Ryan Hanks

By Victória Oliveira

ith 22 years of experience in the self-storage industry, Ryan Hanks started his career like many others in the business, working in the multifamily sector, the initial industry of Madison Capital Group, a holding company he founded back in 2009, and works to this day as the chief executive officer. “I had come from the multifamily space,” he says, “and so Madison, at its roots, was investing in multifamily assets.”

While looking to expand his company’s portfolio, he stumbled upon self-storage. This industry would soon become a big focus of his business and, at the time, was the obvious expansion due to the industry’s similarities. “We predominantly had been doing multifamily residential when I started Madison Capital Group. And I started looking at other investment types that we could get into at Madison, and so started studying the storage space for a couple of years,” he states. “Ultimately, we felt like that was a place we could build a business around, so we started with just a couple of assets and grew from there.”

Go Store It Self Storage launched in 2013 and grew to become one of the biggest assets of Madison Capital. However, at the onset of COVID, Hanks noticed he could expand his self-storage assets even further by focusing on an entirely new aspect of the industry often overlooked. “When COVID hit, people were spending more money on outdoor recreational activities, so what we noticed in a lot of our Go Store It portfolio and other companies was how excess parking has always been in high demand,” he says. “It is common to see many different kinds of vehicles using [the excess parking], from cars to boats and RVs. But we felt strongly that there was a bigger business there, a bigger need for people that wanted to be in a secure location, wanted access to their vehicles, or whatever it may be at any given time.”

It was then that Hanks decided to expand into the specialized self-storage sector, opening BlueGate Boat and RV Storage in 2021. “We call it boat and RV storage, and that’s certainly the base of what we do, but the reality is we have commercial users, car dealerships, sprinter vans, food trucks, school buses, party buses, limos, you name it,” he adds. “Because, again, they want security. A lot of them want these items covered. They want them fully enclosed. Our knowledge of the storage business allowed us to jumpstart that business, and now we’re growing it as an independent vertical.”

With 12 new facilities under development, Hanks doesn’t believe the industry will slow down anytime soon. “Even during COVID, storage became a less impactful business in terms of interacting with people. A lot of people rent online. A lot of people don’t need to go to the leasing office. It’s a business where a lot of people can do things on their own, and I don’t think we’ve seen it really change since then. We didn’t see a lot of volatility.”

To keep a business booming for over a decade, it is imperative to grow the business in scale, keeping up with the latest market needs and trends. Thinking of that, Hanks says Go Store It Self Storage went unmanned, and the company opened their own customer service center to make sure the customer service aspect of the business wouldn’t suffer in the transition. “Our operations team has done a great job adding technology to our business. We feel really strongly about the kind of unmanned opportunities we wanted to bring to our company, and we’ve been investing a lot in that. We’re implementing that across our entire portfolio.”

He mentions creating a call center for customer service early on was one of the reasons why he had such a successful transition from manned facilities to unmanned ones.

“We’re able to use the call center across all the different businesses and staff that up appropriately as we grow,” he says, while making sure to point out there are different groups inside their call center that are specific for each specialized asset type to assure that customers will talk directly to someone who will know how to best aid them when they call.

Besides using technology to the best of its capabilities while finding ways to strengthen the customer-business relationship, Hanks mentions the secret to success in the industry in his experience comes down to location, quality of the facilities, and great customer service. “I think our customer service activity is fantastic. And what we’re finding is even with somebody not being on site, in the way that our technology works, we are able to keep the same high standards of interaction with somebody on a screen, so customers are getting that very high quality of customer service because they’re interacting with people from all over the country all day,” he states. “I think its location, quality of facilities, and customer service really kind of set us apart.”

When choosing a new location to either build a new facility or acquire an existing one, he mentions one should do their homework on their local competition. “A lot of it is really just driven by the competition within that particular location. We just try to focus on areas where we think that there’s obviously upside in rentals and we’re not going to get bombarded with competition, or there’s not a lot of local competition there already.”

As for marketing a new facility, he makes sure his team is building connections with other local businesses, and that’s key to creating awareness.

“I think on top of your obvious web presence, which is a big part of what we do in the self-storage space, one of the things our operations team does is just reaching out to other businesses that have some synergies from the housing communities and apartment communities and things like that, with a residential focus. It makes creating awareness whenever we’re opening a new facility much easier.”

A big focus on the self-storage assets of Hanks’ business is acquiring value-add storage acquisitions, but each facility he undertakes has different improvement needs; however, some are more common than others. “Every facility is different,” he says. “Some of it could need a CapEx value-add proposal, meaning it needs dollars invested to make the appearance look better or to modernize; some of it may be there’s an expansion component on excess land, whether that could be used for parking or that could be used for expanding the square footage. It could also be a redevelopment opportunity on a low-density property in an A location; some of it’s as simple as just putting it on the Go Store platform. There have also been instances where local operators are not utilizing all the technology and tactics, whereby simply implementing what we do every day in our facilities we could see an enhancement in operational. However, oftentimes it’s usually a combination of CapEx cleanup, expansion, and putting it on our platform, as it does create that value and the value-add enhancement.”

As for BlueGate, which was first launched as a specialized boat and RV storage, Hanks and his team have managed to grow it to encompass different verticals. “BlueGate opened up a lot of different opportunities because, again, boat and RV storage is its own thing, but it’s similar to other things, so now we’re into mariners because there’s a lot of crossover between what we do and marinas. So, we’re now buying and building marinas.”

Due to the synergies of the industries, BlueGate has also grown to become an industrial outdoor storage option, as the opportunity presented itself. “It’s just storage, no matter what you want to call it. Now, that’s a little bit bigger in terms of you have companies like trucking companies, construction companies, and even energy companies that need energy that rent a specific lot for a longer period and know that it’s secure, it’s theirs, they don’t have to worry about it,” he says. “That’s become a large business. Because of BlueGate, we’ve entered into two new verticals within that sector because there’s a lot of crossovers and synergies there.”

For operators who wish to give boat and RV storage a try, Hanks offers sensible guidance. “I think people underestimate how difficult it is to operate these types of projects and facilities. I would advise people to really focus on the operational, have that sound strategy there, and be hands-on,” he states. “The acquisition of existing marinas is preferred over developing new ones, as the existing facilities already have a customer base and occupancy. When acquiring marinas, the company focuses on improving the customer experience, increasing revenues, and enhancing the property in various ways, such as re-racking the dry stack storage to accommodate more boat sizes.”