Are You the Right Person to Buy a Storage Facility?

What actually separates the investors who close their first self-storage deal from everyone else watching from the sidelines and why does it have almost nothing to do with money, intelligence, or market timing? 

Joe Downs sits down with Jack Pezzino, Vice President of Education at Belrose Storage Group, the man who runs the mentorship program, leads weekly live calls, and personally guides first-time storage investors from zero to one. 

With Belrose Storage Group's portfolio exceeding $50 million across 20 self-storage facilities, Jack has a front-row seat to who succeeds…and why. 

In this episode, he dismantles the most persistent limiting beliefs blocking new storage investors, reveals the real source of first deals (it's not brokers), and explains how data-driven decisions eliminate fear at every stage of the buying process. 

If you've been on the fence about your first storage investment, this episode is your turning point.

Listen For:

9:35 Who actually closes their first self-storage deal and what does the real buyer profile look like?

14:25 What are the most common limiting beliefs blocking first-time storage investors from taking action?

20:04 Is SBA financing truly available for first-time storage buyers with no prior commercial real estate experience?

23:39 What does the emotional journey of buying a first self-storage facility actually look like at each stage?

26:55 If brokers aren't the main source of first deals, how are new storage investors actually finding and closing properties?

CONNECT WITH GUEST: JACK PEZZINO, VICE PRESIDENT OF ACQUISITIONS BELROSE STORAGE GROUP | STORAGE MOGULS

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Joe Downs on LinkedIn

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Transcript

Joe Downs (00:00):

Have you ever seen the Pepsi commercial with Jeff Gordon? He rolls up on a car dealership lot in a minivan and a costume disguised as a kind of a nerdy looking guy, obviously with some kids as he's rolling in with the minivan. And he gets out and he walks by, I think it's a Dodge Charger and he starts looking at it and the salesman comes out and says, "Ah, I see you got your eye on the Charger." And Jeff Gordon in disguise says, "Oh no, no, that's too much car for me. " And the good salesman of course says, "Oh well, let's get in it and take it for a test drive and find out. " And of course that's the setup. And so this is a Pepsi commercialist. Jeff Gordon has a Pepsi can and on the Pepsi can that he puts right on the front dash and the cup holder has a camera on it.

(00:55):

And the camera of course is angled at both Jeff as well as the salesman. And what Jeff proceeds to do is what you can already probably imagine he does. He takes this salesman for the ride of his life, although it doesn't feel like it to the salesman at the time. It starts out just with him punching the gas a little bit and then it gets pretty insane. And frankly, it's a little uncomfortable to watch when you're thinking about what the salesman must be going through in this moment. Many times he's asking him to slow down, stop, get out of the car. A few times he advises him that he's responsible for any damage that's going to happen to the car. And every time he opens his mouth, Jeff takes it to another level. At one point, I think they end up on a shipping dock going up a ramp, spinning the car around.

(01:46):

The man is terrified for his life basically the last half of the ride. Jeff doesn't let up. He's screaming at him. They come back to the dealership, he does a 180, backs into the parking spot and the guy jumps out of the car threatening to kill him and threatens to call the police and he wants to kill him and then Jeff goes, "Don't know, it's okay. It's okay." And he rips off his mustache and his mask and he says, "It's okay. I'm Jeff Gordon." And it takes the guy a minute and he goes, "Oh my God." And then he stops and he looks at me and he goes, "Can we do it again?" And that's exactly what I want to talk about in today's podcast because in fact, we started showing that video at the Self Storage Academy when we used to just to speak at the Self Storage Academy because that's what it feels like sometimes for those we train and mentor and teach how to buy self storage, how to find it, evaluate it, underwrite it, negotiate it, due diligence it, close it.

(02:58):

That's what it's like. And in fact, the reason we started showing that video was because one student said to me after they closed on their first deal, the first thing they said to me, and they were nervous nelly all the way through, first thing he said to me was, "I can't wait to buy my next one." And I immediately thought about that video and that's why we started showing it. My guest today is taught and mentored dozens of first time storage buyers who felt exactly that way and he's the one on the inside of Storage Moguls who runs the mentorship program, who does the weekly calls, who walks through the deals with students, who's watched people go from, "I found something online about storage and I think I might want to try this, but I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm scared out of my mind all the way to the closing table." And he knows exactly who makes it and why and today he's going to tell you.

(04:08):

I'm Joe Downs. Welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. My company has acquired 20 self-storage facilities, over $50 million in assets across multiple storage niches, with three more under contract right now and two pro storage facilities in development. I've seen this business from every angle, educated hundreds of students and learned firsthand who succeeds and why. That's what drove us to build storagemoguls.ai, an AI powered community with the tools, the structure, and the guardrails to teach people how to buy self-storage facilities and all storage facilities. Check it out at storagemugals.ai and that's exactly why we launched this podcast to bring you the operators, the lenders and the real people who've bought the deals so you can hear their stories and learn this business from the folks living it every day. I'm fired up about day to day's conversation because Jack's got the inside view from the car.

(05:06):

He was the driver. He was Jeff Gordon in all these scenarios and obviously it wasn't as scary as what Jeff Gordon put this guy through and obviously that was a five or six minute video. I highly encourage you to watch on YouTube because it is funny and buying a storage facility happens over months. So it's not a compressed crazy thrill ride. However, it is funny at the end when someone is finally successful and they walk out from the closing table or they get the final email that says we're closed and we're congratulating them, the first instinct is, "That wasn't so bad. Let's do it again." Jack Pezzino is vice president of education at Belrose Storage Group and Storage Mogul. He runs our mentorship program, leads the weekly live calls. Like I said, walks students through deals, personally guides them from the zero to one journey is what I call it, no self-storage facility to your first and he's doing it better than anybody I know in the business.

(06:07):

He's been in the room, on the call, on the site visits, in the underwriting sessions when the light goes on for people, Jack's usually the reason why. Jack, welcome to the Storage Moguls Podcast. Thanks, Joe. Good to have you here. Folks, you're going to hear more from Jack for different reasons over the course of the life of this podcast. But today I want to tease out from him really what the opening was about the thrill ride. And again, it's not quite as exciting as the Jeff Gordon thrill ride or like the kid who's terrified of the rollercoaster and then they get on it and they immediately want to do it again. It's not quite that thrill ride, but boy, is it exciting when you close. So it must be a slow motion throw ride. But Jack, before we get started, I like to have fun on this podcast.

(06:56):

So there's going to be a series of true or false questions I'm going to ask you and you're not going to know when they're coming and it's okay. I'm in control. I'm driving. I'm the Jeff Gordon of this one. True or false? Self-storage is the only commercial real estate asset class where you can realistically acquire your first property for under a million dollars.

Jack Pezzino (07:23):

I would say that's true.

Joe Downs (07:25):

A little bit of a leading true or false question there. Not sure it was a fair one. I think it was definitely, definitely I got to work with Claude on that one. Obviously, folks, I'm not coming up with the true false, but I appreciate that, Claude. It was a nice setup for us, but it does set me up to give you this fact. It is true, although maybe you can buy others there. What I do like about this is while large format facilities and major metros command multimillion dollar price tags, the United States has thousands of smaller rural and secondary market storage facilities that trade in the 400,000 to $900,000 range well within the reach of many first time buyers, especially when they're using SBA where you only put in 10 to 20% down. And that is almost never the case in multifamily office or retail at the comparable income level.

(08:23):

So self-storage is genuinely the most accessible commercial real estate entry point that still produces real cash flow. So little self-serving, but did provide me the opportunity for those facts. Jack, I want to start somewhere that might surprise people because there's a picture in most people's heads of who buys self-storage facilities. And in my experience, that picture is almost always completely wrong. Jack, you've mentored dozens of students now. You're on calls every single week with people who are at the beginning of this. They've never owned a commercial property, let alone self-storage. They're not sure they can get financing typically. I mean, I was one of these people years ago. They genuinely don't know if they're the right kind of person for this. When you look across all of them, who actually does this? What's the avatar? Not who should. We know most people should, but only the 1% actually take that first step.

(09:27):

But who actually does it? Who shows up and gets to the other side? Who gets from zero to one?

Jack Pezzino (09:35):

The ones that are the most curious, I would say. The ones that attended the ... I hate saying like, "Oh, you need to attend all the calls because you can attend all the calls in the world." It's applying what you've learned. They didn't come and do the minimal work. It was the ones that kind of came in really immersed themselves and kind of stuck to their buying criteria of, "Hey, if I have a couple hundred thousand here and I really should be focusing on a deal that's around a million to 1.5 million," they became disciplined where they weren't looking at the shiny object of like, "Hey, I'm going to look at this $4 million deal that I don't know I could do or not. " So they were very disciplined and immersed themself in that whole process, whether it was a one man show or husband and wife, father, daughter, mother, son, whatever it was.

(10:32):

I mean, it was really kind of getting involved together and making it fun. It was just like when you kind of get into everything, it's a ton of work and you're learning how to buy such a fun asset class because it's not only real estate, it's also a business. So you're learning how to basically set all that up where it's just kind of like then from there, once you have all that laid out, it's defining your superpower and running with it.

Joe Downs (11:04):

You gave me a little bit of the demographic there a little bit when you said a husband and wife team, although I don't think you were trying to answer a demographic question, I think you were just talking about how people are having fun when they're doing it together, but what are the demographics? Are they W2 employees? Are they trying to get out of the rat race? Are they military? Are they already retired? Are they trying to protect retirement income? Are they high income earners just looking for better ways to invest in real estate? What's been the avatar? Talk about some of the folks that have come through that are either already in their first deal or looking right now.

Jack Pezzino (11:47):

So it's a little bit of all of that. So there's the folks that are looking to retire but still want to have that passive income coming in where they want their money to work for them where it's generating income. I mean, there's others that are high income earners that again, are kind of looking to diversify the investments a little bit. And then folks that have been saving for a while have been doing a couple businesses or different asset classes of real estate where they're jumping in because they want to learn storage where they kind of got brought in on like, "Hey, there's no toilets here. There's not as much that can go wrong with a residential house where I need to deal with all these tenants that the lien laws are more in favor of the tenant than it is the landlord." And then you also get a bunch of folks in the military.

(12:49):

I mean, you got Rod who works with us, who's a Navy vet and then you also ... I mean, the amount of military folks that we're looking to support as well coming back to find that additional thing for them to do is another big one that we kind of see. So it's a little bit of everything, but

Joe Downs (13:10):

Let me put you on the spot for a second. Is there one thing they have in common? Is it money, intelligence, market knowledge, or is it something else?

Jack Pezzino (13:22):

I would say they want to learn it and they want to get in-

Joe Downs (13:29):

So back to the curiosity.

Jack Pezzino (13:30):

Yes.

Joe Downs (13:31):

Jack, a lot of people come in with what I'll call misguided belief systems or misguided ... They believe in these myths. I almost don't want to lead the witness here, but I think you know what I mean. What are some of the false beliefs or misguided beliefs that they've heard from the naysayers, whether they're related to them or friends, family, coworkers, whatever, that have them believing, "I can't do this. I won't be successful at this, whatever that turn out and they realize through the process, well, that was just flat out wrong." What are some of the most common misbeliefs that people come into this with?

Jack Pezzino (14:25):

I would say one of the most common misbeliefs is there's no money out there for me where people don't think they can get lending, people don't think there's going to be someone out there to lend them the money to buy a deal. It comes down to the risk of the profile of the facility and you. If you found a deal, there's typically a way to get it financed one way or another. And then for those that have had some-

Joe Downs (14:56):

That sounds easy to say. Give me an example because I once sat in that seat and said, "Who's going to lend me a million dollars?" First day of the Storage Academy, I sat there. It all makes sense. The math, maths, I get it. I got it that day eight years ago, whenever it was, but I still had my own self-limiting belief that I could do it. I understood that people were doing it, but certainly and surely those people were different than me. That's what I believed. I've never bought a self-storage facility. What does a deal look like that I could have afforded, I shouldn't say afforded because you don't know how much cash I have, but that I could get a loan on. For me, it was the loan. Who's lending me a million dollars? I was like, "Why would a lender lend me a million dollars?

(15:57):

I've never bought self-storage before." That was my limiting belief.

Jack Pezzino (16:02):

So the SBA has a great program, the small business association. Now the thing is, again, storage is both real estate and a business. So it's not like you're knocking on the bank store and saying, "Hey, I got a deal, lend to me. " It's more of a thought process of you're going to give them a very well thought out business plan of like, "Hey, this is why it's worth X and this is how I'm going to execute it to be able to hit my targets." Which I mean, I can say terms like the DSCR, which is your debt service coverage ratio, your cash on cash returns, where you're really operating it like a business. And when you're able to kind of give that business plan and show everything and you're able to hit all those restrictions and covenants that are in the loan docs, it becomes more real if it's a deal that fits within your credit.

(17:05):

Again, going back to that, thinking of that avatar of if I have, let's just say $100,000 and I'm looking at a $3 million deal, the math's probably not going to math where if I have that $100,000, I'm going to be looking at that deal if that's probably about a million dollars and under to kind of make sure I'm able to get within that approval process within the SBA with the 10% down and being able to get funded with the proper business plan and all my closing costs and everything else like that.

Joe Downs (17:38):

All right. I'm going to throw some limiting beliefs at you and I want you to respond. I'm not smart enough.

Jack Pezzino (17:44):

Great. There's plenty of opportunities to learn.

Joe Downs (17:47):

I'm too young. I'm only in my 20s.

Jack Pezzino (17:53):

It's funny you say that because we just had a couple guys that just closed their first deal in their early 20s.

Joe Downs (17:59):

How old were they?

Jack Pezzino (18:01):

I want to say they were between 20 and 25. All

Joe Downs (18:05):

Right. I'm too old. I'm 60 something.

Jack Pezzino (18:11):

Again, that one's interesting to me because it's like a couple folks that I've worked with, they've done something with their kids where they were trying to make it more as a family atmosphere where they were doing something together to enjoy retirement.

Joe Downs (18:28):

I don't have $100,000.

Jack Pezzino (18:30):

So this is where it becomes you're learning a skillset of learning how to buy commercial real estate where you can also wholesale. There's ways where you can find off-market opportunities, talk to sellers and generate income for yourself through building relationships with those buyers who are looking to sell and you can either bring it to the community and wholesale it to make a fee where you're able to generate to eventually get to that $100,000 or you find that right partner where if it's just like, "Hey, here's the story of this deal because you found this gem that people are willing to invest once they kind of see everything and if they don't want you a part of it, again, they'll pay a fee for it.

Joe Downs (19:26):

So folks, here's what I want you to hear. The thing that separates people who do this from people who watch other people do this is almost never knowledge. It's not money. It's not age. It's not market timing. It's just a decision. All right, Jack, true or false. SBA loans are available for first time storage buyers with no prior commercial real estate experience. You basically already answered this. True.

Jack Pezzino (20:01):

We did just talk about that. I'm getting good at this game.

Joe Downs (20:04):

True. The SBA 7A and 504 programs do not require prior commercial real estate experience. What they do require, reasonable credit, typically 680 plus, demonstrated management ability in some business context, a viable deal with positive cashflow and the ability to inject 10 to 20% equity. First time buyers close SBA finance storage deals regularly. And by the way folks, they do the you need a track record belief is one of the most persistent and most damaging myths in the business, speaking of limiting beliefs. All right, Jack, let me ask you something that doesn't come up in most real estate conversations. What does it actually feel like to be a first time buyer going through this process? What I know from talking to hundreds of students now, the information is never the hard part because especially when we give the frameworks, the underwriting models, the deal analysis checklist, they can follow the steps, but there's a point in almost every zero to one journey where the intellectual understanding of the process meets the emotional reality of what it means to actually sign on the dotted line.

(21:26):

So Jackie, you've been in the moment with people. Walk us through what that actually looks like and what gets people through it.

Jack Pezzino (21:34):

So going back to your analogy in the beginning, if you guys do watch that commercial, the guy sitting in the car who's super frantic and just super scared with everything that's going on is the perfect analogy. It's kind of like learning and taking a step back and taking a breath of checking all of your data, like working with Adam and Kirby, who's been on the podcast and everything else like that. They had a scary thing that happened on their deal where not only did they have to get through signing the dotted line and closing on their first deal, they had an instance where their operator stopped operating. So now they had a decision to make because they actually did have a great contract in place there where they could have walked away. They could have done the safe thing and they could have just been like, "You know what?

(22:31):

We tried, the guy didn't operate, this facility's now below 50% occupancy." I think the lowest it hit was about 45% and they were buying it about 55, 60% where it ... So now they not only have the fear of like, "Hey, we're about to invest, we're about to buy this roughly $650,000 facility." The guy didn't operate. So the conversation there, it's not an easy one, but the one book that we've read in the past is The Gap in the Gain where we have that conversation of like, "Okay, let's take a minute real quick and just turn around and look where we're at because we get stuck in the gap too much where it's just we forget to turn around and look how far we've come." And when we had

Joe Downs (23:26):

That- What point does that happen? Is there a specific moment or a phase where they hit the wall?

Jack Pezzino (23:33):

I would say every day-

Joe Downs (23:33):

Is the first LOI? Is the first time they call the bank? Is it during due diligence day before closing?

Jack Pezzino (23:39):

It happens in multiple stages. So it's like when you first get that accepted LOI, it's all of a sudden like, "Oh my gosh, this is real," because now you've contacted an attorney and you're getting that purchase sale agreement started. Then you get the purchase sale agreement signed. Oh

Joe Downs (23:53):

Shit. Oh shit. They said yes.

Jack Pezzino (23:55):

And now it's just like, wait, we have an agreement and you review all your due diligence materials and everything's checking out. And then again, it's like, oh no. And it's kind of like sticking to the framework. And again, I like using the Adam and Kirby example because they went through it all again. We had that conversation of like, "What are you buying?" And it was like, okay, well, this facility, the guy, the website was unplugged. You couldn't access their website, period. The phone number was disconnected. You either called and it was like the, this number is disconnected, it's no longer in service, or it rang for five minutes with no one answering. But then when they called all the other facilities within about a seven mile radius, there was almost nothing available.

(24:43):

They took a bet on themselves based on the data and that story is a very ... I love that story just because I think now they're over 70% occupied in less than a year. But again, they took that chance, but not just a, "Hey, I'm going to take a chance and go play craps at the craps table." It was a data-based decision of, "Hey, no website, no one answering the phone, no one's operating this thing. And then hold on a minute. How is everyone else in this area full and this person is losing occupancy? What is happening?" And it was kind of like looking at everything again and having your checklist of everything you're looking at and sticking to the data. And once you're able to make data driven decisions, you're able to deteriorate a lot of that fear and start to get more comfortable.

(25:39):

And everyone that I've worked with, I mean, that's a pretty extreme example we've worked with. But again, every week that we're kind of going through the due diligence, whether it's with me or with Rod and Christian or with you, it's, "Hey, what does the rent roll look like? What do the management summary look like this month? What are we getting ourselves into where you're kind of going through each checkpoint and really kind of using the data to validate where you're at within the process?"

Joe Downs (26:06):

Yeah. Well, and I think they also had guardrails, right? So I think a lot of people would have walked away if they didn't have the guardrails in place to say, "Hey, this is a crappy situation. By contract, the seller wasn't supposed to do that. You do have options, but not that much has changed here. This is why you're buying the deal actually." So it's one step back but still two to four steps forward. Jack, true or false? The majority of the first time storage buyers source their first deal from a broker.

Jack Pezzino (26:47):

I would

Joe Downs (26:47):

Say that's true. Yep. This is a good one. It's false.

Jack Pezzino (26:52):

Really?

Joe Downs (26:52):

You are wrong.

Jack Pezzino (26:54):

Interesting.

Joe Downs (26:55):

The majority of first deals in the storage moguls community, and you should know this, I'm disappointed in you, come through direct to owner outreach, driving for dollars, direct mail, cold calling, and warm referrals. Brokers are an important channel, but the deals that new buyers actually close are overwhelmingly off market or lately marketed. I think you're questioning that stat. This matters because your ability to find deals is not determined by your relationship with brokers, although we do want you to develop relationships with brokers. It's determined by your willingness to do outreach, which is something any motivated person can do starting this week. Jack, true or false? Oh man. Most people who buy their first storage facility had no prior experience in commercial real estate before they closed. That's true. That is true. And it's true by wide margin. I can't even think of maybe one or two who had commercial real estate experience.

Jack Pezzino (28:00):

Yeah, maybe

Joe Downs (28:01):

One or two. I think across our community, the majority of the first deal closers come from W2 backgrounds, corporate military, medical trades with little or no prior commercial real estate experience. And the skills that predict success and storage are not real estate skills. They're actually execution skills. The ability to follow a process, make outreach calls, underwrite consistently and not quit when a deal falls through and really immerse yourself. You said curiosity was a key component early in this and I would agree with that. I think the people that are successful, the most successful, the ones that immerse themselves the most, which that's part of the tools we've given people at storage moguls, especially with the multimodal learning, the ability to consume the same information through different media forms. Those skills exist across virtually every professional background and real estate experience is learnable. Discipline and follow through what you bring to the table folks.

Jack Pezzino (29:07):

One little thing to add to that I would say is, I mean, one thing you taught me when I first started is it's okay to make mistakes. Mistakes is going to be how you learn. It's just making sure you don't make that same mistake twice. When you start making that same mistake twice is when it starts to become habit and you're really not learning from it. But I've made my mistakes. We've talked about them.

Joe Downs (29:30):

We'll let you make little ones. We're not going to let you make big ones.

Jack Pezzino (29:33):

Right.

Joe Downs (29:33):

Okay. Last question, Jack. And I want you to actually think about this before you answer and this is going to be a little different for you since you work for me than others that I've asked this question of. So be very measured in your answer. Five years from now, what are you doing? Not what do you hope you're doing? What are you doing? I Where are you? Do you have a portfolio? I mean, you're already invested in some deals. What does your portfolio look like if you want to talk about that? What does your life look like? What are you doing at Storage Moguls and what are you doing today right now to act like you're already doing those things so that you make sure that's exactly where you end up?

Jack Pezzino (30:28):

All right. Thank God I read that book. Oh man.

Joe Downs (30:35):

Reading the book is different than answering the question though.

Jack Pezzino (30:37):

I know. But going a little bit of backstory on me here, it's like I went from Wegmans to furniture sales to being on a golf course, having a conversation with my brother-in-law.

Joe Downs (30:49):

No, no, no. You're trying to qualify your answer. No way. I see what you're doing. You need to answer the question. The audience doesn't need to know your backstory and I'm not giving you the ability to give it to them.

Jack Pezzino (31:04):

Got it.

Joe Downs (31:04):

I want you just answer the question, where are you five years from now? What are you doing and what are you doing today to make sure you're doing that?

Jack Pezzino (31:16):

So five years from now, this is odd because I am on the Belrose team and plan to still be here because we're building the Store Pro concept and I am thoroughly in love with that concept with the couple that we have that we're building, the one that we're

Joe Downs (31:33):

Acquiring. All these qualifications, just answer the question.

Jack Pezzino (31:39):

So five years from now, I mean, again, I just still building that Store Pro concept, still building the education, helping folks get into their first deal as well as having a team to continue to help more folks hit their goals with cultivating those relationships across the students. And whether it's their first facility or their third or fifth facility, that's what I want to continue to do is really help folks get into that first deal and continue to build those relationships over time. And how I'm doing that is I'm staying current. We're still buying deals here actively ourselves. I want to continue to do that with on market, off market, where I'm actually living it. And then the exciting thing is now too is we're also bringing on ... We're starting to build our team here as well where we're starting to train others to do this as well, which is what I'm very excited about because love working with people and helping people hit their goals.

(32:50):

And it's one of the most motivating things to me is to see that person get into their first deal and then seeing how they grow within that first deal and then you hear they're buying their second deal.

(33:03):

It's one of the most motivating things to see as I've been kind of going through this in the last year.

Joe Downs (33:14):

All right. I think you should get into politics because that was as politically correct and non-answer as you could give. And we'll probably go down as the worst answer in the history of the podcast.

Jack Pezzino (33:26):

Perfect.

Joe Downs (33:27):

Because you're completely trying to cater favor to me and your partners at StorageMoguls and Belrose. I give you an F. Folks, if you want to email Jack and let him know that you are also displeased with his answer, it's jack@storagemoguls.ai.jack@storgemoguls.ai. I can't even believe I'm going to let you get away with that being the answer. Utterly disappointed. Jack, what you just described is the whole point though of why we're doing this. Not the portfolio, not the cap rates, the DSCR. The life on the other side of the first deal is what's most important the second and then the third. And that's what this is actually about. And the reason I bring Jack on this show is exactly what you heard today except for that last answer. This is someone who sees it happen every week with real people who are W2 employees or changing careers, people who had never signed a commercial loan deal or even lease in their life who got themselves into motion, stayed in the process and then closing their first deal.

(34:40):

And it's not theory. It's a pattern and you can be part of that pattern if you want to. Now if you've got people in your life who told you this was too risky, too complicated, not for someone like you, that's not unique and you're not alone. Almost every person who's closed their first deal in our community had that same voice. I had my own self-doubters, or I shouldn't say self-doubters, I have my own self-doubts, but I also had my own close relationships which are doubters and sometimes we're related to them too, which is even worse. But the enemy isn't some abstract force. It's the story that got written for you before you ever found this business. And every single person who closes a deal rewrites that story, not just for themselves, but for everyone in their life who's watching them do it. So if you've been watching from the sidelines, here's what I want you to do.

(35:30):

Go to storagemuggles.ai, you can surf for free. And the storage 100s there, the BoatNarViv 100's being recorded and released right now on YouTube. It's the foundation for what you need to evaluate your first deal and evaluate if this is the right place for you to take that first step. And I think it is and it doesn't cost anything to find out. Every week on Storage Moguls, we're covering the full storage vertical, self-storage, boat and RV, pro storage, industrial outdoor storage, truck parking, small bay flex, light industrial, all of it. We will touch on all of it at some point in our podcast and we'll keep coming back to it. And like I said, I'll bring you interviews with people who have done it or are professionals in the industry or are the people that are going to help you do it. So please like, subscribe and share.

(36:24):

And here's why that matters, by the way. When you share this episode, you're telling everyone in your network that you're in this business and that signal goes a long way. So share something based on something specific that hit you today.That's what I would do. Special thanks, Jack, to you for being on the show today and enduring some of my ... How should I put it? My tender, loving care that I have for you.

(36:50):

And now the audience should wonder, the listener should wonder if I was actually, that was the nice me or the mean me.

Jack Pezzino (36:57):

That's nice for us. That's great. I wouldn't expect anything less.

Joe Downs (37:02):

No, seriously, thank you for sharing the insights. I know anyone listening just got a really good window into the fact that they can do this, the fact that we've got the team to help them and that the full framework now that I've defined what that is and that we've defined what that is, it's there for them. So thanks again for being on the show, Jack.

Jack Pezzino (37:27):

Thank you. Appreciate you.

Joe Downs (37:29):

Folks, there's a seller out there right now who's ready. Stop watching, start moving, drive for dollars, send the LOI. We'll see you next week.