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No Experience? No Excuse. Self-Storage Beginner's Blueprint

August 3, 2026 · 29 min

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What does it actually take to run a self-storage facility you've never set foot inside, from fifteen hundred miles away, without a single day of real estate experience between you?

Joe Downs sits down with John Gaspar and Robert Figueiredo, co-owners of CubedUp Self Storage in Morganton, North Carolina. The duo are IBM veterans originally from Brazil who fired their third-party management company after just two months and took full control of their facility from Miami, Florida.

In seven months of self-managing, they drove physical occupancy from 70% to 84% and executed a 12% rate increase with zero tenant turnover.

This episode is a masterclass in self-storage operations, remote management systems, and the entrepreneurial mindset serious storage investors need to scale.

If you've been telling yourself, ‘you can't buy a self-storage facility because you're not local’, this episode dismantles that excuse entirely.

Listen For:

3:54 Why They Fired Their Storage Manager in 60 Days

5:41 The Delinquency Fix Every New Operator Needs

8:17 How to Run a Storage Facility From 1,500 Miles Away

14:08 Why Self Storage Thrived During COVID

14:31 The One Thing Stopping First-Time Storage Investors

CONNECT WITH GUEST: CUBEDUP SELF STORAGE

Website | LinkedIn

JOHN GASPAR, CO-FOUNDER | OWNER-OPERATOR

LinkedIn

ROBERT FIGUEIREDO, CO-FOUNDER | OWNER-OPERATOR

LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

CONNECT WITH US

Joe Downs on LinkedIn

Belrose website | Belrose email | Belrose LinkedIn

Check out the FULL episode on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/@TheStorageMoguls

60 minutes

Storage Moguls Live. Friday, October 16 in White Marsh, Maryland. One day with self storage owners. Walk through a real facility and learn how they find, finance, and close deals. Only 15 tickets. Register at https://go.storagemoguls.ai/white-marsh-md before Thursday.

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