Whether you already own self storage facilities or you’re just getting started in the business, you ARE a business owner. There is a skill that is imperative for all business owners:
The ability to Build Trust.
Authentically and genuinely Build Trust.
Every successful business owner has to have the ability to build trust with key stakeholders. These can include:
- Customer
- Investors
- Lenders
- Partners
- Vendors
- Family Members (yes, family members are a very important part of a self storage owners team. If they haven’t bought into your vision, life becomes difficult at best).
If you become for yourself, and then for others, someone who is trustworthy, “count-on-able” (cool word), it goes a long way to building the team necessary to fulfill the vision you hold for yourself, your company, and your life.
Let’s break down the three key components to building trust.
1. BE Trustworthy
This may sound simplistic, but believe me, it is not.
You must first know yourself as someone who is “trustworthy.” Then, and only then, can you be someone who reflects that out for others to see.
There are a couple of components to developing yourself as someone who is trustworthy for yourself, then others.
The first is your relationship to what you say, i.e. your word.
I don’t mean just what you promise, although that could be included. I mean how you relate to what you say to yourself and to others.
Is what you say sacred?
If you say you are going to be somewhere or do something, is it a sacred occasion?
Is it count-on-able?
Is your relationship to it one of a sacred bond?
I all too often catch myself saying to my wife, “I’ll fix that this weekend” just to keep her from going off on me about something around the house.
Then the weekend comes and what I said is totally gone. On Monday, she and I are both aware that it didn’t happen.
In that situation, who I am for myself is someone who has a weak relationship to my word.
For my wife, it is weak or even worse.
As Stephen Covey called it in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I have made a withdrawal from my trust account with my wife.
Make more withdrawals than deposits, you become bankrupt in a relationship.
Fortunately, trust can be restored. That will be discussed in item three.
So the first component of building trust is your relationship to what you say. On a very simple level, it is what you say you are going to do.
If you say you are going to be on a call at noon, is your relationship to it noonish or exactly at 12:00 PM.
If you are on exactly at noon, that tells me you have a strong relationship to your word.
Now here is the thing; you become someone who for yourself has power with their word. In other words, how you relate to yourself as is someone who does what they say they are going to do. Then as you use your word to “create “ your company, your relationships, your future, for you it is a done deal.
And if what you create with your word is a done deal, your partners, bankers, investors get that.
You are someone who is trustworthy. That is someone they want to do business with.
Someone who has a sacred relationship to their word is someone who can powerfully create with it.
People are attracted to that person because they are trustworthy.
What they say actually happens in reality.
It shows at every level of the business. That way of being will even be reflected out to the people who rent the units, the customers.
The first component is to Be Trustworthy by developing a powerful relationship to your word.
2. Care About Others.
One thing I have noticed about all people I consider trustworthy is they authentically and genuinely care about other people.
They can put the interest of others ahead of their own.
This is hard to fake for very long.
When we are hiring managers, we look for this. It makes a real difference in “customer service”. The ability to get into someone else’s world, see what is really driving them and what would make a difference, then address that is a powerful way to build trust.
If you tell your investors they are going to earn a certain cash-on-cash return, and who you are is someone who has that return paramount over your own return, you will do what it takes to create that return.
And it shows. People are not dumb. They can see authentic caring.
That is why the businesses that succeed over the long haul are usually the ones that have trustworthy people at the top.
All to often the news is made up of the companies that have untrustworthy people at the top. They have dramatic fails. Most companies that last, that get through the growing pains, are ones that are built on trust because that can’t be faked for long.
This is a skill that is hard to develop. You are either more interested in yourself than others, or someone who can genuinely put others interest above your own.
In many ways, I think women have brought this into the business landscape better than anyone. I have learned a lot from working with and partnering with women.
Not that men can’t or won’t be this way, but I think women are socially conditioned from a young age to express this. And it makes a big difference in building trust with key stakeholders.
Began to relate to yourself as someone who genuinely cares about others, and others will get that. When they get that, you are someone who they will trust.
3. How You Handle Mistakes
The last component to building trust is the focus you have when you make a mistake.
You will make mistakes. Why? Because you are human. Humans make mistakes.
The key here is speed & consistency. How fast will it take you to acknowledge your error? Are you consistently acknowledging when you do not honor what you said, or are you being defensive and looking for excuses?
If your relationship to your word is that what you say is a sacred bond, the speed at which you acknowledge when something doesn’t happen and how willing you are to do whatever it takes to clean it up with the person affected is key. That speed is what restores trust.
It is a deposit in the account of trustworthiness.
Looking for who is at fault and why things turned out like they did, is one more withdrawal on top of the original withdrawal of breaking your word.
As I have said many times, I am not interested in right or wrong, or what is “The Truth”. I am interested in what gives me power.
Having a powerful relationship to what I say gives me power.
It gives me the power to build trust with others.
It gives me the power to create with what I say.
By acknowledging, without excuses, where I broke my word as soon as I’m aware that it’s going to happen, I am still honoring my word.
Yes, there is something to clean up with whoever is affected by my actions, but the integrity of my sacred relationship to what I say is restored.
The speed and consistency in which I do that is what builds trust and/or restores it to other people.
If your employees, your partners, your vendors, your customers all get this about you and relate to you as a trustworthy partner, anything is possible.
Why?
Because who you are for yourself and who you are for others is the same.
There is a real power in the consistency between what you say, what you do, and who you are being.
That person will succeed in anything they take on.
That person will succeed at life.
That person will surely succeed in the self storage business.
