Revolutionizing Self Storage with Data Driven Insights!

What do you get when you combine a data-driven investor, an overloaded entrepreneur, and the future of self-storage? A revolution. 

Scott Meyers sits down with Noah Starr, CEO of Tract IQ, to unpack his wild journey—from quitting his corporate job, to acquiring his first facility all in the same week—and how those life-altering decisions set him on a path to transform the self-storage industry through data. 

Noah explains how pain points in the underwriting process led him to acquire and rebuild Tract IQ, a powerful data platform that's reshaping how investors analyze deals and mitigate risk. 

Scott and Noah dive into transparency, rent control legislation, investor pitfalls, and why the next phase of the industry belongs to those who understand—and act on—the data.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

2:07 The Wildest Week: Job Quit, Engagement, House & First Facility

3:09 From Investor to Tech CEO: The Birth of Tract IQ

8:13 The Power Shift to Third-Party Management

13:21 The Data Doesn't Lie: Rent Trends & Transaction Lows

14:38 California’s Rent Control & the Rise of Transparency

22:21 Hedge Funds, Overbuilding, and Overconfidence

31:02 If Noah Were Investing Again: What He’d Do Differently

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NOAH STARR, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer of Tract IQ

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Chapters

• 2:07 The Wildest Week: Job Quit, Engagement, House & First Facility
• 3:09 From Investor to Tech CEO: The Birth of Tract IQ
• 8:13 The Power Shift to Third-Party Management
• 13:21 The Data Doesn't Lie: Rent Trends & Transaction Lows
• 14:38 California’s Rent Control & the Rise of Transparency
• 23:24 Hedge Funds, Overbuilding, and Overconfidence
• 32:05 If Noah Were Investing Again: What He’d Do Differently

Transcript

Announcer (00:03):

This is the Self Storage Podcast with the original Self storage expert, Scott Meyers.

Scott Meyers (00:11):

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I am your host, Scott Meyers, and we have a special guest in the house, Mr. Noah Starr, with the Tracked iq. Noah, welcome to the show.

Noah Starr (00:21):

What's up Scott? Thanks so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Scott Meyers (00:25):

Glad that we could catch up here on the podcast. We're rolling through and having some conversations with some folks after the ISS show in Las Vegas and kind of hard, well, I think it was hard for our handlers to handle both of us and get this scheduled, but glad we were able to do so. But before we begin, I wanted kind of get a recap of your take on the market and what you felt, what was the sentiment from the show. But before we begin, give us a little bio understanding of your history, your background, how you get into the self storage industry, and then at what you do over at Tract IQ.

Noah Starr (01:00):

Excellent. Happy to. Well, I appreciate it, Scott. I'm the CEO of Tract IQ. We're a self storage data platform to help you find and analyze deals 10 times faster with the best data in the industry. I first got into self storage back in 2018 when I worked on the institutional investment side. I financed a handful of development sites that turned into CubeSmart and public storages, predominantly in the east coast and there learned how resilient the asset class has been throughout cycles, how probably like you share with your listeners and community, how it's a bet on American mobility, American dynamism, and it made intuitive sense. I then moved and worked on the equity side as well, lurking for a large private equity company in the residential space and in April, 2022 I was working crazy hours. I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur since middle school, so I left my corporate job the same week that I bought a house, the same week that I got engaged to my now wife and the same week that I bought my first self storage property.

(02:07):

So I don't recommend throwing all your life events into one week, but I went for, and there was a lot of planning and a lot of strategy around that, but that kickstarted an effort to actually build a diversified investment company focused on value add opportunities in undersupplied and growing markets. We acquired about 700,000 square feet across the United States, and my goal was to really build an investment company for a long period of time, but over the course of acquiring those assets over the course of the market dynamics shifting the last three years, I had these massive pain points around data and there were certain data sets that didn't exist that I needed. There were certain data sets that did exist, but they took too long to aggregate. And that kickstarted this effort, which ultimately led us to acquire Trapped IQ after seeing it on page 10 of Google and really move out of the investment world and focus holistically on building the best data platform in the industry.

Scott Meyers (03:09):

Well clearly, yeah, I don't recommend that either. It's way too many life events for one week for one person, but you pulled it off and that just goes to show what you can achieve when you're in a season like that, if you will. That involves going the extra mile and grabbing a higher gear, if you will, but it paid off. And once again, kudos to you. What you've done over at Tract IQ is pretty incredible and we love to have entrepreneurs here on the show to share with Storage Nation their story of how we just see an opportunity in the marketplace. And you grabbed it. I mean it was pretty obvious to you because of your background. You've done a lot of underwriting, you've looked at different platforms, probably built and tweaked your own, and then you saw what Tract IQ had to offer and said, Hey, I think this thing has legs. Tell me a little bit. That's a pretty big jump. That's a pretty big, you're not just waiting in for a little while. I mean you jumped right in. So tell me about the opportunity that you saw with it and more importantly, the opportunity that you saw taking it into the marketplace and self storage at the

Noah Starr (04:08):

Time. Sure, and if helpful too, we can talk about all those life events culminated in a single week, but there's a lot of planning that went into that, especially as someone's considering either leaving their job to buy a storage property or whatever. Happy to get into that. But in terms of Tract IQ, we were trying to build our own tool internally and what you need is data. So we went to all the leading data providers and asked to license data from them and stumbled onto Trap iq, which was built in 2021 in partnership between a guy named Tom Hamilton and Social Explorer. And they built this amazing product that piggy piggybacked off of a decade amount of development into an academic research tool. And right when they built it in 2021, Mr. Hamilton passed away. So the product was just sitting there and when I saw it, I was blown away.

(05:04):

And I think it's all about expectations, and you can relate this to investment. If you underwrite a property hoping for or underwriting to a 12% return and it does 15%, that's great. Versus if you underwrite to a 30% return and it doesn't 15%, it's not as great. Our expectations with Tract IQ were to bolster our investment company. That was the plan. We wanted to use data to target properties that fit our investment criteria, make sure we didn't get into bad deals, and that was the lens at which we acquired Tract IQ. But very quickly we realized that actually opening this up to the rest of the industry not only made sense and was asked and demanded for by people wanting to pay us money for it, but I then felt conflicted about how can I use this data for my own investments while people are using it for their own. So publicly committed to going all in on Tract IQ and stating that I'd never buy a storage property again. And that kicked off this whole effort over the last 14 months. That's culminated into a really exciting time for our business.

Scott Meyers (06:16):

Well, as you mentioned, there's certainly a lot of moving parts and not all of that just happened overnight. There was many things that were happening simultaneously and had been for years. So let's talk about your portfolio and you grew it to what size before you decided to make the shift?

Noah Starr (06:35):

So we acquired 12 properties across Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Michigan, and Ohio. We had institutional investment partners and at this point we've sold off about half of the portfolio and we'll look to exit from the rest of it over the next 18 months. But holistically, that portfolio was intended a lot of value add expansion opportunities, so buying stabilized facilities that had expansion room and strong demands and things like that. And we have since transitioned all of these locations mostly to high quality management companies as we've pivoted towards the data side.

Scott Meyers (07:24):

So let's pull on that thread for just a minute, Noah. There seems to be a movement afoot, and we're right in the middle of this as well where when you start to grow a portfolio because you want to be able to control the cost, especially when you have investor partners, equity partners, because bringing in third party property management companies, it's contrary to our goals and they are looking to maximize profits and fees and we are looking for just a pass through and obviously minimize that as much as possible. And then what we're finding is that in many cases we just can't beat 'em. In certain markets where they have a presence, we're going to spend a lot of marketing dollars and if we miss the mark, we don't know by how much. And this could be one of those factors as you mentioned, where you certainly don't want to underwrite to 30% and end up at 15.

(08:13):

Well, the management piece and the marketing piece and all that wrapped into one is usually the determining factor unless we've made some grave air in our underwriting or looking at the supply index in a market. So now some many syndicators are relying on third party coming into a project because they can underwrite more solidly and with a higher degree of predictability as to how this facility is going to perform, even if it is a little bit less. And if instead of promising a 18, 19, 20% IRR to our investors, it's okay if we're 15 to 17, but we're consistently hitting those numbers over and over again and the distributions are going out on a regular basis. Is that some of the impetus behind it? Was it just the efforts from a manpower standpoint where you were looking to shift all resources towards the platform side versus the

Noah Starr (09:03):

Portfolio side? Yeah, I think everyone's different and every market is different. I think I tried to stick to my core competencies, which was not running a property management company. There's a in theory or you'd like to have a passion and a real interest and a desire to delight customers and make sure you're building, working with people who are responsive and fully on top of it. My core competency was finding and identifying really good locations using data and making sure we had sound underwriting. One thing you said which was interesting around this concept of predictability, and I would say even if you get a third party management company to give you projections, they can't predict the future, but it does give you validation in your underwriting. And I think investors like to see that a qualified third party is providing validation for your business plan. But at least in my circumstance, my goal was to find really good properties in great locations, high traffic counts, good supply demand characteristics, and make sure we were bringing in really high qualified management groups to execute on the business plan so that we can focus on what we did best.

(10:18):

That was my own personal how I thought about it, but obviously if you're only looking at one or two locations and it's within three hours of your house and they're below 20, 30,000 square feet, no one's going to care more about your property than you. Yeah, of course

Scott Meyers (10:33):

Not. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. Nobody cares even 1% as much about the properties as you with regards to expenses and the income side of the house hands down. Well, as we exited this year's ISS Expo, the sentiment was at least that I saw from the folks that we talked to, and as I traveled around and spoke to some of the other vendors, it seemed that the tire kicker stayed home This year the doers were coming out and they were moving forward. Now again, we don't always know that that's the case people were putting on their game face, but it seemed like there was a fewer questions that made me lead to believe that people were just there to learn about self storage to maybe do something in the future. It seemed like the folks were there to execute and the folks that we talked to and that we've even followed up with or followed up with us with regards to, we're always promoting obviously our educational products and our mastermind, which is really the bigger audience at the ISS show, which is, and the SSA show, the folks that are growing and scaling a business and all those folks want to be in a room with a whole bunch of other folks that are running a hundred miles an hour.

(11:37):

And then also our private equity investors, folks that were there to learn maybe about self storage, not to invest actively but to invest passively to just become smarter, which we'd love to see as well. But all of them in all those three food groups, everybody's looking to go forward and not just out there just gather data to maybe do something in the future. Is that kind of what you found in the conversations that you had? And maybe give us an idea of your overall take on the show and the folks that were out there

Noah Starr (12:04):

As a data guy, I asked the ISS one of the heads of the ISS, how did the tenant stack up to prior years? And I think attendance was like 97, 90 8% what the highest attendance ever was, which was I think 2022 maybe was the highest ever. So really strong attendance. I think there's the human anecdotal side and then there's the data side. So I'd say anecdotally for the last couple of conferences, people have seen more optimistic on the state of the industry, but I think that's human nature. I'm an optimist at heart. I think generally brokers and investors are optimistic that things will be better down the road. The data hasn't necessarily supported a lot of new transaction volumes or a lot of new developments. There's been, if anything, slow down in development, which I'm sure you've talked about with your community in addition to a slowdown in investing and transactions still being a really challenged period of time, I'd say there's a bright spot and what I'm hyper-focused on at Tract IQ is transparency and this issue of what is a market rent, what price is a customer moving in at what price are they paying nine months later?

(13:21):

That whole conversation to me, I think has seeped into the industry and people now realize what's going on. And I'm sure you've stayed top of mind with the legislation in California and for those listening who aren't familiar, I think this week they're officially passing, it was originally a rent control bill that would've prohibited storage operators from raising prices between the six and 12 month period after they move in. That has since changed to a disclosure bill where you're telling the person when they move in the maximum price that can be raised over a period of time. So that passing and it's I think the first legislation around transparency in rents. And I've seen a pretty major shift not just in what people are saying, but actually in the rent profile of some of the REITs in California. And I think that bodes really well for the industry for, I think transparency is so important and people I think realize that at face value, but I think they undervalue how important knowing what a market rent is, customers knowing what they're going to pay, lenders, knowing what they're going to underwrite, operators knowing what rents they're supposed to set.

(14:38):

So I think there's this whole conversation that is now being had all the time, which I think is a positive.

Scott Meyers (14:47):

I don't know that I can, well, what I lent to that conversation last year in 2024 at the ISS show on the main stage, my presentation was the top five threats facing our industry right now. And number five in no particular order, but that being the most important, that's why I saved it to last, was just that I said the biggest threat facing us right now is potential rent control because in 2024, what we had seen throughout 2023 in the first quarter was just that we were getting a lot of unwanted attention in our industry by, in the state of California by the news gathering sources there. So the local affiliates where there were enough folks yelling and screaming loud enough clients of self storage that they were moving in at one rate and then three months later, six months later, yeah, they were double and triple the rent that they were being charged at their promotional rate or what have you.

(15:47):

And it was all buried in the fine print and it was enough that they recognized, they're just like, Hey, these are kind of some unfair practices within this industry. They know people aren't going to move all that stuff out for these increases even if they are this high. And so I warned from the front of the stage and with a finger wagging straight at the REITs to say, knock it off on behalf of the rest of us, you're not only crushing rates in markets for us to, everybody have to go down to a certain level to compete, which doesn't help anybody including yourself. It's so hard to raise the entire group back up, but you're going to get us some more unwanted attention and we got it. So I wasn't the most popular person heading in front of the third party property management companies that are owned by the REITs at the trade show floor after my speech.

(16:37):

But it was necessary and obviously getting a bit of applause from the rest of the folks in the industry, but we got it. And that has, in my opinion, that has been one of probably the hottest issue for us here personally in my investment company because you can't underwrite if you have no clue what the market is and where it's going. And you see all of the information coming out from, call it your competitors from Yardi Matrix and the other data gathering sources from that standpoint. And it's a rubbish if you're going to underwrite to that, it makes no sense because they're just scraping the internet for everybody's internet rates, which has nothing to do with rates 3, 6, 9 months down the road. And so that has been the challenge. It's forced us all to get a whole lot better at due diligence. We can't just do it from our seat here in Indiana and try to understand what the market rate is truly in Oklahoma City. It's just you can't do that unless you go and you find out and you have to dig in. And so to get to that place where we're, to your point and thank you for the assistance of getting transparency and pricing has helped us all to get a lot better because those are the challenges that we face is that we're not in a place, many folks are not in a place in which they're achieving those desired returns because they didn't have good data coming in on the front end with regards to the income side,

Noah Starr (18:02):

Absolutely. And I don't think anyone wants the government to come in and tell storage operators how they should be managing their stores. But unfortunately it's working in this sense, which I think hopefully doesn't lead to longer term issues down the road. But this is the kind of reaction that if we were in multifamily, we would've faced years ago, it would've been very quick because we're just not as large of an industry. But it shouldn't come to the government trying to potentially regulate us for us to act. It should really be understanding and appreciating transparency. And you think of, when I think of industries that have done well here, I think hotels is one that we should look at where you can buy a Smith Travel research report whereby all of the major hotel operators actually provide all their in-place metrics for each hotel and anyone can buy a report.

(19:00):

It's not that expensive to show what the actual market is doing in terms of rev car occupancy for hotels, we don't have any of that line of sight in self storage. If anything, we have peripheral metrics like you're talking about. And to really know the truth on how occupied or what the rates customers are paying, you need to be boots on the ground meeting with the managers, calling them, really asking lots of questions. And that's a lot of work to do. And even still, you can't really verify what you're being told. You're just hoping that these people aren't lying to you. So I think that's an industry we should be looking towards, but that's going to take not the government mandating us to do that. It's going to take us actively working to collaborate together and realizing if I own a storage facility that's 50% occupied, you should never build near me because if you build, not only am I not going to lease up maybe for longer, but you're not going to lease up. And that's just a very simple thing that if we communicated as an industry we could solve instead of this situation where very few have the data while the rest of us,

Scott Meyers (20:12):

And this is one of these things that we stress so much in our community, especially in our mastermind, there's, we've got about 60 people that are A players growing and scaling all across the country and they bump into each other in certain markets from time to time. And for years I've seen and felt that there's been kind of a self-policing, if you will, with regards to the cities and the municipalities and zoning really not allowing a lot of overbuilding because they understand that if they, at least on the surface, understand self storage and that it is a competitive market and they understand the supply index and what that does to pricing, and then ultimately if both fail in the example that you gave, well then they end up with some properties that are going to be back off their tax roll and back on their plates having to handle at some point.

(20:59):

And so we've seen that to a degree, or at least the questions raised when we go into the zoning board when we're asking for approval for a particular site. And we do that on our own on the front end where we're not trying to do that. But again, I think what we've seen, and correct me if I'm wrong, Noah, is that we've seen a whole lot of folks including hedge funds that are coming in pretty brazen, even if they've got some smart folks on the acquisition side and the underwriting side, and they're feeling as if they can put a different spin on or they're better than their competitor and they're still going to come into a market with a high supply index and maybe not as much in demand and they're going to do better no matter what. And so that has put some stress and some strain in the industry in certain markets and certain micro markets meaning just a five to seven mile radius and a couple of folks coming into a hot area.

(21:47):

So I am feeling that, and I'm not as confident as I used to be that my competitors as well as the municipalities and other folks along the way are wise enough, smart enough, are using data to the degree that they should, and somebody's hitting the pause button or at least saying, Hey, pump the brakes a little bit. I don't know that we should put this site here right now because there's four others and there's 11 square foot per capita in the five mile radius. Am I wrong? Are you seeing a little more perhaps over optimism by some of our competitors in the marketplace? So

Noah Starr (22:21):

There we did a really interesting research experiment or a research analysis on looking at the transaction volumes in self storage relative to other asset classes. And what we found is that I think in 20 21, 20 22, the transaction volumes was anywhere between 10 and 15 billion, something like that. And we just did an analysis valuing the industry like the asset value of storage in the four to 500 billion range, so percent of transaction volume relative to the basis. We then looked at it across, okay, other asset classes and healthcare is like a two and a half trillion dollars asset class and the transaction volumes during 20 21, 20 22, the same as self storage. So if you think about what that means, it means the amount of capital flowing into self storage

(23:20):

Is significantly more than the amount of capital flowing into healthcare relative to the size of the asset. So that was playing out the last couple of years, and that was a way to quantify that in terms of what I'm seeing today is almost a reckoning in that doesn't work anymore. You need to be super precise, super data-driven and super clear with your investors as to what you're buying. It's not as simple to say, I do value add in growing markets. You need to say, I look for properties between 40,000 and 60,000 net rentable in areas with population growth above five supply per capita, less than eight within a three mile radius, median home values above 350,000 and rent profiles of the surrounding stores trending upwards and above $200 for a climate 10 by 10, whatever it is. Be really, really specific to protect against downside risk versus decades ago where generally you could pick a site and you'd probably be okay, it was storage, there wasn't much of it. Still a newer asset class. Now we're in this period of hyper competitive base where you're not just going up against the local market, you're going up against firms all across the country who have teams of people looking for this stuff.

Scott Meyers (24:50):

Yeah, that's exactly it. And the calls continue to come in. The letters still land on our desk buying our facilities even if we don't own them any longer. And yeah, there's a lot of sophisticated money coming in and a whole lot of other folks that are seeing that they've heard over the years that this is a very recession not resistant, and it's a simple predictable business model. And we've been guilty of that to a degree in how we educate and promote the industry as well. But at the end of the day, it's not a hobby and that it's not black and white. It is a business. It does have advantages over others, but I think far too many people took it as well, here's a simple business that seems to be growing. It looks like anybody can get in and be successful at it. And that's not necessarily the case, which is again, why we are so big on the education and educating investors so they don't end up in that position where they're wrecking the market and then ruining their credit and seeing their own business fail. But it all starts with data, doesn't it my friend? Which is why you're here.

Noah Starr (25:52):

It does. And if you really unpack it, this concept of how resilient the asset class is, it is resilient relative to others. It is. But what you look for is, well, you look at occupancies back in 2008, 2009, you look at metrics like that. If you're looking at occupancies from 2008, 2009, you're probably looking at stabilized stores provided by the REITs that represent less than 15, 10% of the whole industry. You don't really know what the rest of the industry was doing. But at the same time, fast forward to today, just because occupancy is holding doesn't mean rents are holding, doesn't mean that you've, if you've overdeveloped in a market or you're facing intense new competition, doesn't mean that if you bought it a year ago where there were no REITs and now there are three REITs, the market is fast and everyone around you is leveraging data, is hiring qualified management companies, it's not enough to just say, I'm in storage and I'm going to be successful. You have to be super clear and super thoughtful about where you invest your own money and what strategy you're looking to pursue.

Scott Meyers (27:04):

Yep, a hundred percent. So we're seeing a continued movement towards consolidation and the roll up business model of buying, again, using everybody's words, including yours earlier, value add facilities, growing the value building additional buildings on the vacant land that is there or annexing down the road. And then providing to the bigger players, whether it's local, regional, national, a portfolio of 50 to 60,000 square foot or larger facilities that they can buy a gaggle at a time, five, six or so in a portfolio because we can get at least a 52 100 basis points spread on a cap rate versus selling individually. How do you see that changing and how does that really play into your data platform and how folks should be looking at ways to be able to underwrite these, and is that even a viable model in the environment that we're in right now?

Noah Starr (28:07):

I think that it's viable in some markets and not viable in others. And in terms of the data side, the good news is that the large REITs don't invest in many secondary, tertiary markets. They pretty much say 60% of the country, I'm not going to invest there. So that leaves space for the rest of the industry to acquire sites, to build a portfolio, to find value add opportunities. I think some of the best investors that we see who focus on secondary and tertiary markets are the ones who really leverage data to quantify the amount of risk and the amount of demand coming into the market. It's not enough anymore, in my view, to say, well, the area's growing by 4% over the next five years. Okay. How do you know that you could leverage attract IQ to say, okay, I know that there are 5,000 apartment units scheduled to deliver in the next 12 to 18 months, and if those units deliver and lease up to 80% occupancy, which you can look at multifamily vacancy rates, that's another 4,000 people that are moving into my trade area.

(29:19):

That's something quantifiable that I can go to the lender, I can really quantify and convey to my investors. And also I could send them a flyer when they open, come move into my store and I'll give you 30% off for your first three months. So that's one of the data points that in the world of not knowing what a market rent is, right, and struggling between a street rent or a web rent and really trying to figure out what your achieve rent will be as a stabilized facility, it's these other variables such as new housing units, such as what new commercial construction is happening in my area, not just because I want to know if there are any Walmarts nearby or any new corporate headquarters opening up, but also 15% of your tenant base are companies, and in many cases, they represent the best tenant you can get because they pay on time, they get bigger units, they're willing to pay a higher price, they stay around for a long period of time to really understanding the market at this level. So not just so you can paint a picture for your investors, but you can really quantify the amount of demand that's coming into the market.

Scott Meyers (30:31):

All good, all good. So that leads me to my next question, which is, Noah, put your investor hat back on again. If you're looking to get back in the game, what would that look like, one or two on your own? Would you look to grow a portfolio, bring on partners, given the market that we're in right now and knowing what even more so becoming more well-rounded by understanding the data more? How would you approach this market as an investor? And I mean you just, Noah, what would you be looking to do right now?

Noah Starr (31:02):

Yep. So I think number one committed to not doing that, but let's pretend that went away for some reason.

Scott Meyers (31:08):

Yeah,

Noah Starr (31:09):

There are two big ways to lose in self storage in my view. And the first one is to overpay and over lever. No matter what market you're in, if you overpay and over lever, it's hard for things to save you. And that's just the first thing. So number one, as I think of pricing of facility, I would be very much focused on buying assets based on the existing cashflow and making sure that if I'm going to lever, I'm already confident compliant on day one, right? So if you're in the acquisition world, you're like, well, how would you actually do that unless you're getting 40%, 50% leverage. But that's a very conservative way to look at it. And the second would be I would focus on sites with very limited amount of competition coming into the market, either because there's nothing in the pipeline or there's genuine barriers to entry, whether there's a moratorium on storage, like what's been seen in Ohio and some counties or topographical barriers where if you're in a region that you just cannot build more storage, those are ones that I would focus on. So I'd protect myself on the purchase price and make sure I'm not over my skis on leverage. And then I'd really try to focus on markets that underwrote to those metrics with very limited competition and high barriers to entry. Everything else I think is, I'm based in Austin, Texas, there's how much the size of the property and all the other factors that of course I would consider and think through, but those would be two that I'd really focus in on.

Scott Meyers (32:53):

So Noah, what would you feel is probably the biggest threat to our industry as a whole right now? I mean, you touched on it at the individual investor level, but overall as an industry, do you see anything coming down the pike that maybe is a blind spot for some of us or something that is maybe gaining some traction that everybody should be

Noah Starr (33:10):

Aware of? It'll go back to this transparency, and I'll give an example that I didn't touch on before. But I think a risk that we run is if we don't change as an industry and consumers move in at a price and unknowingly they're going to be paying a lot more three, six months after they're going to have a bad experience. And I think it's hard to quantify the amount of people moving in over the last two years. What percent of them will never come back? Because people, our industry works really well when people move a lot and they have good experiences, their stuff was safe and secure, they like the property manager, it was a seamless experience, and they're going to want to use storage again when they move. If down the road we've created something that actually kills the golden goose where people move in and have a horrible experience, I'm never using storage again. That's a huge risk. That's hard to quantify. So I think it just hits on the head of we really need to address the transparency problem in storage and hopefully we're seeing all of the events culminate to just that.

Scott Meyers (34:22):

Yeah. Well, we definitely appreciate your efforts into track tech queue's efforts in that as well. So on behalf of the industry and for those looking to get into it, we are thankful. So before we sign off, what is the best way for folks to learn more about, either to get in touch with you or to learn more about what Tract IQ is doing?

Noah Starr (34:41):

Absolutely. So I'm active on LinkedIn a lot and Noah Starr, and then you can check us out@trackiq.com, TRA ct iq.com. And we have a free trial and we have a lot of great things that you can come check us out on. And I'm always happy to brainstorm on sites, share some free reports, all sorts of things. So no problem on reaching out to me at any time.

Scott Meyers (35:04):

Perfect, perfect. Well we appreciate that, Noah. And lastly, what is, what's Noah reading right now? What's on your desk or perhaps what is the best book that you've ever read or gifted it to folks the most?

Noah Starr (35:18):

I'll show you what's on my desk in a second, but I would say Warren Buffet, an American capitalist, is an awesome read. It's an older biography on Warren Buffett and I have a lot of respect and admiration for him. I'm bummed a little that he is retiring, but

Scott Meyers (35:35):

I

Noah Starr (35:35):

Think it's exciting and kudos to him on figuring out the succession. And then I just was gifted this Mark Twain biography by my father-in-law, Ron Chernow, who wrote Hamilton, who wrote John Rockefeller. So I'm very excited about that. Yeah,

Scott Meyers (35:52):

Ron Schau is just, he is a treasure. I learned more about the founding fathers of capitalism in our country by way of Ron Trau. He is just a master at taking a biography, but also taking you back in time and understanding exactly what's going on in the country at that time and just an incredible author. And that is one that I do not have yet. So I'm glad that you mentioned it came. I'm glad I asked out. Okay, well, alright, I'm on it. Alright, Noah, anything else? Any other parting thoughts for Storage Nation for today as people are looking to head into the balance of 2025? Always happy to be a resource and hope to participate in some of your events going forward. Scott, I really appreciate it. All right. Looking forward to it, Noah, you know that we will have you there soon. Alright, thanks again for your time. Appreciate it. We'll see you soon. Thanks Scott.

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