$3,500/Month Cash Flow from One Self Storage Facility (Same Price as a Rental)

14:43Tony J. Robinson:The doors are like hanging off the hinges, a couple of them. A couple of the units are full of trash. And we're like, okay, are we in over our heads here? Of course, basic information I need just for like any standard investing in real estate is just like, hey, hey, can I have an occupancy, rent roll, anything like that? I think at the time he gave us just a paper sheet of like what he thought they were doing per monthly revenue, kind of back check to numbers with his two office ladies a little bit. And once again, kind of just, you know, the golden 1 % rule of single family home investing is kind of a standard golden rule.

15:18Tony J. Robinson:When we got the numbers, he threw out the number of 330 ,000. Of course, that sounds quite low for a hundred unit facility, which it was. But we knew he was doing approximately like 42, 4 ,500 a month in revenue. So of course that price to rent ratio, we're like, okay, these numbers make sense. I think we can make this make sense if we learn how to run it because we don't live in town. I mean, we both are two hours away. So that was a big step. But of course the general numbers, I mean, initially we actually kind of walked away from the deal because we were like, well, does this place need too much work?

15:50Tony J. Robinson:What are we walking into? and then kind of a month or two passed. We gave him a call again, walked into that bank, got the actual financial numbers, what the lending would look like, crunched the numbers. And we're like, okay, this is going to make sense.

16:03Steven May:Yeah. Fantastic story, man. And we own a hotel in Southern Utah. And along with that hotel, we also, I believe there are 13 storage units that we acquired with that property as well. And much like what you just described, that's how the current owners were kind of managing the storage units. They were just kind of like the redheaded stepchild. They didn't get a lot of love. They had no paperwork on who owned the storage units. People would randomly come in at various times and drop off cash with no identification of what unit it was even tied to. So it took us a long time. We had to go through like a formal eviction process to get out all the stuff from people that we couldn't identify.

16:41Steven May:But it turns out that it's a nice, easy way to add some additional revenue to that hotel. It's only 13 units. We're charging between$40 and$60 and$80 per month are not big units. But still, across$13, that does add a little bit of cushion to the profit margin every month. So it's interesting that it's a universal thing for these self-storage facilities to be maybe underutilized and not necessarily taking advantage of all the technology and the tools and the automations that exist today.

17:10Ashley Kehr:I had talked to this guy once that was wanting to sell his self-storage. And his process for collecting rent was that every first Sunday of the month, he would go and sit there in his lawn chair and his tenants would come and drop off cash or checks or money orders to him on Sunday. And he would sit there and hang out and yeah, wait for them to come first Sunday of every month.

17:36Tony J. Robinson:A lot of people in the self-storage asset class, I mean, they are cashless. A lot of the operators I know nowadays. I mean, of course, we still have PO boxes. We allow people to pay with cash or checks. We have like an office on site. It's an unmanned kind of remotely managed office ordeal. But yeah, when we took over, I mean, there was no website, there was no credit card processing or online payment system. So that was one of the first things we did, which of course, some of the tenants were like, okay, awesome. We can do this just like at home now. So yeah.

18:06Steven May:So Steven, you buy this deal for just over 300 grand, you go in, you improve the operations. What was the actual revenue once you guys stabilize this property? And what's the approximate cash flow?

18:17Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. So, I mean, when we took over, I think we were doing 4 ,200, 4 ,500 was probably the running average for the first 12 months. I mean, we didn't take any distributions or anything. We were just building up this basically reserves account. I mean, fast forward to what we do now, it's about six grand a month in revenue. So I think the net cash flow after taxes insurance maintenance is probably about$3 ,500 a month. Okay.

18:44Ashley Kehr:So we're going to take a short break, but Steven has walked us through why he chose self-storage and how he landed that very first deal. But what's actually even more impressive is what happened next. He didn't just stop at one. After the break, we're diving into how he turned one facility into a six property portfolio by buying consistently every six months. And he was still working full-time. We'll be right back.

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21:28Ashley Kehr:All right, we're back with Steven. So you bought your first storage facility, cleaned it up, implemented systems, and it's now performing. So instead of slowing down, you actually decide to accelerate. Let's talk about how that first win turned into a repeatable acquisition machine. So after that point in time, your first facility is going. What mindset shift made you think we should immediately do another one? Yeah.

21:56Tony J. Robinson:So you're just kind of learning as you're going. I mean, you don't know it all until you kind of really just take ownership of a property like that and do it. So quickly, we implemented a software that basically helps us run it and manage it remotely.

22:10Ashley Kehr:What's the name of a software?

22:12Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. So we use Easy Storage Solutions, pretty operational, pretty user-friendly from an operational standpoint. So we still have that. I know there's a lot of softwares out there now. So we implemented that. I started taking the phone calls on the second. I basically carry the second business phone around. And just you learn some things and kind of create your scope of how you're going to operate this when certain things pop up. Are we doing late fees? How do we lock people out that are behind the Missouri laws of eviction and the storage assets class? So we kind of just day by day figured it out, got it operating a little bit better.

22:49Tony J. Robinson:It definitely takes a bit with a facility that's a little distressed like that. Little did we know. So he had these two ladies working, basically answering the phone calls, collecting rent and stuff like that at another location down the road. So we went and met them, got some paperwork from them, got some deposits on file from them. and they just happened to mention that you know these owners who were the same owners of the first one we bought owned the one that their office was at just down the road and that they had mentioned potentially selling this one too so of course we kind of look at each other and now it's been you know five months we're like okay well yeah we i mean we like the cash on cash return we like how this is going how we're able to run this from two hours away um so basically same thing we called him, same owner from that, you know, whatever, third, fourth phone call.

23:37Tony J. Robinson:And he gave us the numbers on that one as well. So another a hundred unit facility. This one was a massive, like five, six acre gravel lot also came with a 6 ,000 square foot warehouse. He threw out the number, gave us another paper rent roll. And we were kind of just like, okay, this one also makes sense. So how do we take it down? So same thing. We were a little bit more familiar. Obviously the purchase price on the second one was$750 ,000. So definitely not a small purchase price by any means, especially I think once again, I was 25, 26 at the time. Luckily, I had pulled a HELOC on that second house hack.

24:12Tony J. Robinson:So I had some liquidity from still just working full time as a night shift nurse. I was house hacking. So I was living below my means, saving quite a bit of cash. And yeah, the time came, we both wrote a check and took it down. And so those first two, That's kind of how it happened. And it wasn't an exact timeline. We didn't think we were just going to keep rapidly buying, but we got those first two. The cash flow was just so significant compared to my single family portfolio. I got hooked, started cold calling literally every owner in that market. And just, yeah, every five to six months, it seemed we closed another one, another one, another one.

24:47Steven May:So Stephen, do you feel that self storage lends itself to scalability better than traditional single family homes? Basically put another way, is it easier to scale, you know, in a dollar for dollar scenarios, if I buy a$330 ,000 single family home, long term rental, then a$700 ,000 single family home, long term rental, comparing that to the same prices, but with self storage, is it easier? Do you feel to scale buying self storage than it is with single family? And if so, why?

25:15Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, I think they both have their ability to scale. I think with any asset class in the real estate world, it's just the two biggest things are access to capital, access to deals. Of course, these first two and all these deals we've really done in the storage asset class was me cold calling direct to seller. So that helps avoid any bidding wars. Interest rates were a little bit lower. I mean, you definitely have the economies of scale originally already there. I I mean, we're talking 200 units between two properties. For us in particular, I mean, all these facilities are in the same markets. That really helps you scale, right?

25:52Tony J. Robinson:You can have the same lawn care business running all the landscaping there. If you have a handyman, it's all there locally. If you want to go out and buy storage, we are looking at nationwide. I think it's going to be a little bit harder to scale for sure in general. So we're just super localized, which allowed us to scale. We still run it ourselves. We haven't outsourced management yet. So I think that definitely helps. Once again,$750 ,000 if you're in the residential space, that can go quite a long way, especially in a market like Kansas City where I live. I mean, that's like a 20-unit apartment complex, to be honest.

26:26Tony J. Robinson:So I think you could scale quickly either way. But for storage, it just made a little bit more sense.

26:32Ashley Kehr:And what was the actual timeline from the first property you closed on to the last one that you closed on?

26:40Tony J. Robinson:So yeah, I think, I mean, the first couple, it was literally bought the first one six months later. I mean, give or take a month. It was like buy one, six months later, bought another one, six months later, bought another one, six months later, bought another one. One of those, we actually ended up selling and 1031-ing into another one. That was like six months later. So it got to the point where we had seven, sold one, 1031 into another one. I personally own one without my business partner that I bought last year, or I guess it's been about a year and a half. Then we took a little bit of hiatus, not that we necessarily wanted to, but we kind of just got to a point where, you know, we were like, okay, this is kind of an eight figure portfolio now, I mean, based off the numbers.

27:22Tony J. Robinson:And let's just, we don't need to scale that much more at the moment. We did buy one back in April. So, you know, when a good deal pops up, of course, that's been an aspect of not being able to scale is the difficulty to find good deals that pencil, especially the higher interest rates over the last year and a half, two years. So we just got to a point where we were like, okay, we really have to kind of build some systems and processes before we keep going.

27:46Ashley Kehr:That is a skill set that I wish that I would have had. Something that I wish I would have acknowledged a lot sooner is because that can cause such a pain point of getting that itch and just scaling and growing and not focusing on your systems and processes before you go any further. And it's going to make you a better investor in the long run and your portfolio is stronger than if even if you were to continue and grow in scale, you think you're losing time. But in reality, your portfolio is just going to be stronger.

28:17Tony J. Robinson:And it's something we always battle with, especially me personally. I just, you know, how big do you want to get? You know, we own this basically all in-house, 100%. So do you want to own 100 % of, you know, an eight-figure portfolio? Or do you want to go out and once again, raise capital and own just a small percentage of a hundred million dollar portfolio? So just something we always battle with. How big do you want to go? Do we just keep our small but mighty portfolio and just let it rip with cashflow and pay down the principal?

28:45Steven May:So, well, Steven, you, you grew the portfolio quickly, right? Just from one to, you know, seven, ultimately eight. Right. But you did that in a very short period of time. You talked about the first deal, how you structured that one financially from like a debt and cash perspective. if you talk about the second deal, but just how are you continuing to structure these deals financially so that roughly every six months you were able to buy another one? Because I think for a lot of the rookies listening, they can maybe wrap their head around, hey, I've got some cash saved up for my first deal. And maybe they could start to see like, okay, if I squeeze a little bit here, continue saving the second deal makes sense.

29:18Steven May:But to do one every six months, I don't think a lot of folks can even fathom what that would take. So how are you structuring things in a way that actually allowed you to keep that pace? Yeah, it's, I mean, obviously being transparent,

29:32Tony J. Robinson:I have a business partner. So being 50-50, if you can find the right business partner, that will definitely let you go a little bit farther, a little bit quicker. You know, two incomes, being able to, you know, do the down payment to manage it together. So that's huge. I would not be able to do this by myself. So yeah, just looking back at how we built it. I mean, once again, the first purchase was, you know, 330 ,000, we did 15 % down. So split that 50-50. Next purchase,$750 ,000. We did 20 % down on that, split that 50-50. Thankfully, I had bought those house hacks. Once again, like I mentioned, I did pull a HELOC on that second house hack.

30:08Tony J. Robinson:So I bought that at a pretty deep discount. So I had, I think it was about$40 ,000,$45 ,000 on a HELOC that I was able kind of to use as like a recycling or revolving line of credit. The third one we purchased, it's our largest, and we did bring in a partner on that. So a little bit of outside capital involved with that. I mean, that purchase was 3.2 million. So by no means did I have that liquid or nor did my business partner. So we did have an individual who at this point, you know, he's like, okay, these guys are operating in it. They know what they're doing. This deal made sense. It was a very nice A class.

30:41Tony J. Robinson:I mean, that's our trophy asset. So we did have a little bit of outside capital on that. But outside of that, the next couple that once again, the fourth one we bought was a smaller property. it was like under 150 ,000. So that one was relatively easy to take down as far as a down payment. We didn't plan to sell that one. But in the background, I had been talking to another owner who finally agreed to seller finance us a deal. So that one, we ended up 1031ing. So that gave us basically quite a bit. I mean, it was almost a six figure gain in about five months from the sale. So we took all those funds, went into that storage facility.

31:18Tony J. Robinson:From there, You know, that second storage facility we bought, just putting some numbers out there, purchased it for$750 ,000. It's been doing about$13 ,000,$14 ,000 a month in gross revenue. So we went to a bank. They appraised it for well over a million and basically gave us a line of credit on that equity. So instead of going out and raising capital and like syndicating, we use this line of credit. That's, you know, I would say, I believe it's about a quarter million of dollars. So like$250 ,000 line of credit that you can just go pull on. So we have used that. And then we basically decided to not take any distributions, rip all the cash flow into the line of credit, pay that down.

31:56Tony J. Robinson:So the last couple of deals, we basically have used the line of credit, quickly pay it down with the cash flow and then recycle that. So that's kind of how we went about doing that. That's been very helpful. The most recent purchase was a seven figure purchase. On that deal in particular, we had the seller carry back 10 % of the purchase price on the note. So that allowed us to bring a little bit less to the table along with the line of credit. So sorry, that's kind of long winded, but that's how we kind of did it. We used our own capital in the beginning, have a little bit of outside capital on our biggest deal, and then got a line of credit on the equity.

32:28Tony J. Robinson:And then we use that line of credit to basically fund the down payments and then the cash flow pays off that.

32:32Ashley Kehr:Can you explain the carry back? Because that's something you usually only see on the commercial side. A lot of residential loans won't allow you to do this, but explain how you were able to do that and how a rookie might be able to structure that in one of their commercial deals too.

32:48Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, 100%. And I mean, once again, the first two purchases, the good old days of the 3 % and 4 % interest rates. I know it's been a battle in every asset class over the last two years is interest rates. I mean, seeing the, the, honestly, at one point it was in the mid to high sevens. So the, the most recent purchase we did, it was, you know, we got it well under asking price that had been on the market for a while. We had originally made the offer to the seller direct before he listed it. Um, ultimately once again, we purchased that, I think it was like a seven and a half percent interest rate is what the bank was giving us or quoting us.

33:22Tony J. Robinson:So we went to the seller, we said, Hey, you know, if you want your price, which was not too much more than we were offering, can you carry back 10 % of the purchase? So that one, let's just for simple numbers, it's a million dollars. He's carrying back 100K at 6 % interest. So it's a lower interest rate than the bank. And then the bank sees that as partially a portion of the down payment. So you have to bring less capital to closing. So you kind of have two, yeah, you can have two mortgages, which sounds complicated, but relatively, it really is simple. You're paying to the bank who has first position lien, the seller has a second position lien that you're just paying a small note to.

33:58Ashley Kehr:And the thing is like residential, most of the time, especially like an FHA loan or a lot of times even just a conventional loan, they want to see that the proof of funds that you're using for the down payment are coming from you. But on the commercial side, this is way more flexible. And as long as the numbers still work on the deal, but the income, the revenue can still support paying the mortgage to the bank and then paying that debt payment to the seller. And then you bringing your portion of the down payment, as long as the numbers still work on the deal. A lot of times this can be negotiated with the bank to do it this way.

34:33Ashley Kehr:And I think that is a great strategy that people could be using right now to negotiate their commercial deals that just aren't making sense to put that much money down or with the higher rates than we saw several years ago too.

34:47Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, 100%. And lately we've been trying to honestly do floating rates just because they're starting to trend down a little bit. So that's helped us lower our debt service. I mean, the commercial world, like you said, it's just a little bit easier to get kind of the bank what they need. They just want to see your liquidity, the personal financial statements versus like credit checks and like W-2s and pay stubs. So it's a little bit easier in that regard. And then when people are talking about a Fed rate interest cut, I mean, that's directly related to our loan. So every time it goes down a quarter point, our monthly interest rate goes down a quarter point, which is a little bit different than a residential mortgage.

35:23Tony J. Robinson:And then one of our other facilities, we did completely 100 % seller financed, no bank involved. We did do a 25 % down. So I'm not saying we did 0 % down, but there's no banks involved. And that was one that it wasn't necessarily that we needed a lower interest rate because it was a pretty good cash cow of a deal, but the seller just didn't want to pay capital gains. And so that was kind of what we did a five-year note. And so explain that to her. So we did that.

35:50Steven May:Stephen, a few of the things you mentioned as you were going through how you financed it, the creativity around seller financing and working with sellers on that side, but you also mentioned pulling a line of credit against one of your existing properties. I've actually never pulled a line of credit on anything before. What was that process like in terms of going to the bank and getting that line of credit? What were they looking for? How did they determine how much to give you? And I guess like what kind of documentation that they need from you to actually put that in place? Yeah.

36:18Tony J. Robinson:So we've had that line of credit active for a while. I learned a lot, once again, from kind of the single family world of pulling a home equity line of credit. So basically they go in similar to that, they'll appraise the property and then whatever you owe on it, there's a certain percentage they'll give you. So once again, in our scenario, the second facility that we purchased, you know, I think they purchased or appraised it for like 1.2 million and we owe, you know, 550 ,000 or 600, something like that. So he was willing to give us a percentage of that. Typically it's like 80%, 75 % loan of value.

36:51Tony J. Robinson:We just, we have a 4 % interest rate on that one. So we haven't done any cash out refinances. We've just left all of our equity and all of our properties. In my personal opinion, I've just always been a fan of line of credits versus doing cash out refinances, just keep the existing debt there. And you just have, you know, a significant size line of credit that you can go pull on and pay off as you need. So basically, it's just an appraisal minus what you owe. And the bank just wants to see financials to explain the appraisal. I mean, appraisals in the commercial world can be expensive. I mean, on a million dollar purchase, you could be paying four or five, six grand for the appraisal, which is definitely a little bit different than residential.

37:29Tony J. Robinson:But ultimately, there's really no way around that if you're doing just standard bank lending.

37:34Steven May:And then the other thing that you mentioned was the partner. And for a lot of investors, both new and experienced, eventually we run out of our own cash and being able to raise capital from other people becomes an important skill. How did you as a former registered nurse start building the network to the point where you could find someone who could help you take down a$3.2 million purchase?

37:57Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. So my business partner is, he's a family member of mine. He's actually my first cousin. And so we just, we started talking about it. You know, you're wearing merchandise. You're kind of posting on social media about it. You know, I was just making a little bit of content. So, you know, we go out on the boat because once again, it's kind of a vacation market and you just, there's a lot of heavy hitters down there that are, you know, heavy hitters in their own regard, business people, early retirees that did well. So you kind of just like, you know, if you're the young gun on the boat, they're like, well, what's your story?

38:27Tony J. Robinson:What are you doing down here? And so just kind of talking in that regard, we had met an individual who he was in the commercial real estate world himself. He owned a handful of convenience stores. He was, you know, once again, kind of getting older, ready to retire. They had just refinanced their portfolio. So he was pretty cash liquid. And so we just kind of discussed this deal with him and he came and walked in with us. And originally it was just going to be strictly like a promissory note debt structure, a pretty high interest rate. but we needed the cash to close. And we knew there was quite a bit of potential in this deal.

39:01Tony J. Robinson:Ultimately, going to the bank, they did require us to give just a small percentage of equity, just basically using their balance sheet and their net worth to get the deal done. Because once again, a$3.2 million deal when you're 26, 27, and your net worth's not even there at that point, that they're kind of like, okay, we need some liquidity and somebody else. I mean, I don't think they had them do a personal guarantee. We did a personal guarantee on that one. But basically just talking about it, saying what we were doing and the stars just aligned that they had just refinanced their portfolio.

39:33Tony J. Robinson:We're a little bit liquid and looking to park some some capital. So that worked out.

39:37Steven May:We interviewed someone once who signed up for like a super expensive country club and he would play tennis with a lot of the guys. And that's how he started finding capital partners was being really good at tennis. He started making a lot of friends at this country club. we interviewed another guest who joined like a really expensive gym um you know it was you know like equinox or you know something more even more than equinox and he found private money partners through his gym membership so there really is something to be said about even if you don't have the network today can you just go pay to be in the same space as the other people who do have the capital that you're looking for and then position yourself in a way in a very you know honest way but as a person who maybe has a skill set that they might get some value from so i love that story, Steven.

40:21Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. And I'm by no means any like social media influencer. I'm pretty relatively not active on social media, but I do put a little bit of content out there, just letting people know what I do on LinkedIn, Instagram. And, you know, it's gotten me quite a bit of business, especially in my realtor business, just seeing, you know, me selling houses in Kansas City. And then it has, you know, played a factor in the storage world as well of people reach out on LinkedIn or Instagram when I post a little bit of content in the storage world of, Hey, you know, I'm 29 and I own an eight figure storage business.

40:49Tony J. Robinson:And, you know, some And people will be like, oh, well, you know, let us know if you're ever doing another deal type thing.

40:54Steven May:So it's all it takes, man, is just sharing your story and you never know who's building on the other side.

40:58Tony J. Robinson:Got to put yourself out there a little bit.

40:59Steven May:Well, Stephen's story isn't just about scaling fast. It's about building a repeatable system. And after the break, we're turning this into a bit of a mini self-storage masterclass. We'll break down exactly how to analyze your first facility, the operational levers that can increase value fast, and how to approach the banks the right way. And what it really takes to scale this asset class in today's market. We'll be right back after this.

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45:05Tony J. Robinson:Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, basically anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation. It's an IRS-compliant strategy that lets you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal. Cost Segregation Guys is the go-to firm, having done over 12 ,000 of these studies with$500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to costsegregationguys.com slash BP to get a free proposal and see your potential tax savings.

45:45Steven May:All right, welcome back. Stephen has built a portfolio that's done incredibly well, but it's these systems that keep you in the game, right? So Stephen, I want to get into how you actually build your processes, your systems, how you identify a good deal versus a bad deal. So if one of our rookies is analyzing their very first self-storage deal, what are the maybe three numbers they should be most concerned with or understand best before actually making an offer?

46:08Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, there's a lot of levers you can pull. We've always bought existing, you know, cap rate. The cap rate evaluation is a huge thing in commercial real estate and storage. So just, I mean, overhead view, I guess. If you see like something around ACAP, you're probably in a decent spot to start talking with the owner or the broker. But general information you'll need is the unit mix, or let's just call it the rent roll, what they're doing monthly as revenue. And then a profit and loss statement would be huge to see what they're actually doing for expenses. Are there utilities on site and stuff like that?

46:47Tony J. Robinson:So those are the biggest numbers. I mean, once again, for me, I've always just been a cash on cash person. So that really entails knowing what the bank financing is going to look like, what's the current monthly revenue. Some people will call it secret shopping. So let's just say you know the occupancy, you know the unit mix. You can call around to other existing storage facilities in the area and see what they're charging per rent, see if you're above them, below them. If you see you're pretty full, let's just call it 85 % to 90 % or higher, and you see the person down the street is also relatively full and they have higher rates on the same sizes, then you can see that you have potential to do rent increases.

47:27Tony J. Robinson:So other than that, it's really just a spreadsheet of rent minus expenses and what's your cash on cash return. That's kind of how we've always gone about it.

47:37Ashley Kehr:Now, what are some of the operational levers that a rookie investor could pull when they're purchasing a self-storage facility to really boost the net operating income?

47:48Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. So for one, obviously, if you can find something that has below market rents, that's huge. We almost, I don't want to say yearly, but typically the last few years in the winter, we've done small rent increases. We bought ours at pretty good prices that we're able to keep a high occupancy. And in the storage world, it's a beautiful thing. In the single family world or the multifamily world, you're going to have to go in there and usually increase your rents like 25, 50, 75, 100 bucks, which is generally more to pay, obviously, for one individual versus in the storage world, we have these small, I don't want to just call them small metal boxes.

48:22Tony J. Robinson:But, you know, we can send out 500 letters, because let's our current portfolio, you know, we have 750 units, we can go out and send just a $5 a month increase. And that can be significant when you have that size portfolio. Let's just do the math, 500 units times$5, it can add up pretty quickly. So you have the economies of scale there to increase rents. Everything's month to month. So you can do that pretty easily versus like six month, one year leases. So that's the biggest lever on the top line revenue to increase. A lot of people will say you can expand and do like outdoor parking for like RVs and boats.

48:56Tony J. Robinson:If you're in the right market, that's an option. A big thing is, I mean, self-storage is real estate, but it's run like a business and it really is a service-based business. So, you know, know, if you're buying a mom and pop owner facility, you know, do they have any Google reviews? Do they have any website presence that can be huge just for organic people coming to move into your facility? You know, the biggest thing we see the Google analytics of some of our storage facilities, we have Facebook pages, Google business pages that we post on like bi weekly. I mean, if you're in a market, let's just say like Nashville, Tennessee, people are going to, you know, Google storage units in Nashville, Tennessee, who's going to be the top five facilities that pop up in that search.

49:35Tony J. Robinson:And that'll bring in a lot of revenue if you can kind of just automate that to a degree.

49:40Steven May:So and then what about from a financing perspective? Obviously, you walked into that first bank and they seem to love the deal. But when you walk into a bank today, what are the things you're presenting to them that makes them say yes and offer you the best terms?

49:53Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. And some of these mom and pop owners, I mean, there's going to be a lot of paper documentation. It's going to be hard to give them to just give you like a, you know, a digitalized rent rule or profit and loss. So, you know, I would do my best to give some sort of pro forma of what we're going to do. Once again, storage is a beautiful thing where it's not necessarily you're having to go in and like do a kitchen remodel or cosmetic renovations. It's more of just an operational business thing where you can go in there. And if you find a good deal, you can just raise the rents and show a pro forma to a lender.

50:25Tony J. Robinson:Some of these lenders will do six, 12 months interest only if needed to kind of lease up a facility or an improvement a bit. But there really is just, it's a numbers game and they're trying to make sure they can get their debt paid back. So.

50:37Ashley Kehr:So Steven, before we wrap up here for somebody listening that wants to go from zero to multiple facilities, maybe in the next several years, what is a repeatable playbook look like that they could follow?

50:50Tony J. Robinson:Yeah. I mean, step one, I think you just have to live below your means and kind of stack some cash. I mean, I know there's people out there that say you don't need cash to do deals. I mean, I disagree to an extent of you need to have some sort of cash machine giving you some cash to be able to go put a down payment down on a deal if it comes across your desk or just be a great networker and have people ready to roll with you. The biggest thing is once again, always access to capital, which I kind of just alluded to, and then access to deals. In the storage world, I mean, you can get on Crexie, you can get on LoopNet, search storage facilities for sale near me.

51:28Tony J. Robinson:But a lot of times those have kind of been picked through a little bit already, or they're going to be a lower cap rate, aka just less cash flow. And it's going to be a little bit harder for a bank to give you financing or ideal financing, at least on a deal that's not really producing any sort of cash flow after debt service. So I think just really picking up the phones, putting your nose down, working hard to just find deals that make sense and keeping at it. So I think it's kind of a game of how many phone calls you have to make, how many doors you have to knock to find a deal.

51:58Ashley Kehr:Well, Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciated you taking the time to share your journey and tell your story and to give a lot of knowledge about self-storage investing. Where can people reach out to you and find out more information?

52:11Tony J. Robinson:Yeah, I think the easiest would just be Instagram as I'm relatively active on, just at StephenMay underscore real estate. Other than that, I'll just provide my contact info to you guys for you to share on your platform, but Instagram is probably the easiest. So bigger pockets, of course, I'm pretty active on as well.

52:27Ashley Kehr:Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Well, Rookie, thank you so much for listening to this episode. I'm Ashley. He's Tony, and we'll see you guys next time. At some point, your little real estate side hustle stops feeling little. Rent's coming in. Maybe you've got a couple properties now, and suddenly the money part gets real. Your tax bill's going up. You're Googling LLC versus S Corp at midnight, and you're just hoping you didn't miss something that'll cost you later. That's where Collective comes in. Collective is the first all-in-one financial solution built exclusively for solopreneurs, saving you time and money.

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53:39Steven May:Hey, rookies, if you're watching this, we want you to apply to be a guest on the Real estate rookie podcast. That's right. Ashley and I are looking for amazing stories just like yours to be a part of our real estate rookie podcast. Now look, you don't need to be an expert. You don't need to have done 1000s of deals. Even if you've done one deal, your story could help

53:56Ashley Kehr:inspire the next listener as a rookie investor, especially if you just got your first deal, it is all fresh in your minds. And you are the best person to tell your story, give your experience on how you got it done to help someone else get their first deal.

54:09Steven May:So head over to biggerpockets.com slash guest if you want to be a part of our show. Again, that's biggerpockets.com slash guest. And we'd love to have you on.