It can be frustrating trying to get in or grow your self storage business.
I know. I am experiencing it myself.
We have been selling a lot of self storage. I have investors in most of my deals, and we have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize investor returns.
That is easy to do today.
Getting back in is more challenging.
But don’t give up.
We can do it.
The Reality Of Real Estate And Self Storage
Here is what we tend to forget (or at least I do).
There are always, and I mean always, challenges of some sort in the marketplace.
Always.
Upcycles create challenges (like high prices), and down cycles create challenges (like lower occupancy and challenging financing).
When I got back in in 2007 & 2008 (remember those times?), I have big challenges then as well.
I learned a new phrase I had never hear before….” The funding for your approved loan has evaporated.”
Not to mention investors pulling their commitments due to being scared.
So, what do we do?
We adapt.
Instead of conduit lending, we go to small banks.
Instead of investor cash, I found someone desperately trying to unload a vacant building (free and clear), tell him I will take his vacant building if he rolls his equity into my storage deal (a 1031 tax-deferred deal), then I finance his building to pay him for it, and he holds the difference between what I have to buy it for and my loan proceeds in a second mortgage.
Whatever the challenges are, there are solutions if we stretch and get outside our comfort zones.
What I have discovered is most of us are mentally lazy.
It takes no mental power to see the high prices, listen to people complain about it, and go with the flow.
It does take something to not get sucked into “the reality” of what is happening and figure out a way given what is happening.
“Do not judge by appearances.”
I think someone once said that.
That takes mental strength and mental willpower. My training tells me that is the best use of willpower there is.
Solution
So, what do we do as small investors?
What do we do when prices are in the 4% and 5% CAP range?
What do we do when so many sub-markets and trade areas are overbuilt?
What we do today is find expansions and conversion opportunities in markets that have unmet demand.
“But that is difficult to do, isn’t it?”
Yes, but so what?
It is better than giving up.
And believe me, it is more difficult not having much net worth and relating to yourself as someone who has given up once more on a dream, the dream of getting in or growing a self storage business.
Last Virtual Bootcamp of 2021
I am in no way saying anyone has to attend the Bootcamp, or anyone else training for that matter, to be successful.
Success is an inside job which I believe is 80% mindset and 20% knowing what to do.
But what this upcoming Self Storage Bootcamp can do is shorten your learning curve about getting in self storage today and give you the opportunity to discover the mental attitudes you may have that are not serving you as well.
I am getting more self storage projects this year.
Many of the people I work with and who were in the last Bootcamp earlier this year are in self storage business now.
There are solutions to any challenges life throws at us. Perhaps the Bootcamp on Oct 8 & 9, 2021 (click here for details) is part of your solution.
Either way, just don’t give e up on your self storage dreams.
The real juice is not the money self storage can create. I suggest the real juice is who you get to be and how you relate to yourself as you become the person who can fulfill your dreams no matter what life or the marketplace throws at you.
