I’ve never experienced anything quite like the self-storage industry.
I joined this field in August 2021, diving right in as an in-house sales rep promoting entitled raw land deals. At the time, I knew almost nothing about commercial real estate. My background was in house flipping—an endeavor that led to both successes and financial lessons. After that, I moved into a sales role for a residential wholesaling company, which eventually opened doors to self-storage.
The owners of the wholesaling company had ventured into ground-up development for self-storage. They quickly found more viable projects than they could handle alone, and that’s when my journey in this industry truly began.
Getting started felt like moving to a new country without knowing the language. Self-storage professionals behaved in ways I hadn’t encountered in any of my past roles—and I’ve worn a few different hats in my career. Could people in business actually be this nice? I was skeptical at first.
But it turned out to be true.
Some of the very first people I spoke to in this field welcomed me with open arms.
People like Jason Canin of Nuvo Development, Mitch and Jordan Feldman of The Feldman Companies, David Clarke of The Storage Acquisition Group, Bill Leitner of Leitbox, Michael Pogoda of Pogoda Co., Mitchell Pater of Porchlight Property Group just to name a few.
It was hard to believe at first. In the residential wholesaling world, renegotiating is common, especially on the buyer side. Deals feel transactional, and every agreement is a one-off, where you hope it crosses the finish line. Here, even when deals occasionally fell through—as they did when the Fed raised rates in 2022—the experience was different. One particular buyer, who had to back out due to rising debt costs, personally called me to apologize. It was a level of professionalism and courtesy I hadn’t expected.
Fast-forward three years, and I’ve been fortunate enough to connect with some of the most influential names in self-storage. Mike Burnam and Alex at Storage Mart, Guy Middlebrooks at CubeSmart, and Brett Henry and Lauren Feeney from Trojan Storage have all been incredibly supportive. I’ve also built lasting friendships, like with Shimon Kanter, now a VP at Go Store It, and Barry Sherman from S3 Partners, who I was lucky enough to work with early in my career. Then there’s James Reid of StoreCo Storage, my running buddy at industry events in cities from St. Louis to NYC as I trained for a half marathon.
And there are so many more who’ve shaped my journey: Aaron Saunders from Spartan, Jack Mutty of Arrow Management, my first mentor Brian Brogan from Legacy Development, Brady McDonald of Barefoot Land, and the team at NVDR Development, Jake Rosenau and Nick Van Dyk.
Yesterday, this journey came full circle as I had the honor of emceeing the 2024 Virtual Self Storage Conference. It was a gathering of exceptional operators from around the country, like Brett Copper from Copper Storage Management, Beau Agnello from Go Store It, Mari Anne Decoster—formerly of Kingdom Storage Partners, Kris Bennett of The Storage Investor Show, Jennifer Downer of XPS Solutions, and John C. Lindsey from Lindsey Self Storage Group.
Our goal was to uncover the “secret sauce” of successful self-storage operations in 2024, and even better, we raised funds for a worthy cause. One of the event organizers, James Hatfield from LiveSwitch, is a native of Asheville, NC, so everyone involved agreed to donate their time, with 100% of the proceeds supporting Asheville’s most vulnerable communities, especially shelters for youth and women.
Reflecting on this experience, I feel incredibly lucky to have stumbled into such a supportive, generous industry. Not only does self-storage offer rewarding opportunities financially, but it’s filled with a spirit of gratitude and community that’s hard to find elsewhere.