Magen Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Atomic Storage Group, joins Matt Engfer to break down what really drives success in self storage: disciplined execution, strong fundamentals, and a great team.

In this episode, Magen shares her journey from accounting and consulting to building a national third-party management company. She explains how to evaluate a storage facility, which metrics actually matter, how independent operators can compete in today’s market, and why there’s no substitute for doing the basics well—every single day.

If you’re a self-storage owner, operator, or manager looking for practical insight into scaling sustainably, this conversation delivers real-world perspective without the fluff.

Key Takeaways:

• 0:00 Intro

• 2:30 Magen’s background and the Atomic origin story

• 6:31 The most important metrics in a property audit

• 8:41 Competing as an independent operator today

• 9:43 Managing marketing, operations, and customer experience

• 11:55 Why execution beats strategy

• 14:53 Building a strong, scalable team

• 17:13 Managing a diverse portfolio of facilities

• 18:34 Why hard work and people—not hacks—drive growth

• 20:12 The future of Atomic Storage Group and self storage

• 25:03 What’s next for Cubby in 2026

🔗 Learn more about Atomic Storage Group:
https://atomicstoragegroup.com/

🔗 Learn more about CUBBY:
https://www.cubbystorage.com/

Thanks for watching the Cubby Podcast.

Like, subscribe, and follow for more conversations with leaders shaping the self-storage industry.

#SelfStorage #StorageManagement #CubbyStorage #Operations #Leadership

Transcript

Hey everybody, Matt Engfer here, co-founder and CEO of Cubby. Today on our Students of Storage podcast, we're talking to the one and only Megan Smith from Atomic Storage Group, one of the fastest growing third-party managers in the industry. We dive into her background, the crazy story of Atomic's growth to this point, and we kind of dive into what makes them special, what their edge is, why they're winning so much. And it turns out it's really simple. They got a good team, they're executing well. We had a great conversation. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for joining.

How are you? Thanks for joining. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Yeah, thank you so much as always. It's been, gosh, probably almost four years since I first met you, and you had basically just started Atomic at that point, and Cubby had just started.

I know. I remember you with your laptop at the shows sitting there working.

Yeah. Yeah. Little did we know that four years later you'd be running pretty much the fastest growing third-party management company in town.

Yeah. Still sitting at the laptop though.

I've not escaped that.

That's right. That's right. Yeah.

And you'd be running such an amazing software company.

Yeah.

That's grown fast, that now we're on Cubby and we're excited and everything's implemented and integrated. We're past the transition.

Yeah.

You guys have been awesome clients early in your journey, but I'm excited to have you on board, and your team is awesome. They've been great to work with.

But we want to give people the story of Atomic because it's amazing. It's an interesting story, and there must be a ton of good lessons for a lot of folks in the industry — not only how to run a good operation and a good storage facility that produces results, but how to build an offering that allows you to compete as a third-party manager at the clip you guys are competing at. It's amazing.

Yeah. Thank you.

But let's start with your story. Where are you from? So, where are you from — wow, long walks on the beach to the taco stand, that's what I'm about. Oh, no. So I grew up in Louisiana. In college, I worked for a company that was building a property, a storage property. I went to school for accounting and marketing. So I knew I liked business, always liked business. I was the kid painting rocks, selling them in my grandmother's hair salon when I was younger. So I've always been entrepreneurial. So I worked at a storage property out of college.

Didn't know anything about the business. I did that for a couple of years, and a CPA came in and said, "Hey, you should go work in accounting, you have a degree in accounting." So I did the tax thing for five years, got my CPA license, and wanted to start my own firm and honestly just be home with kids. That was the time in my life I wanted more family time.

Yeah.

So I started doing consulting for only self storage and auditing. Did that for about five years and traveled. And then I wanted to own. Had no idea how to do that. So I drove around and looked at buildings, and I was like, "There's a building, it has a door and windows — like, what do you do next?" I had no clue.

And a contractor that I knew hired me, or called me, and they were doing some syndication. So I ended up getting in that group. I got into the conversion world. I learned the development, took all the CCIM classes in Florida, learned all the development, the due diligence, the background, the investment side of things. Took investor money, and Atomic was born from that. So I had to run the properties. I hated it. It was the worst job I ever had.

I was like, this is — I used to work two days a week doing accounting and travel, and now I'm working a thousand hours, and this is horrible, why am I doing this? So I ended up having a few partners come aboard at that point in time, and diversified, and we started growing Atomic since then. And I think we just work really hard. We have a great team now. We started doubling portfolios during COVID — right after COVID, remote management became popular.

We had set up Atomic to be remote way before everybody else. So the first property was New Orleans, second was New York, third was Idaho. So we were ahead of the curve there and were able to really capitalize on that. It was never built locally and then expanded — it was always built nationally and then infilled closer, was kind of the way that we did it. So we worked hard, not smart, unfortunately.

But that was a lot of our growth, a lot of good word of mouth. A lot of our customers grew since then and are still growing, acquiring — a ton of our growth over the past six months has just been current customer acquisitions.

People that have the time and space to do what they love to do and trust us to manage the property. So it's been really good. We have a great team now, and all the seats are finally filled, as you know, building a business —

it's always a musical chairs of who do you need and what can they do, and stepping back to build the next piece of the engine and the next piece and the next piece. So that's what I really love to do.

Wow, a lot — so much there that you just ran through very quickly.

Congratulations.

I tend to do that, I think. But would you agree or disagree with this statement — you're kind of an accountant at heart, a business person? No, no, I am such a bad accountant. So I like accounting because I like the money part of it, and I like understanding the levers of it. I have really learned as I've built this business that I am a builder at heart.

So I want to build — I think in systems, and I want to build in systems and put all the pieces in place, and then I want somebody else to take it and turn it into operations and make it work. That's where I'm the happiest. So I can see the cracks, I can see what the issue is, what the downstream effects are, what the eight layers of that one thing is going to be. Fix all that, have somebody else implement it, and then I go on and do something else. So I'm a swim-lane splasher — when I see issues at the company, I jump in, mess around, fix it, leave. That is what I love to do.

So accounting, sitting there doing the numbers, is actually not us.

Well, you know the numbers background.

When you're looking at the numbers — we'll call it financial statements — for a storage facility or a portfolio, what's your process? What are you looking for? I'm sure it feels natural and obvious to you at this point, but you've probably seen more of these than almost anybody in the industry.

Yeah.

Where are you looking for opportunity or problems?

So honestly, I look at their marketing first. I look at revenue, I flip to marketing. I look at their Google My Business, website, brand, phone number, pictures — customer-facing first, right? So how do they position themselves in the market, what does that look like? That tells you a lot about the back end of how it actually works. And then — are they not capitalizing on some of the value streams, tenant protection, things like that? Are the numbers messy? Are they mixing in personal and business? They're probably not very structured. Do they not have any late fees? They probably don't have very good procedures and processes — they're being too nice.

If you don't have late fees, you're probably not raising rates, too, because those two things go together. So I look at it like — what's the story of how are they doing it, what are they doing,

and where are the opportunities. But I find it starts with marketing and how you display your business to everyone. How's the website look, how's the software look, do they make it easy, do they have good pictures, do they optimize their business? Can they compete? Because right now in storage — when I started it forever ago, you could build it and literally sit there and answer your phone and be fine. It was the best industry because you would do nothing. And now it's not that way.

There's a lot of advancements coming in,

and there's a lot of technology. You can still do things very basic, but you're not going to win big — you're just going to stay in this ballpark. So adding in advancements, software, smart software, technology, intelligent ways of managing revenue, actually making it a business, takes time and work because you're having to put things together and make sure it all makes sense. And that's where I see independent owner-operators falling behind. A lot of the REITs just dominate the online marketing now — pay-per-click, you can just blow through, you know, $6,000 a month.

You're not going to do that on a 200-unit property. It makes no sense. So how do you compete being a smaller owner-operator in the market today? Most are almost forced — I'm seeing it, I'm seeing it on LinkedIn.

I'm talking to people, I'm hearing it at shows. They're saying, "I just can't compete." So their choices are to sell, which they don't necessarily want to do, continue to do what they've been doing, which isn't going to get them there, or choose third-party management.

And then they're having to say, "Is this person going to manage it like I would?

Are they going to care? Are they going to pay attention to it? Will they answer the phone when I call them? Am I going to be one of, you know, 500, and they're just going to run it their way? What does this look like?" And that was kind of the thought I went through when I was deciding if I wanted to keep managing or start a company. And I decided to start a company and do it the way I want. And then it just started being for other people.

Okay.

Amazing. That's so interesting to hear you talk through that. What is it that you've tried to build in from the marketing perspective, since that's so important for you? We've talked about this in the past. What are you guys trying to build at Atomic that is different — how do you express your edge there?

Yeah.

No, it's a great question. So we have an entire marketing department that — the marketing team built it for us.

It's amazing. They run all the pay-per-click, they do all the website, all the optimization. We make sure Google My Business pictures are good, social media is posted, local listings are claimed — everything tells the story of the property, right? So everything, when you look first, it's findable, then the reviews are good and the presence looks good. And then as people go through that funnel of like, okay, I need storage — hey, here's a company, do they look good, do they have good reviews, are the pictures good,

would I feel safe there — they call or interact online. That experience needs to be really good. So your agents need to be on point answering the phone. Your website needs to be consistent, correct, have good discounts, good pricing, good amenities — tell the story of what it is. And then the checkout process needs to be really smooth and easy. And then when you show up to the site, it needs to appear as it did online. So you don't want weeds as tall as I am or trash everywhere, right? You want that whole story. So that is management, all of it.

So you're managing the appearance of the digital asset, you're managing the actual operational flow and structure that customers interact with, and then the actual asset — to make sure the weeds are clean, the locks work, the doors work, the units are clean — making sure all of that is easy. And it sounds super simple because it's storage, right, just make sure the unit's clean — but there's a lot of moving parts. We're in 26 states now, 150 properties, I believe.

Yeah, with people who work — you know, we have 20-unit properties where somebody shows up part-time, to 700-unit properties where they're there every day.

So having that quality and that scale and that consistent result is difficult with the widespread that we do.

Is that the secret? Is it — you just need good marketing, you need to be thoughtful about how you're setting rates and presenting your prices with discounts and amenities and things like that, you need your properties to be well-run, clean, etc.

Is it that simple? And the hard part is just doing it well every day.

Yeah.

Um, and that's the reason that you guys are winning business — because you figured out how to just operate the company exceptionally well.

Yeah, that's what I think. I think it is that simple. I think it's storage. I tell my team all the time, we're not doing open heart surgery, nobody's dying, this is self storage. Let's just keep — make the basics work really, really well, right? And then I think people pick us because we care a lot. Like, I care a lot, a lot more than I should. So I'm going to hire people that care a lot. My standard is to care a lot. And everything in life is about execution.

So you can have the grandiose plan, you can have the budget, you can have the marketing, you can have whatever presentation you want — the real thing comes when rubber meets the road, you execute. Can you do it right? Do you follow up with customers? Do you apologize when you mess up? Do you set rates appropriately? Do you balance rate increases with people staying and moving out in some smaller towns? Do you look at what the asset needs and cater to what that asset needs? Because 700 units is different than 20 units in a very tertiary market.

That's not even tertiary anymore, or whatever the fourth or fifth one is — I had to Google it the other day, I was like, there's now a word for this.

So just making sure that that works, and I think we have a good reputation in the industry for being a company that really just tries hard and works hard — and so do a lot of other owner-operators as well, or operators, management companies. And people just say nice things about us, and one thing leads to the other, and thankfully we have great people that have worked with us. So even when we do drop the ball, because we do — we're human — they're gracious about it, we fix it, we move on, we make a plan, we do it better.

Running a business is you do the best with the information you have today, and should that data set change, you have to adapt to that and say, what else can I do, how can I change it, what tool can I bring in — is this a person, is it a process, is it a tool?

What do I need to change to get a cutting edge on this? If I'm not renting, is it rates, is it market, is it signage, is it a banner, is it the person — diagnose those things and fix it, and then get that turned around.

Where can we cut expenses and increase revenue, how do we be partners in it so that everybody wins — because some management companies just want to suck fees out, that's their job, right? So we try not to do that. This is a long-term thing for us, that we want really good word of mouth, and we just go above and beyond, probably too much, but —

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I think my primary observation, just watching you guys get started working with us, is that you just work really hard — and that's not just you, that's the whole team, is what I've observed. You moved really quickly.

And a lot of the people working at Atomic today in important positions — managing teams, your marketing, your operations, your accounting — all of these folks have come on within the last two years, year and a half maybe.

Yeah, two years is probably the longest person that we have. Year and a half to a year, some six months.

Where did you find all these people?

They're like — your team is amazing.

People reach out to us. It's kind of magical. Yeah, I have somebody else coming on in January. They reach out — people reach out. We're promoting in-house. We've had really good people that work with us, and I don't think it's anything I did — I think we're just blessed to have that, it's awesome.

They're awesome. It's been great. It was a very small crew at the beginning, and we were wearing all the hats. As you probably know, building your company — it's been nice to take some off and then realize what you do like to do and what you're good at, and see how good other people are at things you thought you were okay at. And I'm like, I'm terrible.

You're like, I should have taken that hat off a year ago.

I'm like, here, wear it — proud now, you earned it. Yes.

Yeah.

It's so fun to watch people just love what they do and do it so well and take such ownership over it and care so much. And I get to care a little less because they care so much, right? So I'm like, "You got that, I can take that off my shoulders, on to the next thing, on to the next thing." And it's been great, it's been awesome to watch that team develop, have that support, have them support each other.

After we did the Cubby move, I gave everybody two bonus PTO days, so everybody got a little breather of space because they needed it. Going through that transition, which you guys made so easy — I really appreciate that, but it was still a massive undertaking. Yeah, it's a big deal. So yeah, it's been good. We're blessed with a really amazing team. I have always been somebody who liked to work alone.

So it's been really great to have such a great team of support now. And even our clients that we work for are all awesome — we have a no-jerks rule. If you're a jerk, I don't — life's too short, I'm not doing it. So the people we work for are great. It's fun. It's fun to help them, help them build their company, watch them buy new properties, watch them expand. We just really enjoy it.

And you have a really diverse customer set — you're serving all sorts of operators, it's not like you're the third-party management arm for one private investor or something like that. That's really cool.

Yeah, we have a good bit of private equity that have portfolios. We have a handful of kind of more like syndication, that our friends and family raise. And then we have — we've always kept a certain percent of our business intentionally for people who just want to get into it but don't want to mess it up. I love those, that's kind of my heart. They just own one — they own one next to their house, they own one they built with their kids, they own one, whatever. So we have a variety of that — single owner-operators.

Portfolios are obviously wonderful to work with because you can get 20 or 30 and deal with one person, right, and have one meeting.

And then private equity too, that came in during COVID, that just needs good operations — they have a high level of reporting important to their investors and their banks, whatever situation their loans are in. So we have to be able to help give them really good data, really good reporting, really good handholding, white glove almost on the back end, the reporting side of things.

But that's a lot of fun too, because you get to see how they all do it and how they handle their own investor side of things. It's like being in 150 businesses all at once.

You can tell what I've been digging for here is like the secret, or the trick that you're playing.

Have you figured it out? What is it?

That's the lesson I'm learning just listening to you — there isn't one. You're just a good person that people want to be around, and you work hard every day. Yeah, in storage, where it's a small world, the results compound and people talk and you earn a reputation that brings you growth and more clients.

Yeah. Well, really straightforward.

I try, and it's my team — I could not do — I don't think I could do anything now. We have such a good team, which is nice. So it's really cool. I actually was on client calls this week for the first time, it's been a while. Our VP of Ops now runs that, and I jumped in — he's been out the past few days, so I jumped in and I was like, I am not prepared, I'll just be here, right?

And it was cool to just see the team — the district managers, the marketing people — they ran it, they did a good job, they knew what to do, they knew how to report. They run that business like it's their business and they care about it, and they can do that at 20, 30 properties. I can't do that at 140 properties. So you have to have that level of people paying attention and caring and watching, and it's a full teamwork sport, right? It's not one person's going to be good at everything. So we have marketing covered, operations covered, accounting covered for each property.

And it's been really cool to see that grow, everybody work together, and have the company just kind of become what it is. And I'm excited about the next year, about what's coming for us.

Cool. So how many properties did you have management of January 1st of this year, 2025?

About — I don't know, maybe 100.

Okay. So you think you added 50 this year? Okay.

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay. Well, it's December 19th, '25.

Everybody's about to go on some sort of vacation for the holiday, hopefully. What, when you look at next year, what happens at Atomic? What are you thinking for 2026?

I have pages of plans.

Yeah, that's my fun — me and ChatGPT at night make the plans for Atomic, right, as everyone does now with their best friend. So we're going to keep growing. We're bringing on a business developer. We moved one of our internal district managers to call center and auctions — she's going to be in charge of communication, continue to build the solid base. The rule right now is what works at 150 needs to work at 300. So everything we're doing needs to scale to that next jump. I see a lot of potential in the industry of just people who are having trouble competing.

Loans are coming due, cash management's put in place, SBA is getting heavy — for whatever reason, people want to sell, but they're still not quite there yet. So I think they're going to be looking to third-party management to say, how do I plug into a bigger engine — I want to make the Atomic machine that is a REIT-level of service, data, reports, how we provide information — but also the smaller owner-operator touch of, we do actually care about your property, Mr. one-person owner, I know you, I know your property.

We want to make sure that we're taking care of you. So how do you balance that, remain profitable as a management company, continue to give raises, bonuses, pay your people well, have the right people in the right seats. And that's what I love to do, is building that, moving the chess pieces to figure out what's the best mix to make this thing work in the best magical way. So I think we're going to grow, we're going to offer new services, we're going to continue to build out intelligent ways of growing. I don't like chasing the shiny toy just because it shines.

So what's the smartest thing to do that's going to create the biggest results for us and our customers is what we always look at, filter through. And then growing our team and giving them more knowledge and appreciation and encouragement and helping them grow throughout their career, because the happier and more engaged they are, the better the company becomes, because everybody's having fun doing it.

Awesome. Well, it seems like you're on your way. I know you've invested a lot of time and effort into your new data warehouse, your reporting infrastructure. I think it looks like you're ready for 300 properties.

What does getting to 300 unlock for you, other than just growth for growth's sake?

Growth for growth's sake, right, it sounds good. There's not a lot — it's just me, it's not like we have debt or anything like that. I really just think there's always a need in management, no matter what industry. It is a hard business to manage a company. It is a grind, right, it's tough.

There's just always a need for really good service there, and people really appreciate it when it's done well, most of the time. I think storage is no exception to it. There's a lot of really good operators out there. I'm seeing a lot of people who were in acquisitions pivoting to management because they need the fees, because they can't get the acquisition fees right now. So people should just be careful of that, right — just because you can build your own doesn't mean you can do it for third party. It's different, there's a different fiduciary duty involved. So a lot of it is really just growth for growth's sake.

It gives us the capacity to pay people better, have better seats, have less pressure on everyone. We do work really hard, but I also want to work really smart, not have everybody overwhelmed. As a startup, those first few years you're just grinding, and as you mature into a better company, you're able to have a little bit more of a breath. So I think that's important.

And yeah, just keep growing and providing good service for the industry and having a good time. It's too fun to stop. What am I going to do, lay on the couch? I mean, yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so.

That sounds great. You know, sounds like a perfect place to send it off into the new year — grow, give everybody some more space to do their jobs. It sounds awesome, and I think you're in a great position. Your team is there, your tech is there, your data is there,

and your reputation speaks for itself in the industry.

I can't wait to see what you do. Thank you for spending the time. It was awesome.

Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. What about Cubby? What's 2026?

Oh, man.

Big — you know, growth is the name of the game. We started this year — we were relatively small at the beginning of the year, but we made a lot of progress over the course of the year.

And we want to triple it next year. So we'll see — you'll see us on the road, you'll see a lot more of us at the trade shows, and doing a bit more from a marketing perspective that we're excited about.

And other than that, just continuing to refine the product, features, make it simpler, easier, faster. And we'll just keep on doing what we do, just like you guys.

Yeah.

Well, you guys have a great reputation, you built an awesome team. It's so fun to interact with everyone and see what you've done. And yeah, it's really impressive, and I'm really excited to be working with you.

Awesome. Thank you, Megan, for joining.

Yeah, thank you.

Have a good one.