In an interview with The Business Fame Magazine, Founder and CEO of Storage Authority, Marc Goodin, shares valuable information about Storage Authority and about its remarkable contribution.
Q. Give a detailed description of the Founder/CEO/Management’s contribution over the company and the industry.?
Marc Goodin is the Founder and CEO of Storage Authority. By trade he is a civil engineer and owned an engineering/survey firm until he retired at age 50. Five years of fishing later Marc started Storage Authority, the only self-storage franchise in the US.
For more than 30 years, Marc has worked closely with dozens and dozens of self-storage owners on all aspects of their facilities, from design and permitting to construction, management and marketing. He owns and operate three self-storage facilities that he designed and built, including one international facility in the New Brunswick, Canada.
Marc, who earned his bachelor of science degree in civil engineering at Colorado State University, has authored two best-selling books on self-storage – one focused on development and the other on marketing. He frequently speaks about self-storage at industry conferences and regularly authors articles for trade magazines.
While Marc’s contributions to self-storage are impressive, equally important is his passionate and uncompromising devotion to a simple business philosophy: “Our job is to make your job easier and more profitable – by preparing the road ahead of you and putting rocks in your snow balls so you will be ready to Crush the Competition day one Franchisees owners are our number one priority so my personal cell phone is available to every franchise owner.”
Q. Could you please share your noted milestones, accomplishments throughout your journey so far along with company highlights and achievements under your leadership.
After a life time of learning self-storage and a year of preparing to Launch Storage Authority we knew “self-storage Franchising is an idea whose time has come” when we awarded our first franchise in Dec of 2015. Since then we have awarded two dozen franchises and at the present pace we expect to award a franchise a month moving forward. This June we had our first franchise facility sell that further proved the incredible value of self-storage and the Storage Authority model. Storage Authority Mulberry FL was sold after being open just 2 years. The 82,000 net rentable sf facility sold at just about the asking price of $14,200,000 making Scott the owner a multi-millionaire. It was filled up in recorded time and was had a monthly income of $100,000.
Q. Please tell us about the Franchise model you follow and the services you provide that makes the brand unique in the mid of cut throat competition.
Storage Authority helps busy professionals make an extra 6 figure self-storage profit and retirement nest egg, while they continue your career. Specifically we:
1) Make self-storage MUCH, MUCH easier and reduce the risks for our franchisees.
2) Help our Franchisees obtain oversized profits and other benefits most people would never reach on their own.
3) Help our franchisees to have a lifestyle and growth business that allows them to retire early if they choose to. We do this by providing a personalized Road Map for each franchise owner using our 3 Tier Platform consisting various systems, Dynamic Ease Manuals and one on one guidance for each platform. They include
1) New Development: The Storage Authority Dynamic Ease Development Platform includes planning, finding land, feasibility review, design, obtain approvals and build or buy your self-storage.
2) Operations: The Storage Authority Dynamic Ease Operational Platform consist of a very efficient high tech & high touch manager, website & kiosk driven self-storage facility.
3) Sales, Marketing and Customer Service: The Storage Authority Dynamic Ease Sales and Marketing platform insures a premium Storage Authority Brand for extra profits most owners could never make on their own.
The Storage Authority 3 platforms:
#1 New Development #2 Operations #3 Customer Service, Sales, Marketing
1) Finding land 1) Manger Driven 1) Over the top customer service
2) Planning & Design 2) Automation 2) Remarkable customer service
3) Construction 3) Scripts 3) Gorilla Marketing
4) Pre Opening 4) Manuals 4) 50% environment & 50% team
5) Avoid Land Mines 5) One on one 5) Ritz vs Motel 6
Few self-storage understand or have prioritized Sales and Marking like Storage Authority. Our sales and marketing is more like the Ritz model than the model 6 approach most self-storage use. This allows our Franchises to have premier facilities that not only beat the competition but Crush the Competition.
Q. Please share the most memorable and remarkable moment of your life.
I have two aha moments in my business life. The first being that my best chance of having the live style I wanted was not my engineering company as I thought, but rather self-storage. And second moment was when I realized it was time to retire early.
As a civil engineer, I designed thousands of site plans including for DD, Wal Mart, Burger King, BJ’s etc. In the Mid 80’s I designed y first self-storage. I became known for my self-storage designs and management expertise. I noticed most of my clients were going back to work after meeting with me. The exception was the self-storage owners. They were going anywhere but back to work. One day after returning from one of my rental properties late at night I decided it was time to sell my rental properties and build a self-storage. A year later I built my first self-storage in 2007.
I always loved my civil engineering career and had the perfect job as the managing partner. I always thought I would work until age 60 or 65 One single day at age 49 I realized I no longer needed a paycheck from my Civil Engineering business. I gave a 1 year notice to my partner so they had ample time to replace me and retired at age 50. When early retirement option comes early and unexpected, it is such a strange feeling to know you don’t have to go to work and you will never run out of money. After 5 years of fishing and time off I started Storage Authority.
Q. Where do you see yourself and the company in future? Or, what is your goal to mark the uniqueness in future?
I love building things. My goal is to be a part of finding land, building and opening 100 new Storage Authority franchisee owned Facilities. As we grow the brand the opportunity to make the Storage Authority Franchise model even better is incredible. This include proprietary items like loyalty apps, customer apps, CRM, rental platform, access apps, marketing and many other things.
Q. Advice for the entrepreneur who is trying to embark in the franchise field.
It takes 4 main ingredients to be successful: Time; Money; Expertise and Systems and Platforms to help you through Development and to execute on Operations and Marketing and Sales to Stand Above the Crowd.
Storage Authority provides the Experience and Systems which will significantly reduce the time required, helps you save money and most importantly will help you make oversized profits. Franchising reduces your risk and cost to get a new business started and profitable. And provides so many benefits that most people would not get on their own. It is important to understand the time and investment requirements of a franchise and confirm you are ready to make that time commitment.
A Franchisor should be able to provide an outline of the time commitments and what your responsibilities are. Some Franchise are full time job. Typically the Storage Authority Manager driven system requires an owner to put in 5- 8 hours a week to be a premiere facility.
Many Storage Authority Franchises are investing $600K to $750K cash and obtaining an SBA loan of $5MM to build a 40,000 to 50,000 sf or larger facility. The FAQ’s at www.StorageAuthorityFranchise.com provide more details on this and other options.
Q. What is the one thing that is acting as your motivational tool? Or, who is your role model and how the person inspires and motivates you?
Time spent on self-storage is not a job for me because I enjoy it so much. Helping other entrepreneurs be successful and at the same time building a family business for generations to come motivates me.
