My name's Dave DeBeau, founder of moneypartnerformula.com. And this show is built for everyday real estate investors who are actively doing deals and looking to scale using other people's money. So if you're an active real estate investor and you want to get featured on the show to talk about your own real estate and capital raising experiences, then just go to Dave interviews you.com. Now let's get rolling with this episode and remember to subscribe for daily interview content. Welcome back everybody.

And chances are you've heard a thing or 2 about self storage facilities and what an interesting and lucrative investment opportunity that can be. Today's special guest, Chris Long, is zooming in all the way from beautiful Tampa, Florida, originally from Ottawa, Ontario. And Chris knows a thing or two about storage, but his his take on it is kind of different. In fact, it's really quite different. So looking forward to our conversation.

Chris Long, welcome to the show. Great to have you. Glad to be here, Dave. Alright. Long yards, I see it behind you.

Ties in nicely with what you do. Ties in nicely with the last name. What the heck is it? What does it mean? Long yard.

So, it's basically self storage yards for contractors. And, I was a contractor myself, carpenter for 10 years, ran an construction company, and found a a need in the marketplace that wasn't being fulfilled. It's just small, simple storage yards and add a commercial property into my house. And I'm a simple guy with simple thinking, and I'm like, well, if I need it, sure enough, somebody else does. And, you know, built it out, bootstrapped it.

It was a challenge to get it going because everybody thought I was crazy. No lenders or investors would get behind me, so I had to sell my houses to really put my name on it. In any case, through spaghetti spaghetti against the wall, it stuck. Now I'm working on, you know, expanding in the states, and we have 10 locations coming, and we built a franchise system. So kinda went all in and excited to just spread the word and get great people behind us to, help with the mission.

That's exciting stuff. And I now it's all coming together. We were talking a little bit off camera about our mutual friend, Bruce Firestone, and I can remember him bragging you up years ago talking about this young punk kid that he's he knew or is working with or whatever, this contractor getting this started. So now it's all it's all fallen into place. So very, very cool.

So you you did proof of concept for yourself. Yep. Then what was the next step to kind of figuring out, okay, where did did you start franchising this right away, or did you open up a few more, or how did that kinda come into play, Chris? Yeah. So, I mean, an interesting series of events kind of unfolded at once.

It it opened right before COVID. So, like, you know, I definitely had a big vision with it. I was like, there was a light bulb moment. Like, oh my god. This works.

And then, like, oh my god. This can really work big. And that's when I was like, okay. If I wanna go big, I gotta go where I think the opportunity is big and just and that was the states. It was it was either Texas or Florida.

No. I wanted Texas. The wife won in Florida. We're in Florida. The wife won.

Right. That's basically how that unfolded. And, you know, so now we're building out our our location in Florida. And the construction, we had a few delays with that just with the easements and entitlements and, you know, how commercial real estate could be. But we've learned a lot to take in those skills, package them up, and now build the franchise system.

And we have, I think, a great offer for people signing up as partners. And what's unique the mission that we're aiming to solve is creating affordable storage spaces for contractors. And you don't necessarily have to buy industrial real estate to make that happen. You could find the right real estate, and you could do a lease or a joint venture, or we could even partner with landowners and and it's and, you know, fill out our mission and create these affordable spaces for contractors because it's such a need in the marketplace. So, you know, I I had to think about what's the results of my business.

And a lot of you know, I grew up flipping houses, buying house, tournament duplex. I always had a real estate hat on for a long time. But then you kind of develop 2 worlds of business. There's real estate, and then there's there's business. And then there's, like, EBITDA's enterprise value, a lot of franchising, and not necessarily franchising, but just just more business language.

And I I realized I can merge the 2 of them. So it it was kinda like, you know, I'm going all in. I'm going in the states, and I'm gonna, I think, grow a lot as an entrepreneur as while I do that. And that's what I did. I burned the ships to get to the island, and I'm here.

And and now we're, you know, we're building fires and building cabins, and we're expanding the island. That is that is fantastic. So for for some of us that aren't in the contractor space, don't have the faintest clue, don't have any idea about this, walk us through who your ideal customer end customer is. What are they doing with the space? What have they been doing up until now if they don't have this solution?

Just give me an idea of how that looks. Right. So if you're in the space and listening to this, immediately, you're gonna have a light bulb moment, and you're gonna go, I know that contractor. He's had this problem. And people in this space constantly face this problem.

And it's simply having us a yard space that is not too big, but just big enough for what you need. And that is really the sauce of what we're doing. And for most people, if you go on Prexi, LoopNet, most of your major real estate platforms, and you put in filters for where you are and you try to look for a yard space, any from 2 to 20000 square feet, it is almost obsolete. You cannot get it. Most landlords, they're like, here's a piece of dirt, 1 acre, 5 acres, maybe a fence.

If you're lucky, go to town. Right? But for the for a lot of the marketplace, you don't need that much space. You just need a smaller yard, and and then we provide all the amenities, the power, cameras, office, container, everything else to make it a little ecosystem. So the client that I built it for was a client like myself.

I was a contractor. I asked myself, what do I need? And what I don't need is a long 3 year lease where I don't know where I'm gonna be. I don't need a triple net lease. I need to know what my expenses are, and I don't need fit up costs.

So I built a business around these things, and it's month to month when you need it and what you need for your business. So and that goal was to surprisingly a lot of people. So we're on a mission now to just really support these small businesses, which frankly, I think needed the most and with great people in great locations. So very, very cool. So it's kinda like the self storage space, but you don't have the tin containers necessarily.

Although it does sound like you do it. Like, does each guy contractor have their own container on their on their spot as well in in addition to the fencing and all that kind of stuff to secure their their tools and whatnot? Well, that's the beautiful thing. So, I mean, you have certain limitations. With certain zoning restrictions in certain areas, you have bylaws that say what you can and can't do.

Right? And some of them are just sticklers for the containers. So you really need to make sure that, you know, what you can put on the property will will satisfy the zoning and the local building requirements. Yeah. So with that being said, in I ideal, you know, if you look at, like, a pyramid of the top ideal piece of land and property, it's heavy industrial.

And then it goes light industrial, and there's some commercial. The more intense the zoning and property class for industrial is, generally, the the less limitations and the more freedom you have, which means we could do the office, the containers, everything else for the small business. So, yeah, it it's it's the idea is to cater with them with as many adaptable storage solutions, which is our core values. We adapt to the marketplace, but we adapt to our clients as well. And that's the whole idea.

Right? What they need when they need it. Yeah. I really like that, Chris. That is that is fantastic.

So things are rolling out. So for a typical contractor, you know, I'd I understand each market's gonna be a little bit different, but give or take, how much are they paying for, like, let's say it's a a rehabber kind of guy. He needs he's got a pickup truck. He's I'm you know this world way better than I do. Just walk me through, like, a typical guy, what he's gotta Yeah.

Pay for something like this. Maybe I should back up because sometimes I explain it, but people are like, I don't really get it. It's the weirdest thing. But, like, think of, like, a boat and RV storage facility. Right?

You got a bunch of different lots. The only difference is now they're fenced in. Yeah. And you have maybe in a 10 acre property, you have 60 small fenced in yards, anywhere from 40 to 50 feet to 50 to a 100 feet in up upwards up to a 100 by a 100 feet. And these are for exactly that.

These small businesses, these carpenters, contractors, car dealerships, service based businesses. You have local utility providers. You have larger corporate clients, and then you have smaller, and you even have homeowners and a hobbyist, little tinkerers that, you know, have a a boat, an RV, ATV, and they wanna put it in one spot with a camera and kinda, you know, get away from the wife and tinker on the weekend and have where all their toys are. It's really a world of possibilities. And, demand is just so high.

It caters to so many different people. So it's just a unique product that the market hasn't really seen. And what's fascinating about it is I mean, it's all the same benefits of self storage. It it's passive income. Right?

So business partner that we're bringing on, they get all these benefits of first of all, it's a high success rate. It's self storage. It's about 85% success rate as business. It's passive. You need 1 part time employee.

You don't have a lot of different supply lines you're relying on. It's mostly software and tech based. So, I mean, operationally, it's low drag. It's very simple. I mean, hard it I I I explained to people that it's it's really simple, but it's not easy because getting the right location, leasing it up.

I I mean, you still there's a barrier to entry. It's about a 1,000,000 or $2,000,000. So but, yeah. I mean, a lot of the similarities with self storage, and and these are the clients, the ones that needed the most, the small businesses and the contractors. No.

I love it. I love it, Chris. So what have you discovered in this process of franchising the business? I think you said you're you're at 10 locations now. So you're how many franchisees do you have?

That sort of thing. Yeah. So right now, we have about 6 franchisees, and it's a hybrid of 4 corporate locations. And there's a long life cycle by the time you secure a territory, whether it be corporately with a location or a partner, which we call either a franchisee or we do joint ventures that people would wanna buy the real estate as well. And then, you know, obviously, go through your acquisition, your entitlement.

So it's been a massive learning journey from how to underwrite, how to understand what the city needs to hear and how they need to hear it. Obviously, getting lenders on board. Right? One of the great things about Longyear is as a franchisor, we got approved by SPA, which is extremely unique because now we could go find industrial property for, let's say, $1,000,000. And if your build out is, let's say, 800,000 and you need another 200,000 just for carrying cost or even to pay yourself a small salary while you're transitioning from a w two into the business world Mhmm.

So you're in $2,000,000 SBA will allow a lending program 90% loan to value, meaning you only have to come up with $200,000 on that whole project. And as most people know with real estate, which what we teach anyone coming on how to underwrite, how to understand it, you could turn that $2,000,000 property into sometimes 3, 4, $5,000,000 with a massive cash flow. So now you're not like a traditional franchise system. You're not buying liabilities like trailers or equipment or leasing a space. You're buying an asset that's appreciating in value with cash flow with 1 part time employee.

And we're teaching people to do that, and it's just you know, it's a win win win. Yeah. That's nice. Well, you're down in the states doing this. Have have you come up to Canada as well with the franchise?

Is it up and running back home for you? Well, I mean, our 1st corporate location is in Canada. And, I mean, I just fell in love with the states. So my main focus is in the states, especially Ten times ten times the population, man. That's just the logical place to start for sure.

And you know what? It's a lending programs too. It's the mentality. It's the the size. It's the banks.

Canada is just, it's harder. Yeah. I'll just it's a lot harder for many reasons. Not to say there's not great opportunities and there's a lot of locations and a lot of people can use it in Canada. There's just a few more barriers to entry.

But, you know, we we we have the tools and the systems to really know how to sneak through those. It just takes the right partners and the right people in the right location with our support to get through it all. But our main focus is definitely in the US, Florida, and Texas. Who are you finding are the people that are most attracted to this as a business opportunity, as a franchise deal? That's a great question.

I feel like as I'm learning more when I jump off podcast or a network, a lot of real estate investors love what I'm doing. They love the real estate side, and, you know, they wanna get involved, and they wanna partner. And that's, you know, one of the main partner avatars that we've been targeting. However, in the business world of more business targeting, one of the biggest people that are loving it is service based franchise service based existing franchisees or service based businesses, like one that rents bins or rents dumpsters. Because they first of all, they're already in a service based high profit business, and they understand the pay pain point for land.

So instead of them actually, you know, having to, like, try to figure it out on their own and paying for land, we're like, hey. How about we find give you a system where you actually get paid to have land to run your service based business? So, you know, they're kinda guys that are plugging in now and be like, hey. I really wanna get behind this. This is really cool, and I wanna secure multiple territories.

So I have 2 worlds I I live in. I have the real estate investing world, which is more like syndication, joint venture, bringing partners. And then the franchise world, in most cases, more leasing, kinda like and SBA backs us on the leases too, which is really unique. And then just rock and roll, and you have a great cash flowing business for 10 years plus. And, ideally, even with the lease, you can negotiate at least to own on the real estate depending on how creative we get.

So long answer, but a lot of different ways. Yeah. No. That makes a lot of sense. Well, Chris, I think you've done an awesome job of explaining what the heck this is all about.

And, hey, hats off to you for that light bulb moment, having the cojones to, you know, go out and do it yourself in spite of lots of obstacles and in spite of lots of people thinking you couldn't do it or not willing to support you or banks turn up their nose at you like they usually do with new ideas. And then just packing everything up and going down south to to really make it happen. That's fantastic. So if people wanna find out more and connect with you, where should they go? I mean, go to longairs.com.

You can complete a form and just fill out some information. I put my email, clong@longairs.com. And, hey, shoot me shoot me a call. 941-278-1995. Just love to network and be great partners and expand this business.

Awesome. Well, all the best to you, and I can't wait to hear how things are going in a year or 2. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. Alright, everybody.

Take care, and we'll see you on the next Hey there. I really hope you enjoyed that episode. And as always, if you wanna listen to more daily interview content, make sure you subscribe. And if you're an active real estate investor and you're doing deals and you'd like to get featured on this show, then just head over to daveinterviewsyou.com. Now at moneypartnerformula.com, we help real estate investors to create a process for predictably getting capital so they can do more deals without relying on hard money lenders or the banks.

We do this by building them a private capital marketing system. Now if you want help turning yourself into a big money capital attraction machine, then book a call with our team to see how we can help. Just visit moneypartnerformula.com to find out more. Alright. Take care, and we'll see you on the next interview.
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