Four Problems, One Closing: How First-Time Investors Still Won

Setback encroachment, a title defect, a survey and parcel problem, an old septic tank that tripped an environmental flag. That's not a list of reasons to walk away from a storage deal. That's the actual due diligence report on my next guest's very first acquisition. Now, most buyers go through their whole career without maybe even seeing one of those. Our guests today saw all 4 on their very first deal and they still closed. And today we're going to get into exactly how. I'm Joe Downs. Welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. My company has acquired over 20 self-storage facilities and over $70 million in assets across multiple storage niches. I've seen this business from a bunch of different angles now, educated hundreds of students, and learned firsthand who succeeds And why, which is why we built storagemuggles.ai, which of course is an AI-powered community with the tools, the structure, and the guardrails to teach people how to buy their very first storage facility. Also why we launched this podcast so that I could bring you the lenders, the brokers, the industry pros, as well as the real people like my guests, Mike and Stephanie here, who've successfully purchased their first self-storage facility so you can hear their stories and learn this business From them and the folks living it every day. And I am fired up about today's conversation. But before we get to my guest, just 2 quick housekeeping items. One, I've never asked, so it's the first time I'm going to ask, if you wouldn't mind giving this podcast a review and a rating, I'd greatly appreciate it so we can keep spreading the good storage vibes. And speaking of storage vibes, I'm excited to invite you to join us tonight. For the very first Monday Night Storage Show with my co-host, Kristen Blunk, where week to week we will talk about all things storage as well as entrepreneurial. Uh, again, so that's 7 o'clock tonight on YouTube on the Storage Muggles channel. So just go to Storage Muggles on YouTube and click to register if you're not already a subscriber. And then when we go live, you will be notified.

All right.

Mike and Stephanie Vostanik, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

They are first-time self-storage owners as of, has it been a month, Mike?

August 10th.

A month today.

August 10th. Exactly. Exactly a month.

That's correct.

They closed on their very first self-storage deal, Murrayville Self Storage, renamed Murrayville Self Storage. Actually, I hope I remember to, to, to bring that up at some point, which is 110 units in Wilmington, North Carolina. Quick background on you guys, Mike, 34 years in corporate HR, retired in 2024. Stephanie homeschooled her kids. They're a little older now. So the last couple years, I think you were just probably just keeping Mike in line all these years, right? And now runs the day-to-day facility operations for their brand new self-storage, not brand new, but brand new to them. Self-storage facility. Learned how to buy this directly through an education program we actually helped facilitate before launching Storage Muggles. And despite 4 separate legal and title issues on one deal, they closed on and now own their very first self-storage facility. Mike and Stephanie, welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. How are we doing today?

Good.

Joe, great to see you. Thanks for having us.

It's always great to see you guys. I've got, obviously gotten to know you over the last year plus. I'm a big fan. So excited for both of you that you've, you've, You've, you got into your first deal. You were someone that just did everything right, in my opinion. You know, attended all the classes, the education, the calls. I just knew it was going to happen. I knew there was a period of frustration for you, but I knew it was going to happen because you had some, you were close to some others and it just didn't work out. But super excited for you both that you're in your first deal. And I know we're going to get into what's next, but before we do, I know you guys are big fans of this, of this podcast, so, you know, we start with true or false. So true or false, self-storage income has grown faster than inflation every year since 2008.

True.

That is true. Stephanie, was that the final answer?

Yes.

I'm assuming you get final say when you guys are a team in Trivial Pursuit. Okay. That is true. NOI averaged 4.4% annual growth since 2008, outpacing inflation by about 200 basis points a year on average. Okay. So Mike, I'm gonna start with you. You spent 34 years building someone else's HR department. What actually made you decide right around the point where most people are looking at a true retirement? What made you decide that the next thing you built needed to be your own?

Well, good question. Well, 34 years in HR, that's why I have the gray hair that I have, right? So we were fortunate enough that I could leave the workforce early, but young enough that still wanted to stay active and find something for me to do. And I've had my real estate license for quite a few years. I would, while my kids were in private high school, I would sell some properties to pay off some of the expenses and so forth. And, but I know I didn't want to do that in retirement. I didn't want to get into sales and spending time with people. I already had 2,300 people that I was spending time with on a daily basis in HR. I didn't need to have that again, but I wanted to be in real estate. So it just took me a little bit of time, but I was researching the different verticals within real estate and just one night self-storage popped up and it intrigued me. And so I did quite a bit of research on it, shared it with Stephanie. I said, hey, this is something I think that not only can I do, but we may be able to do together because we've always talked about having a business of our own. Even though I spent 34 years in the corporate world, we always talked about that. And this would be an opportunity that we could do that, Number one, but number two is we could maybe involve the kids. Our kids are 26 and 24, and so this may be something for them to get involved with as well. And that would really be fun. And that's a dream of ours. So we'll see if that happens or not. But that's a dream of ours. So we looked into the self-storage. We actually even took a trip out to Arizona to a self-storage academy and learned more information about it last year. Met quite a few people, including you and your team. And we walked away with saying, you know what, this is something we can do, we should do. And that was what, February of 2025?

Stephanie, what was that conversation like for you?

Well, I was all for it right away just because I knew that our experience with the corporate world was not adding to our happiness, to say the least. It's really stressful, uh, really time-consuming, um, and it really doesn't lend itself to, you know, keeping up with your relationships and all that kind of thing. So, um, I knew that Michael would be much happier if he could do something that he could be in control of. And I knew he's always loved real estate. I've always been interested in real estate. And when he came home and said, you know, it's self-storage is the most profitable niche in real estate. I was like, this is great. You know, if we could do this, then I know that he won't have to return to the corporate world. I won't have to return to the corporate world. And I think that we'll just be happier as a result. So I was all for it.

That's right. You had a corporate background, then you homeschooled, right?

Yes. I worked at a big corporation in Delaware for 10 years before we had kids and I, we decided to homeschool them and so, and dedicate myself to that.

And I'm going to come back to that in a second, but I want to ask this first. What was the tipping point that made self-storage the answer over a rent, another rental property or a portfolio of rental properties or even a franchise?

Our age, we just, we're not interested in all the hassle associated with residential real estate. Our best friends actually are in residential and they, they rent prop. They own a local town near us. They've inherited half of the town and they rent it out. And we know what they go through with the tenants, the repairs, the trash, everything. And we said, no way. So when Michael found out about self-storage and he started to explain to me that you don't have any of those hassles with this, you know, vertical in real estate, we just knew right away that this was for us.

So Mike, what I'm trying to remember, did you, you said you went to a self-storage academy. Were you both there? I'm trying to remember.

Yes.

Was it, was it just you? You were both there?

I was there. Okay.

Yeah.

What tipped it from, let's do this someday to we're doing this now?

Well, number one, look at my gray hair. I don't have time. I don't have a lot of time left on my hands, so why not do it now? Right? And for me, it was what I learned there was there's over 70,000 self-storage facilities in the US, and 50% of them are owned by original owners or be called mom-and-pops. Right? And a good amount of those individuals or couples will be retiring either now or in the near future. And so these were great opportunities that I saw coming from the private equity world where you value add. This was perfect for me to be able to go in and get a facility that maybe doesn't have a website, they don't have management software, they didn't give rent increases in the last 5 years, blah, blah, blah. Like I thought there was a great opportunity to be able to go in And get some cash flow, but also have the upside of equity down the road. And that really appealed to me, number one. But number two is, you know, if one person left their unit, it didn't, it was no sweat because I have 109 other units that I could rent out. So everything wasn't based on one person. So if I had a townhouse and one person left, well, there goes 50% of the business. You know, if it was a twin or something. So I didn't want to be put in that situation. I wanted to be able to leverage our time and leverage our resources there. So it really intrigued me to do it and do it now while I think the market is ripe for it.

Yeah, you're 100% on point there. I'm going to tweak your numbers a little bit. I don't know if there's— I have seen people say 70,000. I know there's at least 55,000 to 60,000, but I think the number you're looking for is 70% are owned by mom-and-pop. When I started in the business, it was 80%. Now it's down to 70. I've seen different stats, high 60s, low 70s, but either way, I think it nets out about the same. Stephanie, you've been managing this facility for exactly a month as we've just established. Was there, is there anything about homeschooling that ended up mattering or influencing how you manage the facility day to day?

Yeah, homeschooling is a lot about discipline in your daily routines. And it's the same with this. It's turning out to be, it's just, you know, a morning check-in, an evening checkout, and then you, you know, you schedule pockets of deep work when you need to get things done. And you have to be flexible as well. With homeschooling, you have to be flexible because you never know if someone's going to be sick or if a change in schedule or the family's going to need you. Same with this. I just have to be flexible. If the phone rings when I'm doing something else, you know, I just pick it up. It usually doesn't take a minute or 2 to answer a question or take care of a tenant. And, you know, you just kind of let that roll with that.

So, so it taught you how to be flexibly rigid. Flexibly scheduled.

Yeah, you do. With homeschooling, if you want to have long-term results, you have to do certain things on a daily basis. So you have to study certain things on a daily basis and do that and study them in certain ways. You have to practice your writing every day. So that cumulatively over time you gain skill. And it's just the same with this. Although I think this, this business seems a lot more simple than homeschooling, teaching children how to read, write, think, and everything like that. This is a little bit more straightforward.

I can't imagine how difficult it is to homeschool. I, I, uh, I love my kids. I love spending time with my kids, but there's certainly a certain amount of time where I start to lose my mind and I wasn't homeschooling them. So it's, it's, it's impressive.

I never I never said I had lost my— I didn't lose my mind homeschooling my kids. Sometimes I did.

It might be too soon to say this, but you didn't kill them. So that's a—

Exactly. Hey, and they graduated college, they work, they have wives, they're good.

That's great. All right. True or false? More than 3 out of 4 self-storage operators plan to add AI or automation to their business this year. True or false?

I would think true.

You would be correct, Stephanie. 78% of operators plan to roll out AI automation in 2026. I'm sure that's already been done, by the way. All right, Mike.

Yes.

One of the 4 separate legal and title problems that came up on this deal, which one actually made you think maybe we should just walk away?

Probably the, uh, the setback.

All right.

Walk us through that moment. What, why did you, why did it, like, what, what was happening in real time in your head? Why were you like, man, I don't know about this one?

Well, as you said, we had, we had other issues prior to that and they, they were, they were resolved pretty, uh, pretty quickly. But the setback issue, you know, uh, that was determined back in the 1990s. There was apparently a variance for a setback. And the county did not have any records of it. There was an application for it, but no records. So here we have 3 buildings that are over the 50-foot setback, and if we can't resolve this, we can't operate the business the way that we want to operate the business. Can't just cut off half the building. So we, this was really a key point for us, and thank goodness we had fantastic attorneys. Jason Mandel and Ryan and Cameron did a bang-up job, and they worked tirelessly with the county to come up with a solution. And it took us several weeks to finally come up with an answer. And the answer was they convinced the county, because there was an application in place, they convinced the county commissioner to give us the approval to grandfather us in. Legal nonconforming because the former owner acted on their application thinking that it was approved. And so here's the buildings. What are we going to do now with these buildings? So they said okay, and they wrote us a letter saying that that they accepted the way that the facilities laid out, and they put it in writing. And thank goodness they did that because if not, I don't know that we would have been able to purchase. the property, and I don't know if the seller would've ever been able to sell the property without getting that fixed.

And you know, Mike, I don't know which episode, but I promise you that was covered in the Storage 100.

Yeah, I know. I've watched it twice. Unfortunately, it was after I already went through the setback.

So you got your I dotted and your T crossed.

Yes.

With a letter from the municipality made you feel comfortable and probably the lender feel comfortable that Yeah. Correct. Okay. Um, Stephanie, how about you? Was there any, were there any issues that, that had you in Mike's ear going, I don't know about this?

Um, not really. I, I just, I just had a lot of faith that these issues were gonna be taken care of. Uh, maybe because we did have such bulldog lawyers. I mean, they were, they were so persistent. Um, I knew the setback issue could be a showstopper. If that didn't get resolved, but I was never really worried.

All right.

Funny thing, Joe, was, is that we went through our inspection and our inspector said, hey, I see a lot of facilities. This is in the top 10, maybe top 15% of all Class D facilities that I inspected. You guys got a winner. So we're feeling really good coming out of the inspection, and then we get the survey and we're just getting smacked in the face with issue after issue. Like, Did he just say we have a good facility? Like, but it, it'll work out. But, uh, yeah. Yeah.

I think, I think these issues bothered Michael more than they bothered me, but that's just a personality thing, you know?

Understood. And, and by the way, back to the inspector who's a phenomenal inspector, uh, David Harkness from Fivefold Technology. That's saying a lot if he said this is in the top because he misses nothing. We usually look at his report and go, all right, Dave, come on. Really?

Yeah. The things that came up for us, these issues were things he could have not picked up on. He couldn't have known.

Yeah. Well, no, no, those, those were not his issues. I'm, I'm saying from an inspection standpoint, you know, he, he misses nothing. So for him to say this is, this is a good looking facility, that's, you know, that's, that I sleep well knowing that. Um, yeah.

And Joe, the funny thing is these never came up in prior Surveys. So when the facility was sold 5 years ago, it was never discovered. When the facility was sold 10 years before that, never came up. It came up while we went through this process.

I will tell you that the teams we put together are, I think, a lot more thorough than what I've seen out there. And in the past, certainly. And by the way, that's not uncommon for us to let sellers know, regardless of how long they've owned something, that they have issues with it. And they bought it, you know, on a handshake usually, you know, and then we're, especially we're in the South here and we're dealing in North Carolina.

Yeah.

We've dealt in, in Florida and Georgia and, you know, that whole kind of Southeast. A lot of stuff was just done differently back then and the I's weren't dotted and T's weren't crossed and people, you know, they just operated on, eh, it'll be fine until it isn't. Um, but You know, like I said, we, we, the teams that, that dot I's and cross T's so we can sleep at night and our lenders are happy and we get to move forward without worrying about things. Mike, I said, I didn't directly say this, but I, if anyone reading between the lines could have picked up on the fact that, you know, it took you, it took fortunately slash unfortunately almost a year to get into your first deal, or maybe about a year.

Did longer—

what did that waiting a year, I know you were frustrated, but what did waiting a year, what, you know, did that cost you anything looking back? And, or are you glad that your first deal was this one and not some of the others?

Well, during that first, probably during the first 5, 6 months, we were able to become limited partners in 3 other deals. At the time, so we we weren't just sitting around waiting to finally get a facility. We were actively, you know, networking with with the with the brokers. We're networking with other facility owners and so forth, and we were ready. Fortunately, we had some money to be able to invest in in several projects, and each project was different. I'm excited about each one of the projects. They're in different verticals, and so I think that helped expedite my learning process. By becoming part of these deals. And then I still was participating in weekly calls and the mentor program, and I learned a tremendous amount. And there was a couple other facilities that we almost got, but they fell through and it was a learning process. So I think that year, 13 months of time was well spent. And we have a couple other LP opportunities we're looking at as well. So we're active as investors, but we also want to continue on with owning and operating facilities as well.

So my take on that is, you know, no regrets. Yeah.

Some of the work that Michael did in contacting facilities during that first year are facilities that we have gone to visit, aren't ready to sell right now. But will probably be the first people they call when they are ready to sell, maybe this year or next year. So he's, it was groundwork, laying groundwork for the future that year.

I love that. That's obviously, that's one of the things we preach is go build relationships. These things aren't gonna be, you know, every, every person you meet isn't ready to sell the day you met them. One of the last deals I closed was a 3-year relationship. They don't all take that long, but If you're not out there desperately panicking, just trying to get something done because you entered a program or an education program in a community and you feel like you're pressing it, if you just take a patient approach to it like you did, Mike, and invest passively in other deals because you had the means and desire to, I think you're right. That probably did accelerate your learning curve because you got to see real deals that weren't yours, but you got to kind of shadow them. Um, Stephanie, I'm coming to you on this one because you were the teacher and this might be one of the hardest questions I'm going to ask. So please don't beat me up, but, um, oh, maybe not. Maybe not. You were the teacher. Maybe it's just hard for me. If you had to describe the whole process from the very first introduction to the, the, storage workshop you were at to closing the first deal, roughly that year. If you had to describe that in one word, what would it be?

Progressive. It's a progressive process, learning curve. It's little by little. It all builds a little bit of work every day. built up to a point where we felt we were ready to put a team together to buy our first facility and, and, and comfortable enough that we felt like we could run it.

I, I couldn't agree more. I watched you guys put in the work and I, I think I said this in the, in the opening, you know, not only did you attend everything, you truly, I always preach to people, it's an immersive experience. You need to do as much as you can, absorb as much as you can, read, watch, listen, learn, participate As much as you can, because that's the progressive process. That's a great word, Stephanie. That's why I went to you. That is a fantastic word to describe how you arrive where you arrived. Uh, you guys watched the Storage 100, the Boat and RV one. I mean, you truly immersed yourself in the process. That's what we say from stage. The people that immerse themselves will be the most successful. You guys did it and here you are. Mike, what is the one thing you do faster or different or not knowing what you know now?

Well, probably 2 things. Number one is I'm able to identify and analyze a market very quickly where I want to be. And then underwriting is a blink of an eye anymore. I've gotten very used to doing it. I underwrote so many deals in that first year I got a lot of practice, right? That was number one. But number two is thanks to you and the team. But now incorporating and embracing AI into what we do has been a game changer for us. And things that would take me a couple hours to do, it's 5, 10, 15 minutes and I'm done. I'm moving on to something else. And that, I mean, self-storage already is a passive type business, right? It's not, 40 hours a week doing it. Now I've gained back even more time by using AI. And so it's a couple hours here and there a week. So there's not a whole lot to it, but you got a business and you own real estate. You got, you know, 2 in 1. And I think it really has been a game changer for us using AI. So I do a lot of things faster because of AI. Other than that answer.

Is there, Is there anything you'd say to somebody who's been thinking about it? They've been on the fence and they haven't pulled the trigger or, you know, is there, is there anything, what piece of advice would you give them?

They sit on the fence long enough, it's going to hurt. So why not? I don't think they have anything to lose. Right. And I have a couple of people that I've spoken to about it and I've tried to get them off the fence. But Some people just aren't ready. You know, a lot of people try to overanalyze things. I don't think that you have to overanalyze this. You know, it is pretty much what it is. It's not a, it's a simple business. I don't say it's easy, but simple concepts. There's not a whole lot to it. So I think maybe that's what scares away people sometimes is that, but I don't know. I just think they'll just jump. What do they got to lose?

Totally agree. Totally agree. In fact, what I say, it's, It's not a, it's not a hard business. It's just a new business to you. We don't, we don't launch rockets, but you also haven't done it before. So you have to immerse yourself. You have to learn, you have to do the reps and, and make it progressive. I'm going to keep using that word because it was so good, but that's what you did. You progressively got better because you were putting in the time and the reps and the work. All right. True or false, Mike, the average self-storage facility earns about $16 per square foot in Why could you give that one to Stephanie? It's 50/50 chance you get it right, Mike.

True.

That is true. The national asking rate's about $16.27 per square foot as of January 2026 per Yardi Matrix. All right. Once you actually owned the thing, the facility, what surprised you about what it actually takes to run it day to day? Definitely. So like, what does a normal day of running the front-end calls, tenants actually look like?

Honestly, because of this phenomenal soft, uh, management software that we have called Cubby, it's been so easy. That software is so intuitive. It's, uh, gives you so much functionality. You can do anything you need in there. Um, I can take calls. They set me up with a website. They set me up with a phone system on my computer and on my phone. I can access the software from my phone as well as my computer. So I can be out at the Hobby Lobby and I get a phone call from a tenant who wants to know what their balance is, and I can slide over one screen and hit 2 buttons and give them their balance. And go back to my shopping. It's been really rather easy. And frankly, I've enjoyed talking to the tenants. And so I don't know, it's been pretty enjoyable actually.

It's only been a month, so this is going to be tough for you to answer because you're not even in rhythm yet. I think this would be a better question if I asked it 6 months from now, But give me your best answer or give me your 6 months from now answer if you've already seen where, how you're gonna be more efficient. But how many hours a week or a month do you think you're spending or will spend in 6 months on this facility? Just this one facility.

Daily operations? Uh, no more than 10 hours a month.

10 hours a month.

Unless you're facility gets struck by lightning like ours did. And then you have to deal with a few, a few more problems, but we're working through that too. Yeah. But daily operations—

Better chance of that than winning the lottery.

So. Yeah. Um, that's 10 hours a month.

10 hours a month. Okay.

And she's doing a great job at it, Joe, too. Like I overhear her on the phone and She's just fantastic with it. I mean, she's really comfortable and I think the tenants really appreciate talking to her and provide some good feedback. So I think she's doing an excellent job at that. She was made for it.

Yeah, you've surprised no one who knows Stephanie. I mean, that's exactly what I expected. Mike, you're, as you mentioned, you're an LP in, so limited partner investor passive investor in some other deals. You don't have to get into the deals at all, but I'm curious, how does that experience— I know you said it helped you with buying your first, but how does it change? How does owning your first now, how does that change how you look at those passive investments?

Well, sarcastically, it's a lot easier to be an investor, an LP investor than an owner-operator. You just give your money away and say, okay, I'll see you in 3 to 5 years. So that's not a bad thing when you went through some of the challenges we have, but you didn't, you're not really learning the business. And we did want to learn how to own and operate a business because I think that will help us become better investors down the road. But also if we decide we want to build a portfolio and hopefully someday our kids, as I've mentioned that a couple times now, but if our kids get involved with us as well, Love to be able to, to teach them and, and, and, you know, bring them into the business.

With Murrayville Self Storage, I wanna, I wanna set the scene for, for the listener here. You guys live in South Jersey. Murrayville Self Storage is in Wilmington, North Carolina. Obviously we've established that Stephanie is the day-to-day management, answering the phone, dealing with tenants. I'm not sure who's handling the insurance scenario with the, with the lightning strike and the gate and all that, but I'm sure that's being handled by the two of you somehow in, in some capacity. But how do you handle something local? What, what did you, because I'm sure anyone listening is going, well, how do they do that if they're in South Jersey, which has gotta be, how did you, you drove there, right? How many hours was it when you guys went?

10.

9.

9-hour, 9 to 10-hour drive depending on who's driving and traffic. So you're not doing that often. So you might go there once a year maybe at this point, right? So how are you set up management-wise? When you need local boots on the ground. And tell us about how you establish that, what the setup is, and, and what the arrangement is between the two of you.

Okay. So we knew we needed a boots-on-the-ground presence at the facility since we lived a 10-hour drive away. So we began the process by placing ads for the job on a Facebook, a North Carolina, Wilmington, North Carolina Facebook page having to do with jobs and employment opportunities. And we got quite a few responses. Michael took the responses, he called them all, interviewed them all, and we feel we're very fortunate to be able to hire a young guy who just started his own property management company. And so, uh, Michael, uh, we W-9'd him and, um, gave him, uh, you know, the description of his work. Uh, when we did go down after closing, we had him meet us there. And we trained him in one day on how to do everything that we need him to do. And it's worked out great. On a weekly basis, he does a walkthrough for us using the CUBBY walkthrough feature functionality in the software. And he also will send us photographs and anything else we need him to look at on the facility. Um, and in CUBBY, it's very easy to work with this boots-on-the-ground person because I can go into CUBBY under any unit and type in whatever task is needed for that particular unit that particular week, and it'll show up for him on his side when he does the walkthrough. So that's how we're communicating with him, and it's working out really smoothly.

Okay. So, and you've, so you found this relationship on the Facebook Wilmington Facebook jobs page. You got a lot of responses. Mike, how did you, uh, decide on the, the one you chose? Like what, what about this person jumped out at you? And, and by the way, comment on how many responses you got and did you have a lot of good options?

Yeah. So the nice thing is I have 34 years of HR experience. So this is right up my alley. So interviewing candidates, come up with a list of questions to ask them. Doing reference checks on them, come up with the job description and commission programs and so forth. That just was right up my alley. So it was easy to do. We did have probably a dozen or 15 candidates. So I made several calls. The ones that responded, I interviewed, and I did have a couple good candidates. So if this first one didn't work out, I did have options 2 and 3, but the first candidate just kind of blew me away. He's a really sharp young guy. He was from New Jersey, moved down to North Carolina, and he does have a property management business. And he was looking to take on a couple more clients. Got some tremendous references on him as well, and I just knew it was a good fit. And so I told Steph about it. We invited him over to the facility when we went down there, when we closed and did the transition, met him, walked around the facility, asked great questions. He's very dependable and he's very technology-oriented, which was perfect as well because now he could do all the tasks that Stephanie needed just seamlessly.

That's fantastic. What folks don't understand, and hopefully they do now because we preach this all the time, we talk about this podcast, we talk about it on— we'll talk about it on the Monday Night Storage Show with Kristen. We've spoken it from the stage. You don't have to be local in real estate. We always think We have to be local. 23, 24, something like that. We've acquired storage facilities in my company. The closest one is an hour and a half away. You don't have to be local. You just have to be willing to go there once, at least to understand what you have. Maybe meet the seller, maybe go there twice the first time, and then you don't have to be local from there. I mean, I don't know what your plans are. Maybe you're going to visit once a year. Maybe you're going to visit once or twice in the next 5 years. I don't know, but you really don't have to be local because you With cameras and with local boots on the ground, you can, you can really effectively manage these facilities very well using technology and, and local relationships. Stephanie, true or false? The national self-storage occupancy is well above 90% right now.

I would say false.

That is correct. The national occupancy is actually right now is low. Well, as of September 2025, I should say, it dipped to as low as 82.2%. That's national, which was down from the peak of 95% at the peak of COVID in 2021, which is interesting because Stabilized nationally is more like 85 to 90. So there's actually some room for some growth here, which is also another reason why it's a phenomenal time to get into this business. All right, Mike, you've had a year to look back on this. If your friend, your neighbor, your buddy, your old coworker came to you and said, what's the best way to get started? I see what you're doing. You did it. You closed on your first deal. You said you would, you said you could, and you did it. I want to do this. What would you tell them to do? How would they get started?

I would tell them to do one of two things. Either directly they can go to storage moguls.ai, and on that website there is a YouTube 100 series, and that is 106 days of just the basics of how to own and operate a self-storage facility. It's free. It's everything that you need to know that I wish I had When I got started. I've learned it over time. You can get this and you can binge watch it in just a couple days and you'll have all the information that you need to educate yourself on whether or not you want to do it or not. And hopefully after you watch the 106 days, you'll make the decision to go ahead and pursue it.

I don't know any host that doesn't appreciate you promoting their own business, so we thank you for that. Stephanie, is there any advice you'd give somebody?

Yeah, I would just say the same thing. The support that we have received from the folks at Storage Moguls has been invaluable to us. Absolutely invaluable. We could not have gotten this far and we couldn't have closed this deal without their support and their help. So I would— I'm so glad we did join the mentorship program and we did join the program. and took advantage of it, made the relationships with the mentors. And like I said, the mentors in the program, I give them all the credit for, you know, our ability to close this deal.

So, and listen, I really appreciate you both promoting storagemuggles.ai. Not where we met you. We met you in a, in a different program, but I think your Your advice is sound regardless. Join some mentorship program. Join, I think for anything. I mean, I, I was always a big proponent of, um, you know, get a mentor.

Yes.

Pay for the course, not for the sake of paying for the course, but if you believe there's a, a mentor, a course, a program, a system, a something that is, um, that is not just well put together, but well-intentioned, um, I think it's invaluable because it's not just about getting you in deals. You know, we do, even when we were fulfilling for the old program and we're doing the same thing and hopefully better with storage mobiles, we end up talking people out of more bad deals than we do in helping into good deals. And that's not to say we don't help people into good deals. We do. It's just because there's so many also deals, there's so many pitfalls out there. We end up pointing out and showing people why that would be a mistake or this, that you're overpaying for that, or this, we need to renegotiate this, or this won't work for that reason. Or, so my general advice, which is you guys were very specific and I greatly appreciate it, but my general advice is Find it, whatever you're doing. If it's not storage, fine, but find a mentor, find a program, find what we have tried to create at Storage Mobiles with whatever you want to do is find that program that feels like you're bowling with bumper rails. And that's kind of the tagline I tell people. What's it like? I'm like, well, it's like bowling with bumper rails. You still got to bowl the ball. We're just going to keep you out of the gutter. And, you know, is it going to be a strike, a spare, or, you know, we'll help you with all that. You know, there's certainly the second ball, but I don't, I don't want to, that's, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna tap outta my knowledge of bowling jargon in a second here, so I should probably switch to a different analogy, but you get the point. For, don't take advice from a solid, uh, you know, 900 average bowler either. And I'm, and I'm probably being generous at 100. Um, but, um, all right. Last question for you both. Um, And I know you've listened to this show before, so you know what it is. It's about the book Be Your Future Self Now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy, which is, you know, certainly the beginning of it. And the premise of the book is about MrBeast and what MrBeast did. And he essentially burned the ships. I like to say he was, he was the modern-day YouTube Cortés, right? He, he recorded those videos, he put them out there into the future, but what he did was he put them out in the public domain. He held himself accountable and then he had to go live up to what he said he was going to be in, in those intervals at 6-month, 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year intervals, uh, from, from where he was that, that day as a 17-year-old, which is even more impressive.

Yeah.

So we don't have time for all that. I'm picking one interval and the, and the interval I've chosen is 5 years. It's not too far out and it's not too close. So in 5 years, Mike and Stephanie, Where are you guys? How many storage facilities do you own? What's your life like? And most importantly, whatever that is, that's, that is up to you. What are you doing today to make sure you achieve that in 5 years?

You know, we're going to stay in the self-storage area for sure. We think this is the most profitable area of real estate to be in. We're going to stay in this area. I could see us owning several more facilities or more. I could see us being involved in limited partnerships, several or more. I don't know that we would be managing, personally managing all those facilities ourselves. So maybe we would be involved in some kind of like management outsourcing and that type of thing to make it more manageable. But we're definitely going to stay in this market, in this area, you know, self-storage.

Yeah. And I would echo what Stephanie said. I don't know exactly how many LP opportunities or self-storage facilities we'll have, but we're definitely going to stay active with it. Right now, I've already built up a pipeline of original owners or mom-and-pop owners that have been willing to talk to me. They're looking to retire soon. So I've already met with several of them and I have another one towards the end of the year. So we will be actively Acquiring more facilities. I just don't know what the number is. I think it really would depend on whether or not our children will come into business with us or not. Otherwise, maybe we don't do— I know you're looking for a number. Maybe we don't do, you know, 6 or 7 or 8 of them. Maybe we're only doing 3 or 4 of them because, you know, that's all we want to do as a couple as opposed to a family. But we're definitely going to stay active in it. Uh, it's a, it's a great opportunity and, uh, we think the timing's right.

All right. I, I'll allow your 3/4 of an answer, maybe 90% of an answer somewhere in there. Um, I wouldn't let Jack off this easy, but you guys are a nice couple and I'm gonna, uh, and the other thing is I actually know you're doing the work because you're telling me about the work you're doing. So we're gonna let it slide. You normally, I like a number. So that, you know, you've, you've, you've put that, you've, you've burned the ships, as they say, but, uh, I'm going to let this go. Um, and again, only because I know you're doing the work. All right, folks. They had 4 separate problems on one deal and they closed anyway. And that's not luck. That's what happens when you decide first and figure out the rest along the way, because they knew they had the guardrails. They knew they had the team behind them. They knew the team was assembled. And they knew they weren't gonna make a mistake. And then that's, that's just the nice-to-haves. They, Mike and Stephanie, still went out and did the work and, and there's no replacing that. You gotta do the work and it's not hard work. Mike, you having fun out there?

Yes, we are having fun actually. We are.

Yeah. I, I, I think it's a lot of fun being out in the field, meeting people and seeing what kind of deals you can create from, from sellers who are just looking to find someone to take over Their baby and take it into the future because the average age of these sellers are mid-70s to low 80s and Father Time's undefeated and life gets in the way. And that's another reason why it's such a great time to get involved in this business. Folks, please like, subscribe, and share if you don't mind. And again, most importantly, as I'm learning this whole social media thing is the reviews and the ratings that actually goes a long way. So I know I asked in the beginning and I'm going to ask you again. Um, if you're interested in trying to be like Mike and Stephanie, um, storagemoguls.ai, storagemoguls.ai. And don't forget to join us tonight for our Monday night storage show with co-host Kristen Blunk. Uh, on YouTube, you go to YouTube, look up Storage Moguls. It's our channel. Just hit subscribe and you will be notified when we go live, 7 o'clock tonight, folks. There is a seller out there right now who's ready to sell. So stop watching, start moving. Go drive for dollars. Send the LOI always. And we'll see you next week.