Script

Welcome to Surgeon Syndicate. We are here today with Chris Long of Longyards. Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, Mike. Excited to hear.

Alright. So today we're talking about outdoor industrial storage, and Chris has kinda taken, this mysterious yet relatively simple idea and kinda streamlined it into a great business model. So, Chris, let's start out. Tell us a little bit more. How did you get into the, industrial storage business?

Tell us a little bit more about your background. Yeah. I appreciate that. I think, like, many great opportunities are found when there's a problem and you need a solution. And that's how I stumbled across my business model.

So as a contractor for, licensed carpenter, started off in the trades young, basically got my ticket as a carpenter, got renovations, and named the company after my grandfather, Connor Construction, ran that for 10 years. Got it. So I during that point, I learned a lot about construction development and also loved real estate, always loved real estate. I basically got into, bought my first house, turned into a duplex, bought my second house, turned into a duplex. I was like, okay.

I like cash flow. I love real estate. But very quickly realized I don't like tenants. I just don't like tenants at all. It's a headache.

If they don't pay in Canada, they have all the control. The average time it takes to get rid of a tenant in Canada is 12 months. So then all these kind of perfect flavors merge together when having problems with tenants still love real estate, and then I had a problem with all my construction equipment. I had tools, equipment, trailers at my house all the time, and my wife, every time we have family come over, it's like, Chris, clean up our lot. It looks like a junkyard.

We can't have stuff everywhere. And it was like every week. And I was like, kid, this has gotta end. Like, come on. And, you know, I look on a 2 acre lot, but even my neighbors, I could tell driving by, you know, they they were excited to have family come down the road.

So finally, I just put the the few dots together. I had this commercial property. It was, 10 acres near the house, and I'm like, you know what? If I need a yard, I'm sure somebody else needs a yard as well. I'm a simple guy.

Simple thinking. And I was like, I'm gonna build this business. I'm gonna do contractor storage yards. And sure enough, I'm trying to pitch it to investors like, hey. Help me with the startup.

I can do contract storage yards. They're like, you're crazy. I've never heard of that. So I'm like, it's a storage yard. So nobody thought it would work.

So I had to sell my dreadful real estate portfolio to, you know, and get out of that to start up long yards. And then sure enough, it was a success. We leased out. Now we're fully leased. I turned that property for 470,000 to $3,600,000.

Now it's easily worth closer to 4.55. And, you know, we have over 10 locations coming in the US. We're going internationally, And so that's how it started, and that's where it's going. I'm just excited to spread the story. Man, that's, you know, it's amazing how many people started out in small multifamily or individual residential and quickly realized that, tenants can be problematic.

We still, we still have one fourplex, and just last night, my wife comes in because she managed it for a while. And then I took it back over, and then we we recently just finally passed it off to property manager. Because it used to be really easy with the tenants we have, but now she comes storming in last night. Like, why am I getting texts from tenants? I'm like, I don't know why they're texting you.

They're not supposed to. They know. I know. I don't know why they do it. So it's crazy how those those things happen, and it's completely different when you start to move so your tenants are businesses.

I mean, that's, so when when you look at these storage yards, how what all kind of different tenants do you have, and what kind of things are they storing? Well, that's a great question. So in different markets, what we're seeing is we have different client and avatars, and we're always working on the data to try to, like, you know, who's our most common client? But because there's such a surge and there's such a gap in the supply and demand of what we have, we have so many people that need our service. It's it's wild.

You know, I used to think just for guys like me. There's a lot of guys like me, but there's also a lot of corporate clients. There's a lot of homeowners that are hobbyists. There's a lot of dealerships. Like, the list just goes on.

The niche in the market, the problem that we solve, if you go to just go on Crexio LoopNet tonight or anyone listening, go and search for a yard space between 5,020,000 square feet. You barely you can't find it. It doesn't exist. And then try to find it fully fenced in, secured month to month. That's the problem.

So then there is a big market of people that need just that type of space. So when you ask me who needs it, just think of anyone who needs that space, and that's a long list. Oh, that's incredible, Chris. So it sounds like some of it are just are small are just individuals who have stuff they wanna store? Exactly.

It's a lot of small businesses, individuals, but then you have corporate clients. We've got propane dealers. We got dealerships. We have, logistic companies. I mean, the list just goes on.

And and it's really unique. Our model, we've built it to adapt as part of our core values is adapt, because our fencing moves around. So we try to make it as simple as possible as well because the clients change. And sometimes depending on your infrastructure where you are with the city, you know, you could be outside of the the city. Right?

And then it's a land bank play as well. But what happens is you buy the land, you put the model on it, and then the city starts to mature and grow out. And as that happens, your clients mature and they change. You know? Now you got new builds, new permits, you got a different type of clientele.

Where in a if you're in the core of a city, you have more seasoned clientele that are more logistics, more operational heavy. So it's really it's a flux fluctuation on where you're at. And there's there's just so many factors, and we could study the behavior of our clients. This is wild. Through, tracking, you know, where they go, where their most popular places they hang out, the traffic routes they take, the and we have the data from our clients at our first facility, how long they're willing to drive.

So we merged all of these and we've built feasibility tools to look at our property. Now within minutes, give us a a checklist credit score almost a credit score. It's like, how does this work compared to this location and how to underwrite the real estate as well? So it's just been a massive learning curve that we've been getting better at every time more data comes our way. That's pretty cool.

So let me just back up a little bit. So for the you know, for anybody who's listening who really hasn't heard of outdoor industrial storage, the the idea here is, you know, if you think about things you may see more often are self storage, and some people use self storage for their home stuff and some people for their business stuff. But then bigger than self storage, you get into flex space and warehouses and all this, but some of this stuff can be stored outside, and people are looking for a place to store it. Side and people are looking for a place to store it. And what you're seeing is right now, if you're if you're looking for outdoor storage, typically what's going to be available is our really big spaces if you can find it or or leasing out just empty land, but there's there's no security.

There's no infrastructure to it. So what you're providing now is a fenced space with security cameras, with lighting. And it's it's instead of one person leasing, like, the whole, oh, this vacant acre, they can lease the size of space they need and have their space fenced in separately from everybody else. Yeah. Exactly.

So I'm always trying to figure out the best way to explain this. Like, anyone that has a self storage unit, they get it. Right? They go to their unit, they open up the door, They put their stuff in. They close the door, and there's a lot of doors like that beside them, and that's self storage.

Ours has a lot of the same language except when you go to your unit, it's a fenced in yard and you're opening your gate, and that gate is completely enclosed with its own yard that's private with a camera, with power, and we could bring you an office or a container. That's that's the long yards model, and it solves many problems. There's 3 of the biggest problems because a lot of these small businesses, if they go to try to rent something, there's a gap in the marketplace like we talked about. But as well, it's it's month to month. It's on a 2, 3, 4, 5 year triple net lease.

A lot of small businesses, they're growing. They're going through change. They need something that's affordable and adaptable to their business. And it's not you know, so it's it's month to month. There's no tenant fit, fit up costs.

Right? So you just you don't have to add all the stuff you need in the office. You got it. You need power. You got it.

It's right there. You can move into the next week. It's what you need. So there's no fit up costs, and, you know, it's month to month, and it's adaptable. It changes for you when you need it.

So we just solve so many problems. I can't believe this doesn't exist. Like, it's just how come no one's doing this? There are few people doing it, but they're not doing it like we're doing it. I mean, now we're international, and we're we got a great team, and we're just looking for great partners to expand.

So not only is it just outdoor storage. If you want a a storage container, so you can have indoor storage. You have different options for the size of the container, or is it just one container? And you also said that you can bring in an office, and that all gets dropped in your yard? That's it.

So long yards, we have long boxes and long offices that fold and unfold in the yard. And what's really unique about it is, it now there's there's different zoning in different areas that have different environments, And, you know, you gotta approach it from a modular mindset, just because it satisfies some local building requirements. If it's fixed, then you need a concrete slab and you fix the actual office of the container. But if the zoning allows it, then you can, you know, you can have it a little bit more mobile. And at that case, these are the units.

I say advanced compared to the marketplace, and we're always trying to improve and innovate. But we have cameras. So if you're renting a yard for me let's say you're a mason, and you're renting a yard and your yard's 50 by a 105,000 square feet, you can you get free camera access to our facilities. You can watch if you're you know, have either your crew coming in or a new, client that wants to see the type of stone you have for display. You can watch them on the camera.

You could text the gate, open the gate from your cell phone, watch them go into your yard, and you can have a grid system on your fence. So all your piles of stone, you could just be like, yeah. Go to b 3. That's your new colonial stone, and you can watch this whole process all from your phone. That's long, Eric, and we're just getting started with innovation.

Wow. That's pretty cool. So not only depending how you run your business, somebody could go and pick something up on their own out of your out of your lot, or you could watch your your own crew and be like, no. No. No.

No. No. Well That's not the one. Exactly. And if you have you know, you got a nice trailer, that is your brand new trailer.

It's you just bought it. It's a nice paint job beside your stone. You can have motion alerts set up near your trailer. So if anyone even goes near it, you'll get an alert on your cell phone that has this a different vibration that lets you know that someone's in that zone in your yard. So it's it's pretty cool to the level of depth that we can modify, the security customizations.

And then so the size that you're talking about within so within the big yard, everybody's got their smaller space that's fenced off, and you said that's completely modular. So if if somebody's business grows and next month, you're like, hey. I I've got this all this more stuff I need to to store. You can expand their fence out and their and their space can grow. Yeah.

Exactly. So think of like a shell, all the fencing in in most cases around the perimeter is fixed and on the road around the yards is fixed. But perpendicular to that between the yards, we like to do a modular design where things can move. And it's not like a temporary fence. This is more heavy duty, and it's just part of our innovation of strength.

So it's still secure. Like, a storm is not gonna move this. This is this is fixed, but it's made to adapt, which is just really cool because that's, again, that's that's what these businesses need. Yeah. And I think it's well, we see a lot of the same thing in in some of the other industrial areas like flex space, where a building can be redemised if if you have open space and and one tenant needs more space and you can move that wall over.

So you've kinda done the same thing outside where it's a controlled space, but it can be changed to fit the needs of the tenant over time. Exactly. Exactly. So, like, you know, great businesses, I think, are built for for the client. It's what's best for them.

You know? And if you think about and put your client and tenant first and you build a business that's, you know, flourishing for them, that's when magic really happens. So it's it's not it's not about you know, we we try to put that first, and I built a business around the mindset of what do I need as that small business. And that's just, I think, part of the magic of it. That's pretty cool because, yeah, you came in with a problem to solve and started solving that problem, not just for you, but for other people.

So when did you do your first lot? What when? When? Yeah. How long ago did you do your first lot?

Were you started with yours? It's funny. I bought the property in 2017 with my brother. We were partners. And, you know, just good old brothers.

We're like, couldn't figure out what to do. He wanna do one thing. I wanna do another. All in love. And, but we just couldn't figure it out together.

So we we sat on it for a while. I think I started developing in, like, 2019. It almost took 2 years because I you know, I had this vision, and my construction company was, you know, doing what my construction company is doing. And sometimes you have this great vision, but you just don't have the time or the resources. And I finally pulled the trigger, and I said, it's it's a funny story because, actually, in 2019, I wasn't sure what to do with my brother in the business, and we couldn't agree.

So we're like, let's just sell it. Let's just, you know, let's just get out of this. And another storage guy want to buy it, and we had an offer, and we accepted the offer. And then so that could have been it. That could have been the end of long years, but he got into an accident.

I don't know what happened, and then he pulled out of the deal. And then by some twist of fate, I'm just like, forget it. I'm going all in. I literally sold everything I had, went all in, got it done, and then I'm like, oh my god. This really works.

I'm going all in again. That's when I sold my house and went to Florida, and here we are. So it's it's quite a journey, but that started 2019. And I kinda, you you know, just slowly picked at it. I didn't have the resources to really go all out, and I literally bootstrapped it.

Being a blue collar, just, you know, grip guy that I am, I was literally with chainsaws and, know, cutting down trees and digging holes, putting up fencing. Like, I got this started, all means necessary. And, we cut the ribbon October 1, 2019. God. Was it 2,021,021?

Jesus. Yeah. 2,000 no. 2,000 I should know that. 2019, I believe, is when we did the grand opening.

And, I mean, look. It's just been it's been great since then. And that first one was in Canada? Yeah. The first one's in Ottawa, Canada.

Absolutely. And now we're under construction in Central Florida, and now we have over 10 between a territory secured and, fully opening. And some of them, depending on the location, could be a few months, and depending on the land, you know, could be a longer period than that. So, yeah, we're we're we're we're growing. So now you're you're looking at some new models.

We were we were talking about this a little bit earlier to to begin partnering with people and to to grow the business even further. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah. So, like, a lot of people love the model, but they just don't understand the real estate part of it. And like an entrepreneur, every time there's a problem, I gotta I gotta think of a solution.

And so what we created was the go longer go home guarantee. And what this does, it it secures your territory, and we give you the tools, the know how, and we introduce you to an agent to go and find a parcel in your area. And you're in it for $5,000. You understand how to underwrite the commercial real estate. You understand how we look at our tiers of land.

You start to understand how we track our clients. And it's not just the real estate. It's making sure that our avatar and the real estate is lining up in in in a good location. And the best part is if you don't find nothing, we give you the 5 grand back. So, you know, it's it's the go long or go home guarantee, and then we partner with you.

And we have 2 lanes to do this. We either do a franchise, which is, you know, more of the franchise route. We could do land arbitrage so we can go and lease up a piece of land. You do the $50,000 franchise fee, and you don't have royalties. And that's a great play.

It's it's it's actually a faster return on your cash flow. Or a lot of people love the real estate play, and that's when we'll actually become a partner. We'll do a joint venture partnership, because we were actually approved by the SBA. So if you look on the if you go to the federal SBA website and you put a long yards, we're there. And they removed that directory.

So no they stopped that, but we got approved. We got on there, and now we can get approved by SBA. So how cool is it to buy industrial dirt for all do the long years build out for only 10% down with a partner that helps you from a to z, and that's what we've built, and that's what we're doing. That's pretty cool. So if somebody were looking at this and they're they're like, wow.

I I like this model. This sounds very interesting, but it's it's kinda scary because we we talk about this on the show since we're talking to doctors a lot that when you start getting it's this whole thing with doctors. You're used to being an expert for so long that when you move into something new, and you feel like I have to be an expert to do this. And so pulling the trigger to actually do something gets gets really hard for doctors when it's new. So if somebody's looking at this and they're like, okay.

This sounds really cool, but wait a minute. I don't know who's gonna rent this. I don't have a construction business. I don't understand it. I can see where you say and and, like, where does it go and how do I run it?

So this is all built into the package. Our second franchisee is a doctor. And one of our partners right now is also, a doctor on a corporate pro property. And I don't know what it is, but doctors love our business. And we you know, so a lot of them too, when they wanna get in real estate, you know, they either trying to be an LP and a partner.

And it's like, here, sit in this lane, buy these shares, and you get a small slice, and that's your return. Whatever it is. 10, 15% IRR, if you're lucky. But first of all, our numbers are crushing it. And with us, we do everything from a to z with you, and you own up to 80% of the real estate.

So you're owning it. It's just a different play completely. So now when you when you start down this road, how much what's the time requirement to to run this? Is this I mean, it it it sounds like when you got a lot going on in the yard, it's not this isn't a a set it and forget it business. This is a business that still needs some work.

Correct. So, you know, it's the closest thing to self storage because anyone we're in a lot of self storage masterminds, and one of the biggest things that they have to think about is obviously the management. And some of their best clients that they want are actually small businesses, and that's who our clients are for the most part. And because they're independent, they take care of things themselves. If there's a pothole or their gate's not working, they'll grab their socket and their wrench or a shovel and they'll fill it, and you never hear about it.

And these are the type of clients that we have, and these are the type of clients you want. So first of all, we're highly diversified. So if if my top three clients stop paying me tomorrow, I'm still cash flow positive and I'm still okay. So I'm highly diversified. I have some of the best clients you want in the business.

And whereas automated as you can be, you literally go up to my gate, you scan the QR code. Right? You get a link. You fill up the document. You upload your credit card.

You make your payment. The gate opens. You're good. Like, it's as hands off as could be. And so, I mean, you still require part time boots on the ground, but we even help organize that.

We help hire them, train them, and we have great management systems because we built an entire franchise system with checklists. So and everything you need. So, I mean, yeah, it's like turnkey. Plus, we take care of the construction. I was at GC for 10 years.

We go there. We build do the build out. So we're as hands on as we could be. And by being a partner, we don't get paid until you get paid. We put our skin in the game.

So what kind of trust is that? Like, you know, if we're in it with you, we gotta make it work. Alright. So when we we start looking at at real estate for one of these, is this and and and maybe I'm going too far on on being a simpleton. I'm just trying to understand it.

Yeah. Is, you know, a lot of the the indoor outdoor industrial storage that you see is off the highway. It's on the edge of town or outside of town. But you talked about there being a need for it within the city also. Is that is that something that that that is more useful?

I mean, I think some of the some of the cities that you have old industrial areas downtown or or maybe they were factory areas and now they're not doing so well, and so you kinda get that that that inner city demise. Are these areas that are also useful for this or most of them on the edge of town? That that's a great question. So because our model is literally made to adapt from the inside outwards, we understand to solve this big problem, we had to get creative. And every parcel of land, as long as the zoning works, is an opportunity.

You know? Now you can't it's you can't buy the land for $1,000,000 an acre in the middle of, like, Chicago and do a long yard. That's extremely difficult. But what you can do is you can find plots of land that, you know, have certain issues oddly shaped. And if that opportunity presents itself, you could still make a deal work, and you could do a revenue share with the landowner.

And this is where part of our partner and internal network get these resources and our team to go out and try to make these deals happen. So, you know, whether or not it's an oddly shaped property in the center that doesn't have much more higher higher and best use, we can go and do a revenue share and make a deal happen. On the corporate, more of a land banking side, we wanna be on the outside, the perimeter, one of and that's typically a lot where you see the industrial pockets anyways. And it's not just on market. Like, we're geared to go off market and even future land use.

So in certain areas, like, let's take Nashville as an example, it's one of the hardest places to find industrial real estate. It's just so hot. We so we have to put in other gears. It's either the land arbitrage or the future land use, and that takes a little bit longer. So depending on your market, there's different opportunities that present themselves based on the asset class.

That's interesting. So when you start talking about some of the the future use that that maybe if it's on the edge of town that right now, a yard is the best use for it. But 10 years from now, after the city grows, it might be now it's got a better use and you can move the yard further out and sell that piece, and it becomes apartment buildings or because you got a pretty good chunk of land there. It's not a tiny lot. Exactly.

You got a pretty good chunk of land. It's not a tiny lot. And you want to, you know, go where I think Wayne Gresley says it best. Go where the puck is heading. Right?

So in some pockets, industrial real estate, you know, it's it's hard. Right? It is hard. It's a hard asset class we're going after. We have a great problem that we're working on solving, and that's why we created the go long, go home helps us work through these weeds as a team because you need people and different approaches to get as creative as you can and tactically logistics to get in there and just tackle those problems.

So, but the future land use, yeah, you wanna go where the city is going. You wanna go where the the growth is, and you wanna go where the contractors are going in the small businesses. So that's just one of the many keys, that we have as a resource to go. If there's nothing on market, if we can't do a joint venture, if the off market's not working, we got future land use. So by partnering with us, like, we're gonna make a long air tap, and it's just how long is it gonna take.

Okay. Well, you know, it's interesting because we were talking last night about flex space, and, you know, and it's one of those hot classes where they're building these basically contractor garages. And in some cities, it's just gone wild. And you hear a lot more about that. But you're solving a lot of the same problems for somebody who has stuff they need to store.

They may need a small office space, some inside and some outside storage, you're basically have the ability to make the whole thing happen and maybe even be a little more flexible and give a little bigger space than just your little flex warehouse. That's right. So, I mean, it's funny when you mentioned you're talking about the mastermind, someone brought up long yards. And, my wife, she has family on vacation. They were talking at our restaurant about industrial real estate, and somebody else brought up long yards in Mexico last week.

So it's just like I don't know. Something's working here, but, in any case, what's really unique is that as long as there's land that works, we could do a long yards. So in our central Florida location, we have 26,000 square feet of warehouse, and there's, you know, around 6 6 acres of land. And we just run the highest and best use. So not only are we it's just pure land.

This is warehousing with land. And because of our expertise, our contacts, our database now, we look at that warehousing and we run the highest and best use. What's in the area? What's working? What's their, you know, supply index?

What's the shortage? And for us, it was climate controlled self storage. So we let the numbers do the talking. We ran the numbers, ran the highest and best use. And so we're doing long yards with climate control self storage on that property.

So it's not just storage yards. It's what's the highest best use, what's the demand, and what's the opportunities in the area, and we'll make a deal. That's awesome. That's, I think sometimes where people get hung up is you're like this. You get a shot at a property, and it looks like it's a great property, but then you kinda get hung up on what is the highest and best use, and what's it really worth, and and what how much can you make it pay out for?

And it and it takes some experience to know all those different things. And and I think that's where it can get really tough with with our commercial mastermind. We were talking last night, and that's where your name came up because, we it was this kind of a funky property and was being used for a bunch of different things and was kind of this process of going, well, how how much could this property really generate? And looking at it in all these different ways. And, you know, and and depending on how you divvied it up and who you were renting it to and and really what you could rent it for, those numbers change dramatically.

And so, yeah, how would somebody this is what you guys do. So this is what you do all day. Oh my god. Yeah. We have a funnel, and it goes to the feasibility.

It goes zoning, local building requirements, and then feasibility. Right? So before we look at a deal, it has to match all of our checklists. And then what's the way the feasibility? This tool that we've built can allow us to analyze real estate within minutes and tell you the future market value, the NOI, and then you could assume the debt.

And we right now we're assuming SBA, but you can use different debt facilities. And then we go through our acquisition assembly line, which allows us to go through all the filtering due diligence. You know, is there gas lines, easement, setbacks, anything that's gonna kill the deal as quick as possible. So by knowing all of these different steps and sequences allows you to identify real estate quickly, tell you what you can and can't do, how much it's gonna cost, and just move to the next one. And that's part of, you know, work with long hours.

We give you this education. It's like, here you go. We teach you commercial real estate for as little as 5 grand. It's sometimes I'm like, what am I doing? But, you know, anyways, yeah, it's it's really powerful.

Well, that's great because that's where a lot of the time you get people get hung up is it's how much time do you put into a deal trying to figure it out. And and then it becomes that that, you know, time sunk cost. I've I've seen deals where people take a not great deal, and they they fall in love with it. And and then we'll spend hours and hours weeks months trying to figure out a way to make it work. But, basically, you're coming to it going, okay.

Let's identify rule yes or no as quickly as possible and get down to where we have something that we can turn into a revenue generator. Exactly. We take the guessing out of it. Right? We you don't wanna know, well, how do the banks work?

How do they're lending? How much can I make? How much is it gonna cost? How long is it gonna take? All these questions someone's gonna be asking themselves about the you don't have to ask that.

Like, we're first of all, we're gonna educate you so you understand all the elements. You're literally going to know how to use our tools and then identify a property and underwrite it yourself. And then we're there for you all the time for accountability. So, like, if you have any questions or something's not working, we're phone call away. We're with you.

And that's you know, like, when people try to wanna get into a business, they want to understand it. They wanna know it's simple. Like and you look at Longyear to zoom out. Like, it's a simple business to get and understand. There's only so much risk or unknown that you can have.

And we just you know, by removing the unknown and the risk, we just make it as simple as possible for all of our partners. So going back a little bit to the financing because I think we probably have a lot of listeners who have never doubt they've heard of the Small Business Administration. They know there supposedly these loans out there to to help you as a small business, but most doctors have never really dealt with 1. And, I think even within mild practice, we looked at 1 a couple times, but it turned out, you know, the we went another direction. So how exactly is an SBA loan different from any other business loan going to the bank, and how does that process work?

What are the advantages of that over just standard bank financing? Yeah. SBA is extremely powerful. First of all, it's the amount of money you need to make a deal happen. Right?

Let's look at a piece of property that's a $1,000,000, and you need $700,000 for the construction to build out. And then, you know, you need carrying costs. How long until it's profitable? And the over underwriting tools answer all these questions. But let's say you're in it for $2,000,000 total.

Well, most banks, they're going 35% down or whatever the case. And so you gotta come up with, like, 6, $700,000 for this deal. Using SBA, you need as little as 10 to 15%. Right? And then it factors in you could even have a small salary of $40,000 for the year to just go out there and oversee it and get it going.

So the Small Business Administration is built to help and support small businesses, and their loans are facilitated for that. And what does long haireds do? We support small businesses, and our tenants are month to month. So that's why we're on the, the SBA directories because all of our our all of our business vision and mission is to support small businesses. So, I mean, it's it's powerful.

It's it's there for us to get started. And because we're buying real estate, our our term loans are actually amortized over 25 years. So, you know, you we can even do a lease on a 10 year loan using SBA, but to buy dirt, they'll do 25 years on industrial land with 10 to 15% down. And that's almost unheard of. So not only do you get all the business support, but you get a great lending package that we as partners provide to you.

The funny thing is is that I'm a Canadian. My business got approved by SBA, but I can't use SBA because I'm I'm not a green card holder. So part of my creativeness was to find partners and, like, hey, guys. Look. I'll provide the know how.

You provide the SBA and the underwriting and, you know, the let's be partners and let's make a deal happen. So that's how just like starting in the first place, I just solved another problem. That's great. So so you had everything, but you just needed an American. I needed an American.

To to add my wife, I told her if only you were an American, babe. You know? But we're we're we're Canadians, and we came down here and, you know, it's all about solving problems, so that's what we're doing. That's great. That's you know, it's one of those things that sometimes you stop and you're and you go, god.

He's a Canadian, and he knows more about the the the things our government provides to us to help us succeed in business than we do. There's you know? And and especially as doctors, we feel dumb easily because, you know, you went to all this school and everybody thinks you're brilliant. And, and then you keep hearing about things that you go, what? Never heard of that before because our specialty gets so narrow where you, you know, like Yeah.

Yeah. Very different. My my my second franchisee, he he's a doctor, and he had look. He he had a a health accident. Right?

And it was in that realization that he knew if he can't go into work and perform, he couldn't keep the bills going. And he said, Chris, I I want something that if I know if I get sick or something happens, I wanna be able to take care of my family. And that's what we did. We offered that service. Now we can you know, we're on the path to own real estate that's gonna pay him every month no matter if he's sick or healthy.

And, I mean, you know, as a doctor, it's you're only in so much control so much. You help everybody else, but we're helping creating a business that allows, you know, you to help you and take care of yourself. And so let's see. It's a you gotta think outside. You know, doctors that I know, we're all in our lanes and engineers and lawyers as well.

But once you start getting that that cash flow and you start owning those assets, it's just a different world you're in. You know, that's interesting because if you look at, compares comparing this to disability insurance from what he basically came to you and he was what he was needing was was to continue to bring in some money. And disability insurance is probably the the craziest, most expensive insurance you'll ever buy. The number of provisions within it that when you if something happens to actually elect it, that the number of stories I hear where they're like, oh, well, you know, you're not disabled enough or you didn't have the appropriate job specific right or in all these different things that it's one of those things that makes my head hurt, and then you're wondering how good your insurance agent is. And the amount you pay for it over 20 years, is definitely as much or more than it sounds like it would take to get a Longyear.

So and Longyear, it's not all does it give you that insurance policy that it that's actually real cash flow along the way, not just in if I get hurt. Like, you could be in a long yard for as low as $50,000 as a franchisee with the land arbitrage. It's just wild using SBA and can go up to 250 for $2,500,000 asset. It's wild. And here's the crazy thing.

My location is in Canada. I moved to the US 3 years ago, and I went to my location about 3 times in 3 years. When I say this thing is a business that runs itself, that's the proof, that's the evidence. I am living it, and that's why I'm like, I gotta do more of these. So I would love for a doctor to sit down with me and say, okay.

Let me let me show you what I'm working on, and then I'll show them. Okay. Let me show you and I'll actually show you my location and the numbers, and let's compare apples to apples. I think it would be a great conversation. That's a so how many do you have an employee there who who checks in on it or does it you know, if you need stuff moved around, what's the requirements there for employees?

Yeah. So it's usually one visit a week at the minimum, sometimes 2 depending on the season, if there's a lot of landscape maintenance required, depends depending on the location. So, yeah, it's it's usually about 12 hours every 2 weeks for a part time employee. 1 4 hour day, make sure you cut the grass. Things are going good.

And then the second week is an 8 hour day, just to make sure. You know? But that's on an average. It depends on the size of the facility and if there's other warehousing you gotta keep in mind, but it's it's it's a rule of thumb. Yeah, you have one part time employee that has a checklist they follow.

They upload the pictures, make sure things are you know, that we give them. It's like, make sure this is being operated the way it should. But, I mean, I don't know if you ever poke your parked your boat in RV or went to a self storage facility, but they don't have full time staff kinda guiding you where to go. It's it's a pretty automated business, and that's what we have. Okay.

What's the, I forgot my question. Oh, so how big of a of a metro area? How how how big of a city do you need to support one of these? That's a great so we're doing, a lot of research and development. And, you know, I could tell you the smallest would be we wouldn't wanna go anywhere at this point under 50,000 people for a population within a reasonable distance.

Just while we're getting our metrics and our data and we're really getting dialed in to increase our confidence. But there's no limitation. I'm in Ottawa. Ottawa is a population of over a1000000, you know, and we there's a lot of great stats about Ottawa. But there's nothing shy to say we can't go into certain areas.

As long as, you know, we go through our funnel and we've identified the area to work, and we're gonna go there and we're gonna make a deal happen. Awesome. Yes. You don't need a major metro area to to make one of these work. Yeah.

It's different than, like, your mom and pop self storage where a few people on social media, like, oh my gosh. 5,000 people and, you know, here's your your facilities. Like, now we need a little bit more growth than that. I mean, you know, if if you think there's too many people around you with a yard, then, you know, not the demand and need for yard is that high. You know, and I like to say the business is simple, but we make it look simple because we're good at what we do.

But it's not easy because you don't wanna spend $1,000,000 on a piece of industrial real estate that you're not sure is gonna work. And we know people try to do what we're doing, and they're not leasing up. And because we have the data, we've gone deep into building the processes and systems, building the franchise to have a level of confidence that we could bring it to an area close to you and lease up. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes, and it's like an iceberg. You see the long you're expensing, but there's a whole 90% of the ice underneath it as to why that location works, and that's what we do.

Oh, that's awesome. So if somebody want to learn more about this, how do they get ahold of you, Chris? Yeah. They can email me, c long@longears.com. Check out our website, longears.com.

And, I mean, happy to talk to new partners and, go from there. That's awesome. And and I have to say, you you know, we talked about this earlier. Your your waiting room to get on a Zoom call has audio and video that, I I have I didn't know you could do that on Zoom. So, I was like, wow, this is really cool.

So you you got to you're using your tech there in lots of different ways. As a carpenter, I'm a little proud of myself sometimes that I'm I'm actually excited about tech and, you know, we're 2 years ago. The last thing I wanna do is look at it. So I appreciate that. That's great.

Alright. Anything else you wanna add here before we, before we wrap it up? No. I appreciate it. If any doctors are worried, just, you know, look at our podcast station.

Go on longears.com. You can look at our podcast. You can learn more. And just, you know, don't be afraid to reach out. We don't bite.

We wanna educate you on the process, and, I I'm pretty certain there's the longears that could be at a location near you. It's just is it gonna be you? Alright. So thank you so much again. This is, Chris Long with LongYard.

We'll include that in the show notes, his contact information. Hope this has been valuable to you, and thanks again for joining us here on Surgeon Syndicate, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Mike.