Mastering Self-Storage Investing and Personal Growth with Alex Pardo

And I said, right under my nose, this asset class has been here. Cash flow, time freedom, no tenants, no toilets. Like I can go on and on. And I said, why am I screwing around with single family, especially wholesaling single family? At that point, Shona, I was like, I was too in my head about, eh, it's a big asset class. I don't have millions of dollars to start buying storage facilities. That was my limiting belief.

Welcome to the She's Got Assets real estate investing podcast. I'm the host, Shona Lepis. Follow along as we unpack and demystify real estate investment strategies through expert interviews and personal experience. From how to find off-market deals to creative financing to long-term and midterm rentals, we aim to educate and inspire others to gain financial freedom and generational wealth through real estate. And as always, please subscribe so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate reviews. It helps others find us and just helps us get found. Hey everyone, uh, welcome to the She Caught Assets Podcast. I'm the host, Shona. Lepus. I'm super excited to have Alex Pardo on. I can't wait to like nerd out about self-storage and real estate. We met at a Carrot Camp that was amazing. Shout out to Trevor and the whole Carrot team. Really just inspiring. I always feel like energized when I come back, meet amazing people. So, um, Alex, thank you so much for, um, coming on today. Um, I'd love to just a nutshell version of where you came from. I know you in self-storage, I know you're a big advocate and we can dive into all those details.

Yeah. Yeah. Shona, Noah, thank you for the invitation to be on your show. I have, I've probably complimented you 27 times about this, the name of your show, She's Got Assets, which I absolutely love and think is brilliant. So from a branding and marketing perspective, but yeah, you and I shared several car rides in Carat Camp and just instantly struck up a friendship and just had some really good conversations. So I'm excited to chop it up with you on the show here. But yeah, no, listen, I did come from a family of entrepreneurs, born and raised in Miami. My parents came from Cuba when they were young kids, but I always had something inside of me that wanted to create something big with my life. I wanted to impact, was always something that I've been driven by. I feel like I have a heart for service and just genuinely want to see people like, like I root for people to win and I want to see people thrive and I feel like I've had this entrepreneurial gene and fire inside of me, but when I got to college, something tamed it and I ended up getting a job with General Electric and their financial management program. Did that for a couple of years. And one of the things I've always shared with people is that I'm not good at a lot of things, but there's a few things I'm pretty good at. And one of them is getting clarity about what it is that I want and then reverse engineering my way to figure out how to get there. And when I was in that job and I saw my boss and then I went up the ladder, I said to myself, I don't want that job no matter how much they pay me. That's not the kind of life I want. And yeah, no, I just, I finished that program. I went backpacking around Europe for 3 and a half months. And it was when I was on those trains is when I immersed myself into the personal development classics. I started learning about real estate. So I ended up going to a Marketing for Deals bootcamp. When I got back from that trip and plucked out one of the letters from the manual, a pre-foreclosure letter, sent it out and started my first, my first foray into real estate. My first deal ended up making $44,000, which I split with, with a partner because I was too scared to take it on by myself. And that's a whole nother story. And that was in late 2005, early 2006. And I haven't looked back ever since.

Awesome. Yeah, I, it's always funny how we get into this. I love real estate. I think you can, come into it from any background, right? That's the beauty of it. Okay. So I know to make a quick turn here, I know you were, and I have a bit of a soapbox about wholesaling and flipping.

Yeah.

So I know that you got started in that. I'd love to, and I know then you transitioned to self-storage, which I think is like a super sexy asset class. I'm afraid after this I'm gonna want to jump into self-storage.

Okay.

A little worried about that.

Be careful. You You might want to cut me off, Shawna. I don't know.

I know, but I just, yeah, we all get into this for time freedom and rental. Yeah. So I know you have a lot to say. I'll just let you take it from there.

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think, let me start with one of the biggest mistakes I feel like I've made in my career. So I got in real estate in 2005, right? So almost 20 years now that I've been in the game. And I want to say one of the biggest mistakes, and I want to share that because I find that oftentimes people hide their mistakes. And I tend to put a spotlight on them because I learned from hearing other people's challenges and lessons learned. So I want people to learn from mine, but I got into real estate. You nailed it. Time freedom. I wanted to generate cash flow and build wealth, and I wanted options. I wanted to be able to do what I want with my time. And that's one of the most, if not the most valuable commodity. And yet what's interesting is that I spent the better part of 16 years playing the wrong game. I was chasing deals. I was going from transaction to transaction, wholesaling, fixing and flipping. Wholesaling was always my bread and butter. And while I don't look back with regret, I do wish I would have been a little smarter about playing the right game. And what I mean by that is I made a lot of money wholesaling throughout the years, but I remember in 2017, 2018, I was on a cruise with my wife. And it was kind of like a defining moment for me. I had that point, I had built a team of, I think I had 8 or 9 people on my team at that point, maybe a little less. And, and while I wasn't the one wearing all the hats in the business, I was putting out a lot of fires from like a management perspective. And I remember a lot of challenges, deals were falling out of contract, people were going around our back, trying to poach deals from us. And I said, I told my wife, I said, something has to change. I feel like I'm playing the wrong game here. Right. Not only am I getting taxed at the highest bracket, but I'm just, I was starting to get burnt out from chasing deals. At that point, I think we were doing north of 50, 60 deals a year, nothing too crazy. But I remember my, in 2019, my overhead ballooned to about $40,000 to $45,000 a month. I had to close 2 deals a month just to break even, just to keep the lights on. And at that time I was coaching a gentleman who owned a storage facility. And I got an inside look into what an incredible asset class self-storage is. And I said, right under my nose, this asset class has been here. Cash flow, time freedom, no tenants, no toilets. Like I can go on and on. And I said, why am I screwing around with single family, especially wholesaling single family? At that point, Shona, I was like, I was too in my head about, eh, it's a big asset class. I don't have millions of dollars to start buying storage facilities. That was my limiting belief. And I'll come back to that. So I ended up starting to buy rentals in Cleveland, Ohio, in the Midwest part of the country where you don't necessarily experience a lot of appreciation, but the cash flow is pretty steady. And it took about 3 or 4 rental houses to then quickly realize if I want to generate X amount of cash flow and I really want that time freedom, I just quickly saw similar to the job I was in, in General Electric, when I looked at my boss, Like for me, this isn't going to be the way to go. It takes too long. There's nothing passive about being a landlord. I even had a property manager in place, but I had to manage them. And so just a couple of months ago, I sold off my last single-family rental and it was in 2021, end of 2020, beginning of 2021. When I, after shutting down the wholesaling operation, I, I just completely pivoted and transitioned 100% into self-storage. So I'll pause there.

No tenants, no toil. Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah. Look, no, I'm allergic to rehabs. I do not enjoy rehabs. I've done quite, quite a few of them. I don't like it. With storage, the rehabs, what we call CapEx in commercial, capital expenditures. What are we talking about in storage? We're talking about, for the most part, concrete buildings with metal doors and metal roofs, and all we do is rent space. Right? So we don't have plumbing, we don't have, we don't have all the stuff we have with single family and multifamily. And so while it's a sexy asset class, it's a boring business. And there's so many benefits that I wish I would've known earlier on that I know now. But it's just a simple business. And, and I think that's the biggest thing, Shona, is that the wholesaling operation that I built— are you there?

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. My screen like flashed somewhere else and I completely lost you. But the wholesaling business that I built, Shona, wasn't really a business. If I'm being honest with you, like when I exited that, I wasn't able to sell the business. Now I sold off assets of the business, lists, domains, things of that nature, but I wasn't building a business. Storage is a business. It just has the benefits of real estate. Right from depreciation, appreciation. Like I just did a, a cost seg a couple years ago, a cost segregation study on one of my facilities, saved a bunch of money on taxes. Like it is a legitimate business, but I don't have all the headaches that come with single family and in some cases multifamily. Like you said, no tenants, no toilets, no long-term leases where I'm locked in. And here's the cool thing about storage and commercial in general, we can force appreciation. And what I mean by that is that in commercial, the value of the asset is dictated by the net operating income, the income the asset produces. We can do simple things like rent raises every 6 to 9 months, and we can force the appreciation. We can increase the net operating income, which increases the overall value of the facility. So again, I'll pause there because I could go on and on about the benefits, but it's, it's just one of those things that I didn't take the time to learn the asset class because of limiting beliefs. I thought years ago that I needed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to go buy these assets. And now I know that all the magic and the power is in finding the right opportunity. And there's no shortage of capital, at least where we are today in this market. There's no shortage of capital chasing these opportunities. If you understand how to find deals, you understand how to structure deals. If you understand how to generate leads, all of the skills that we acquire in single family easily—

Yeah, that forced appreciation, that it's a beautiful thing when you get that, right?

It's—

so I'm curious, right? Like how— this might be a little in the weeds, but like when we're looking at multifamily or single family, we're going by like rent roll. Is it the same concept in storage or how— I don't know anything about the underwriting. Hey there, Savvy Investor. Quick question. Are you ready to jump into midterm rentals but not sure where to start? I've Got You Covered, and she's got assets. We help real estate investors set up and fully book their first midterm rental with quality guests so you can double or even triple your cash flow. And here's the kicker. We dive deep into marketing strategies, including how to tap into the lucrative niche of getting insurance leads for displaced families or long-term stays that can really boost your bottom line without all the hassle and regulations of short-term rentals. Sound interesting? Head over to shefoughtassets.com/ntr and get all the details. And if you're new to real estate investing, we've got something just for you, check out our REI Playbook course where we teach you how to snag your first investment property by finding off-market deals without cold calling or door knocking. We'll even walk you through creative deal structures like owner financing and how to leverage what you've already got. You can find all that goodness at sheisgotassets.com/rei. Oh, and one more thing, don't miss out on joining our free She's Got Assets community. We've got a ton of resources plus weekly live streams where you can dive deep into strategies to help you succeed. You don't want to miss it. Trust me, hop into the community at she'sgotassets.com/network and let's get you crushing those real estate goals. All right. Back to the show. So I'm like really curious how it, like the nuance of it.

Yeah, no, it's a really good question, Shona. And here's how I would explain it. When at a high level, when I look at a storage facility, I look at a couple of different things. I look at, yes, you want to look at the market and you want to see, okay, ideally you want to be in a market where there is more demand for storage than there is supply.

Right.

So once I know I'm in a good market that has a certain, call it KPIs or metrics that I look for, and we can dive into that if you'd like. Essentially what I'm looking at is what is the current net operating income? And one of the ways I do that is by establishing what is the current rent for the different unit sizes that this particular storage facility has. And then I compare it to the average of all the other competitors. In other words, I look at the market street rates of the storage facilities within a 5-mile radius. And then what I'm looking for is the bigger the gap between the current rates and the average of the market street rates, that gives me— there's a value-add opportunity right there. Because now I can step in and all I have to do is raise or bump the rates to match the average. And it's instant equity, right? It's the equivalent. I'll break it down this way. Imagine, Shona, if you owned a house, you bought a house in 1990. And you've been renting that house for the last 34 years, but you've never raised the rates. Imagine if you're renting that house for $700 a month back in 1990, which is probably a lot. And today that house is renting for $3,700 a month. It's not uncommon for us to communicate with storage owner operators. And generally speaking, these are mom and pop operators in their 60s and 70s who have owned these facilities for a long time, and now they're for the most part, getting ready to retire, it's not uncommon to come across a lot of these operators that haven't raised rates in years. And that is, I hate to use the word easy button, right? Because I don't want to oversell it, but that is an easy value-add opportunity to go in there. And all we have to do is bump the rates, raise the rates to match the market street rate, and you're instantly adding value to the facility. That is just one example of something called a value-add opportunity.

And I love that because like often we refer to that in multi. In multi, we have tenants, we have landlord-tenant law. You can't just— I'm assuming it's a lot easier to raise your rents in storage.

Yeah. Yeah. Remember, these are month-to-month leases, right? So in storage, depending on the market and the facility, we're usually pushing the rates every 6 to 9 months. So call it on average 1 to 2 times a year, we're bumping the rates right now. We're keeping an eye on the market, right? Obviously we're not bumping the rates if we're like the leader, but in storage, one of the things I always tell my clients is that you want to push the rates. You want to be the market leader in your market because sometimes the average of the market street rates, Shono, are established. But if you're looking and you're taking the average of a bunch of non-sophisticated storage owners, They don't know that they can push the rates up a little bit. And the great thing about storage is if I bump the rates on a 5x10 from $60 to $70, and over the course of the next 2 to 3 months, I don't get the kind of move-ins I want, I can always take it back down.

Mm-hmm.

And so we're month to month. We're not locked into 6 or 12-month leases.

That is so much easier than, yeah, 3 months and Okay. So many things to unpack. So there's, you're looking for value add. So as far as management, right? I know there's a lot of automation and technology and that's really appealing, right? Because it seems like you can really streamline that. And I'm sure that when you're getting these, they are not that streamlined.

Yeah, no, to your point where we're getting them very, I don't want to say rarely, but it's not uncommon for them to not have a website, believe it or not. And if I told you that more than 70% of our customers rent because of either pay-per-click or SEO. Think about how crazy it is not to have a website if you own a storage facility. And a lot of them don't have automated gates. They don't do any type of marketing. So those are some of the opportunities that we look to go in and implement. But yes, look, 30 years ago, if we were having a conversation, technology wouldn't have given us the ability to manage these facilities remotely. So I own 3 facilities. None of them are in my backyard. I live in Miami. I have one just north of Jacksonville and I have 2 in Mississippi. And we manage these, it's what's called an unmanned model. And the way that we're able to manage these remotely is it's like a three-pronged system. Number one, we have a part-time local boots on the ground team member, and that person goes to the facility on average once a week, and they're responsible for doing unit lock audits, overlocks, unit cleanouts, taking pictures of items that need to be auctioned off because a customer didn't pay. That's generally speaking what that person does. Then we have a third-party management company that manages the day-to-day operations of the facility, and they have an in-house call center. So when customers call to ask questions or rent the unit, they're not calling me or somebody on my team, they're calling the management company. And that gives me time freedom, right? So I have, uh, I think right now I own 838 units in total across 104,000 net rentable square feet. And if I tell you that I spend an hour and a half to 2 hours a week on that portfolio, it's probably a lot. Now, I do want to underscore one point. I don't want to make this sound like you spend 1 hour a week and that's it. Like you're, you have all this like cash flow raining down on you. It does take time and energy to find these opportunities, to structure them properly, and then to get them optimized, stabilized, dialed in. But once you get these facilities to that point, it's a pretty boring business. There's not a lot that happens on a day-to-day basis, which again is great for us from a time freedom perspective.

That's super cool. So I'm curious, what do you want management fees? Like what percentage? Like I, I didn't really, I have no idea. What are they charging?

Yeah, I'm, I think industry standard is 5%. Now the full transparency, the management company that I work with doesn't charge me a, a particular percentage. It's a flat fee. So on my one facility, I pay $1,500 a month. The other facility, I pay $2,000 a month. And then the third one, I pay $2,250 a month. So it, it varies, right? But that's a very small percentage. Like my facility in Florida, that on average generates about $21,000 a month in revenue. Do the math on what $1,500 in management fee is. It's a pretty small overall percentage. It's not like I'm paying 20, 30, 40% to the manager here. And that, that kind of leads me to one of the reasons I decided to go for storage over multifamily. If you look at multifamily, the asset class from an operating expense ratio, on average, you're probably between 45 and 50%, 45 and maybe all the way up to 55% operating expense ratio. So in other words, if your multifamily is generating $100,000 of gross revenue, your expenses are going to be between $45,000 and $55,000. In storage, most of the time we're between 30% and 40% operating expense ratio. So it just doesn't take as much, which gives us more margins in our storage facilities.

Yeah, no, there's so many reasons. Just the automation and the, the lack of, I don't want to say those people, I'm sure it's just easier. What's— so if someone doesn't pay, what do you do? It's not like rentals, right? You can just— how does that work? Because that's a big—

it's very simple. They get a letter. So if they haven't paid by the 5th of the month there, so we do what's called first of the month billing. There's anniversary billing, which is they basically pay their rent whenever they come in at any point in the month. And there's first of the month billing. So if they haven't paid by the 5th, they're getting a letter, they're getting an email. We're communicating, we're documenting that. By the 11th of the month, if they haven't paid, we're overlocking them. In fact, in our facilities, if they haven't paid by the 2nd of the month, they're getting overlocked, right? Which means they can't access their contents. They can't— their gate code automatically stops working. And so they don't have access to the facility. They don't have access to their contents. And once they pay, they automatically— their gate code automatically works. Our boots on the ground person will go and will take off or remove the overlock. And now they have access to their stuff. So depending on the state the facility's located in, usually by the 67th day, we can go ahead and auction their stuff, provided that we followed a particular protocol, right? Like we've publicized something in the local paper, we've taken pictures of their stuff, we've reached out to them a certain amount of times. And that's the great thing is that it's not like we're dealing with evictions here that could take 3 to 6 months. In 2 months and a week or so where we can basically auction off that person's units. We do a unit cleanout and then now we put that unit back online to rent.

And it just occurred to me, you probably never have damages, right? Is anything ever damaged like in a rental?

So it's a good question and I'm just thinking here. So here are the damages that we've had whenever we've had any type of break-ins. So I've shared with you a lot of the good of storage. Let me share with you what are some of the hiccups, what are some of the challenges with storage. My very first facility I bought in a pretty rough market. Okay. And in that market, we've experienced quite a few, like, security break— like, security issues, break-ins, things of that nature. And when they break in, sometimes these people will break the hasps, break the locks, trying to access, and they'll damage the doors. So now we gotta repair or replace the doors. Sometimes they cut fences and we have to, like, now repair the fence. So That has been our biggest challenge. But if you compare that to my Florida facility, I've never had a break-in and I've owned that facility almost 2 years now and I've never had a break-in. So the old adage of location applies to storage, just like it would apply to a single-family home. Right. So that was a mistake I made when I got into storage. Now, granted, I bought it right. I got a really good deal. But it's been a little bit more management intensive than I would have preferred because it's in a rough market. Every now and then, it doesn't happen very often, but sometimes people will back up with a box truck and they might bump your ballard, which are those like poles on the corner of the buildings meant to protect the building. So all our facilities have these ballards because people are coming in and out with moving trucks. Sometimes they might hit a building or hit a ballard. Doesn't happen all that often, but it's not super uncommon either. But honestly, the biggest headache I would say with storage is every now and then the gate operator might not work, and then we have to try to fix it remotely. And if that doesn't work, then we have to send like our local gate guy to go fix it. But outside of that, pretty simple.

Considering all the things that can go wrong with a home or an apartment, that's—

Yeah, I'm not getting a call or a text about a clogged toilet. Or like nothing like that. Again, there's very few emergencies when it comes to storage from an operational perspective. Most of the time things can be handled within— it doesn't, in other words, things don't, you don't have to stop what you're doing unless of course your building's on fire or something, somebody gets murdered on a facility, something like that, which thank God I've never had to deal with. There's very few emergencies with storage.

So you've made me think of something. This might be silly, but like, I think I filter things through marketing, right? Clearly you, you're good at marketing. Is brand— is like well-branded facilities or amenities, like you said, location, that got me thinking. Is there any— do you— is that a focus or is that really not relevant in storage?

Yeah, no, it's totally relevant. But the answer, the direct answer to your question, and you might not like it, is it depends. So if you are looking to acquire a lot of storage facilities in the same general location, in the same city, then brand— rebranding a facility that you buy, Storage Depot, right? Because now you have numerous Storage Depots within a certain region. That makes sense. For me, we're looking for opportunities all throughout the Southeast part of the country. So for me, generally speaking, unless the facility I'm buying has really bad Google reviews, they have— maybe they have a poor reputation. Then in that case it might make sense rebranding. But the facilities I've bought, 2 of the 3 that I've purchased, I kept the same name. One I did rebrand because it didn't have the, the best reputation. But yeah, look, branding is important in any business, but I don't think in storage it really matters if to rebrand something, unless again, it's got just a bad reputation, poor Google reviews, and/or if you plan to acquire numerous facilities within the same area or region.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious about like, are there certain amenities for like higher-end storage or is it just the basics?

Yeah, look, I don't target Class A facilities and this brings up an interesting kind of a conversation we can have. 'Cause people sometimes often ask me like, like, what's step one? Where do I even get started? We don't, like, I, I live in Miami. I've never spent one minute, Shona, looking for storage in Miami. Why? Because In the big metropolitan cities, they're generally speaking, they're dominated by the REITs, the real estate investment trust. These REITs like Public Storage, Extra Space, CubeSmart, Life Storage, like these are the national brand facilities that we're typically speaking, we're not buying facilities in markets where down the street there's a Public Storage. We're looking for secondary and tertiary markets. That have a population between 1,000 people all the way up to 60,000 people. We look for markets where the population is increasing over time. And then I like to be in markets where the average medium household income is $50,000 or greater. So as far as amenities are concerned, like if you go to the Class A facilities, you're going to have, obviously you have climate controlled, you have multiple floors, you have automated kiosk systems, you might have vending machines and all these different types of things. We're looking for ideally Class B, Class C facilities located in Class B areas or Class B facilities located in Class B areas. And as far as amenities are concerned, obviously you're going to have your automated gate. You're going to have your automated keypad where you can access your unit, but we don't really like my facilities. I don't have those automated kiosks. Everything can be done with their mobile, but But we don't have any sexy Class A type amenities at our facilities, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's, yeah. Okay. I just thought of something else. I think that leads into who are you buying from and if, is it the typical avatar? And we always talk about the tired landlord avatar in single family or small multi-family. Is it a similar mom and pop tired? Facility owner?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I would say for the most part, yes. I would say probably I'm thinking of all the storage owners I've spoken to throughout the years. I would probably say a high percentage, 80% or more, I would classify between the ages of 65 and 75 years old. Usually, and this might be dangerous to say on a podcast, but please do not read into what I'm about to say. In my experience, the majority of the time, men own these storage facilities. I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's a good old boys club. I don't know if storage ba— I just don't know. Now, having said that, I have spoken to women who own storage facilities and please again, don't— I want to be crystal clear. Anyone, men, women, race, I don't care about race, color, sexual, I don't care about any of that. Anybody can own and operate storage. It's a simple asset class for the most part. But yeah, if I was going to define an avatar, I would say, generally speaking, it's a man between 65 and 75. He's, he or she has owned the facility for probably more than 20 years and they're getting ready to retire. They're done. Now, do I have the, do I have the motivated storage owner? Oh my gosh, I have to get rid of this thing. No, because again, there's not really that many emergencies, but do I get the burnt out storage mom and pop owner? Absolutely.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so when ha— marketing is a big part of it, is it? How are you finding these networking, marketing? What's your strategy here?

Yeah, absolutely. Remember when I said earlier that all the skills we acquire in single family translate over to storage? I wish I could give you like some ninja storage-specific marketing, but here's how I've gotten all my deals. Are you ready for this? Direct mail. Cold calling and relationships. I've been involved in 5, about to be 6 storage deals, and they have all been like, all those opportunities have come from one of those. So I think 3 of those deals have come from direct mail, 1 from cold calling, 2 from relationships.

So the classics, right?

The classics.

Yeah.

Like direct mail, Shona, you and I at Carrot Camp, we we compared our letters and they're very similar, right? My letter's very down to earth. I'm not some big company. I'm just a regular dude. There's a picture of my family and I at the bottom. We're raising two little girls. I'm not lying. This is the truth. We're just looking for storage. And I convey that and communicate that. And I encourage them that if it's not the right time to sell their storage facility, to keep the letter and keep me in mind. And I may or may not have shared this with you at Carat Camp, but September of last year, 2023, let me backtrack, share with you a quick story. In June of 2023, I get a call from a sweet lady. She was probably in her, and look, and this is the exact opposite of the avatar that I just explained. I'm guessing, I don't know her age, but I'm guessing this lady was probably in her 50s. Her and her, her husband owned a storage facility in a small town in Louisiana. And she said, she calls me, she says, Alex, You don't know me, but you sent me this letter 2 years ago. By the way, this was the first direct mail campaign I ever sent out when I got into storage. And she said, it appealed to me because it was a picture of your family and it felt very personable. And she said, I always knew I wanted to sell this facility. I just didn't know when the right time was. And I'm now considering selling it. Are you still interested? So I had a handful of conversations with her between June and the beginning of August. Well, I ended up getting that facility under contract in August. And I was in such a busy season of life and business that it wasn't the right time for me to onboard a new facility. I ended up getting that property under contract and I ended up essentially selling 100% of the rights in the LLC to a friend of mine who is in that state for $550,000. So I made $150,000 on that one deal that came from a direct mail campaign that I sent over 2 years ago. And she kept that letter. So direct mail to me is like a staple in any marketing campaign, as old school as it might sound, right? It's not social media. It's not all this like stuff that people are doing now, but it's still a valuable, important arrow in your quiver. And I still use it to this day.

No, I 100% second that. I've had people call me and it's a year. And they, and, or I go to a meeting and they have my letter saved. Who saves marketing, right?

Yeah. I'm one of the crazy ones that do. I remember when I ran the wholesaling business, whenever I was the one going to meet with like homeowners, I would always ask for their direct mail campaigns. A, I want to take those pieces away from the homeowner and put my competition in a little bit of a tougher position, but also I always built the marketing swipe file. And I want to study my competitors and see how are they marketing? How are they communicating? And that's one thing I've always shared. I think real estate investors, I hope I don't offend anybody, but I'll put myself in that category. Generally speaking, Shauna, I think real estate investors suck when it comes to marketing. I'm just going to, I'm going to shoot you straight because, and test me on this theory, right? If you're a single family investor, go meet with a homeowner or try to get your hands on marketing pieces. I would venture to say more than 70 or 80% of these pieces say some version of, we buy houses cash, as is, we close on your timeline, no closing costs, no realtors, no fee, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what everybody does. That's what everybody does. So what is your unique value proposition? What is your selling proposition? How are you going to differentiate yourself from everybody else? And it could be through your copy in your direct mail piece. Or something different, but really challenge yourself to, to if people are zigging, how are you going to zag? Right. That's, and that, that might sound like basic marketing 101, but it still surprises me to this day how real estate investors, again, generally speaking, are copycat marketers. And I get it because I've been there. Like, I understand.

No, I am 100,000% agree with that. And I think we often were taught to present ourselves as like quick cash buyers, that when it comes down to it, it's a people business. And the more authentic, the more you are, the more relatable, the more you connect with someone and the more they wanna work with you. But it took me years to be myself and be okay with it. And I don't know why, maybe it's just an evolution. I'm not sure what your experience was, but for me, yeah, they're very similar.

Like marketing to me, like I'm trying to teach my daughters now, my I have two girls, 7 and 9, and I'm teaching my daughters, like, now if I was to bring them on the podcast and put them on the spot, hey, what's an asset? What's a liability? Like, they could actually tell you what it is. And one of the— I bring that up, Shona, because I think no matter who you are, no matter what age you are, if you focus on always sharpening the following as far as your skill sets, like, you'll never starve, you'll never go broke, you'll always be able to be valuable to somebody else and generate a lot of money: sales, marketing, communication, and leadership. Sales, marketing, communication, and leadership. If you are not sure, if you're one of these people that just jumps from podcast to podcast, YouTube to YouTube, ask yourself and do an audit and say, hey, all this content I'm consuming, these books I'm reading, are these contributing to one of those four areas? Marketing, sales, leadership, or communication. Because to me, if you can sharpen those axes, you're always going to be valuable to the marketplace. And at the end of the day, whether it's storage or single family or short-term rentals, midterm, whatever we do, it's about people. It's about communication. It's sales, marketing, and leadership.

And that is really hard to automate, right? With all this AI stuff, I think the more that we are leaders, that's You know, it's hard to automate. The other thing I just wanna like, some another one soapbox is like that really cheesy sell your house fast as is. What if someone doesn't wanna sell their house fast? What if they wanna sell on a note? And we make all these assumptions about what people wanna do. Yeah. So I know you do a lot of that. I'm curious what you think. Yeah.

Yeah. Shona, it, it drives me crazy when I see people pitching as a value proposition or as a feature or a benefit, hey, I'll close in 3 days. It's what if that the thought of closing in 3 days, like stresses that person out because there's no way they can like do everything they have to do in 3 days. Now you've automatically X'd yourself out for that person. So I think it's really important that you get to know the person you're working with, whether it's a storage owner or homeowner, like what is the pain that your solution solves? Or that your offer solves, right? What is it you're offering? And does that solve their pain point? Right? Just basic 101 stuff, but we really got to break it down that way. And yeah, look, I, one of my facilities that I purchased in the one in Florida, it was an attorney, super sharp dude, right? You would think like that an attorney wouldn't give you like great terms, but he owned the facility. He and his sister owned this particular facility that they bought. I don't know, roughly 15, 16 years ago, his sister was running it. He's in Ohio. He, they weren't really treating it like a business, right? They bought it cash. And so it was generating some cash flow for them and it just wasn't a big pain point, but they always had this thing over there in Florida that was this for the storage facility that they weren't really treating like a business. I ended up paying his price. He was looking for a particular price and it was at the top of the market, but I'll always pay anybody's price as long as they let me dictate and create the terms. And so we were able to pay him his price, but we structured no debt service payments for an entire year. So essentially think of not having any payments for 12 months, and then we got a 3.25% fixed interest rate. We were able to amortize it over 35 years, which is pretty uncommon in storage. Storage is for the most part amortized 20 or 25 years. We got 35-year AMM, which lowered the debt service payment. We got a 5-year balloon, and then we got first right of refusal and we got all the lettuce and tomatoes, right? Like we got all the different things that, that we want as options if we're going to get involved in a seller finance type deal.

Yeah. And I really think too, that really serves the seller too. If you understand what they want and you can craft something, it really benefits them. It's not just us. And that took me a while to realize when I was first starting out.

Yeah. And to your point, Shona, so this particular gentleman, the seller generates more money on our monthly payment to him than they were operating the facility. So think about that. We solved their problem in that they were going to have a huge tax liability if they were to sell the facility, right? Outright. So by doing a seller finance, so we got 90% seller financing. All we had to do was come with 10% down, which that 10% I got from a private lender. So I got into that deal with no money out of my pocket. He avoided a huge tax liability. He makes a couple thousand dollars more a month, roughly not having to do anything, not having to worry about the lawn and the taxes and the maintenance and the operations of the business and the rate, the rates and all that kind of stuff that we have to do. He doesn't have to do any of that and he just gets a monthly ACH and he's making more money on seller finance than he was operating the business.

That's a beautiful thing. And that's actual passive mailbox money, right? There's no headache.

That is legit. Legit. He is the bank. So that is legit. I hate to use the word passive. In this case, it's passive. He doesn't do anything except check his bank account on the 3rd of the month, every month, and he gets an ACH deposit. That's it.

And I'm super happy, by the way, because we got amazing terms.

And guess what? We were able to almost double the rates when we came in because they hadn't raised the rates in over a decade.

I, it's just all around. I'm sure it's such a win-win. You have PML is making money. It's, I, it's a beautiful thing. I think for a lot of people that hear about, like, I did a deal recently, it was zero down. I deferred my interest accrual, and it just seems like a unicorn, but I think it comes down to mindset and talking to the seller. And I don't know if you have any tips. I think people just, they jump in with, how about we do seller financing without really understanding the needs of the seller, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't even bring up seller financing until I've diagnosed the seller. Like I have a coach in sales. I talk about marketing, sales, leadership, and communication. Like I put my money where my mouth is. So I have a sales coach. And one of the first coaching calls I had with him, he said, he goes, Alex, role play with me for a second here and pretend that you had a pain. Like he was like, where are you experiencing any pain in your body? And I said, ah, my knee bothers me a little bit. He says, okay, great. When you go to the doctor and you tell the doctor, hey doc, I got knee pain, does the doctor automatically like prescribe medicine or give you a solution?

No.

Like he's going to ask you several questions. He wants to understand what led to this. He wants to understand what you're feeling. He wants to understand how often, what's the frequency of this pain? What's the level on a scale of 1 to 10? There's a lot of questions the doctor's going to ask you before he prescribes a solution. We are no different as real estate investors, storage operator owners. Like we are no different. We need to ask the question and pre-qualify, ask questions and pre-qualify these people. And by the way, Shona, I've had meetings with storage owners and with property owners where I genuinely didn't feel like I was the best fit for them. And I go ahead and tell them that outright. And it's not like some sales strategy to redirect and go in it. No, it's hey, look, honestly, yes, I'm happy to make you this offer or a couple different offers, which I prefer to do. But quite honestly, I think you're better off like listing this with an agent because I think you can get more. Like I will flat out tell them that and I'll genuinely mean it. And sometimes they take me up on the offer and it's okay, great. I, I, this is a better solution for them, even though I couldn't help them. And then sometimes it actually works in your favor where they're like, that transparency, that honesty wins them over. So I, I think the underlying point here is that it's important to ask questions, pre-qualify people, and really get to understand what they're trying to solve. And then your job as a creative investor is to figure out a structure and a solution that can help them accomplish that while also giving you what you want.

Yeah, 100%. I think that diagnosis, I think we jump to offers way too fast. Traditionally, that's what we're taught a lot of the time. And shove a contract, get them under contract.

Yeah, it's a shotgun approach. And no, I think if you take your time, Now, having said that, I'm not necessarily saying that you want to waste all this time, but it is important to connect with the person, understand what they're after, why are they even considering selling before you present a potential solution or solutions.

100%. I'm curious, and this is like more B2B, are you meeting in person or having a phone call and then sussing it out? Or how does that go generally with storage?

100% is over the phone. 100%. Like I've never met with a storage owner face-to-face. Now, having said that, look, I have a friend of mine who owns a pretty big storage portfolio. I want to say he's got 9 or 10 facilities in the Midwest and he's pretty much in his backyard within a 3-hour drive. Like all his facilities are within a 2, 3-hour drive. Again, I live in Miami. I don't have the benefit of that. I'm probably not looking or buying a big Class A storage facility in Miami. So I look at secondary tertiary markets. And so one, literally 100% of the deals I've done has been over the phone.

Okay. Yeah. Everything's possible. So I guess to circle back, if someone's done some flips, done, has some single families and they're like, you know what, I'm a tired lamb. I want to get in. How do you talk to a seller? And are you just really honest? Hey, I don't have a storage unit. How do you translate your experience to make them feel confident? I love that question.

I love that question. So I'm going to give you my favorite approach to this. But before I do, you said something that was super key: mindset. I don't care what we're talking about, guys, like mindset is everything and how you approach a conversation. Cause to me, sales, and I forgot where I learned this, but sales is essentially just a transfer of enthusiasm. And when I started approaching people, like initially I would always ask the question, I try to build some rapport, right? Quote unquote. And then I would eventually, hey, would you consider selling? Have you ever thought about selling? Like I would ask some variation of a question like that, which is okay. What I prefer to do is if you don't own a storage facility is humble yourself. And I immediately, when I cold call within the first 5 to 7 seconds, I identify who I am and why I'm calling. Why? Because the job of somebody on the other end of the line receiving a cold call, which can be annoying, can be frustrating, can be threatening, can be all these things that are negative, right? That job, the person, the job of that person is to hang up or to get off the phone as quickly and/or as politely as possible, depending on who you're talking to. So I immediately identify who I am, why I'm calling, and I say, look, I, I came across, I realized this is a very random call, but I came across your facility on Google and it looks like a beautiful facility. I will always compliment. I'll compliment them in some way, shape, or form. I'll stroke them. I'll nurture them. Now, if I'm looking at the facility and it looks like a dump, I'll find something to compliment them about. And I'll say, look, I, my wife and I are actively looking to purchase our first storage facility. And I'd love if you could give me a little bit of guidance, right? Do you have a minute or two? Because I'm, I'm really genuinely looking to learn from a successful seasoned storage operator. Again, I'm appealing to their ego. I'm complimenting them. I'm also being genuine. And I find the conversation with the storage owner, Shona, and for those of you who have never spoken to a mom-and-pop operator, trust me when I tell you this, more times than not is so much easier than the conversation with a quote-unquote motivated homeowner. Like it's just a different conversation. And I have found that probably 60 to 70% of the time that person is open to answering your questions and they want to help. And so I'll just ask them like, hey, how'd you get involved in storage? Like, what is it you love about the business? What's a challenge? How are things going for you? Like, I'll literally just engage in a dialogue with them. And then at some point I'll transition. Look, this has been super helpful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. By any chance, do you know of anybody, like clearly you're very well networked, a lot of storage owner operators. Do you know anybody that might be open to selling their property? And I don't, I haven't measured the percentage, but I would say maybe 2 out of 10, 3 out of 10 times they say, actually, like, I might dot dot. And then now you've stepped into a different part of the conversation. Every now and then they'll give you a free referral. And then probably 50 to 60% of the time they'll tell you, no, I don't. And no, I'm not interested. And then I always ask, is it all right if I stay in touch with you? Can I follow up in 6 to 8 months from now? And regardless of what they say, unless they tell me, do not call me, generally speaking, I'll usually follow up anyway. Because Dan Kennedy, Marketing 101, right? Like we want to enter the conversation already happening inside the minds of our prospects. And going back to that lady in Louisiana, 2 years ago, she was thinking about selling, but she wasn't, the bread hadn't baked in the oven. Back in June, we heard the ding. She was ready.

The timer was going.

The timer, the ding. Yeah. In case anybody didn't catch that, the ding I was referring to was the oven, the timer.

Yeah. I love that. I love how, honestly, how it is, I think, and I had this when I was starting out, this fear of talking to sellers, but they're just people and it's really a conversation and people like to talk. Like you don't even, they just Well, they like to talk in my experience, but you're very open-ended is what I got from that. It's just have you thought of, not like a hardcore kind of sale.

Like, now look, we, we can certainly talk about what are the, what are the handful of questions if they are interested in selling that I think are important to, to get from them. But I don't have some fancy ninja sexy, like storage owner script. Like we have a general framework that we share within our community, but But yeah, I just try to relate. I'm not trying to be somebody else. I'm being myself. I'm just humbling myself. Even today that I have some success in the business and I own some facilities, like I'll relate to them on the fact that, hey, I'm a storage owner operator. And look, my wife and I are just looking to purchase another facility. We have these 3 and XYZ. I'll usually try to appeal to something that I know a storage owner operator is going to experience. So I'm always seeking for ways to establish some type of identity, bond, or connection with the person I'm communicating with. And that goes with a storage owner or, I think it was Dale Carnegie, was it? How to Win, or Stephen Covey, one of those two, How to Win Friends and Influence People. That's in there. Like that book is a staple for anybody in entrepreneurship and just people in general. It's just about. Building relationships at the end of the day with people.

It really is. Okay. And you got me really intrigued. What are— I know nothing about storage, so I would filter it through what I would ask for, like single or multi. What are some like questions? Does that income or what do you—

You got one of them right there. Okay. All right. Here's the cool thing about storage is on the back of a napkin, literally on the back of a napkin, on a piece of paper, on my phone. I could underwrite a storage facility in 60 seconds or less, maybe 2 minutes max. Right now, that does not substitute or take the, the, the place of full deep analysis, what we call underwriting, right? So that's not a substitute, but if I'm on the phone with an owner and I can get the revenue that they generated last year, the total gross revenue, if I can get the year-to-date revenue this year, If I can get the unit mix, right? So in other words, the unit mix is how many 5x5s, how many 5x10s, how many 10x20s. If I can get the unit mix, if I can get their current rental rates for each one of those units, then with that information alone, I can pretty much underwrite the facility and more or less tell you what it's worth. And what a ballpark offer would be. Right now, additional information I like to collect is I always like to get a P&L, a profit and loss statement last year and this year. If you can get that, it's automatically going to tell you the revenue. It's going to tell you their expenses and it's going to tell you what their net operating income is. Now, I don't put too much stock and emphasis on their expenses. Why? Because their expenses are not going to be my expenses. They're probably managing it themselves. They're probably not paying themselves as a manager. I know what my expenses are going to be. And so I'll look at their expenses, but I'm going to plug in my expenses based on my experience and what I know. I'm going to look at their occupancy. That's another number that I would like to get from them. Hey, where, what's your current occupancy? And oftentimes they'll say, oh, I'm at, I'm pretty full. Okay. How many units do you like?

Seriously?

Like they speak very well. There's a difference, Shona, between physical occupancy. And economic occupancy. Let me explain to you the difference. Physical occupancy is you, Shona, as a customer of my facility, you have your stuff in a unit, but you might not be paying. It's the unit is physically occupied, but it's not economically occupied, right? So if I can collect $100,000 being 100% occupied, but I'm only collecting $80,000, I'm 80% economic occupancy, but all the units might have stuff in it. It, it might be 100% physically occupied, but not 100% economically occupied.

I, that's, I know that's so fascinating. Do you ask that directly or is it more just to find out?

That number's not super important to me right now. I just want to get a general idea. I don't get into economic and physical occupancy when I'm talking to a storage owner. I just want to find out like, hey, where's your occupancy at? More or less. So again, unit mix, the current rates, if you can get their P&L, occupancy, and then some other, not super important at this stage of the game, but I want to know like how many net rentable square feet is the facility. And if you have the unit mix, you can just plug that into a Google spreadsheet or spreadsheet and you can easily do that math. I like to know like, how are you managing and operating it? Do you have a gate? Are you using a management software? So I'll ask them some general questions about how they're managing. And then when it comes to the condition of the facility and determining from a CapEx, capital expenditures perspective, what does it need? I'll always ask about the roof. The roof is going to be one of your big items, the roof or roofs usually. And what's funny is that most of the time I hear, oh, they're in great condition. I'll dive a little bit deeper.

Okay.

Have there been any repairs done? Have you ever done any repairs? Yeah, years ago I did this because it was a leak. Okay. Well, there's some patchwork. I said, are these original roofs or have they been replaced? Oh no, it's original. And then you look it up and the facility was built in 1986. It's okay. The roof may or may not have some life, but that's something to keep in mind. But yeah. That's pretty much it. Like, the cool thing about Storage Shawn is that I don't have 127 questions I have to ask the storage owner. Like, pretty much a handful of questions for the most part, and I, I pretty much have what I need.

And this is, again, probably a really dumb question. Is there an inspection period, like, in, like, single family?

Yeah, not, not a dumb question at all. Yeah, there's something called due diligence. So, Whenever we go under contract is when our due diligence clock starts. Let me backtrack. My contract stipulates and states all the different things I need, and until I receive that from the storage owner, that is when my due diligence clock starts. So in other words, I need your tax returns. I need your profit and loss statements for the last 3 years. I need your management summary report. I need your tenant rent roll. Like, I need all these different things, and until I receive that, That is, then my due diligence clock will start. For the most part, I like to get 45 to 60 days worth of due diligence. And that is the first time that I am either flying out or driving out to the facility to physically see it for the first time. Right? So I'm not spending any money on travel or a plane until I have that facility under contract. And during that 45 to 60 day due diligence window, or whatever you negotiate, is gives you the ability to back out if you ultimately see something that you don't like that you didn't anticipate, or obviously you have the ability to renegotiate.

Yeah, that's a, it's a longer timeframe than often with—

Oh, and why? Because you're, you're buying a business. We're not buying one single family asset with one roof and two or three toilets. You, there's a due diligence checklist, right? That you need to go through to make sure that you don't want any blind spots when you walk in. Like when you walk in, you need to know what you're getting involved in and what type of asset do you, is it a complete turnaround? Is it a value add? Like you need to know, you're not, we're not just winging this. And if you're going out and getting bank financing for these storage facilities, sometimes they might require a business plan. Right? Like they wanna see an interview. Like, how are you going to now operate this? How are you gonna take it from here to here?

Buying a business. That makes a lot of sense.

Okay.

We make this all sound extremely easy, and I wanna tie that back into mentorship and coaching and how that's so important because there's a lot of— this isn't just, oh, you just call a seller and you get a deal and do due diligence and you're good.

Yeah, no, look, Shauna, that, that's another mistake. That's another— I talked early on in the podcast about one of the mistakes I made was playing the wrong game, being a transaction type investor, going from deal to deal. The other mistake I made the first 2 years of my career between 2005 and 2007, I always saw coaches and mentors as expenses and how naive and stupid that I was because my very first fix and flip project was a half a million dollar project late 2007. Just by giving you the year, you can imagine what happened to me. Between myself and a partner, we lost $102,000. So I lost $51,000 of my own money. And I've done, I don't know, probably somewhere close to 800 deals in my career. That to this day has been the best deal I've ever done. Now you ask, why would you losing $51,000 on your first fix and flip be your best deal? Was because right after that happened, within a couple of months, I hired my first coach. And I have literally had a coach every single year between 2008 and today. Today I have 4 coaches. I counted them. I have 4 coaches in different areas of my life. I'm not kidding. And when I got into storage almost 4 years ago, I hired a storage coach, right? Because yes, can I figure this out on my own? Are there enough resources on YouTube and books and podcasts and all? Yes, I can. But I also know that I might be making expensive mistakes. And why not learn from somebody who's been there, done that, right? Especially somebody that you can, there's a core value alignment, somebody that resonates with you. And so I, I act and do what I preach. So I coaching masterminds, communities, mentorships, like those relationships have literally changed the course of my life in business. And as a result, like in 2013 is when I started coaching real estate investors. So. Yeah, earlier this year I launched a Storage Wins coaching program where the singular goal of that program is to help people find, fund, and profit from their first cash-flowing facility within 6 to 12 months, which is awesome because that's the part of the business that really fills me up. Storage and real estate, it's cool. I'm pretty good at it, but it's a vehicle. I don't wake up in the morning doing backflips to go do another deal. It's, but I do backflips when I hear about a success that a client or student is having, or people making progress or learning a new asset class that can really change your life. That's the stuff that lights me up.

Yeah, 100%. No, I feel the same way when I have students. It's just, I, it's so amazing. I think it's funny because we spend money oftentimes on college or higher education, but for some reason, real estate, there's so much free content. I think we forget the value of coaching and mentorship. I know for me, it's been a game changer. Like I've had It's paid off in dividends that we're, there's just so much content. So how do you know when it's worth paying for versus?

To me, I, I view coaches, Shona, as like the ultimate insurance policy, like the peace of mind that I have, whether I do it or not, that if I run up into a challenge or something I haven't been through, I have a number of people I can pick up my phone and text or call. And more than likely within a 6 to 12 hour window, I'm going to get a response back. Hey, let's hop on a call. Let's talk through it. Let's work through it. And just having a thinking partner, somebody who's steps ahead of me in that area of life, that aspect of business, whatever, to me is invaluable. And then also somebody who like, like I'm somebody who I'm going to hold myself accountable because when I make an investment, like I'm going to follow through. And somebody told me years ago, when people pay, they pay attention. But have you ever gotten access to something for free? Like, you may or may not value it as much as if you had to pay for it, if you made an investment of your hard-earned dollars. So I truly believe that when you make an investment, you just show up different. You just playing all out now because you have something on the line. And, and I have experienced that on my end whenever I've hired coaches and mentors. Like I, I show up, I play all out, I prepare, I implement what they're coaching me on. I hold myself accountable because I know they're gonna hold me accountable. But whenever I hop on a call, like I, I may or may not follow through if it's not that type of relationship. At least that's just me.

No, 100%. I think there's a commitment there and you're also just, it's, it, yeah, it, there's a level of commitment you don't have when you're just watching a video or something. So, yeah, no. I have, yeah, I'm very grateful to coaches. I just, I never did so many courses before I was in real estate with— Same. They definitely paid off. Yeah, for sure.

No, it's, it's the best investment. Yeah. As cliché as it sounds, sorry to cut you off, Shona. I wanna hear what you have to say. It's, it's, it's literally the best investment you can make cuz nobody can take it away from you.

But I have to ask, maybe this is a personal question. I think when you put yourself out there as you do, people I see you as a resource and I, I wanna help, like the whole go-giver mentality I'm so all about, but there, I have limited time and I feel like if I give someone some advice and, and I can't coach them through it, am I really helping them? So how do you navigate that? I guess that's more of a personal question or learning a new craft.

Yeah, it's, I, I do, and feel free to interrupt me if I misunderstood your question or if I'm going in a different, cuz I wanna make sure I answered it, but I think what I'm hearing is when people come to you for advice or if they want to quote unquote pick your brain, right? Like how do you navigate that? Is that what you're asking?

Yeah. And how do you, cause I want to help, but I feel like I can't really help someone unless they're going through my program. There's so much nuance and I am, I, a 5-minute conversation isn't really going to serve them as well as it could if I could work with them on my program.

Yeah.

I found balancing that.

100%. To your point, I'm very direct and transparent, and I wasn't always like that, but I'll go ahead and let them know that from the get-go. Like, they might ask me a very general question, like, how do I get started in self-storage? It's— that's not a 5-minute answer. And even if I could give you a 5-minute answer, right? Is that going to help you? Is that going to really put you in a position to— is that answer going to give you what you need? And so I'll come right and tell them that, listen, like I have people specifically that I work with that have that same question to take them through the process over a period of time. Now it's tough for me, Shona, because I genuinely want to help people. I feel like I have a heart for service and wanting to give. So I try to make myself as available as I can. But what I've also done is that I've gone back and I've done an audit of the people that have come to me wanting to pick my brain, so to speak. Or the people that have questions and I analyze like what percentage of the time does that person actually do something with the information I gave them? And I think it goes back to what we were just talking about. Very rarely do I come across somebody that like they, they hear something and then they go like speed of implementation. They go apply it. Now, conversely, the people I work with that become clients, like they will succeed, right? Because like I'm pouring into them, they're pouring into this, like it's so It's a tough thing. Now, I've been hosting a podcast called The Flip Empire Show that I've been doing for a little bit over 8 years. And so oftentimes I'll refer them there because there's just like a lot of episodes and more times than not, especially if I know there's an episode that can answer their question, I'll point them in that direction. I'll say, hey, listen to this. And then if you want to have a conversation with like more specific questions you have, then we'll hop on a call. But yeah, I've put out quite a few content, a lot of content throughout the years that most of the time I can point people in the right direction.

That makes sense. And I guess just, I'm curious if this is for you too. I feel like I never thought I'd be a coach, but I've learned so many strategies that I just really want to give back. And for me, it's giving back in a way, like it was a calling or something. I don't know, strange way. I'm curious if that's how you feel too.

Yeah, for me, I remember in 20— 2017, around the time of that cruise, more or less, where I was starting to like question, like, where am I going with this wholesaling business? I started the podcast in 2016. I want to say 2017 or '18, couple years into it, when I was starting to get like DMs and messages on social media about, hey, Alex, thank you for this podcast episode because it really resonated or it helped me in this way. Or dude, your podcast has been awesome because that was like really filling my cup. And it wasn't from an ego perspective. It was like, man, it, it felt awesome to be able to like put something out that is helping people change their lives. That was bringing me more joy and fulfillment than the next $18,000 wholesale deal. Right now, don't get me wrong. I was grateful for that money, but once you've done a bunch of deals, it's just another deal. You know what I mean? And so that's when I knew I, I really, there's something here with this, with coaching. And I had been coaching people since 2013. So I've already gotten a taste, but not on a big scale, right? Just handful of people a year type of thing. And I just like the feeling of knowing that I can pour into someone. And I've always had the mindset and the belief, Shona, that we should have one hand up to a coach or mentor, and then one hand down trying to bring somebody up. Because it's, it, we're all at different levels and there's a lot of people, a lot of people that are far ahead of me that I can learn from. And I've, I've just, I've always had the mindset where I can always learn something no matter where you are in your journey. I can probably learn something from you. And relationships are so much better when like you're genuinely there to give without the expectation of getting something back in return.

So if someone's looking for a coach, what do you think the best way to evaluate that or program? Is it just What do you recommend or how have you gone about that?

I love that question. I can only share with you what I've done is I always look for a core value alignment. What does my gut tell me? What's your intuition tell you? The nudge from God, the tap on the shoulder, like whatever it is you feel like, can you relate to the person? Right? Like I can tell you instantly when I see Lamborghinis and flashy this and flashy that, and we're like that instantly. Definitely turns me off. However, like that type of coaching and that type of marketing appeals to a segment of the audience. And I get it. Like when I was in my early 20s, maybe that would have appealed to me. Right now at this stage of my life, that does not appeal to me. That doesn't resonate with me. So no matter how genuine or great of a coach that person is, I just can't connect with it. And so I always look for, is there a core value alignment? Like what's important to you? Like I said, like for me, faith, family, like that type of thing, like I connect and I just can relate to them better than something like nothing, nothing. There's anything wrong with the Lamborghinis and all that. That's not what I'm saying. So I just look for is there a connection? And then I look for where are they in the journey? Are they still learning with me? And if so, that's okay. I just need to know that going in. And then I try never— here's something interesting that I do. I try to the best of my ability not to inquire about the investment early on in the process. In fact, I rather not know because I don't want that to filter how I feel about the program until I get the full picture of the value. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. So I want to know how I can value from working with a coach. Before I even know what their price tag is. Because if I go into a call knowing this coach is outside my budget or this coach charges X, I'm already now thinking about like the money and that's a barrier in my mind. And I'm, I might not be fully there to be able to grasp all the value. So I want to understand, hey, where's the value here? Like, how can this person help me? Can this person relate to my particular challenges? That's the other thing. I also try to look for a coach that's 2, 3, 4, 5 steps ahead of me. Like, I probably couldn't benefit that much from a coach who's a billionaire because there's such a far wide gap between where I'm at and a billionaire that that's probably not the best fit for me. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I don't, I don't know if that makes sense, but can that person relate to the stage I'm in right now? Or was that moons and eons ago that it's just too wide of a gap?

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I, I love that. I love that, the process, cuz I think it's, we're often hit up by a lot of options and knowing what's worth it, but that's super helpful.

Yeah. I'll, uh, let me add one more thing, which I think can be really valuable for people listening. I, I was considering hiring this particular coach not too long ago. Despite the fact that I have 4 coaches and I ran it through a good friend of mine who I'm in a mastermind with. And I said, hey man, what do you think of this offer? Before you ask me the question, let me already answer it. Cause he's a coach as well. And I already knew what he was going to ask me. And so I, I answered in a boxer. Here's why I'm considering this. Here's what I think I would get that I'm maybe not getting over here. And then he asked me a very simple question. He goes, Alex. Is this going to provide clarity for you or is it going to be provide clutter? And I was like, wow, clarity or clutter. And ultimately I decided on, hey, this is probably going to be clutter. I feel like I have everything I need right now, but am I fully executing on what I have right now? So be careful not to be somebody who's always looking for the next best thing because you may or may not have what you need. And if you don't have what you need, then by all means, go find the person and go get it. But in my particular case, I felt like it was going to add more clutter than clarity.

That is a great filter, right? Because there's so many shiny objects. I love that. That is, that's a great way to get to the heart of it. Is there anything else that we didn't cover in storage? I have a couple of wrap-up questions. It's been so fun. I feel like I could keep asking you questions for—

No, yeah, no, I love this. Look, I, again, I want to be as transparent as possible. Like, I find that a lot of people, and this was me years ago, and I've made so much progress in this area. This is the last thing I'll share and I'll shut up because I don't know if people want to continue to hear me talk, but try to get out of your head about how you might look, sound. I'm afraid to make a mistake. I'm afraid how— I almost didn't start the Flip Empire show 8 years ago because I was too worried about how I was going to look and sound and what if I made a mistake or This and that simple decision to start that podcast has allowed me to create meaningful relationships, friendships, opened up a lot of doors and opportunities. And the same thing can apply to wherever you are in your business. So don't ever make a decision based on fear and especially don't ever make it based on how are you going to look, sound, feel, all these, like the inner critic, how you're, because at the end of the day, Shauna, I find that A, people got their own stuff to worry about and they're not worried about you. Like I'm not that important that I got people like waiting on me to make the next move. They might think about me, talk about me for a second, and then they're moving on to the next thing. So don't worry about that because you're, I'm not important and neither are you. Now you are to your loved ones, obviously, but you get the idea, but put yourself out there, put yourself out there. So if you're scared to cold call, like step into that unknown because everything you want is gonna be on the other side of that pain or discomfort. And until you start to associate what you want with getting through that versus the pleasure of being in comfort, then you're never gonna grow. You're just not gonna grow. So that wasn't meant to inspire people, but just to share that genuinely I felt compelled. To bring that up because I find too many people not putting themselves out there, not taking that leap, not making that call, not transitioning their business because of fear. And we rarely ever make the right decision when it's rooted and based in fear.

That, that is very good advice. I think that you answered my question. It was like, oh, what's the top business or life advice you'd give someone to live life on their own terms? I think you just answered it, but yeah, I'll go with that.

And then find your tribe, find your community, find the person that can help you. I make it a habit to read 10 pages every single day. I make it a habit, like I have, I'm looking at my board. I have 4 non-negotiables every single day, no matter what's going on. Connect with God, daily sweat, which is i.e. working out, read 10 pages. And quality time with family. Like, those are my 4 non-negotiables. No matter what's going on, I do everything in my power to make sure that those 4 things happen.

That's so important cuz life gets busy and we don't prioritize, prioritize it. It not, doesn't happen. Yeah. This is like a new question I'm adding. What's your biggest asset in life or business?

What is my biggest asset? That's an easy one. My relationship with God, hands down, is my biggest asset. Probably not the question you were— the answer you were expecting. My, my support system, my family, right? I don't know how I do what I do without that support system. And then I, I think just my ability to learn something and then just implement, just, just the ability to— I hate to say take action because I feel like that's so overused. I got to find a better way to say take action. But just my ability to just ready, fire, aim. And I'm, I've adopted that mentality years ago. And so yeah, I just, I have the mentality that I'm either going to win or I'm going to learn. Like those are the only two options. I'm going to win or I'm going to learn. If I don't win, I'm going to learn something. It might suck. It might not feel good, but I'm going to learn something. Or I'm gonna win and then I keep going.

Yeah, no, that is all such great advice. And I think the path unfolds when we take that action or how, whatever we say. But if we don't, we can just get so caught up in our head and, and over analysis and—

Yeah, I, I find it all the time when people reach out to me about getting involved in storage, they're so consumed with steps 7, 8, 9, and 10. How do I get funding? How do I do this? How do I manage and operate? It's whoa, have you even identified an opportunity? Forget about that right now. Do you believe there's an answer to those questions? Yes. Okay, then let's focus on steps 1, 2, and 3. That's it. Like it's the whole analogy of middle of the night, get in your car, you're driving from Florida to Arizona or from, you know, Washington, like you're traveling across the country. Are you worried about like where you're going to be in 4 hours? No, like just. Let the headlights in your GPS take you from where you are to the highway and then from the highway to the, it's, that's it.

That's a great analogy. You don't really, you don't question, are you going to make it? You're going to make it, right? If you just set that intention and set your GPS and follow.

That's it. You know why? Because intentionality and clarity, if you have that's your foundation, then you got to take the action, i.e., get in the car, turn on the car, put it in drive and go. Same thing. I hate to oversimplify it, but it, it is that simple.

You have to believe it. You have to believe you can find that storage unit or find that deal, or you just, that starts with that intention. And it's so simple, but it's, yeah.

To your point, if I have never been in a car and I don't even know what a car is, I might not get from Miami to California because I have no idea of the capability that the car can actually get me there. So I might not even step in the car. And again, I hate to sound such, use such a simple elementary example, but I know that if I turn on the car and it has gas or I have an EV and it's charged up, like, it's going to take me there. I just need a GPS and I need to know how to drive. That's it.

And you never doubt that. You never doubt. No. What's the matter, gas or something? There's no— I don't know if I'll make it. Right. Yeah. That's it.

That's why mindset is literally like the most important ingredient to this whole puzzle we call success. Us. It's, it's your mindset.

It really is. It's, it's especially when you're starting out. I feel like it feels very intimidating and everyone else is getting deals and they're all putting their best selves out there, but we all, we're all festive together.

Uh, that's why I've shared lessons learned and challenges because I don't, just because I'm on here being interviewed by you, it doesn't mean I have everything figured out. I got challenges just like everybody else. Be careful to look at other people's highlight reels on social and feel less than. Because you're only seeing the highlights. You're not seeing like the challenges and the struggles and the pain points and the lessons learned and all that, because we all have them.

For sure. Yeah, it's easier to get caught up in that and the glossy version of it. Thank you so much, Alex. I know you have a lot, you have got a podcast, of course, if you just want to highlight how people can get in touch with you if they want to follow up about storage.

Yeah, no, thank you so much. I appreciate that. It's called The Flip Empire Show. So wherever you consume podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other platforms, it's called The Flip Empire Show. And then yeah, for anybody interested in storage, I actually have a valuable resource. I gave a talk a couple of months ago about how you can find, fund, and profit from a cash-flowing storage facility within 6 to 12 months. It's not a pitch, it's 100% content. If you want, just text me the word storage. At 305-318-6213. By the way, that's my mobile number. Oh, actually that's my legit mobile number. I'll put that out there. So 305-318-6213, text me the word storage. I'm happy to send you that, that resource. Or if you really like serious about going a step further, storagewins.com, storagewins.com, simple application there. Just take a minute or two to apply. And if I like what you have to say, we'll go out and schedule a call with you.

I love that. It's very generous. Yeah, definitely. You're in the game. You're doing it. You're really easy to talk to. You're fun to be around.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Alex. This has been a real treat. Thank you for taking the time. I know this is long, but it's just, it was a really fun conversation.

So yeah, super effortless. Love what, love what you're doing with She's Got Assets. And I'm grateful. That you and I met at Cara Camp and now we've built a relationship and I look forward to having you on my podcast and just yeah, helping people. That's the idea here.

Totally. Awesome. All right. Thanks so much.

Take care, guys.