What do you do with good ideas when they come to you? Do you write them down or let them fade away and be forgotten? Do you share them or keep them to yourself? Or maybe you've discovered the real secret to good ideas: They don't come out of thin air—they're actually someone else's ideas and you “borrow” them and pass them off as your own.
Though I don't condone plagiarism or taking undue credit for something that isn't yours, I also know that ideas can't be copyrighted, at least not until they become created works or products.
Generally, an idea is yours to pursue, whether you overhear it while eavesdropping at a restaurant or from a good friend who tells it to you outright. Therefore, if you're looking for ideas for how to grow and improve your self-storage business, you should visit the largest idea consortium in the industry: the Self-Storage Talk forum.
Need proof that good ideas originate there? These users took ideas they picked up from the forum, implemented them at their facilities and have seen success:
astro: “Greatly reducing Yellow Pages ads in favor of other advertising efforts.”
Autodoc: “Cleaning tips—everything from using a pressure washer to carefully clean doors to procedures to clean inside doors and walls.”
Ian M. Johnson: “Collection ideas. I've been able to cancel the last couple of auctions.” (For more examples, visit this thread.)
The best part about idea-sharing on the forum is that no one is at all concerned that you might take their ideas and benefit from them. In fact, that's the point. Those idea-sharers know they're going to pick up a good idea from someone else, so to them, it's worth the effort to offer their own wisdom to help others. Not to mention, this tight-knit industry is built on the notion that in order for self-storage to succeed, everyone must do a little to pitch in.
I'm sure at this moment there are at least three good ideas waiting to spill from your head to your fingers to a keyboard to Self-Storage Talk. But if you're not a member, you can't post, so here's an idea: Register here.