One of the most important factors of getting your storage business ready to go is having getting into Google Business Listings. This not only puts you on the map, it also comes with a myriad of other benefits you will surely love. Join Stacy Rossetti as she gets into the nuts and bolts of getting your business on Google. Stacy covers setting up your Google MyBusiness listing, advanced marketing taking advantage of Google to invest in storage facilities. Tune in and learn more from Stacy as she peels back the layers of the storage real estate space.
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The Secret To Google Business Listings For Your Storage Investing Business
It’s right before Christmas. It’s the last two weeks of 2021. Every year for the past few years, we have closed on a facility in January because we picked up that facility in December. There are a lot of people that are thinking about selling their properties, whether it is on the residential or the commercial side. A lot of people want to offload their properties as soon as they possibly can before the end of the year or at the beginning of the year.
End Of Year Acquisitions
We bought an abandoned facility in January 2020. We also bought another facility that was not abandoned but was almost abandoned. In 2021, we are closing another one. I’m putting another storage facility under contract, and as soon as I find the money for that storage facility, then I will close on that. I have somebody who wants to lend me the money, but I’m not 100% sure yet. It is also a mismanaged facility. We are putting that one under contract, so I’m going to get out there, start pitching it, and get some money for that one. It’s $400,000, and then we are about to put another one under contract, which is $1.1 million. We have been going back and forth and negotiating the contracts.
Most of the time, when you buy a property, the first time that you put the offer in, you go back and forth. There’s nobody that accepts the offer. They try to go back and negotiate it. That’s what we have been doing on this. We have been negotiating the contract on that one with the owner. We had to Zoom meeting with them. It went great. We are trying to put that one under contract, and I’m excited about that one. That one may be good for the fund that I’m launching here shortly.
We have another one that we are trying to put under contract as well, too. That is a $1 million property, and we are putting that one under contract. It’s 220 units for $1 million, so it’s a good one. That one should be worth $2 million or $2.9 plus million, honestly, but the owner is not into it. He doesn’t want to do it anymore. I talked about this if you were on the last webinar. This is one of those examples where I talked about an owner that owns too many storage facilities.
There are several doors or facilities that each person can handle or wants to handle. There are some people out there that want 20, 30 or 40 facilities, and then for some people, a handful is good. This guy has a total of six facilities. The five facilities are within a 20 to 30-minute drive of where he’s at, and the other one is 60 minutes away, which is not that big of a deal if you know what you are doing and he does not know what he’s doing. Those within a 20 to 30-minute drive of his house are all doable for him, and this one that’s 60 minutes away, he’s not into it.
That is a great example of an owner that has got too many doors and facilities, and he can’t handle it. When you get out and start looking for facilities, you will notice there are owners out there. You don’t want to get scared of talking to owners that have more than one facility because the truth of the matter is that there’s a limit to what people can handle or want to handle.
You may think you want a lot of facilities, if you can’t handle it in the end, all you want to do is dump that thing. We are working on putting that one under contract as well, too. What I’m saying is that it is December 2021. It is the end of the year. I get that people are busy thinking about what they are going to do for the holidays but if you have time, I would not stop trying to talk to owners about selling their facilities. Even though it’s the holiday season, people still want to sell.
Getting Ready To Start The New Year
I know because we are about to get three storage facilities under contract. I’m working on one contract and about to send that thing over, and then the other two, we should get signed here as well. I’m excited about that. 2022 is going to be a great year for us personally. I didn’t ask this but if this is your first time, welcome. If you don’t know who I am, I teach people how to invest in self-storage.
I teach every Monday night for free. Hop on every Monday from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM Eastern Time. This is free content, and it’s just me teaching. It’s not the same webinar over and over again. Some people emailed and were like, “Is it the same webinar over and over again?” It’s not. This is a live webinar where I teach every single week. My students come on, and they all hang out. You can ask them questions because they are all learning from me, getting out there, and putting deals under contract.
As a storage facility entrepreneur, Google business listings is your friend. Google business listings is going to be the backbone of your business.
I’m here to teach whatever. What happens is every week, I have my coaching calls for all my students, and then during the coaching calls, I get inspired by what we are going to discuss for the webinar by listening to my students and what kind of questions that they have. That’s what we are going to do. I had a coaching call with one of my students that’s doing an amazing job. She’s going to do very well.
I talk to her, and sometimes, she doubts herself. You have these things in your head that talk to you and tell you that you are not doing well. This voice in your head is like, “What are you doing? You are crazy. You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing. You should be sitting on the couch watching Netflix and bingeing on something instead of getting out there and making calls.” Every once in a while, she will get this voice in her head that’s like, “I’m not sure I’m doing the right thing. I’m too scared and nervous.” Honestly, a lot of it is mindset but what she’s good at is calling owners.
She’s about to get a $1.8 million facility under contract. She has been in the coaching program since August of 2020. What she is good at is calling, talking to owners, putting stuff under contract, and then either wholesale it or she will get some equity split in the deal. Until she can afford to buy her storage facility herself, then she’s just wholesaling or partnering with people, which is very smart. Kudos to her.
Learning To Use Google Listings
For my coaching students, we had one student that was asking me about Google Business Listings, and that’s what we did. We talked about Google Business Listings and how we can utilize Google Business Listings to find and manage your properties. As a storage facility entrepreneur, Google Business Listings is your friend and is going to be the backbone of your business. I wanted to go over that in this episode and discuss that. I’m here to help you. I’m not here unless something comes up.
Another thing before I forget to remind you, the StorageNerds Coaching Program, which is the coaching program that I have to teach people how to invest in self-storage, the doors are opening on January 4th, 2022. The doors only open three times a year, and they are only open for two weeks out of the year. I take a handful of students during that time, and then the goal is to get you your first storage facility under contract within the next 90 days. That’s the coaching program. If you are interested in the coaching program, you need to get on the waitlist because the door is open to the people on the waitlist first, and then after that, if we don’t get enough students, it goes to my regular list.
The website is StorageNerds.com. What you do is apply to get into the coaching program. What that’s going to do is take you to the waitlist. Check out everything that we have to offer. Come hang out with us. It’s an awesome community. I love it so much. We are getting so much done. We are doing deals together and growing as a community.
I want to get back to Google Business Listings and how you can utilize Google Business Listings. I have never honestly taught this. I wanted to get into how you can use it on the front end of your business and then on the back end of your business. The front end of your business is going to be how can you use Google Business Listings to find a property for sale. If you are a newbie here, I teach people how to go directly to the owners to find facilities. That’s what I teach, what I believe in, and how we find all of our deals. We do not go to the MLS, Crexi or LoopNet, which are all commercial real estate websites that you can go to and look at.
The reason why we don’t go there is that everybody goes there and the deals are not good. If you want to buy an okay to crappy deal, go online. Go on to Crexi or LoopNet to find storage. If you want to find an amazing deal that’s going to be very good for you on the front end and the backend, then you do what I’m doing, and that’s going directly to the owners.
I’m an owner. We have eleven storage facilities. Every week, we are getting somebody that is calling or sending us a letter or an email about our facilities if we would sell them. That’s the concept. I am not on the market. We are not selling any of our properties at all but we still get contacted regularly from people that want to buy our properties, and that is what I’m talking about. It’s you being the one that contacts the owner directly and tries to get them to sell the property. The three facilities that we are getting under contract are all coming from exactly what I’m going to show you in this episode.
Now that you are going to be a storage business owner, you are going to have to learn about Google My Business Listing.
This is what my acquisitions person, Chris, does to find his properties, which is going to Google Maps. I will talk to you about Google listings. Everybody that is reading, go to the Facebook group called StorageNerds.com. That is where we do all of the videos as well live. You can rewatch those if you want to see what I’m doing.
Google Maps And Markets
Google Maps is how we find our storage facilities. I’m on Long Island, and this is a primary market. A primary market means that it is mostly going to be larger retail, REITs, and hedge funds that are owning the facilities. There are 8 million people on this island, and the island is three hours long. Within a 3-hour radius, there are 8 million people.
This is a primary market, so you are not going to find a lot of secondary to tertiary facilities here but just so you know, you can go to Google Maps and type Storage Near Me. When I do that, the search engine behind that field where I’m typing this in is working through Google Business Listings. That is the back office of Google Maps. The only way that you can get on Google Maps is if you go through the process of putting your company on Google listings. I wanted to point that out.
A lot of people have not heard of Google Business Listings. Google Maps is the fastest-growing search engine in the country. You are going to be a storage business owner so you are going to have to learn about Google My Business or Google Business Listings. That’s what it is. This is where you are going to add and manage your businesses. These are the ones we own. I used to manage this but I do not manage this anymore. My husband, Pete, and Bonnie are our Office Managers. They all manage that. I don’t even own anything anymore. I switched all that to Pete. What I mean by owning them is owning the profiles.
We have been doing this for years. We are all working on our twelfth facility to close. It was just me in the beginning because my husband had a different business. He had the home inspection business. I was running and doing everything on our first storage facility. Our first facility was about 125 units, and then after we bought our second facility, which was another maybe 60 or 70 units, we added that on.
We were over around 200 units, and then we added Bonnie. Bonnie was part-time, and then she started to help me manage everything. We started acquiring more. In the first couple of years, we had six facilities. For those six facilities, it was me and Bonnie. My husband, Pete, sold his home inspection company, and then once he sold the home inspection company, he came in and stepped into the storage business, and then I started doing the coaching side. I’m the coach and the teacher, and then my husband manages the business. I did all the Google Business Listings ourselves. I went in and set up all the profiles for all of our different businesses.
Nobody teaches you this stuff. I figured it out as I was going along. I was like, “I need to get on Google Maps.” That is what I’m going to show you. Most storage facility owners are not on Google Maps. If you have somebody that can figure that out or if you are the owner and you know how to figure that out, then you will be on Google Maps. Every facility that we have ever bought is not on Google Maps, and that’s what I call the hidden market. Those are the storage facilities that I contact anyways.
What you see in the Google Business Listings, I set those up myself, and then what happened is when Pete came over and started managing our facilities, we switched all the ownership over to him. You can’t see all of our facilities anymore because they are under his account. You can only see the ones that I set up, and that’s why you only see 5 or 6 of them there.
Getting Your Business On Google Maps
What I’m saying is that these are all going to be on Google Maps, and then if I needed to add a business, I could always come in and add another business and then go through this step-by-step process. Let’s say, Warm Springs, Fairburn or Fayetteville. These are going to be on Google Maps. They are going to look like this Red Rover, Moving Storage, Life Storage or AAA Storage. That is what Google Business Listings is doing. It’s getting you onto Google Maps. It’s the back office for Google Maps.
What happens is that when somebody wants to find a storage facility, a restaurant, Starbucks or a grocery store, they go onto Google Maps. They pull up your map on your phone or here on your computer and say, “Restaurant near me. Chinese food near me. Storage near me.” That is Google Business Listings or Google My Business. They change the name all the time. Back in the day, it was Google Business Listings.
It’s how we get onto Google Maps. It’s how Public Storage has this profile right here and how Moving Storage Center of Long Island has this profile. That is what I wanted to show you. You can do this while reading. Pull up Google Maps on your computer or wherever you are at and then search, “Storage Near Me.” Look at what facilities are near you. If you are in a primary market, you are going to see a lot of Life Storage, CubeSmart, Security Storage, Extra Space. These are all huge, big conglomerates of REITs and hedge funds that are all buying.
As an owner of a storage facility, once you start getting into how to manage the marketing of your business, you are going to have to learn how to do online marketing for your storage facility.
Pretty much as I said, I’m on Long Island. This is all a primary market, so most of the facilities that I find are going to be owned by huge hedge funds. It is expensive to invest anywhere from New York City to Long Island. We can go way out here. Let’s search out here where it’s further. Let’s see where Shelter Island is instead. Let’s start here and see if there are any storage facilities out there. You have this one right here called Twin Forks Moving & Storage and Complex 114.
Let’s see what this Blue Sky Storage is. This looks like somebody was like, “I’m not going to CubeSmart.” Let’s see what it is. It looks like a farm. It doesn’t look like storage. Maybe it’s a storage place. You have to look at everything. There is a CubeSmart way out here. CubeSmart is like, “We are going to buy everything on Long Island.” This is a nice little storage facility. This was probably owned by somebody else, and then they came in and bought it.
Google Maps gives you so much information about the businesses. Life Storage is all over the place in the Hamptons, as well as Twin Forks. This is probably a bigger one. Let’s check and see. They even have a whole fleet of trucks there. They have some piping going on. It has a parking garage. That’s it. All they have are three pictures. Maybe it’s a moving company, even though it says storage. Maybe because they put it in storage. I’m not sure. Here is some more storage. As you start zooming in Google Maps, you might find some other ones as well, too. Home Sweet Home Pods, Moving Complex 114. I see Life Storage is still out there.
When I say Life Storage and I see CubesSmarts in all this, I know it’s a primary market. These types of companies are primary to the secondary market, which is expensive, so I don’t even look in those areas because I focus on tertiary markets, and then maybe secondary markets if it’s a secondary to tertiary market. When I say tertiary, I mean country.
Setting Up Your Google Business Listing
You have an idea. What Google Business Listings does is when you go through your profile, and you are going through and adding all this information. You add the name of the company. This is where you get all your reviews from Google. It’s through Google Business Listings because what they are going to do when you set up a profile with your company, they are going to give you a link that you can be sending out to everybody to try to get reviews. You put your address in. This is the most important thing, and then they have your hours of operation. You have your website, phone number, and then you have lots and lots of pictures. Google loves pictures and reviews. They check all the reviews.
This profile here is what gets set up in Google Business Listings. When you start clicking on and looking at all this, this one right here is PODS Moving & Storage, which I’m guessing is a moving company or maybe they set the pod down. When you are doing market research by looking at all the facilities in your area, even if you are in a primary market, you still want to look and check things out. They have the title but they have 4 reviews that are 3.5 stars. For me, that’s a sign.
When I see a storage facility that has bad reviews or not a lot of reviews, maybe they don’t know how to manage the property properly. When I think of leads and different storage facilities that I would like to contact and see if they want to sell, one of the things I do look at is the reviews. If it does not have a lot of reviews or bad reviews, that’s an A to a B.
Once you become an owner of a storage facility, your job is to utilize Google as much as you possibly can because essentially Google is the king.
For me, As would not be on Google Maps at all because you will see the process as we go through. Getting on Google Maps is quite extensive. If people don’t want to do a lot of storage facilities, owners don’t even want to get on Google Maps. On Long Island, you are only seeing this many storage facilities in this area but I can guarantee you several other ones are not on Google Maps and those for me are an A lead.
The Bs would be when their profile on Google Maps is not filled out properly. They have bad reviews. Their address is screwed up. They don’t have time, website or phone number. This would be a B for me. I’m going to contact them as well too, and then Cs are going to be all the primary market ones. This one has 78 five-star reviews. The manager that’s managing this company knows what they are doing. My storage is here. The address is correct. They’ve got all the hours. Everything is filled out. It looks great. They’ve got great pictures showing all these happy families loving that they are moving and packing all their stuff up.
This is not something that I’m going to touch. When they know what they are doing, I stay away from those. If they don’t know what they are doing on Google Maps, that’s a B, and if they are not on Google Maps at all, those are As. We’ve got our filing system, and we know how to organize our leads. Let’s get back into the Google Business Listings. To get on to Google Business Listings, you would have to go in and add a single business. I don’t know how far that’s going to let me go but let’s do test storage, LLC, and then add your business to Google. You can do the same thing.
This is what you are doing. You are building your profile and storage facility. Look at what they said. When we do storage facility, they have RV storage, wine self-storage, cold storage, boat storage, record storage, moving storage, automobile storage, and luggage storage. They have a lot of storage here, so pick whichever one you want. I will do this one for now and then click Next. You are going to go through, “Do you want to add a location that customers can come to visit?” You could say yes. This location will show up on Google Maps and search when customers are looking for your business, so yes. You want to be on Google Maps, and then you will put the address in.
We will add this one. We will put my mailing address for Peachtree City here. Do you see how it automatically pulls it up because of our mailing address? Is it like Pak Mail, Extra Space or UPS? It’s none of these. This is how they claim your address. The way that Google works is you are going to claim the address of your business, and then you are going to get a postcard in the mail, and that postcard has the six-digit code on it. They are going to come back to Google Business Listings, and you have to put the code in. You have to finish out the entire profile, which I’m not going to pick any of these and claim it.
Our profiles look like this. This looks perfect. This is the one in Warm Springs that we have. This is after you go through and set everything up. You come to this page right here, and this is where you are going to always be keeping this up-to-date. You want to make sure that everything is up-to-date because if it’s not, then Google is very picky about this. They are like, “If you are not going to keep it up-to-date, then we are not even going to put you out there in the world.” You want to keep everything up-to-date.
You can get started here. You can create posts, add photos or do an ad if you want to do it for your business. You can manage your business profile directly on Google Search and Maps. They have a little video that you can do stuff with. You can get more reviews. Once I filled out my profile, then it gives you this review. This is your code for tenants to do reviews. You could say like, “Can you do a review for me?” Post it out on Facebook or set it up, so you can send it to your tenants. That’s the reviews.
You can do posts. We have our last post here. This is me. I’m not posting out anymore but we do posts. We do all kinds of stuff. We have four five-star reviews. We have added a manager, so if you need to add a manager, you can send them an invite. You can do insights. In a month, we had 941 searches. That’s a lot of searches. People were looking directly for Ms. Lillian’s Self-Storage or we’ve got discovered.
Marketing On Google
They put storage near us, we’ve got discovered, and then they clicked on us. This is where we did maybe some ads, and they came in through this way. As an owner of a storage facility, once you start getting into how to manage the marketing of your business, you are going to have to learn how to do online marketing for your storage facility. You do online marketing through Google Ads. It’s all connected to this. They set up the profile, you can do the ads, then you could see all your information.
This is your account for your business and where you are going to come back to spend a lot of time. You spend a lot of time managing this because this is where you are going to be focusing your marketing. You can look on the left here. We did home. We went through all that. We did some posts. You can put info. You can add more posts.
This is where you can add products if you want to add a product or you have a product showcase that you want to do. This is where you can do some offers. This is where we did $2 for your second month’s rent offer. It looks like we did something like this. We did some posts, and we had some events. We did a free month here.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that we did through the post. These are posts that we do, where we do like sizes of units and what you can fit in it. You’ve got your info. Info is where you are putting all the hours, address, service area if you have this, phone number and website. This is all Google. Also, this is where you would add some photos. They had a whole photo section over here. Google loves videos and photos. You want to post nice photos of your facility.
If you have a kiosk, you are not in the 21st century.
This is Close the Business if you want to close it. The reviews are here. This is where you could set it up to where they could call you right through Google, and then the messages where they can set it up. They could message you right through Google. The truth is we do get a lot of messages and calls through Google. You can see it here. Somebody came in and messaged us. This one says, “I need a semi-large unit. Please call me.”
People will message through Google. As they are looking on Google Maps, they will come and send you a message or call you. It keeps track of all that, which is cool. Through Google Maps, we had 41 people call, and we have just missed one call. That’s good. That’s how that works. You can keep track of that, and then this is where you put all your photos. Ms. Lillian’s Self-Storage is all here. You can put a lot of videos, photos, logos or any products. You could also put the sizes of units. Pete, probably on his side, has a lot more stuff. This is where you put your website. You could build your website if you want to do that as well, too.
It will pop up themes. You’ve got users. This is where you create an ad. You can go right into Google Ads and create an ad and manage all your marketing through there. Somebody handles that for us. I’m not going to screw that up. Get custom Gmail if you need Gmail. You can add a new business, link ads, and do all kinds of stuff. On the left, it says all this.
This is the insight into Google Business Listings. It doesn’t show you how it works but as you go through it, you will come to a part that will say, “Thank you for all this information. We want to verify your address. We are going to send you a card to the address that you have put in here, and at this address, you need to get the code, come back and put the code in. Once you put the code in, then you can finish filling out your profile.”
Leveraging Google For Success
This whole process could take up to two months. This is not an easy process. Mine was all filled out but it took us forever to figure this thing out because Google is very particular about the address. They are going to triple verify that that’s your address. That’s the Google Businesses Listings back office. Once you become an owner of a storage facility, your job is to utilize that as much as you possibly can because Google is the king, and we have to follow the rules to be coming up on all the searches. That is the back office of your searches, of your profile for your business, and your Google Reviews. That’s what Google Business Listings look like, and that’s how you manage all that.
You know how to get onto Google Business Listings, so then you are going to be right on Google Maps. You are going to want to become one of these pretty red dots here. Your goal as a business owner is to become one of those so that you can compete with everybody else. When people are like, “I need a storage facility near me,” they are going to go, “Storage near me,” and then you are going to pop up. That is on the management side, the tenant side, and the back office side.
On the front side, for acquisitions, you are also going to use Google Maps to find storage facilities. That is what you are going to do. For instance, we were over here with all my students. We did an in-field training day with all my students right in this area. We went to Eastern, Bethlehem and Allentown. This is not tertiary. This area would be a secondary market. We found a lot of stores.
For instance, we found Budget Store & Lock. It is a company that probably has maybe eight facilities. You will see that in secondary markets. There were not honestly a lot of primary market facilities in this area. You see how we search storage near me, and everything is down here. There are not a lot of storage facilities in this area, which is very interesting to me because when I was out driving with my students, there were some overhear in this area but we went around and drove all through this area.
Finding Opportunities
I don’t know if it’s secondary or tertiary markets. To me, it felt like a secondary market because there was a lot of traffic on the road. That’s the one thing with this area. Over in Pennsylvania or New Jersey area, I feel like there are so many people that live in this area, and there are not enough businesses. I learned that as I was doing my market research, which is driving for storage and getting out there and looking with my students. I don’t feel like there are not enough storage facilities in this area, so if you have the stomach and the money to build, I highly recommended building in this area. This is what would be considered a secondary market.
You see how we are searching this area, and when you search this area like the way that we searched over in Long Island, where you searched storage near me, it was Life Storage, CubeSmart, and Extra Space storage. Over here, there’s Extra Space storage, so this area is still a primary market but as you come out over here, this would be considered a secondary market. It’s not a tertiary market but a secondary market because there are a lot of people that live in this area. I feel like there is some good opportunity over here. There’s one public storage, and that’s it. There are not a lot of primary market facilities out here. You have an idea.
When you look at Purcell Storage and click on it, you can take a look. It’s got some tractor-trailer park in here. That’s a good-looking parking spot there, and that’s it. It doesn’t even have a lot of good pictures. Maybe it’s just tractor-trailer parking but I’m not sure. We did find a couple of tractor-trailer parking places out in this area, which was land, and they were like, “Go, park over there.”
This one has no reviews. It’s got an address and this mailbox. Maybe it’s not a storage facility. You can do a lot of research by spending some time looking on Google Maps and learning about your area. There’s this one right here, which is Jetport Self Storage. When you look at Jetport Self Storage, they have 18 four-star reviews. They are massive, huge storage facilities like a church or cathedral. This is a super nice storage facility but the pictures are all horrible. It only has two pictures. You’ve got to fill this thing out and make these things look nice. The point is that on the front end of looking for storage, utilize Google Maps. Usually, I’m looking at Google Maps and satellite view.
You understand that the back office for all these storage facilities that you see are all funneled. The back office is Google My Business, Google Business Listings or whatever you want to call it. You have an idea of what to look for when you look through all this. You can see that North Reading Storage only has three and a half stars, which is way over here. Why does North Reading storage have this picture? I would be like, “This is a good one. Let me go check this because this does not look like North Reading Storage.” It comes up as Burke Storage right here. You could click on the website, and we can check out what Burke storage is.
Whoever is managing this property is not doing a good job. This is a good one because North Reading Storage has a little tiny office space right here. It says, “Pay here,” and they have a kiosk. If you have a kiosk, you are not in the 21st century. Kiosks are not good, and that kiosk right there probably cost $15,000 to $20,000. I don’t know why anybody would have a kiosk when you could go right online and have everybody pay for everything.
They have some container storage here. Maybe these are moving pods, and then they have some storage in the back. I would be interested in calling this one here because it’s like North Reading Storage but it’s Burke Storage. Maybe Burke Storage bought them. You never know but it doesn’t look like that because when you click on Burke Storage, it comes up as North Reading Storage. I would check that out and see. The point is that Google Maps and Google Business Listings are going to be the backbone of your company as a store business owner. Get to know how to use Google Maps and Google Business Listings properly so that you can utilize them to the best ability that you can.
Taking Advantage Of The Hidden Market
A couple of years ago, it was called The Business Listings but maybe it’s called Google My Business. I’m not 100% sure, honestly. “When searching on Google Maps, if the facility has not been claimed by the owner, no website presence, mismanaged, will the listings still show up?” When searching on Google Maps, if the facility has not been claimed, it does not show up on Google Maps, and that is called the hidden market. Those are the ones that you want to buy.
If you want to have a super huge, big facility and sell boxes and tapes, more power to you but for me, to sit there and manage all the boxes, tapes and stuff like that, then you’ve got to get somebody to manage all that, and that’s overhead. I don’t want any overhead. We are completely vertically integrated, and our overhead is essentially an operations manager, a phone customer support, boots on the ground person, and Pete.
If you want to be like one of those big, huge companies that sell boxes and tapes, great. Do that. The one in this picture behind me, these are what we buy. We focus on $3 million or less but typically, it’s around $1 million or less but we are open to $3 million less. I can remember that the very first facilities that we bought were only a couple hundred thousand dollars. We have been doing this for years. For us, $3 million doesn’t scare us. $3 million is not a big facility. It’s probably anywhere from 300 to 600 units, and those are not big facilities. It seems like a lot but it’s not.
“I noticed that your business hours are from 8:00 to 5:00, seven days a week. I’m wondering that since your facilities are a man, why not 24-hour access? Wouldn’t you set that apart from the competition?” Our business hours, when we answer the phone are 8:00 to 5:00. That is when Bonnie and Patrick works. We have our phones going to phone support that picks them up and takes messages. When they come back in at 8:00, we call back again. Calls are always answered for us but our office hours are only 8:00 to 5:00.
We have learned over the years that essentially, that’s when we are going to be answering phones. We’ve all got lives and stuff like this too but we will have a back office to answer the phones for us. If a tenant calls and says, “I need to pay my bill. I’m locked out,” we do an emergency number for emergencies but if it’s just a whole bunch of, “I need to complain about something. I need to get a unit,” or something like that, they take a message, and then we call them back in the next morning.
We did not have any offices at all. Our entire company is completely virtual. I live in an RV. We travel full-time. Patrick is also a virtual phone person. Bonnie works out of her house but they are all our boots on the ground person. He travels around and manages all of our facilities for us. “Would you contact the owners if the facility allows you Google listings, especially if you don’t find other ones?” Yes.
The whole point of the conversation is the contact owners if their Google listing is not good. That is a sheer sign that whoever is managing that property is not doing a good job. You, as the Manager or Owner of the facility, are going to be managing this very well. One of those ways is learning how to manage Google My Business, eventually doing Google Ads and stuff like this.
“What’s the best way to find the hidden market?” That’s what we went over the whole time. When you look on Google Maps, and you find all the storage facilities that are in your area near you, then you use that as a reference on Google Satellite Imagery to find storage facilities that are not in your view. Honestly, I’ve got a lot of training on that, and we go over that in the coaching program and the course, Super Simple Self-Storage. If you are interested, please go to my website, and you can check all that out.
Here is the Satellite Imagery, and we are using Satellite Imagery to zoom in and look for storage facilities. That is what we teach at StorageNerds. Go to StacyRossetti.com. That is the website where you are going to find all the information about StorageNerds and the coaching program. You can find Super Simple Self-Storage, my online course, free trainings, podcasts, and then you could register for the webinar that’s there but you can also register here. This is where my bootcamp is coming up. This is all the information about that. Come in and check out the website. Look around. Check me out. I’m here to help people. I appreciate everybody hanging out. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you for reading. Take care.
