Data Points That Actually Matter When Closing Storage Deals

Picture this. You found a storage facility. The owner is motivated. The numbers look right on the surface, but you've got about maybe 72 hours before this thing goes somewhere else. You're sitting at your kitchen table. You got 6 browser tabs open, census data, Google Maps, a calculator, and a legal pad covered in math. And you're trying to figure out whether the market actually supports this deal. 2 hours in, you're no closer to the answer. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you're thinking, the big operators don't do it this way. They have tools I don't have access to. Well, here's what I want to tell you, folks. That gap is closed. The data that the institutional buyers use to evaluate markets, track competitors, and spot deals, it's all available to you right now. And today's guest is the person who's going to show you exactly how to use it. I'm Joe Downs, and welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. My company's acquired 20+ storage facilities, over $50 million in assets across multiple storage niches. I got 3 more under contract right now, 2 pro storage facilities in development, and I'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 tools, the structure, and the guardrails to teach people how to buy storage facilities. Check it out at StorageMoguls.ai. And by the way, that's exactly why I launched this podcast. To bring you the operators, the lenders, and the real people who've bought deals so you can hear their stories and learn this business from the folks living it every day, especially from people like my guest today. And I am fired up about this conversation. So let me introduce you to James Brunig, who heads up sales at StoreTrack, the platform that tracks over 74,000 self-storage and boat and RV facilities across the United States. He's been in self-storage for 18 years, the last 4 of which has been at StorTrack, and he's talked to more first-time buyers trying to crack a market than just about anyone I know. James, welcome to Storage Moguls.

Hi, Joe. Thank you for having me. Uh, looking forward to the conversation and, uh, talking about what's going on in the market.

I, I know our listener is going to be very interested, especially if they've never, um, heard of StoreTrack, or they're just thinking about self-storage and they didn't even know that this tool exists. Uh, and then I guarantee we have, uh, listeners who are— have been beating around the bush. They're on the fence, they're on the edge about using StoreTrack. So I'm excited for, uh, today's conversation. I know it's gonna be very beneficial for a lot of our listeners. Um, before we get started, James, uh, I, I told you before we started, I, I like to ask some true/false questions just to see, you know, how knowledgeable my guests are about the self-storage industry. So no pressure, Although you should feel a little bit since you're an industry pro. I'm just kidding, James. All right, you ready for the first one?

Let's do it.

Here we go. James, true or false, self-storage vacancy rates have stayed below 15% nationally for over a decade, even through recessions, pandemics, and rate spikes.

True.

That is true. And, uh, And the reason is storage is structurally resilient in a way most people don't appreciate. And that's what today is about, getting equipped with real data so you can see this business clearly and with more confidence. So James, let me ask you something that a lot of people skip over when they're evaluating any tool or any platform even. And that's where, where did this thing actually come from? Because the, the origin usually tells you about whether it was built by someone who understood the real problem or not. So StoreTrack isn't a general commercial real estate data platform that added storage as an afterthought, right? It was built specifically for this industry. So walk me through that. Who built it? Why did they build it? And what problem were they actually trying to solve when they built StoreTrack?

Sure. So our parent company, Aggregate Intelligence, has been around longer than StoreTrack. StoreTrack's been around since 2014. And we, our parent company worked in other industries such as airlines, hospitality, rental cars, and was already collecting rate data. And they'd seen the need for rate data for the self-storage industry. And that's really kind of where we started before we even got into the development and demographic data and supply demand, all that stuff. It started with rates. And truth be told, I've been a StoreTrack— I was a StoreTrack user before I came to work for the company. And in the early days, believe it or not, it was simple spreadsheets and pivot tables. But at the end of the day, it saved so much time, especially when you're running multiple locations, to be able to get that data. at the same time for multiple locations rather than trying to track managers down, having various people hand-collect at different times of the day, week. Just the accuracy and the overall completeness of that rate data ended up saving me countless hours throughout the week.

So that's so fascinating. So they were already experts at aggregating data and discerning data and what was important, and they moved into storage as part of that. I actually just learned something. I didn't know that. That's actually very fascinating. So that must be why they're so good at the data part, I guess. If you're new at the business, and I know in my opening I said you've talked to a lot of first-time buyers, and I know you've talked to first-time buyers all the way up to institutional buyers, right? For a new buyer who I think is, is, is who's listening to, to this podcast, um, what separates StoreTrack from its competitors and even tangential software companies like CoStar, LoopNet, or CREXi?

Sure. So we've really put a focus on self-storage and data itself. And again, if you look at our website, you'll see Data First is our tagline. And not to say anything negative about any of the— any of our competitors, but one of the things is we collect all of our own data. We have a data team of 200 plus data scientists that have been working at this process. Again, let's say going back to 2014, 2015. And as you move forward, again, we've just refined the process. Just to throw out a couple of quick numbers, when it comes to the rate data, we track about 150,000 rate changes per day. developments, pipeline activity. There's— we truthfully, we collect somewhere in the neighborhood of— we run what we call our scripts. We run about 20,000 scripts every day. And if we find a piece of data that we don't have, We don't just correct the data. We go back in and we figure out why we missed it and to make sure we don't miss it in the future. So that's really kind of where our strength comes in. And when it comes to the rate data, that is ultimately our strength. And honestly, it's one of the best ways to look at a market, having complete up-to-date and historical data, you can tell so many things about a market without even looking at the rest of the numbers.

So don't take this the wrong way, but I like to be the ignorant average Joe because that's probably a pretty good description of me anyway. That sounds like a lot of features. How does that benefit me as a potential user?

Sure. So one of the things that I learned in this business and going back to our earlier conversation. In my previous life, I was in manufacturing and I studied statistical process control. Same similar processes for this business as well. So there's a science to it. The really successful operators understand that and they're going to take this data And, you know, look at a market and look at several different points. A lot of times I get asked, you know, you know, what's a good square foot per capita? Square foot per capita can be all over the map. What I want to know is what's happening with the rates. I want to know what's going on with supply and having all that data accurate and in front of you in a timely manner. will just save you a tremendous amount of time.

If I'm a new user, are there tutorials on StoreTrack that would help me understand Supply Index and how it relates to rate movement in the market? What kind of, what kind of helpful tutorials, videos, FAQs, whatever is there? What kind of support? Sure.

So we have a resources tab when you go to our website. I always encourage people, it's going to have all of the latest reports. So we do national reports, we do what's called a market of the month. We're going to point out what's good, what might not be so good. It's a good way to, you know, start learning again if you don't know anything about this industry. I mean, there's articles in there going back years. And again, just reading some of the reports, and we have a very quick and easy method on pretty much every one of them. You're going to see there's a link, you can reach out, you can message us through the chat, you can send an email, you can schedule a meeting. And then we're happy to go through and, you know, if you have questions, You know, kind of walk you through. Again, one of the things we tend to stay away from is we don't get into the feasibility side. So we don't tell you whether that's a good market or a bad market. But what we're going to do is we're going to provide the data points for you and we're going to tell you why they matter.

Does anyone track more self-storage facilities than StoreTrack?

I don't believe so.

I—

that world— and we're not just in the US. Canada, but we're also Europe, UK, Australia, New Zealand. So, I think right now we're somewhere around 100,000 worldwide. Wow.

100,000. James, what does your day-to-day look like at Store Truck? What do you do?

Answer a lot of questions, troubleshoot. I talk with clients. And again, there's so many tools in the platform. This platform has grown and become so big. I was just doing a presentation yesterday and we were pushing up on the hour mark and I hadn't gotten through everything. That was in there. And I was skimming and not going into each individual report, but just showing all the characteristics and all of the things that you can do with it. Everything from, you know, now we have a portfolio builder. So again, for the larger groups or people that may be looking at taking on 4 or 5 or up to 300 facilities. You can just simply upload a simple list of properties. It will auto-populate. It'll tell you if there's any type of corrections that need to be made to the address. And then you can bulk download reports. We also have what's called a list builder. The list builder, now you can pull up to 5,000 properties a month. So for example, if you wanted to look at a particular state, you could put in whatever criteria you want from either— if you want, let's say you're just looking for a specific owner, you can search that way. If you're looking for a property name, you can search that way. If you're looking square footage, climate control, non-climate control, operator type, You can put in whatever you want. You can literally search our entire database and literally in seconds get a list back. So it's great for prospecting from that perspective.

So it's fair, you might argue it's the most complete self-storage database available.

I'm partial, but yeah, I do. And like I said, I have in my Past life working for various operators, I've used other platforms. I've typically tried to get back to StoreTrack again, just understanding the platform, the ease of use, and just there are so many tools. And the nice thing is we have three different levels. So again, it just depends how sophisticated you are. And I always tell people. You know, we have our enterprise level, which is, you know, for the people who are really getting after it, looking at 5, 10 properties a week or more, and they're going to drill way down on it. I mean, it just— however far you want to drill down on it, we have the data. But for most people, it's again, if you're just getting started, some of the entry-level offerings that we have are going to work just fine. To actually get into the market.

It's interesting, storage as a data— as a business with a data set is a better way to say it, is actually not that old, right? Probably only goes back 30-ish years. I don't know how good the data was 30 years ago, but it's obviously gotten better in the last 10 to 20. Right. But that's what it's— now, now I'm putting the pieces together. So StoreTrack parent company was, um, was a data aggregator and understood here was an, here was an opportunity to aggregate data. Here was a space, an industry that needed someone to aggregate the data. And that's the thing about tools built by people who actually understand the problem. The problem is there was no data aggregation. They solved the right problem. So, you know, in the past, I guess we had general CRE, you know, commercial real estate platforms built for office, retail, multifamily, whatever. Storage is its own animal. And if you've ever tried to use a general tool to evaluate a storage market, you know, the data doesn't fit, it doesn't work. So that's, I think that's one of the beauties of the StorTruck. It actually came in and solved a niche problem in a niche. And now we know why. Um, so that's, that's cool. I learned a few things myself there. All right, uh, true or false? The majority of self-storage facilities in the United States are owned by individual or small operators, not REITs or institutional funds.

True.

That is true. That was a layup. You knew that one. Uh, about 70 to 75% are independently owned. The REITs are visible, but they're not the whole market. So I think, I don't know, I know before I was even involved in self-storage, I would not have believed. In fact, that's what interests me the most. At the time I got involved, the number I think was 80% was owned by mom and pops. I think today depends on who you read, it's anywhere from, you know, give or take around 70%. And you know, most facilities you'll ever buy, or most of us will ever buy, are owned by individuals, people who, bought one facility 20 years ago and ran it themselves, and that's who you're buying from today. And that's what StoreTrack helps you find, I believe.

Yes. So we track, and again, whenever you're looking at the platform, we actually have 5 different categories that we put operators into. So single operators, which are just the one store location in their, they've got one store in their portfolio, there's 34,000 plus. of those in the US. And then when you talk about 2 to 4 locations, you're talking another $7,000 to $8,000. And then as you keep going up, so yeah, the REITs really are a small percentage.

Yeah, that's interesting. All right. Here's something I hear constantly from people who are genuinely close to their first deal. Not thinking about it close, but like actually close. They've found a property, they've talked to the owner, they're negotiating price. Maybe they're already past that. They're, they're working on the contract. Then they freeze, not because they don't want to do the deal, but because they don't trust their market reader, the read of the market, right? They don't know if the market actually supports the occupancy they'd need to make the numbers work. And they don't know how to find out fast enough or if they can rely on the information they have put together. James, is there— this is this buyer that this profile I just painted, and we've seen it a few times. This is the buyer that you talk to every day, is it not?

Oh yeah. I talk to a ton.

Do they actually— what does the fear actually look like from your side where you sit? We see it because we coach and educate a lot. Now it's Storage Moguls. And, you know, we're the bumper rails, we're the guardrails, we're the uncle, the grandfather, the dad, whatever, who gives them the confidence. What do you see from people who don't have people like Jack and Tim and Rod and Chris and, you know, at Storage Moguls?

They're trying to—

they're just coming to you with—

A lot of times I see them trying to make that decision on a simple supply and demand number, and it's never that simple. So one of the things that we do is, again, we show about just even in our very most basic level, we show about 24 different data points. So everybody says, oh man, it's above 7 square foot per capita. That's going to— I heard that's the number everybody heard, right? But then again, if you look, there's so many other factors. So if you go into What's the rental housing percentage? Is it above or below what you would say 7 square foot per capita is a good number? In some areas, 5 square foot per capita is a good number because they have big houses and there's very little rental or apartments or multifamily. So again, there's that factor. The other one that I always look to are rate trends. So a real simple, quick sniff when you're looking at a market or if you're thinking something, maybe the square foot per capita is above 10. And I can show you markets where it's above 13, 14, 15, and guys are getting $3 a square foot.

And everybody's full.

Yeah. So if the rates are trending up, here's a really quick If the rates are trending up, occupancy is going up. If rates are trending down, occupancy's going down. There's so many people using some type of revenue management tool that when you just look at the average of a market, and again, obviously there's some markets where that's probably, they're going to be the outlier, but as a general rule, that's one of the things that you can look at without even knowing the occupancy number. But it's never as simple as one data point. And unfortunately, that's where I see people.

You're so right. And we get that all the time, not just from people that are interested in storage, but even from the students after they're learning storage. Because look, you're drinking from a fire hose. It's a lot of data. There's nothing— and I tell people this all the time, and I have to do it in a self-deprecating way, but I'm being honest about it. I'm not I'm not Elon Musk. I'm not launching rockets. I'm not that smart. I'm not dumb, but I'm not that smart. It's— and I tell people, if I can do this, you can do it. But it just, it takes immersion. There's— you're drinking from a fire hose. There's a lot of new information coming at you. None of it is calculus. None of it. It's all, all easy to understand at a, at a 5th grade level at some point. You just have to immerse yourself. And StoreTrack, while it's a wealth of information, can be overwhelming to people. And I— we constantly have to talk them off the ledge, like, no, no, you— it's— I know there's a lot of information there. It's good information. We'll— it's not all relevant to you at every, every point. We'll show you how to use it. And what matters and why it matters and what the dependencies are. Like, you just gave a great nugget. If rates are trending up, occupancy is going up and vice versa, right? People don't understand that. And then they also don't understand street rate versus in-place rate, right? So, um, assuming that I'm a new customer and I'm looking at StoreTrack, when I'm reading rates, in a market, if I've picked a market, what am I looking at? I'm looking at the street rate that everybody's advertising.

I always tell everybody, because this is probably one of the November, December timeframes, or probably I get a crazy number of calls asking me what's going on with the market, what's wrong with these rates. This is a very cyclical business. So you need to look at it over time. If you're just looking at the rates today, again, you're going to do yourself a huge disservice. Rates go up, rates go down. And believe it or not, I talk to a lot of people coming out of multifamily now looking at self-storage. So they— it's a completely different dynamic, right? Or if you're in retail and now you're looking at self-storage. So the rate data—

Do you think we're seeing— go ahead, finish. And then I want to—

oh, so, so the rate data, again, it's so important to look at over time. If you're looking at a snapshot in time, you may be able to leverage that somehow to close a deal or maybe, you know, get a deal to where you want it to be. But if I'm making a, you know, long-term decision on is this a good good market, I'm going to want to look at rates over time.

Do you think we're seeing more swings in rate in the last couple of years than we did in, let's say, the prior 10 years?

It's crazy. We do some pretty sophisticated reporting for some large financial groups. And I just got off a call late last week. And there's so many different methodologies out there, right, for rentals. So if you look at REIT rates, let's say, they could be offering 3 different prices for the same size unit. So understanding how those all factor in. I think the other thing with these is you have Operator A, who's going to try and do existing customer rate increases on a pretty rapid basis, they're going to start out lower. Another operator may start out higher, but they're going to do time-limited promotions. So understanding each operator type, and again, this is why we separate those out, you'll be amazed when you look at the average rates and understanding where you fit. in that hierarchy with, am I a large operator? Am I a medium operator or a single operator? Single operators tend to stay very stable, low. They want to stay full. And then the flip side to that is obviously the REITs. And they're going to bring people in. And that's a money machine. That's not your standard real estate plan. So depending on, obviously determining how you're going to compete in that market and what rates you're going to look at and how you're going to look at them. One more thing, Joe, real quick. We just added this this last week. We actually are publishing the REIT quarterly reported rates. Now, so again, you can see if you have REITs in your market, you can see what their annualized rate's coming in at. Then you can factor in what's the difference between what they're asking and what they're actually obtaining. Big difference.

Yeah. And their strategies, which are Very interesting, some of which I don't really love at all, which I, you know, some people call it a bait and switch. I call it a dump and pump, meaning you dump the rate and then you pump it up and see who survives. But, um, I will say one of the things we constantly talk about and teach at Storage Moguls is the, the rate specials, the promotions aren't as important as the reason that they're having them. So in other words, the details of how they're arriving at whatever they're arriving at, and you just alluded to different institutions deploy different strategies. What we try to teach and educate our students to understand is what those strategies are, are not as important as why those strategies are in play and how that relates to the market and how you're looking at the market. Would you care to comment on that?

Oh, absolutely. So one of the things I always— another, again, because I will get a ton of calls on, are my rates too high? Are my rates too low? What should I be doing? The first question I always ask everybody is, is there demand? I mean, are you turning people away? Are people coming to you or is the phone just not ringing? And the biggest mistake I see people make is that they lower rates, not understanding that nobody's seen their rates in the first place, or maybe they're on a back road and nobody even knows they exist. Sometimes, like I say, when I look at it, I'm always amazed that that's the first thing that everybody gravitates to. I can tell you that having the lowest rates, again, if you want to go that route, you better have a way to recoup that or have some type of mechanism in place to get that back up because the guys that are doing that are good at it. They're not going to leave those rates sit there. But to your point, a lot of people feel that that bait and switch is unfair. And I can tell you that what we're seeing is a lot of the large operators, not the publicly traded, are tending to go with more time-limited promotions, 50% off 1 month, 50% off 2 months. I, my other advice I always tell people is if you think price is the issue, do something drastic. You don't have to reduce all the rates on all of your units at your facility. Pick a couple of your most difficult to get to, least rented, You know, one of the things going through acquisitions, I'd go onto properties and I'd see units that had been vacant for 3 years because somebody would just rent the ones around the door, right? You want to run a low rate, cut the rate in half, put it— you do the one that you haven't rented in 3 years, make sure it's that unit, and see if that's the problem. If you didn't get any more rentals this month, that wasn't the problem.

Right.

I—

you reminded me of a conversation I had with a student the other day. Um, he was all excited about a deal, and, uh, we were looking at the competitors, and I said, well, you're, you're $20, or you're $15, uh, less than them, but they're closer to the population. than you are. Are they full? And he said, well, I don't know what they're occupying. I said, no, no, no, you've got these unit sizes where all your vacancy is. Are they full in their unit sizes? And it's, it's getting the students to understand that there's the market within the market. So my storage facility is in a market with 5 others, but so is every unit size.

Right.

And you need to understand what you can, what the occupancy of each unit size is, not your facility as a whole. And then how does that relate to the rate of your unit size, your street rate, your in-place rate, and what your competitors are charging? And by the way, what is their occupancy at that unit size? And within 15 minutes, he called, you know, 2 other facilities, was able to get that, get enough information to realize, oh, They have a ton of vacancy in that unit size. I, I, my performance says I just raise the rates and, and lease 'em up and I'm making 'em, I'm printing money here. But I said, but that's not your market. And just getting him to understand the market. And within 15 minutes he called back, you know, kind of tail between his legs in a good way. You were right. I'm like, it's not about me being right. It's about you learning. Now you want, now you know that's a step in the process. Before we get excited, we're gonna check that. And that's and that's all about having the right right information, the right tools. Now he did that manually. He probably could if he was a StoreTrack customer could have just done it on StoreTrack. So that's the real cost of not having the right tool, right? It's not just time; it's the deal you didn't do because you couldn't get comfortable fast enough, or the deal you almost did because you weren't working with the right information. And I and I want the audience to hear that that. That information exists. You don't have to build it from scratch. You don't have to wing it. The answer to does this market support this deal is findable, and it's findable in minutes, not days, because of of the the data that's being aggregated and disseminated by StoreTrack. So, all right. True or false? A storage facility. in a market with a supply index under 6 square feet per person is generally considered undersupplied. Generally considered undersupplied.

True.

And I gave you that generally because you already alluded to a market at 5 square feet per person. So I didn't want you to get tripped up. That is true. 6 square feet per capita is, is, I think, on the lower end of the rule of thumb here. And you can touch on this if you want. When I got into the business, it was 7. Now I'm hearing 8 to 10 on the national average. Below that, markets tend to have higher occupancy, stronger rate growth, more pricing power, whether you think it's 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 square feet per person. And most first-time buyers have never heard of this number. I know, James, you talk about it on every demo. It's one of the first filters serious buyers use when they Open store track. Um, let's actually, uh, why don't you walk me through what a first-timer does on day 1? Because I want to get tactical here and think this is— I think this is where most people get lost, right? Not in the concept, but in the execution.

Sure.

So you can understand that the market data matters. What's harder is knowing what to actually look at when you open a platform for the first time. So James, you've done I'm sure hundreds of demos, uh, for people who are brand new even to storage, right? I'm sure you've done them for experienced people, but let's, let's focus on the, on the, the new person. Uh, walk me through what you show them. If I'm a first-time buyer and I just got access to StorTrack today, what do I do first? What, what am I looking at? Where am I going? What am I looking for? And what tells me whether I should keep going or move on?

Uh, again, the Really, the quick answer to that is when you're looking at the summary screen, again, you're going to want to look at square foot per capita. But then I want to know, you know, what's the square foot per capita for the market? What's the square foot per capita for— and again, each market's different, you know. And again, especially going back to this is where the The question gets loaded when we say it's 6 square foot per capita. Good. Yeah, it is. But if you have 100 people that live there and it's 6 square foot per capita, I'm not sure it's going to take much more supply. So again, good population density. I want to see, you know, is the population growing? What's happening in the housing market? Is there more multifamily coming? I want to see, are rates trending up? But the real quick answer, obviously, look at square foot per capita. Look at, again, population. Is there enough pop—

Is there a market snapshot?

Yeah.

If I have a specific facility or market in mind, is there— there's a market snapshot? Yeah.

So a quick market view. And even—

what does it show and how— what's a quick way to read it?

It's going to start out with square foot per capita and the total number of stores within that market. And again, you can— the market is defined by either a radius, so you can go anywhere from 1 to 10 miles, or you can do a drive time, 10 to 15 minutes. So if you have natural barriers, like, for example, a river, or you're along a coastline, something like that, then I would use like a drive time because it's going to be more representative of your, your actual market. And then for really densely populated areas, we have a polygon tool. You can actually draw your market. So if you know or have a pretty good idea where your clients are coming from, you can You could set it up that way. But again, define your market. That's the other thing I see people that look at a city or, you know, hey, oh well, how's the market in Leavenworth, Kansas? I don't know. Give me an address because everything is market-centric. That's why I'm always hesitant to, you know, when people put out the national reports or national numbers. Wow. I mean, I can look at a city and I can pull probably 3 or 4 markets that are out of that particular area that are doing extremely well, and I can pull another 3 or 4 that are doing extremely bad. So define the market. That's what I always tell people. So use the exact address.

Let me run through a list here of things for you, and I want you to comment quickly on each one. Right. So these are, these are things I just kind of scratched them down as I was thinking what I would look for as a first-time— obviously I'm not a first-time buyer, but these are the things that I would coach our students to look for. I know you have them, so I just want you to comment on them. All right. So market snapshot, B1, supply index practice. All right. Check. Right.

It's there. Yep.

How to pull it, how to interpret it for a specific market, right?

Yes.

Rate intelligence.

Yes.

Walk-in versus online rates, uh, climate control versus standard, right?

Correct.

All there. How about operators? Who they are, who owns what?

Type of operators.

How many do they own? Type of operator, so REIT or independent. If independent, do I, I find out what else they own? Is it— that data's in there?

Correct.

Or I guess REITs too. How about prospecting tools? What do we have? I want to use it to find deals. Sure. So we just evaluate markets.

We have a discovery tool so you can put in the specific data points you're looking for and you can do that by state. You can do it by the entire country. So for example, if I was looking at square foot per capita, Again, one of the other data points that I would put in there— apologies for that.

No, I think he's looking for deals right now.

Right. He's listening in. But again—

Don't forget to tell him about how to find deals.

Right. But again, putting that population number behind that square foot per capita, Putting in a rate. Let's say I don't want to look at any markets below $1.50 per square foot. You can do that. Or believe it or not, I have clients, they want to look for the worst markets because they feel that that's where the best deal is and there's nowhere to go but up. So anyhow, you can reverse engineer that whole search. So put in your data points.

Can I search by, let's say I'm a supply index guy, I want to be under 7 square feet. I can search for markets Because there aren't some. Okay. How about, um, like, um, so those are opportunities. How about, um, things we want to avoid, like FEMA hazard zones, or, or maybe, uh, places we want to look for, like opportunity zones?

Yeah, so we have filters on the map. So, uh, business opportunity zones, although from what I hear, there's a number of changes coming with those. However, they're there. And believe it or not, I have I know a couple of groups that develop nowhere else or purchase property nowhere else than in those business opportunity zones. So that's literally, they've made them, that is their method.

Yeah, they've got a strategy and they're using StoreTrack to employ it.

And same with the FEMA hazards, we do have, you can easily overlay that on the map. Um, traffic.

You know what I, I, I like about StoreTrack is it— you don't have to have a PhD in data analysis to use it, right? It's, it's doing that for you. All we need to do is ask the right questions in the right order, right? And, and this is a platform that gives us the answers without making us piece it all together from 5 different sources. I'm thinking about my opening, I talked about— because I've been there. With the 6 different tabs open, probably more than that actually. And you're trying to dial in on this and then triangulate that. And you got population, but doesn't— city data, it doesn't cover. It gives me the county, but not the town. And I need to dial into the— so now I'm making guesses and that's a lot for someone new, a first-time buyer with trying to piece all that information together and have confidence because you're the one putting it together. Right. So I think, I think it gives no more spreadsheets. Right. And I think you get better answers if you got, if you have the right questions. So, and faster answers. So.

Well, I really think it's accuracy and up-to-date data. So again, I've, you know, again, talked to operators who collected data 6 months ago or a year ago. All that changes and you have to stay on top of it, especially when it comes to pipeline. What's coming into the market? Is somebody selling because they know they're going to lose market share? All these things really kind of, you know, are things that you should pay attention to. When I got started, believe it or not, going back to the people that got me in the business, it was if you could smell a McDonald's and see a Walmart, That was a winner.

That was dated.

Yeah, different times, different times now. So again, it's, it's, you don't want to make the mistake, but at the same time, use the data, figure out what's going to work. It's there and it's, it's relatively easy. And the late— the next enhancement that we have coming out is there's going to be a Claude integration. And so again, if you don't like the way we display the data, you could just ask it the question however you want to.

I mean, Claude integration is a game changer. I mean, that's— I use Claude probably more than anything at this point. How about what does a first-time buyer actually need? Versus what they don't need yet. Um, I'm, I'm thinking about the structure of StoreTrack, like the membership tiers. And is there, first of all, is there trial, demo, direct signup? Uh, I'm assuming you go to storetrack.com, but what— yeah, so I go to storetrack.com. Yeah, walk me through all that for the first time.

The best thing to do is if you're looking at this for the first time, just set up a demo. Um, uh, again, I had a demo with a large group of data scientists yesterday and they were kind of blown away because it just kept going and kept going and kept going and there's more in there. So, and a lot of people don't know how much is in there. But again, if you're just getting started, some of the groups that use all these sophisticated tools, they're looking at purchasing portfolios. They're I mean, there's things where you can't make, you know, a mistake. I mean, they're going to look at everything with a fine-tooth comb, especially, you know, we work with people on the finance side. They want to make sure they're putting money behind, you know, good, good, good deals. So they're going to look at a little bit more fine-tooth. If I'm just an operator getting into this for the first time, are what we call essential, is pretty good. It's going to give you 24 data points. It's going to give you the search tool. And then I tell people, if you really want to get into it from there, purchase a market report. The market report's going to give you access to everything in the enterprise level. It's just going to be geographically locked to that market. Uh, the next level.

All right, so you— it sounds like you have— it sounds like you have a beginner tier, is that right? Like with, with bundle what I need, with some maybe some menu items if I want to purchase some one-off stuff, is that right?

And believe it or not, um, okay, for— I, I have, I have some fairly large groups running on the what we consider the, uh, essential or the beginner level That I would think you would want more data, but they find that it's enough. So again, it's really just how far do you want to get into it? What level do you want to analyze it? If you're in a heavy market, you're competing against REITs and large operators and you need historical data and you really want to, let's say it's a market that It's a significant investment and risk. You're going to want those additional tools. But for most people, and again, out of those 34,000 single operators, probably don't need all of that. Probably don't even know what to do with all of it.

Yeah, it's data overload. But maybe you're building a portfolio that Someday it won't be data overload. Who knows? It's a great business. True or false, the average self-storage facility changes hands less than once every 20 years. Average self-storage facility.

False.

Oh, it's true, James.

Really?

Now, you might have the data. You might have the data that— Well, I'll tell you about—

I'll tell you the last 3 years, I would have, I would have a hard time buying that one.

Well, it says the average. Now, most of these owned by my mom-and-pops, right? And they— there's storage owners that hold.

Sure, that's true.

When a facility does hit the market, there's always a reason: retirement, estate, debt, mismanagement. The low transaction velocity is exactly why off-market matters and why the buyers who know how to find motivated sellers win every time. But I think that's where this data is coming from. But I would love for you to fact-check me and really what you're doing is fact-checking the pod.

No, thinking about it again, thinking about the total number of single small operators. Yeah, that would make sense because it's the highest percentage.

All right. I got you on one. That's good. All right. No, I understand why you said that because there's been a lot of activity even the last 5 years, right? But the large majority are still single operator, right? Mom and pops have been Right. I've been owning them forever. So, all right, last question, and I want you to, um, I want you to think about this one before you answer. There's a book called Be Your Future Self Now. Have you heard of it? It's written by Dr. Benjamin Hardy.

I have not, but now I'm gonna look.

He was the co-author of Who Not How and 10X Is Better Than 2X that he wrote with Dan Sullivan. I think he's got other books as well, but he, he also wrote Be Your Future Self Now. And it's fascinating. It's actually about, um, MrBeast. You heard of MrBeast?

Oh yeah. Incredible story.

Um, and the idea is, yeah, the idea is that you don't wait to become the person you want to be. All right. You start acting like that person today, uh, right now from where you are. So 5 years from now, James, what are you doing? Not what, what do you hope you're doing? What are you doing? Where are you? What does— if you have a portfolio, what does it look like? What does your life look like? And the question is, that's part A, and part B is where most people struggle. What are you doing right now today to make sure that's exactly where you end up?

So real estate has always been my passion. And again, going back to what landed me in Florida, right? I came down during the housing crisis. I own real estate currently. The one thing I have not owned is self-storage, or truthfully, what I'm actively looking for now is to do something in the boat and RV storage side. Again, because it's something I, you know, I travel. I have an RV that I've got stashed up in Tennessee. So that's summertime, head to Wisconsin, stop in Tennessee. So again, I've always been fascinated with that. And that's just, you know, that's something else that we do as well as we track boat and RV data or boat and RV storage data. So that's really kind of where I'm at. And then the other thing is my kids are— my older kids are into real estate. I've got 2 of them now with getting into their second properties. So again, helping them.

So where are you in 5 years? You own a store? You own a boat and RV facility?

I hope so. Or potentially an RV park.

Not a hope so.

This is not an I hope so.

I haven't found the right piece of property.

But I'm actively searching, right? And I think that's the thing.

The point of the book and the exercise is you have to state where you're going to be and burn the ships, right? That's what MrBeast did. He publicly stated what his goals were and he released them on YouTube in the future. So you're publicly stating to this listening audience where you are in 5 years, not what you hope to be, what you are doing. And then the second part is, what are you doing today to make sure— and it sounds like you want to own a boat and RV facility, is that fair?

Yes.

All right, so in 5 years you own one.

I'm going.

How did we, how did we get there? What are you doing today so that 5 years from now you can tell us the story about what you were doing 5 years prior To own this facility?

Sure. So obviously with, you know, doing research and planning both, you know, financially and, you know, looking at those, you know, planning the area that I want to be in, I think is really the important part. And then again, finding that land. I am— anybody, if you talk to any of my friends, they'll tell you I'm a nut. I was just up in Alabama Memorial Day weekend, went up. I went up.

So you're looking?

Went up, looked at 2 different pieces of property. I haven't found the right one yet, but yeah, active.

Well, that's the answer. This is what you're doing. You're already actively looking today because you have this vision, this goal of owning. Because 5 years from now, when I interview you, we're going to rewind to this moment. We might even have a clip. We'll play the clip.

With any luck at all, Joe, you won't be able to find me in 5 years.

That's even that—that's an even better answer.

That's—that's—that's the ultimate goal.

We'll have to make—we'll make sure we stay in touch. Absolutely. But yeah, no, that—that—that's the answer. That's awesome. So you sometimes you—you know—you don't realize it, but you are doing what it takes, or you have—you have a goal, but you haven't stated it publicly. And—and I think that's important. That's what Mr. Beast did. So. Listen, I appreciate you being straight about that, and that's the answer people are gonna remember. And by the way, that's part of the reason I ask this of every guest is because I want you all to be inspirations to others as well. So here's what I want to leave the audience with. The information advantage in this business is not reserved for the big operators. It never was. They had a stranglehold on it for a little while, but thank God for Store Trek. So What separated them wasn't secret data. It was discipline about using the right data in the right order before making a move. And StoreTrack puts that discipline in reach for every buyer at every entry level. If you're in the research phase right now, if you're sitting on a market and trying to figure out whether it makes sense, go to storetrack.com and see what the data actually says. Don't build another spreadsheet. Don't spend 2 more hours on 6 browser tabs. Get the answer. James. You said, uh, the best way for people to start with StoreTrack is to do a demo first. How can they get in touch with you to do a demo?

Uh, you can go right to the website, storetrack.com, or you can reach out directly to me, james@storetrack.com. You can send me an email. Uh, typically I get back to people within an hour, uh, and I'll send over a link and we can set up a Zoom call. And just see what kind of questions you have, or just have a quick phone call just to see if we can answer some basic stuff for you right away.

What is your tip or trick to help people remember that there's no E in StoreTrack? S-T-O-R-T-R-A-C-K.com.

There's no E in StoreTrack.

You just say there's no E in StoreTrack. Okay. Yeah, there's no I in team and there's no E in StoreTrack.

There you go. Oh, I'd like it.

Every week on Storage Moguls, we're covering the full storage vertical: self-storage, boat and RV storage, pro storage, industrial outdoor storage, truck parking, small bay flex, light industrial— all of it, all for you. So please like, subscribe, and share, and share based on something specific that hit you today. And go check out storagemoguls.ai. Storage 100 is free. It's on YouTube at The Storage Moguls, 106 episodes. The full foundation for buying your first facility. Start there and join us at storage moguls.ai. We'll see you next week.