Alex Pardo went from 750+ wholesale deals to self storage, and never looked back. He breaks down how he bought his first 43,000 sq ft facility with no money down, why rentals aren't passive, and the one asset that matters more than capital.
Episode 12: The Truth About Rentals, Real Estate, and Freedom with Alex Pardo
What happens when you realize the life you're building is not the life you actually want? That’s exactly the realization our guest, Alex Pardo, had when working his corporate job at General Electric. In this episode, he shares with Mike Seidl and Zach Richards how this pivotal moment pushed him to rethink everything and led him into real estate, entrepreneurship, and eventually self-storage.
Alex opens up about the early moment that changed his path, why fulfillment matters more than a good salary, and what made him decide he couldn’t spend his life doing work that didn’t fit who he was. He also shares how travel, books, and a bold decision helped set everything in motion.
Our conversation then digs into the real estate side of things. Alex talks honestly about why rental properties are not the passive income many people think they are, what investors need to understand about return on equity, and why relationship capital can be even more valuable than money itself.
Alex also explains how mentors, masterminds, and the right people in your corner can speed up your growth in a big way.
This episode is a great listen for anyone who feels stuck in work that no longer fits, anyone building in real estate, or anyone who wants a better way to think about growth. Alex brings a lot of honesty to this one, and he gives a clear reminder that the right relationships can change anything.
“When you don’t know what you want, ask yourself what you don’t want.”
“Don’t throw away your life doing something that doesn’t fulfill you and that doesn’t tap into your God-given gifts and talents and your potential.”
“Masterminds extend beyond business. You can find a mastermind for any area of your life that you want to grow in.”
Alex Pardo is a self-storage owner, investor, and coach who helps real estate investors and W-2 professionals buy their first cash-flowing self-storage facility, often within 6 to 12 months, without needing prior experience or their own capital.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Alex was selected for General Electric’s prestigious Financial Management Program. Shortly after, he packed a backpack and spent 3½ months traveling across Europe, visiting 23 countries and 51 cities, an early signal that freedom, not comfort, would shape his life.
Alex entered real estate in 2005, building a highly successful single-family wholesaling and flipping business in Miami. Over the next 15+ years, he closed more than 750 transactions and founded multiple high-level mastermind communities for entrepreneurs seeking better businesses and better lives.
In 2020, despite running a profitable operation, Alex made the difficult decision to walk away from houses and transition into self-storage, without prior storage experience and without using his own money. He navigated the financial, operational, and identity challenges of that shift and went on to own multiple facilities across Florida and Mississippi, totaling over 100,000 net rentable square feet.
Today, he continues to own and operate self-storage while actively structuring creative, relationship-driven deals.
Alex is the founder of Storage Wins, a coaching community and education platform designed to simplify self-storage investing and help everyday people move from confusion to confident action. His approach emphasizes clarity, relationships, creative deal structures, and what he calls relationship capital, the backbone of every deal he’s done. He is also the host of the Storage Wins Podcast (formerly The Flip Empire Show), with over 760 episodes, where he shares real conversations, real lessons, and real stories from investors who are building freedom without trading their lives for it.
Most importantly, Alex is a man of faith, a devoted husband to his wife Natalie, and a proud father to his two daughters, Arianna and Alessia. Family, faith, and alignment come first, and everything he builds flows from that foundation. Through his businesses, coaching, and content, Alex’s mission is simple: help others achieve real freedom, financially, relationally, and personally, while living fully with the people who matter most.
Find Storage Wins on YouTube ㅣ Apple Podcasts ㅣ Spotify
Find Alex Pardo on Instagram ㅣFacebook
For Investors & the Fund – Learn how the Fund works and book a call
For Borrowers & Deals – Get funding and support for your next investment
[00:00.2]
My belief, guys, is that to me, the most valuable capital you can raise is relationship capital. Money is super important, obviously. Having access to capital, having relationship with you guys, like super important. What's even more important is the relationship side of the business. And that's something that was ingrained in me early on in my journey.
[00:17.8]
And I think that's really important for people. Listening is dig your well before you're thirsty. Yes. The time to go get the capital you need for a deal is not when you get the deal, you need to plant those seeds, water the seeds like, well in advance. And that starts like yesterday.
[00:34.2]
And if you already missed the boat there, that starts now. Most people think saving money is the answer, but the truth is saving only gets you to zero. Join Mike and Zach as they flip the script from saving to earning from zero to unlimited potential.
[00:52.2]
Welcome to Save to Zero. Welcome Everybody to episode 12 of the Save to Zero podcast. Mike and Zach here with our guest, Alex Pardo, who used to work for General Electric and then spent, some years doing fix and flip and all kinds of real estate investing and then transitioned into self storage.
[01:13.4]
So, Alex, welcome to the show. Hey, I'm excited to have this conversation with you guys. So tell us a little bit about your background. Like what, what, how'd you get into ge and then what made you realize that that wasn't for you? Yeah, I quickly realized it wasn't for me.
[01:28.7]
It's interesting. When I was in college, I felt like I had an entrepreneurial bug, yet I didn't know what that looked like. I come from a middle class family. Nobody in my family had ever started a business or run operated a business. So I started interviewing with big Fortune 100 companies.
[01:45.1]
I ended up getting a job with General Electric in their financial management program. And three months into that role, after averaging 70 to 80 hours a week, just looking at Microsoft, Excel and PowerPoint, I remember, I'm not good at a lot of things, but I'm good at a few.
[02:00.6]
And one of those skills that I developed early on was when you don't know what you want, ask yourself what you don't want. And for me, I looked at my boss, I looked at her boss all the way up to like the CFO of the company. And I'm like, I don't want that job no matter how great the comp package is and the benefits and all that.
[02:19.2]
And so three months into this two year commitment, I started to just learn about real estate. And you guys are going to laugh at me. I'm Going to date myself here. But I ended up buying a Carlton Sheets no money down home study course for like 297 bucks. I'm not even kidding you.
[02:35.6]
Oh, was it. Wait a minute, wasn't that on cassette? That's exactly right. Wait a minute, that was even before eight track. Dude, this was in 2003. Yeah, 2003 is when I bought that. And man, I thought that investing in real estate was about assuming people's loans. That's what I literally learned about from that course.
[02:53.6]
But what it did really was it opened my eyes to real estate. And then I finished off that two year rotational program. I knew that I wasn't going to continue to work. I wanted to go out and build my own thing. I was interested in real estate, but I didn't quite know what it looked like. So I did what most single guys in their 20s did.
[03:11.1]
At least me, I decided to go backpacking around Europe with a couple of buddies. And so Mike, we were talking, but yeah, we did 51 or 52 cities in 23 countries in three and a half months. I funded the entire trip on a credit card for $7,000.
[03:27.1]
The whole thing, food, hostels, I mean, we slept under bridges. I mean the whole nine. The reason that was so pivotable in my journey, guys, was because if you've ever been to Europe, there's the Eurorail, right? There's a train that can take you from country to country, city to city. And the pain, the thought of moving back into my parents house, which, by the way, that's where I was going to be moving because I didn't have a job, I didn't have money.
[03:50.7]
25 years old, I was like, this is embarrassing. But the thought of going out and getting a job was so painful that I'm like, one way or the other, I'm starting my own business. I just don't know what that looks like. And on that, on those train rides, I started to read, think, and grow rich. Rich dad, poor dad.
[04:06.0]
Like all the classics, I must have consumed six or seven books on trains. And I made the decision and commitment when I was in an Internet cafe in Ibiza. I had an email from a buddy of mine that was inviting me to A Marketing for deals bootcamp happening in Atlanta, Georgia, October of 2005.
[04:23.4]
So I don't know if you. If you guys know a gentleman by the name of Dave Lindahl. I think he's still in the education space, but he teaches about how to buy apartments. This particular boot camp is what they called it back in the day was learning how to market for real estate deals. So that was $997.
[04:40.1]
Now I was funding the whole thing on my credit card. I didn't have a money, didn't have job. It could have been 997,000 to me, but what was I going to do? Like, I literally had like, okay, I either do this or I don't and then. But what am I going to do anyways?
[04:55.9]
What's an extra thousand bucks? Put it on the credit card. I attended that event a month later after I left the, backpacking trip and I got back home and I mentioned how I'm not good at a lot of things. One of the things I'm good at is reverse engineering things.
[05:11.4]
And I've also always been a ready, fire, aim guy. So I remember sitting down at the kitchen counter in my parents house. I plucked from the three ring binder, I plucked out a pre foreclosure letter. I went to kinkels, I made 350 photocopies.
[05:26.9]
I'm not kidding, you guys. God's honest truth, I remember the letter because it had the three black holes from the photocopy and I was stuffing and stamping envelopes and I sent out 300 plus letters to people in pre foreclosure. And while that campaign was hitting, I had bought a list at that event and I started door knocking people in pre foreclosures.
[05:47.6]
Super long story short, less than three months later, myself and a friend that I brought into the deal, we closed on our first deal, which happened to be a short sale for 44,000 bucks. All right, so you just unpacked a lot. I'm going to go back.
[06:04.3]
I'm going to go back to a couple of things that resonate with me. The first thing, and Zach knew this was coming and you and I touched on it briefly. Alex is. What part of Europe did you focus on? Because I like to travel too. I've been to 52 countries. I've been all 50 states.
[06:20.7]
Sorry, 42 countries. All 50 states. I've been to, four continents. So travel is in my heart. So I feel your pain. And then coming back because I dropped out of college, went backpacking in Europe and this was long before 2005. But I'm never gonna tell you when it was. Yeah.
[06:39.0]
And to come back and to go into the work world is not an easy thing. And I, like you said, yeah, I'm not going to do this very long and started my own business. So just to go back. Give me an idea of what countries you were focused on because, that's a lot of countries in a short period of time.
[06:55.1]
We started in Spain, so that was our first stop. We started in Madrid and then we bounced around Barcelona, Sevilla, Salamanca. We did a bunch of cities in Spain. And. And we were totally winging it. Like, we kind of had an idea, like, we wanted to go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower.
[07:10.2]
We wanted to do, like, the common touristy things. But our plan was, like, literally look at a map, hop on the euro rail, and when we get off, if we kind of like the city, we'll stay for two, three, four days or a week. If we don't, we hop back on. And so literally, Spain, France, Italy, we went all the way up to Ireland. We went to.
[07:28.0]
I mean, we went all over Europe. All we even went. When we were in Ibiza, we learned that we could hop on a ferry and go to Morocco. So we even did a quick stop in Morocco. That was a whole other world and quite a unique experience. But yeah, we were just winging it.
[07:44.2]
We were single guys. It was myself and two other buddies. And, it was a great time. It was also, we were roughing it. I mean, we were sleeping in nasty hostels for five bucks a night. We were sleeping, like I said, we slept under a couple bridges. We slept in random strangers houses.
[08:01.0]
Like things that I would never, ever do in a million years now. But we were young, dumb, and we just, I guess, living life. I don't know. I hear you. I was a barman in London. And, my friend and I went over and we had like $500 between us and we didn't have credit cards.
[08:20.2]
Wow. And we got jobs as barmen. We ran out of money at one point and ate peanut butter for a week. I believe it. This was before we got the jobs. And then I got some by working at the bar. And he wanted to stay, and I went on my own. And I hear you about sleeping under bridges.
[08:36.1]
I slept in more than one park. Yeah, yeah, no, I get it. My average dinner when we were backpacking was like a baguette We ate so many baguettes and prosciutto and like. Absolutely. I mean, that's pretty much what we have. Bread fills you up, man. Any type of bread will fill you up.
[08:51.4]
Oh, I feel right. Absolutely. And I'm impressed that you did Eurorail, because I did this. Oh, did you really? You hitched? No, you see, we didn't hitchhike. We didn't hitchhike. Oh, yeah, I hitched. I remember being in Brighton on the south coast of, England one time, and nobody was picking us up.
[09:07.4]
And I was with my friend at that time. So we hitched up. We hit. We pulled, up our pants leg. It was showing our leg, and we did this. Some woman laughed. She picked us up just because she thought it was so funny. That's hilarious, man. That's hilarious. I love it. We'll have to talk offline about your experiences. I'm sure you got some stories. Oh, yeah.
[09:23.2]
Some of it best not to be recorded. I get it. I'm not going there with mine. So.
[09:31.0]
So what made you pick real estate? That was just. And you may have said this. I apologize. That was just because the Carlton Sheets course came up. Or had you always been interested in real estate? Yeah, you know, when I was working for ge, I don't know where I read it. I don't know if it was an article or something, but, like, I read some statistic, and I couldn't quote it because I don't remember the details, but that, like most millionaires got their millions from real estate.
[09:53.2]
Whether that statistic is true or not, at least at the time, that's what opened my eyes to real estate. I have always had an interest in real estate, and so I just did a little bit of research at the time. I came across Carlton sheets and spent 300 bucks to get the course. And then, really, when it was on the Eurorail that I read Rich Dad, Poor dad, and I realized that's like, okay, Alex, you couldn't be more original.
[10:13.7]
Like, pick another book. But that's the one that really taught me, like, assets and liabilities. And his little diagrams simplified it for me. And I was like, man, this makes so much sense. This makes so much sense to me. So it was then that I decided, okay, real estate is going to be the path for me.
[10:29.7]
I just had no idea what it looked like. And I think the lesson for me, as I reflect back, guys, is that when you decide and commit to something, even though you don't know the next steps. I don't know if it's the universe, God, if it's the reticular activating system, but things start to open up for you, and you start to notice things that may or may not have been there prior.
[10:49.8]
But it was interesting to me that I was. I remember specifically where I was sitting on a train and as I was reading Rich Dad, Poor dad, and less than a week later, I'm in an Internet cafe in Ibiza. And I happened to just check my email because I had a bunch of emails from family and friends and I saw my friend inviting me to a, marketing for deals boot camp.
[11:07.8]
By the way, this is a friend I hadn't talked to in months. So interesting. I would I have noticed it had I not committed and decided to pursue real estate. Probably not, but because I did, I saw it, I acted. Even though it was painful to spend a thousand bucks on something, I have absolutely no idea what I'm getting into.
[11:26.3]
But yeah, that, that just set off a chain of events. When you were at ge, was there a straw that broke the camel's back? I know you said you saw your boss and their boss and you didn't want that, that life, but what, what did it for you? Was there one moment? Multiple straws, multiple, Having to wait for a coworker to get back for me to go to lunch is a minor straw.
[11:48.7]
Having to ask for. My grandmother had passed away during that time. And I remember it was, let's just say it wasn't frictionless to Get the time off to go to the funeral. Like, things like that, that I'm like, I don't want to have to rely on someone to do something simple like, go grab a bite to eat, make sure I'm back at a certain time.
[12:08.8]
And I think for me, the politics inside, the fact that like, I could literally be as efficient and productive as possible. I could get my work done in half the time. But you had to show face. You had to be the first one in and the last one out, no matter how productive you were.
[12:25.5]
And I was like, yeah, this is, this is not for me. Yeah, I gotta tell you, I feel your pain. I started my first business at 23. I can't imagine sitting in a cubicle every day all day. That would make my head explode. I remember I went to school at nyu. My brother was an advertising agent and I did some work there on the side for some money.
[12:45.7]
And I can remember these people sitting in their cubicles and my brother going to work at 7 o' clock in the morning, getting home 9 or 10 o' clock at night. And he was in that little, whatever it was, seven by seven cubicle every day. And sometimes he worked seven days a week. And I thought, that's not going to happen for me.
[13:01.9]
I just couldn't. My head would explode. Hope you get a raise. Like, you know, it's not up to you. Like if you're a business owner, right and you just, you know, close more deals or whatever and make more money. But yeah, when you're an employee, it's not up to you. Yeah, man, look, I was fortunate. I was single. I didn't have a family, I didn't have kids.
[13:17.5]
And so my, I have empathy for people that I connect with now that they're, they're in, a job they don't like and they have responsibilities that admittedly I didn't have at 24, you know, 25. Yeah. And I still tell them it's like you only get, as cliche as it sounds, guys like, you only get this one opportunity to live this thing called life.
[13:36.9]
And, you know, you spend a good majority of your life working, especially if you're an employee, don't throw away a third of your life, half your life, doing something that doesn't fulfill you and that doesn't tap into your God given gifts and talents, your potential.
[13:52.5]
So I agree. For me, I always, for me, one of the good things and bad things at the same time is that, this and this don't always work together. So it's not conducive to being an employee because I can't fire myself and I get paid, you know, I get to eat what I kill.
[14:14.3]
I've had to learn to be a little more understanding and a little less from the hip. But when I'm not, which does still happen, I'm not going to be fired and I know that I can still make money. I, just need to find a different audience, if you will.
[14:31.2]
I completely agree. That's always been something I had to do. So, so tell me, it says here that you've done over 750 transactions. Is that correct? In single? Somewhere north of that. The truth is, I don't know the exact number because it doesn't really matter and no one cares. But yeah, it's somewhere north of 750.
[14:49.3]
So let me ask, are those predominantly wholesales or did you do any buy and hold? Yeah, the majority, I would say over 90% are wholesale primarily. Of that 90%, I'd say 80% wholesale, 10% fix and flip. And then in 2017, when I realized, I remember being on a cruise with my wife at that time, I think I had a team of five or six people.
[15:09.7]
Acquisition managers, transaction coordinators, the whole nine. I was getting tired and a little bit burnt out of just chasing transactional deals every single month and starting the month from scratch. And I remember telling my wife, like, hey, I got into real estate because I wanted more freedom.
[15:26.0]
Time freedom, financial freedom. I wanted the benefits of real estate. I wanted more options. But yet, for 14 years in total, I had been playing this transactional game, which made me a lot of money, but it was an income roller coaster. I could have six figure months, and then the next month could be a complete goose egg.
[15:42.5]
And I'm like, I don't want to keep chasing deals. And so we started buying single family rentals in Cleveland, Ohio. We live in Miami, you know, so Midwest market. And. And I got up to five of those. And I'm like, yep, not for me. Like, I don't. I don't want a bunch of toilets. I don't want to manage a bunch of tenants.
[15:58.6]
I don't want to be a landlord. We got a property management company. I quickly said, I don't want to manage the property management company. I said, people say this is passive income, and I'm not finding anything passive about it. Do you have a story? Because usually we've had a few people now that have said exactly what you just said, myself included, where they had rentals and they decided it wasn't for them. Did.
[16:18.6]
Did something cause that too? I bought a house on auction. And then I realized, and this is my fault, there's a story there, but I bought a house on auction that was going to be. I was getting it so cheap, and there was a reason because it had foundational issues. And then I realized that it was worth about half the price of what I paid for it.
[16:36.5]
That wasn't necessarily a landlord challenge. That was, I bought it. I didn't do my due diligence and I bought the wrong house at auction. But yeah, I think for me, what opened my eyes, guys, is that I was averaging somewhere between 250 and 325 bucks a month on, was my net on these rentals.
[16:53.5]
And I remember one time I got a work order because from my. From Re Max Property manager, which is the management company I hired in Ohio. Every time there was a work order, it had a specific subject line. And when I saw it, I'm like, oh, here comes. And I would get one of those like once a month.
[17:09.2]
And I'm like, what is it now? And I realized the work order was about a $5,000 job. And I'm like, that's it. Like, my cash flow's gone. And mind you, I incorrectly got into owning rentals because I thought it was a cash flow play.
[17:25.0]
This might sound controversial. You guys may disagree or agree. But what I've realized is owning rentals is a long term play. You know, it's about cost segregation and, you know, taking advantage of depreciation. It's about some equity growth over time. For me, it wasn't a cash flow play, at least not with five rentals.
[17:44.0]
And I was like, this is a lot of work for what it is. There's gotta be a better path is what I was telling myself. Okay, Alex, I've known you for several years, and I know a lot of people that know you in real estate. They have a tremendous amount of respect for you, as do, Zach.
[18:02.1]
And I thank you for finally saying that. As far as it is not, it is not passive. And I've never understood. Now, I'm not the brightest guy in the world, but I can do some basic math. I was in economics. I can understand some simple stuff.
[18:18.0]
If you have one repair of any, size that needs to be done, you wipe out your cash flow, your profit for the year. It could be a couple years. If you're averaging $325 a month in net and you have a $5,000 work order, you're done for a couple of years.
[18:38.2]
And there's just no way. And I hear it all the time, and I'm like, okay, maybe I'm just not smart enough to get it. You know, I hear these, I'm very much into space. I like space travel, the concept of it and so on. If I hear somebody from NASA talk, I say, okay, they're just smarter than me and I just don't get it.
[18:54.6]
And that's okay. But when I hear these single family guys and they've got all these properties and they're netting two, $300 a month, like, I don't know, I don't think I'm missing something here. I think they're telling a different story because there's no way. Not only that, Mike, but, Sorry, Zach, I was going to share.
[19:11.8]
We, we, the three of us, we have a lot of friends in common. Like, we're part of the same mastermind. I'm seeing that over the last couple years. A lot of guys that we all know that had big portfolios have been unwinding and descaling or scaling down and selling off rentals.
[19:28.2]
And I, Look, it's not that you can't build wealth with rentals and building out. You, you can, but there comes a lot of brain damage with that. And it's a lot of work. And the property management aspect of it. So, like, I don't, I'm not like poo pooing people that want to go out and buy rentals.
[19:44.8]
Like, by all means, go do it. Just understand that it's not passive. Yeah. And, exactly. And tenants, toilets, termites, property management companies. And property management companies are. I get it. I'm not trying to talk ill of anybody who chooses to do that or the industry, but I just don't get it.
[20:03.6]
For me, I just don't have the patience for it. When I got out of college, I counseled sexually abused kids for a couple of years. And my patience is gone now because you have to have patience when you have. One of my kids had extreme attention deficit disorder. When we took him into facility in the school.
[20:19.7]
They had to build a three sided, cube around him so that he couldn't see anybody because he had no attention span at all. And that took all my patience. The idea of somebody complaining because their AC isn't working at night. It's only getting the apartment down to 75.
[20:36.1]
You gotta be kidding me. Call somebody else here. Alex, do you want to buy this property from me? It's all yours, buddy. I'll give it to you at cost. I'm out. And I think a lot of these people, they buy these properties and they haven't had an issue yet, so they think it's all working out great. They're making their 325 bucks a month and that may last for five years, right?
[20:54.6]
And then all of a sudden something happens and then they're right back to zero. And until it happens, everything's fine. A hundred percent. And you know what? The other thing I think people talk about key performance indicators and metrics, right? Every business owner should know there's certain numbers. One of the questions I always ask people that have rentals is, what's your return on equity? Right.
[21:15.8]
It's like for some people, they have hundreds of thousands of dollars trapped in a house and they're earning such little money. It's like, well, oftentimes it's 2%, 3% is a return on equity. It's like, well, if you unlock that equity, could you earn, could you double that? Could you earn 6%, 8%, 10%?
[21:33.2]
10 out of 10 times? The answer is yes. But people don't even think to run that calculation. What's my return on equity? So that's really, really important. I think that's a great point. Yeah. And you're. Cause exactly your equity's going up every year as that mortgage is Getting paid down and the property's appreciating.
[21:49.6]
And yeah, if you don't do anything with that equ, return on equity is going down. If your rent isn't increasing by enough to make it worth it. Yeah. I see so many guys in the single family world when they're trying to increase their portfolio and Zach and I have a lending company on the side, they'll come to us and the way they're able to unlock some of their equity is to get a loan against that property without having to sell the property.
[22:15.8]
So just to cross collateralize it, but otherwise they're handcuffed. They have these golden handcuffs. They have all this property and on paper it's really nice and you can have a net worth of $4 million. Okay, and how are you going to access that capital?
[22:31.0]
Well, I'm not really sure. You're broke, you've got no cash, you've got all this equity and yeah, nothing you could do with it. You can't buy groceries with equity. You can't. You can. And yeah, you can go put a line of credit on some of these things, but you're still leveraging at the end of the day. Yep, you are. Absolutely.
[22:47.3]
So now from single family, wholesaling and then your short foray into single family rentals, I understand that now you've gone into storage facilities, correct? Self storage.
[23:03.0]
All right, now I know that that's a hot thing for people. It's a hot market and I find it very interesting that people buy so much stuff that it won't fit in their garage anymore. So now they have to buy another garage for their stuff. So I do find it very interesting because people won't throw their stuff away.
[23:20.7]
That's the way I see it from the outside looking in. Tell us about self storage and what made you go to that versus another asset class? Yeah, look, for me, I shared with you guys in 2017, I had that moment with my wife on the cruise. I'm like, okay, let's go buy rentals. A year and a half, two years into that process.
[23:37.4]
Okay, this is not for us. In 2019, I went on a mission trip in Guatemala and one of the guys that was on that mission trip, owned a couple storage facilities. And I remember sitting across from dinner one night and just inquisitively, I just started asking him about self storage.
[23:54.7]
And that conversation just completely opened my mind to the asset class. I had always seen storage facilities but didn't quite knew how it worked. And I Just assumed, by the way, incorrectly, that if I ever graduated from single family, for a lot of people, what's the next natural progression multifamily.
[24:12.7]
And I thought that was gonna be my path. And then as I started to hear him talk more and more, and this is somebody who I trust and respect, I know he's not gonna like, feed me bs. I was like, man, this asset class sounds awesome. And I said, well, okay, well, you told me all the things you love about it. What don't you like about it?
[24:28.3]
He's like, well, sometimes the gate operator breaks and then we have to leave the gate. Like just ink minor things that were. Sometimes people will break into a unit and things that were like, compared to my experience with rentals, I'm like, that's nothing. And so, again, I had made a decision, okay, I'm going to pursue learning about this asset class.
[24:46.8]
And little did I know one of the guys I was coaching at the time owned a storage facility. He just, that was one of the assets he owned. He just never talked about it because it was just humming along, doing his thing. And as I started to have conversations with him over about a three to six month period, I'm like, this asset class makes way too much sense.
[25:04.3]
You know, like, I just started to get really bullish on it. I started to research the facts and I kept seeing things like storage is the most recession resistant asset class. And I started to research, okay, what does the asset class do during 2008, 2009, like when the down economy and then now with technology, like we can run, manage and operate these facilities remotely without having any employees, without having a big team.
[25:29.4]
And it was in 2019, guys, that I decided I'm gonna start to unwind my single family business. And right before COVID like literally January is when I started having conversations with my team members that, hey, come summertime, we're gonna shut this thing down.
[25:45.5]
Covid came and it was just an accelerator. So, over a six month period, I shut down a profitable single family wholesaling business. And it was later that year, December of 2020, that I committed to self storage. And I said, okay, I'm going to focus on building this asset class now with this one here.
[26:04.3]
Were you ready, fire, aim like you were with the Carlton Sheets course, as far as the templates and the letters that you were sending out, or did you go and educate yourself a little bit more? I educated myself. I joined the community at the time I hired a coach, because I, look, I had confidence that I could Learn it.
[26:20.3]
But I've also. Coaches, mentors and masterminds have changed my life. It's like, why would somebody. I don't understand the mentality of trying to go and figure something out on your own when you have people that have been there, done that. And yes, you can make a significant investment up front, but what does that save you in terms of time, headaches, mistakes in the future?
[26:42.5]
And so I did what I always recommend people is find somebody who's further along, that you trust, that aligns with your integrity, your mindset, that has what you're looking for. And, and I learned the business from him. And less than a year later, I bought a 43,000 square foot facility, without using any of my own capital.
[27:00.5]
And we can talk about that. And yeah, literally every single year I've been involved in at least one or two different storage deals. Okay, so I definitely want to talk about how you did it without of your own capital. But you. So your first storage facility was 43,000 square feet?
[27:15.8]
Yeah, look, that in and of itself I think is a lesson for some people that what you focus on expands. I had this belief system. And belief systems to me are fascinating because they can serve you and lift you up or they can pull you down. My belief system at the time was it is just as much time, energy and effort to analyze and underwrite a small storage deal as it is to underwrite a bigger one.
[27:38.1]
I also had the belief system that getting the capital, like the lending, would likely be easier on a larger facility because the pie was bigger. Now, I didn't know that because of experience. I just. That was the belief I had. And so when I created my buy box, my buy box was, I'm going to focus on facilities that are 25,000 net rentable square feet to 50,000 net rentable square feet.
[28:01.0]
And that's what I was focused on. And lo and behold, my first deal, 43,000 square feet. Had I taken that same mentality and said, hey, I want to focus on a small 8,10,000 square foot facility, I guarantee you that's what I would have found. Same time, energy and effort.
[28:16.2]
Tell us about the first deal. Was it a storage facility that was like, had, a lot of problems with management or maintenance or like, what, what made you find it? Why? What pulled you to that particular deal? How did it work? That, that first deal? There was a lot of lessons learned on that one.
[28:33.4]
Yeah, yeah. And it honestly, like, I'm gonna always come on here and shoot you guys straight. Cause I never wanna come across like this. If I have everything figured out, I've made my share, my fair share of mistakes, and that one could have gone sideways on me really quick. But we've all heard that you make your money when you buy, you realize it when you sell.
[28:49.6]
I was very, very fortunate. I had, because of relationships that I've built over years. I had a wholesaler that a broker brought him a pocket listing. This was a broker that he had bought storage facilities from. It was in a market that he wasn't interested in, which was Jackson, Mississippi.
[29:06.0]
I don't know if you guys know anything about Jackson, Mississippi, but just say that I think the average medium household income at the time that I bought that facility was like 26 or $27,000 a year. That so an affluent community? No, no. Not only was it not an affluent community, like the population, like I literally did everything that I tell my coaching students not to do.
[29:28.4]
Like you can't, I can be a great operator, but I can't fix the market. I can't fix bad demographics. But I was getting it so cheap and the returns, the spreadsheet was like singing at me, right? It looked amazing and I wanted, I wanted to get in the game and I had this belief that I was like, I can run this thing, like I can fix these issues, right?
[29:49.9]
There's a reason I was getting it. I bought it for 1.59 to 1 point just under 1.6, which for a 43,000 square foot facility that I think was like 60 something percent occupied and was the revenue was generating. I was like, this was a good deal on paper and I bought the facility.
[30:07.4]
I got 85% financing from the Small Business Administration SBA. And then I needed about 350 grand to get into that deal, which was the 15% equity plus some capex money. I didn't have that. So I brought in an equity partner, he got 40% of the deal and he put about 360,000 in change into the deal.
[30:28.0]
So that's how I got in with none of my own money. I found the deal and I operated it. That was the value I was bringing to the table. My equity partner was the cash injection and I was able to leverage his balance sheet which helped me get the SBA financing. So let me ask now that you did that and that was your first one, do you operate in the same fashion as far as giving equity or not?
[30:52.3]
No, no, I take every deal on a case by case basis. It would have been significantly more profitable for Me, I could have borrowed the 360 grand I needed from, like, you guys had I known you at the time. That would have been more profitable for me when I exited the deal because I've since sold it, than giving up, 40% of the deal.
[31:11.8]
At the time, though, I opted for speed and convenience. Like, it was literally a couple of phone calls, a couple of text messages. And because of the relationship I had with him, this wasn't some random stranger. He trusted me and he saw the opportunity and he said, okay, let's do this.
[31:28.8]
So I was able to secure the down payment I needed fairly easily. And yeah, I learned a lot operating a storage facility in a very, very rough market. End of 2024, I ended up selling that facility for 2.495.
[31:45.3]
So I bought it for just under 1.6, sold it for just under 2.5. How'd that conversation go with this equity partner? Right? You'd never done a storage deal before and you obviously didn't say, hey, I've never done this before, come give me 365 grand. So how'd you do this and build that? Here's the key.
[32:01.7]
A couple things. My belief, guys, is that. And don't kick me off, this recording, right? Because I'm gonna say something that maybe you don't like. Being lenders, to me, the most valuable capital you can raise is relationship capital. Okay? We don't disagree at all. Okay, okay.
[32:17.7]
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Look, money is super important, obviously. Having access to capital, having relationship with you gu, like, super important. What's even more important is the relationship side of the business. And that's something that was ingrained in me early on in my journey.
[32:35.3]
And so whenever I join masterminds and communities, I don't join for the the X's and O's for the how tos. Like, yes, I pick up some of that stuff along the way. I join to meet you guys. I, I joined to connect and, and build those relationships.
[32:50.5]
And because I've had that mentality and approached life and business that way, this is somebody that trusted me, that I built a certain relationship with. And then of course, like, not only is he underwriting me as the operator, even though I had never done it, I presented my business plan and I shared with him, hey, here's the value of the facility based on the income it's producing today.
[33:12.1]
Here is the plan to add value. Here's the plan to take it from X to Y. And why this is going to be a profitable venture. So it wasn't just literally a phone call and said, hey, I need 360 grand, yes or no? No. I walked him through the plan and I presented it with confidence.
[33:28.8]
I had, you know, I had built a relationship with him, so he knew that I was somebody, that I was going to make it work one way or the other. And I think that's really important for people listening is dig your well before you're thirsty. The time, the time to go get the capital you need for a deal is not when you get the deal, you need to plant those seeds, water the seeds like well in advance.
[33:51.6]
And that starts like yesterday. And if you already missed the boat there, that starts now. It's funny that you brought up the relationship capital and thought as, people that lend money that we would, not necessarily lend. It was tongue in cheek. But yeah, that was a good thing.
[34:08.0]
No, I got to tell you, 100% when we lend and other lenders sometimes don't get this concept, and I know you clearly will, 90% of saying yes to a loan is the borrower, not the asset. Because good people, good operators don't bring bad loans to the table because they won't even look at them.
[34:28.8]
You talked about the reticulative activating system, ras, that Tony Robbins talks about a lot. And that's what you focus on. So that's what you get. Like you focused on the large, large storage facility.
[34:44.3]
We're the same way. We're focused on the operator. And good operators focus on good deals. And they won't even consider bringing a bad deal to the table because they don't do bad deals. Yeah, they just don't do them. They won't even try. And you talked about not, digging your well when you're thirsty.
[35:02.4]
I had a guy one time that I had known for several years. I'll, make this a very quick story. He had raised, he had $4 million on a large multi family that had evaporated 24 hours before closing because they had another closing they were supposed to do. That didn't happen.
[35:18.5]
So he was dialing for dollars that night and they had a million dollars. That went hard. And he needed $2 million by 5 o' clock the next day. He called me. We had some strong relationship capital and I was able to lend him $2.4 million of personal capital in six hours. Wow.
[35:34.0]
That's relationship capital. That's it. And he paid it back. He wanted it for 90 days, paid it back in 10 weeks. And capital like that's not cheap because there is a lot of risk involved, but you focus in on the individual. So yeah, we are, 100% with you that it is the relationships that mean everything.
[35:54.5]
And once you get to know somebody and you trust them, it's an easy phone call. Very easy. Yeah. What a great story, Mike. I appreciate you sharing that, man. Because if that doesn't like, nail home the importance of building meaningful relationships with people, I don't know what will. Yeah, it's just so important.
[36:14.0]
Yeah, so tell us you also have here I'm seeing, the Flip Empire Show. You're no longer doing that anymore, correct? No, yeah, I launched that podcast 2016 last year after almost 10 years. I didn't shut it down, I just completely rebranded it because the Flip Empire show, it just has nothing to do with what I'm focused on these days, which is self storage.
[36:35.7]
So I rebranded it to Storage Wins. And now the podcast is 100% about self storage. How to find these deals, how to underwrite them, how to get the funding and the financing, how to manage and operate them. And yeah, so now it's called the Storage Wins podcast.
[36:53.0]
Fantastic. Now how many storage facilities do you have now or how many square feet do you own? Yeah, it's four storage facilities I'm involved in. And I sold 80,000 square feet of storage at the end of 2024. So I had more, but I exited.
[37:08.3]
I wanted to quickly get out of that market. I realized that, again, you gotta be involved in the right markets. It's funny, I got into my first and third deal and I violated the first rule of real estate, which is location, location, location. So yeah, now I do deals with my students.
[37:26.9]
I look for one or two good solid deals a year. I went from a high volume transactional business in single family to now low volume. And just cherry pick the right opportunities and then if something falls outside my buy box, I will go back to my wholesaling routes.
[37:42.0]
I'll wholesale it. The good thing is, is literally one storage wholesale deal is like the equivalent of like six or seven single family wholesale deals. So that doesn't suck. Yeah, yeah, the volume play is never something I've been interested in, hence, hence the relationship capital.
[38:01.7]
I'd rather have one person call me 10 times in a year or three times in a year than three new people or 10 new people. So, yeah, larger deals. I know that Zach and I, we do the one, hundred fifty thousand dollars loans all the time, but bring me a one or two million dollars loan.
[38:18.5]
It takes just as much time to underwrite, and it's more profitable. And it takes much, there's much less brain damage involved because they're generally very qualified operators are looking for that size deal. You literally took the thought out of my head.
[38:34.0]
I was just gonna say, when you're dealing at a higher price point, more times than not, you're dealing with a little bit more of a sophisticated operator. And I don't mean that in like a derogatory way. I just mean, yeah, they're, they're, they're a little bit further along in the journey. They probably got some reps and experience under their belt.
[38:50.6]
And to your point, I will always bet on the jockey first, then I will bet on the horse every day of the week, 100%. So what are, some of the masterminds that you're in in terms of what it is that you're looking for? Because I know Zach and I are in them, are in different ones.
[39:06.0]
And while we are in private lending ones, we don't just focus on them because you have to get a different perspective on reality. And we find if we go in some that are completely unrelated, it gives us a mind stretch and a perspective that we weren't expecting. Do you find that as well? Yeah, I have found that.
[39:21.1]
I also do think there's value in getting in communities of people, people that are not only in your industry and in our case, particularly, real estate, sometimes I find, look, there's value in both. And I'm a part of both. I've been a part of both. I'm in a season now where less is more.
[39:37.7]
And so I've recently, over the last 12 months, I've opted out of a few mastermind communities. I mean, I think in 2023, I was a part of five different masterminds. And, I'm like, too much between the travel and the time away from. It's just, it was too much. I, I.
[39:53.9]
So now I'm just a part of two. They're very focused. One that obviously we're a part of, and then another one for, like, the coaching business. Because obviously I want to grow the storage wins community with the right people and do that the right way. At one point, about a year and a half ago, I was in a mastermind for fathers, for people that wanted to be better fathers and better husbands.
[40:15.1]
And so masterminds extend beyond business. I mean, you can find masterminds for any area of your life that you want to grow in. And I Think I've just gotten so much value from the relationships. Some of my closest friends were from masterminds that it's just such a high roi And I'm learning to be much more intentional about joining the right ones because they're all great, or most are great, I should say.
[40:43.2]
But time can be scarce and, you know, I don't want to be away from my family too long. And so now I'm just a part of two. And I think part of the problem can be that you can go to a mastermind and you get all these ideas and you get so overwhelmed you don't do anything. Right. And then if you don't do anything, what was the point?
[41:00.5]
Right. It just becomes, like you said, the travel, the distraction, you're spending time away from the business stuff that, you know, you got to focus on getting new ideas. And it's always a challenge as a business owner to say, is this a shiny object or is it something worth focusing on? Yeah, yeah.
[41:15.8]
One thing I'll mention too is, and this is. I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but the mastermind that we're a part of, I noticed a theme over the last few that I had been to and the people that I look at that, at least from the conversations I've had with them. Now, granted, you never know what's going on behind the scenes.
[41:33.4]
At least from the perspective I got that they have their stuff dialed in, not just business wise, but up on the personal side. They spent more time in the hallways having conversations than they did inside the main room. Yep, 100%. Which is interesting to me. Yes. Yep. I did a, post on that at that mastermind you're referring to that we're part of with you, is that what you have to do is you have to get in the room and then you need to get out of the room and get into the hallway.
[42:01.2]
There's one that Zach and I went to. I think we probably spent over the two and a half days, maybe an hour in, in the main room, and the rest of the time was out in the hallway. It was one, one, one thing after another, and none of it was planned. It just happened. They were naturally organic conversations and, holistic.
[42:20.3]
And we learned a tremendous amount just from being in the hall and talking to people. So now we don't spend much time. We've learned from that. So now we're not focused on being in the room. We want to be in the hallway. That's where the cool kids Are sure. And Zach, to your, Like, I don't need more content and information.
[42:37.8]
Like, I need less of it. I just. I know what I gotta do. I just gotta, like, execute and focus. And I. The building relationships, I mean, that's the spigot I'll always have turned on. But I don't wanna go in there and get new ideas and things that are gonna potentially distract me from what I know I gotta do. Well, I gotta tell you something, Alex.
[42:55.6]
As you know, I already have a lot of respect for you, but when you said that you joined a mastermind so that you could become a better dad or better man, I'll tell you, man, that is very cool. Good for you. You touched on. It isn't just the growth in the business and being away from the family.
[43:10.9]
It's, the masterminds that you're part of is people that have as much as you can. Because we're all still trying to figure this out. Dial in and focus on the important stuff. Because ultimately you're not going to bring a U haul to your. To the, to the, what do you call it for the cemetery when they bury you?
[43:26.2]
100%, man. Oh, yeah. You want to see how many people are standing around and how many people are, you know, toasting you because you touched them. So that's really cool. I like hearing that. Thank you for sharing that, man. Thank you. Absolutely. Yeah, Zach, what do you got, bud?
[43:41.9]
I mean, we're kind of running out of time here, so, tell us about a little bit about. Well, one, how people can get in touch with you, but before that, about more about what you do with self storage, with teaching people and the group you have the podcast and just tell us a little bit about that.
[43:57.6]
Yeah, absolutely, man. And I appreciate you guys asking. Look, a couple of different ways that I can help people who might be interested in self storage. I put out two podcasts a week on the Storage Wins podcast. And by the way, kudos and shout out to you guys for, for jumping on and putting the podcast hat on. I'm excited to, to see how you guys grow your show and, and I'm grateful to be on.
[44:16.6]
So, yeah, the Storage Wins podcast, which you can find on all the major platforms. YouTube as well. I, I put out two, unique YouTube videos every single week and then on Facebook, so I put out a lot of content on a weekly basis about self storage. And then for those that want to go deeper, that really are committed to buying their first storage facility, learning how to find fund and operate it.
[44:36.5]
If you go to storagewins.com, storagewins.com and that's where you can learn more about that. Fantastic. And what about people getting in touch with you, like your. Your personal social media accounts or. Yeah. Instagram, lexpardo25, and then Facebook.
[44:53.4]
I've been spending a lot more time on Facebook recently, so facebook.com AlexParto15 is where you can find me there. Interesting. Cool. All right, man. We appreciate you having you on. This was fun. It was as fun as I thought it was going to be.
[45:09.1]
Didn't know you traveled that much, so I'm even more excited about that. I love it. We got to talk offline and share stories where it's not recorded. That's right. Yeah. This was cool. Alex, thank you so much. And, we appreciate you being on. Looking forward to hanging with you next, in March down in Tampa. Thank you so much, guys.
[45:25.7]
Keep doing your thing. And if I can be of service to you, your audience in any way, just let me know. Appreciate it. Thanks, man.