217. Buying your first facility in a small town w/ Ben Gottfredson
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Buying your first storage facility is no easy feat. Today we talk with Ben to learn how he bought his first one.
Ben Gottfredson started in his small town of St George, Utah, where he bought his first facility after being denied by banks repeatedly. He started with a small service business, but quickly realized the potential of self storage and thought it was worth being persistent for.
We're talking what are some of the mistakes he wishes he didn't make, and what you should know if you are looking to get into self storage!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, so first storage deal was ground up construction and it's one I did all on my own, which, you know, having learned what I know now, maybe was a mistake. |
| 0:09.0 | But at the time, it was good because it stretched me and I grew with the asset. |
| 0:14.0 | So I scraped together, you know, 300 grand for the land and some plans. |
| 0:19.0 | But then the bigger barrier of entry was actually the banks. |
| 0:21.9 | So I went from bank to bank to bank in my small town, St. George, Utah. And finally, after about |
| 0:28.7 | a dozen plus banks, I went to three different branches of the same bank and someone took a chance |
| 0:33.7 | on me. No matter what your situation is out there, you can always look for that |
| 0:37.5 | competitive advantage. We don't want to be the people that have a competitive advantage because |
| 0:41.4 | of the moving company. We want to have a competitive advantage because of how we operate. |
| 0:50.3 | Welcome everybody to self-storage income and we are on site today at self-storage income live, our event. |
| 0:58.9 | And I've got here with me, Ben, who Ben has got a great, well-rounded experience of self-storage |
| 1:07.7 | because of not just the storage, but complementary businesses to everything |
| 1:12.8 | from finance structures with zero money down to doing conversions. And we're going to talk about |
| 1:19.0 | pitfalls. We're going to talk about struggles, these side businesses, and just his overall |
| 1:23.4 | experience. And I think, you know, it's that, you know, Ben, really that array of experience |
| 1:30.4 | and inputs that give you such a unique view of the business. Because you started, did you |
| 1:35.4 | start in moving? Was that your first company you started? Yeah, absolutely. Started with just a service |
| 1:40.1 | business and fell in love with real estate. You know, I did frat houses renting out by the room. |
| 1:46.4 | Yeah. So I learned real estate, you know, the appreciation, the cash flow. And at the same time, |
| 1:52.8 | I'm getting leads from my moving company, customers calling in and saying, hey, can you move us? |
| 1:57.4 | We've heard you're great. Sure. Can you store our stuff? Well, we can't, but we can refer you're great sure can you store our stuff well we can't but we can |
| 2:01.6 | refer you to someone and so I realized that I had all the money I was leaving on the table as far |
... |
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