Cedar Creek Capital: Leveraging Self-Sufficiency To Achieve Success

Good companies can survive economic downturns, but great companies can thrive in them. AJ Osborne, CEO and Founder of Cedar Creek Capital, wanted his company to be among the greats, so he designed his self-storage investment business to be resilient against the financial challenges that arise when the economy takes a tumble.

Osborne’s strategy prioritized cash on hand. He knew markets would fluctuate, but not when, so he wanted to be self-sufficient when interest rates and inflation caused lending and consumer spending to dry up.

“At the end of the day, there's more going on in the business world that is out of your control than in it,” Osborne says. “Interest rates go up and down. Stock markets do, too. We have recessions, depressions, booms, and busts. Companies with the greatest technological advantage and the smartest people will fail all the time. But those who have cash on hand have a fundamental advantage, even in the worst of economies.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, countless businesses closed due to the economic problems that followed. Cedar Creek, however, was prepared thanks to Osborne’s commitment to having cash on hand.

“Our approach put us in a position to survive COVID and the high-interest-rate market it triggered,” Osborne says. “Storage rates at that time fell to unprecedented lows, even further than during the economic crisis of 2008, killing many businesses in our industry and elsewhere in commercial real estate. Our reserves allowed us to not only survive but also to take advantage of opportunities that arose because other businesses were not prepared.”

AJ Osborne: removing barriers from self-storage investing

Osborne has 20 years of experience as a self-storage owner, operator, and developer. In addition to leading Cedar Creek, he is the founder and a board member of Storelocal, the largest self-storage co-op, and Tenant Inc., a SaaS company that supports self-storage facility management.

In his mid-30s, Osborne was hospitalized due to a rare autoimmune disease that left him paralyzed, hooked up to breathing tubes, and unable to work. While the incident cost him his job, it didn’t leave his family without income due to his successful self-storage investments.

After he recovered, Osborne decided to educate others on how they could successfully invest in self-storage. He wrote “The Investor’s Guide To Growing Wealth In Self Storage,” which became a number-one bestselling book on self-storage investing, and launched “Self Storage Income™,” which became the number-one top-rated and listened to self-storage podcast.

“I realized many people believed passive investing either required putting down a very large sum of money or making deals on your own,” Osborne says. “But my experience showed me that self-storage investing got rid of both of those barriers, so I set out to educate people and open doors for them to experience financial freedom by becoming successful investors.”

Cedar Creek Capital: Reshaping the self-storage investment industry

The more involved Osborne got with self-storage, the more he saw the opportunities for improvement. Investor information was hard to find, infrastructure was lacking, and technology integration was years behind. Through Cedar Creek, he set out to build something better.

“We survived the economic crisis of 2008, and then scaled up,” Osborne shares. “We bought facilities, then set out to improve them by investing millions of dollars in infrastructure and software. In many cases, we were developing tools that didn’t exist.”

Cedar Creek’s innovative approach to investing made it a unique leader in the industry. Rather than just placing capital, it created a fully operational business from top to bottom.

“Our ecosystem is composed of integrated platforms for lending, architecture, property management, branding, marketing, and more,” Osborne says. “Together, the components allow us to find underperforming assets and extract a high yield.”

Cedar Creek emerged as a pioneer in the industry, blazing a trail that others would eventually follow. And Osborne’s core strategy of having cash on hand allowed the company to weather setbacks and ultimately find its way.

“We knew we had to leave room for error,” Osborne says. “Failing and room for error were embedded in the business plan because there was no alternative. There wasn't reliable information out there to show us how to operate, buy, underwrite, or anything else.”

Cedar Creek Capital: Leveraging stability to drive long-term success

Cedar Creek didn’t suffer from high debt leverage or other financial circumstances that tend to cause business failures during tough economic times. Rather, it maintained a financial position that fostered internal stability despite external chaos.

“We learned during our 20 years in the industry that we are not in control of markets, we never know what will happen, and we cannot predict the future,” Osborne shares. “Thriving in that environment requires sticking to the fundamentals, protecting your downside, and taking a position that allows you to manage short-term market fluctuations. In the end, it’s not about timing markets, but taking advantage of them.”