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The Storage Investor Show
From Natural Disasters to Maximizing Revenue: Anne Mari DeCoster's Guide to Self-Storage Success
Connect with our guest:
https://www.decosterconsulting.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-mari-decoster
Episode description:
Join me and industry veteran Anne-Marie DeCoster as we discuss what investors can expect with insurance premiums post-natural disasters, and reveal the secret sauce to maximizing self-storage revenue. Discover why location and active involvement are your best bets for success, and dive into the latest innovations in storage tech and the role of fostering a positive culture to retain top-notch property managers.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Storage and Investor Show. Hope you guys are doing good today. My guest today is Anne-Marie DeCoster. She's a self-storage professional with over two decades of experience in all aspects of development and operations, from concept to exit. She's the founder of DeCosterConsultingcom. Anne-marie, thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, Chris.
Speaker 1:We're gonna cover some questions and topics for new owners and then some for seasoned owners, and we do want to talk about insurance costs. I think that's an interesting topic. Right now. We had two major storms come through One in the Carolinas, I mean, it obviously came up from the South but hit the Carolinas pretty hard and then one in Florida as well. So let's jump in there and talk about insurance costs. Anne-marie posted on LinkedIn If you don't follow her, go follow her. Connect with her on LinkedIn. She posted an interesting thing about rising insurance costs and the expectations of premiums going up into 2025. Anne-marie, can you kind of give us an overview of what's going on in insurance? As far as you know?
Speaker 1:I know you're not like an insurance specialist per se but just help us understand what we might be able to expect in 2025.
Speaker 2:Well, recently I was reading an article that described losses due to natural disasters and big ones, but also the smaller ones big ones, but also the smaller ones and about 2010, they were only about $13 billion a year, but by 2022, they climbed to $99 billion and that's a tremendous increase. It was a little less for 2023. 2024, with two storms you've mentioned, you know it's on, unfortunately, probably on track to be close to, or even more than, those alarming rates. And so you know it's on, unfortunately, probably on track to be close to, or even more than, those alarming rates. And so you know, you look at that and you think, well, what is that going to do to commercial property insurance? That's going to have a big impact. And so I started, I just started talking about it, like I did with you, and I started posting about it just to try to get some conversation about it, see where this is going, how it's impacting people. And, sure enough, as I started, you know, picking up rocks, plenty of things crawled out from underneath them, and so people are finding that.
Speaker 2:You know, in some cases, some dramatic cases this is not the common, but some dramatic cases their insurance provider, who was able to provide them insurance for 10 years, suddenly had to apply, for instance, a fire rating with a tool that evaluates fire risk, and if you're at a six, say, out of a hundred, you're fine, but if you're at a 42 or a 71, depending on the carrier's risk tolerance you may find yourself no longer insured by that carrier.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly what happened to a self-storage owner who had been insured by the same, through the same brokerage, by the same carrier, for 10 years. Well, they no longer had insurance. So I started asking questions like well, what can you do in such cases? And the answer is if you have an existing property, you have to shop your insurance, try to get a quote from each carrier, carrier, and so that's a combination of brokers and agents and administrative groups connecting to carriers. It's a many-layered process, but the point is it's a carrier whose risk tolerance you need to be able to evaluate, and while one may be particularly averse to the wildfires, another may not be. So, by shopping and comparing and being very aggressive about it. Just, you know, some people do that with their phone, their cell phone. All the time they keep shopping for a new plan. That's kind of the approach that an existing owner needs to take if they're finding themselves in insurance trouble.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So are there you're talking about if a property has a certain fire rating or, whatever the case may be, certain characteristics?
Speaker 2:Yes, within 25 miles of the coast, the Gulf Coast, okay.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you what are some characteristics that increase risk and what are some that decrease risk?
Speaker 2:Being more than 25 miles away from the coast the Gulf Coast or the Atlantic Coast, all the way up probably to about the middle of the United States or maybe even further. If you're beyond 25 miles, as the bird flies, you're in better shape to get wind coverage. But wind coverage, which is hurricane damage, is getting harder and harder to get and I tell you another carrier told me that cosmetic damage is something to reconsider. So, for instance, if you have been in a hailstorm we had a terrible one here in Arizona some years ago but they're suffering some bad hail damage in Missouri right now If it's on the face of your building, if it's on the drain pipes, you know if paint or metal has been dented, that certainly should be fixed. But if it's on the roof and it's purely cosmetic, you may find your carriers unwilling to do that repair.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, so there's different risks for different areas, right, I think of the coast no-transcript.
Speaker 2:They wanted to buy market share, so the insurance prices were low and the underwriting standards were relaxed, so it was easier to get insurance. As an owner, it was easier to shop insurance and get a better price. That's not the case right now. It'll come back, but it's not going to be tomorrow, it's not going to be in six months. It'll be a while, because the losses sustained have been significant, and so this is the time when you will benefit from having really safeguarded your claims, your loss ratio.
Speaker 2:If you've had a lot of claims, life is going to be a little rough. You may find yourself being canceled. You may find yourself facing much higher cost. If you have been very conservative in your claims and so you don't have a lot of claims on your record, you'll be in better shape, and I am describing people that I'm interactive with right now. In both of those situations, when we rolled out store local protection and we're looking at the you know the underwriting risks of the facility itself, I learned about the value, the importance of having a really stellar claims ratio, and now I'm seeing it again from the point of view of commercial property as opposed to tenant protection. It's really valuable. Just like with your car sometimes you fix it out of pocket instead of doing an insurance claim or your house. You know you got a $4,000 deductible. We'll fix the window in your pocket instead of doing a claim.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes a ton of sense, if you get a little fender bender, little bumper thing, I would not call the insurance company. Some people want to freak out and call the insurance company. It's not always a good idea to do that. Just get it fixed yourself so you don't have a claim and then, like you said, the other issues going forward. So I guess you know, if you're a current owner, it kind of is what it is. You own what you own. It is what it is. The way you can kind of get ahead of it is. It sounds like what you described earlier shop around, start looking. Now have a few numbers that you can call or contact just in case something changes with your insurance carrier, if you're newer in the business and you want to get started. So, like for the newer owners, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Likewise with insurance, you have to be very sober minded about what you expect it to cost. Certainly, talk to existing owners about what has happened with their insurance. Yesterday I was talking with one whose insurance went up something like 65, 70 percent from 2022 to 2023. And then this year it went down a little back from that, but it's still, you know, much higher than it was. So those are the kind of shocking, you know numbers that people are facing.
Speaker 2:Try to be more than 25 miles away from the coast if you're looking for a new site. I kind of laughed at with at with one of the insurance experts I talked to when he said stay away from Texas. I'm like well, everybody loves Texas. Texas is a great market, but it's a really terrible market for insurance because they have hurricanes and they have tornadoes and they have severe weather of many kinds, and so it's a tough market in Texas right now. So be very cognizant of that and make sure that you don't use past insurance cost to predict future insurance cost.
Speaker 2:Do something that reflects today's reality, which is insurance is going to be more expensive and, you know, expect a high deductible, expect that you might have to piecemeal your coverage and in some places you might even have to go into a pool. You know, if you've had a lot of damage in Florida, they might want to put you in the wind pool, and nobody wants to be there. But it's better than nothing. What is the wind? What does that mean? But maybe it's the HMO as opposed to the PPO. Maybe it's a portal care act as opposed to a top notch employee health benefit from a terrific employer.
Speaker 1:OK, got it. So it's not ideal, but at least helps you get some coverage and don't be afraid to piecemeal it.
Speaker 2:You can have this kind of coverage from one carrier and another credit coverage from another carrier, and if you have to fill in with a pool, well, hopefully conditions change and that won't be the case forever. But yeah, you have to insure your business. It's not an optional cost.
Speaker 1:What about? So you mentioned. Texas as being maybe cautionary. Like you said, it's a great market for population growth.
Speaker 2:I mean it's an active market.
Speaker 1:I mean it just is population growth. I mean it's an active market, I mean it just is. Are there other places like Florida or you know elsewhere that you would just wouldn't say maybe don't invest there, but just be cautious or be aware?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you know that Florida is a market that has a lot of new supply. You also know that it's got great demand. So demand and supply are increasing together, which is good. So it's wonderful when you see occupancy not dropping when there's been a lot of new supply added, because that means that demand is indeed increasing. So there are a lot of attractive markets still in Florida, but there are over-served markets, there are saturated markets. So you've got the insurance challenge and you've got the supply challenge. Everybody loves Florida, has loved Florida for a long time for a lot of great reasons. But if everybody's running there, you might want to be looking elsewhere or pick very carefully. It's still. It's a great place to do business. It's just the cautionary tale of you know, don't be one of a hundred felt storage facilities within 10 miles, you want to be one of five or 10.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was looking at one today, not in Florida, it was elsewhere, but a broker deal just popped it into the address, into a database real quick to see what was there Smaller tertiary market and there was probably, I think I don't know, like 10 or 15 facilities three of them. Yeah, like three of them. You could probably throw a rock at all three of them standing on the street corner. You know like it was pretty rough and uh, those, those can be difficult.
Speaker 1:I mean you may be able to find an edge in some way, shape or form, but still, it's, it's. It's tough to make that work. So Florida can be pretty saturated, like you said, and that's just. That's just kind of what I was thinking of today, Okay, so what I mean? It kind of leads me to ask, and we don't want to like you know, send people just in one direction.
Speaker 1:But are there any insurance brokers, carriers, whatever, that you can recommend that people kind of talk to, maybe two or three, that we can kind of point the people in the right direction?
Speaker 2:Certainly, universal Insurance Programs has been a great provider in the industry for a long time. They are a preferred partner for Store Local and I was with Store Local for a long time. It's not frequent that you have one vendor that nobody complains about, and that's the way Randy Tipton and Jenny Bortman are. They've run a really they run a great shop and they're also very frank about this is what it costs and no, I can't go lower. You know they are honest and fair and true and if they can't help you, they'll let you know that as well. So I always like them.
Speaker 2:And then Terry Anderson is an expert on all things insurance, so I always call Terry and ask him questions. Joe Teresi is another great resource, but I've you know Minico is good and there are a lot of good providers in the industry. So those are my go-to people that you know James Appleton over at Minico and Randy Tipton and Jenny Bortman at UIP and Terry Anderson just because he knows everything about insurance and protection and he can guide me in the right direction and he has creative solutions as well.
Speaker 1:Perfect Guys. If you need to rewind that, please do so. Reach out to those folks.
Speaker 2:And reach out to me. I will do an introduction for you and be happy to help.
Speaker 1:Perfect, yeah, we'll have your, obviously your contact info in the show notes and obviously at the end of the show.
Speaker 1:Great Okay let's talk real quick for newer storage owners. I know you have an expert. Your background is pretty diverse, so if somebody's new and they're trying to get into the business, what kind of expenses and surprises should they look for, be aware of when they're first getting into the business, insurance costs obviously being one of them? Is there anything similar to that that they should be on the lookout for? That could be an unexpected expense that throws their entire first year budget off track.
Speaker 2:Well, if you have an opportunity to be on the main thoroughfare as opposed to off the main thoroughfare by 100 feet, definitely be on the main thoroughfare. Don't take the less expensive land that is off the beaten path. That can really sink your lease up because another self-storage facility is going to take that plot in front of you and they're going to lease up first, which is what happened for a property in Hawaii 20, 25 years ago that I was involved with and it was really discouraging, you know, because our lease up was affected for years. We did not lease up as fast as we had planned Public storage. We broke ground first. They broke ground after us, but they had a bigger team and they were able to finish it first and open before we did. And that property suffered from that for a long time still sold well, sold high to Extra Space. It was a great deal. It was just more of a slog than it would have been if we had gotten that plot right on the main thoroughfare. So that is one lesson location, location, location. Another one is that you know this is a cash producing, appreciating asset because it's dirt with a business on it and businesses don't run themselves. So there.
Speaker 2:You know, there've been a lot of folks in the industry who say this is easy and you can buy it and then go to the beach and never think about it again. Of course, I'm exaggerating ever so slightly, but so are the folks who are, you know, really having people drink their Kool-Aid of? Yeah, this is, you know, just the easiest thing, since you know, I don't know, easier than tying your shoes. It's simpler than building airplanes. It's simpler than building cell towers and networks for communication across the country. It's simpler than brain surgery and networks for communication across the country. It's simpler than brain surgery.
Speaker 2:But it is a business you must attend to. So, no matter how you manage your business, no matter who you use or what you use, be sure you read the MSR, look for places where money is leaking out and look for places where oddities are leaking in, and your MSR, being very familiar with it, will help you with that. So don't be hands off, you know. Don't trust management staff with your beautiful, incredible asset that you've just purchased and you're fixing, or the beautiful one that you've just built. It's your baby and you do need to attend to it, unless you have, you know, know, a really good right hand who can do that for you? But still, you know. Look at the msrs, look at the management summary report yes, the management summary report, in other words.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we I've made that mistake in the past. It's funny you mentioned number one about being off the beaten path. I've done that before and that could be pretty tough. And then the other is, like you said, being a bit more hands off and just kind of trusting other folks to run the business, and we've been through that as well. It's been pretty tough sometimes. Trust, verify Exactly yeah, I don't care what anybody tells me anymore. Like show me the doc, show me the stuff, show me, show me the customer stuff. Like we need to figure out what's going on if there's a problem.
Speaker 2:And if it doesn't make sense, ask a question. You know what makes sense and don't be, you know, intimidated into oh, you don't know the lingo. No, these numbers don't add up and these facts don't add up. So explain it to me again and push. You know, if you see the number of units change, why did they change? There were 705 last week, there are 703 this week. What happened to those two units? You do, you absolutely do.
Speaker 2:Your labor is being charged to your business, not somebody else's. And also remember that they may be doing something across the board for all of the properties, for their entire portfolio, but that might not make sense in your market. So if they're doing, for instance, revenue management very aggressively and driving down your street rents or driving up your in-place rents, and you know your customers and you know that those big units are going to be vacated if the rent goes up so high, don't let them. Don't let them so that you won't be in the situation of another owner I talked to recently who found that that was the case. You know, she had expressed her concern about the increase in in-place rent, but the management company did not adhere to her guidance and, lo and behold, 20, 30% of her large units were vacated and there were no new takers, there were no new prospects for them, so they're sitting there empty and that had a significant impact on the monthly cashflow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not good. It takes a bit longer. I think probably in your experience. It takes a bit longer to rent those sometimes, or you have to lower the rents to get somebody to come in there and now you've just lost what was potentially a long-term tenant and having to go through the whole process. They were long-term tenants.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's tough, that's really tough. How can? Okay, so if somebody they get their first facility, they want to scale. Obviously they want to grow. Is there a way to scale effectively by controlling costs? Like what? What does that look like? Is there? I know some people run it like a hub and spoke model. What's? What would you suggest for somebody who is wanting to grow their business and acquire new locations to keep the costs and expenses down?
Speaker 2:Well, the magic happens between closings when you close on a property and you own it, and then when you close on a property because you've sold it, your success at exit or continue to hold it if you're buying a hold depends on what you do in between those two benchmarks and between those two bookends. And that's where the secret is. That's where the magic happens. It happens in operations, and operations is a sum total of many small things. So I do encourage people to put the customer first and the customer experience. It's important to understand that our customers are not necessarily comparing us to other self-storage facilities. They're comparing us to Amazon and they want that kind of online experience and that kind of delivery immediacy. They're comparing us to their favorite restaurants, to their favorite hotels. They want that kind of treatment. That's the standard that the customer has right now. So if you design your business with the customer first, you're going to have longer term tenants who are willing to pay a premium for your space and your service because you take care of them and you give them a great experience. So that's one thing. Another thing is to maximize top line revenue with all of your resources. So that's rent, what the market will bear, and you have to be realistic about what the market will bear, and you have to look more frequently than every month. You don't want to miss a whole month of move-ins because you were priced too high. You have to look more frequently than that and take information from the market and from your competitors, and there's a lot of data available these days. There are data sources that can help you with this. So maximize your top line revenue by maximizing your rent that the market will bear, but also make sure that you offer good, better, best so that you can upsell to a more expensive unit. It's amazing how frequently people will take that Offer tenant insurance or tenant protection. I prefer protection because there are higher yields for the owner with protection and in your lease you have to make coverage of the stored property required and then let the customer know. You can cover it yourself. You can get your own policy covering it or you can use what we sell, which is this tenant protection or this tenant insurance plan, and then other add-ons that you can add. For instance, storage Defender is something that is helping people who own traditional self-storage offer smart units. People want smart units, so it's a great opportunity for additional ancillary income If you have a lot of technology that you've paid for. People are adding technology fees. Certainly, get people on auto pay and there are even people who are charging a fee for not being on auto pay. Fee income in our industry is it's almost laughable. We have raised it to an art form. Don't forget about fee income. Don't waive the fees. Make sure your policies are clear and people know what to expect, but don't waive your fees and give your revenue away. You can add 15 to 17 percent to rental income through ancillary revenue like the ones that I've mentioned. So focus on top-line revenue and, of course, manage your expenses.
Speaker 2:There are a lot of experiments in remote management going on these days. People are doing it a lot of different ways. They're doing it with a kind of a kludge combination of tech that's stacked one on top of another and that's difficult to manage. They're doing it with high-end tech. That's very to manage. They're doing it with high-end tech that's very expensive and they're doing it with a combination.
Speaker 2:So I don't think that we skinnied out best practices yet as an industry for remote management. We will. I thought it would be here by now. Back in 2020, I was saying this it'll be three years before. We have best practices and one or two or three models are elevated as clearly the superior models. I don't think that's happened yet. We haven't cracked that net yet, but when we do, that'll be another shift in the industry. I look forward to the day where you can take advantage of smaller pieces of land in suburban areas and build small facilities, multi-story, that can be built in a way and with materials that are affordable and can be run without a lot of labor. That's going to be a new opportunity for self-storage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's interesting. I was going to ask you about some of the tech in the industry the no key locks and DaVinci locks and then, like you mentioned, I like the idea I haven't used these, but the idea of the door alarms. I think, that's probably something that's pretty useful, but what is your take? You kind of alluded to some of it. What's your take? It's pretty useful, but what is your take? You kind of alluded to this experience.
Speaker 2:Well, we were on the virtual self-storage conference about two weeks ago and it was interesting that Beau was talking about his time with Extra Space, when they really pushed hard on the top-end, most expensive smart access technology offered by Janus, which is called Nokia. He said, with all of their resources at Extra Space and all of the testing that they could do which is, you know, impressive, the kind of testing they can do they found that it was truly beneficial in very few select markets. Now that speaks volumes to me. I have friends who are operators who swear by it, and I have a lot of friends who are operators who won't purchase it because they just they don't, they can't see the ROI, it doesn't pencil for them, and so it's exciting now that there are alternatives.
Speaker 2:You've mentioned DaVinci, but there's also KISS technology, Keep it Simple, Storage and OpenTech has a variety of solutions. I remember I think it was at ISS last year you looked all around and there were a whole lot of door companies and lock companies, A lot of new innovation coming into our market Not necessarily new tech, but it's newly applied to our market, and so I like the fact that there are alternatives now at different price points.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. It's funny as you're talking, I'm thinking about the storage roll-up door hasn't changed much, but it's a little tiny thing that goes on that door uh, that seems to drive a lot of the innovation. It's kind of funny, the little lock, you know um, and how that that whole thing is operated.
Speaker 1:So, okay, very good. Yeah, we looked at we've looked at no key locks, I know, I think work in some places really well, other places maybe not so well. Davinci Lock as well, like that's a great product, very simple and easy to understand. And the KISS, that's another great one too. And OpenTech, like you said. I see a lot of posts from them and what they offer with their locking system, etc. What do you think of these door alarms, the individual door, like the unit alarms? Any thoughts on that or experience with that?
Speaker 2:Well, traditional alarms are a logistics pain. They're always false, alarming. We didn't have great experience with those in the past, but there's a. You know.
Speaker 2:The new device that Storage Defender offers is a different deal entirely. It's not wired into the facility's infrastructure, it's connected by a magnet and it has its own battery, and it only. It's not in continuous operation, it's activated when there's an activating event. It's activated when there's an activating event, and you know, you and I can probably sit here and say I don't want to be notified.
Speaker 2:If you know, if there's a slight movement in my unit and it turns out to be a cat who got in at three o'clock in the morning, I certainly don't want that. I don't know about you, but it's actually a compelling offer and the data that Storage Defender is putting out is that six out of 10 consumers will choose to have it. They want to be notified if somebody goes in their unit. They want to be notified. There are different things that it can notify you about and consumers are choosing that, and so you know there's a different mindset in consumers of different types, and if you have something that appeals to the different desires of different consumers, then you have opportunities to increase top line revenue with something like that always thought that they were interesting.
Speaker 1:Like you said, I don't want to be notified you know if you don't I don't bug. Yeah, like, if there's like a little bug that walks in front of the thing, I don't really care, right, but I have my ring door doorbell camera. That's what I'm as my office right now. I've had it go off. Yeah, it's gone off like three times since we. It just depends on the customer, but I do think that makes sense.
Speaker 2:It's six. Just a compelling idea. There's data. The data tells us wow, six out of 10 people want to spend an extra $12 a month so that they can get dinged. All right, I'll sell it to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's an interesting value add, you know, at your facility.
Speaker 2:Especially if you have no smart technology whatsoever. If you're, you know, a class C older property and all you've got is doors that hopefully keep well oiled, well maintained. If you can just add that, you can promote smart tech We've got smart units and it can go on any unit, it's not a hardware.
Speaker 2:You know it's not a CapEx, it's not a hardware. If you want to buy a bunch of them, it's probably a CapEx project, but not if you, you know, buy them as you use them. You can do that. There are some locks now that are available that way. Kiss locks are available that way, so that you can just add them as units open up. And what I like about those locks is that you can pay for them the same way as you pay for your coffee you just tap it. It's not Bluetooth, it doesn't rely on your internet.
Speaker 1:It's not Bluetooth, it doesn't rely on your internet, it's a power transfer from your phone to the lock. 're not using a bunch of tech, but they obviously hire larger teams, or, I'm sorry, they hire property managers and they start to build out that team. How do you find and retain good property managers? Because I know that that for us has been the difference in some cases between success and failure, between leasing up and not leasing up. A good property manager can make a big difference. What's your experience been on that as far as finding folks or just trying to motivate them in the long term?
Speaker 2:Well, I am going to give you what is an atypical business answer, and I'm actually going to quote Ryan Brown, who is I think they're adding like their I don't know ninth, 10th and 11th properties right now. He was an anesthesiologist, the doctor who decided that he preferred self-storage, investing a young man, and he was on a CSSA peer power hour, oh, maybe two or three months ago, and in answer to that question, he said love them. If you love your team and they know it, they'll love your customers and your customers will feel it. Antonia Hawk is a customer experience expert and she says that the human heart is hardwired to recognize sincerity, and so if you can instill in your team how much you value them, how important they are, how important what they're doing is, you will have better retention, you'll have better culture and you'll have better people. You will have better retention, you'll have better culture and you'll have better people.
Speaker 2:Everybody who most people who come to storage to rent space, come because of some compelling life event and you can connect to those compelling life events divorce, disaster, dislocation, the d's that bring people in they're're often traumatized and if you have staff, either by video or in person, who can recognize what that human being is going through and connect to the story and be compassionate. You have an opportunity to build a moment that they'll never forget and that increases customer loyalty. It increases willingness to absorb rent increases. It gives you greater lifetime value because they stay longer with the rent increases. There are a lot of benefits that come from that simple, non-business answer, which is love your team and help them love your customers. Thanks, Ryan, by the way, for that wonderful.
Speaker 1:That's funny. It's funny you mentioned Ryan. I'm having him on the podcast. We're doing his interview next week. It's November 14th, so we're doing his interview next week. Yeah, I talked to him the other week and he's like hey, I've been invited on a lot of podcasts, have declined all of them, but I decided I'll do yours, so for the first one I was like this is awesome. So I know, I know exactly who you're talking about. It's almost like, yeah, exactly. It's almost like you're saying love your neighbor as yourself in fact, that's exactly what it is, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yes, yeah, that is 100, so I mean you have to love yourself, chris that means you have to have a holistic view of yourself. It can't be all about the money, no right. And I think if we're motivated, motivated only by that, then we do see people as a number and as a warm body filling a seat, uh, which you know that that only goes so far, uh, and people will feel that after a while, if you actually genuinely care, about your managers and their well-being.
Speaker 1:sure, you might find or hire one or two that just don't fit. You know your management style and your company. That's fine. But you will find the ones that make sense for you and fit and then they treat your customers very well and we've seen that. We have seen that 100%.
Speaker 2:I'm working with a team right now and I believe that 49% of their team have been there 20 years or more, some of them as much as 30 or 35 years, so imagine that kind of loyalty. Isn't that impressive. That's KS management, yeah isn't that impressive.
Speaker 1:That's ks management. Yeah, wow, that's a that's extremely impressive.
Speaker 2:I'm sure their stores perform very well.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, outside of the market situations and all that that everybody faces. That's fantastic, I think. Uh, amory, we've covered a ton of ground. You are extremely knowledgeable and some of the stories you've said you know I've been 25 years ago. The thing in hawaii, like that, means you've been around for a very long time. You're a professional and a seasoned pro at this. Can you recommend a good business or just maybe investing or whatever resource for the listeners that they can help, you know, grow their knowledge base and education?
Speaker 2:Well, I was handed a copy of the almanac when I started by Greg Kreisenbeck of Hewko Pacific Development. He was the president and CEO and he handed it to me and said you'll learn what you need from this. And so I read it cover to cover the MSM almanac way back then, and every year I continued to read it cover to cover. And so I was building my own database in my head and I could recognize changes and see where things were going. And, lo and behold, all these years later now I'm writing sections for that almanac. So it feels very you know, very complete for me. But I will also say I am benefiting greatly from Armand Agajanian's posts on LinkedIn. He does about 700 a year and they're filled with data and analysis. So find Armand online, read what he's posting, ask questions He'll answer them. He's he's a great resource for all of us and it's you know, it's there on LinkedIn. It's free.
Speaker 1:Absolutely A hundred percent. Yeah, armand is a great resource. I've tried to get him on the podcast. He doesn't want to do it. He likes to write a lot. Armand is a great resource. I've tried to get him on the podcast. He doesn't want to do it. He likes to write a lot, which I think is fine. Everybody has their style.
Speaker 2:He's chosen his lane.
Speaker 1:Great, yeah, he certainly has. So I'm like, hey, man, get you on the podcast. He's like not yet. I was like okay, whatever. But yeah, If you guys are not on LinkedIn, just go create a profile, join LinkedIn. It's a great community of storage investors and professionals out there and obviously give us all a follow.
Speaker 2:With that being said, anne-marie, how can people get in touch with you if they want to get involved in your services or just ask any questions or just reach out? My email address is my name annemariedecoster at gmailcom. Spelled oddly, there is an E on the end of Ann and there's no E on the end of Marie.
Speaker 1:Thanks, mom, that's awesome. I'll put that in the description for the episode and people can reach out and the website is decosterconsultingcom.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, decosterconsultingcom. I'll have that in the description as well. That's it, Anne-Marie. Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate everything you shared Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me.