326. He Left His 20-Year Dentistry Practice for Self Storage (And Would Do It Again) with Wayde Elliott
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Self storage investing isn’t always smooth sailing, but the market tends to reward those who stay the course. From wild construction-site break-ins to complex newspaper-building conversions, this self storage investor has seen it all—yet he’s still built a multimillion-dollar storage business that supported his family after a health incident took away his main source of income.
In today’s episode, AJ and Conner are chatting with Wayde Elliott, founder of StoreIT. When spinal fusion surgery forced him to leave his successful dentistry practice of 20 years, Wayde turned to the only backup plan he had: self storage. Since going all-in, he has scaled to roughly a dozen self storage facilities across California and Oregon.
Despite taking on ground-up developments and complex conversion projects, sharp self storage analysis, collaboration, and persistence have helped him carve out his own corner of the market where even REITs struggle to compete. Stay tuned for not only a wealth of sage advice but also one of the most bizarre break-in stories you’ll ever hear—involving secret tunnels, missing cameras, and an exhausting cat-and-mouse chase!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- The wildest self storage break-in story we’ve ever heard
- How Wayde built a self storage portfolio that allowed him to leave his high-paying career
- The “hack” that helps you dodge rookie mistakes and scale your portfolio faster
- Blending automation and on-site supervision with the hybrid management model
- What you must know before tackling a self storage conversion project
- Why doing “difficult things in difficult times” gives you a competitive advantage
—
🔸 StoreIT: https://storeit.com
📸 Wayde’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waydeelliottdmd
🔵 Join Inner Circle: https://www.selfstorageincome.com/inner-circle
🌳 Work with someone experienced in self storage loans at Live Oak Bank! https://www.liveoakbank.com/business-loans/self-storage/
🎙️ Do you have a great story to share on the SSI or AJ Osborne podcasts? You can now apply here! https://form.asana.com/?k=TGU88eU0bFTFW1iHcckuTA&d=1203571084143207
📉 Take advantage of today’s market conditions and invest with us: https://cedar.cc/invest
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | They break in, steal a bunch of the contractor stuff. |
| 0:03.0 | The contractor put trail cameras throughout the building |
| 0:06.0 | that would take pictures at night and on the roof and all throughout the building. |
| 0:11.0 | Well, he broke in again, stole the trail cameras and some more stuff again, |
| 0:18.0 | but he forgot one trail camera. |
| 0:20.0 | And we recovered the picture, took it to the police. |
| 0:22.6 | The police knew who the thief was, knew where he was parked in his RV, went to the |
| 0:28.6 | RV, recovered the trail cameras and some of the stuff, he had sold some of the stuff. |
| 0:33.6 | Then he goes to jail, and then about two or three weeks later another break-in. |
| 0:39.3 | We're like, what? |
| 0:40.2 | How is he breaking in? |
| 0:41.7 | This time he broke in. |
| 0:42.9 | There was a tunnel underneath the building. |
| 0:45.6 | There was a grate on the outside, a tunnel that goes into the basement and he wrote a note on the contractor's desk. |
| 0:52.2 | It said, |
| 0:53.1 | It said, |
| 0:53.1 | Oh, On the contractor's desk, it said, Welcome to self-storage income, everybody. |
| 1:03.2 | And today our guest has the absolute craziest story of a self-storage break-in, |
| 1:09.4 | like people breaking in and stealing things that I've |
| 1:13.2 | ever heard. They never do that. They never do that. That never happens. Never happens. And this is like, |
| 1:19.2 | you know, breaking into the loove kind of low, like crazy stuff. I'm absolutely shocked. Ocean, |
| 1:25.5 | exactly. Ocean's 11th style. |
... |
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