more robust. And there's a healthy team under us that is absolutely crushing and is nimble and using the systems we put in place and then championing our team, kind of moving into that more of that championing big picture and the day-to-day lessening and lessening to spend the time where I want to and who I want to spend it with.

So, and that's a great answer. What are you doing today to make sure that happens?

Yeah, that's a great episode to talk about that, right? It is. I mean, and I know we keep— we've probably said systems 100 times in this episode, but that's That's truly what it is. It's leveraging your unique ability, being realistic with yourself, making decisions as your future self. That, that's the biggest thing. And guess what? If you put yourself in the framework of making every decision, intentional decision as your future self, guess what? That's a system. There's your check. There's your, should I take on this opportunity? Let me check with my future self. That doesn't really fit. That t-shirt manufacturing company is for sale, but it doesn't fit what my wife and I are trying to do. And that could be the 3 facilities in 5 years kind of thing. That's a system already. So it is, it's making decisions as you're already there, making decisions as your future self, and spending time on the business is as or more valuable than in the business. And that will get you there.

I love it, folks. Here's what I want you to take away from today. The thing that let Bellrose scale wasn't working harder. We were— believe me, we were working plenty hard, but it wasn't until we put systems in place, thanks in large part to Tim, but put systems in place and us respecting the seats that needed to be filled by someone other than us. And that's available to anybody listening right now. So if you want to go deeper on how to actually do this, the models, the mentorship, the community, go check out storage moguls.ai. It's free to join. There's weekly calls. You will not be disappointed.

But this is—

these are the things we talk about there. All right. Please like, subscribe, and share. And here's why the share matters. I tell you every week, but I'm gonna remind you, when you share the episode, you're actually telling everyone else in your network that you're in this business. So we're over here doing the heavy lifting for you. All you gotta do is share it. And believe me, that signal, when you send that share message, it's like a beacon. That signal goes a long way. If some— and especially if something Tim said about defining roles hit you today, or—

Excuse me. Or systems.

Share it with that, that specific partner or spouse that you're trying to build something with, even if it's not self-storage. They will definitely thank you for it, and you will both grow from it. All right, folks, there is a seller out there right now who's ready. So stop watching, start moving. Drive for Dollars. Send the LOI. We'll see you next week.