Chris Berg - the AI Storage Guy Shares How to Maximize Your Deals Using AI

THE SELF STORAGE REPORT — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode: Chris Berg - the AI Storage Guy Shares How to Maximize Your Deals Using AI Guest: Noah Starr — Co-Founder & CEO, TractIQ Host: Chris Berg — Abernathey Development Recorded: May 26, 2026 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9c2FZ-y1xA Key topics: Building 4 AI agents for initial analysis, zoning, scoring and underwriting; a self-built CRM using Replit and Claude with no tech background; an MCP server connecting the AH CRM to Claude; roughly 1,000 deals tracked with 450 dead and 284 in source; re-underwriting deals every 3, 6 or 12 months as a compounding effect; Whisper voice dictation to drive the agents; TractIQ geocoding, demographics and pricing data; a $219 24-month CC blended rate on site 1; auto-promotion from source to screening at a score of 50 or more; a scoring rubric weighting rental rate 40%, supply scarcity and demand 30%, market demand 10, entitlement risk 15 and a 5-point corridor bonus; $260-plus 10x10 CC rates scoring 21 points versus a $185 floor at 9; a California focus; running analysis from a phone during a lunch meeting Note: Speaker attribution reconstructed from raw captions. Light cleanup of transcription errors only; wording preserved. Timestamps and YouTube chapter markers removed. Turns marked [attribution inferred] could not be attributed with certainty. ————————————————————————————— Chris Berg: So, I am right now currently building out 4 agents. So, one for the initial analysis, one for zoning, one for scoring which I'll share, and then one for underwriting. But, I want to think and I'm going to steal your word from a couple weeks ago, Noah. One of the things that's been really, really powerful for us, I essentially built my own CRM. And what I want people to realize is I know nothing about tech, okay? So, I'm utilizing a thing called Replit, and I'm utilizing uh Claude. So, I built our CRM, which this is the dashboard, and then I built an MCP for our CRM. Now, why does that matter? Because basically now my MCP, excuse me, my CRM can talk to Claude and communicate back and forth with other tools that I'm using. So, this is our dashboard. I'm going to walk through just a quick example here to share. What I get really excited about with this dashboard, Noah, is the fact that this is how we're basically tracking and monitoring potential deals, right? So, I've also got a dead column uh way over here to the far right. Now, the reason this is important is because this allows me to compound. I mean, imagine now right now I've got roughly, you know, 1,000 deals. If you look at I've got 450 dead, 284 in my source, some other screening, closed, whatnot. But, once this thing is at 10,000 deals, the beautiful thing about this is because of the MCP, I can literally, which you'll see in a moment, talk to my computer and re-underwrite deals every 6 months, 3 months, every 12 months, whatever, and see if hey, maybe that thing didn't work 12 months ago, maybe it works today. So, there's this compounding effect. Where also what I'm doing with this is being able to help Claude get better every time we do this, so it can get more refined and better at helping me underwrite the best deals um really in the country, even though we're focused right now on California. So, that's the CRM, that's the compounding piece. We're scoring things. I've got different agents. I want to share with you how I'm utilizing what Noah's put together. And the impact that that's having on our business. I mean, really immediately cuz again, I can keep all these potential sites in the CRM and then let things compound. So, have you ever used Whisper Noah? Noah Starr: Uh the voice? Yeah. Yeah, I've used that. Chris Berg: So, that's what I use just to give people an idea. So, you can see here I'll say, um and I'm going to do this I'm going to keep this super simple today, but uh go to the AH CRM. I want you to grab 2 sites from the source column that you've not previously run through Agent 1 and run them through Agent 1 and then I want you to set it up so I can just simply copy and paste your instructions into Agent 2. Can you do that? So, I've got instructions in Agent 1. And so, it's going to go now as you can see, it goes to the CRM with the MCP. It's going to grab 2 of those I just showed you. I think there was like 250, 300 sites in the unsourced or excuse me, in the source column. So, he's going to now search for 2 sites that they haven't previously looked at. Finds 2 of them. And now it's going to run because of the instructions I've given it to go and search TractIQ and utilize TractIQ information. You'll see here it's going to kind of run through because it's already in that source column. What's powerful about this and again, Noah, ask questions or poke holes in this, but I essentially can go and I can run I can get a list of 10 sites, 25 sites. As this gets better, I'll be able to grab a list of 200 sites, throw it into Agent 1, it'll do its initial run through. Noah Starr: It is really cool. Wait, scroll down. So, now it automatically knows to geocode it using the TractIQ. It's now pulling the demographics from TractIQ. It's now pulling pricing and you built your own deal engine on top of our data so that you can have your own agents underwriting sites. Chris Berg: Exactly. So, this will take me through Agent 1, which will give me kind of a brief demographic analysis. Then what it's going to do is it's going to give me a copy and paste that I'll put into Agent 2. And the beautiful thing is I refine these agents, eventually this is all going to just be one simple hit a button and it'll go do it for me. Um but then I put in my Agent 2 is my zoning agent, so it does a very thorough job on going through city documents and looking at zoning aspects. And then once this is done, just to give people an idea of how it works. Now I then I'll share with them what I'm up to with Agent 3. Um so here's the site 1. It gives me a 24-month, you know, CC blended rate of 219 bucks per TractIQ. Now [clears throat] it's going through site 2. Now, a couple things to note, I don't know off the top of my head here how big these sites are. I don't know what the pricing is. So, again, this is all first iterations. Even what you saw in the CRM is sort of first iteration. There's definitely work to be done there. But, this is just to give people an idea of how powerful it is what Noah has put out here at TractIQ with the MCP. Because what's beautiful about this right now, whether I've got 2 in here, 10 in here, 200, while it's doing this, I'm now talking to brokers, sending emails, doing the things that I should be doing, right? You know, shaking hands and kissing babies kind of thing. While my tech is doing all this work. Noah Starr: And and Chris, I'd like to drive the point home. You also can do this from your phone, right? This is the analysis that we did together on Claude of the demographics of LA. Here's all the pricing trends. So, you can leave your computer right now, go to a lunch meeting and have it continue to run um on your phone um and like what's the point? Like what why is this so important, right? I think in this case it's you can 1,000X not just the deals you look at, but also the quality information brought initially, right? Like you think about initially screening a deal 5 years ago. You might look at like 4 or 5 things. Now you can genuinely bring all of that deep underwriting data and immediately so that potentially maybe if you were going to miss a site 5 years ago because you didn't have time to go really understand the dynamics, now you can understand the dynamics much faster and also focus on what your superpower is, right? Like Chris, your superpower might not be building memos and models. It could be developing relationships. It could be meeting with owners. It could be meeting with brokers. It could be the human aspect that like requires your presence and your brain and your integrity, not how great can you move with Excel keyboard shortcuts. Chris Berg: Dude, that's a Thank you, Noah, for pointing that out because Excel is not my it's not my jam, right? I mean now with Claude it makes it much easier, but I'm not going to sit there and do a bunch of formulas. That's just not my jam, but talking to you, talking to people, I love doing that. I got to say kind of embarrassed I didn't know this about myself, but I have loved building stuff, which I'm going to share with you guys in a minute, something else that um Noah has helped me build with the MCP, but here's what's awesome. Again, I take this, I can basically copy this, I'll throw this into Agent 2, it's going to run the zoning aspect of it, and then it's going to give me and now keep in mind what's beautiful about this, Noah, every time I do this cuz watch this. I can just to see so people can see. Can you make sure you put these notes inside the CRM with each one of these site cards? Can you confirm that that's been done? Hm. So now all these notes are in the CRM and it's there forever, right? So that's the beauty where again, if I go back 6 months from now or 12 months from now and in this site didn't work today, but let's say it's still being listed or it's off market and I you know, haven't had a chance to connect with the owner or whatnot. Boom, it's all right there and I can go, "Hey." And simply just talk to my computer, go, "Hey, can you go and re-underwrite 222325 Staffing Boulevard Knoxville?" Boom, and it'll re-underwrite it, redo the zoning, you know, whatever it is that I want it to do, right? Um so that's really powerful. Now when I run it through Agent 2, then I'm going to take it through Agent 3. Here's where it gets to be really fun. And then I'll show you this real quick. Agent 3 I'm going to show you in a minute is a scoring rubric that we built. Again, thanks to Noah's tech. But I've also got it automatically set up that if I get a score of like I think I lowered it to like 50, but if it's 50 or more, it'll auto me move automatically move that site from source to screening so that I can now take a deeper dive in it and then obviously move it to underwriting and then whatever in the next steps are. So just to have some fun with this, here's something that I built um again, thanks to what Noah was able to put together. This is a site scoring rubric. Noah, you and I think looked at this recently, but if there's anybody out there watching that's got some feedback, would love it. Um what you can do, and I may make this public, but you can essentially put an address in here. Again, thanks to TractIQ. Hit look up. I did this one yesterday, so I don't know how this is going to work today, but it should fill in all these fields. And then it should score it, which I think it was an 80 yesterday, so I'm assuming it'll be 80 tomorrow. Or today, excuse me. Yeah, there you go. So, you can see, it'll give you the 24-month blended rate, projects in the pipeline. Um the the zoning stuff isn't accurate, so that's not really fair. But, the point is is what we're doing is building out scores again to help us sort through sites more efficiently, like you said, to 10 100 1,000X um what we're up to. And this is the rubric we've created so far. We're giving rental rate 40% of the score, supply scarcity, the demand score is in here, 30%, market demand 10, entitlement risk 15, and then just some contact bonus around is it a high-traffic corridor or what not, 5 points. And then, this is really built for California, as you'll see, cuz the rates are so high, but this is just to give people an idea of how we're scoring things from a rubric perspective, where if the rate's 260 or more for a 10 by 10 CC 24-month blended, that gets 21 points. If it's down here 185, kind of our floor, it gets 9 points. Um so, what's great is that I will then put from Agent 2 into Agent 3 a list of again, 2, 10, 100, it'll score those, give me its analysis, and then I can decide, hey, do I want to continue to focus on these? What's really nice is this rubric's also got our demand scoring here. Um and some other aspects. — END OF TRANSCRIPT —