Self Storage- Why Storage? Why me?

[Henry Clark]

This topic got erased before.  I am not trying to sell anything or promote myself.  Giving information and experience freely. Would like folks to know who is giving the information and what the "angle" is.

We are finishing our last storage location.  Moving on to a different part of our life's and a new investment (Teak Forestry).  Glad to help others out.

WHY STORAGE, WHY ME?

First of all, don’t trust anything I say. All things related to Storage, “you” can validate. You need to own the info, since its your money.

Second, start small and make your big mistakes early.

My background is as a CPA/Controller/CFO in Small $10mm and large corporations $1bl. Primarily in the manufacturing arena. Have a great wife and son. Everything is/was good in the world. I don’t have a great Pasta recipe to start a restaurant. Not handy with machines. Not a sales person. Don’t want to fix toilets at 10pm on a Saturday and replace soiled carpet on a Sunday. I am diligent, great at managing projects, good at Finances, care for my clients and most importantly can “Take a licking and keep on ticking.” Do you have similar skills? Being a business owner is hard. Developing a new Storage site is harder. Everyone sees “money” when they see a storage location, they don’t see the Risk or hard work to get there.

The first time I thought about having a business was at lunch with an Engineer friend/colleague. Both of us come from the world, of do good in school, work hard and life will be good. Both of us are at the top of our professions. At the lunch, he mentioned one of his friends got a call from his son who was an Engineer in Colorado. “Dad, I’m thinking about buying a Snow Removal company.” The friend thought his son had gone nuts. He had achieved the dream. Did well in school, worked hard and had a good job at a firm. At the time a lot of technical and engineering work was going overseas. Manufacturing was under attack in the US by Free Trade (which is good to a degree). The son said, “They can’t move the Snow, I’ll always have a job or business”.

As I kept working in the corporate world, I started to go through Buyouts, bankruptcies, rapid growth, headquarter movements, Investment firms and family businesses selling. This started me thinking the old days of working 30 years at a company and having security didn’t exist anymore.

The travels to one of my company’s was past an intersection next to an Interstate. It had huge stumps left from a tornado and cattails, because it was low. Made a low offer on the 2 acres and purchased it. Cleaned it up. Got any free dirt in the area I could get. Built it up about 5 feet. Then had to decide what to do with it.

There are no houses near it. Although it is next to an Interstate interchange, there is no reason to get off there. Came up with two ideas. Self storage and a special type of restaurant/entertainment location. Decided to go with Self Storage. Being an Accountant I wanted all of the numbers to help me to come to a 100% decision to invest, but only got to about 65%, couldn’t quite get enough information, then decided to make a leap of faith. The key was I could take the financial hit and it could not be a total failure. There are a lot of resources out there, that I did not seek out or know about. Keep searching for information. At some point you will make a decision to move forward. Again, “Start Small and make your big mistakes early.”.

Six years later we have 8 locations. Six locations in 4 small towns (800 units), less than 5,000 population. Two new locations in a 1mm metro area. One location in Phase one with 229 units, Phase Two and Three will have 200 each. The second location in the same town is in groundwork stage for 330 units. A lot of mistakes made and lessons learned. All of this is self service, managed through my phone.  I never meet a customer.  Good luck on your projects.