Cameron Barsanti was an out-of-work actor who had just lost his wife’s life savings in a feature film he produced, and was collecting unemployment and writing screenplays. Their 2nd kid was on the way when his wife started listening to real estate podcasts and learning about investing. Within two months, she told Cameron to drop everything to focus on investing, and he began committing 40-60 hours a week to finding deals. Within a 2 ½ year span, he’s managed to build a $35M Self Storage portfolio with little to no money in the bank, and he did it by cold-calling.
Cameron credits only three key elements to his rapid success: partnerships, mentorships, and deal-flow. While he and his wife were learning how to underwrite deals and understand the concepts of passive income, they began attending meetups in their local area. Shortly after, they hired a real estate coach and pulled out all of the equity in their primary residence. With $90K to spend, Cameron relentlessly began looking for cash-flowing assets online. After purchasing a triplex and an 11-unit, he stumbled upon a bank-owned storage facility, and the rest is history. Despite having no money in the bank, and living off of a single income, he continued hunting and finding substantial off-market deals. He used the deals and his strength for building relationships, to leverage lucrative partnerships and opportunities. Cameron’s partnerships and opportunities have led to ten self storage facilities across four states, and they project to acquire an additional $100 – $200M in storage in the next 12 – 24 months. Without great partners, mentors, and most importantly, deal-flow, none of this would have been possible. Cameron has created a system to find great deals and that’s what he continues to lean on, as he pursues substantial growth and impact within the Self Storage Industry.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Excellent. Excellent. For our listeners continuing for the first time would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Cameron
Yeah, you got it so you know you you kind of hit on the on the points of how I’m here now right so it’s been a pretty quick crazy ride originally getting into real estate three and a half years ago started in multifamily bought my first storage facility two and a half years ago but and then Yeah, so we’ve been full time storage gun in and running for about two and a half years a little bit over but a pride or that grew up in a small town in Colorado mountain town epic skiing on a river great little place to grow up. Whole life I really wanted to always have this kind of neat want and desire to help people, maybe encourage and inspire people, I didn’t really know what that was going to be. I didn’t know if it was going to be through, you know, public speaking, motivational speaking. And then somehow I ended up actually going to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. When I was 18. That dumb idea I don’t know how that translated from wanting to help people may was the maybe I thought I was going to inspire people, right. So moved to Hollywood, and had some great opportunities to work in the industry. It was kind of a wreck, had a lot of life lessons to learn trials and tribulations, and had a decade of really just kind of crashing and burning as a human. And it wasn’t till I was really pushing 30 met my now amazing wife Christina, where then I had somebody else to really work for not just me, my degenerate self and so trying to get back into the acting industry never really felt right. But I just didn’t want to do anything else, didn’t really want to work anywhere else, thought I could make a lot of money was a slow roll. So then I decided to make my own feature film. That was a nightmare that was very challenging. And yeah, I literally lost her life savings. So by then we had our second kid. I was in my late 30s. And she Yeah, she learned through podcasts that we could actually start investing in real estate with no money. So we actually started trying to wholesale. We pulled out 90,000 of equity in our home, we bought a triplex I found on Craigslist, and a Texas 11 unit we partnered up with our partner in New Mexico and we’re a partner in an 11 unit. And then I stumbled upon my first storage bank owned storage facility and, and that’s how I’m here.
Brett
Amazing Cameron, what a story of inspiration. And I mean, that’s to me, that’s the inspiring part right there. You started with high, high, high hopes and goals for Hollywood and now, things were tough for a while, but now you’re building wealth and helping people build wealth and hopefully get some freedoms of their own. So I’m curious about Cameron talking about our story or the podcast subject today, which is building a $35 million Self Storage portfolio in just two and a half years. Ken, what would you say is the number one secret for you to be able to do that? What was that?
Cameron
Yeah, good question. You know, when I broke this down, you know, to help other people. You know, I teach my own students. And so I’ve kind of really had to, you know, get better and think more in retrospect was like, what was right. And so, you know, I’ve had time to really kind of break it down and really simplify it. And obviously at the time, I didn’t kind of really know what I was doing. But to really kind of simplify it for everybody listening, I found that like, if you kind of really think about just momentum in general, right, and when I look back on what happened to me, I was desperate. And I, I saw all this opportunity, right? So for me, it was like, desperation met the opportunity. And I was so excited. It was actually one of the most exciting things that had ever happened, this idea of passive income. I’d never I never knew about it. I didn’t know what a title company was, I didn’t know how things worked. I didn’t know real estate worked. And so I was pumped. I saw the opportunity. I never looked back. And so what happened was, I started doing everything I could, right. It was like, so buy for me, I learned I hired a coach right away, I’ve always had a coach my entire real estate career, I and I hired a coach, we were listening to lots of podcasts and, and meetups, and we were doing everything we could. And so what happened was we started building lots of momentum really quickly. And one thing that I think I was doing that I didn’t know was like, almost backwards is after my coach had taught me how to underwrite and kind of saw what kind of deals he was trying to buy, and what a good deal look like, well, then I could start looking for deals. And so I started doing that right away, I was cold, calling my butt off looking everywhere for deals, Craigslist, off market, you know, pulling lists of off market properties. And every time I called somebody, whether it was a broker or another person, somebody had a meet up. You know, I love talking, I love people. And so what I found was all these outputs, they were all creating some sort of opportunity, which was creating the momentum. And so then, with tons of cold calling, and really on deal funnel, right off the bat, the deal funnel started providing crazy opportunities for me, I was able to bring deals to like, create super seasoned investors that never in a million years would partner up with a beginner. And because I had the good deal, I liked the keys to the castle. They wanted to partner with me. And that was like, that was huge, right? So breaking it down deal flow, mentorship and partnership. And those are literally like the three keys when I look back and I’m like, wow, what happened? How did we get here? It breaks down to those three things.
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About Cameron Barsanti
Cameron Barsanti was an out-of-work actor who had just lost his wife’s life savings in a feature film he produced, and was collecting unemployment and writing screenplays. Their 2nd kid was on the way when his wife started listening to real estate podcasts and learning about investing. Within two months, she told Cameron to drop everything to focus on investing, and he began committing 40-60 hours a week to finding deals. Within a 2 ½ year span, he’s managed to build a $35M Self Storage portfolio with little to no money in the bank, and he did it by cold-calling.
Cameron credits only three key elements to his rapid success: partnerships, mentorships, and deal-flow. While he and his wife were learning how to underwrite deals and understand the concepts of passive income, they began attending meetups in their local area. Shortly after, they hired a real estate coach and pulled out all of the equity in their primary residence. With $90K to spend, Cameron relentlessly began looking for cash-flowing assets online. After purchasing a triplex and an 11-unit, he stumbled upon a bank-owned storage facility, and the rest is history. Despite having no money in the bank, and living off of a single income, he continued hunting and finding substantial off-market deals. He used the deals and his strength for building relationships, to leverage lucrative partnerships and opportunities. Cameron’s partnerships and opportunities have led to ten self storage facilities across four states, and they project to acquire an additional $100 – $200M in storage in the next 12 – 24 months. Without great partners, mentors, and most importantly, deal-flow, none of this would have been possible. Cameron has created a system to find great deals and that’s what he continues to lean on, as he pursues substantial growth and impact within the Self Storage Industry.
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