Your Personal Map to Self-Storage Success!!!

You need a business plan. Every successful business has one, do you? If you don’t know where you are going with your business, how are you going to know when you have achieved your goals? You need to decide where you want to go with your business. Do you want to own one or two self-storage properties, or do you want to own an empire? Are you going to buy properties out of state? If you want to own more than just a few self-storage properties, how are you going to do that?

The first thing that you need to do to start building your self-storage business is you need to create a business plan. If you haven’t already got a business plan for each property you own, you need to make a business plan for each property. But this is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about an overarching business plan for you and your company. Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years, 25 years? Will you still be doing the same thing that you are today, or will you be on a beach somewhere relaxing?

Let's start by traveling into the future 1 year. How many properties did you buy this year? Is that number realistic? If you are going to buy 1, 6 or 12 properties, then how are you going to find them? Who are you going to get to manage them? Where are they going to be located? How will you finance them? Will you be bringing in partners? If so, who do you have in mind. When are you going to talk to them and how are you going to present your ideas? Take a minute to write down all of your ideas. Do you feel like you need to bring in a mentor? If so, who? Do you have a good power team in place or are there some people you need to replace or add to your team? If you are looking out of area, do you have the right people in those areas? Do they specialize in self-storage?

Now, let’s look 5 years into the future. You are no longer dealing with first-timer mistakes. You have a strong base of properties in place. Now you can really start expanding and stepping back from the properties you own into an overseer role instead of day to day management. Now you have built relationships with banks, and they want to work with you. You know people in the industry, and you can reach out to those people to back you up or partner with you. So how are you going to expand? How are you going to take your business to the next level? What can you do differently? Where can you go? Who can you network with now that you have more experience?

Now, let’s go 15 years into the future. Your properties are streamlined. You have built more of an empire, what are you going to do? Are you going to continue to expand? How many square feet of self-storage do you want to own? Are you going to start spending more time doing the things that you always wanted to do? Are you ready to start taking a more passive role in your investments? Is it time to bring in more partners? What does your dream look like? How are you going to make it a reality?

If you don’t know what you want to accomplish, how will you know you accomplished it? Take the time to really think about what you want to do and write it down. Take the time to ask yourself the hard questions so that you can start working on the answers to those questions. You can make self-storage work for you; you just need to have a plan in place. As always, happy investing.