Day 53 - Boat & RV 100 LIVE RECAP: Section 4 -- Operations & Management

Hello folks, and welcome to day 53. We are live. This is the section 4 recap of operations and management, and I am doing my typical song and dance, letting people log in, get the notification, then we'll switch the screen here and we'll get into it. All righty, one second. Cool. Hopefully everybody, uh, is in and we are getting started. So, uh, welcome to day 53 of the Boat and RV 100 series. I'm Joe Downs and today we're live. But before we get into it, if you've been watching section 4 and you're not in the Storage Moguls community yet, this is the moment. Let me make sure my chat is up actually too. Where'd that go? There it is. I want to make sure I can see, uh, anything that comes through. Okay, so today's the moment because what we cover in these live sections, you know, the real questions, the operator war stories, the stuff that doesn't make it into the recorded episodes, that's all inside, right? And, uh, it's all inside the Storage Mobiles community. And it's free to join, and we'd love to have you. StorageMoguls.ai is where we're at. Obviously, there's a free tier. I keep saying it's free to join. There are levels that you can take if you want to be in this business. We do have education. We do have training and mentorship. So there's various levels inside the community. Want to make sure I let you know that it's not just all free, but the free. Level is a great place to start. Um, there's a little more than what you're getting here, so, uh, we'd love to see you over there. The tools are built and the operators are in there, and it's community too, so all you gotta do is show up. Um, all right, now Section 4 was 13 episodes. We went over the full operational playbook from day one takeover to the customer service standard that keeps your best tenants. Tonight I want to hear what actually came up for you as you went through it. Uh, towards a little towards the end, I'll do Q&A like I always do, and then I'll give you a preview of Section 5. Uh, but let me know what clicked, what you're still working through, and, you know, let's close this out. All right, let me walk through what we did cover in Section 4. Uh, if you missed it, go back and watch them. Uh, 13 episodes, 13 layers of the operational challenge specific to this vertical. I've heard from a couple of you already over the last couple weeks. I do have your questions, I'll get to them. Um, I love that you email— emailed them in. You could also come on the live and ask them there. Um, all right, so the section opened up with the first 30 days after closing, this which is the single, uh, most relationship-critical window in boat and RV ownership. If you get that right Your tenants will stay. If you get it wrong, you're chasing occupancy from the start. So, uh, we also covered the infrastructure decisions that shape your tenant mix— things like the drive aisle, the gate technology, security. We covered the amenity decisions that show up in Google reviews and referrals, the legal and documentation decisions, lease clauses, insurance, winterization guidance, uh, all the stuff that protects you when something goes wrong. And the customer service standard that separates facilities that retain tenants from the ones that don't, which if you remember is the peak-end principle, which the end should be the one-call resolution, peak being— if, well, if you didn't watch, I'll tell you. If you did watch, it's a reminder you should go back and watch this. Um, in every customer situation, you as the customer, you as the business owner, your customer has this or you have it yourself, you have what's called the peak-end principle. So in every customer experience, we have a peak of the experience which could be good or bad. A lot of times it's bad. And then you have the end of the experience. That's what customers remember, the peak and the end. Peak, good or bad. The end. If it's bad, better be resolved. And that's what the one-call resolution is. These are not abstract concepts. They're used all over corporate America. I'm just— you need to use it in your facility, no matter how big or small. And they're the difference between a 5-star review and a 1-star review on a Saturday morning in September. Uh, 3 sticking points come up on almost every operator call when we're talking about operations. Who manages it and what that really costs. Operators consistently underestimate the time and overestimate how much, how much of it requires them specifically. Uh, and the answer is remote access technology plus clear resolution authority for whoever answers the phone. The seasonal gap, June through August, operators see occupancy dip and The ones that are not watching this series are not part of our community. They panic. And the right move is retention in spring before the gap, not discounting it during it. And the least question— operators running adapted self-storage leases on boat and RV facilities have gaps in vehicle description, move-in documentation, and the abandoned vehicle process. And every one of them is solvable. The operators who run clean facilities have all three figured out. We had two themes run through all thirteen episodes, and they're worth naming directly. First, this vertical rewards operators who plan around the seasonal cycle rather than react to it. What does that mean? Well. Every staffing decision, pricing decision, marketing decision, and customer service decision should be calibrated to which phase of the cycle you're in. So if you remember, spring is retention, fall is execution, summer is your gap management, and then winter is when you're planning for the spring retention, summer gap management, and fall execution. Second, tenant trust is your competitive moat. These tenants, remember, they store high-value recreational assets and they have emotional investment in their vessels and vehicles. The operators who understand that, who handle problems like the tenant's entire Saturday or weekend depends on it, who document the vehicle at move-in, who recommend, not require, winterization, who encourage insurance or require insurance. Those operators retain tenants at rates that standard self-storage facilities cannot match. Everything else we covered in Section 4 is in service of those 2 dynamics. The one-call resolution standard is the operational insight from this section that I Uh, most want every manager to internalize. Remember the professional framing. You aren't storing their stuff. You're keeping their memory-making machine safe, and you and your gate stand between them and making more memories. It's a different paradox than storing stuff, and it's always the timed event. That context changes everything about how your staff handles the Those calls. There's 3 things required: remote gate access on every phone, every manager phone, tenant account access so they can see the history, and a defined fee waiver authority. They have to have the authority to waive the fee if that's what's holding up the access. Any one of those missing items and the system breaks exactly when you need it most. If your call center doesn't have these tools right now, that's the one thing you need to fix this week. You need a call center that can open the gate remotely, waive a first-time late fee, or even second time. That's what you— you've got to protect your tenants and their memory-making experience. That's going to go much further than a $15 late fee. All right, uh, questions, fire away if you have them. Um, if you can't think of any, I've got some prompts on the screen here for you. If you already own a facility and you wanna shoot me a message in the chat, that's fine too. I'll read them as I see them. In the meantime, while you're thinking of them, I— as I mentioned, I did get some emails along the way, or I'm always getting emails along the way. Hopefully I'm answering them, all of them. Um, all right, here's one. Let me pull it up. Sorry. Yep, that's it. Joe, I have a 60-space open-air facility I'm looking at and I live 45 minutes away. 60 spaces, open air, 45 minutes away. Okay, should I be self-managing or hiring someone from day one? Well, it depends. 45 minutes away is, um, That's outside the self— the traditional self-managed window. I mean, it's up to you. That's kind of on that demarcation line there. Uh, I mean, you're not going to drive 90 minutes round trip, are you, when a gate glitches on a Saturday morning and a tennis facility is waiting to head to the lake? 45 minutes, that's way too long for, for them to wait. Um, yeah, the right move Um, at the very least, a local contractor or part-time manager who can be on site within 20 minutes. Um, and then you handle the business side, the leasing, the pricing, all that, the communications. Um, you really need someone who can get there faster than 45 minutes. I mean, that's not even realistic, you know. That means 45 minutes, you're walking out the door on the phone. Uh, you know, I don't know about you, but I need probably 10, 15 minutes at a minimum to get out the door. So really you're an hour away. Um, yeah, get somebody local to handle the physical stuff like this. Um, assuming you can't— oh, what was the, uh, the gate glitches? Yeah, so you need— that's a physical. Define the scope and, um, yeah, get someone to handle the physical. You, you'll define the scope, uh, for them. Uh, and that's a hybrid model. We cover that, um, On day 41, and it works well. Works well at 60 spaces. Yeah, I'd say that works well. Um, all right, got a chat question here. Um, I have a facility under LOI. Congratulations. And the drive aisles on the secondary rows are 34 feet. Okay. Main aisles 50. All right, so— And the seller says it's never been a problem. Should I believe him? I know, look, in this Boat and RV 100, I know I made some declarations. I walked it back a few episodes later. I think I didn't walk it back, I just explained there's other scenarios. Um, the answer is it depends. Can we get a rent roll history from this guy, from the seller? Hopefully you have it. Hopefully it's 2 years at least, ideally 3. Same with the P&L. You know, if you're a mixed-use facility where you got Class A's, um, you know, at that 50 feet, and you also have, you know, jet skis and whatever, and there's enough demand, it could work. It's not a hard and fast rule. Um, you know, it's never been a problem probably means nobody with a Class A has ever tried those secondary rows, or they've looked at them and didn't bother. Because 34 feet is substandard for anything over about 28 feet on a trailer. So you're definitely putting smaller vessels, vehicles back there. But, um, the question is, who are those rows serving? Who and what, right? If the secondary aisles are priced for smaller boats and jet skis, then it might be workable. And by the way, if that's what the pro forma— or sorry, the trailing 12 dictates and the rates are market for that vehicle size. It basically have multiple classes in one. Um, obviously if you're, if you're pro forma and the asking price and the pro forma to reach the asking price or even the trailing 12 is Class A pricing on every row, well, that, that doesn't work. Um, but it could work. I mean We own one that's, that's got a mix and it works. It just depends on what the, what the unit mix is that you can serve. Um, and that's just where, that's where the due diligence comes in. You gotta roll up your sleeves and get, and get, uh, you know, get your, get your fingernails dirty, which is a bad analogy because you're not gonna get them dirty in a spreadsheet. But, um, all right. What's the one gate technology upgrade you'd do first if you took over a keypad-only boat and RV facility tomorrow? It's one technology upgrade. I guess I'd have to see what everything— I mean, it's kind of a— I'm answering this in a vacuum, but since you went with keypad only, um, Is it Randy? Yeah, Randy. Um, you went with keypad only here. I'm gonna answer this way. Go Bluetooth. Bluetooth auto-open with remote management capability, and I'd make sure it's on the manager's phone before the first tenant calls with an access issue. Keypad is fine as backup. But ideally, folks, going forward, you don't want that to be your primary system. So as soon as you can budget the upgrade, uh, at a single gate facility, which is what, $1,500 maybe to $3,000 installed, the day— I don't know how far away you are from the day that, that, that Saturday morning call comes in, uh, tenant at the gate, family, you know, in the truck looking to head out on the lake and you open it from your phone in 30 seconds, you're gonna, you're gonna know exactly why you made that investment. Uh, Dave, let me look at this. Day 43 covers that full tier breakdown if you want specifics. Um, let me see what else we got here. Hey Joe, you mentioned Gate technology being retention tool. Oh, a little segue there. What changes have you seen improve the tenant retention The most changes have I seen improve. Gate technology is definitely one of them. Rinse station's another. Air. I mean, these are all low investment, high. What's the word I'm looking for? It's low investment, high reward indirectly, which is a tenant retention tool. Um, you know, it's more of a gut feel. It probably takes a little while for you to, to see it in the numbers. And how do you actually see it in the numbers? But, you know, you see it in talking to tenants and getting the qualitative feedback from them. I would say those 3— the upgrade the gate, rinse, and air— and we covered all these. Um, you mentioned gate techno— oh, it's the same question there again. Just, um, all right, let me see. What's the single most important thing operators get wrong in their first year of owning a boat and RV facility? Hmm, I'm— it's a good question, and we covered a lot of them. Maybe that's why you're asking the single most, um Probably the first 30 days, depending— another one I'm answering in a vacuum here— depending on when you're buying it and taking over. But I'm still gonna, I'm still gonna say the first 30. Um, it just becomes a lot more critical depending on the time of year because we got the 4 phases, right? We got the retain, The summer gap, the go time, and then the planning phase, right? So retain in the spring, summer gap, and, you know, what you can do to try to fill it without giving away the farm. And then, you know, your primary leverage season, which is the fall, and that's your revenue growth season. And then you're back to planning again to learn from what you did last year and do it again. Um, those are your 4 seasons depending on when you take over. I'd still say that first 30 days because— and here's what, here's what the mistake people make. And we're good. I'm good. Look, everything inside of Storage Moguls, almost everything, a lot of what's inside of Storage Moguls from an education standpoint, whether it's free or whether, you know, you new, uh, level up tiers. It's all from experience. And unfortunately for us and some of my partners, not always the best experience. You know, we've made mistakes. We're always learning. What— you know what they say, just, uh, mastery is a journey, not a destination. So we're, we're learning every day. Sure, I'm on here sharing knowledge, but I still learn every day, and then we share it. Um, but what happens is It's like you actually—it's prob. I've never done this, and I never will climb Mount Everest. But I imagine it's like this: it's such an an exhaustive effort to close, and closing would be reaching the summit. But you're not done when you reach the summit of Mount Everest. Still got to get down, right? And that's. No picnic. Is it easier? Sure. But you can still die on the way down, and many people have. So obviously this is not a life or death situation when we're— when we just closed on a storage or a boat and RV storage facility. But closing is not the finish line. That's the beginning of a new process. And in boat and RV in particular, because there's a relationship factor that's different than there is in storage, and you want it that way, you got to get those first 30 days right. So what happens is you close and you're relieved that you closed because all that hard work finally came to fruition, and you should celebrate, right? But you're not done. The first 30 days is the opportunity for you to set the tone for tenant retention, to get an operational rhythm, whatever season you're in. And build the relationships with the community you just inherited. And then there's other things you gotta— you gotta walk every space, document every condition, photograph everything, introduce yourself to the long-term tenants personally, whether it's in person or by phone, not by letter. Um, especially your top-paying tenants. Find out which 3, 4, or 5 of them are— there's always informal community leaders, especially a place like this where Storage people show up at your facility near each other, maybe they say hi, maybe they talk. If they're contractors, maybe they do. At a boat and RV facility, people are checking out each other's boats, measuring, you know, or RVs. Oh, what does yours do? They're proud of it, right? So they talk. So there's always the, the ringleaders. So you want to find out who they are and you want to get to know them. You want to make sure they're happy and they'll they'll know what people are saying. So, uh, what day do we cover this? Day 40. We covered the first, uh, first— or yeah, the first full 30 days, or the full first 30-day playbook, something like that was called. Um, if you're in year 1 right now and you haven't done those things, by the way, if you own it, congratulations, but you need to go back and do that. Um, and this week's a good time to start. Uh, all right, any other questions? No? All right, well, let's keep moving here. Um, I want to tell you what's coming up. Section 5. So Section 5 opens tomorrow and it shifts the question entirely. In Section 4, we asked, how do I run this? Section 5, we're gonna ask, how do I make this thing perform at its absolute best? So seasonal rate strategy, surge in, um, the fall, retain in the spring— may sound redundant, it's not. I'm going deeper into each one. And, um, and remember, and this is major part of Storage Moguls and how we're presenting education there, Anytime you think I'm repeating or, hey, didn't he already cover that? I'm going deeper. This isn't— learning this business is not hard, but it needs to be immersive. So some of the topics may sound familiar, but I'm going deeper into them because if I go deep the first time, you're not going to retain it anyway. All right, um, what else we doing? Raising rents and long-term tenants, adding covered storage, ancillary revenue, Google My Business. Uh, the referral network, rate optimization, building a portfolio— those are some of the things we covered though. So, um, if Section 4 was the foundation, Section 5 is where you're gonna find out what the building is worth. I don't know why I came up with that analogy, but I did. Hopefully you understood it. Um, all right, like I said, Section 4 gave you the clear picture of what you're running one of these facilities, um, actually looks like. Then like this video for me. But really, I've said it a million times, you're doing it for you. Yes, it helps me because I am trying to spread the message and grow our community, but that's also for you because more people in our community, the better community is. But it's also good for you because you signal to everyone in your community that you've been putting in the work watching these videos. And believe it or not, When you share stuff like this, people just assume you've been doing it forever. I remember when I started this business 7 or so years ago and I was sharing stuff that I read— LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube— people that I know was like, oh, how long you been in store? You've been in storage for years, right? Like 6 months. Um, so trust me, it, it goes a long way. And it's that The signal that tells YouTube to put this in front of the next operator who needs it too. So it's good for the community. Subscribe so you don't miss day 54. That's the first episode of Section 5 tomorrow, and it's the one that shows you exactly how to price your highest revenue window of the year. Folks, if you want the full operational playbook, uh, the one-call resolution framework, and a room full of operators already been through the seasonal cycle It's all at storagemuggles.ai. It's free to join. Everything you need, it's already built. Section 5 starts tomorrow. We'll see you there.