As a self-storage owner, you’ve likely made some changes to your business in the past year. The global health crisis brought a host of challenges to your door, including unique sanitation needs, new legal concerns, social-distancing requirements and heightened consumer demand for risk-free rental options. Meanwhile, the industry has continued to enjoy an extraordinary development boom, causing market competition to intensify. With all this, you’ve likely spent more time and effort on your business lately than you have since opening day!
Now it’s time to up the ante. Pandemic aside, your business will continue to face obstacles this year and beyond, and you need to be prepared. Fortunately, we have your ace in the hole. The Inside Self-Storage (ISS) World Expo, July 13-16, offers four days of education, networking and exhibits to ensure you hit the jackpot. Learn more the opportunities that’ll propel your business to the next level of the game.
Play Your Best Hand
With all the chaos of the past year, it’s perhaps been difficult to keep your eye on some of the most basic elements of your self-storage operation. You were dealt a lot of unexpected cards! Still, there are many critical tasks you must address, regardless of what’s happening in the world.
Our carefully crafted Ownership Track of seminars offers seven sessions catered to your unique business needs:
- 5 Smart Things Self-Storage Owners Should Do Every Year (But Many Often Forget)
- An Owner’s Guide to Remote Self-Storage Management: It Isn’t Just for Pandemics!
- The Keys to a Smooth-Running Self-Storage Business: Implementing Policies and Procedures
- In Self-Storage, Staff Is King: People-Management Mistakes to Avoid
- Self-Storage Diagnostics: 5 Ways to Measure the True Health of Your Business
- Is It Time to Become a Multi-Site Self-Storage Operation? Why and How to Grow Your Portfolio
- Spend Where It Counts! Ways to Cut Costs and Boost Your Self-Storage Bottom Line
In addition, you can stack your deck of knowledge by attending some of the expo’s eight in-depth workshops. This year’s four-hour sessions are:
- Acquisitions Workshop
- Advanced Legal Workshop
- Development Workshop: Building
- Development Workshop: Planning
- Digital Marketing Workshop
- Operations Workshop: Fundamentals
- Operations Workshop: Advanced
- Risk Management Workshop
Take a Chance
A difficult choice many self-storage owners made last year was to close their front office to foot traffic or limit business hours. Many soon discovered the benefits of leveraging a contact-free customer experience enabled by technology, which allowed them to operate their sites remotely while giving customers the rental options they now crave. If you aren’t quite sold on a high-tech model or just want to learn about the latest strategies and tools, the following seminars will give you a much stronger hand:
- Technology Trends to Welcome in a Progressively Virtual Self-Storage Landscape
- Can’t Touch This! A Thorough Exploration of the Contact-Free Self-Storage Rental Process
- Getting Smart: Real-World Self-Storage Applications for the Internet of Things
- Spilling the Tea on Self-Storage Technology: Straight Talk From Fellow Facility Operators
- Help When You Need It Most: When and How to Leverage Self-Storage Tech Support
- The Must-Have Elements of Site Security: Advanced Technology for Self-Storage
- Making the Leap: Taking Your Small Self-Storage Operation From Tech-Free to Tech-Savvy
- Cultivating a 5-Star Experience: How to Foresee and Meet the Needs of Your Self-Storage Customers
- Bridging the Digital Service Gap: Ways to Humanize Technology in Self-Storage
Pair Up
One of the primary goals of the ISS World Expo is to create meaningful connections between industry professionals. Whether you’re hoping to network with subject-matter experts, fellow colleagues from a specific sector of the business, or knowledgeable product and service suppliers, we’ve created chances for you to interact and engage.
For example, our Self-Storage Q&A Sessions are the perfect place to meet peers and get your pressing questions answered. Once upon a time, we had a single event called the “Open Forum Q&A.” In 2019, we expanded this to three topic-themed sessions. For this year, we’ve expanded still further, to help keep each conversation ultra-focused as well as prevent overcrowding in the seminar rooms. Now you can choose from six options, each hosted by a pair of hand-picked experts in the field.
- Building
- Investing
- Management
- Marketing
- Staffing
- Technology
This year’s Storage Talks (formerly known as Table Talks, or roundtable discussions) have also been retooled this year, but will still offer a space to share and learn with your peers. Think of these as mini Ted Talks. Thirty unique topics will be organized by category across six rooms. In each space, speakers will rotate on the stage in 10-minute increments, giving a short presentation and then inviting feedback and questions from the audience.
Sadly, due to safety restrictions, we aren’t able to offer a grand cocktail reception this year, but we’ve come up with something better: the ISS Attendee Lounge! Pop over to Caribbean Court between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on all four event days to enjoy complimentary coffee/tea service in the morning until 10 a.m. From that point, you can purchase water, soft drinks and cocktails. Each registration comes with two free drinks, and the lounge is a perfect place for mingling and impromptu meetings.
Finally, if you’re looking for new products and services or simply want to chat with a favorite vendor, you’ll have plenty of time during our extended expo-hall hours on July 14 and 15. It’s a great place to get demos, pick up information, ask questions and make connections. If you’re a member of your state self-storage association or would like to be, stop by the association area, too.
Never gamble with your business! It’s time to double down on your investment, make improvements and prep for the next major challenge. Plan to attend this year’s show so you can tackle what’s ahead and reach your goals. To register and learn more about education sessions, exhibitors and speakers, visit issworldexpo.com.
