While some people aspire to be self-storage managers/owners/operators, most just seemed to land in the industry because of some quirky fate. How did you come to find yourself here?

Well Drew, ever since I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being either a fairy princess or a storage manager. The fairy princess has nicer uniforms, but being a storage manager paid better.


Actually, my husband and I opened an internet cafe in 2001, and discovered that not only could we work together in peace and harmony, we actually enjoyed it (most of the time). After the Florida hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 put a whammy on the buildings and tourism on the east coast of Florida, we sold out, took a 3-months cross country road trip vacation...came home and said "NOW what do we do with the rest of our lives?"

We considered opening another business somewhere else, since my husband had owned several construction businesses over the years, but at our ages, the price of health insurance was a big concern. So we decided that we would try working for someone else's business....and spent about a month researching on the Internet for something that we could do together. We looked at campground, MHP, apartment management, etc. But we kept coming back to storage, after all...we had rented storage ourselves throughout the years, how hard could it be to learn whatever it took to sit on the other side of the counter?

So we started sending out resume's and finally someone hired us. We are on our 2nd storage position now, and ABSOLUTELY LOVE WORKING IN STORAGE!!!! There was a lot more to learn that I had ever dreamed of, especially because we have done truck rentals at both jobs. Having to deal with delinquencies and the lien process was also a big shock as I had no idea that people didn't pay their storage rent on time.

But I enjoy the "people" aspect of the job, and I really feel that we are providing a valuable service to customers who are going through upheavals in their lives. So it feels to me like it is a rewarding job. I also get to work with my hubby, and we still spend most of our days in peace and harmony.

So I think we did more research and strategizing with a goal of becoming self-storage managers, not because of quirky fate. I'm just happy that we made the right decision for our career path at this time in our lives.

Back in the 60's (about the time I was born) my father purchased a large piece of land that used to be the Sacramento Northern railway line. This piece was adjacent to another business he had interest in, so he bought it because of its proximity. Not too many years after, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) approached him to purchase the right of way to complete their line. He turned a VERY tidy profit on that deal, and they did not need all of the property he then owned. Since they didn't want it all, he gladly kept the remainder, not knowing what he could ever use it for, but land is land. He was left with a piece of property roughly 60' wide by about 1/4 mile. People laughed at the unusable piece of property he hadn't been smart enough to get rid of.

In the meantime, mini-storage was born.

In 1987 (I was 23) we built the original 53 units with a manager's residence. Since then we've built out to 400+, 2 stories, with 4 residences on the property.

This little unusable, stupid piece of funky property now is our little goldmine....and the value of the land was originally $29,000. We've since been approached by major players in the industry to buy us out in the 4-5 million dollar range.

This is a bit long - sorry...

In 2005 We were living in Phoenix - I was working as a Project Manager for a large auto parts chain and Beverly was an office manager for a large Dairy. We went to Walt Disney World for a fantastic 10 day vacation in September of that year.
When we returned from vacation it was time to go back to work - 10 min back to work and we were both already hating our lives! We got home that evening and we were talking about the rotten day we both had and Beverly asked if I had the opportunity to move where would it be. As we are both big fans of Disney we started talking about moving to Southern California. Over the next week we talked about it more and more - then she gave me the go-head to quit my job of 12 years.
We had just sold our house and an acre of land we also owned (and made a tidy profit on both). We had enough money to live on for at least one year (two if we had to).
After several weeks of driving around Southern California we finally decided on Palmdale. It just looked like a nice place and was close to Disney (80 miles away) and not as overpriced as the LA area.

In December of 05 we moved here - no job, no income just money in the bank.

While we were packing we had stopped at a Self Storage in Phoenix to get boxes - as we were driving home Beverly commented that "we could probably do that" referring to managing a Self Storage.

Anyway - one day in January 06 I was looking at the paper and noticed an ad for resident managers of a storage facility -- we answered the ad and the rest is history! We walked in with no experience and have learned as we go. We have both been good at flying by the seat of our pants.

Anyway that's our story (most of it) We are still making things up as we go, but it seems to be working out for us.

PS - if anyone in the Keys is looking for good resident managers give me a holler. We decided we like snorkeling and the water is better in the Keys them it is in California.

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Wayne
All American Self Storage
Palmdale, CA.
webmaster@all-americanselfstorage.com

My husband and I have been here for going on 5 years now. My grandparents ran this place for roughly 20 years before they decided it was time to retire. The owner having little time to look for a replacement made my husband and I the new managers. Our previous experiences were in management already but, not in this field. Having grown up around the storage facility I pretty much new the ropes so, that also helped with us getting the job

Well we moved from Seattle to Florida after finding my Husbands birth mom he was adopted at 3 yo (seperated for 30 yrs). We was apartment managers in Seattle and had no luck in Tampa in that field. SO after looking and working in other fields for a year, we was so unhappy. I told my hubby i missed working with him each day(even though we worked together in evenings @ Karate) so i got online and typed in Apartment Manager Team in Tampa.... The first thing that came up was the company we work for now. I clicked on there website and faxed them our resume and in about 10 minutes I received a phone call to set up an interview. Well after what seems like for ever we got the job and LOVE the company we work for and have been here almost a year now. We love this more then apartment management as we don't get the call at 2 am that someone is partying or ther water heater is broke. Oh the quiet nights

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Proud Karate Mom

I was 22, some friends of the family were about to start some kind of business that I knew nothing about(turns out its mobile storage) and they needed help with construction. I decided I'd try it for awhile until I found something else. My temporary summer job became a full time career after five years and a succession of steps up the ladder, from my first title of "Director of Paint Application and Clean Up" to running the entire Chicagoland operation. But I still tell everybody that I did it for one reason:Self Storage Groupies