How I bought a self storage business and became a millionaire 3 months later...

In 2015, my wife (then girlfirend) and I rented an apartment in a new town that was right next to a self storage facility. I met the owner one day when his dog wandered over to see my dog. They became BFFs

The owner and I friends and connected over mutual interests such as hunting, firearms, dogs, etc. He was in his mid 60's at the time and back then I told him if he ever wanted to sell his business, to keep me in mind. A couple months later we bought our own house and moved on.

At the time I didn't know how compelling the storage business was. I was mostly driven by the land. My grandfather always said "if you have the opportunity to buy commercial property, do it." He never had the chance to do so with his grocery business.

A few years later I noticed the storage website was broken and offered to build the owner a new one for free. This re-kindled our conversation about me buying him out. He said he was ready and told me to make him an offer.

Fun side note...as a thank you for building his website, he built me a custom rifle! It's an H&R 1871 Buffalo Classic 45-70 with a shortened barrel, new stock, and vortex scope.

I did my due diligence, came up with a fair price based on how the business was performing at the time and we shook hands.

Then commenced the long process of drawing up a contract with attorneys, agreeing to terms, securing financing (SBA 504 loan), appraisal, inspections, 4000 gallon oil tank removal, survey, etc which cost over $40,000 before I owned anything.

Finally, on March 5th, 2020 we closed the deal.

Then the real work began. The previous owner did everything on paper. He had a 95 year old bookkeeper who would type the invoices from scratch every quarter. (Anyone with experience can see the hidden dollar signs here)

I spent many late nights converting everything from paper into my new management software. Within 3 months I had cut over $100,000 in annual operating expenses which also means the net operating income went up by the same amount.

Conservatively, this added at least $1,000,000 in value to the business if I were to sell it today. Since then I've increased the net rentable square footage and adjusted rates making the picture even rosier.

At the end of the day I made this deal happen. If I hadn't nudged, pushed, kept in touch, offered value, friendship, and made the transaction easy, this wouldn't have happened.

Lessons learned:
1. time doesn't always kill a deal
2. relationships matter
3. let you dog wander
4. talk to your neighbors

And that's the story about how I bought a self storage business and became a millionaire (at least on paper) 3 months later.

Opportunity: There is a HUGE wave of baby boomer business owners on the cusp of retirement. The quality of their retirement is often contingent upon them selling their business.

P.S. I still work full time running our 4 store, 6th generation family grocery business along side my father. Storage is much simpler, less risky, and has better margins than grocery. I'm currently trying to close another storage deal as we speak. Fingers crossed.

Well this went viral. I have nothing to sell or shill (besides groceries and storage space ) but DMs are open if you have questions. We all start somewhere!