MEET YOUR STORAGE COACHES
Are You Ready To Accelerate Your Storage Success?
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Mike Wagner
After spending 6 years and a quarter of a million dollars earning three degrees, Mike entered the real world as a Physical Therapist. And while he enjoyed the rewards of that profession, he quickly realized that other people (ie- his bosses) had more control over how he spent his time than he did. With that, Mike turned to real estate as a way to regain control of his time.
Between 2007 and 2010 Mike deployed what is now known as the BRRRR method (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) to build a portfolio of 31 one apartments and though he did so pretty quickly and was making money, it became clear that this strategy was not getting him where he wanted to go fast enough. And, he was getting more burnt out by the day. He was working 40 hours a week at a J-O-B that he no longer loved and then chasing rents and managing contractors on nights and weekends.
Knowing something had to change, Mike made a pretty dramatic transition to self storage in 2011. He bought an under-performing storage property and quit his job to turn it (and his life) around. Since then, Mike has used storage to achieve a level of freedom and lifestyle (for himself, his wife and his kids) that many believe is out of reach.
Mike is determined to prove that anyone can use ordinary garages to create an extraordinary life! Toward that end, he started the Storage Rebellion in 2018 which has quickly become the premier self storage training organization as well as the most robust self storage investing community in the country!
Ken Holmes
After graduating college and bumming around the world for a while as a raft guide and ski bum, Ken began his business career in 1987 as a real estate appraiser. He began buying rentals a few years later and flipped his first house in 1995.
He has been self-employed for about 20 years and has owned appraisal, property management, and investment real estate businesses. Over the years Ken has mastered many types of real estate investing; rehabs, rentals, development as well as self-storage. He has seen low interest rates and high. He has seen buyers markets and seller markets. He has adjusted his investing strategies again and again to meet the different investing environments. His most recent adjustment lead him directly to Self Storage, the most efficient asset class on the planet.
In his first 3 years in the storage industry, Ken has purchased $3.2 Million of under valued storage assets that have a combined stabilized value of right around $6 Million Dollars. And he did so using none of his own money! Today, Ken has bought 200,000 square feet of undervalued storage for $5.2M that will reach $11M in value!
He now has way more time to spend with his wife, kids, and hobbies. He loves to enjoy the great outdoors by whitewater kayaking and camping. He is a proud husband and father of two sons and lives in South Carolina.
As a real estate investing coach for the last seven years, Ken has helped hundreds of students achieve their real estate investing goals and is now blending his storage expertise with his uncanny ability to coach others to similar success.
Ben Burket
After graduating college with a degree in Business Management, Ben knew that he wanted to be a business owner instead of working for “The Man” his whole life. He rose through the ranks of his W2 job in the filtration industry. From 2010-2020, Ben grew from laborer to Sales Engineer to GM over one half of the company. However, those moves only deepened his dissatisfaction with working for others.
In 2016, he purchased his first residential multi-family house with his brother. In 2017, Ben threw himself head-first into the Real Estate Investing world. Over the next few years, he built a residential rental portfolio, started a Realtor business, flipped a few houses, wholesaled a couple deals, and talked to anyone who would listen about the wonders of Real Estate. Though he experienced a level of success in each of these areas, he decided to cast aside those “good” results to seek the “great” life that he saw others achieving through self-storage.
In October 2019, he fully committed to self-storage. By Christmas of 2019, Ben had quit his W2 job with a runway of savings to live off of. Since then, he has purchase two facilities for a total of $1 Million Dollars. Within 6 months of ownership, those facilities stabilized to provide $75K+ per year in cash flow and have a current value well over $2 Million Dollars. Ben now enjoys not working most of the time. That enables him to spend a lot of time with his wife and two boys doing the things he loves (playing sports, traveling, being outdoors, fishing, camping, drumming). The life-changing storage journey allows him to make his own schedule, choose who he works with, travel with family, and continue learning and growing as a person.
Though storage provides the financial freedom he was looking for, Ben draws his true purpose and joy from helping others accomplish what they never thought possible through storage. To this end, he whole-heartedly jumped into coaching to help draw the best out of great people who are willing to achieve extraordinary lives.