Episode 189: Time Is Money: Mastering Self-Storage Deals

Announcer (00:03):

This is the Self- Storage Podcast.

Scott Meyers (00:08):

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I am your host, Scott Meyers, and today we’re going to be doing something a little different. See, we are starting a challenge here. This is a 30 day LOI letter of intent to challenge that I’m doing with a group of our folks that just started our Self Storage Mastery program. It’s a mentoring program where we walk people through the process of how to find, evaluate, purchase, and manage either their first or their next self storage facility. And so I wanted to step in and do a little experiment. I love to play around in the business and try different things, especially on the marketing side, but it’s not that often that I step into this level that I work hand in hand with our mentoring students as they go through the process, especially when it comes to the marketing piece and filling their funnel.

(00:53):

So that’s what I’m going to do. And in 30 days, I’m going to take a group of folks and we’re going to make sure that, well, the goal is to get to every single one of them into a property, meaning that they have written a letter of intent on a property. So these folks have just come out of their five week underwriting course, it’s an underwriting and a financial analysis class in which each week they go through the ins and outs of what it takes to underwrite a facility. So looking at every single line item in terms of the income and the expenses of a self-storage facility, and then determining whether this is worthy of moving forward in or not. And so it’s not until that they get to that place that we then move them into the place where we begin to fill their funnel with opportunities because we know that they are only opportunities until they become a deal.

(01:38):

And so that’s where I’m going to step in, and then we’re going to fast track them, and I’m going to talk about the 11 ways in which we utilize the 11 tried and true ways that the 11 trusted ways that we have perfected over here@selfstorageinvestee.com that have for the past 19 years that we’ve been successfully launching the careers of self storage investors and entrepreneurs into this incredible industry. And so what I wanted to do today is to introduce you to that, but we also have an awful lot of folks that have been challenged in finding properties. And of course, the first thing I would say is, well, are you a part of our mastery program? Are you part of our mastermind? Because we are, well, the folks that are in those groups, those two groups are killing it, and we are purchasing and acquiring a lot of facilities, purchasing ground to develop, and the freight train is continuing it to move down the tracks.

(02:29):

And so this is to help you along if you’re not a part of that. And the next question is, if you’re not, why not? We are moving at speed right now in the marketplace because well, the market doesn’t wait for people to get completely educated. And if you don’t have the tools and the resources, and if you don’t have at least 11 ways that dialed in to be able to find your first or next Excel storage facility, but then you are going to miss a train because it is heading down the tracks and it is going at speed. As we head into this next economic cycle, which we now know from the past, and maybe you don’t know if you haven’t been around a while, this will be our third recession, technically the fourth if you want to include the pandemic. And we know what happens because we’ve been at this for a little while and we are excited about where we’re headed.

(03:08):

And so if you’re not prepared, if you don’t have the tools, the resources and a team behind you to be able to transact, well then don’t let this. I would just say don’t let this opportunity pass you by because the market waits for no one and speed is the name of the game. And so speed is not only important, but so is time. And so I wanted to take a step back and talk about a few things as we head into this, and we’ll give out some freebies that come outside of our programs. If you’re not a part of our community that will, well hopefully get you on the path to becoming more successful or at least finding the time to begin to fill your funnel with opportunities until they turn into deals. And so this isn’t going to be a class, this isn’t going to be a podcast on time management because that we all know there is no such thing.

(03:48):

There’s just a finite amount of time, but we can handle it more efficiently. And I think that first comes from a little bit of self-awareness, which is where are you spending your time and do you really know where your time is going? And so yeah, we’re going to talk just a little bit about time tracking. So we also have a couple sayings around here, which is basically from Yoda do or not do. There is no try and there’s an awful lot of folks are saying, well, I’m trying to find time to be able to go out and market and to make those relationships with the brokers and to go out and drive my market to send the mailers out, all the ways that we utilize that and more to find those deals that are out there in the marketplace and just we don’t take those excuses any longer.

(04:28):

If you truly want to be successful, then you’re going to do the heavy lifting. You’re going to do the work that it takes upfront to be able to fill your funnel full of prospects that ultimately turn into deals. And so if you don’t know where your time is going and you’re tired of really making that excuse for yourself when they need to start tracking your time, I did this, gosh, 25 years ago, it was suggested to me, I don’t even remember by who. It was some book or some part of a group that I was involved in. Maybe it was my mentor, I can’t remember exactly, but it is one of the most invaluable tools and one of the most invaluable exercises that I’ve ever gone through. Now, mine started this way on a pad, on a pad of paper, and what I would do is I would, throughout a workweek, I did this for 30 days throughout my workweek, I would track my tasks, what I was doing within 15 minute increments.

(05:16):

And so obviously if I had an hour long meeting, I would put down that hour long meeting. But then if I had multiple tasks and things that I was knocking off in 5, 10, 15 minutes, well, then I would write down what those things were and then categorize each and every one of those. And then at the end of the week, I would do a tally and split up those tasks into scheduling, just spending calendar time, working on getting appointments and managing my calendar emails. Obviously if I was doing marketing efforts to go out and find properties, the true management of my facilities, how much did I have a hand in not only meetings with our managers and management companies, but how much time was I spending doing any active management, any of the mundane tasks like research and other items in which were truly just something that most likely could be handed off to somebody else?

(06:03):

But what were those mundane tasks that I had to do? And then what were the more important things that were driving the business forward, which is such as exploring and searching for either personnel or resources or software to be able to grow the company because usually they come into two flavors, your tasks, your roles and responsibilities, and that is working on the business and then working in the business and then working on the business is getting better so that you can grow and working in the business is the stuff that only you can do that you really can’t delegate to somebody else, or at least maybe so we can’t, or maybe at least so we don’t recognize or realize. So today, fast forward, I believe everybody should do a time audit to be able to determine where their time is going. And it’s good for two reasons.

(06:44):

One, so that you’re honest with yourself so that you can carve out the time to do the things that you need to do. But secondly, when you begin to look at your tasks that you’re performing in a 30 day timeframe, there’s going to be some items that come up that you recognize that is not a good use of my time. And that only happens when you take the second step to the time audit. And that is when you actually determine how much money you make per hour, how much are you worth per hour, and that’s as simple as determining roughly how many hours you worked last year and how much money you made, and then you divide that out by the hours to get your hourly rate. And so as you go through your time audit and you begin to chunk down these tasks, you recognize that, wow, I’m worth a hundred dollars an hour.

(07:25):

I’m worth $500 an hour, 2 50, 3 75, 700, a thousand dollars an hour. It’s going to be pretty apparent that if you’re spending time basically going through your own email, that is a waste of time. You need to immediately offload your email to somebody else and then that person will send over the emails to you that you actually truly need to respond to. You shouldn’t be answering the phone. There shouldn’t be any customer service, any bookkeeping, any of these items in there, at least at your hourly rate. I believe that just about everybody on this podcast that your hourly rate is worthy of more than an executive assistant to pay or an assistant or a virtual assistants pay. And so ultimately, if you see where I’m heading with this, that is what we’re looking to do is to determine where your time is spent, how you can offload that time to somebody else so that you can do the things that you need to do, which is working on the business to grow it and scale it, and to go out and find the next deal.

(08:16):

Because if you don’t guess what somebody else, I’m going to find it. One of our students, one of our mastery students, one of our mastermind members, they’re going to go find it if you’re still flailing around because you haven’t even bothered to take the time to understand and determine where your time is going. So there’s a number of tools out there that are available right now. Time tracking apps, if you will, toggle track, T-O-G-G-L Track is one of them very popular, and that’s kind of cool. I found a little bit difficult as I peruse these and looked at really how user-friendly they were and if this is something that I would be interested in using again, just depending on how it worked and how I work. And that one, I know it’s popular, but I can’t say that it was very good for me. Now, the next on the list was our stack, HOUR stack, and that integrates with your team’s project management software.

(09:07):

And so I like this because it just adds another overlay to the property management software that you’re using right now. You may be using Microsoft Edge, you could be working in a Basecamp, a number of other different types of project management tools out there. And this is just another additional layer that tracks the time within your project management software. So it also takes a look at your entire team and where they may be wasting time, timely, T-I-M-E-L-Y. And by the way, I’m going to put all these in the show notes. I’ll link to all these in the show notes as well. Timely is another one that works with Android Chrome, Firefox. You can pull it down. It works for a Mac. And this one is, it’s kind of painless. It has an accurate record of how you’re spending your time, and it does not only time tracking, but screenshots along the way as well.

(09:50):

So this one could be used for yourself, but I found that it was probably better suited for tracking the time of say, your VA or somebody else who’s doing work for you. Meme mem time, not meme, M-E-M-T-I-M-E. So I guess it’s a memory time. Formerly Time bro is also another automated tool. And much like Timely, it’s a desktop app, keeps track of your computer activity so you can categorize it later and then go back through and find out exactly where your time is spent. And I found this one to also be probably the most effective of the bunch, but the one that I’ve been using for about 20 years is rescue Time. And it’s just because I’m used to it and I have a history, and so I can kind of compare and it knows me and I know where it’s at. I don’t have to start over.

(10:34):

And so when I start a deep focus session, that’s where I spend most of my time, thankfully, but I still keeps me honest when it comes to any of these other time wasters that I should be offloading to anybody else. So there’s a handful, I’m sure there’s others out there. Those are about the top six that I’ve run across or been that familiar with. At the end of the day, rescue Time is the one that I use the most when it’s computer time, but that doesn’t track everything. This tracks everything. So running it down after 30 days, bring yourself, give yourself a gift of some awareness of where you’re spending your time so that you can stop the excuses. You can offload those tasks and those duties and responsibilities to somebody else that you could pay for less than your hourly rate. Because if you can pay somebody a dollar less than your hourly rate, then why are you wasting your time doing it?

(11:18):

Because you should be doing what is your superpower? You should be spending most of your time in your superpower, which is either raising capital, finding deals, or if it’s a both, then it’s fantastic, but you shouldn’t be monkeying around with all those other items that you can pay somebody else to do. Otherwise you’re not going to get ahead and you may not find that next deal. Okay, so now that you’ve got this newfound time, you’re welcome. Now it’s time to begin to utilize the 11 ways that we found that are the most effective ways to be able to fill your funnel with more opportunities that eventually would turn into deals after underwrite them, hopefully to find more opportunities to be able to fill your funnel, to find your next deal and to grow and scale on the business. So number one is probably the obvious, but maybe it isn’t for everyone.

(12:04):

And that is to create those relationships if you don’t already have them with both the commercial and the self storage brokers in your market. So yes, it means to pick up the phone and call the brokers that are selling and listing self-storage facilities in your market and call them up and let ’em know what it is that you are looking for. Get on their list, have them send you deals, make sure that they know that you are looking for the value add projects, which I’m assuming that’s what you’re looking for, or if it’s a development land, whatever, it’s that is in your buy box. But the way that I approach them is to let them know that, hey, I’m really looking for the junk. I’m looking for the stuff that your buying list is not interested in. So I want the stuff that has hair on it that you may not have a solid T 12 set of books and records on this project.

(12:54):

I can piece it together and my lenders are savvy enough and they know that I’ve been at this long enough that we know what we’re talking about and how because of our track record, we know how to turn these projects around. And so send me the properties that aren’t very popular with your buyers. Listen, that are a little difficult to finance because those are the ones that typically have the most upside, and those are the ones that I can get across the finish line. So here’s my phone number, put it on a yellow piece of paper, on a yellow sticky note, put it on the top corner of your screen, and then when you run across these projects, then please give me a call and I’ll give me 48 hours. Give me the information you have. I’d like to take a crack at this before anybody else does.

(13:28):

And if not, no harm, no foul. You can continue on out. Just let me know ahead of time before you spend 40 hours putting together your offering memorandum and trying to gather all the books and records and everything else on this project. If you can’t, you know it’s going to be difficult. Give me a call first. Give me 48 hours and I’ll let you know if I’m interested in putting in an offer. Now, is that value to a broker? It absolutely is because they send those mailers out just like you do, and you will be doing if you’re not already. And they’re going to continue their marketing efforts. And when they do find a property, they do find a seller that is difficult, they’re unsophisticated, very unsavvy, and they don’t have access to all that information. They’re not going to be able to get this thing across the finish line because they won’t be able to put together an offering memorandum that makes any sense, and they won’t be able to get it funded because the banks need a solid T 12 set of financials tax returns, and in a buttoned up offering to be able to get this thing across the finish line.

(14:21):

So yes, that puts you in a very envious position when it comes to working with brokers. Okay, so number two and kind of akin to that are business brokers. There’s many folks that would look at self storage, including folks that own self storage, is that they’re small business owners, they look at themselves as small business owners and not real estate investors. And the answer is, it’s both. It’s and it’s yes, it’s no. We find that when these sellers are interested in selling their facility, they may approach it as looking at selling their business. And so they will contact a business broker and business brokers operate in a different realm on a different platform, different websites. And so you will go to those business brokerage websites or their individual websites and make relationships, create relationships with these small business brokers that are selling these self storage facilities, these small businesses.

(15:08):

Because if you’re only looking in the traditional real estate circles, I’d say you’re missing out on approximately 15 to 20% of the deals out there. So there you have at one of my secrets is out, although we’ve been teaching folks how to do this for years, and that also includes self storage specific websites. And so there are a number of different listing of websites of storages.com. Of course, you could say LoopNet is a listing site even though it really is, and it’s all things commercial. CoStar to be able to find the facilities that are out there, list self storage.com, there’s a number of different listing services, and that includes getting on wholesalers sites as well, the SSA, the Self Storages Association, and also inside sell storage. They have forums in which people can buy, sell, trade, and these are folks that are already in the business that are testing the waters and putting these facilities out to the folks that they already know in the industry before they decide to pay a broker to put their facility out into the marketplace and perhaps even try to save themselves a little on that commission.

(16:07):

And of course, as you begin to find properties and you begin to go out into the marketplace and driving around areas of your market or into new markets where you’ve never been, always pay special attention to the existing self storage facilities in the market. We’re going to drive within a three mile radius and visit the competitors. And as soon as I visit a site, I’m certainly going to go at least a mile up and down the road in all four directions. Not every facility is located on the corner, I get that, but I’m going to drive in all four directions. And if I pass another self storage facility and I don’t have my appointment with the broker or the seller yet, well then I’m going to stop in and I introduce myself. I don’t pull any punches. I don’t act like I’m shopping or secret shopping them.

(16:45):

I pull up my business card and let ’em know that I’m in the business of buying facilities. And do they know of anybody who is selling a facility in the market that’s already one of your friendly competitors that may be selling? And by the way, are you the owner? Are you looking to sell? So the goal is to uncover all of the owners and any potential sellers in the marketplace, especially if you’re already looking at one and you’re looking to buy. We want to dominate that market. And while we want to own the competition, we want to be the competition, be our own competition to buy as many as possible in that market. So always stop in, always leave a business card and then follow up with them. And every facility sells in the future. And so you just never know when it is going to be time for somebody to sell and you just want to be in front of ’em.

(17:27):

So add them to your list, grab their business card name, contact information and continue to follow up with them. And then also send them a letter on a regular basis just in case they’re considering selling their facility. Another one of the ways that has produced a number of deals over the years is also to send mailers out. And if you’re already in the business, you’ve probably seen, well, most of those mailers out there that I’ve seen that come to my are my mailers. I am the lg, the original cell storage expert. And so the letters that we created in our home study system 20 years ago are the ones that are getting passed around today. And from our students very successfully over and over again, it purchased their facilities off this mailer that I created 20 years ago. So there you have my contribution to the industry free of charge now, not that it was supposed to be, but now it is.

(18:15):

And so it always comforts me to see that my mailer that I created 20 years ago comes back to me with somebody else’s name on it trying to buy my facilities. But it works. And the idea is to, once again, you want to land, you want that letter to land on the desk of a potential seller at the time that they’re going to sell. And so yes, it’s competitive and there’s going to be other folks doing the exact same thing, but it still works. To this day, it is still producing results. And to this day, it is still producing a number of opportunities for us to be able to look at. And before you begin to think, oh gosh, how many of these do I have to send out? Well, a lot and a lot to get one deal. And you can never send out too many because if you do underwrite and find multiple deals that you say can’t close on all of, well, then you’re going to wholesale those off.

(19:03):

You’re going to turn ’em back into our community. If you’re already in our program, the community, we built the ecosystem, we trade more deals that are publicly sold that you would find just about anywhere through the brokerage community. We have thousands of self storage investors that have come through our programs that are utilizing these techniques that are all off the grid. And we have created an underground army of people that are trading deals back and forth. So bring ’em into our ecosystem, bring ’em into our deal room, and we’ll find a home for it. We’ll find a seller for it for you to be able to monetize. And so I can’t stress enough, don’t be afraid to send out so many mailers. And I say this because there are so many folks that think, well, gosh, that’s a lot of money to spend. And what happens if I get a hundred opportunities and then I have to choose one?

(19:48):

Well, you’re not going to get a hundred, but you’re not going to get one if you don’t send ’em out there. And every market is different, and every mailing campaign that we have ever embarked upon is different. We’ve settled in on some norms and we always have some goals in mind in which we’re sending a campaign out in terms of the amount of opportunities that we would like to see, but has always produced fruit for us. And so you need to start a campaign, follow a model, purchase a list to create your database of facility owners in your market or a market that you want to invest in, and then you need to continue to send those mailers out on a regular basis. Our letter is a very simple one pager that states how long we’ve been in the business, how many facilities that we have purchased, how many that we have sold, that we have lending relationships.

(20:32):

We let them know, we let them know that we’re not just tire kickers, that’s just not our first time out. We have the ability to transact and to close. If you are new to the business, you’re going to have to find some more creative ways to be able to state in that letter that you have credibility and you have the ability to fund and close, and that you are savvy when it comes out to business. And if you’re in real estate, then you talk about your real estate accomplishments or if it’s in business, you talk about your business accomplishments. Either way, they need to feel confident and comfortable that they can call you back and that they’ll have a real conversation with a real person who has the ability to buy their facility so that they don’t waste their time. And we talk about that in many ways in the circles in which we teach people about the business.

(21:10):

And so if you’re not a part of that, then we would invite you to join us as well, because that is where the rubber meets the road. And sometimes it’s just one word or a sentence or an entire mailer or an entire campaign, which is the difference between you launching the business or just getting fed up and walking away and going back to what it is that you’re doing or whatever it is that you’re frustrated about and the reasons why you looked at self storage in the first place. And so with that, I’ve touched on about four or five of my top ways that we go out into the market and find properties. So we’ve got 11 tried and true ways that we teach our folks that we talk about. Well, the folks in our mastermind are doing that. Folks in our mastery program are learning about as well.

(21:46):

And the ones that we touched on today are some of my favorites. So I would just challenge you as we go through, as I go through this 30 day challenge with our mastery students, to get into an LOI would just challenge you to begin to lean into the four or five ways, pick one of the ways that we talked about today to begin to add your arsenal, add to your quiver of ways to go out and find facilities and then go execute. And you have to execute in a massive way. Again, we hear so many ways, and I heard very early on in our career, even before we started our education company that, well, the things that I’m doing and the things that I’m trying, they just aren’t working. Only to find out that it’s not necessarily the processes and the things that we teach.

(22:26):

Even though they’re very, very effective tools, it’s usually the person that’s not working. It’s not the person that’s not executing because they’re coming up with excuses and they don’t have the time. So that’s why I wanted to start by having a discussion about the time and being able to determine what are your priorities and what are the reasons why you want to get into the business and what are the goals you’ve set out, and to not let anything else get in the way with that, certainly not any longer the excuse of time. If you follow some of the practices that we just talked about, the very simple practices that we just talked about in doing a 30 day time audit and implementing that into your own processes. And then beyond that, it’s all about execution. And so you just need to be honest with yourself and ask yourself, are you putting in the work each and every day?

(23:06):

Asking yourself that question, putting that as a note on your computer screen, putting that as a text that you sent to yourself or an alarm on your phone that says, did I give it my all? Did I do everything possible to go out and find my next or to find my first or next self storage facility? And if you’re still left with questions, if you’re still not feeling as if you are being 100% effective, well then I invite you to join one of our masterclasses. We’ve got one coming up on September 12th. Just go to self storage investing.com, click on my seat, and you can join one of our masterclasses where for an hour we’ll sit down and talk about, do a deeper dive into the things that you need to be doing to be able to get into the business and the reasons why. So we’ll lay it out.

(23:46):

It’s a masterclass format, a jam packed full of information to give you a kickstart in new. So if you don’t have a process, if you don’t have a plan, well this is the place to start. And beyond that, for those of you that are looking to grow and scale the business, then obviously click around on our website, come join us at our Self Storage Academy, become a part of our mastery programs, or join our mastermind. If you’re already growing and scaling at scale and at speed, and you really want to supercharge your business, well then you need to be in the most powerful self storage mastermind in the industry. So with that gang, this has been a Scott Myers with the SOLO podcast on finding the time to be able to go out and market your funnel, and then some of the best ways, means, and resources and processes to go out and fill your funnel full of opportunities that you will then underwrite and turn into deals. So with that, stay tuned. We’ll give you updates on our 30 day challenge with our latest round, our latest batch of self storage at Mastery students, and that we’ll show you how they do, how they fare, including stats, numbers, speed winners, because it’s always a contest when it comes out to this. And we’ll produce out the results. Well give us about 45 days or so, and we’ll come back to you on that one. So stay tuned and we’ll catch you on the next one. Take care.

Announcer (25:01):

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