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Show Summary
In this conversation, Marc Goodin, the franchise owner of Storage Authority, shares his journey into the self-storage industry, discussing the opportunities and benefits of owning a self-storage franchise. He emphasizes the low failure rate of self-storage investments, the importance of patience in building a successful business, and the various factors that contribute to a profitable self-storage operation. Marc also highlights the support provided by Storage Authority to franchisees, making it an approachable business opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Marc Goodin (00:00)
Well, it’s a great opportunity. First of all, it has the lowest failure rate of any real estate. In the last 20 years, every single year, it’s either been the number one or the number two most profitable real estate opportunity. When we get beat, it’s typically with these large warehouses. First, was the large warehouses for Amazon and those guys. We came in second.Of course, you had to have $50 million to build one of those. Now we’re coming in second to these data warehouses that cost 500 million to build. So reality for somebody like you and I, we’re always number one as making a profit. And the low failure rate or the lowest failure rate means we’re gonna get banks to loan us that money. As long as you’ve got a good credit score, and especially if you’re part of a franchise, they’re gonna approve you.
If your feasibility for your land says go, obviously if the feasibility study says don’t go, you don’t buy the property. And the way we do it to protect our franchises, we give an option to buy, so we don’t buy that property until after we have approvals. That way we know our money’s not at risk. Some people just want to go out there and pay 800,000 for that land tomorrow
Kristen Knapp (02:50)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with Marc Goodin, who’s the franchise owner of Storage Authority in Sarasota, Thank you for being here, Marc.Marc Goodin (02:58)
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.Kristen Knapp (03:00)
Well, I’m excited to get into the franchise model and storage and the opportunity there, but let’s go back to the beginning. How did you get into real estate?Marc Goodin (03:07)
Back in the early 80s as a civil engineer, I was designing site plans for a lot of developers. And one day an older gentleman came and said, you’ll design a self storage for me. I’m 24 years old. I say, sure, what is self storage? Back in the early 80s, you didn’t see a lot of it. You certainly didn’t understand what it was. He took me out and he showed me a couple of them. I designed my very first one for him. And after that, people were asking me continuously.to design self-storages. eventually after I built my own, they asked me more about operations sales and marketing as well. But it all started when some guy came to my engineering office.
Kristen Knapp (03:45)
Wow, so you just got into that right away.Marc Goodin (03:47)
Yep, I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. What I finally realized in my engineering business, the only customers that were going out fishing, going home, going on some fun event were the self-storage guys. Everybody else was going back to work. And that’s when I decided I’ve got to find a way to build my first self-storage.Kristen Knapp (04:54)
Yeah, so I’m curious about, you you were building for other people and you figured out you were really good at it. And I’m curious when what that moment was when you really were like, wait, I want this to be my career. Was that the moment or was there something else?Marc Goodin (05:07)
No, was just, you know, even before Self Storage, I bought and sold.real estate, single family houses, I rented them out, duplexes. So I’ve always been into real estate. And one day I had so many clients are calling to fix the sink in the middle of the night. And I said, there’s gotta be a better way. And then it just popped in my mind, at Self Storage, you don’t have to repaint, you don’t have to recarp it, you don’t have to fix the stove. it just…
came to me and I said, hey, let’s do it. It can’t be that hard. And it just took some time and it worked out well.
Kristen Knapp (05:44)
That’s amazing and you already were investing before then. this was kind of, you’ve already kind of been in that world.Marc Goodin (05:50)
Yeah, and I use that money from those places. I never built from scratch residential. I usually bought and repaired. So that kind of gave me the money that I needed to build a self-storage.Kristen Knapp (06:04)
Amazing. So you built the self storage and then when did you get linked up with storage authority or how did you find them? ⁓Marc Goodin (06:10)
Well, I built my first one and then I, couple years later, I built my second one. And then about 15 years ago, a gentleman came to me. He says, I took all the courses, I went to all the seminars and I did everything. I still don’t feel like I can go out and do this on my own. Will you walk me through it? Will you be on my team? I’ll pay you by the hour. Will you walk me through it? And I said, absolutely, I’d love to do that.And I was actually retired at that time, so I had plenty of time. after a couple months, he said, what you’re telling me, you’re going to tell the next guy the same thing, and the next guy the same thing. Why don’t you do a franchise? And come to find out, Scott was from the hotel franchise world. In fact, he was one of the best salesmen of franchises, won all kinds of awards. says, Marc, let’s do this together. And I said, great, let’s do it.
It took us about a year to put the system together. And the first two months, we signed up two franchisees. And I said, Scott, this thing is working just like you said. You take care of the franchise side. I’ll take care of the development side. And he said, Marc, I can’t. I have a job. I have to go to my job. I said, what are you talking about, Scott? We did all this. And he says, I’ll tell you what. Marc, I’ll give you my half. He owned half. I’ll give you my half.
Kristen Knapp (07:17)
Yeah. ⁓Marc Goodin (07:26)
If you help me build a self-storage, you help me become a multi-millionaire in self-storage. And that’s exactly what I did. It didn’t take him long. His self-storage was raking in $100,000 a month in Florida. And right now, he doesn’t own any of storage authority, but he is a happy guy. He’s got millions in the bank because he sold his self-storage. And now he just dabbles in real estate and enjoys life.Kristen Knapp (07:50)
That’s incredible. So I would love for you to talk about just the opportunity with franchises, because it seems like you’ve done it on your own and you’ve done traditional investing. What’s the opportunity with franchises that you love so much?Marc Goodin (08:04)
Well, I love it so much because I love helping people get to another layer of financial stability. I own my own engineering business and I own two self-storages that were pretty brand new. I said I would never retire, never. And I’d never moved to Florida from Connecticut where the weather has four seasons. But another year later, I was double my income and I said, this is amazing. And I gave my engineering business to my staff, basically.And I moved to Florida and I said, you know, why not help people do this? You know, we offer three things. We offer development, we offer operations and we offer sales and marketing. And if you do all those things correctly, you can make a fortune. You can charge 30, 40 % more than your competition and you can keep your career. Most of our people are professionals. They’re keeping their career until I know one day
five years after they open, a lot of them are going to retire or do something different. So it’s just a blast. Now’s a great time for lot of reasons. So we’re just having fun at it. And this is part of my personal goal is I’d like to keep working, but I’m building an empire for the family when I’m gone. And a lot of people do that. They don’t even sell their self-storages. They take a loan. It’s tax-free.
every five years for a couple million dollars tax free, the self storage pays for it. But they’re building a legacy they can live to their kids. It’s one of the reasons people get in.
Kristen Knapp (10:04)
That’s incredible. mean, so talk about where is storage authority. It’s all over, right?Marc Goodin (10:09)
Yeah, it’s all over. We seem to do a lot in Florida. We’ve got one that’s just starting construction ⁓ here in a couple of weeks. We got one in Virginia that’s under construction, another one that’s finishing up construction next week in New Jersey. But we’ve got a couple of franchisees in Houston. it’s in your backyard. If you want to be a self-storage ⁓ developer,you we help you do it an hour from your home because, you know, do you want to be a lawyer six hours from your office? No. So we figure out, it work in your neighborhood before you get on board with us? And, and, know, we bring you through discovery. So you really understand what our role is, what your role is. It’s just fascinating. All aspects of people think self storage is, know, just a little bit, but it’s all aspects of business. It’s accounting, it’s sales, it’s marketing, it’s maintenance and staff.
and you as an owner, you just get to do what you love. When I go to my self-storages, you’ll find me out there in the garden, because that’s what I love to do. You’re not going to find me doing the books, but other franchisees, they love doing the books and they do them themselves.
Kristen Knapp (11:15)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, it really does offer people the opportunity to start their own business in a very approachable way.Marc Goodin (11:21)
Exactly, and we give them that step by step. Not only is it written down, but you know, people think, and that’s the problem with books, it’s tough. But when somebody’s there and you’re meeting with them once a week and you’re going over, okay, this is what I did last week, this is what’s next week, okay, watch out for this pothole, here’s a surprise you probably never even think about, and sure enough, that surprise got them, came up and they knew what to do. You know, they knew to call me or they knew the solution.You know, just going out there to look for land, know, not all seven acres is equal. Some is wetland, swamp, topography, zoned wrong. You know, so it takes about 12 to 16 good features of the land and the area and the community to make it a good site. So we help you review all those. You never guess them all. You know, if there’s one problem with self storage is everybody thinks it’s too easy and…
Kristen Knapp (11:53)
Right.Marc Goodin (12:14)
And then the second problem is they just never take the first step.Kristen Knapp (12:18)
Right. And obviously, you you mentioned some of the physical attributes of the land that you’re looking for when opening up a new franchise. What are some other, like, what makes a good piece of land for storage or what makes a good area for storage? Does it have to be in a certain type of residential area? Like, what do you think?Marc Goodin (12:37)
Well, there’s several factors like that. We look at the factors in a three mile radius because that’s where 80 % of your business comes from. So we like to have at least 15 to 20,000 people in the three mile radius. We like to have 15 to 20,000 cars driving by your property because people remember your site. When they need it, they’ve seen it.You know, we like to, if we want to build a single store, we like to buy five or six acres for under a million dollars. That’s, when I say five or six acres, that’s usable. We don’t count the cliffs, we don’t count the swamp, we don’t count the steep topography. So there’s all those types of things. And you know, in our manuals, we actually give you ranges. Here’s the minimum, here’s the preferred. Here’s the minimum, here’s the preferred. Somebody wants, some people just want all preferred. They want the best for their property. Other people, hey.
Okay, I got three minimums and the rest are preferred. Let’s go to it. Everybody’s personality is a little different. So, you know, that’s why, you know, you can’t say A, B or C is always right or wrong.
Kristen Knapp (14:20)
Yeah, and I would love for you to talk about storage in general. Talk to people about why it’s such a great opportunity in the investing world.Marc Goodin (14:27)
Well, it’s a great opportunity. First of all, it has the lowest failure rate of any real estate. In the last 20 years, every single year, it’s either been the number one or the number two most profitable real estate opportunity. When we get beat, it’s typically with these large warehouses. First, was the large warehouses for Amazon and those guys. We came in second.Of course, you had to have $50 million to build one of those. Now we’re coming in second to these data warehouses that cost 500 million to build. So reality for somebody like you and I, we’re always number one as making a profit. And the low failure rate or the lowest failure rate means we’re gonna get banks to loan us that money. As long as you’ve got a good credit score, and especially if you’re part of a franchise, they’re gonna approve you.
If your feasibility for your land says go, obviously if the feasibility study says don’t go, you don’t buy the property. And the way we do it to protect our franchises, we give an option to buy, so we don’t buy that property until after we have approvals. That way we know our money’s not at risk. Some people just want to go out there and pay 800,000 for that land tomorrow
and…
heaven forbid you looked at the zoning wrong or this or that wrong and it’s just not going to be financially feasible, you own a piece of land that you’re to have to resell. So our goal is to reduce your risks, show you how to get around all those potholes, increase your profitability, and decrease the time you need to spend. So you can’t beat it, but you have to realize it’s a five-year game plan to becoming
incredibly wealthy. Most people, me included, at my job, what did I make? I made a good six figure income and I spent a good six figure income. It was the second income that was twice my regular income and it comes in whether I go to work or not. It’s a beautiful business. And some people are young and they’re gonna build two or three or four. So it can be a lifestyle business.
Kristen Knapp (16:34)
Yeah.Marc Goodin (16:36)
or can be a growth business. So, depending on your personality, people just don’t realize that various opportunities and self-story.Kristen Knapp (16:45)
Yeah, I would love for you to kind of expand on the fact that it requires patience. You have to be patient over the course of a few years. It’s not going to happen overnight.Marc Goodin (16:54)
Yeah, the first thing, a lot of people like to build their own facility because they’re going to make an extra five million in the first five years. But to find a piece of land means you’ve got to look at 100 pieces of property, 100, make an offer on three, and buy one. So 100 pieces of land, we help you. When people do it on their own, they look at a piece of land for three months, and they stop looking at the second one.and then when it’s rejected, they look at another one for three months. They’re not gonna get there forever. We give you some key factors, so most properties you can reject in 15 minutes. And then one or two a month, it’s gonna take you a couple hours to get to that answer. And that happens everywhere. When you open your doors with us, everything is set up from your internet and people don’t realize it.
Simple stuff. You gotta have two internet systems. One for the credit cards and one for the general use. You can’t connect those, but those things are on paper and we have somebody on our team helping you get ready pre-opening preparations. It’s a lot of work, it’s fun, but it just takes time. And then once you find the land, it takes four months to design it.
Four months to get it approved and 12 months to build it. So there’s some time and then it can take a year to 24 months to fill it up. So we work with banks so you can borrow the carrying costs. So there’s no surprises. We put that in our performance. Here’s the carrying costs for the interest. Here’s the carrying costs for the staff and the employees. We make it part of the loan so it costs us less money to get to that.
position out of our pocket. SBA ⁓ allows self storage and SBA allows 10 to 15 percent down depending on the size of the loan. That’s another great opportunity to save money.
Kristen Knapp (18:53)
And as far as like the clients, like the people actually renting out the storage units, is that affected by the market or is that pretty steady no matter what? Because I assume people want to keep their stuff no matter what.Marc Goodin (19:05)
We had a lady last week that, you know, we call everybody, it’s automated, but once they get 30 days late, we call them and tell them, you know, hey, you know, the contract says, you know, in 30 days from now, we can auction your unit. And this lady says, I get paid next week, my mortgage is due, I can work on that. They’re not gonna kick me out for months, but I’ll pay you next week. So people pay us before they pay their mortgage, you know.And we have, we open units when they don’t pay their rents, because we can auction it off 30 days after they’re 30 days late. And there’s, to us, to you and me, it’s trash, but it’s their stuff and they don’t want to give it up. I built my first self storage, I don’t recall, like 20 years ago. I’ve got clients from the first month that are still there. So that’s a great thing because let’s just say you had 50,000 square feet to rent.
Kristen Knapp (19:51)
Yeah.Marc Goodin (19:57)
in beginning. Well now I don’t have that because I’ve been open so many years. I got 15 % rented for life. So that allows me to raise my rates because I don’t have to rent 60,000 square feet every year. And the average person right now stays 18 months. That’s just incredible. We put them on credit card and they stay an extra two months. You know, it’s out of mind, out of sight, automatic payment. know, yep.Kristen Knapp (20:19)
Right. You get used to the payment.Marc Goodin (20:24)
You know, it has slowed down in the last two years because of the high interest rates. And what happens is fewer people are building homes, fewer people are moving. That’s one of our biggest customers, 60 % are moving. But right now we’re seeing the trend going back up. know, people are already feeling better. They already believe the interest rates are coming down. So, you know, I can see a boom like we’ve not had in 20 years.And I built my first self storage, I might mix up on the dates, 2007. We were in the king of depressions at the time. And everybody’s telling me, don’t build it, don’t build it. But time comes and goes and you’re out of that recession or whatever it is. so there’s some people that, we’re almost in a recession, we gotta wait. You wait, it’ll be too late because it takes time. So you don’t wanna wait, you wanna do it now.
Kristen Knapp (21:10)
Totally.Absolutely. Well, I mean, this has been so great. What you’ve built is so impressive and how you’re able to help other people get their business, you know, get a business for themselves and their family. Tell us where to find you, how to get involved with storage authority, if people are interested in being franchisees.
Marc Goodin (21:29)
Yeah, if you want to get a hold of me, I’d love to hear from you, see what your goals are, and see if we can help you with or without Storage Authority. My email is pretty simple. It’s my name, Marc, M-A-R-C, at storageauthority.com. If you have questions, the best place to start is on our website, Storage Authority Franchise. Go to the FAQ section and read that.There’s a couple of places where you can read our blog or you want to sign up for a free copy of our book, The 12 Steps to Self Storage, whether you’re to do it with a franchise or not, it’s there at our website. So that is step one. Step two is giving us a call and we have a little conversation, see if things are going in the right way. And then we have a discovery process. on Zoom or we’re live together. And then quite often we meet up. it’s a little bit of a…
you know, 45 day process to make sure we’re a good fit. know, we’re looking for people that really want to be go-getters and have a super successful business. You know, that’s what makes life fun. So, you know, we get ahold of you. We have a team that tells you the good news and we have a team that tells you the bad news so you’re prepared. But if you’re going to do something, and not everybody’s made to be an entrepreneur, you know.
maybe 1 to 3 percent of the population really should be owning their own business because it does take a lot of effort. Check out our website, again, storageauthorityfranchise.com. Go to anywhere, just search my name.
I’ve written multiple books on self storage. My favorite book is, I wrote, is Crush Your Competition. And it’s 52 weeks of marketing, guerrilla marketing for self storage. And at the very, very, very end of the book, I tell everybody, by the way,
You know, I don’t check on my competition. I don’t see what my competition is doing for rates. The only competition I’ve got, and the only competition you really got is the belief, the belief. Because if you believe it, there’s enough people out there that want to be treated special, that want a super clean site, that want, you know, everything. You know, it’s not that much to ask, but you don’t get it anymore. And you definitely don’t get it in self storage because they’re all average. Most industries, you have a peak.
Here’s an average, but in self-storage, 95 % are average, so it’s easy to be super, in self-storage. But read that book, crush your competition, and it tells you about the guerrilla marketing that makes a difference. Without marketing, you’re just a commodity, and you’re not gonna build a self-storage today if you’re gonna be a commodity.
Kristen Knapp (23:59)
Amazing. Well, I mean, you make me excited about storage, so I’m sure a lot of people feel the same and learned a lot from this. So thank you so much for being here, Marc. Awesome. Well, everybody, please check out Storage Authority and please check out Marc. And thank you for listening. We’ll see you back next time. Bye.Marc Goodin (24:07)
It’s my pleasure.Thanks.
