Built to Grow: The Origins of Bald Eagle Storage

May 6, 2024

Brendan Daly had always followed his curiosity. After graduating from Cornell he went to work at Lehman Brothers right as the 2008 Financial Crisis expanded from real estate to Wall Street. He then went to business school, which led him to work in tech upon graduation, bringing marketing and lead generation functionality to market. Through that first half of his career, he'd absorbed everything he could about investment banking, local marketing at scale, and business development. He was ready at that point to build something on his own as a real estate entrepreneur. Learning on nights and weekends, he decided that self-storage played to his strengths. The nature of the business would allow him to apply his marketing acumen for a competitive edge, especially in the tertiary markets he decided to target.

He found a perfect starter facility in Ozark, Alabama. What today is Bald Eagle Storage - Downtown Ozark was for sale. It was generally in good shape, just a block from the charming downtown square, and not too intimidating for a first facility at just 200 units.

From there Brendan dug in and got to work, putting in basic capital improvements, cleaning the facility up, and putting together what would become the foundation for his storage platform moving forward. He found a call center he could rely on to answer the phone and follow up with leads. He installed electronic gates and some basic software that allowed him to organize his facility online and understand high-level metrics about his business. It wasn't perfect from the jump - but it was a good enough to give Brendan the confidence that he was on the right path.

He kept looking and found a smaller annex facility 10 minutes down the road that he could market alongside his downtown facility. He jumped on it. Installing basic upgrades and running it remotely with the help of his call center and software, it paired nicely with his downtown facility.

Still he knew he'd need to be managing more units to support the business he wanted. He found another facility in Summerdale, AL just outside Mobile. It was only a few hours drive. Again, the seller's cost eventually penciled out and he jumped on it.

As his operation grew, he wanted more from his legacy software. He knew there was far more he could do with modern marketing technology and he struggled to get a holistic view of his growing business. He wanted more control over his lead flow and ability to drive rentals. He wanted more automation around customer service and phone calls. He wanted simple tools his part time "boots on the ground" could rely on to complete simple tasks.

When he found another large facility, this time in Mississippi, that fit within his "buy box" he again jumped on it. Brendan knew his fledgling business deserved better technology. He assumed he was entering a market stuck with clunky legacy tech built for an operation that looked much different than his would. Then Cubby called.

Brendan quickly switched to Cubby to power his marketing and facility management. Finally, he felt he had modern software that was evolving with the needs of a remote operator in 2024, a foundation on which he could build a serious business.

Brendan was anxious about the transition to a new technology. His call center would have to use a brand new technology and was nervous about Cubby not having an IVR call-to-pay option, which in their experience with other platforms had resulted in an abundance of overdue tenants. The Cubby team heard these concerns, and while confident in the one-click collections links that other clients were leveraging to reduce collections, quickly designed and implemented a call-to-pay option for Brendan's renters. On go-live, Brendan and his call center team were surprised to see how smoothly things went. Collections were indeed reduced by the one-click collections links automated by Cubby and the IVR call-to-pay option was in place for the tenants who preferred it.