314. Buying Your First Self Storage Facility While Working Full-Time w/Braedon Haertling
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This one small-town storage facility has made today’s guest over $500,000. And if you’re interested in buying your first storage facility, there’s no better inspiration than this. With one self storage investment, Braedon Haertling has added another 9-5-sized income stream and increased value by close to $1,000,000, all while working a full-time job. He had no experience, but a lot of drive, and didn’t do anything you can’t.
Braedon tried the rental property route, but scaling to 100+ doors didn’t seem like the best bet. Why buy 100 rentals when investing in storage units can get you to 100 doors with just one purchase? Thankfully, Braedon knew of someone who may be too busy to run their storage facility anymore. He gave them a call, scored a $0-down self storage facility, and the rest is history.
Got a 9-5? You can invest in self storage. Got kids and a family to take care of? You can invest in self storage. Think you need to know everything before getting your first facility? You couldn’t be more wrong. Thanks to simply taking action, Braedon now has a six-figure-producing self storage investment, $500,000+ in equity, and is hungry for his next deal!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- How to use the “seller carry” strategy to buy a self storage facility for $0 down
- Creating massive value ($1,000,000!) with simple improvements to your storage facility
- Is your town too small for self storage? How Braedon gets 90%+ occupancy in a 3,200-person town
- One big mistake Braedon made, but later turned it into a substantial payday
Why you should NOT quit your job to invest in self storage (unless…)
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Grab AJ’s Book, _Growing Wealth in Self-Storage 2.0_: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/book Braedon’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestoragemat/
Braedon’s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thestoragemat
🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/
📑 Our Self-Storage Feasibility Studies will help you speed up the process in understanding markets, potential risks, and analyzing the facility itself. https://cedar.cc/feasibility-studies/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I always thought residential, that's where I'm going to start. |
| 0:03.0 | It kind of just feels like that's where you should start, right? You buy your single family. You get a tenant and you scale from there. I remember it vividly. It's last July. So my best friend's dad owns a storage facility here in town. I'll reach out to him while I'm working out to shoot up a text. Hey, Brian, I've been interested in real estate. We have a single family house. Didn't know if you'd ever be interested in selling. Immediately responds, yeah, we're busy with everything else. I'd love to sit down and talk to you. With storage, it's a totally different ballgame. I had no idea where we were at. I was just, you know, nose to the grindstone for the first four or five months. And then I sat down in down in June like let's see where we're at |
| 0:37.9 | and I ran the numbers and I saw the returns I mean I knew we were doing well but I didn't |
| 0:43.2 | realize how good it was. |
| 0:48.3 | Welcome back everybody to the self-storage income podcast. This episode is a re-release of one of our top 10 episodes with Braden Hartling. And in this episode, he talks about his journey from where he started to where he is now, how he got started in the industry. Again, this is one of our most top downloaded episodes. Pretty much any episode that has to do with starting out in storage |
| 1:12.4 | is really, really popular. And this episode is one of those as well, where he shares a lot of |
| 1:17.4 | really, really good information for any of you guys really looking to just start in the |
| 1:21.8 | self-storage industry. He comes from, you know, college, the nine to five world, all of those things, and his process of going |
| 1:29.5 | from that world into commercial real estate investing, owning and operating these assets. |
| 1:34.9 | And can't wait for you guys to jump in to hear his incredible story and where he's at today. |
| 1:39.7 | Great episode, guys. Keep listening and take note. |
| 1:44.0 | Hey, everybody. Connor and I work really hard to try to bring |
| 1:47.5 | the best podcast in cell storage that we can we ask a lot of guests we do a lot of research |
| 1:55.1 | and a lot of work goes into it if you could help us out by leaving a review it's's so easy. You just go down on whatever device, |
| 2:03.6 | Spotify, Apple, whatever you're using, leave a great review. It really helps us out. Thanks, |
| 2:10.8 | everybody. Welcome everybody to self-storage income. And I am so excited about today's podcast because we are interviewing |
| 2:21.8 | a very busy man. He is a PA. He has, well, almost two kids here very, very soon. And he is also a |
| 2:33.8 | storage owner as well as a laundry mat owner. And so how he's juggling, |
| 2:42.4 | his job, everything else. This is an awesome subject that I love, considering I've been there, |
| 2:50.1 | and that's how I started. So with that, |
| 2:54.6 | Brandon, how you doing? Do it well. Do it well, AJ. How are you? Doing great. Now, |
| 2:59.9 | we were talking before we jumped into this and you were saying you're out of Illinois. You got to |
... |
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