Finding Self Storage Land: A Simple 10,000 Steps Journey?
If it is that simple why isn’t everyone building ? Because, it is simple but not easy. It is 10,000 steps a day, every day, looking for land, then 10,000 steps a day, every day to design and obtain approvals and then 10,000 steps a day bidding and building the facility.
Have you ever walked 10,000 steps a day? For a week, a month and a year? Simple but not easy. If you have a cell phone it most likely had an app on it that has been recording you steps each day. If you have an I phone, it is the red heart icon app. Check out many steps you walked yesterday and last week.
We all know things just don’t happen on their own. There must be a starting point, an end game and a strategic plan to accomplish the multiple intermediate targets.
About 2 years ago, one of my goals or end game was to continue my bad habits of Junk food and wine, stay in good shape and be healthy. After my research I decided the best way to reach my goal was 10,000 steps a day. For the last 2 years I never hit my goal constantly and instead had to limit my snacks and wine (now and then). I had to accept: weight gained –weight lost- weight gained– weight lost – weight gained, and so on.
About 6 months ago I asked myself, is this on again off again plan my plan or is there a better way. Since I like wine and I like to walk I reset my walking plan – The same goal but with it broken down into multiple time frames. Plus, I am also accountable to my wife on a daily and weekly basis. And it is working!
I set a goal top walk 10,000 steps a daily, weekly, monthly, bi yearly and yearly. When it was just a daily goal I could easily start over. By making it weekly, monthly, and yearly goal it was a more serious goal and I could see the huge effects of skipping a day. It is one thing to start over when you missed a day but starting over when you missed a week, a month, or 6 months was an obvious a major setback. And you could see, in the walking summary, it gets progressively harder to meet the goals as the time frame got longer if you did not meet the daily goal.
To repeat: I quickly realized how important it was to meet the daily step goal if I was going to me my intermediate targets. And if it did occasionally miss my daily goal it was critical to make up the steps the very next day – no matter what. And being the engineer, I am, I quickly learned that often beating the 10,000 steps by a 1,000 or 2,000 steps added a tremendous amount of safety for those days where walking was interrupted by family, weather, work or host of other delays.
But now after having met my 10,000 steps for a week, month and 6 months I have a good routine and rarely miss a day. And I really enjoy it! Now I have many walks to choose form to reach my daily goal:
Walk # Steps
Emergency night walk: 8,000
Short walk with my wife 4,000
Long walk with my wife: 6,000
Water garden and minor weeding 1,000
Mow the river cottage lawn 3,000 add 1500 steps if I am in the mood to mow neighbor’s lawn (the kids cottage) Cool mower it matches what ever walking speed I want to go
Work outside on the cottage 6,000 (lots of flower garden to clean up and wood top cut)
Fishing up & down the river 6,000 ++++++
Here are my recent daily, weekly, monthly, 6 months, yearly and super sat. steps. You can see I have made my goals for 6 months but need to replace at least 4 months when I averaged about 2,500 steps a day.
How does this pertain to developing a self storage? Self storage is just hard enough and takes enough cash and time that next to no body will build a self storage. Even most people who do the research and decide to do self storage will not develop a self storage because they do not have the commitment, goals and game plan to find land.
The Starting and end point for self storage development is easy to determine. All but one targets are easy with the right guidance because they generally have known time frames, so it is much easier to make the time commitment to accomplish them. Here are the targets with minimum time frames:
Task Time Frame
Starting point: Confirm you have the cash and self storage is something you are serious about
making happen. 0 to years
Finding land Unknown?: Depends a lot on YOU
Site plans designed 3- 4 months +_
Building plans designed 3 -4 months +_
Bid the project/choose contractor 2 Months+_
Banking 3 months+_
Build the facility 8 – 12 Months +_
Premarket the facility Start 4 -6 months before you open
Of course, an experienced developer may do multiple items at the same to shorten the overall time frames.
While all items depend to some degree on you and your team, finding land depends a lot on you. In other word once you reached the starting point the one target that is more likely to stop you from reaching you end goal and is Finding Land.
If you want to be successful finding land, I suggest you set and keep track of what you are going to do daily, weekly and monthly basis to find land. In the couple of blogs I will provide a specific check list can use.
If you are a go getter it often takes 8 – 10 hours a week of your time constantly using multiple strategies to find land in12 months. FYI: waiting for a real estate agent to find you land is NOT going to work.
The top 2 ways for finding land is word of mouth and driving the roads. The third way is YOU finding land via multiple internet sources. Real estate agent send you land does not even reach the top ways of finding land.
If one on one guidance day in and day out would help you reach your end game of owning a self storage give us a call.
Mowing the lawn at self storage = zero steps. To much grass and they do not like me using mower anyway. haha
Don’t forget to sign up for our blogs so you do not miss my next few blogs on: 4 items done daily & weekly find land faster; 31 tip & tools to help you find land; How to prepare a letter of intent.
Marc
860-830-6764