The Drive for Dollars Playbook for Self Storage Investors

6 months after a guy told me to leave his property, he called me. Not his broker. It was him dialing my number because I was the first person he thought of when he decided to sell. And I want to tell you exactly what happened in between, because that's this whole business, folks. I'm Joe Downs. Welcome to the Storage Mongols podcast. My company's acquired over 20 storage facilities, over $70 million in assets across multiple storage niches, and I've learned firsthand who succeeds in this business and why. And that's what drove us to build storagemongols.ai, which by its very name should sound like an AI-powered community because it is. And it's got the tools, the structure, and the guardrails to help you buy your very first storage facility. storage facility. And that's exactly why I launched this podcast. So I could bring you the lenders, the brokers, and other industry pros, as well as the real people who've 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 today I have none of them with me. It's just me, but I'm, I'm somebody too. And I also bought my first storage facility, so I count. And I'm an— I'm not going to go so far as to call myself an industry expert, but I'm out there and I'm seeing, seeing a lot of things in the industry and participating in it. So I think my voice counts and particularly on today's topic, because I think I'm the only one out there championing this cause, if you can call it a cause, this method, this idea, this Really what I call no-brainer, and it's not like I've invented something new here, folks. This is this is just me paying attention. This has been done for decades, and who knows, probably centuries. But somehow the the the art of it has been lost, and it's what I call driving for dollars. So what is driving for dollars? Well, it just means physically driving a market to find. And log every facility yourself instead of waiting for one to show up in your inbox or, you know, someone to call you back from a phone call you made or a letter you sent. And those are all methods that work. I mean, I get deals in my inbox from brokers. We make phone calls and sometimes we get a callback and we used to send letters. We don't anymore. But driving for dollars, Well, that's different. And frankly, knowing what I know now, I don't think I'd ever make a phone call unless I drove first. Me personally. Yeah. We have teams of VAs doing it, but me personally, because I've done it, I've made the phone calls without physically being there first. I much prefer the phone call after I've been there. Even when the owner wasn't there. And that's actually what kind of what I'm talking about. Driving for Dollars has multiple benefits. There's the immediate. If you happen to meet up with a self-storage owner on their lot, on their property, well, there's the immediate benefit. You're talking to the owner. The secondary benefit is when you make that phone call, You now know something about that property. You've been there. And I'll go through the specifics in a second. This is just kind of my opening here for the call, for the, for this show. But you know something about that property because you've been there, you've seen it, and you, you took note of those details. And then one of the other benefits that I'm not going to call it the last, but a third benefit, because there's other benefits. But the third benefit is when you're driving for dollars, You always, always find facilities that weren't on Google. And I'll go through what I mean by that in a minute, but I'm always finding facilities that quote unquote don't exist. And if they don't exist on Google, that means nobody's emailing them. Nobody's calling them. They're virtually untouched. One of the challenges in our business is finding a seller That you can build a relationship with so that you could be hopefully the buyer of that facility when they're ready to sell. They've got brokers calling them. They've got people like you and me calling them. They're getting letters every day, multiple letters a week, multiple phone calls a week. So when they're not on Google, they're not getting that. That's just, it's a virgin territory right there. And if they're not on Google, I would submit they're probably hurting in the marketing department. And therefore, one of the greatest benefits of driving for dollars is finding facilities no one else is finding, including the potential customers. So what actually happened? Actually, you know what? I'm not gonna hit you with 5 true or false today, but I'm gonna throw a couple at you because I love them and I know you've come to expect them. So let's, I have no guests here to answer them, so I'll let you answer them yourself and see if you're right. So true or false? The national street rate for a self-storage unit is around $130 a month. Well, if you said true, You would be correct. The average is $133 per month nationally per the 2026 State of Self-Storage Market Report. So what actually happened in my opening hook there when I said I got a phone call back from a guy who nearly walked me off his lot? In fact, he was walking me out of his office. Well, let me set the scene for you. So I'm down in Georgia, And I was down there to see some facilities we were about to buy. And of course, anytime I'm going down to see something that we have under contract, or if I have an appointment to go see the owner, I am building a trip around it. And that's my driving for dollars. So in my trip that I built around it, and I, believe me, sometimes I'm trying to make advance calls to get appointments, but, and I don't remember exactly what the case was here. I know I did not have an appointment. I was driving by, uh, or I knew that I was gonna go visit this one facility not far from, uh, a boat and RV facility we were buying. So I pull off the road, great location, great visibility. Um, pretty easy to get into. I pull off the road, I pull into it. And, uh, I mean, it's a nice looking facility. So nice, I thought it must be brand new. Fairly large, I'd say at least 300 units, maybe 400 to 500, probably closer to 400 to 500 though. Now I think about it, kind of picturing in my head. So there's an office, and I pull up to the office, and I walk inside, and there's a guy in there with a younger woman. Yeah, not younger, but you know, in her probably 30s. And you know, I get the, can I help you? Because I look like a customer, potential customer. And I say, yeah, hey, I'm Joe Downs. I'm in the self-storage business. I was in town. I thought I'd stop in. And as those words were coming outta my mouth, He went from sitting behind his desk, I think, or just in a chair to, and, and I'm, I remember this cuz I know I took note of what was happening. He got up with the, with, with the gusto. He didn't like bum rush me, but he got up with enough of a, he didn't make a scene either, but he, he got up with enough of a, Intention. Maybe that's the way I'll say it. And the look on his face was basically like, if you asked me in that moment, if we, if we just paused it, the scene and said, what's happening here? You would say, this guy is about to throw this guy out of his office. Not, not like I wasn't physically threatened or anything. It was just, he kind of got up and just had that you and I are walking outside look. And he even like almost put his arm on me. Like it was like one of those gestured behind me, like you and I are walking this way. So naturally I was like, all right, this guy wants me out of his office. This is awkward, but what are you going to do? Right. So, uh, and by the way, this has never happened to me before. Usually people are just beyond graciously nice. And I'll, I'll cover that in a minute. Um, this is the worst interaction I've ever had, which is to say it's not that big a deal. So he's gesturing me out. I, I don't remember who opens the door. We go outside and, um, I said that, you know, I'm still talking and I don't know what I'm saying at this point cuz I'm now paying attention to the, the physically what's happening. And, um, I think I say something like, um, well, look, um, you know, I, again, as I said, I'm in town, I'm buying a facility up the street. Just wanted to see if, you know, you know, whenever I'm in a market, or probably said something like, whenever I'm in a market, I always, you know, like to meet the owners and, you know, just let you know I'm a buyer if you're ever interested in selling. And he goes, ah, I'm not selling for a couple years. So, you know, don't, don't kind of one of those like, don't waste your time here. Right. Okay, fine. You're one of 10 stops I'm going to make. They're not, they're not all going to go great. It is what it is. I'm making mental notes. And as I start to walk away, I say, hey, can I ask you a question though? He said, yeah. I said, did you just build this? He said, no, we built it like 7 years ago. I said, really? He said, yeah, why? I said, because it looks brand new. I'm like, these buildings, the metal buildings, I literally would have thought they were just built yesterday. And he said, Oh, well, that's because I used 7-gauge steel instead of 14-gauge steel. And for all you steel folks out there, if I got that backwards, I apologize. I don't know what he said. The bottom line, he was very proud of the fact that he used a more durable steel. I think I might be right. I think the lower the number is, the— who knows? But he was proud of the fact that he spent up on this steel, which was going to be more durable and last longer. And to his credit, it looked awesome. So what was happening in that moment? And folks, I, I'm, I'll be 100% honest with you. I, I knew and know and have read that you're supposed to, first of all, if you're talking, you're losing, right? You're supposed to be listening. The art of communication is get people talking and you just listen. I know that I've read it. I've whatever. I know that people like to be complimented. I know it makes them feel good. I know that I've read it. I— there's probably 2 or 3 other things you're supposed to do in these interactions that we've all known. We all know, and we've all read. I'm human. I find it hard to put all of those things together and walk in with that disciplined, planned, and then still be your true authentic self. So I'm not doing those things, at least then. Um, what I accidentally did was be my authentic self and just showed curiosity and asked him about his metal buildings and why they look so nice and new. And in that moment, what I realized was I just complimented his baby. I just told him his baby was beautiful and it was the cutest baby I've ever seen. And he was loving it. And the next thing you know, this man who 15 seconds earlier was walking me out of his office, couldn't wait for me to leave his property, now wanted to talk. And so he's telling me about how he built it and when he built it and why he used this and what people told him and this and that. And I was listening. And then in that moment, I sort of noticed, hey, he really liked this guy. 'Cause it was such a, it was such a, uh, the pendulum had swung so far from one direction to the other. Like we were almost best friends 30 seconds after he was walking me out of his office, maybe a minute, but it was such a fast transition. That I couldn't help but notice. And in that moment, I couldn't help but realize all those things I had read that I'd never put into practice, or if I did, it was always unintentional and accidental. I saw working firsthand and it was unintentional and accidental, but it was authentic. I literally was authentically curious. It wasn't A staged question. So in that moment then, as he's talking, and I happened to notice something else, the lights over the doors, and they were different looking. And I was actually curious and I said, well, what about these lights? I've never seen those before in storage facilities either. How well do they work? And you, oh, that was like better, a better question than the metal, the metal siding question. Because those like worked so well. The guy up the street stopped by one day and asked him where he got them because he needs more lighting at night at his, at his not even storage facility at, uh, whatever, whatever the guy up the street has. And he loves, and you drive by, this place is lit up like a Christmas tree and they're LED lights. So they cost less than this and this and that. This was, I couldn't ask this guy 2 better questions, right? When we're all said and done, 10, 15 minutes later, after I hear his whole story about building this whole facility and every part and piece he used and every naysayer and this and that. And I, you know, I, I, of course now realizing this new superpower I've had this whole time, started to use it a little bit there. When the, when the conversation wrapped up, I said, all right, well, you know, let's appreciate your time. Hey, love what you did here. Good luck, right? I was still walking away defeated. And he said, hey, listen, I'm actually probably 6 to 9 months away from selling. I got a partner. It's my brother. I don't know what we're going to do. We're going back and forth. One of them wants to keep, one of them wants to sell. I said, oh, I just figured maybe it would go to your daughter. Because I assumed foolishly that the woman inside, because I think I also witnessed him talking to her and it, it almost seemed like a father-son conversation or father-daughter conversation. And I said, oh, I would just, I just thought that was your daughter would just take it over. And he said, no, that's, that's, that's an employee. She's going off to school or she's going off to marry or moving outta town, something like that. And I said, oh, okay. Um, and he said, well, just, I'll make you a deal. Don't bother me and you'll be my first phone call. I said, okay, deal. I mean, I, I was walking outta here defeated, never, probably never bothering you again. So if you call me, you call me, it's a win. I'm, I don't know, 6, 7, 8 months later, I'm on stage at an event where I'm teaching folks self-storage and my phone's ringing. In my pocket and it's ringing again. I'm like, you know, I'm like, my wife and kids know I'm, I'm on stage. Who's calling me? My employees know, my partners know. Like, who is calling me right now? But I obviously I'm on stage. I'm not answering it. And I get off stage and I look at my phone because it was like 3 phone calls in a row. And I look at my phone and it's all from this Georgia number. And I listened to the voicemail and sure enough, it was, I don't remember his name now, Bob, I think. It was Bob from, you know, whatever highway number self-storage. And he's reminding me of the conversation. I mean, this is maybe 9 months. He's reminding me of the conversation, which one I'll never forget. And sure enough, he's calling me to say, hey, it's time. Let's do a deal. Now, we didn't buy that facility. Why? Because He wanted more than we could pay. And I'm not saying what he wanted was wrong. I know he probably got it. He was a bigger facility. He probably had a lot of competition for that facility. Um, we just couldn't see eye to eye, but that's not the point of the story. The point of the story is I wa— I turned a, you know, a scenario where I was getting thrown out of somebody's office, not Physically, it wasn't, you know, wasn't that bad into— I was the first phone call and I was the first phone call before they listed it. So if he and I were going to do a deal, if we could see eye to eye, it would have been an off-market deal. He went and listed that property. That's why I'm pretty sure he got his number. But look at the power of that, just building a relationship through Just me being curious. But if you're not curious, you can go in with a plan. Just go in with the idea that you're going to compliment something about that facility, about them. People like to hear themselves talk. They like to be complimented. And when you compliment them, you become in their eyes, one of their new best friends. Because you were saying things to them that activate all the right kinds of dopamine in their body. I'm not telling you to be deceitful. I'm not telling you to be inauthentic. I was authentic because I was genuinely curious about the metal on a side of a storage building. Why? I'm not even, I'm not a metallurgist. I don't, I'm not even a builder really. Right. Yeah, sure. We develop properties, but I'm not even the guy that's onsite overseeing it. But I'm just curious. I'm curious about things. And I guess I've become a storage nerd, but that curiosity led to authentic questions. And those authentic questions led to all kinds of dopamine in this, this seller's body. That turned a scenario where I might as well have been trying to sell him an ad in the Yellow Pages. I turned a scenario that was awkward where a guy was throwing me out of his office into I was his first phone call, right? When it came time to sell and all because I was just curious and I complimented him and I had a conversation with him. About something he accomplished. He built this. This was his baby, and not about what was good for me. When are you ready to sell this facility to me? That was it. That moment, I had been teaching people for a while now—not as well as I as I should have been—about how to find ways to bridge that gap, that awkward gap. If you think about it, whether you're sending a letter or making a phone call or. Showing up in person. We're technically weirdly in sales. We are selling something. We are selling the idea that the seller should A, want to sell in some cases, and B, want to sell to us. It's the weirdest sale ever. I'm trying to convince you to sell to me. I have no product. My product is me. Now look, a sales, top sales strategist would say, nah, it's not true. You're selling them a better life on the other side. Yeah. Okay, great. They still need to determine when the time is right for that. Sure. You can go convince somebody to do it. I'm not going to teach people to go out and try to convince every self-storage owner that they should sell to them now. I think that's— I think that's a complete waste of time. I think a better use of time is to go build relationships. That one took 5 minutes, maybe 10. Well, I guess all in probably 10 to 15. It took about 2 to turn it, about 15 total. And it lasted for 6 to 9 months or 8 to 9 months or however, whatever the distance was between that conversation and the phone call. I think that's a much better strategy than just trying to convince somebody or find out even, because we're not, we're not convincing. Let's be honest. We're just asking and begging. Is now the right time? Is now the right time? Are you ready to sell? And that's step 1. Step 2 is, is it me? Can we see eye to eye on price? It's just when you, if you do it the way I'm telling you to do it, And it starts by driving for dollars. I'm going to get into that. It eliminates the first part. We don't so much compete for these relationships anymore, for these transactions. They're still competing. I'm not saying it's eliminated, but we don't do it as much. We are much more collaborators now on how the transaction is going to go down. When you develop a relationship, you're a collaborator. Otherwise it's just transactional. And of course you're competing. Hopefully it's enough reasons you should consider it. Here's how you do it. Pick your market first. I can't get into how you pick your market in this episode. We cover it in storage moguls.ai. There's free information up there. There's information, uh, in our community. You can, you can join the community. You can become, you can, um, become a member, learn the system, learn the process. Um, storage moguls.ai, it walks you through how to, how to pick your right market. But once you've identified the right market, You're going to look at all of the storage facilities in that market. We're going to toss the REITs right out. All right. By the way, do I need to qualify this? This is for folks who are looking to buy $400,000 to $2 million self-storage facilities, right? If you're listening to this podcast and you work for CubeSmart, obviously you're not throwing the REITs out. But if You are more like me. You're a frustrated real estate investor. You got into single families and you're tired of the headaches. You're a 9-to-5er looking to get outta your job eventually, or just pick up extra cash flow on the side, build generational wealth. Maybe you make a ton of money and you're looking for tax-advantaged investing. This is, I'm speaking to you. So we're going to look at this market. In fact, I did this recently where my daughter goes to college. I dropped her off. She's a dancer down at JMU. I had to go down there. This is before college started for a weekend, drop her off. I got nothing to do. So I'm either twiddling my thumbs, playing golf, or I'm driving the market for storage facilities. And I already admitted I'm a storage nerd. So what do you think I did? First, I drove the market for storage facilities, then I played golf. So I hit about 12 storage facilities on a Saturday, about 4 hours. Had I been more prepared, I would've gone a little earlier. I didn't go out until 10, 10:30. I honestly didn't know I was even going to be doing this. I just did this all last minute on a whim. So what do you do? You, I look at that market, there's 20, 25 storage facilities. First thing we do is throw out all the REITs and any other institutional players that we know of. I want to get it down to the independent operators. Why? Because that's who I'm really going to have the most success with, right? I want the mom and pop. I want the guy that owns 1 or 2, right? So that list, I think, was whittled down to about 12, and then I grouped them geographically. Now I have no meetings going into this trip. Sometimes we try to, we have a target where I'm going to see that one, or, uh, or I have a specific meeting. They're expecting me on a certain date at a certain time. I didn't have that. And that's okay. It's a little more efficient if you can try to call ahead, say you'll be in the market, you know, having it, having to do it over again. I probably would've either had somebody call, say, hey, Joe Downs is gonna be down in Harrisonburg. Can he schedule time with you? That probably would've been a better trip if I had started on a Tuesday or Wednesday planning it for Saturday. I didn't, and yet I was still successful. So ideally call ahead, try to plan appointments. If you get the appointments, you plan your trip around it. If you don't have any, I grouped it geographically, right? I went south of Harrisonburg first, then I think southwest and then north, and then golf was the other direction. So I had to build my route. I had the list. Um, I take a recording device. I record everything these days. Uh, so many reasons for it. Obviously, uh, we live in the world of AI now. AI is incredibly powerful, incredibly helpful, especially if you feed it all the context you possibly can, which is what you get when you record. Plus you're driving. So I'm driving for dollars. So I'm, I'm on my recording device, every facility. And by the way, every facility gets its own recording. So 123 Main Street, um, you know, here's the name of it was what the sign says. What do I see from the outside? It's gated. It's not gated. There's lighting. There's not lighting. The gate's open. The gate's not open. There's a keypad. The keypad's on the outside. The keypad's on the inside. Whatever it is, I'm just calling it out. Like, uh, like I'm play-by-play, you know, in a game. I'm just calling everything out. Most of these facilities, the gates were open. By the way, that gets noted. So now I'm driving through the facilities. Why? Because I can, because the gates are open. And I'm a prospective customer seeing if I want to store here because my daughter goes to school here. And guess what? Between the end of the school year and the beginning of the next, folks, maybe for the first time ever, will say, I might have to rent a storage unit. So I'm a prospective customer, just driving the area, driving the facilities to see where I might want to rent. In either case, the gates are open. I'm driving through. So I'm driving through and I'm calling out what I see, you know, a lot of overlocks. No customers on a Saturday, beautiful day. Nobody here. I mean, there was one facility, there was no gate, no anything, and no customers there. And it wasn't looking too good. And I, you know, I could kind of see why customers weren't there. Customers being there or not is not necessarily a sign that it's, it's busy or a good facility or not, but it, who they are, what they're doing, especially when units are open, you kind of get a feel for it. Yeah. So, and you know, it's Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon. I would, odds are there's activity there. There should be activity there. So these are all the things you do. You drive, you dictate the notes. You have a really good feel for it. Why do you do all that? By the way, I'm looking for an owner first and foremost. First facility I went to, by the way, I got an owner and only one other one. So out of 12, I only talked to 2 owners. Um, when you do talk to an owner, by the way, plan on being there for 30 minutes. Um, not always, but if it's going well, you're going to be talking. You might even walk around. I think I was there for 40 minutes. So my first one zapped a lot of time, but it was a very good one. I learned a lot about him. Um, by the way, at the end of that conversation, he said to me, if I ever need any help with my daughter, cause I'm 4 hours away, just give him a call. He could help her with anything she needs. Guy just met me 35 minutes earlier. He's offering to help me. That's the more normal conversation you have with self-storage facilities. The opening hook story I told you about, that's the outlier. Normally they're as friendly as can be. It's maybe the greatest of all. It's the greatest collection of owners of all. Commercial real estate asset classes. I promise you, it's not multifamily owners because I promise you they're more miserable. Why? Because they have to deal with people who live there. Self-storage facility owners, all we get are sometimes some crazy wacky stories. Really fun, nice people though. Greatest collection of people. So my experience was more was with him was more like what I expected, um, offering to help me with anything I should ever need in an emergency with my daughter. Um, anyway, so I leave there, I drive the other facilities, and I want to tell you, I want to spend more time on the other facilities, not so much on the conversation I had with that owner. Because the conversation I had with that owner, you don't know where they're going to go. He's, he's on the now to 2 years. He's gonna sell. I'll stay in touch with him. He's got some hair on his deal with some very unique situation there that he hasn't fully processed in his head that the way he thinks this is gonna go down isn't gonna go down. And he just needs, he needs to get through. He's gonna need some time to understand this is not gonna happen this way, the way he's, the way he's gonna sell this thing. And he'll have to come to that realization on his own. I'm not going to help him to it because I'll look like a bad guy doing that. It will put strain on our relationship if I do that. So I'm not going to do that. He'll need to come to that realization on his own. But what, what's more important that I want to share with you about Driving for Dollars is, and I, and I, I said this in the beginning, now I can make phone calls that no one else can make. So anyone listening, feel free to pick up the phone and call any storage facility in Harrisonburg, Virginia. All right. Call them. Go ahead. I don't care. It's not my territory. I was there. I don't think your phone call is going to be as good as my phone call though. And I'll tell you why, because I know that no one else can know. Because I, I drove every facility and I dictated notes about every facility and I have them all recorded. And I can take that recording and I can put it into AI and I can say to AI and load up all the information about the facility. And I can say, tell me how I should structure this phone call when I make the phone call to this owner. What does that mean? Well, I'll give you an example. There was one facility. I don't remember the name. Call it, uh, Bob's Mini Storage. And I pull up to it. It's in 2 sections. One section is, is gated, fenced. The other section is not. It's open to a business park. The fence around this place is a really beautiful white picket fence, including the gate. The gate is a white picket fence. Not a tall one, by the way. This thing, this white picket fence is 4 feet tall. So it's not really much of a security fence. And the gate is the same fence, but the gate is not electronic. It's, it's on these, it's on wheels, but it's manual. So that means someone has to open that gate at whatever time in the morning and close it at whatever time at night. And I also noticed that there, the facility was on 2 different levels. There's an over-under. I noticed there's an office, but not an office anybody works out of. And I dictated all this in my notes. And by the way, by dictating all of my notes, I remember it all. I haven't looked at my notes or heard them since. It's been 3 weeks, but I still remember it all. So now you, the listener, you go to make the phone call to Bob's Mini Storage. Even if you're a Storage Moguls member and you've gone through all of our coaching, the way you're making that phone call Can't possibly be as good or with the angle that I'm making the phone call. Because I know things about that facility you don't. I can have a conversation and bridge a gap with that owner so fast. You can't. And I don't— I hope you're not taking this the wrong way. This is not a competition, me versus you or me better than you. I'm just illustrating a point. Had you been the one to drive those facilities in Harrisonburg, dictate the notes, you would have the upper hand in that conversation, in that competition as to who could potentially build a relationship with that seller and maybe buy that facility someday. I'm just illustrating a point here. And if you say, well, so what? You know about a white picket fence? You can see that on Google. Sure. But do you know it's not Automatic. Do you know where the office is? Do you know it has a window? Do you know the other part of the facility isn't fenced and gated? And do you know it's in a business park? Do you know someone has to open and close that gate in the morning? I get to call and say, hey Bob, I was, I was in Harrisonburg. My reason is because I dropped my daughter off. Your reason is whatever the reason you were in Harrisonburg is. Harrisonburg. I get to say, I dropped my daughter off in Harrisonburg. I own storage facilities. I was driving around. I noticed, I love the white picket fence on your storage facility. You're the only one in the, in the market with that. Does that help you get customers? I mean, it's a, it's a nice looking feature. I'm now having a conversation about his baby, complimenting his baby that no one else is. I stand a much greater chance. The odds of me growing that, that relationship versus everyone else now that calls or sends letters are astronomical compared to anybody else. I've been there. I've taken the time. I'm complimenting. I'm in the business. We're just, we're just 2 peers now having a conversation about his baby. We're 2 parents talking about parenting. We're on the same level playing field. I'm not trying to steal his kid. I'm just complimenting his baby. If I'm going to continue down this analogy, and I don't know why I am, because it's kind of a good one, but kind of a weird one, but I'll do it anyway. Since we're talking about kids and babies, if we were out in public and he said, and he had to run away from his kid or whatever, go do something. He's going to look at me versus a stranger and say, hey, can you watch my kid? He's going to ask me to watch his kid. All right. And that's a kind of a weird analogy and maybe it doesn't land exactly, but you get the point I'm trying to illustrate. I have an advantage nobody else has now. That's why you got to drive for dollars. It makes those phone calls so much easier. So number one reason, you might accidentally meet an owner and have a face-to-face conversation. Amazing if you do. Number 2 reason, just as important, because I only talked to 2 out of 12. So that means I got 10 phone calls, 10 powerful phone calls versus 10 cold calls. I got 10 power calls. Let's call it that. I have 10 powerful phone calls I can make. Someone else has 12 phone calls. And if you look at it that way, I have 12 powerful phone calls I could make because I talked to 2 people in person. Versus 12 cold calls. It's a game changer. It's night and day, folks. It's not even close. No one likes to cold call. You are listening to someone who has cold called more than 99.99% of people in the world. That's not true. There's a lot of people in India and Pakistan that are probably making cold calls. And there's a lot of them. All right. More than 99.99% of people in the United States. How is that? I promise you, I've made more cold calls from my old days when I was young and making 300 cold calls a day at American Express Financial Advisors. I can cold call. I hate cold calling. If I hate it, I know you do. I don't even like powerful calls. I'd much prefer an in-person call, an in-person face-to-face conversation. But I will take that powerful informed call every day of the week and twice on Sunday over a cold call. I would be totally fine just making those powerful phone calls versus a cold call. And the only way you get to do that is by driving for dollars. And again, it's because you get to see everything, gate, no gate, manual rolling gate versus automatic gate, fence condition, signage. An obvious but unlabeled office, sections of the gate that are missing, um, everything around it. What's across the street? What's good for business? What's bad for business? There is no substitution. Google is great. It is nowhere near as good. Plus, how old are the images on Google? You never know. All right. So recap, plan the trip ideally in advance, make some cold calls if you can. How does that go? Hey Bob, I'm going to be in Harrisonburg, Virginia, dropping my daughter off at JMU. I'm going to be visiting some— I have some appointments at some other storage facilities. Do I? No, but I'm planning on it. He doesn't need to know that. Is there a great— is there a good time to meet up with you? I'd love to see your facility. I love this market. Love to meet you. Love to get some advice from you about this market. That call could go any which way, including he sets the appointment. It could be, I'm never at the facility. No return phone call. No interest, no time. It could, it doesn't matter. Make those calls first. You could go 0 for 12. Fine. Saturday, get up and drive it. Get there Friday night, whatever town, go to a town an hour away from you, 2 hours away, make a fun trip out of it. Take your wife and kids. If you have them, take your spouse, take your significant other, whatever. Go alone. I was alone. Plan. Plan doesn't work out. No big deal. Just go do it. Because the result will be, at the very least, if I talk to nobody that day, the result will be 12 powerful phone calls I can make that weekend. I promise you that will lead to 2 to 4 relationships, maybe more. And if you continue to call them, because you won't get all 12 on the phone, if you continue to keep them in your rotation, you keep those notes and you keep your, this is how AI said to make that phone call, because you will forget if you, 6 months from now, you might forget all the details. You keep that. You keep that. That's why that voice recording, don't forget your voice recorder, whatever it is. There's a lot of great AI ones as well. If you, you keep that recording, you were always in a powerful position to make that phone call. And then again, the last reason is the gold nugget, the one that doesn't show up anywhere. I said, I saw 12. I planned to see 11. There was one that didn't show up. Now, nobody was there. I didn't talk to them, but I have all their information. I know they're not on Google. I've done the research. I'm trying to reach out to them. Right? So I've got, I had my 11 and then I had my bonus. There's always one bonus unless you're in a major market, which I don't, you're not doing this in a major market. You know, I live outside of Philadelphia. I wouldn't do this in Philadelphia. Right? I, if I wanted to do this in Pennsylvania, I would have, I would drive to Harrisburg, not to be confused with Harrisonburg, Virginia. It's confusing for me, but I would drive out to Harrisburg or Carlisle or Lancaster, PA, where I would go north to the Poconos, right? Those would be my hour-ish to 2-hour drives, right? Here I was 4 hours south in Harrisburg. And by the way, there's 25 places I could have gotten off Route 81 on the way south and gone into those towns. So there's no shortage of towns you can go to. If you're willing to drive for dollars, and there's no shortage of them within. I'm sure there's some exceptions to this, but most of you live within four hours drive of plenty of markets. Go spend the night, and by the way, four hours you could go drive for two three hours and still make it home the same day if you don't want to do spend the night. All right, true or false? To the top self storage REITs. More than 9 out of 10 units are currently rented, which means 90% occupancy. Answer's true. Extra Space Storage ran 92.6% same-store occupancy in Q4 2025, the highest of any major REIT per the report. So occupancy's up. Self-storage, we had a rough couple years, relatively speaking, to the rest of the years in self-storage. 2023, 2024 bled into 2025. 26, but pretty good. 27 is looking really good. Folks, you know how I like to end the show. I always ask this question. I don't have a guest to ask it to. So I want you to ask yourself, you're familiar with the book by now, if you've been a listener, if you, if you aren't, you should read the book, Be Your Future Self Now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Beginning of it anyways, about MrBeast. And what MrBeast did to become the most famous person on the planet. And all he did as a kid was what Cortez did. He burned the ships. He had the world hold himself accountable by recording 4 videos and posting them in the future on YouTube. And what do those videos say? Basically, he said to himself, self, in 6 months, in 1 year, in 5 years, and in 10 years, that's the 4 videos. That's when they were released. I better be doing this. He set goals for himself. And then because he did, because he, he had the world, YouTube world, hold himself accountable, he started acting today and doing today the things that he would need to do to achieve those goals. And what was the result? He absolutely annihilated those goals. Every single one of them. Way ahead of time. So if you want to own a storage facility, and I would think you do, otherwise you're only listening for the sound of my voice, then what are you doing today? What are you doing right now to make sure in 6 months, in 1 year, in 5 years, in 10 years, you own not one, but many storage facilities or as many as you want, as many as meet the goals of your life and your objective, right? Whatever those goals are. Whatever has you listening to this podcast, I submit to you, the single best way to do that is to drive for dollars. You do it every weekend, you will crush your goals. You do it once a month, you will still probably crush your goals or at least achieve them. Folks, there's a seller out there right now who's ready to sell. They're just waiting for you to show up on their lot. Stop watching. Start moving. Go drive for dollars. Always send the LOI. We'll see you next week.