Tell us about the time you went head-to-head with U-Haul.

It's the only time I have won against an institutional operator.

And that was really just reading the cellar.

So I get to this facility.

It's not upstate New York.

It's about an hour north of the Bronx.

And, um, and it kind of a small little town and I get there and it's a beautiful facility and it's right off the highway and you can see it from the highway.

What was the opportunity you saw there?

21st Century Entrepreneurship with Martin Piskarik.

The hook that got me into self-storage was that, and now this was at the time, 80% of all self-storage facilities were owned by mom and pop investors.

And that number today is still probably north of 70%.

So when I saw that stat, it was probably 2016, I think.

So the market's moved a little bit.

Wall Street and the institutions have definitely gotten more involved.

And I would say the game has changed from a standpoint of barriers to entry.

Mm

...

the, the people themselves, the, the students, they love us.

They were gravitating to us.

We, we were, we were teaching them a couple nights a week, different classes.

We were their cheerleaders, their champions.

We were, we were the bumper rails, uh, to the bowling ball, right? The, we, we help people from making mistakes buying self-storage facilities, their very first one.

Yeah.

you i like your starting point go ahead please

But enter the SBA because it's a business, right? The SBA is one of the primary lenders for self-storage facilities under a certain size, right? So you have the, it's like a demarcation line in the business where I'll call it north of two to $3 million in acquisition versus south of there.

Or if you say square feet, and they go hand in hand, depends on where the facility is, but let's say 30,000 square feet, 3 million bucks.

I know people are trying to draw a direct line between the two right now.

Don't make that mistake.

There's a lot of gray area there.

But the smaller deals, there's less institutions going after them.

If I

So Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

And that, that, uh, that intro, that opening really resonated with me because one of the things I struggle with, um, as an entrepreneur is putting kinda guardrails on the shiny objects that I, I want to be involved in.

Like, uh, I, I'm so intrigued by RV parks and mobile home parks and, um, you know, land flipping.

Um, I, I have a distressed debt business.

Um, and I have to, I have to stop myself because I am guilty of s- shiny object syndrome.

Um, so when I say niching down, I...

... 'cause I'll tell you about that deal we're working on this week, and I'm, I'm so curious about this space 'cause I'm not in it yet, but very curious about it.