“Being in self-storage has been one of the most rewarding and surprising careers, and it’s one I never could have imagined.” This is exactly what I hear repeatedly while networking with young and old professionals in self-storage. From conferences, tradeshows, interviews, and networking sessions, these words resonate again and again. Moreover, when heard, I can distinctly visualize the excitement, the energy, and the wide-eyed passion emanating from an industry peer as they happily share what the industry has meant to them. Many admit they had no idea that an entry-level job in the self-storage industry would have led them to such a rewarding and enriching career. Fortunately, our industry has a Young Leaders Group to welcome, grow, and network our future self-storage professionals. Here are the many reasons why becoming a young leader in storage benefits career-seeking individuals and ultimately the self-storage industry.

Beginning a job in self-storage often starts in a customer service role with a tight-knit facility team. This makes self-storage a great learning environment, giving direct exposure to the running of a facility via a small working team. Whether you belong to a single facility or a large organization, you are likely in direct contact with your manager and the handful of direct individuals that make a site successful. By working within your company and networking with others in the industry, you can become the best at what you do. Fortunately, the Canadian Self Storage Association’s Young Leaders Group provides an avenue to share issues, brainstorm new ideas, and learn the best solutions to industry challenges. Given the small teams and tight-knit nature of a self-storage facility’s team, having another resource for learning and innovating is extremely helpful. I’m always amazed at the brain trust of having like-minded professionals together in a group to share with and tackle issues. Often, industry challenges are being solved by another group within our industry. By working within a Young Leaders Group, the best ideas often come to light.

Self-storage Young Leaders Groups have a diverse range of members covering all aspects of the industry. This diversity allows you to learn how each role integrates with the others. It supports the importance in each job, and how when done well they combine to achieve great results. The members of a Young Leaders Group have diverse backgrounds that range from customer service, call centre, and management to vendors, brokers, development, and acquisition teams. By networking within these groups, you have access to like-minded professionals in every part of the self-storage industry. This allows you to grow a strong network of emerging professionals to help you evolve and get ever proficient and better at your role in the industry.

As time progresses, I often see savvy young professionals progress upward within the industry. If you’re keen, humble, and ever learning, it’s very common you’ll have lots of opportunity to grow in the industry. There are many examples of a high school or university student taking a part-time entry-level job, only now to be a manager, regional manager, director, or executive. With patience and understanding, the industry provides a wide range of learning and challenge to take on. Therefore, corresponding with like-minded peers often provides a great opportunity to learn how everyone’s roles work together. For many smart young professionals, where you start is often only the beginning of a great self-storage journey. Moreover, your skill sets and connections may take you into completely different skills sets within the self-storage industry. Thus, you never know what door you may go down when you’re networking with other like-minded individuals at an event or tradeshow.

Like any other business, self-storage firms have existing processes and ways to tackle issues. Thus, I find a lot of great emerging ideas come from the sharing of perspectives from young industry leaders. Our young leaders naturally come with new technological insights that they’ve grown up with. Also, their youth often provides them a perspective that is often outside of the traditional self-storage box that industry veterans have become more familiar. This allows for the sharing of great ideas and solutions to common problems. Consequently, these groups create better processes and ways of doing things. The benefits of successfully implemented new ideas can lead to great operational efficiencies and increase revenues. It’s no surprise that a lot of great innovations today come from young executive minds who are members of industry Young Leaders Groups. Tangible examples include the use of technology in drones, site surveillance, pricing models, and access control. Many of these initiatives have a young-at-heart mindset behind them.

A significant benefit of the self-storage Young Leaders Group has been the access to industry experts and veterans in direct-access fireside chats. These informal get-togethers often have great nuggets of information. When a 30-year-plus veteran of the self-storage industry divulges their great key learning over a fireside chat, it’s a real special treat. Moreover, when that is paired with inquisitive minds and innovative young industry brains, I often see ideas that leapfrog the industry on great new paths. The open, unfiltered sharing and innovation that come out of these meetings is priceless.

When I sit down with our Young Leaders Groups and emerging stars of the industry, it gives me great reassurance that the future of our industry is in great hands. Moreover, as we work and share together new possibilities, successes arise that could only be attained through great collaboration. Thus, I encourage you to seize the opportunity to join the CSSA’s Young Leaders Group. On the flipside, if you’re now too old, like me (the age limit is 40), take the opportunity to network and share with our industry youth as you’ll rekindle some of your great stories and imagination in ways that will surprise you.