I have been threatening to create a course on Fundraising For The Small Investor In Self Storage for years.
I am in the process of doing so now and will also be speaking on the subject at the April 2023 ISS (Inside Self Storage) Expo and Convention at Ceases Palace in April 2023.
I have been talking to fundraisers and Capital Groups in all kinds of real estate niches and have re-discovered something I already knew about success in self storage.
No matter what the industry, or niche in any industry, the more I hang around people who are at the top of their game, the less they discuss tactics and strategies, and the more they discuss the breakthrough they had in their thinking.
To a person, it seems, their growth occurred when they shattered some limiting belief, they had about themselves.
Not when they learned some new tactic.
I recently attended a Fundraising Event where people in the business of raising capital for real estate of all kinds got together.
I met a guy named Ellis Hammond. He was a youth pastor at a church right out of college, which was not a very high-paying job. He wanted to devote his life to something larger than himself which would make a difference. With his beliefs and background, he saw this vocation as a way.
He said he had difficulty even asking for a $100 donation.
To say he had a limiting belief about his ability to attract money (i.e., capital) was an understatement.
Yet, he has recently raised enough capital to close on a $40 million real estate project in a major MSA in Texas. His group, Symphony Capital Group, has purchased over $150 million of primarily multi-family assets.
Even more impressive is that he has done this within less than three years. Ellis is in his 30’s.
He did not come from any wealth. He did not have wealthy friends or acquaintances. He was even afraid to ask for small donations as a youth minister.
Yet, as he said, he broke through the belief that “you have to have money or know of people who have money to raise enough money to get into real estate.”
His words were “smash through” that belief.
Quite impressive.
If you are raising money for self storage, what are your limiting beliefs?
We all have them.
I suggest there may be many unconscious limiting beliefs all humans deal with.
I have seen in the people I work with and the people like Ellis, who I have researched for this upcoming class, three main mindset shifts need to occur for us smaller self storage investors who want to grow our business using other people’s money.
What I have observed is that for a small investor, someone who has, let’s say, some background in business or real estate but has decided to make self storage their niche relates to raising money as a necessary thing to do to fulfill on their goals.
Myself included.
I am a self storage person who just happens to have to raise money. Not that I want to; I just have to because I don’t have any or enough to do more than one or two deals.”
Some version of the above is how I have seen most of us stumble into the arena of “fundraising.”
Mindshift Number One
What I have observed is people who have made great strides in their fundraising skills have had a shift from “I raise money” to “I AM A FUNDRAISER.”
This may sound simple-minded, but it is a huge jump.
What was it like to become “I am a parent,” or after you closed on your first self storage deal, moving into “I am a Self Storage Owner?”
If you wake up every morning as a “Fundraiser,” you do different things. The world occurs differently.
You take different actions.
One is constantly nurturing relationships, the relationships of current and potential investors.
Why?
Because you are a “Fundraiser,” and that is what fundraisers do.
But more importantly, you are taking action, not any kind of action, fundraising action.
And what happens when we take action in any new area of life?
We mostly fail. Some things work. But more times than not, we fail. Especially early on in our new identity as a “Fundraiser.”
Or, another way, we discover what works as a fundraiser and what does not.
If you can shift your identity from that of a person who has to raise money to do the deal you want to one of a fundraiser that is always raising capital and serving investor’s needs, I have seen those are the people that fail fast enough to learn what works for them and can keep playing the game.
The old adage to fail fast and often truly applies here.
How many of us as parents have made mistakes and wish we had handled a situation differently?
But if who we are is “I am a parent,” most of us learn from what didn’t work and become better parents.
We don’t just say, “well, that parenting thing didn’t work. I came from a dysfunctional home, so I guess I should not be a good parent.”
Or “I blew that with my kid. Perhaps I can’t be a parent, and someone else should take over.”
You may think this is an extreme example.
But is it? Really?
I suggest that if you want to be playing in the self storage business at a new level from where you are now, or if you want to play anything in life at a new and larger level, it truly requires one to alter who you are for yourselves and who you are for others, to win at the new and larger game.
Especially if you want to create momentum.
Like Ellis Hammond did. He shifted from Pastor to Fundraiser.
Not because it was better but because he felt he could positively impact more people in this new game.
If he can do it, imagine what you can do with mindset shift number one.
Mindshift Number One: Shift from “I raise money” to “I AM A FUNDRAISER.”
