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Self Storage Income

263. The Man Who Taught an Entire Country to Start Using Self Storage w/Henry Madden

Self Storage Income

AJ Osborne

Entrepreneurship, Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.9591 Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ten years ago, barely anyone in Brazil used self storage, or even knew what it was, for that matter. But one man, Henry Madden, saw what no one else could: a country sentimental about physical items, with a population living in small apartments and needing more space. The problem? How can there be demand for self storage when nobody in Brazil even knew they needed it?

Fast forward to today, Henry owns the most popular, highest-demand self storage facilities in Brazil. He can’t build units fast enough and is raking in high rents even with Brazil’s significantly lower building cost. So, how did a foreigner successfully create a new industry, learn the laws and regulations, and succeed even during lockdowns?

Want to build wealth in self storage? Like Henry, you need to think outside the box (or more like BUILD the box). He shares exactly how he started his business, built his massively successful first self storage facility, and the lessons YOU can learn from his experience to invest in a market nobody else believes in. 

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

  • Why Henry chose Brazil as the country to start building his self storage empire 
  • Educating an entire population and creating (not finding) self storage customers 
  • The surprisingly high rents Henry brings in at his Brazilian facilities 
  • The cost to build a multi-story, class-A self storage facility in Brazil 
  • Out-building your competitors in dense, urban areas so you control the market 
  • The one event that “triggered” Brazilians to start using self storage 

Moby Self Storage https://mobystorage.net.br/

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Someone asked you, what do you do? I'd say self-storage and then no idea what I was talking about.

0:04.0

But I think lockdown was the trigger. Now that it's triggered, you know, they can't

0:08.0

unknow what storage is. Yep. It's only going to increase and that awareness, you know, we're seeing

0:12.5

demand. You know, we can't build the units quick enough.

0:22.6

How's going, man?

0:24.7

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

0:28.4

I'm here with Henry Madden, and we are in Brazil.

0:36.3

Now, first thing we need to address is your accent doesn't seem very Brazilian.

0:40.9

So why don't we hit on that? Because you're in Brazil, you're doing storage, but you're not originally from here, right? No, I grew up in Cornwall in the UK.

0:48.2

I was in banking after university for seven years, fell in love with Brazil on a holiday and got a bit

0:57.5

worried that I might end up doing banking for my whole life so I quit, move to Brazil,

1:02.9

set up a travel company initially just to have something to do here, which is still going,

1:07.6

wins awards, it's a great company called De Hooshe, then we got into real estate, kind of via the travel company.

1:14.1

We worked on a hotel deal with UBS and Mandarin Oriental.

1:18.6

And then got the bug for real estate in Brazil,

1:21.2

started to kind of understand what the dynamics were.

1:23.6

But I was really keen to find,

1:25.2

we were really keen to find something that was scalable and resilient

1:29.2

because we knew Brazil and as a lot of merchant markets are can be quite volatile.

1:34.8

And it came upon self-storage.

1:36.8

That was about 10 years ago.

1:39.5

Yeah, 10 years ago, so a bit more than 10 years now.

...

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