Shreve is likely to become the district’s next congressman given that Pence defeated his Democrat challenger by 35 percentage points in the last election. He says his experience in the self-storage industry, which includes serving as chairman of the board of directors for the Self Storage Association (SSA), will be valuable while serving in Congress. “The experience of working together with people to get things done is what I’ll take with me,” Shreve says.

After growing up in Indianapolis, Shreve attended Indiana University Bloomington (IU), where he developed a strong interest in both real estate and politics. “I came as a freshman undecided but had two internship experiences that were formative,” he says.

Choosing political science as an elective, Shreve landed an internship with a senator in Washington, D.C. He graduated with a BA in political science from IU; he also earned a master’s degree in international studies and diplomacy from the University of London and an MBA in Agribusiness from Purdue University.

After Shreve completed an internship with a real estate lobbyist in Washington, he came back determined to gain experience in real estate. He applied for a summer internship with a strip center developer. “One of the partners was looking for a use for some leftover ground adjacent to their strip center,” Shreve recalls. “Self-storage was new. My time was cheap, so one of the partners had me vet the idea of doing small self-storage on some of the extra ground.” Over the course of the summer, he researched the concept.

“With grid paper, I started laying out storage buildings,” Shreve says. He found that there wasn’t enough square footage left over for an office and a manager’s apartment, which is how most facilities were operated at that time in the late 1980s. “There was only enough ground for 25,000 square feet on some of these parcels,” he says.

The partners decided to forgo self-storage and focus on retail development instead, but it was the germ of an idea for Shreve. “I was getting ready to graduate the next year and thought I had something that would work in terms of small self-storage, centralized, and without a manager on site,” he says. “I was determined to cut my teeth on that notion and do a couple of locations.” His plan was to graduate to apartments or retail developments. After trying his hand at other commercial real estate types, however, he found he did best with self-storage.

Simplicity was key to the strategy. “I was just doing something like 50-unit, pre-engineered steel buildings.” Shreve says. “Simple construction, not fenced, not paved.” He began to build a small portfolio of storage facilities under the Storage Express brand, which he founded in 1993. “The secret sauce was the simple operating platform,” Shreve says. The stores were remotely managed, allowing him to allocate human resources across locations. The phone number 1-800-STOREIT was prominent on all of the buildings at these locations.

Calls came into a small, two-person office. “We rented space over the phone and mailed out rental agreements with a return address envelope, asking customers to return the agreement with a check or money order,” Shreve says. “Then we would cross our fingers and hope we got it back. Most of the time, it worked. It was as simple as that.”

Visibility was critical in the pre-Google days, and Shreve had to turn down opportunities to buy some otherwise suitable but low-visibility locations. In that era, customers found storage facilities through the Yellow Pages or by driving past the property. “I wasn’t competing with algorithms on online searches,” Shreve says. “I didn’t need a McDonald’s on the corner, but I needed locations people would drive by.”

As Shreve added more locations, field service reps moved around to the various properties for lock checks and maintenance. “It was rudimentary but innovative in the way that we had multiple locations without a manager,” he says. “It was simple and scalable. I could do that with one person in the office and one field tech to take care of a dozen little properties, or I could have two people in the office and two in the field to take care of another dozen properties.”

The industry responded to Shreve’s unmanned business model with passing curiosity. “Some thought it was novel,” he says, “but few believed the managerless approach was likely to be broadly adopted. Most believed customers would be unwilling to rent without the human interaction.”

Yet the simple strategy proved successful and Shreve continued to add to the Storage Express portfolio over the next few decades. “I bought properties in years when properties were on sale and it was a good time to buy, and I built properties in years when it was more profitable to build,” he says. “I acted as general contractor and we got pretty good at building facilities.” They built a consistent product, which Shreve says is important in a business you want to scale up.

There were bumps in the road, of course, such as the tail end of the global financial crisis that hit private self-storage operators hard in 2008 and 2009. “It was tough sledding for all of us,” Shreve says. “I was thankful to make it through unscathed.” Despite obstacles, Storage Express became the largest self-storage company headquartered in Indiana, with 125 stores across six states.

In 2020, Shreve thought market conditions were favorable for beginning to sell some of his self-storage interests. In June 2022, Extra Space acquired Storage Express’ remaining 107 remote storage properties across Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Kentucky. The sale also included 14 future development sites. Extra Space announced that total consideration for the acquisition was approximately $590 million. Shreve was appointed to the company’s board of directors but resigned from the position this year to avoid a potential conflict of interest while running for office.

During the years Shreve was building his self-storage business, he stayed active in the SSA, served in several leadership positions for Indiana University, and ventured into Indiana politics. He served twice on the Indianapolis City-County Council, served on the Police Staffing Commission, and was a commissioner on the city’s Metropolitan Development Commission. He and his wife, Mary, are known for their generosity in lending their financial support to scholarship funds, animal welfare needs, and other local causes.

Early in 2023, Shreve took his first big venture into politics when he ran for mayor of Indianapolis against an incumbent who was running for a third term in a Democrat stronghold. In a largely self-funded mayoral campaign—the city’s most expensive to date—Shreve battered his opponent with nine months of campaign ads attacking the incumbent’s record on public safety and other issues.

Winning as a Republican in the overwhelmingly Democrat city was a longshot. Ultimately, he couldn’t turn the tide. As to why he chose to run against such improbable odds, Shreve stated in his concession speech that “This wasn’t a head decision. This was a heart decision.” The upside was that during the pervasive campaign, he was able to get the attention of the city at large and share his concerns over growing crime, needed infrastructure improvements, and other issues. At the time, Shreve had no plans to seek any other office.

Two months later, Pence announced that he wouldn’t be seeking reelection to the House of Representatives in Shreve’s district. Shreve saw it as a better opportunity to serve the people of Indiana. “I thought, ‘Here is someplace I can really make a difference,’” he says. In February, Shreve filed as a candidate on the last day to file for the 6^th District primary. In May, he won the nomination in a tight race.

Although Shreve’s focus has shifted from operating a business to running a vigorous political campaign, self-storage is never far from his mind. He is still an active member of the SSA and serves on the board of the Indiana Self Storage Association. He says much of the association’s work involves keeping on top of legislation that affects the industry.

“Most of what our operators need happens on a statehouse level,” Shreve says. “When I was going through the chairs with the SSA, all of our efforts were focused on the general assemblies from state to state because that’s really where the touchpoints are for self-storage.”

The big issues are property tax policy, lien sale notification requirements, vehicle and title transfer issues, and updating of the construction codes and standards, none of which happens at a federal level. “So, we were always heavily focused on advocacy work at the general assembly level,” Shreve says. “We spent a disproportionate amount of time on states like California, where they had the moratorium on evictions or rate changes. For three years, California was locked down and it was a real challenge for smaller operators.”

All states remain under watch, however. “There was a councilman in Miami who wanted to regulate the colors that self-storage could be in,” Shreve says. “You have to be mindful of, attuned to, and get in front of efforts at overregulation at the state and even at the local level.” For example, he notes that Ohio charges a sales tax on storage rentals that is both burdensome to collect and is an additional cost for the renter.

“We just have to be vigilant,” Shreve says. “I would encourage everyone to stay involved with their industry associations and to keep their ears to the ground and share information. When some menacing legislation or threat surfaces, let your industry association know it so we can get on it. Some things can move pretty quickly, especially at the local, city, or county level.”

At those levels, he says a challenging ordinance could be introduced and adopted within 45 days, while most bills that go through the general assemblies take six months or so. “The SSA has a bill tracking service that we monitor, and we engage advocacy talent at the state level on an ongoing basis,” Shreve says.

One issue that’s getting a lot of buzz is the potential for legislation—even federal legislation—for self-storage operators accused of price baiting. This involves low promotional rates offered by the large operators that are quickly raised to much higher rates. “The customer thinks, ‘I rent a space for $89 per month, and I have this expectation that it’s going to be that for six months to a year,’” Shreve says. “But some big operators are moving those rates after three months now, and that’s catching the attention of not just consumers but the members of the general assemblies. I think our industry is going to find itself on defense.”

Although the industry has used promotional rates in the past, it would typically be six to nine months before renters received a substantial rate increase. “That’s fair pushback because it does represent a significant change in the way things have traditionally worked,” Shreve says. “In my Storage Express days, we’d raise rates, but we didn’t raise them 30 percent in three months’ time. The really big operators have gotten pretty aggressive on that, and we are seeing some pushback.”

Shreve says that regulations could potentially happen even on a federal level because the companies that are most brazen about doing it are operating nationally. “That could result in some federal regulation being introduced,” he says. “It’s a fair issue to call into question.”

If such legislation is introduced while he serves in Congress, Shreve says he will address the matter with care. “I would work to be quietly helpful by talking to people both in the industry and to colleagues in Congress, including someone who might be authoring the bill, about how we could get the industry to modify or make some changes without actually implementing legislation,” he says. “It’s easier to head off a challenge through quiet communication than to introduce a bill that goes into a law and try to fix it after it’s already been adopted.”

Shreve says the people serving in both the House and Senate come from a variety of industries and those who have a footing in real estate or development can bring their experiences. “We can be helpful in communicating back to our own industries and can help colleagues who may never have been in business at all understand the other side of why we have a practice in place.” he says.

Although Shreve is no longer running a large self-storage operation, he has many thoughts on an industry he calls “great and durable,” and he has some advice for those entering the field. “In some respects, it’s more challenging to get into the industry than it was when I began,” Shreve says. “There’s more and increasingly sophisticated competition out there in both large and smaller markets. In other respects, it’s easier to get into our industry. One can access third-party management services, contract call centers, and access so many other tools that weren’t available to me when I began.”

His advice for new operators? “Don’t run out of cash,” Shreve says. “There are countless businesses that have failed—not because they lacked a great underlying idea, or a viable marketplace, or even top management talent. Rather, they failed because they simply ran out of cash.” He says cashflow management is key to survival in the early years of a business.

In fact, fiscal responsibility is one fundamental principle of running a storage business that Shreve says he will take to Washington, D.C. It’s a key issue on his platform. He notes other things learned through his experience in the industry that he will carry with him to Congress as well: “The value of understanding your market, as in your district and voter demographics. The importance of developing a team. A lawmaker, like a business executive, is only as good or as effective as the bench of talent that he or she staffs up with. The value of relationship building with your peers, in both business and politics.”

Lastly, Shreve says, “Constituents are like customers. They’ll vote with their feet. If you aren’t serving your customers or your constituents, they’ll take their business elsewhere or give their vote to another candidate.”