Living the Life You Want Now Using Self Storage with Michael Wagner

I'm Neil and I'm Brittany. We are a family on a journey towards financial and location independence. Each week, we interview successful real estate entrepreneurs about their chosen investment strategy, and rate it based on how much money it took to get started, how long it took to educate themselves, how passive it is, and whether or not they could do it from anywhere in the world.

Welcome to the road to family freedom.

In this week's episode, we sit down with Michael Wagner, an investor who started off in small multifamily, but pivoted into Self Storage when he realized it would get him closer to the life he truly wanted.

If you like our show, the easiest way for you to give back is to leave us a rating and review on iTunes, head on over to road to family freedom comm slash review for links and instructions on how to do that we would be so grateful. All right, and that thought of us Let's hit the road to family freedom.

Michael, welcome to the road to family freedom.

Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

We're really pleased to have you. So let's go right into it. Tell us a story about how you got into real estate.

Okay. Well, I want to get in, I want to dig into the Self Storage a little bit, but we covered we just covered a lot here. And I want to sort of backtrack just a little bit.

Yeah. So you, you know, you said that, that you kind of had thought you wanted to go someplace, and obviously that that changed. So what's your destination? Now? Where Where do you feel that real estate, particularly in the self storage area is taking? You know, that's

an excellent question. And, and I'm a big believer that you can't win a race unless you know where the finish line is. Right. And and so I was very fortunate several years ago to be exposed to some mentors who have helped me create my vision for the future. And, and it's hard to boil it down in a nutshell. But I'm what I'm after is the freedom to spend my time doing the things that make me happiest. And helping those that I love the most in this world experience the same. So it's really about impact. I believe that all the things that I'm fortunate enough to have in this world don't necessarily belong to me, they're just my responsibility for the time being. And it's my responsibility to share those with others. And so that's with my family, with friends with strangers. And it's not just about money, it's about time and expertise, and, and all of those things. So my finish line, if you will, is and I don't want to come off as immodest. But I'm very grateful that I'm as close to quote unquote, that finish line as I am right now. This all started. Yeah, and I think it's, of course, it's always a moving target. But to answer your question more succinctly, my ultimate accountability is to my children. And I believe that my greatest purpose is to is that they're going to learn how this world works from me. And so I can either teach them that the re way the rest of the world lives. And I want to be very clear that I'm not passing judgment on anyone or placing blame on anyone, I just think our culture lives accidentally, some somewhat by default, where more is the default definition of success. And I, I've taken it upon myself to kind of find what I believe to be a better way. And I want to teach that to my kids, I truly want them to think it's to think that the life we live, where we don't go somewhere and work nine to five, five days a week, and we don't have someone tell us when and where we can vacation and for how long I want them to think those things are strange, rather than what seems to be the truth. And that is that what I'm doing is strange, right? Not going to work every day seems to be odd. Yeah.

So you've left Have you stopped doing the physical therapy? Was that what you said? Yeah, I

actually, and not that I recommend this for the folks that I work with. But I quit my job the day that I bought my first storage facility. Wow. And it was losing $2,000 a month. So combine that with my my forfeited income from the job and the only conclusion is that my wife is crazy for having let me do that. But it was it literally was a six figure flop in the wrong direction overnight. But you know, everyone asked me was that after the fact my friends would say Wagner you spent all this time going to you know, get a doctoral degree. And now you quit your job to rent out these garages Was it the right move? And I at the time, I could look at him dead in the eyes and say, I know it was of course they'd follow up with why and I would say because I'm dead broke and I've never been happier now, there was also writing on the wall that I wasn't gonna be broke forever. So don't get me wrong. I'm not you know, I'm not I'm not above the mighty dollar. I think it's a very important tool that we need, but it doesn't need. I think folks put too much emphasis on if I if I get to this point. Then I can start living. And I'm a big proponent of starting to live now and then figure out how to pay for it as you go. Yeah.

You know what you said about what your ultimate destination is just having, you know, control over your time, your day to day time is such a such a powerful message, because it really are our most finite resources, time, money, money, you can always make more money, you'll never make more time. I also often talk about the fact that our our w two jobs are a single point of failure. And everyone goes well, I've got a good steady job, and I've got insurance, it's like, well, you know, you're always one lay off, once one illness, one accident away from all that going away. And anyway, so it was there any of that in it for you? Or was it more just I want out of my job?

You know, it was I would get asked a lot along those same lines about how I was tolerating the risk, everyone thought what I was doing was so much riskier. And it got to the point for me that I was so and I don't want to paint this picture that I was unhappy, depressed in the fetal position, like I had a decent life, I just knew something was off, and there had to be something more. And truly, the lack of fulfillment of staying where I was, was far more riskier than what I was actually doing like that, that to me a life on lived stuck doing something you're not necessarily happy in is far worse than, you know, going through the school of hard knocks of investing, which I certainly did a little bit of, there's no doubt about that. It hasn't been all all rainbows and roses. But there's an autonomy and self reliance that comes with it. And I think those things are far better than what I perceive to be a false security at to your point, the single point of failure job, right, I now rely on 600 customers to pay my bills, if 10% of them go away. I'm not I'm not out on the streets. Whereas if if you're single employer decides that you're no longer valuable to them, now you're in a boatload of trouble.

So when you ultimately decided, you know, alright, I want to, I'm going to transition out of multifamily. And I'm going to go and do self storage. How did you go about getting yourself educated? Because that a lot of people say, well, let's talk they're totally different kinds of businesses.

Yeah, and and there are definitely some differences that you need to be aware of, when I made the transition, our multi families were making us money, they were just making us a little bit of money and giving me a lot of blood pressure problems. And I wasn't a great personality fit for for that. And that's my family in general, I think it can be a great investment if it's someone's personality. But what I did is I was fortunate enough to receive a hand me down home study course from one of the Self Storage gurus. And I use that and his information was great. And it was enough for me to kind of fumble my way through the first deal. And and essentially it was just parlaying what I had learned in the residential world into Self Storage, the finances, the the underlying fundamentals are identical, you're just renting space for a price that you hope is higher than your cost to own and operate that space, right. And in self storage, our income to expense ratio is in the 30 to 35% range, which gives me a good buffer relative to multifamily investing. So my mentality was, well, even if I'm not very good at it. I've got a margin of error here that I can I'll have the time to learn and streamline things. When you think about it. We're talking about concrete slabs with metal buildings and metal doors. Yeah. And so our income to expense ratio is considerably more favorable. There are nuances, right? We have to if in the old days when I had an apartment, if someone called me and I was out to dinner with my wife, I could let it go to voicemail call them back in the morning. Chances are they haven't moved into a new apartment yet. In the storage world, if I don't answer the phone, or I don't have a system in place to answer the phone. By the time I call them back in the morning, they no longer need me. Yeah, gotcha. So that that was definitely an adjustment that needed to be made. Yeah.

How long did you spend on that self study? Course?

That's a good question. It took me a while to I guess get my first deal across the finish line. I had a couple under contract I would say from no turning back. Here's what I'm going to do moving forward till the time I closed on the property was about 18 months, probably spend six months or so three to six months just getting smart and kind of half looking around because I didn't you know, I was still learning. And then from there on out, I've continued to learn everyday since but I was Two properties under contract and that first year both fell through for various reasons until I found the one that ultimately has me being thankful the first two didn't pan out because it turned out to be a really good deal.

Awesome. All right. So how did you end up financing that

first deal, the first one I bought I was, because I had my eye on it, I had bought a couple residential properties. The last three I bought, I bought cash, rehabbed them, and then used a blanket mortgage to refi and pull out about $40,000 in equity. I also borrowed $60,000, privately, at a hefty D, I think 10% was at the time that I paid. And then I used a conventional loan, for a quarter million, the total project cost was 350, to get started, and I had to use perseverance as my most important trait during that time. I think I went to five or six banks before I got a yes. understandably so. Because I would say, hey, I've got this great deal. And they'd say, Well, you've never done storage before. And you're telling us you're quitting your job. So

Oh, you sound like a great, you sound like a very low risk.

Yeah, I thought this through like, but ultimately, we got it done. And the property was 50 55%, full at the time. My background as a physical therapist allowed me to identify why it was like that the owner was elderly and had some early signs of dementia. And, sadly, she had a family member out of town, a daughter who was not well, and so she would just close up shop for six weeks at a time in a week. Well, it became very clear that it was a management thing. It wasn't a marketing thing or anything like that. So I knew we could get it turned around. I'd be lying. If I said I knew how I was going to do it. I just knew I wasn't going to stop until we did it. No. And ultimately, it worked out very well.

Now, let me nail down those numbers. You said it was a you had to come in with about $350,000.

Correct. That would be about

about 1.4 purchase price. Oh, no,

I'm sorry. Let me back that up. The purchase price was 330. Oh, wow. Okay. Oh, about $20,000 in closing costs, put the project acquisition price at 350,000. Gotcha. And I had to come up with 100 of that 40 was my own 60 was a proper unsecured promissory note clearly from someone I'm very close

with otherwise they will. How are you typically financing deals? Now?

So you it was essentially a cash purchase. Correct. Gotcha. And its value add

it is a value add it was 40% full when we bought it. And we're 77% full today, under six months later. So it's gone very well.

Can you explain how value add what value add means and specifically with self storage?

Yeah, absolutely. And it's, when I say value add, I'm referring to taking any property that's performing below its potential, I tend to gravitate toward the ones that are operating very below their potential. My goal is to be able to improve the operations maybe do a little work. But in the storage world, it's primarily at least the properties I invest in an operational or managerial overhaul. And in doing so we look to double the value of the property over 24 to 48 months. That is to kind of paint the other side of the spectrum. You could go and buy a storage facility that's 95% full, beautiful as you drive by churning out money, but all of the profits or a vast majority of the profits in that project are going to come from monthly cash flow my model, we get to the point where cash flow is a profit center. But early on, all we're doing is is forcing appreciation by improving the income stream that the property's capable of producing.

And so, for people who don't know much about commercial real estate, the value of commercial real estate is based on the income that it produces. And so if you go into a property and You're able to raise the income, then you've increased it in property. It's not based on what color drapes or how the yard looks. It's, it's all based on income.

Awesome. It sounds like what you really are doing is you're coming in and putting in systems and operational things. So what does that? Do you have some systems that you really feel like I've helped you to be successful in this business.

Okay. Are you part of this online system? Is it like one of the the kiosk pieces where they can get the essentially rent and get a lock right there or?

So? That's a good question. I personally don't utilize the kiosks. And it's, it's just a cost decision for me, I, for those that don't know, these kiosks are ATM machines that would be kind of in a phone booth at a storage facility. And they're meant to replace an office manager. And they are incredibly functional. They'll dispense locks and scan licenses and allow for lease signing there anywhere between eight and $20,000, though, and far more important than that upfront cost is a three to $800 a month maintenance and troubleshooting cost. So I believe, and I can show you that everyone has a kiosk. Every single one of my customers has a smartphone, except I don't pay their monthly bill they pay. You could pull up to my storage facility today. And there's a sign that says sorry, we're not here to assist you. But junk right online, and you can rent a unit immediately. And you can do it on your smartphone, the only thing you can't do is ask your phone to give you a lock. So you have to stop at a store and bring your own. But aside from that, I found that to be the most efficient way.

That's cool. I didn't realize that there was that option. So that's really neat. But you can kind of bypass that extra monthly cost and the the like initial investment because you're right, it's it is just a kiosk in our hand. And and so and most people if they're going to rent storage, they probably realize they need a lock and or won't feel too miffed about having to go get one if they for some reason didn't bring them in

with them. And what happens when somebody rents a unit from us they get an email on a text message after they've electronically signed the paperwork that says, you know, thanks so much. Here's how to get through our security number for the code. PS Don't forget to stop at Dollar General and grab a lock on your way. So they're getting the reminder before they're even there.

Gotcha. That's great. So you've outsourced all this. How much time are you spending in real estate

a week? Yeah. It's an excellent question. And I always divide this answer into two parts because my wife yells at me if I say I only work five to 10 hours a week, because you will. And she's absolutely right, I have to spend five to 10 hours a week, maintaining our current rental portfolio, which is, at this point, we just sold the storage facility. So we've got two right now. And then we got to our contract, I had three of my own sold on about a month ago. So five to 10 hours a week is the maintenance, the rest of the time is spent on what's next, you know, I've got a storage training program that I'm getting off the ground, I always looking for the next deal, spending a lot of time and one of the greatest benefits of kind of the journey I've been on has been achieving the freedom to work on me and figure out how I can be better spending time meditating and reading and exercising, improving my physical health, my emotional, all of those things, which in turn, allow me to be a better investor when I'm doing that. And so it's really, you know, I just feel really fortunate to have the freedom to work on those things.

Now, you completely self managed, you don't have any professional management in place.

That's correct. I don't use a third party manager of any kind.

Gotcha. Have you ever done that?

I haven't. No, I haven't restored I did in my residentials for a while. And the reason I there's nothing, I don't have anything against third party management in the storage world, I tend to operate in secondary and tertiary markets, I like to be the only big facility in a small rural town, it just makes things very simple and is a way to mitigate my risk. And the third party managers tend to gravitate more toward the institutional grade, you know, Class A and B facilities where I tend to operate in the class C range. Gotcha.

Now, you mentioned hiring a manager for have boots on the ground there in your Florida facility. Have you hired you have any other employees or virtual assistants that you've hired to help you out,

I put boots on the ground at each facility, I finally I have a facility about 20 minutes from my house. And when it's nearby, I get lazy with my systems. And so I've owned this one for three years, and I just now have my boots on the ground and because for a long time, I would do it myself. It wasn't quote unquote, that big a deal and, and whatnot. But I'm really trying to emphasize removing myself from the day to day, aside from them, I do outsource to you know, things like my late letters on the 10th of the month, rather than me stuffing the envelopes, I send a PDF of the letters that need to be sent out to someone who assist me with that, and she stuffed the envelope by the stamps, puts them in and then just invoices me. I'm looking toward potentially, I'm always of the mind to identify the parts of the business that drive me bonkers and finding someone who would be willing to do those things. And so that's that's kind of my work on the business rather than in the business. focus right now. But the truth is, there's there's not a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done day to day outside of what my management software is able to do.

Awesome. Okay, so

you've got one facility nearby you and you've got one in Florida. Where are the two that you're looking at? One of them is in North Carolina about an hour outside of Charlotte and is you wouldn't believe me if I tried to describe it, but it looks like a zombie apocalypse.

That's some smells like money

is zero per surrounded by 20 foot tall pine trees. Oh, wow. The best i can tell is down there. They can pour concrete slabs right on basically the soil because it's clay. And so they install the parking lot second, as opposed to up here where I live. We install the parking lot. And then the concrete in the buildings. I think what happened is the gentlemen building it passed away during construction, and they halted everything it was about 10 years ago. So these buildings, there's four of them in there about 30 feet apart from one another. You cannot walk between the buildings. It is that much overgrown. Wow. So we're going to be going into the bulldozers clearing forest, putting in a parking lot and a fence and then opening for business. It'll be a very for me a very fun project. I have visions of doing some time lapse photography from up above. And yeah, it'll be nice. The other one is down in Georgia. It's actually I'm just a minority partner in this deal. It's one of my students who's purchasing the property that is very much within the mold of what I've done in the past about 35 to 40% full, needing a managerial overhaul. It's right outside of Air Force Base, so the demand will be there and I'm very excited for him. I think it's my goal with the training that I do relative to storage is to help people use my tagline is to use ordinary garages to create an extraordinary life, which is very cool because it's it's not about quote unquote, getting rich. The folks who come to me and want to work with me have got to have a much bigger why. And I'm happy to help them define that, why and share with them the exercises and thought processes that I went through to kind of define mine. And I don't impose my y on them. I just want them to have their own. And this particular gentleman has a very strong one. And so I'm very excited to see him move away from the 400 houses, that he has flipped in order to create some residual income. That's fantastic.

The North Carolina facility is not important as it

is that's impressive. It is.

Yeah, I find it on Craigslist.

Yes.

I've seen that facility. I looked at it and talked to I talked to the guy that's that's funny. I know exactly what you're talking.

I said it's incredible if you've seen the pictures.

Oh, yeah, it's it looks it looks like they like this completely abandoned, you know, facility that got overgrown very quickly. So

yeah, it's I've got videos, and I put a lot of storage related videos on Facebook and whatnot. And that one's got like six times the views of any video that I've ever put out. These reasons?

Why didn't we buy that one?

Okay.

Do you think? No, I was just gonna say like, you're clearly comfortable with things that aren't nearby, you do have like a limit as far as how far away something can be or you just wherever the market Oh, is good for what you're looking for?

That's a good question. And I don't want that I would say I have a limit, although I'm sure I do. I just haven't approached it yet. I think more what I have is a prioritization. And I'm very big on making sure that the businesses we run serve our life. And you know, that goes hand in hand with designing the life that you want. First having that vision and then creating a business to serve it. And so it's not a coincidence that I have a storage facility under contract that's an hour outside of Charlotte, because I have five of my best high school friends live in Charlotte, I can also get a direct flight there. So I can fly down in the morning and be back by midnight or first thing the next morning have done everything I need to do. And I was only gone for 24 hours. The other facility we own and for that it's an hour and a half from Disney World. I've got a two year old and a four year old and we spend way too much time at Disney World every year.

Yeah, I see your game.

Yes. So the idea is that we want these businesses to the Minister minimally disruptive to our life. And when I'm helping people come to, you know, figuring out where to look for investments, whether it's storage or anything else, you know, I'm not going to rush to buy one in California, because I'm, I'm in New York, and I'm terrible at jetlag, like even if I could get to California and back affordably. And in the span of 24 hours, I'm going to be a wreck for the next 48 hours. And I'm not going to be the dad I want to be or the husband, I want to be for that entire time. So we I tell my students, you know, where do your in laws live? Where do you find yourself three or four times a year, and we try to structure their investments in that way. And sometimes we have to push further. And they don't maybe have connections in the area, but it's a direct flight, as opposed to you know, I'm from Rochester, New York, where you can only get a handful of places direct everything else is a layover. And you know, so we we take all of that into consideration when we're when we're shopping around.

That's cool. It's a really great idea. Unfortunately, all of our like family connections and funds are in the places that have really high market value. Reno is boom in California.

I'll tell you the other the because we've been lucky to get a couple investments in the areas where we find ourselves several times a year. The last question I posed to my wife was, if you had to pick a state that you got to go to four times a year, what would it be? She listed those and now those are where all next? Look, the challenge is it's always a balancing act. And they all are. We're National Park addicks. So they're all you know, Montana and California and Utah. And yeah, yeah, I'll have to learn to get better at jetlag. I guess.

You should come you have to come visit us in Vegas. We've got Red Rock Canyon. Yeah.

Beautiful. Ah, very nice. So

how long do you think you could go completely hands off with your with your business?

That's a good question. I and it's a two part answer. It is not a strong suit of mine. To be able to let the inbox pile up and then deal with the problems when I get back. And when I say problems. It's literally just answering questions. I'm very much a if it comes onto my plate, I want to eliminate it immediately. We regularly go off grid for Get a time. And then I will handle literally within a couple hours of getting back into the swing of things. Everything that occurred in that week, there's really not a lot to do, you might have somebody who was upset that they had to wait to hear back from you. That being said, most of my urge to get back and spend some time working is to make sure that things didn't burn down. And it's a completely illogical fear, right. And I don't mean literally burned down, I just mean that things have gone awry. But two hours later, I'm ready to go again, and could go for another week or two, my limit right now is about 10 to 12 days completely hands off, the nice thing is all of the remote management that I put in place is cloud based. So all I really have to do is get back to Wi Fi. And doing that for two hours in a coffee shop is almost enjoyable for me to clear the inbox, make sure that I'm not coming back to more overwhelmed than I need to. And then we can hit the road in the RV again for another week. And we're to the point right now we traveled this year, probably closer to 90 days. And we tend to do that in one to two week increments, though. We had a stretch this summer where I think our our longest stretch home was 12 days. But we had a series of two week trips that brought us home for three or four days at a time. And then we just jumped to the next one. And that to me if we could do that all winter long as opposed to all summer long would be perfect for me be great.

So what do you think for a self storage investor is the most critical skill to foster in yourself,

you know, what I stress for people is that self storage has a tendency to be a shiny object, right? It's, especially folks who know the success we've had, it's it's intriguing to say the least. And it's definitely a powerful vehicle for creating wealth. So I need to make sure that folks get over that shiny object syndrome, I encourage them to develop a habit of I rather have somebody look for storage facilities for two hours a week for the rest of their life, as opposed to 30 hours a week for six weeks, right? Because they're much more likely to have success, it's not a get rich, quick thing, there is a lot of wealth that can be built in a relatively short period of time. I mean, we've only been doing this for seven years now and our worlds completely different than it used to be. So I think perseverance and consistency are two traits that that are absolutely necessary. And I think that's true of any real estate, then it's just a matter of getting smart and on the industry specific knowledge that you need. And I will be the first to tell you that it's not rocket science, I mean, I'm in the process of giving all of that information away for free. Because I I come from an abundance mentality, I don't think that you learning what I've spent the last seven years learning is gonna put me out of a job. So I'm very free with that. And I think this is a long circle to your your questions. But I think the most important thing that a new investor can do is to go through the process to figure out what their Why is get that hammered down so that they can tap into it when when they're tired and haven't found a deal yet, or when the idea loses a little bit of its shy right. Tapping into that bigger, why is going to be what pushes them through and ultimately allows them to succeed. Great answer.

All right. If you could hit a magic reset button that allows you to go back in time and start your investment journey over again. Is there anything that you would do differently any systems that you might put in place or that is being?

Yeah, no, that's an excellent question. And a lot of times I think, for the people that know me, they would expect me to answer Well, I'd skip the residential stuff and go straight into storage. But I don't know that I would I think I learned so much in that time about the industry as well as about myself that I don't I don't know that I'd want to trade it. The one thing that I would absolutely do in an instant is for literally the first six years, just a couple months ago, I fixed this problem. I had two cell phones, a personal cell phone and a business cell phone, and the business cell phone came to me anytime someone needed storage. And I mentioned before about how I justified that my own brain, but really, it was a limiting belief I had created a false choice. Either I answer the phone, or I hire somebody to do it. And that's going to be more annoying than just answering the dang phone. I was challenged several months ago by a mentor of mine and they said well, why are you pretending those are the only two options. I guarantee you there's a bad better third option out there. And that's what ultimately led me to the remote management structure the call center that I'm using now. So a couple months ago, I was able to take that phone I made a video online and I literally chopped it about 300 feet. And that was as free as anything I've done in a long time. So if if I could do it again, I would design a business Where I am not in the day to day from day one.

Gotcha. Yeah, you sort of covered this a little bit. But I want to ask it this way, if you were standing in front of a roomful of real estate investors, aspiring real estate investors that primarily, you know, people with families and a full time job, you know, where their time limited? What sort of advice would you have for them, maybe a couple of strategies that they could implement today,

you know, I would, I would probably approach that opportunity in, in a couple ways. One, I would talk about the vision and the why that we've already discussed, but two, I would help them see, I think, too often in our world, we have this idea that you have to, and we're raised this way, it's not our fault, but you have to do certain things, so that you can have certain things, and then you're allowed to become somebody, right. And I would want to teach any new real estate investor and really anyone that that's backwards and invest in yourself to decide who you want to be, and become that person and allow that to dictate what you do, right, we have this finish line mentality in our culture, where if I only get to x, y, z, then I'll be happy. Or then I'll be able to do this or then I'll be able to do that most of what we want to life revolves around having experiences, creating relationships, and contributing, and we're all able to do far more of those three things right now within our current means than we give credit for we pretend that we need to get somewhere before those things can happen. So I would want to encourage folks to start doing some of those things right off the bat live life now, rather than hoping you can buy back life at some point in the distant future. And the flip side of that coin is, there's nothing wrong with aspiring toward finish lines, just knowing that it's about the race toward that line, not getting to the line, because whatever that line is, whether it's a material thing, a achievement, it doesn't matter. As soon as you get there, you're just going to build another one another several miles away. Right? So helping people start to understand that I think would be my goal as I stand in front of anyone willing to listen to me.

Awesome. Well, Michael, thank you so much for sharing with us today. If people want to reach out to you how what's the best way they can get in touch with you,

you know, probably the best way we've got a website, the storage, rebellion, calm, there's a webinar on there a couple of case studies, if people want to learn more, and then after the webinar, I give folks the option of filling out a questionnaire to set up a phone call with me. And I make crystal clear that it's not a sales call in any way I am of the mentality that those who give get whether they like it or not sometime down the road. So my only goal on those calls is to help people figure out one is storage a viable option for me. And two, what are the couple first steps that I can take and I try to share resources and that sort of thing. We're also on Facebook, at the storage rebellion, you can search for us there and I tried to get a video out every day or two, and I will be soon have a greater presence on YouTube. Also under the storage rebellion, where there's more nuts and bolts educational content there. That's

awesome. Well, we'll put all this in the show notes.

Awesome. Well, it's

been so great talking to you. Yeah,

yeah, you as well. I appreciate the opportunity and get downstairs and check out the Ninja Turtles would Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome.

All right. Very good, guys. Thanks so much.

Alright, right. That was Michael Wagner. We want to thank him for his time again, it's always great talking to him. What would it be a key lesson learned that you came away from,

I think one of the biggest things that he said that I just thought was really impactful was when he was talking about sort of his pivotal moment of where he was when he was still in the apartment, investing space. He said, Why am I setting up my life to, to have to vacate what I'm doing on a regular basis to be happy. And, you know, he followed up with like, once he quit his job, and he thought that for storage facilities that, you know, he said, I'm dead broke, and I've never been happier. And that just make made a huge impact on me. Because I think that's sort of one of the things that for us and our goals is that we really do want to be able to get to a point where we're doing the things that make us happy consistently. And not just living vacation to vacation.

Yeah. For me wait when you talk about being consistent. He talked a lot about you know, people who send out you know, they spend 30 hours, one month in or one week sending out a bunch of mailers and then they don't send it out again for six months. versus someone who does something, you know, an hour a day or even just 20 minutes a day, just whatever it is, be consistent. You're going to be having more success. If you Just consistent versus like, pouring into it one month, and then just leaving it for six months.

Sure, I think that's a good lesson for just about anything in life, you exercise once a month, you're definitely not going to be as good as well off or, you know, if you if you are eating well, every day versus only a couple days, and then you know, eating like crap, the rest? Yeah, you're not gonna be good. Oh, good, good. In your health. I don't know,

how we feel about his about the scores in the four values. How about knowledge? What do you say?

It's hard, because he did spend quite some time with the apartment space, which gave him years of knowledge. And as far as the time that he spent on self storage, it was in that, you know, six months to a year and a half sort of range. You know, some of it was kind of that learning as he went while he was looking for deals. And then some of that was, you know, doing that self study course. So, I think, you know, it does take a little bit more knowledge, and there are a lot of resources out there to gain this same knowledge, even with Michael himself with his mentoring program. So, you know, I think there's some opportunity there for someone to get into it quickly. They really want to they also, you know, you could really utilize a partner or something. And that sounds like, again, that Michael sort of provides that to his students. He might be a partner,

I sort of came to I came down on a sort of a seven to 12 months, maybe a little bit longer, maybe a little on remote, more like a year and a half, just because he did have all that experience in small multifamily before that. But he definitely, I mean, it was definitely he said about a year that he spent educating himself on self storage. Yeah. Yeah. What about money?

Well, for his very first deal in apartment, stuff is about five grand is all he put into that of his own money. And then I think we're looking at 20 to 50 grands somewhere in there for a lot of the other deals as far as like actual cash money that's coming from him. And then, you know, he's doing a fantastic job, leveraging other sources of income, whether that be private lending, or you know, a bank. Yeah,

I sort of the same thing. It started sort of two different periods in his investing career there he started off, was able to get in very cheaply, because it was the deal sort of fell into his lap, and he was able to get in for about $5,000. But then, afterwards, it was definitely a little bit more like 20 to $50,000. For the storage. Yeah,

yeah. I mean, I think some of the later ones, maybe there was one that that needed in the $100,000 range. But I think that was a little bit later on. So he's got more access to capital. Time, what are we looking at for time,

he said himself about, he has to put in about five to eight hours a week, you know, his wife said, he puts in a little bit more than that.

Yeah. Sounds like he's spending a lot of time on self development, looking for deals. So this is really that five to seven is maintaining what he has. So you know, if if that's all if you've got what you want. And you're then then that's, you know, that's all you have to do. I think, though, looking we didn't really talk about this, but looking for deals, that kind of thing. He's probably spending a significant amount of time daily, because we're talking about he invests small bits of time daily to do this. You know, it sounds like it's kind of a full time job for him. But it doesn't have to be is probably a good point that, you know, if you do have a full time job, you could still be successful in this area, and then spend more time as you are able to open that time up from your jlb. Yeah,

he also self manages, he does not, he does not used professional management, which is fine. But it's if at some point, he gets big enough, he may probably he might, yeah, to explore that. And that would definitely remove himself.

Yeah. Especially if he's just answering questions. I mean, that sounds like something he could probably train a virtual assistant to do in a heartbeat.

Yeah. Is your that advice, Michael? What about location? How, how long do you think he could go without working in his business? Well, he

said himself that he doesn't like to go like to go more than two weeks. You know, I think it sounds like if he decided that it was a priority for him to put some of the systems into place to go longer that he probably go three to six months. And he did mention that he likes to visit places up to four times a year. So that's in that three to six months sort of range of where you know, if he wasn't doing the day to day that he might check back in.

Yeah, I tend to agree. I think with the fact that he's self managing two weeks is probably a good barometer before you know things would go completely off the rails. But obviously if you put some system someplace he could definitely go walk. Yeah.

All right. Awesome. Well, what do we take away from that a useful strategy for someone that's maybe similar to our situation?

I think very much. So it would just be a matter of building the putting the systems in place to do that. He chooses to self manage right now. And and

I mean, to tell you the truth, if we wanted to do this, and we needed to self manage, we do have the flexibility to do that. Because I have a job that doesn't require me to go into an office I essentially work for myself, so so that's something that we could do if we really wanted slash add to good.

Well, it was Michael Wagner. His genres strategy is self storage. And thanks for listening to the royal family.

See you next week.

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