Why We Started Family Storage Holdings (And What It Means for You)

We spent 14 years as the seller. Now we’re the buyer — and we’re doing it differently.

I still remember the morning we got the call that our buyer was backing out.

After fourteen years of building our digital marketing agency — the late nights, the payrolls we weren’t sure we could make, the clients we poured ourselves into — we’d finally found someone who said they wanted to buy it. And then, three weeks before closing, they went quiet.

It turned out to be a miscommunication, not a collapse. The deal closed. But for those three weeks, I understood something I hadn’t fully appreciated before: the most vulnerable moment in a business owner’s life is when they’re trying to hand it off.

We got lucky. We found a buyer who treated us like people, not a transaction. Most owners don’t get that — especially in self-storage.

That’s why we built Family Storage Holdings.

What 14 years as a seller taught us about being a buyer

When you’ve spent over a decade building something, you learn things that can’t be found in a due diligence checklist. We learned them the hard way, and we carry them into every conversation we have with storage owners today.

• Good buyers communicate, even when there’s nothing to report.

The silence was the worst part of our own sale process. A buyer who goes quiet isn’t necessarily backing out — but you have no way to know that. We respond to every inquiry within 24 hours, and we give weekly updates throughout due diligence. Not because we have to. Because we know what silence feels like.

• The number on the Letter of Intent (LOI) means nothing if the buyer can’t close.

We’ve talked to owners who received compelling offers, went through three months of due diligence, and then watched the deal fall apart because the buyer was still trying to raise equity. We don’t operate that way. When we make an offer, we have committed capital behind it.

• Treating the seller like a partner changes everything.

When our buyer walked us through their offer math — showed us the assumptions, let us push back on a few inputs, explained their thinking — we trusted them. Not because the number was perfect, but because they respected us enough to be transparent. We do the same. Every offer we make comes with an explanation, not just a number.

• And eventually, we started asking: what if we were the buyer?

  
  

Why self-storage, and why the Western US?

After our exit, we spent years looking seriously at different asset classes. Multifamily. Car washes. Laundromats. We kept coming back to self-storage for three reasons.

First, the fundamentals are strong and relatively simple. People need storage when they’re moving, downsizing, going through transitions. Demand doesn’t disappear in downturns — it often increases.

Second, a significant portion of self-storage in the Western US is still owned by individuals and families who built these facilities themselves. They’re not looking to sell to a REIT that’ll change the name, fire the manager they’ve known for fifteen years, and never return a call. They want someone who will steward what they built.

Third — and honestly most importantly — Doug’s operational background made self-storage a natural fit. He’s spent years on the business side of real estate operations. He understands what it takes to run a facility well, which means owners don’t have to worry that we’re going to run it poorly.

We focus on Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, and Utah because that’s the market we know, and we believe local knowledge matters when you’re making offers on real assets. We’re not trying to buy everywhere. We’re trying to buy well.

What we promise every owner we talk to

We’ve made a short list of commitments that we hold ourselves to in every conversation, every offer, and every closing. These aren’t marketing language — they’re things we wish our own buyer had put in writing.

• A straight offer, explained clearly.

No black-box math. We walk you through the assumptions behind every number we put in front of you.

• Real capital, not a financing promise.

We don’t submit LOIs while simultaneously trying to raise equity. Our capital is committed before we make an offer.

• A defined, reasonable due diligence period.

We move efficiently and we don’t renegotiate at the finish line. The timeline we agree on at the start is the timeline we keep.

• If we can’t buy it, we’ll tell you why.

Not every facility is the right fit for us. If it’s not, we’ll say so clearly, explain our thinking, and — if we can — point you toward someone who might be a better match.

• We respond to every inquiry within 24 hours.

Let’s just have a conversation

If you’ve spent years building a self-storage facility in Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, or Utah — and you’ve started thinking about what comes next — we’d genuinely love to hear your story.

Not a pitch. Not a hard sell. Just a conversation between people who’ve been on both sides of a business sale, and who understand what it actually means to hand something over that you’ve built with your own hands.

We’ll talk about your facility, your timeline, and what matters most to you in a sale. If the numbers work and there’s a fit, we’ll tell you. If there isn’t, we’ll tell you that too.