Burnout and Breakthroughs: How Self-Storage Saved Us

Ready to learn the secrets behind one of the most reliable real estate investments?

Scott reflects on his journey from traditional real estate to self-storage, joined by his wife, Christina.

Together, they recount the challenges of managing rental properties, the eventual burnout, and the pivotal moment that led them to pursue self-storage.

Christina shares her initial enthusiasm and how she persuaded Scott to make the leap.

They explore lessons from their first self-storage deal, the benefits of the industry, and how it transformed their personal and professional lives.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
05:21 Christina’s "I Quit" Moment
11:32 Finding Their First Deal
24:42 How They Funded Their Early Facilities
29:25 Lessons in Financial Analysis for Self-Storage

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Chapters

• 5:21 Christina’s "I Quit" Moment
• 11:32 Finding Their First Deal
• 24:42 How They Funded Their Early Facilities
• 29:25 Lessons in Financial Analysis for Self-Storage

Transcript

Announcer (00:03):

This is the Self-Storage Podcast with the original self storage expert, Scott Meyers.

Scott Meyers (00:10):

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I'm your host at Scott Meyers, and it is a banner day here at the Self Storage Up Podcast because we are celebrating episode at 200. So what does that mean? It may not mean that much to you, but just to put some stats behind that, there are only 2% of all podcasts that actually make it to past 200 episodes. And you probably heard this stat before that 90% of all podcasts never make it beyond three episodes, and then they just kind of fade off. And so not that longevity is a key to quality, but we wouldn't be doing this if you weren't listening and to see the amount of downloads, the activity level, and the interaction that we're able to have within our community. Well, there's no place that I'd rather be than in front of this microphone either doing a solo episode and talking about the things that we're learning in the day-to-Day, and the trenches of this incredible industry that we call self storage or with somebody else on the other end of the microphone that is talking about their challenges in self storage, being vulnerable, but also talking about best business practices so that not only many times can I learn from the person who I'm interviewing, but also you get the benefit of being a fly on the wall from listening to two professionals in the industry just having a casual conversation about this industry that we love so much.

(01:27):

But you're in for a treat today because I have my favorite returning host today, and that is my lovely bride. Christina,

Christina Meyers (01:34):

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I must have done all right the last time I got invited back.

Scott Meyers (01:39):

She's so polite. Thanks for having me. I mean, as if I have a choice. So after the last time Christina was on, we had a flurry of emails that came in and folks that had requests about certain topics and they wanted to bring her back so that we could navigate to talk about how we navigate the business because there are many folks. We are the mom and pop in the business and were, we've expanded and grown, and there's quite a few folks that are on the staff and on the team now. But we began just like many folks, which is as a mom and pop, and we know that there are many husband and wife teams out there as well as folks that have their significant others in the business as well. And so a number of questions came in with regards to topics on what they wanted us to talk about the next time Christina was on the show.

(02:25):

And so as I looked through these and we were grabbing some of these out, one of 'em was teaching our kids about investing in self-storage. And so we thought about that for about 30 seconds, and then we recognized that it would only take about 30 seconds to have a podcast on that because our kids are not interested in self-storage. I don't know why it is such a sexy asset class and interesting business for teenagers in young twenties. I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to brag to their friends about being in the self-storage business, but we decided not to choose that

Christina Meyers (02:59):

To be continued maybe when they're in their thirties

Scott Meyers (03:02):

To be continued when maybe perhaps some of the other things don't work out. So instead, what we landed on that was our first deal, what we did right, what we did wrong. And to go back, we're looking at, gosh, we're about 19 years on now from our first deal. And so I know it's a stretch for myself to remember that far back. It is not a stretch for my wife, but we thought we would walk you through what that first deal looked like and answer the questions that many people had about that. So when we found self-storage, actually it was self-storage that really found us. It was a time in our lives where we were in single family homes. We had about almost 80 single family homes. We had over 400 multifamily units, and it was at the time when we really just didn't like the tenant and toilet business.

(03:50):

And there is that time in everyone's career in that side of the business and the habitation real estate where you almost have to get over a hump where you have to have a critical mass of units where you can completely turn everything over to a third party property management company. And even though we had done that and kind of fits and spurts and portions of our business were operating that way, we still had some properties in the single family side where we were managing those. We were managing those. Christina was managing those. And not only was it very challenging, just because it takes its toll, that side of the business just can be pretty stressful. And what I was finding personally is just I was less loving of my fellow man after people just destroying our properties and not paying, which is essentially in my book stealing and just damaging our properties.

(04:34):

The courts looked at it differently and we realized that the courts aren't there to protect us. They're only there to protect our tenants. It was also a challenging time financially when we began to look into other aspects of commercial real estate and other forms of investing or other businesses in general. As we continue to go through like habitation real estate does and the ebbs and flows in an economic cycle, we could be caught when the music stops without a chair. And so at that point when we were getting kind of a double whammy prior to that point, for the past three years or so, we've been struggling on both financially and really just our attitude. And finally, Christina was really at her wit's end, and nobody can describe my wife's emotions at that time better than her. So I'll let her describe where we were before we decided to make the pivot.

Christina Meyers (05:21):

Let me back up a little and just say I did a few years before that suggest that maybe self-storage was the way to go. And at the time we were rolling along with apartments and office buildings and other things, and Scott said, no, no, not that. And then we had an apartment complex and I said, what if we built self-storage? We've got some extra land. What if we built self-storage on this property? No, no, no, let's keep going. And so after several of those where I had even taken our kids who were little at the time into the offices of these apartment complexes to help turn 'em around in some cases where a manager just doesn't do it as well as the owner does. So I'd spend several weeks with my kids lugging 'em back and forth and going to work in these apartment complexes. And it just got to the place that it was overwhelming. And so I basically said, I quit. I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I think this is a terrible business. So I didn't really care what happened at that point in time, but I was really done with houses and apartments weren't far behind.

Scott Meyers (06:29):

Well, we still love real estate for the reasons that everybody loves real estate. It appreciates if you do the right things, we can count it against depreciation against our taxes. We can borrow money to get into it, we can utilize leverage. And then we have our tenants, our clients that are paying down our basis for us. I mean, there is no other investment and it produces cashflow if you do it right. There's no other investment that operates like real estate and everybody loves rental real estate if it weren't for the tenants and the toilets and the trash. And so what other asset classes could we invest in? Well, it's either parking lots or self-storage. And that's when I began to take a harder look into self-storage and visited the self-storage trade show up in Chicago, which thankfully the SSA show was traveling and it was traveling nearby because we weren't in a place where I could fly across the country and spend several days in a hotel.

(07:21):

It just didn't seem prudent at this point to be able to do so as we were doing our best to stay afloat and tread water. And so I went up to the show and met as many people as I could and talked to them about why they like the business, how they got into the business, what are the things that they don't like about the business. It seemed to be that the downside was very minimal. Most of the folks who said the worst thing I ever did was wait to get into self-storage. Many of them had the same story that we had where they were in habitation real estate and they found a better way. And so as a result of going to that show, and not only in the keynote, my eyes were really open to the industry itself and how well it was performing and doing in comparison to the other asset classes, including the ones that I was in.

(08:07):

And so at this point then I was amongst a whole bunch of folks that were absolutely fired up about this asset class that I looked at as kind of the stepchild of commercial real estate. And as Christina mentioned, my pride got in the way and not looking at it when she originally had brought it up thinking this was a step backwards, investing in these metal boxes on concrete slabs until we saw the performance and then recognized that, well, I wanted that. I want the performance. I don't care what the asset class is. I don't care what the widget is. And so we began making steps towards getting into our first self-storage facility. And so we were speaking with lenders, looking for properties, looking at many properties, practicing the underwriting and sending mailers out, talking with mom and papa owners. And we ran across a facility, got an answer to one of the mailers that we sent out from a gentleman.

(08:58):

He owned a self-storage out facility with his partner, and they were in a contracting business. They were in a concrete business, and that's where they started and that was on this piece of land to begin with, was their concrete business in a number of bays. And then they decided with all the acreage and back that they would just put up a self-storage building and see how it went. Well, it went well. And so they added another building and another and another. And several years later, they had a sizable facility and it was throwing off a ton of cashflow. They put a manager in place inside and they just continued to operate their concrete business until they decided that it was time for a business divorce. And they were not getting along. Things were not going well between the two. And what they were doing was unfortunately, well unfortunately for them, fortunately for us, is they were intentionally driving the business into the ground so that the other one wouldn't profit when they sold, which was kind of the craziest thing to witness and to get caught in the middle of the negotiations and the meetings with them, which is very uncomfortable.

(09:57):

But all the while we knew that there was a great opportunity in front of us here. And so as we continued down the path within negotiations, we could see the tremendous amount of upside in this project. There was a land next door that eventually most likely could be purchased, and it ticked all the boxes for everything that we did when we bought our multifamily properties, our single family, there was tons of upside ability to expand. However, the challenge that we had at the time was that we didn't have all of the down payment for this property and the lenders, even though we were in commercial real estate with our apartments, we didn't have enough experience in their minds and we didn't have experience in self-storage to which we thought, and I felt, well, Christina could run one of these things with one hand tied behind our back and blindfolded.

(10:47):

We've been dealing with multifamily for this many years. We're talking about metal boxes on concrete slabs. There are no tenants, it's just their stuff. That's it. However, they did require us to bring in a guarantor. And so we found a partner or some friends of ours that were in the commercial real estate business. They were investors themselves. The gentleman was a commercial real estate broker. We decided they were looking at the same time when we'd had multiple conversations about getting into self-storage together, even though we wanted to do this on our own, felt that we could as well. But this was a great opportunity for us to create this partnership and get into our first facility. And so we both applied for the loan. We were 50 50 equal partners putting in the same amount each for the down payment. We both guaranteed the loan.

(11:32):

So as we were going through the loan process, of course they appraised our house to go out and provide an appraisal, and we knew it was worth a little bit more than what we were paying for to what they were asking. They were asking $925,000 for it. And when we did our own underwriting on it, we felt that it was worth, well, way more than that, somewhere to the tune of around 1.4, 1.5, and the appraisal came back at one point million. And so we were extremely pleased and of course did not share that with these sellers, and at this point, it really didn't matter. They both were done, they were done with the property, done with each other, and they just wanted to get their business divorce and move on. And so we closed on the property, very seamless, very easy obviously with that appraisal having the down payment in place.

(12:12):

And this was pretty traditional over the years, we've gotten what we bring private equity into all our deals now because once you get past a certain point, you have to some of our properties, the capital stack looks, has multiple layers to it. It has a primary loan in place, it has our own cash, it has some of our own equity, it has private equity in, it may have seller financing or a mezzanine loan in place, but this was pretty traditional straight up and down the fairway, 75% LTV loan and 25% down payment from the borrowers. So we decided to keep the manager that was in place. This is a common practice of ours over the years with our apartment complexes, is that we wanted somebody that had familiarity with the tenants that they were used to. We didn't want to upset the apple cart too much.

(12:58):

We wanted to learn from that person for the first 30 to 60 days to see who were the habitual offenders with turning their rent in late and just getting an understanding of the property before we would free them up to pursue future career opportunities. Because typically it was those managers at the apartment complexes were the reason why the seller had to sell and why he was not performing well. So we did the same here and we began to learn from the manager that was in place, but then this is where Christina began to work alongside of her and then determine the direction and the course of the management.

Christina Meyers (13:31):

That was probably a mistake in hindsight, I think we went back and forth. We knew she probably wasn't what wasn't going to portray the image that we wanted to portray in this town that we were in. And we went back and forth as to whether to keep that manager on board that had worked for the previous owners. And we decided to, because we didn't know cell storage management yet, and in hindsight I think that was wrong. I think we should have just probably cut ties and started over from the beginning. What ended up happening is she was in place for a few weeks and then got very sick and went into the hospital, and so I had to go in there and work and learn the business anyway, so I probably could have done that from the beginning and hired someone as I was learning.

(14:20):

But I would say that was probably what changed the trajectory of me understanding self-storage more from an operations side obviously than from the investing side. But because I just had to learn it, I mean, I had to spend my time on customer service with the management software, figuring out how to do it, how it worked. One of the other things that we did at that time was it had an open tech alliance, the insomniac kiosk installed in that facility, and we were one of the very first adopters to that technology, one of the very first installations of those machines. And Robert Chey himself came out to the facility and talked us through what that looked like, where it should go, how to train our customers on the technology, all of those kinds of things. So we were very early on in that piece and it really helped and changed our trajectory of what self-storage was going to look like.

(15:21):

Then from then on for us, because we had learned a lot about operations, Scott was really good at recognizing what the property looked like and making sure that the curb appeal looked correct and hiring contractors to make the curb appeal look nice wasn't one of the things that the previous owners had done well and just really kind of launched us into, alright, this is a really cool business and we want to be a part of this and we're making money. We're able to put it away in the savings for the future to be able to build onto this facility. And it really worked well for us. We did very quickly hire someone else who then really knew the community and the neighborhood, spent a lot of time working with the local chamber of Commerce and local little league teams and things like that, and it was a really small town feel, and so it worked really, really well for us, and she really took that facility and helped us out in terms of what that looked like within the community.

Scott Meyers (16:29):

So over the years, as we've gotten better at the hiring process and then doing a predictive index and a culture index and multiple interviews and multiple staff members interviewing to make sure that we picked the right person, we didn't always do so in the beginning. And as a matter of fact, this person did not have a typical background of any self-storage manager or facility, let alone did we do any of those. She probably wouldn't have passed the interviews that we have right now on some of the questions that we ask, but she was an absolute rockstar, and I didn't think that, I told Christina, I said, I don't think that she's the right person for this job. So I was immediately after several months, however, after she was in place, and she was absolutely knocking it out of the park, I was immediately fired from any decision that had to do with anything related to hiring or HR function. Christina, talk a little bit about her background and how we came about hiring, and I wish I could give credit to her name, but we will keep her name anonymous.

Christina Meyers (17:31):

Yeah, this gal came to us. She was from the area which helped, and she stocked cigarettes at gas stations and what jumped out at me, I remember in the interview process two things. She had worked at this place, whatever this company was that went through stocked cigarettes. I don't remember exactly if it was a distributor or if it was an actual cigarette manufacturer, I can't remember, but she had been there for a long, long time. She'd been doing this for a long time. So she literally knew all of the gas station owners anywhere within a three hour radius. She knew all of the gas station owners and had lots of stories of people that she knew about their lives, and she knew a little bit about what they did and had made friends that way. And so that's the first thing that jumped out at me is that she was people person and she knew how to just, and in those days, keep in mind there was technology in self-storage, but the technology in the last 10 years has exploded.

(18:34):

This has been a long time ago that there wasn't a ton of technology that kiosk was new and innovative in that you could actually pay, but you couldn't really do that real well online. We didn't have online access to pay your bill online, so you were either on an automated pay or you would come into the facility and pay and rent a unit that way as well. So that's one of the things that stuck out at me about her previous experience is that she was a people, person, person and would create relationships with our customers and in that small town, that was super important. The other thing is that she was just loyal. She'd been there so long, she was loyal, and that is thing I think that we realized about her when we brought her on as she was as loyal as the day is long for us. If there was an issue at night, I remember one time there was a storm and something happened and she just went there at night. She was just as loyal as could be. So that was probably the two things that made me say, I think she'll do all right.

Scott Meyers (19:37):

We were introducing the kiosk really to this market, and again, we were one of the first in the country to actually have it installed. And so her job in the very beginning was to then train those clients who they were still coming in once a month and dropping off cash, which we immediately put it into or a check, and then they were going to chat with her because she was so chatty and became friends with just about everybody that was coming into the facility. But her job then at this point was to walk them back outside and introduce them to the kiosk and say, this is going to be your new friend and here's where you're going to pay your rent each and every month. Or if I'm busy with another client or if I'm in the back showing a unit, this is how a rent is paid.

(20:16):

But what we didn't anticipate is then all they did was triple the amount of time that she was talking with every single client that came in at the beginning of the month for a while she was training them. So eventually it paid off. We kept the kiosk in place, and really at that time, it was just a backup so that somebody could pay 24 hours or rent a unit off hours, including on Sundays when we weren't open. And that was really the reason and the need for it. Now again, as Christina mentioned, obviously the technology has changed and we've evolved and we have the ability to do everything not only online, also through by way of a smartphone. The smartphone is a built-in kiosk for us, and the software resides there, but it's very instrumental in the beginning, not only from a marketing standpoint, which we were one of the first in the Yellow Pages, and yes, we were still using the yellow pages. We were in that transition time in which we were still advertising the yellow Pages, but we advertise in the yellow Pages that we have this fantastic technology in which you could come visit our facility and rent a unit or pay a unit online. And we were one of the only ones around that had the ability to do so, but we've come a long way since then.

Christina Meyers (21:19):

That's funny. One of the things as far as our line items, profit and loss statement, line items, yellow pages, biggest line item, almost the biggest line item on our p and l for that facility was the yellow Pages.

Scott Meyers (21:38):

Yep. That's what we had to do to beat everyone. And back in the day, so many lessons learned in this very first self-storage facility, but I would say that we pretty much saw the light once we recognized that from an operation standpoint. What was really burning us out was the fact that these people could destroy our apartments and steal from us, and the courts would call it nonpayment of rent and excessive wear and tear, and we had zero to almost no ability to be able to recoup any of that. Whereas in self-storage, what we understood and recognized and learned is that we have the lien process in which if somebody doesn't pay, we put a lock on their unit on the sixth of the month, and if by the 30th of the month they haven't paid, then they go into auction status and 60 days later we can auction their stuff off and get some, sometimes all of our money back and recoup the back rent and light fees.

(22:24):

And that alone, that was a game changer, and that was worth making a pivot in my opinion. Just taking a look at what the business could look like that we're managing a million dollars goes a whole lot further in terms of buying a lot more units in self-storage than it does in apartments. But we didn't have to go to court, we didn't have all these evictions, we didn't have all the management headaches. It was the operation, the time to manage the facility was minimal. It was just a fraction of what it was in managing all those tenants and the contractors and all the people on the other side of the business. And so we made our minds up pretty quick that this was it, and we began the process of getting our houses and our apartments ready to sell and simultaneously looking to our next properties. So we were thankful for the partners that we had, and eventually many years later, we sold off our shares to our partners and we moved on with all the other facilities that we had acquired through the years.

Christina Meyers (23:19):

One of the things that was happening during that time is we had realized, Hey, this is really good. And we were at a time in our family that this would be really nice not to have all of these tenant and toilet headaches and the apartments and all of that. This would be a really nice thing to have. We were in the midst of adopting a baby at that time as well. And so by the time we adopted her, we were able to get out of all of the houses and apartments and move forward with self-storage with just our family.

Scott Meyers (23:49):

Yeah, it was quite the celebration because we literally sold our last apartment complex the day before we boarded a plane to China to go meet our new daughter. And so at this point, we were expanding the self-storage portfolio, but we were doing it on our own. We only needed to bring in our partners into that first project. They subsequently many years later, bought our shares and all the other facilities that we had acquired in the meantime, we had acquired on our own was it that we didn't appreciate that partnership, but we just operate better. And there's fewer slices up pie to be able to split up if you don't have that many partners that it just made more sense. And so as we expanded then, it was probably eight or nine years later before we then brought on more partners, and that was by way of syndication as we were growing at a very fast clip be it outpaced the cash that we had from selling off of the apartments and the houses and from the cashflow from the existing facilities.

(24:42):

And so then we got into the syndication world and raising up private equity. Since then, I've really never looked back. It was just a few short years after that that we then started the education company and built upon that really that first facility that we bought as well as almost every other one. Since then, the model hasn't really changed that much. That very first facility was throwing off when we bought it, $10,000 a month in positive cashflow, and that was split between the partners, and sometimes we took those distributions, but most of the time we just kept it into pay down debt and for a rainy day we didn't really need it. And then as we moved on to the other properties and the second, the third, the fourth, and they all were right around that same amount of positive cashflow each and every time that we purchase a facility. And so that is the model that we've been teaching our students now for the past 18 years that we've been educating and teaching people about the business as well. So as we wrap up and as we look back on that very first facility or maybe even the first few, what would you state were some of the hardest lessons, the biggest lessons that we learned? Maybe it's just some of the blind spots and the things that we didn't know that stand out.

Christina Meyers (25:46):

I think the biggest win that we didn't realize was going to be a win, I guess we kind of did, but it was in our family. It was in our personal life. The stress that we were putting on ourselves by doing the apartments and the single family houses was getting overwhelming, and it was getting overwhelming for us in our marriage and our family and those kinds of things. And so one of the greatest wins in transitioning to self-storage was that was just the time, getting our time back and being able to function in a little higher capacity because we just didn't have the stress hanging over us, whether that was the rehab of a house or we lost another contractor at the apartment complexes, whatever that was, it was, I think that was one of the things. Another lesson learned, I think, was that we would've interviewed any facility we took on. We would've interviewed the person in place as though we were interviewing several candidates to make sure that they were the right one and not putting ourselves back. I remember a funny story walking into that very first facility, and this gal had her TV with her rabbit antennas and she would watch soap operas all day in the office, and it was certainly not,

Scott Meyers (27:08):

And smoke

Christina Meyers (27:08):

And smoke,

Scott Meyers (27:09):

And she would smoke.

Christina Meyers (27:10):

And I walked in one day and opened the door and she's got her feet propped up on the desk watching her soap operas smoke it. And I thought, this is definitely not parents. So we want to give to people walking in about our self-storage facility. So I think we would've made some different choices and not operated out of a place of fear, not because we didn't know the industry or whatever, because we certainly did find a learning on our own. So those are the two that I can think of.

Scott Meyers (27:37):

For me, I would say one of the biggest challenges, I think it was just learning the nuances of this asset class. I mean, it was all good, and I can honestly say that just about all of it was better from the world that we had come from in habitation real estate. And the skill sets definitely transferred over into this side of the business. But one of the, I guess the lessons learned even as we grow more so than at the beginning, is that I needed to lean in and I should have done a better job at underwriting and understanding the other financial analysis side. I was taking my underwriting and financial analysis skillset from multifamily and squeezing it into a self-storage model that operates differently. It truly is an operating business on top of commercial real estate, and I just treated it as a commercial real estate asset, much like an apartment complex is.

(28:26):

And so it isn't straight line, 3% increase in income and a 2% increase in expenses year over year over year. We have to account for fluctuations and insurance. We have to account for fluctuations in property taxes as new owners, other taxes that come into play and just, there's a number of variables that are involved in running a self-storage business on top of the real estate that I could have sharpened, and I should have sharpened my skillset and my pencil when looking at these. They worked out well in the beginning, but there's some that we look back on, I think that maybe we wouldn't have purchased maybe one of 'em or so, but we certainly would've gone in with more capital reserves and looked at the business a little bit differently in the beginning years. And so that's the first. And then also I think maybe in the very beginning, recognizing that this is an asset class that isn't as hands-on, and it isn't as needy because we don't have all the tenants and toilets and trash, but as I just mentioned, a million dollars buys a whole lot more units.

(29:25):

And even though the software handling that or a manager, that's a lot of accounts receivable, and that's a lot of accounts tracks. So there is a fair amount of work that needs to be put in place and or systems put in place to be able to handle the monthly activity of collecting rent and staying on top of the lien process should somebody not pay. So you do have to cross your T's and dot your i's in self-storage. And there was a lot more that had to happen from a compliance standpoint in operating within the framework of the lien laws than maybe we had anticipated in the beginning. But I, like almost all the other people that I interviewed at that first SSA show would say that my greatest mistake also was not getting into self-storage sooner and not looking into it when my wife first brought it up.

(30:11):

So gentlemen, if you have a spouse, a significant other, I would say that is a wise counsel to listen to the counsel of your spouse when they bring up things like that because they many times are more intuitive than you are. And so I mark that as probably my greatest regret or lesson learned in self-storage is truly not starting sooner. So with that, we could go on and on about where we went from there and the benefits of self-storage and the reason why we love this asset class, and certainly this is not a prescription for everyone. We're not saying that everybody should sell all the other properties that you have and go 100% into self-storage, but you're here for a reason on the self-storage podcast. And that is to learn about this asset class. And I strongly believe that everybody should be involved in at least one.

(30:55):

You should have one self-storage facility in your portfolio and just see what it looks like and if it's for you. And that's what we're here for. That's how our education company came about. It was really not even out of necessity, it was just an opportunity to come alongside of folks that were interested in what we're doing and then create a business around it. And we love what we do. It's been very rewarding for us and our family, and it has been for the hundreds of people that we've helped to launch the business as well. So with that, Christina, any words of wisdom that you would want to give to everyone before we wrap up today?

Christina Meyers (31:24):

I think the only thing is, I mean, take a good hard look at where you're at in your business model today and is it really working for you? What places are you trying to force the square peg in the round hole? And maybe that's an area that you need to readdress and look at. And I think when you do that, then things kind of fall into place and they just feel like they fit. And so it was nice for us to be in a place where we could just spend time with our family. We had our evenings, again, that was nice. We had our evenings back and we weren't spending time at rental properties or things like that. We're doing work ourselves because we couldn't find a contractor that day. So I just highly recommend taking a look at where you're at and evaluating that in an honest way.

Scott Meyers (32:15):

Well, I couldn't say it any better. So Storage Nation, you've been spending time with Scott and Christina Meyers, and again, we are here to serve you. And if this is something that you're looking to take a deeper dive into, of course, as always, head on over to self-storage investing.com for the nation's largest amount and the best information on how to launch and grow your self-storage business. So with that, looking forward to seeing you all on the next episode. Take care everyone.

Announcer (32:42):

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