Car washes were booming. Private Echoey was paying up. So why would two season developers sell, pivot, and bet big on Class A, climate controlled storage. Today, we're pulling back the curtain on a built-de-core self-storage model that garners the interest of big names in storage space, such as public storage, extra space, and QSpart. This is the name of few. I'm Kevin Bup, and this is the Real Estate Investing for Cashlow podcast, where we go beyond headlines to unpack the playbooks of operators

building durable income and long-term value. Here's what's coming up. First, the blueprint. Why

70 to 90,000 net rentable square feet, full climate control, and a drive-through design make big

players actually want to manage your asset.

And later in the show, we're going to discuss how entitlement's turn not so valuable dirt into a prized asset with real equity.

And then lastly, we're going to talk about when to pull the rip cord on a deal and eat $30,000 to $40,000 in pursuit cost.

Our guest are Bill Canadas and Ben Salzberg, co-founders of self-storage developers.

Bill's a finance-first developer with decades across retail, office, and housing.

Ben's a Six Sigma operations vet who saved Fortune 500 companies, nine figures, and now

applies that rigor to national storage builds. Together, they've shifted from express car

washes to institutional-grade storage run by third-party publicly trade operators. Together, they've shifted from express car washes to institutional grade storage run by third party publicly trade operators. So let's go ahead and dive into the show. My friends, how you doing today? Welcome to the show. I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having us on the show. Yeah, Kevin, thank you so much. Excited to have you guys here, excited to talk shop, pull back the curtain, learn a little more about your background, business and you know uh you guys are in self storage today but you've got a you know a background

prior to that right and so let's how about we start there before we um before we dive into the you know

the mechanics of of what your business looks like today in the self-storage space again you

both came out of of the express car wash development side of things before moving to self-storage space. Again, you both came out of the express car wash

development side of things before moving to self-storage. So I guess let's start there.

You know, what made you realize or when did you come to the realization that storage was a better

long-term play? Gosh, that's a great question. I think we were looking at self-storage facilities

for years. Prior to even doing

car washes, we developed strip centers, office buildings, office condos, and then got involved

into the express car wash model. Obviously, car wash has been around for a long time since the 60s.

The Express model came much later when people realized that it was very, very labor intense, right?

Your car washers in the 60s are not the car washes of today.

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