Dianne Tanna

By Brad Hadfield

he timing couldn’t have been better when MSM released its female-focused cover story “Mini Women” in 1982. The movie “9 to 5” had recently become a cultural touchstone, empowering women by highlighting their struggles in the workplace and promoting gender equality. It may have also put some men on high alert as businesswomen began stepping out from the shadows of their male bosses to make a name for themselves. Dianne Tanna was one of them—and one of the “mini-women” featured in the cover story that year.

Tanna was already eight years into her career when we interviewed her back then and working her way up the corporate ladder. “I moved from Canada to California in 1974, joining the Alison Company and working with a management team responsible for 50 properties in the area,” recalls Tanna. “I’d grown up in a real estate-oriented family, so I knew what I was doing.”

In 1976, Tanna joined Linkletter Properties as an accountant, but she aspired to do more. Was her gender holding her back? In 1982, she told MSM, “I feel that with most companies, there’s usually the sexual discrimination barrier to overcome … but of all the development and management firms I’ve been associated with, Jack Linkletter was the most receptive to the idea of a woman in a primarily male-dominated position.”

Today, she acknowledges that while Linkletter was a great man to work for, the men in the company would usually be heard and promoted first. “I saw three or four VPs come and go, and I said to Jack [Linkletter], ‘Let me do that; I’ll still run the accounting department. I can do both.’”

It took three years or so of hammering this message home before Linkletter would give her the position. But even after becoming vice president, it wasn’t always easy. “I was often the only female at most self-storage events. When people did approach me, even as a VP, they’d still ask to speak to the man in charge. Back then, being a ‘woman of self-storage’ meant you were married to a man in self-storage, and you’d share recipes or gardening tips with the other wives.”

Despite these challenges, Tanna continued to drive the self-storage division forward, growing it to more than 90 properties by 1989. “It was still first-generation self-storage, very primitive by today’s standards, but I loved what I was doing.” However, with a new decade on the horizon, her priorities began to shift as she became more focused on family. And, like many women of the time, raising children meant sacrificing career plans. “I left that year to have a baby. Back then, it was often one or the other. You couldn’t ‘have it all,’ as they say now.”

While raising her children, Tanna did continue to consult with some of Linkletter’s clients, many of whom asked her to please get back into the business. Motivated by their requests, she formed her own company, which she ran as a one-woman show for several years until Ray Tuohy came calling. “Ray had been in the industry as long as me,” says Tanna. “He wanted to partner up and start a third-party management company. He said he’d handle the field work and I could work behind the scenes from my home office. I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

Together, Tanna and Tuohy formed TNT Management. If you haven’t heard of it, Tanna says she’s not surprised. “We don’t advertise, we don’t go to trade shows, our phone number isn’t even listed. We grow our clients organically and through word-of-mouth.”

The strategy has worked well for the duo. Today, TNT manages about 75 locations from Texas to Hawaii; some of its clients have been with them for more than 30 years. Over that time, Tanna says she’s seen many changes. “Technology is a big one, of course; there were no computers when I started in this business,” says Tanna. “Now, everything is virtual, and people can rent units online.”

While tech upgrades have been a boon for business, Tanna says she’s still not a fan of remotely managed properties. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should,” she says. “I don’t think you can replace that personal interaction that happens when there’s a manager on site. I think part of the reason we haven’t had to engage in some of those recent pricing strategies of the REITs is because we have good staff on property, and people appreciate that and will pay for that.”

Although self-storage has become more future-focused, Tanna doesn’t know what the future will bring for the industry. “I think people are less likely to hold on to stuff these days,” she says. “I’m a mother with grown children; I’ve tried to give them some beautiful old furniture, and they don’t want it. They look at it and are like, ‘Mom, please … Oh, God, no.’ So why would you store that when no one wants it?”

Tanna says she’s opened up many units for auction to find what she considers nice things, but things that obviously no one wanted. “You can’t sell some of this stuff. You can’t even give it away. I wish I had a rosier outlook, but I don’t. I think as my generation ages out—we’re the ones who hold on to stuff like the family china and whatnot—I see some aspects of self-storage disappearing.”

But not all self-storage, she’s quick to add. She does believe that younger generations will continue to gravitate toward self-storage as a place to keep belongings that they use often but are too large to keep in their home. “Small units, or lockers, those will always be popular,” she says. “As housing gets smaller and the square footage goes down, people need to put things away that they use routinely, like sports gear. So, while I think demand is going to go down, and the overbuilding needs to slow, there will still always be a need.”

Despite some of the challenges of being a woman in the industry in the early days of self-storage, Tanna looks back on the time fondly. “I’m proud to say I was a pioneer in this industry. I worked with others on state boards to create operating systems, procedures, and policies. We helped write the California Self-Storage Act, one of the first lien laws. And what made it so much fun and so challenging is that all of us were first-timers. We were people with an entrepreneurial spirit taking risks that, for the most part, paid off.”

Continues Tanna, “As far as women in self-storage, and business in general, I think we’ve come a long way. My son works in our company now, and we have a lot of area managers his age [30-something]. When I relate some of these old stories to them, they’re like ‘What?’ They can’t wrap their heads around the way it was. And that’s a good thing.”

Does she have any advice for women entering the industry today? “Always work your hardest, do your best, and don’t ever say, ‘It’s not my job.’ Instead, just get the job done.”