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Self Storage Income

321. How We (Remote!) Manage Our 19-Facility Self Storage Business

Self Storage Income

AJ Osborne

How To, Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship, Education

4.9591 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You can live hundreds of miles away from your self storage facility and still run it successfully. Just hear from Bill DeWaal and Korbin Smoot, founders of Better Self Storage. They’ve got 19 facilities across multiple states and run self storage management to perfection with a team of VAs, a director of operations, and without having to fix, overlock, or inspect a single unit.

 

You can invest from anywhere in the country, or even anywhere in the world, and this is how you do it.

 

Bill and Korbin are what a solid partnership looks like. Korbin is chasing deals while Bill is making sure the facilities make sense. Their formula clearly works, as now they have 19 facilities and are experts in self storage remote management. Plus, they’ll share what a great partner looks like, so you don’t get into the self storage business with a bad actor.

 

Don’t know what to buy when sellers are still asking too much, but the numbers won’t budge? Bill and Korbin define their buy box for small, scalable remote facilities, and how they easily increased revenue by 300% at one facility, and the impressive outsourcing they do so these two can focus on building their portfolio, not managing units. Plus, underwriting (analysis) tweaks they’ve made to ensure they’re getting a deal, not a dud, and how to compete with the REITs who drop prices fast and furiously. 

 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

 

  • What makes a great self storage partnership, and how to find someone who plays off of your strengths
  • Remote managing a sizable self storage investment portfolio (it’s more than possible)
  • How to use virtual assistants (VAs) to clear hours of work off your plate every day
  • The real reason you want to buy multiple facilities in the same market (so much less work)
  • Bill and Korbin’s buy box for small, but seriously profitable, self storage facilities 
  • Setting your self storage rates when the big facilities around the block are offering fire sales  

Join AJ’s Self Storage Income Inner Circle https://www.selfstorageincome.com/inner-circle 

Better Self Storage - https://www.betterselfstorage.com/ 

Korbin's Contact Information: KorbinSmoot@gmail.com, 801-505-2334

Bill’s Contact Information: 801-910-0594

__

🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! We seriously love them. 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/ 

📖 Sign up for Our Weekly Newsletter: https://ajosborne.com/newsletter

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

So it was doing about 1,500 a month when we first took it down. It's 240,000 was the purchase price.

0:07.0

Revenue went. We got up to 5 grand at first.

0:10.0

Geez.

0:11.0

1,500 to 5 grand.

0:12.0

In a short period of time.

0:13.0

How many facilities do you guys have?

0:15.0

Yeah, we've got 19, I guess, separate locations, but they're all like 20,000 square feet. You know, I think we

0:21.6

accumulated everything for 1.1 million. How was it? Purchase, $3.2 million in five years.

0:27.9

What was it with you guys that you said we would make a good partnership? Bill, he's the one

0:33.5

that's kept us clean out of bad deals, out of bad opportunities, because I'm just like,

0:37.6

let's go. We got to do this. Let's go. And that's been really helpful to have that contrast.

0:43.7

Yeah. And find a partner, right, that has something different from you. If you're just both yes men and

0:48.8

you tell each other, you're going to get yourself into a bad spot.

1:00.0

All right, everybody, welcome to the podcast. So we are actually at the self-storage income event, and we are having conversations and

1:06.5

we have operators here that we are interviewing.

1:09.6

We're excited to dive into it. We actually started

1:12.2

the podcast just straight going into it because we are already into conversations and they were

1:17.6

a great conversation so we didn't stop. But before we jump in and start playing that, you guys

1:23.4

want to introduce yourselves real quick because obviously the podcast just started out with us

1:27.7

going. So why don't you guys introduce yourself real quick when they, before they hear our

1:32.5

immediate nonstop for the next hour and a half. Before they start playing, you want to go?

1:39.2

Yeah, I'm Corbyn Smoot with better self-storage. We're, yeah, owner and operating facilities and love storage.

...

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