5 Key Lessons in Self Storage: Real Estate Strategies for Smart Investors

John Harcar (00:00.637)
OK, hey guys, welcome back to our show. Super excited for today. You know, I’m here with Amy Jenkins and Kathrine East and we’re going to talk about their business and self storage and a lot of different aspects of it as far as a management piece. Guys, remember at Investor Fuel we help real estate investors, service providers, mean all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business by having the tools to grow the business they want to grow, which allows them to live the life they’ve always dreamed of.

Katherine, Amy, welcome to the show.

Amy Jenkins (00:31.493)
Well, thanks, John.

Kathrine Dawn East (00:32.952)
Thanks, John. Great to be here.

John Harcar (00:33.149)
I’m super excited to learn more about self storage. am a very much novice or non really informed about self storage. I’d like to be more. But before we talk about all that, why don’t you guys share a little bit about your background, how you got into real estate and what got you here today?

Amy Jenkins (00:51.719)
I’m to. I’ll start if Katherine’s okay with that. I got into real estate a little bit different than the normal quote unquote real estate investor, I think. I spent 10 years in the military, retired out and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life at that point in time. And my dad had handed me a book to read Carlton Sheets.

John Harcar (00:54.919)
Hahahaha

Kathrine Dawn East (00:56.686)
Absolutely.

John Harcar (01:13.906)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Jenkins (01:20.175)
If anybody ever remembers Carlton Sheets, right? Yeah, right. But I started in on that and I started buying ugly and flipping houses. That’s what I, you know, I learned the process in doing that and was a trainer for a couple of the really big names in the industry of doing that. Was a trainer for them for about 18 years.

John Harcar (01:20.707)
and sheets.

dates us a little bit.

Kathrine Dawn East (01:25.475)
Yeah.

Amy Jenkins (01:47.593)
And through that process, built my portfolio, et cetera, had tenants and toilets. And then I finally got to a point where I had so many single family homes that I didn’t like tenants and toilets anymore. And I kind of ran into self storage, didn’t know a whole lot about it. And when I figured out…

in self storage that you didn’t have tenants and you don’t have toilets and you don’t have to deal with, you know, that it’s like, my God, get out, get out, you know, get rid of everything. So we made the transition over. My husband and I have a general contracting business, so it helped us in our single family, multifamily homes. But moving over into and transitioning into self storage.

Kathrine Dawn East (02:18.124)
Yeah.

John Harcar (02:19.805)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Jenkins (02:42.301)
We started looking at it, figuring out what we needed to do, ran into Catherine here and she’s the one that actually started training me and teaching me how to do the underwriting, understanding the numbers behind it. I can, you know, I’m a systems and process person. So, you know, everything has to have a place, you know, in order to do that. I got the daily management side of it because I was able to take it from my self, you know,

John Harcar (02:53.199)
Interesting.

John Harcar (03:05.617)
Sure.

Amy Jenkins (03:11.869)
from my single family knowledge in doing that, but I didn’t understand the numbers. So when I ran across Catherine, she’s opened my eyes on a whole big different way. And in doing that, it’s just kind of momentum and built from there. We met each other in 2009, 10, I think somewhere in there.

John Harcar (03:18.205)
Mmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (03:24.12)
Thank

John Harcar (03:29.405)
Okay.

Kathryn Dawn East (03:37.368)
Stop aging me today. How about that? Maybe that’s enough now.

John Harcar (03:38.653)
You’re not supposed to ask that!

Amy Jenkins (03:42.757)
Right? So in doing that, we formed a relationship together personally and in business. And we were working with a couple of other investors that were out there as trainers and teachers for them and decided that, you know what, we’re tired of working for somebody else. Let’s start doing it ourselves. So we created our company, which is Omni Asset Management Group. And

John Harcar (04:01.533)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (04:07.473)
Love it.

Amy Jenkins (04:12.701)
We are the yin and yang of self storage now. She takes care of the numbers and helping people understand the process to get into it. And then once they’re into it, that’s my lane. And I take over the property management in the system. So with that, Catherine.

John Harcar (04:16.913)
That’s very cool.

John Harcar (04:31.527)
Very, very cool. Well, before, Catherine, real quick, but no, yeah, no, just before, just wanted, this is it’s fresh in my brain, I don’t wanna forget. So real quick, and I’d love to ask this for folks, you had Carlton Sheets, right? You had a book. Did you have any other influences, people that led you kinda to the real estate path, or was it just that book sparked an idea, took off like that?

Kathrine Dawn East (04:33.582)
Well, hi everyone.

Amy Jenkins (04:50.649)
no, no, no, no, no, multiple, Like I said, Carlton Sheets, Russ Whitney, Tony Robbins, Mike Hambright worked with Mike in his early years of starting his education company, et cetera. So lots of behind the scenes knowledge and a lot of mentoring to go with.

John Harcar (04:53.84)
Okay, all right.

John Harcar (05:02.705)
Mike Hambrick.

John Harcar (05:17.251)
Awesome. That is so great. I love the sound of your journey. I can’t wait. We’re to find more about, but Catherine, you’re on the stage.

Kathrine Dawn East (05:23.532)
Yes, thank you so much, John. Catherine East here. I have been in the industry for 18 years. If that ages me just a little bit, I’m okay with that. I also had a very different entrance into the self-storage industry, meaning I took a job on a whim in Mississippi as a self-storage on-site manager. So I moved down to Mississippi from Missouri, where I’m originally from.

John Harcar (05:46.854)
Hmm

Kathrine Dawn East (05:52.814)
And by the way, love the coast, but now I’m in Tennessee, which is definitely home sweet home. That’s what I’m gonna say about it. But I moved down there on a whim, took a job. My first day on the job, the corporate manager got fired for selling a unit that was a military status. So they were looking for a new corporate manager and within six weeks, literally my rise is all their fault. Everything that I’ve done,

John Harcar (06:12.839)
Mmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (06:22.796)
For the good or the bad, it’s all their fault because in six weeks, I became their corporate manager and started running seven facilities out of a portfolio. I did that for quite a long time, John, about four years. If you can imagine that, just, and I lived on site for those four years, even though I was running seven, I was running one myself and then corporate managing six more. I learned a lot from them, but they…

John Harcar (06:22.944)
Hehehehehe

John Harcar (06:31.579)
Wow.

Kathrine Dawn East (06:49.888)
stunted my growth at my year five so that I couldn’t get any more raises and I was like, I think I can make more money. So then I went into self-storage tenant insurance and I was the Midwest sales director for StoreSmart. And through them, I became the executive director of the MSSOA. So that’s Missouri Self Storage Owners Association. I fought with legislation for self-storage in Nebraska and Kansas during that time.

John Harcar (07:03.197)
wow, okay.

John Harcar (07:16.189)
Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (07:17.498)
And then I met Self Storage Investing and became a mentor and have been doing that now for about eight years. That has been my self storage journey. I do partner in 14 facilities, so I do also own, but I also do management as well, although that is Amy’s Nellane. My passion is truly the numbers of it. What does it look like financially?

John Harcar (07:25.329)
Very cool.

Kathrine Dawn East (07:46.786)
to buy a property, operate it, and then exit it when it’s time. What does that look

John Harcar (07:51.837)
And you have a lot of experience. mean, that hands-on stuff early in the beginning, I mean, could only have helped you tremendously. I guess this next question might be maybe for Amy is you did single family and stuff, right? Is that what you said? What were some of the challenges when you left single family to go to storage? I mean, I know there’s a lot of pros, but what are maybe some of the cons or maybe some of the struggles that you specifically faced?

Amy Jenkins (07:55.729)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Jenkins (08:02.525)
Yeah, correct.

Amy Jenkins (08:15.997)
think really and truly not being as busy all the time. know, I actually had, well, you know, at that point in time, it was a really big transition for me because I was going from sitting in front of a computer and or being out on on properties, you know, going and looking at properties.

John Harcar (08:22.193)
You say that’s a bad thing.

Amy Jenkins (08:43.127)
showing properties, fixing properties, you know, all day, every day to where when you step into self storage, it’s like, okay, now you can sit behind a computer and you can Google map it and figure out what’s in your neighborhood and your target marketing. And, you know, you can do a whole lot.

Kathrine Dawn East (08:46.67)
Yeah.

John Harcar (08:49.629)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (08:59.485)
Mm-hmm.

Amy Jenkins (09:06.855)
from the comfort of your home, sitting in your pajamas, you know, behind a computer screen instead of having to put a face on and get out in the community. I mean, you still gotta do it, but not as, it’s not as hands-on as a single family or multi-family unit, facility.

John Harcar (09:17.01)
Right.

John Harcar (09:29.639)
Got it, so you’re, please.

Kathrine Dawn East (09:30.07)
And do you mind if I add on to that? I have been doing coaching, mentoring, and financial classes for about six years now. And what I find has been the most biggest challenge for people coming from like single or multifamily is they don’t necessarily understand the financial underwriting piece. Yeah.

John Harcar (09:51.311)
Right now I was gonna ask what is the big difference and thank you for bringing that up.

Amy Jenkins (09:55.887)
It’s major. It’s major difference. There’s so many different, yeah.

Kathrine Dawn East (09:58.606)
It really is. But let’s just start with the expenses are quite a bit different. Although you of course you have things like safety, security, you know, what is your tenant going to feel by tenant in our case, we mean a much different type of tenant. You have to think about it in terms of they’re literally renting air from you that’s covered. That’s it. You’re not responsible for that air.

John Harcar (10:23.313)
Yeah, exactly.

Kathrine Dawn East (10:24.558)
I’m like, okay. So with that, you know, the expenses that are then plugged in are quite a bit different. Your taxes are significantly different than on your rental income for a house. Your tax significantly different on that. Insurance looks significantly different. It’s actually significantly higher most times, because of course our property values are higher. It’s a higher investment, higher asset class usually. Unless you’re in the million dollar home market, then you’re playing games with like we are.

Amy Jenkins (10:42.107)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:44.797)
Sure. Yeah.

John Harcar (10:50.781)
Mm-hmm, right.

Kathrine Dawn East (10:52.512)
It’s all the way down to the marketing is much different. I mean, you have to think about it from the perspectives of what new types of categories on that expense ratio are going to come into play. And that’s what we’re able to help new people into is to better understand what would look like a chart of accounts on a P &L.

John Harcar (11:11.293)
Okay.

Amy Jenkins (11:12.253)
It’s actually understanding what a PNL is. A lot of people don’t even understand what a PNL is, you know? Right.

John Harcar (11:16.381)
People don’t know what PNL means.

Kathryn Dawn East (11:20.002)
Well, that just seems right to my point of, you know, the brand new investors that come into self storage, they need to be more assertive about their training on it so that they understand the terms and conditions that apply.

John Harcar (11:33.457)
Yeah, no, 100%.

Amy Jenkins (11:34.449)
Just the terms, some of the terms, the IRR and the cap rates and we can start rattling off a whole thing and you’re going, wait a minute, let me Google that real quick and try to figure out what that means. I mean, truly, it’s way different.

John Harcar (11:52.091)
What about the mindset piece, right? What’s different about self storage versus single family for you, Amy, and then Catherine, for you, I mean, what kind of mindset are you bringing into it to help your investors say, hey, when you’re coming in, this is what we need. This is where you got to be thinking.

Amy Jenkins (12:08.701)
I’m gonna let you take that one first.

Kathrine Dawn East (12:10.818)
no, I’m just kidding.

You know, really for me, it would boil down to the fact that what we need to be bringing to an understanding is somewhat of what Amy said from an educational level. We need to understand terms and conditions. But when we are talking about the struggles of single family people coming into self storage, it’s not just about the financial piece. It’s also about the mindset of, well, but this is what I did over here. This is what I did over here.

understood and that’s great for that asset. So a lot of times the mindset is crinkled too. This is the only asset class I’ve been in. This is what I know.

what they need to learn is what they can take from that mindset to draw from over into the self-storage asset. Again, you’re not dealing with tenants, toilets, and trash on that kind of level anymore. So you need to take that fear of, what if I’m gonna get sued for everything? It’s much easier to do storage than you think.

John Harcar (13:14.907)
Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe they maybe they try to overplay their card to try to overdo things when it’s really, you know, keep it simple, stupid. I mean, in a sense.

Amy Jenkins (13:18.162)
Yeah.

Amy Jenkins (13:25.883)
Yeah, well, it… Yes.

Kathrine Dawn East (13:26.014)
yes, Kiss System works in everything that you apply it to. Let’s be real. Unless you’re a scientist, Kiss System is the way to go.

John Harcar (13:32.923)
Yeah.

Yeah. Amy, you were saying?

Amy Jenkins (13:36.775)
Yeah. I just, think in addition to, I think the other thought process behind it for me was I don’t have to do all of it myself. I can hire a company to come in and help me do this. I can hire a manager to manage this.

Kathrine Dawn East (13:53.262)
That’s our show.

Amy Jenkins (14:04.412)
property or be on the my boots on the ground or whatever it is. It doesn’t mean that I physically have to go paint the inside of a house or go clean out the toilet or you know, whatever the case may be which majority of single-family home investors do it themselves and you don’t

have to with this. This is something that you literally can scale to infinity. How big do you want to go? How big do you want to get? So the scalability of it was something hard for me to wrap my head around because I couldn’t, I didn’t realize.

that these little 10 by 10 boxes that has a door and a latch and a lock on it, and I don’t even have to provide the lock. It’s just a door and a latch. That’s all I’m really responsible for and all I have to worry about. you know, it takes five, maybe 10 minutes to sweep or blow a unit out and man, I’m onto my next tenant, you know? So it’s…

John Harcar (15:04.029)
Kathryn Dawn East (15:06.574)
Nope.

John Harcar (15:20.379)
Man, next person. Yeah.

Kathrine Dawn East (15:23.042)
Yeah, think about the time you get back when you invest in the self storage asset. Listen to Amy, 10 minutes to clean out a unit versus how long to clean out a single unit.

John Harcar (15:31.601)
Mm-hmm clean out a house. Yeah. hundred percent hundred percent. Are you guys? I’m sorry.

Amy Jenkins (15:34.173)
yeah. And then you have to go ahead. No, no, no. I was going to say, you know, dogs and cats and hair and feces and, know,

John Harcar (15:42.877)
Oh, hoarders and, oh gosh, would have not. Yeah, some of the stuff I walked in. Yeah, I know. So are you guys buying existing units? Are you guys buying land and building, going ground up? What are you guys doing? What’s your business look like?

KathrineDawn East (15:42.923)
yeah.

John, that’s the dirtiest word!

Amy Jenkins (15:58.865)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Kathrine Dawn East (15:59.062)
All of the above. Yes. Yes.

John Harcar (16:00.921)
Everything yes Okay, yes, what would you put what you got? mean obviously if you have an existing unit But are this thing building do you guys find it easier sometimes to start from the ground up or do find it easier? To do renovations on maybe somebody something existing

Amy Jenkins (16:16.381)
Oh, great question. It depends on the market. You know, it truly depends on the market really and truly as a builder, as a general contractor, you know, I’m always going to say, Oh, let’s scrape ground and build new. However, if the city is not

Kathrine Dawn East (16:17.422)
I know. It does. Yeah.

John Harcar (16:31.773)
Yeah, right.

Amy Jenkins (16:38.129)
builder friendly and it’s a challenge to pull permits and get, you know, past memorandum not memoriums and, know, et cetera, et cetera. You got to do your homework to determine is it a viable option to build a brand new facility when you can go right down the road and find the old

John Harcar (16:39.751)
true.

Amy Jenkins (17:06.781)
Kmart building or whatever kind of building it was, tweak it and redo and go in and make it into a self storage facility. There’s lots and lots of options, conversions, yeah. There’s lots of options. Again, it comes back to the numbers. What do the numbers say?

John Harcar (17:11.909)
Mm-hmm.

Kathryn Dawn East (17:23.032)
That’s true, conversions.

John Harcar (17:25.639)
Right.

John Harcar (17:33.745)
what works.

Amy Jenkins (17:34.437)
what works for you and what’s the out clause? What’s your out ticket? Every time you talk to a real estate investor, the number one thing is we can always buy it, but what you gonna do with it? Are you gonna hold on to it or are you gonna get rid of it? And if you’re gonna get rid of it, then you need to look at that long-term goal and figure out, at what…

point in time am I gonna make money and is it going to make sense for me to turn around and sell it?

John Harcar (18:06.077)
100%. 100%. So.

Kathrine Dawn East (18:07.544)
I actually have ugly duckling syndrome. Talk about yin and yang for me and Amy.

John Harcar (18:12.493)
Mwahahahaha

Kathryn Dawn East (18:13.46)
I like to buy the uglier storage facilities and put the capex in revamp and revitalize them. A lot of that, like I’ll give you a place where I would love people to do that too. It’s actually just south of Pensacola, Florida. There’s a strip there where it’s just Navarre Beach. All of those beaches are right there. You you go two miles in. That’s where most of the population is. And those storage facilities need to be bought, revamped and redone and sit back.

John Harcar (18:29.681)
Hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (18:43.354)
out there because they would be full. I’m like somebody go do this in Navarre Beach, but that would be me. I like the ugly duckling. They’ve been sitting there for a minute. Mom and dad and grandpas and grandpas have owned them and you know they didn’t raise rates for five years. Yes, we still see that. We still see the pegboards with the color codes of what means available and.

John Harcar (18:45.147)
Wow. Wow.

John Harcar (18:55.972)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (19:00.709)
Right, I’m sure you do.

Amy Jenkins (19:01.501)
Yeah.

Kathrine Dawn East (19:08.8)
And even though I’m still kind of shocked by that because, you know, as a later Gen Xer, I’m all about technology. So I’m like, how did you not know they had computers, ma’am? You know, it’s… But we still do see that in some of those tertiary markets. And I love them. I think they’re the greatest thing that you can do is invest to re-beautify something that’s already there.

Amy Jenkins (19:09.276)
Yeah.

John Harcar (19:21.159)
No.

John Harcar (19:26.971)
Right. Right.

John Harcar (19:35.268)
Do you guys and speaking of that, you know investing in an area that maybe you know can be revitalized are there specific criteria you look for when you’re finding properties or helping people find properties like I know you mentioned you get to deal with maybe counties that maybe not be or might be against building and stuff but like are you looking for a population density are you looking for a proximity to a major city I mean, what are they like the key factors that help or make a good storage facility?

Kathrine Dawn East (20:00.238)
Honestly, John, I’m gonna give you some nuggets here for you and your listeners. Are you ready? We have what are called key performance indicators and they’re basically, this is the level that is acceptable. If it’s above that level, you’re in a good market. Number one, how much median income is in a market above 45,000.

John Harcar (20:03.505)
Take notes guys, take notes.
Kathrine Dawn East (20:18.606)
can’t raise rates on poverty people. It just doesn’t work that way. They’re not going to pay. You know the crime rates are bad. Stop acting like you don’t know this. So yeah, over 45,000 for a median household income might be a market worth looking at. Under 20 % poverty level, period. That actually works side by side. If it’s over 20 % poverty level, that’s an ugly duckling for sure, I bet.

John Harcar (20:20.497)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (20:26.225)
Yep. Yep.

Amy Jenkins (20:38.244)
Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (20:45.058)
But it may not yield the highest revenues that you possibly could. And if you still really like that market, you’re like, well, one side’s really good, but the other side’s not. OK, well, if that facility is in the good side, what is the city doing to revitalize the other side? Where is that city’s focus? That’s then, you know, then we start asking questions. What’s development doing? Where’s new housing going in? We check all of that supply index between 8 and 10 is good.

John Harcar (20:48.496)
Number you want, yeah.

Amy Jenkins (20:49.692)
Alright.

John Harcar (21:10.493)
Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (21:14.604)
But there’s a couple of states where supply index does not come into play. That would be Texas and Florida. Ain’t nobody caring about supply index in Texas or Florida. Because the markets are growing so massively no matter what. So those are just a couple of the KPIs that we use. Through our financial mentoring class, we do give those KPIs to our new students, of course.

John Harcar (21:21.659)
Right. Yeah.

John Harcar (21:39.101)
And let’s talk about your guys services. How do you help folks that want to get into that, you know, investing in that asset class, whether, you know, actively or passive.

Amy Jenkins (21:48.731)
Yes and yes, soup to nuts, literally soup to nuts. If you are brand new to this asset class, we will teach you literally everything you need to know up to the point of purchasing a facility. wait a minute. We have an 87 % closure rate for any of our students and I say students, clients.

Kathryn Dawn East (21:51.255)
you

John Harcar (22:08.059)
I’m not

Amy Jenkins (22:15.545)
that come on board with us to get them into their first facility within 12 months. 87 % closure rate. So it’s awesome.

John Harcar (22:20.669)
That’s awesome. That’s incredible.

Kathrine Dawn East (22:24.296)
And it is important for us to distinguish, we don’t actually take on any students, we take on clients only. We’re also very a la carte. it, because not every self storage beginner is in the direct beginning, they might be in the middle, they might have some knowledge and just need to sharpen it. We do all of it, all of it, including you can, we’ll hold your hand through all of it, but more importantly, we do one on one. We don’t,

You know, we do suggest that you get onto groups like Self Storage Clubhouse or Riverside and you really listen in on the speakers and what they’re doing and how they’re doing things, but we don’t do group sessions. Everything is one-on-one with our clients.

John Harcar (23:10.673)
That’s awesome. So, so how, you know, if I got someone that’s, that’s wanting to get into self storage and they don’t know what, what advice outside of calling you guys, which I definitely recommend folks outside of you guys, I mean, what, what resources, tools or things can they use to just kind of start learning?

Kathrine Dawn East (23:27.534)
Well, ISS is coming up at the end of this month. That would be a great start. That’s a national show. They have virtually every vendor you could think about using for yourself storage properties. They have all the softwares. All the new technology is out. I’m pretty sure Gactus is presenting out there with their new AI tools. I mean, it it’s, it’s in Vegas.

John Harcar (23:37.789)
Hmm.

John Harcar (23:44.125)
Where’s the conference?

Amy Jenkins (23:44.978)
Yeah.

ISS is yeah, ISS stands for Inside Self Storage. It is a convention in Las Vegas, April the 23rd, 22nd, 22nd, 23rd through the 24th. Yeah, next week. So yeah.

John Harcar (23:52.465)
Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (23:58.349)
Weird.

24th. Yeah. But not just that, your state associations have like luncheons or annual shows or quarterly meetings. Get involved with that. Even if your market is not the best place and you’re not necessarily going to buy there, knowing your state association will make you much stronger when you start getting into self storage, especially since guess what’s involved with self storage state associations.

John Harcar (24:02.365)
Well, next week. Yeah, very cool.

Amy Jenkins (24:09.712)
Mm-hmm.

Kathrine Dawn East (24:28.59)
Facility owners, those are your owners people. Those are the people you want to try and buy their facilities. If you know the old man who’s 92 years old that’s still on the board sometime he’s got to sell that facility. I’m just saying. You need to buddy up to that man. Right, right.

John Harcar (24:32.209)
Yeah.

John Harcar (24:41.533)
Or be sold for him!

Amy Jenkins (24:43.389)
Right, yeah.

Kathrine Dawn East (24:46.242)
But you know, get in there, get your name out there. If you’re only interested in self storage, get it out there. Get your name out there that you’re starting to look into self storage. I promise you a hundred links are going to come to you the second you do it.

John Harcar (25:00.135)
Tell everybody what you do. Always tell everybody what you do. Blast it from the rooftops. Amy, Kathrine, thank you guys so much. I mean, this has been such an incredible bit of information. If our folks wanna reach out to you, if they wanna start working with you guys, how do they get in touch?

Amy Jenkins (25:20.009)
OmniAssetManagementGroup.com. Easiest way to do it. They can go onto our website, read literally everything that we have available as far as services and what we can do for them, has all of our contact information. They’re more than welcome to jump in and do that.

John Harcar (25:37.543)
Perfect. Thank you guys again, man. Incredible podcast. Guys at home, I hope you enjoyed it. Hope you got some great nuggets and took some good notes. It’s been a lot of fun. we enjoyed your time. See you on the next one. Cheers.

Amy Jenkins (25:52.039)
Thanks, John.

Kathrine Dawn East (25:52.044)
Yes, sir. Thank you, John.