Want to know the real key to launching your self-storage investment journey? In this episode, Stacy Rossetti reveals the #1 first step secret to starting strong in self-storage investing. Discover why understanding the market and focusing on foundational strategies are crucial for your success. Stacy discusses the critical components of finding, funding, and running storage facilities, and shares insights on overcoming common challenges and leveraging opportunities in a competitive market. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to refine your strategy, this episode provides the essential knowledge and actionable tips to set you on the path to success in self-storage investing.

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The #1 First Step Secret On Getting Started In Self-Storage Investing

My audience is people who are trying to get into self-storage. I am here to help you get your foot in the door. That is my job, and that is what Storage Nerds is all about. The brand, Storage Nerds, is not going away. I know you guys are getting emails about the coaching program closing. I’m only taking coaching students. I’m closing the doors to coaching students in September 2024 because I’m focusing on other things. I have a lot of stuff going on. I can only have so much time.

I have a good amount of people in the coaching program. I really want to focus on helping them buy facilities instead of being one of these people who’s always trying to get new students in. My goal is to increase the success rate of Storage Nerds by helping the students who are in the program buy facilities. We have about 100 students in Storage Nerds and around 50 of them own storage facilities. That’s a 50% success rate. A lot of them own 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or even 7. They’re buying their seventh one.

I have a pretty good success rate, but I really want to help 100 people. I turned 48 not long ago. By the time I’m 50, I want to help 100 people buy a storage facility. I’m going to focus on the 50 people that are already there and then work with them to find a facility. It’s a goal. If you want to buy a storage facility or you want to get a storage facility under contract and close by the end of 2024 or the 1st quarter of 2025, I highly recommend checking out Storage Nerds. That is what’s closing down. I’ll focus on helping them.

My husband and I own a lot of storage facilities. We also partner with our students. We have a ridiculous amount of deals that we’re juggling as well. I want to be able to give my attention to all of those deals. Especially the ones I’m partnering with my students, I want to make sure that they’re making the most income that they possibly can. I want to give some time and attention to those people as well. That’s my goal. Plus, there are a couple of other things that we’re working on. We’re switching it up a little bit. I’ve been teaching and coaching people how to get into self-storage for five years. This is the fifth year. I’ve been investing in real estate since 2010 or 2011. I’m going to go through it before we start.

A quick reminder is that my book is out on Kindle. We’re in the process of getting it in paperback. It’s not quite on paperback yet. I’m working with Amazon on that. It is on Kindle, so if you’re a Kindle reader, you can read my book. I’ll go through a lot of stuff as well too. If you guys remember, we have a division of Storage Nerds called Turnkey Acquisitions. That is where eight of our virtual assistants call owners. That’s how I teach. Call the owner and ask them if they want to get an offer. All our virtual assistants do that. We are getting a lot of owners interested in getting offers in Texas, South Carolina, and Georgia.

In 2023, it was very hard to find deals in the southeast. I used to live in Atlanta. Now, I live in Tallahassee. When I first started in storage several years ago, it was an amazing market. You got amazing good deals. People then started to realize that there were such good deals, so more people came in. They were interested in storage and stuff, so then there was more competition. The prices went up and then the deals weren’t as good.

In 2023, it was very difficult to find deals in Georgia. In 2024, the market is down. You know what happens when the market goes down. A lot of people back out. I have seen a lot of people backing out. They’re like, “The interest rates are too high,” or, “It’s hard to get funding.” They come up with some excuse. Internally, they didn’t want to do it in the first place. They’re like, “It’s not the right time,” or whatever. They get out.

What happens is that gives us who are the ones who are like, “Who cares what the market says? I’m going to do it anyway,” which is me, more opportunity for people like us in there as well. The southeast is making a comeback. To me, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are really hot areas. Even Tennessee is a hot area for storage. If you’re not calling owners, this is the time to be doing that.

Also, remember, and I always teach this and go over this, that there can only be so much storage out there. The way that storage works is you have a population inside of a radius. You can only have so much square feet for storage per population. When you think of it in terms of storage, in this industry, we talk about net capita per square foot. That’s a term that you hear, which means there’s a population within a radius. That may be a 1, 3, 5, or 10-mile radius that there’s this many people living there. That means that there can only be so much storage there. What that means is that overall throughout the whole United States, there can only be so much storage if you stick to the right net capita per square foot.

 

There can only be so much storage in any location. You never want to have too much storage in a location because then, you have a lot of storage but you don’t have enough people to rent from you. That’s what you call oversaturation. You hear that word a lot, like, “That market is way oversaturated.” That means that the people who did not understand net capita per square foot built in that area and there’s too much storage and not enough people to rent. You don’t want to be in that situation. What that means is that overall, in the grand scheme of things, there can only be so much storage.

Let’s say there are 300 million adults who are qualified to be able to buy square footage. In each area, there are only so many people that can buy storage or rent storage. The whole purpose of me telling you that is that there’s a window of opportunity in storage to be able to get into it. Those that get in are going to reap the rewards in 5 or 10 years. It will only get more difficult to break into the storage world.

What is happening is there are too many players. There are a lot of players trying to get their hands in the game, and then there are people like me. I own sixteen storage facilities. I’m buying this and buying that. Whatever’s a good deal, I’m buying, but I’m a smaller player in the whole market. There are bigger players that are buying in tertiary markets, secondary markets, and primary markets. Within the next 5 to 10 years, there will not be as much opportunity as there is now. It’s time. If you want to get into storage, this is the time.

I’ve been in storage for eight years. Look at where I’m at. After 8 years, we own 16 facilities. We’re partnering in a whole bunch of other deals. We own a lot of storage. It’s because we started years ago in the game. This is where you want to be in the next eight years. In the next eight years, it’s going to be super hard to be able to do anything in storage. This is my opinion. It’s already very competitive. It’s going to get worse.

If you don’t understand marketing or management and you own this facility, you’re going to be stuck behind. If you’re not marketing or managing the facility properly, then you are not doing well. Even if you’re the cheapest in town, all you’re doing is screwing yourself over. We talk to a lot of owners. They’re always like, “I’m the cheapest in town. I’m always full.” That’s not how you play the game anymore. You want to be at the right price and you want to be full. How can you always be at the right price or at the market level price and be full at the same time? That’s the game that everybody’s playing, and that game is only going to get more difficult. That’s my two cents and I am sticking to it.

Find Them, Fund Them, Run Them

I’m going to go quickly through my three-step process, which is to Find Them, Fund Them, Run Them. That is the name of the book. This is me from teaching people how to invest in self-storage for the last couple of years. This is how I’ve been working through it. These are the questions I’m sure you’re asking yourself. You’re like, “How do I find storage facilities to buy outside of going on Crexi, going on LoopNet, maybe hiring a realtor to send me their deals, asking a realtor to send the deals, or maybe talking to a wholesaler?” Those are the four typical ways. If you are looking on Crexi, looking on LoopNet, talking to wholesalers, and talking to realtors, you are shooting yourself in the foot because those are the most expensive ways to buy and find facilities.

What are the ways where you can get the best deals? I talk about going directly to the owner, but how do you do that? I teach fifteen different ways to find facilities that do not include Crexi, LoopNet, wholesaling, and realtors. That is the find them process. Within find them also includes deal analysis. Once you find a property, that’s great. You found a property. You’re like, “The guy wants an offer. Perfect. How do I know if it’s a good offer?” That includes deal analysis. You’re like, “How do I run the deal analysis? How do I know if it’s a good deal? If I’m looking at these numbers or they send me their package over, that’s great. I got a package. How do I know if it’s a good deal?”

When you’re getting into this industry, you have to learn how to find good deals, look at them, run numbers, and know if they’re a good deal. It’s not knowing whether or not it’s a good deal. It’s, “What is the best offer that I can make that fits within the parameters that I can afford and that I can do?” Everybody’s parameters are completely different. There’s not one person that has the same parameters. Believe me. I talk to thousands of people about storage. Finding them, deal analysis, and understanding these concepts is step one.

Step two is funding. Funding includes all the different ways that you can fund facilities. Most people think, “I’ve got 20% down. I can go to a bank and get a loan.” That is one of a plethora of ways that you can fund storage. Remember. I bought $15 million worth of storage. I own around $30 million in storage and I haven’t put a dime of my own money into purchasing that outside of maybe operational income. To purchase the facilities, I have not contributed my own money. I always bring other people’s money in. That’s how I buy my facilities. You’re like, “How do you do that?” There are so many different ways. I call this creative deal structure.

Going to a bank and getting a bank loan is 1 way of 100 different ways that you can fund a deal. If you only know that one way and you have a deal coming across your plate, and you’re running the numbers and that deal does not work with those numbers based on what that bank is telling you, then you cannot buy that deal. If you have 5, 10, or 15 different ways to structure a deal that you know and understand, think about how many deals come across your plate that would become opportunities because you understand how to fund deals.

Think about how many deals come across your plate that would become opportunities because you understand how to fund deals. Share on X

I do not go out and look for deals. I don’t go out and look for storage anymore because no matter what deal comes across my plate, I can make it a win-win situation. If the owner’s willing to work with me and they want to sell their facility, I would be able to come up with a structure to buy that property. That’s why I can’t go out and look for deals. That’s why I have sixteen facilities. I bought them all. I can’t do that, but I can teach others to do that. I can teach you how to do this. That is what I do. I teach people how to understand the tools that are out there so that they don’t have to pass up an opportunity.

I hate passing up opportunities. If I see an opportunity, I’m going to pass it on to my students. We have a deal in Turnkey Acquisitions that is an amazing deal. We posted it out to the students and I said, “This is an amazing deal. If you do not buy it, I’m going to figure out how to buy this deal.” That’s how it works. I hate passing up a really good deal you can make. If you could make $1 million on a deal, why would you want to pass that up? That’s funding them. Your next step is funding them.

You then have running. That’s the management part. Remember. When you’re buying storage, you are buying a business. You are not buying an investment property. May the best marketer win. Your job as a storage facility owner is to increase revenue and decrease expenses. That is my job w. I sit and look at how much money we’re making and how much money we’re spending. I yell at everybody all the time telling them to take this off, do this, increase the marketing, or whatever it is. That’s my job.

That’s where you want to be when you are running a business, but you have to learn how to do that. I didn’t know that. I did not understand that on my very first deal when I bought storage. It took me quite a while to figure that out. I was like, “A storage facility. It’s a great deal. Let me buy one.” It was getting seller-financed or whatever.

Let’s learn how to manage facilities properly so that in the coming eight years, we are doing very well in marketing, matching the competition, managing the facility property, and understanding your income versus expenses, your net operating income, and this kind of stuff. That’s management, and there’s a lot of stuff that goes into that. That is my three-step process. I teach that in the course. I teach that in the coaching. I teach that in my book. In everything I do, those three steps are the basis of how I teach.

Business Departments

Another thing that I teach I want everybody to know about, and I’ve gone over this before but I want everybody to realize, is that when you get into the storage investing world, you are creating a business that has departments. Nobody really thinks about that because you go through your day and you’re like, “I got to do this today or that today.” The truth is that you have six departments within your storage investing company. You’re like, “I’m going to be a storage investor.” You do stuff, but you are setting up departments for your business even if you don’t know it.

When I teach, I am always teaching in one of these departments. The very first department is going to be your admin office. How do you set your office up? How do you structure your business? How do you make sure that you’re doing everything for taxes correctly? How do you get your phone set up? How are you going to manage everything?

Your office and structuring your office correctly is super important. This is something that I never did until after I was in the business. Now, I know that this step is the most important step because it’s the basis or the foundation of how you’re going to add to your portfolio, even save on taxes, or all kinds of stuff like that. Admin and understanding how to set those up properly is number one. That is your first department.

Also, as you go through these departments, you are going through the step-by-step process of owning a facility. This is a step-by-step process. The second department is your marketing department. You have to market. You have to find facilities. What are all the different ways that you’re going to be finding facilities so that you can get them under contract? The marketing department has all the different ways for you to find facilities. It’s talking to owners or going to a broker, wholesaler, or whatever it is. There’s a plethora. There are twenty-plus different ways for you to find facilities. That’s your marketing department. That’s the next step.

After you set these systems up inside your company, all your marketing systems, then you’re moving over to acquisitions. Acquisitions is deal analysis. Acquisition is like, “How do I acquire the property?” I have one student who is sending out letters. That’s his thing. He is in this one state. He got the list of all the storage facilities and he’s sending out letters to all the storage facilities, and then he gets calls back. That’s one system in your marketing department. That’s the first step.

Owners are calling him. Owners are calling and saying, “I’d be interested in getting an offer.” Acquisition is where you gather all the information from the owner so that you can run a commercial deal analysis on the property. After you run a commercial deal analysis, you can make an offer. I teach that you don’t make one offer. You make five offers. You want to come up with a whole bunch of different offers.

Acquisition is what are the systems or what are the processes internally that you are doing in order to be able to acquire property? The goal of acquisitions is to get a property under contract. You say, “I want to buy a storage facility.” There are some steps in order for you to be able to buy a storage facility. Your ultimate goal is to get a facility under contract. You will never be able to buy a property unless you get it under contract. What do you have to do in all the steps and processes to be able to get it under contract? That’s your admin office department, your marketing department, and your acquisitions department. The goal for acquisitions is to get a facility under contract.

After that, you have a facility under contract. That’s great. I have a whole system inside Storage Nerds. You have a facility under contract. Now what? You can’t get a facility under contract and be like, “I did it.” We call that the onboarding phase. During the onboarding phase, there are a lot of things that you have to do in order to be able to close on a property. What are all those processes?

Your goal in the finance department is to be able to buy the property, but you can’t buy it. You have to onboard the facility, and then you have to also find the financing. Depending on what type of a deal it is, what is the structure going to be? Can you pay in cash? Do you have to go to a bank? Do you have to syndicate it out? Are you going to partner with people? There are all kinds of ways.

Whatever that deal calls for is what the finance department is about. That is the next step. It is finance. It’s not financing in terms of talking to banks. There are different types of loans out there that banks can offer for commercial property. Is this a commercial mortgage-backed security? Is it a conventional loan? Is it this SBA loan? What are all the different types of loans out there? It’s understanding those.

 

Under finance also includes your bookkeeping, keeping track of your company’s money and your property’s money, and making sure the income is going up and the expenses are staying the same or going down. The goal of finance is to close on the property. Also, you have to remember that when you close on that property, your goal on day one is to be able to take payments because you are not going to make any money on this property unless you can take payments.

Under finance, you have to consider merchant accounts. How are you going to take payments? How’s your software looking and stuff like this? That all falls under that. You then have to manage the property. You have to be able to take calls, have somebody go out, clean the units out, overlock, and have a lot of management duties. Who’s going to take care of the lawn? There are all kinds of a million different things.

That is the management. You really want to get all those things set up but then also systematize that so you can make this property as passive as possible. I have hardly been to any facilities in years. You can do that. Under the management department, you are trying to create the systems internally to be able to manage those. What are those systems?

Finally, you managed it. You got the prices up, which is under management. You got your income up. You’ve stabilized the property. You’ve done as much as you possibly can and you’ve had it for five years. You’re like, “How much more money can I make on this property? Should I keep it or should I sell it?” We’re in that phase. Remember. I told you I’ve been doing this for almost eight years.

We got properties that are 5 years old going on 6 years old and stuff like that. We’re like, “Should we keep these or should we get rid of them? How much more money can we make on this property if we hold onto it? Is it better to sell it and then 1031 exchange that money into another deal, build, or whatever we want to do?” That’s the liquidations portion. The goal is to get to the point where you can liquidate your property at the most amount of money that you possibly can get for it.

 

Those are the six departments. When you buy my course, Super Simple Self-Storage, the course takes you through these six departments. That is the purpose of the course. When you buy the course, you’ll see six different modules. Inside each module are videos going over every single one of those. I’ve been teaching the six departments for at least ten years.

I also used my six departments on the rehabbing side when I was coaching people to do rehabs. That was the first thing I did. For five years, I did rehabs and moved over to storage. That’s the six departments. If you get into the coaching program, you’re going to learn all that. That’s everything. If you want to know specifically your six departments, the Super Simple Self-Storage course is what’s going through that.

Four Stages Of Self-Storage Investing

If you’ve followed me before, you already know this. This is what I call the four stages of investing in self-storage. I told you I’ve gone through this. Stage one, your goal is to get the facility under contract. You’re like, “What are all the things that I have to do in order to get a facility under contract?” I talked about Find Them, Fund Them, Run Them. I talked about all the six departments.

This is all woven together. Your goal if you do not own a facility is to get the facility under contract. Even if you do own a facility, that one facility is going to fall in either stage 3 or 4. You may be ready to start looking for another facility. This cycle repeats it over. I’ve done this cycle sixteen times. For all sixteen facilities, I’m managing the facilities. That is what I’m doing.

Stage one is to get the facility under contract. Stage two, you got it under contract. You then have to onboard it and fund it so that you can close on it. The goal for stage two is to buy the facility and own it. When you own it, you’re doing what’s called transfer ownership. When you transfer a business from one person to the other, it is utter chaos. Whatever that owner told you was not correct anyway, so then you’re trying to figure it all out anyway. You’re wheezing through. You’re trying to figure out how everything works.

It takes a good several months to figure this out and get everything up to date. It’s in your system and your processes. We call this onboarding and transfer ownership. The first couple of months of owning a facility is a lot. A couple of months before you buy it and then the first couple of months that you own it, that 6 or 8-month period is a lot of work.

After you own the facility for a while, you’re like, “I feel like I can breathe a little bit. I’m not stressed out so much. I’m chasing tenants and all this stuff. Now, I need to figure out my systems. I need to get into my six departments. I need to work through how I’m going to manage this facility properly so that I can sell it for the highest return in 3 to 5 years.”

Those are the stages. That is what I’m teaching throughout all of my courses and coaching. Number one, under contract. That has a lot to do with Turnkey Acquisitions and Storage Nerds. Turnkey Acquisitions is where I have eight virtual assistants that do nothing but call owners. I call this the dirty work. This is a lot of work. I tell this to everybody all the time. To call an owner and gather all the information from the owner on what you need in order to run a deal analysis takes around 40 hours. That’s one week’s worth of work per deal.

Remember. It takes around 30 offers to get a facility under contract. You’re doing 40 hours of work 30 times. Hopefully, within 30 offers, you find something. Sometimes, it takes 40 or 50 offers. It has taken some of my students a lot of offers to find a deal. Sometimes, you get one that’s super easy. Sometimes, it’s upwards of 50 offers. You never know, especially if you’re super conservative.

We have some students that are really conservative. They want an income-producing property in a growth area and want to net $2,000 or $3,000 a month. That makes your buy box really low or small. It’s not impossible but it’s small. That means that it’s going to take a lot of effort, a lot of time, and a lot of offers to find a deal that fits into that buy box. My buy box is like, “Show me any deal. Let me see if I can make it work.” There are some people who are not like that. There’s no right or wrong. This is how you are. You have to learn how you are and how to do stuff. Those are the stages.

Seven Ways To Invest In Self-Storage

Finally, what I wanted to go over is the seven ways to invest in self-storage. I talk about this a lot as well too because a lot of people do not understand that there’s more than one way to invest and self-storage. You don’t have to buy a facility in your neighborhood. You don’t have to do that anymore. There are mismanaged facilities, which are facilities that may be making money but are not making what they should be making. 80% of all facilities fall under mismanaged facilities.

There are severely mismanaged facilities, and then there are mismanaged facilities. For instance, we’re looking at a facility that’s making $150,000 a year, but it’s supposed to be making around $250,000 a year. It’s making income. It’s probably making enough money to buy, manage, and even pay the mortgage off, but that $100,000 break even. That’s where it’s at. I’m like, “I’m going to break even.” That $75,000 to $100,000 that you could make is what’s going to create that opportunity in that deal. In mismanaged facilities, you’re either breaking even or you’re coming out of pocket every single month for at least 1 or 2 years on the deal so that you can stabilize the property.

In income-producing properties or that 20%, they’re making what they should be making. There’s not a lot of upside on the back end because that appreciation has already been done by the owner. You cannot offer a lowball offer to an owner who has stabilized a property. This really pisses me off when people do that. They’ve done all the work. They stabilize the property. It’s at 85% or 90%. It’s at the price that it should be. The price per square foot is doing great and it’s full. They did all the work. You can’t go in and offer 50% on that. In income-producing properties, you want that cashflow and a little bit of upside on the backend. The main thing is the cashflow. That’s about 20% of deals out there.

We’ve got new construction. New construction was big in the last couple of years. It has chilled out a little bit. Contractors are looking for work. It takes a long time to build. You have to have a strong stomach because it could take years to build a storage facility. Once you build it, you have to lease it up. You’re still not making any money. You built the thing. You need to have a really strong stomach. You have to have this mindset of, “I know I’m going to be able to double or triple the value of this property going through all this process, building it, and leasing it up. I’m in it for the long haul. I’m going to do this.”

You make a lot of money on new construction. That’s why there is a lot of new construction going on because you make a lot of money. You have to have a really strong stomach, and you have to be able to follow the rules. I’m bad at following rules. You probably know this. I can’t follow the rules. I do whatever I want. I’ve done new construction on houses and it was horrible for me. I will never do that again.

My husband is really good at following rules. He makes a good partner. He’s like, “You can’t do it that way. I’m like, “I can do anything I want. Don’t tell me what I can do.” He’s like, “You have to do it this way.” Maybe he wants to do new construction. He can do it and I’ll coach everybody, consult, and stuff. We’ll see what happens.

With conversions, we did buy a conversion. We did not do a conversion but we bought a conversion. That’s where you buy a building and there’s already storage inside it, like old Best Buys and stuff like that. This is a really big thing because there are so many empty buildings. You can get a good deal on an empty building and then you can convert it into storage. This is a thing that will never go away. This is a very good way to get into storage. You have to be able to afford the building and afford to do it. You can also get loans on this. There are all kinds of loans that you can do.

Also, entitlements. Entitlement is where you are doing all the pre-development work in order to sell the project to somebody who wants to finish it. With new construction, you have to do all the variances, get the drawings, and do all that. That could take upwards of 1 year or 2 years sometimes depending on where you’re located. People do the entitlement work.

That pre-development work or that entitlement work is worth a lot of money. A lot of people will pay very good money if you can do something like that. Contractors want to buy it and build it. If you think of the 3-step process in building a storage facility, step 1 is entitlements, step 2 is building it, and then step 3 is leasing it up. I have had students who have done each step.

I have a student who bought a facility that was a brand-new facility, leased it up, and then sold it to somebody who was going to hold onto it and manage it. I have a student who has done all the entitlement work, and then she sold it to somebody who was going to build it. If you can think of those 3 steps, you can do any 1 of those steps inside the storage investing world.

Wholesaling is good for $1 million or less. You can wholesale anything, honestly. I wholesale stuff that’s $3 million. A lot of times, wholesalers work on $1 million or less. Wholesaling is where you are the middle person between the buyer and the seller. We have lots of wholesalers inside Storage Nerds. For a lot of people, if they don’t have a lot of money, they’ll come in and wholesale 1 or 2 deals, and then they have enough money to go buy their next deal. That is exactly what happened to many students that I have. They own 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 facilities.

If you don’t have a lot of money and you’re reading this, wholesaling is the best way to get in. You have to understand the wholesaling process. I have a wholesaling course. My students have access to it. Maybe later on, I’ll open it up to everybody. I teach wholesaling inside the coaching program. What happens is if you come into the coaching program and you go to wholesale, you could wholesale to all the students.

We have one student that’s wholesaling to another student and the student’s buying it. That happens all the time. Wholesaling is very good if you are okay with being the middle person between the buyer and the seller. You’re like a broker, but it’s a different way of doing it. You are not a broker because you don’t have a contract. You have what’s called equity interest in the deal.

Finally, lending. Lending is the best way, hands down, to get into storage because you don’t have to do any work. You lend them money out. All my lenders get a paycheck. That’s all they do. If you want to get a paycheck and somebody doing all the work, lend your money out. If you’re sitting on money and you can’t figure out what deals to put it in, lend your money out, and then you don’t have to do anything. I lend my money out. I borrow money. I partner. I do it all.

Lending is the best way, hands down, to get into storage because you don’t have to do any work. You lend them money out. Share on X

Lending is the best way to make money in the real estate investing world because you don’t have to do anything. I have a lender that has been working with me for about ten years and he has made $1 million off of me. He has not seen any properties except for the first one. That’s it. He was like, “I trust you. Here’s my money. Do whatever you want.” He’s made $1 million off me. He hasn’t done anything except that he does his taxes. If we close on a property, he signs the documents maybe or something and that’s it. Lending is very good if you can do that.

Creative Deal Structures

I wanted to get a little bit into who I am. I own sixteen facilities. From 2016 to 2024, I have 16, and then I’m partnering on 15 other deals. The partners come from Turnkey Acquisitions. If you’re interested in partnering with me, please check out Turnkey Acquisitions so that you can partner on a deal with me. Of the sixteen that we own, my husband runs around and manages them with his team. My job is to find and fund the deals. His job is to run the deals. That’s how we’re set up internally.

I have 50-plus students in Storage Nerds that own at least 1 up to 6 facilities. What we focus on in Storage Nerds and what I consider what I do very well is creative deal structures. I hate to pass up any opportunities. The thing is that when I look at a deal, I can come up with a structure that’s going to work. The hardest part about a creative deal structure is not coming up with a structure. Once you learn how to come up with structures, that’s the easiest part. The hardest part is convincing the other person to do that structure. A lot of people don’t understand that you can be creative in buying property.

In my job, I see myself as an educator not only to you guys that are tuning in to me but also to owners. For the most part, owners do not understand that there’s more than one way to sell a property. My job as a person who wants to buy property is to educate the person on all the different ways that they could sell the property to me so that we could create a win-win situation.

That is what I excel at. I excel at finding the deals and funding the deals. That’s why I own sixteen properties and I have not put a penny into any of them. That is what that is. I haven’t put a penny into buying them. We’ve put our own money into maybe CapEx or something like that, the operational stuff. In buying them, I always bring other people’s money in.

When we talk about creative deal structures, this is something that I go in in the course but really in the coaching program. There is a plethora of training on how to do this. I also have a two-day boot camp where we do two full days of this. If you want to succeed in real estate investing, it doesn’t matter what the type of property is. You have to know and understand all of this. This is the foundation of raising capital.

The truth of the matter is, especially on the commercial side, residential, land, or whatever it is, it’s expensive to buy property. A bank will only allow you to lend so much. That’s why they have the debt-to-service ratio. That’s why they talk about leverage. That’s why they’re looking at everything that you have because they want to make sure that you aren’t over-leveraged. What if you took the bank away? What if you took that away and you focused on alternative investments or alternative ways of investing? You could buy as many properties as you want. That is what creative deal structure is.

There’s seller financing or owner financing, doing traditional methods or commercial mortgage-backed securities, getting a conventional loan versus an SBA loan, partnering, setting up structures for your partners, getting deals done, syndicating your deals, which is raising money for one deal so that you don’t have to buy it and you get everybody else to buy it for you, crowdfunding, which is pulling a lot of people’s money together, or getting people to be debt lenders on your deals.

There are so many different ways. You could do it 100 different ways. You could structure deals by knowing these types of methods and training your brain so that when you look at a deal and the numbers, you could come up with a structure on how you can do that. The hardest part is convincing the other person to do that with you. That’s a skill. That’s negotiation skills. Convincing other people to do what you want is another skill that you’re going to have to learn in order to be successful in this game, the real estate game.

Road To Success

I keep saying success. For me, the word success is super personal. When did I consider myself successful? Was it when I bought my 1st property, 100th property, or 200th property? I don’t know. What’s successful is very personal to you. Success doesn’t always have to be with work. It can also be other things. I’ve been to 40 different countries. I do speak other languages. What is success? I don’t know. It is whatever you want it to be. I’m talking about success in the storage investing world. Being successful is buying at least one facility. That’s more than most people in the world buy.

With coaching, there are two ways that I’ve been coaching up. There’s one-on-one coaching, which is the coaching that I’m closing down. This is where I’m closing down. If you want my help to find a facility, you want to sit with me, and you want me to tell you exactly what to do, then that’s the one-on-one coaching. That’s the Storage Nerds Legacy Program that I’m closing down. You’ve got to apply to talk to me about that.

We also have group training. That’s where all my students get together and I teach or a student comes on and talks about their deals or whatever it is. That’s the group coaching. I want to make sure all of you know that the one-on-one coaching is going away. Everybody that’s in the coaching program will always get that. I’ll help you at any time. I’m not going to bring any more students in. I’m capping it off.

Also, we have the mastermind. We have one mastermind. It’s called the Facility Owner mastermind. This is the best mastermind because once you own a facility, you get to come hang out with all the other owners in Storage Nerds. We exchange ideas. Even though I’m the coach and I tell everybody what to do, everybody always tries to figure out their own things and they bring that to the table. We’re all learning from each other.

You don’t have to become an island in this industry, and I hope that you don’t become an island. Trying to figure it out on your own is only going to prolong however long it takes you. It’s not that it’s impossible. You can always figure it out on your own. If you hang out with somebody like me or a lot of people that are like me, you’ll be able to hear all the different ideas or what everybody’s doing on all types of ownership, how we’re building out our portfolios, our marketing, hiring people, or whatever it is. That’s the Facility Owner Mastermind. If you join the coaching program, you’ll automatically get access to this once you buy a facility.

 

You know that I have my book. It’s $6 or $12. It’s $6 for the Kindle version or $12 for the paperback. Be ready once I figure it out. Everything always takes me forever to figure out. It seems like I’m doing a lot and I know a lot, but the truth is it takes me a long time to figure stuff out because I’m busy. You can only put so much time into so many things. Eventually, I’ll figure out the paperback thing on Amazon and you’ll be able to do that as well too.

I have eight different courses. We have a development course. We have a management course. We’ve got Super Simple Self-Storage, which is everything encompassing it. We’ve got the Deal Analyzer. If you want to learn how to analyze deals, there’s a course for that. You’ve got the wholesaling course. You’ve got the jumpstart course.

If you’re like, “Tell me what to do. That’s it. I want to know. What do I do right now? What are my first ten steps?” We got all kinds of courses and they range from $297 to $1,997. You can go on my website to get those. It is $15,000 for the one-on-one coaching, but you get everything that I offer included in that. For the Turnkey Acquisitions, I talked about that. It’s $25,000-plus for me to find you a deal that you can buy. It’s lead generation.

I have a whole bunch of different prices. On my products, I try to have different amounts for whatever you can afford. I get it. Everybody’s in a different space. I also do have some free stuff. I’m teaching on Wednesdays for free. I’m not going to promise it’s forever, but I’m teaching for free. YouTube is free. You can watch all my videos. I have thousands of videos there. My show episodes are free.

Overall, this is what I offer. This is everything that you can do. There’s something there for you at whatever price range you’re at in order to get started in this industry. My job as a coach is to inspire you to get out there and start looking and to train you and educate you on how to get into this industry. It has changed my life.

Another thing I was going to tell you, too, is that when I started in real estate investing in 2011, I joined a coaching program. I paid $50,000 for that coaching program. Do I regret it? No. Look where I’m at. I did not have any idea about anything to do with real estate investing, so I hired somebody to tell me what to do because I didn’t know. I don’t know if it’s good, bad, or what. For me, that’s how I learn. That’s why I coach. It’s because that’s how I learn. You have all this here available for you if you really want to get into this industry. I made something for you.

I have a couple of questions here. Tommy says, “Do you have experience using retirement accounts for funding?” I have experienced using every type of money that you can imagine. In fact, I am lending out my money from my self-directed 401(k) into deals. Anything that you can imagine, I’ve done it. I promise. If you have any questions, let me know. You can use your retirement account to lend out money. You cannot buy your own personal property because you can’t benefit from that until you’re 59, 67, or whatever it is. You can’t buy your own property but you can lend that money out.

Heather said, “I am from the Finger Lakes area.” That’s perfect. I love that area. My sister lives in Ithaca. Someone asked, “How do I buy and run storage facilities out of state if I don’t have money for a management company? What size facility would I need to purchase to be able to afford this?” I have a lot of students like this, but one student lives in San Diego and owns a facility in North Carolina. Everything is remote. There’s this whole concept in storage called remote management or contactless management. This all stemmed from COVID.

Pre-COVID, for most people, you had to go there, sign the contract, and stuff. This time, everything’s electronic. If you go to my website and go to Mission Self-storage, you can rent a unit without meeting anybody at all. You rent the unit, get the email with the code to the gate, get the code to the lock at your door, and then you move in.

Of all sixteen facilities, we are remote. We do not meet any tenants at all. We live in Florida. Our facilities are a minimum of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 hours away. We cannot go and meet anybody. What that means is in your automated system, which is stage four, you are going to set your facility up for remote management. That’s what you’re going to be doing. You have to understand and learn them. Read my book. Buy my course. It’s all there. That’s what it is. Onboarding, stage two, is where you’re picking your software that does all this, and then you are using the software to automate everything as well as other things as well.

Someone said, “I heard that, unlike other real estate investing, we can find deals anywhere, especially if the rental system is automated.” If you came into Turnkey Acquisitions and you had my virtual assistants finding you deals, you would have access to at least 30 deals across the entire country. Mark is a student who lives in Idaho and bought a facility in Texas. You can be living all over there. I have a student who lives in Washington, Seattle and is buying a facility in Florida. You can look at deals across any country but you have to know how to find them. You have to know how to run deal analysis. You have to know how to fund them. That’s what you have to do. It’s not just looking. It’s understanding the process.

Someone said, “Getting into this while working a W-2 job is one of my biggest hurdles. You mentioned the first two stages will require lots of time.” It is a lot of work. If you have a full-time job, it is going to take you a long time. You can look at wholesale deals. Wholesalers are doing all that work for you. It’s lead generation. That’s what wholesaling is.

Even if you got all the information from a wholesaler and then they gave you everything, it still takes about 1 hour to 2 hours to look at that inner information and analyze it. You have to give yourself time to do that. If you’re going to do everything on your own, if you’re going to go out, build your list, talk to owners, and all the stuff I teach, then give yourself 40 hours per deal. That’s how long it takes. Remember. It takes, on average, 30 offers to find a deal. That’s 1200 hours. That’s a lot of hours. It’s a lot of work.

If you have a full-time job and you’re reading this, and you’re like, “I do want to buy a storage facility but I do not have the time or patience to look at deals,” you can hire my team called Turnkey Acquisitions to find you a deal. We send you deals. You say, “I’m really interested in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, or whatever it is,” and then we call all the owners for you. We do what’s called the dirty work and send you the leads. That’s Turnkey Acquisitions.

You are ultimately responsible for your success. Share on X

Someone asked, “If I sign up for your course, can you make me a millionaire?” Your success is not my responsibility. I’m a coach. I’m a mentor. I can tell you what to do and give you the tools but you are ultimately responsible for your success. I would love to help you become a millionaire because I have many students who are doing this, but you are in control of your life. I’m not in control of your life. That’s it. I appreciate you guys hanging out with me until the end. I’ll see you next time. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Find Them Fund Them Run Them: The Ultimate Blueprint to Buying Your First Storage Facility
• YouTube – Stacy Rossetti – Self-Storage Investing