337. How We’d Set Up a Storage Facility from Scratch (Complete Playbook)
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is how to run a storage business successfully if you’re starting from scratch.
Closing on your first self storage investment is a big deal—but it comes with a lot of questions: What management software should I use? What types of locks are best? How do I track competitor prices? How do I handle the auction and lien process if someone doesn’t pay?
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and resort to handling everything yourself, which often leads not only to a bad storage business but also to severe burnout. It doesn’t have to be like this, so today, we’re sharing our entire self storage tech stack—everything we use to run our self storage facilities (remotely!) so you can have a successful first, or next, self storage investment.
We’ll give you everything—management software, lock systems, lien automations, call and customer service providers, website hosting, and other recommendations. If this is your first self storage facility, this information could be the difference between you scaling fast or falling behind.
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- The expert playbook for running a self storage facility from scratch
- Our complete self storage tech stack that you can use at your facility, too
- How to track competitors and ensure you’re pricing right in your market
- Remote self storage investing? You can do it if you have these tools
- Which “tech” is not worth the investment and won’t make you more money
- How to join a bigger self storage “brand” with all the benefits
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Software Mentioned in Today’s Show:
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Man, if I was going out right now today and I was going to set up a facility, this would be my |
| 0:04.3 | ideal setup and how I would run things. We're giving you the exact playbook of what we would utilize |
| 0:10.4 | right now today in our tech stack. We're talking website, property management systems, systems |
| 0:15.6 | from attracting tenants to going through the sales process to managing phone systems, everything, |
| 0:20.5 | the gates getting |
| 0:21.6 | systems that talk to each other it's literally the step-by-step outline of exactly how we'd set up a |
| 0:26.9 | facility so i'm super excited and happy to be able to share this with everybody we get this question all the |
| 0:31.5 | time like what text act should i use for my facility like that's literally what we go through today |
| 0:35.5 | we get very granular on each thing like connor said giving you specific examples so whether you're new to the |
| 0:41.1 | industry just getting in or if you're already an owner operator you can hear you |
| 0:44.8 | know the the tech stack that we've used throughout the years on the cedar side |
| 0:48.0 | and you know how you might be able to use that for your business today so |
| 0:50.6 | excited to dive into this. |
| 1:13.2 | Welcome everybody to the self-storage income podcast. You got me and George hanging out today talking something really, really important, man. I'm excited to dive into today's topic because this is all the talk these days as far as, you know how do we set our facilities up for success you know what are the best ways the best tools those different things |
| 1:18.4 | because so much has changed man over the past you know five years even 10 years even it's it's |
| 1:23.5 | crazy to see the changes and it's only going to continue to go faster but uh dude, before we jump into that, George, how the heck you doing, man? |
| 1:30.3 | I'm doing good, man. |
| 1:31.1 | I'm excited to be here, excited to talk on this. And, you know, you're right. Like technology in all industries is changing like crazy and self-storage is a part of that. So excited to dive into this and talk about how things have evolved in the past few years with storage and where we see it going. |
| 1:46.0 | I think there's so many industries out there that are focused. So excited to dive into this and talk about how things have evolved in the past few years with storage and where we see it going. |
| 1:46.3 | I think there's so many industries out there that are focused on this stuff right now. |
| 1:49.5 | And it's smart to be focused on these things because you're going to have to stay relevant. |
| 1:54.6 | You're going to have to compete, you know, whether it's on the expense side of things or its user experience. |
... |
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