An Intro - A Little About Me

A newsletter should open the kimono on how I look at deals, the things I've bungled, and the little wins I've beat my chest about. A little about me:

The summer before my senior year of college, at the encouragement of a friend on wall street, I took an offer to intern at a company that had been crowned 'biggest buyer of commercial real estate in the US.' At the time they owned the 3rd-tallest building in the country and the buzz in the office was about how Blackstone was gobbling up Equity Office Properties in the biggest LBO ever. I was like, “cool industry.”

Over the years I worked a crazy variety of jobs - from apartment leasing to construction loan origination. And while working those jobs, as a side hustle, I did a few quirky 5-figure deals with friends. Then I did a small storage deal with almost no money, by leasing the real estate instead of buying it.

Then I sourced and helped entitle a project for a miniscule fee for a big storage player, and invested in it.

That same developer visited another site with me, in that same state, and said, "Eh, it's not for me... but I wouldn't tell you not to do it." So I took that enthusiastic show of support and went and rezoned it, with the financial help of a work friend, while keeping my dayjob.

Then boom - shortly thereafter I lost that dayjob, and with the money made from my goofy little deals (and a severance), I decided to try to survive on my own for a little less than a year. Several friends pitched in to help me with pursuit costs as I teed up more sites, and before I knew it, I had a $20+ million pipeline. My previous construction financing experience was incredibly valuable at this stage.

Through sheer luck and the generosity of a couple industry contacts, that entire pipeline got funded. And more.

As of now I am almost 6 years into running my own self-storage deals full-time and would like to do this for the rest of my life. Going forward I will talk about deals I loved, deals I missed out on, deals I passed on, and deals that got done and how it's gone. And maybe some gossip. And might have a partner pitch in and write some stuff.

Let's see if I can keep it up.