253. Financial Freedom in 4 Years by Building a “Simple” Self Storage Business w/Dillon Leonard
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At just twenty-seven years old, Dillon Leonard has reached financial freedom. How’d he do it? By tenaciously identifying, acquiring, and improving self storage facilities. Within four years, he’s built his self storage business to 800 doors, and he’s done it all by buying storage units in small towns that you’ve probably never heard of. How did he succeed so quickly, and what does he do that sets him apart from the competition? He’s sharing his “simple” secrets today!
Dillon had one goal—to reach financial freedom so he could spend time with his family. While working as a firefighter, he began building a residential real estate portfolio. One day (ironically), a tenant burned his property down. Dillon had it with tenants and toilets and realized self storage was the business he truly wanted to be in.
If you’re just getting started in self storage investing, Dillon delivers a masterclass on finding, acquiring, and running small facilities. If you follow his lead and put in the work, you, too, can reach financial freedom in just a few years!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- How to find financial freedom FAST by building a self storage business
- Why Dillon gave up rental properties and got into self storage investing
- How Dillon runs seven facilities (remotely!) in rural areas
- Competing with REITs and how investing in smaller markets can yield bigger rewards
- Raising rents and how Dillon has managed to keep high occupancy while charging more
- Buying the competition and the “relationship marketing” Dillon uses to acquire new facilities
- —
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It was February of 2020. I had a tenant. I gave them multiple warnings, burnt down one of my four plexas. |
| 0:06.0 | And about three days later, I posted, I remember on Facebook, I said, does anybody know anything about self-storage? |
| 0:11.0 | I'm done with tenants and toilets. Today we sit at seven facilities, mostly in eastern Kentucky, but we park the state as a whole, 116,000 square square foot 800 doors. By the time you're 30, |
| 0:22.7 | you're going to be further than I could have ever even imagined by the time, you know, I was 30 |
| 0:27.8 | and that's, that gets me really excited. |
| 0:44.2 | Welcome everybody to self-storage income, and I am excited for this guest podcast today. |
| 0:53.1 | Lots of times we have individuals that come on here, and they are, well, I don't know how else to say it, so I'm going to say it. |
| 0:53.9 | Old. And so I'm really know how else to say it. So I'm going to say it. Old. |
| 1:03.4 | And so I'm really excited today to have Dylan here with us because he is 27 and this is a podcast of celebration because he has big things he's doing right now and his life is going to change |
| 1:09.5 | dramatically. |
| 1:10.1 | So with that, Dylan, how you doing, man? |
| 1:12.9 | Hey, Jay, I'm doing great. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here today, a long-time |
| 1:16.6 | listener. So this is kind of a pinnacle event for me since I just started in a storage, |
| 1:21.4 | really in 2020. So this is kind of a long, time, short time coming kind of thing. So very |
| 1:26.6 | exciting to be here today. First thing I |
| 1:28.2 | want to hit on right away, you are a firefighter, right? I was. I actually retired technically. |
| 1:35.6 | I guess you can say retired. I don't really like using that term. Essentially, I'm a quitter. |
| 1:39.3 | I guess is how they would probably turn it as of about mid-May, more or less when my wife and I kind of |
| 1:45.5 | stared into business. We started with the idea that if and when we got to a point that, |
| 1:49.5 | you know, we started having kids and I decided to step away from kind of the emergency work. |
| 1:54.1 | We had that opportunity. And luckily, we were able to realize that actually May and we |
| 1:58.8 | had our first daughter in March. And that is why we're celebrating having you on here. |
... |
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