327. He Built a 15-Facility Portfolio with These “Underrated” Skills (Not Money)
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The self storage industry has finally bottomed out, and today’s guest believes there are more deals now than ever. He’s seizing the moment and buying self storage facilities left and right because in 18 months, these deals could completely dry up—leaving many wishing they had invested in self storage.
In this episode, Conner and George sit down with Ben Gottfredson, who, just a few years ago, depleted his life savings to build his first self storage facility. Since then, he has started his own private equity fund and scaled his self storage business to 15 facilities. But the truth is that Ben would still be stuck on his second deal if he hadn’t developed soft skills and forged invaluable partnerships that helped him rapidly grow his net worth and create lucrative investing opportunities for many close friends and family members.
Today, he’ll show you how to do just that—build out your network and teams in a way that allows you to grow your portfolio as quickly as possible. Ben also opens up about the blunders he made on past deals, from buying while the market was at its peak to cutting corners when stabilizing his facilities, so you don’t repeat his costly mistakes!
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- How Ben has scaled from one to 15 self storage facilities in only a few years
- Why now is the best buying window the self storage industry has seen in years
- The top-down and bottom-up approaches to building your self storage business
- Fast-tracking your investments through education and networking
- How to scale your portfolio faster with smart investing partnerships
- “Underrated” soft skills that provide rare self storage investing opportunities
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🔵 Join Inner Circle https://www.selfstorageincome.com/inner-circle
▶️ Buying Your First Facility in a Small Town w/ Ben Gottfredson | SSI Podcast #217 - https://www.selfstorageincome.com/podcasts/self-storage-income-2/episodes/2148265195
🚛 Big Storage Ventures - https://www.instagram.com/bigstorageventures
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Every person I've talked to that, they ask me what I do. |
| 0:03.0 | I've always wanted to get into stores. I always drive by and they'd be a good idea. We make that a reality for people that they would just be dreaming about that their whole life. Instead, we're like, yeah, like, come on in, take a piece. Most of our friends and family, who I care about and love, this is an asset that's going to get them 20 to 50% on their money where they |
| 0:21.5 | were stuck in a 401k for single digit returns in the last two weeks we've gotten more deal flow |
| 0:29.4 | than we have and the whole time i've been in this these amazing deals that you're going to see in the |
| 0:33.6 | next 12 18 months they'll never see again. |
| 0:44.7 | What's going on, everybody? |
| 0:49.9 | Man, George, do we have an incredible episode going on on Social Origin Cup today with the one and only Ben Godforsen? |
| 0:53.3 | Incredible dude. |
| 0:56.8 | Yeah, 100% Connor. So in today's podcast today with Ben, we talk about how Ben has scaled to 15 facilities. We talk about some of the |
| 1:02.6 | biggest lessons that he's learned throughout the years. We talk about lawsuits that he's avoided, |
| 1:07.1 | how he was able to get into a partnership, zero money down by taking someone else to lunch. |
| 1:12.7 | And we talk about how he's really grown as a leader. |
| 1:16.1 | And I think for anyone listening to this podcast today, you're going to learn a lot of someone |
| 1:19.8 | who started off small, buying a deal on their own. |
| 1:22.9 | And then when they allowed other people to come along for the ride, Ben has now scaled to |
| 1:26.7 | 15 facilities. |
| 1:28.5 | And so there's a lot of powerful stuff that we go through in today's episode. |
| 1:31.5 | There really is. And talking about the granular or tactical pieces of each of those things, |
| 1:37.7 | including stuff that like you wouldn't even consider, right? |
| 1:39.7 | Like some of the soft skills we talked about on today's episode and building relationships. |
| 1:44.7 | Some of that, just stuff that is not on the radar for a lot of us when we're jumping into |
| 1:48.9 | these different industries and looking to invest and buy businesses and grow. |
... |
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