Thread: Owners, What Are Your Goals for This Year?

From Benjamin Burkhart's article in ISS...

"It’s amazing the number of owners out there who operate with little more sophistication than a lemonade stand. Complacent managers and distracted owners translate to weakening bottom lines. Can you make money that way?

"A lot of self-storage owners have for many years. Keep expenses low and hope for the best. But that’s not good business, and as we all know from recent experience, the best is not bankable. If you want your business to be profitable in the long term, you’d better get serious now. Otherwise, you’ll lose.

"Developers, owners and managers should look for better efficiencies, tactical marketing initiatives, and ways to sharpen their competitive edge, no matter what stage of the self-storage life cycle they’re in—development, startup, leaseup, stabilization or sale. The key is to get serious about your business."

Anyone care to share a couple of business objectives for 2010?

Survive!

Here in Southern California we pray every day that things will turn around as it has started to in other places, but their is no relief in site for a long time.

Originally Posted by jcarlisle

From Benjamin Burkhart's article in ISS...

"It’s amazing the number of owners out there who operate with little more sophistication than a lemonade stand. Complacent managers and distracted owners translate to weakening bottom lines. Can you make money that way?

"A lot of self-storage owners have for many years. Keep expenses low and hope for the best. But that’s not good business, and as we all know from recent experience, the best is not bankable. If you want your business to be profitable in the long term, you’d better get serious now. Otherwise, you’ll lose.

"Developers, owners and managers should look for better efficiencies, tactical marketing initiatives, and ways to sharpen their competitive edge, no matter what stage of the self-storage life cycle they’re in—development, startup, leaseup, stabilization or sale. The key is to get serious about your business."

Anyone care to share a couple of business objectives for 2010?

Carefully review EVERY expense and make sure we are spending our money wisely, expend every effort to make sure we do our best to gain new customers and retain the existing ones, keep exploring new ways to market, maintain a positive attitude and share that with everyone we come in contact with.

Yes the last several years have been tough but we live in the greatest country in the world and we still have many opportunities to better our lives and the lives of others. Make sure we say "thank you" often, and I'am sorry when necessary.

Perhaps not a business objective but certainly a business philosophy to achieve a successful business and personal life.

To me the most important thing is to stay positive, not matter how tough it gets we all need to stay positive and look for ways to market ourselves better, while trying to find ways to reduce our bottom lines to run more efficient...

Thank you Mel....you are spot-on!! and I appreciate you saying it so eloquently.

Great thread!! While we have been holding our own-- it could sure be much better. My most immediate goal is collections- ugggh-- or ugly. But tax refund time has always been a great time for that. Have already had a few begging phone calls to wait until mid January or EOM when they get their refund.

Next up is my yellow pages ad, main directory very overpriced. I am toying with the idea of going from 1/2 page to 1/4 page if they won't come down on price. (couldn't get them to last year-- the guy left on the verge of tears) And a marketing plan to step up on an as needed basis to make up for the yellow pages.

And I am anxiously waiting for spring. Real Estate and home building come on! We are still having plant closings and layoffs which are bringing the normal amount of "distressed" prospects.

Think I have just about cut all the expenses that I can. But am considering adding a very part time office assistant- maybe open up some time for me- for marketing & management-- and more participation in the industry - especially SST !
Happy New Year-- Julie
PS- Just between you & I - my real goal is to Work Less & Play More!

I think the general consensus this year is that the Yellow Pages print edition is not a great marketing investment. We tried to reduce the size of our ad last year in an effort to save money, but that only made the price of the advertising go up. We told them that we were going to have to pull out of the book altogether, and they offered to give us the same size ad (3/4 page ads in 3 books) for 33% less than the price that we paid the year prior.

This year, we have opted to cut the book entirely. We placed call tracking numbers in the books last year and discovered that people were definitely NOT finding us from the book.

As for my 2010 objectives, I have enrolled myself in some college classes with the goal of landing a job in the government...it may take a while, but it seems to be a great place to be these days.

All fun aside, we've taken a serious look at our current staff, cut out the ones who were not conducive to helping the business grow, hired new faces with plenty of self-storage experience that possess an energy for success, cut out the big yellow book, and decided to put the money that we will save back into our staff by way of training and motivation seminars, etc.

I'll keep you posted on our progress.