Is there some suggested price per acre to look for when looking for a self storage site for development ?

Go to city hall. There will be a desk for development...what name it is, well, that will change depend on the municipality. Talk to the staff and tell them what you want, and they'll send you to the right place. You want to talk to engineering and development staff and ask them who the best developers are. They will recommend who you should meet, and maybe even introduce you. When you are changing land use designations like this, it is very helpful to be familiar with city staff. The staff are the people who write the reports that go to council. Council depends on those reports for information to help them decide which way to vote. Ideally, you want a developer who is well known at city call, is used to working with staff, and is appreciated for their attitude. Density bonusing can be achieved in exchange for amenities, and if your developer has a history of making these kinds of horse trades with the city, all the better. What you don't want is a partner who gets the staff's backs up, and doesn't know how to get the best bang for their buck out of the development. Six years of city hall experience and in the construction field on my end.

Q) What info would a buyer need in order to make an offer? Unsolicited offers rarely start out as offers. They start as conversations. Cold inbounds from potential acquirers are usually done to establish some facts and also willingness to entertain an offer. They need to have enough information to form a rationale (i.e. explanation as to why it makes sense to the acquiring company) and enough confidence that there is interest by the seller. Q) Would that info need to be verified or can an offer be made on the condition of verifying later (if the conversation gets serious)? A) Offers are always conditional. There is a delicate balance between knowing how much to disclose and when to disclose information, versus trying to force more commitment on the part of the potential acquirer. Q) What is a general rule of thumb (formula?) for how to valuate a SaaS business? A) Depends on the size and business of the acquirer. The smaller the acquirer (especially where its valuation is $100m or less), the more it becomes a relative valuation argument (what do we have and what do you have), but the larger the acquirer it is typically a talent acquisition model where the business dynamics are less important to what the team has demonstrated it can do and the perceived value that that team can make internally. This is even more true when the target (you) is generating less than $5m ARR on a trailing basis. Finally, you phrased this question as "how would one go about entertaining an offer to buy my company?" so let me speak to a few general rules. 1) If you're willing to sell, be polite, efficient and courteous to any potential interest. 2) Quickly qualify who you are dealing with and their ability to make a decision (are they junior and just doing research or are they VP Corp Dev?) 3) Quickly establish mutual interest in a desire to dive deep, and get them to explain their process including other decision-makers etc. 4) Ensure that you have competent legal counsel who has significant experience in M&A, ideally with the buyer you're talking to. 5) *GET A TERM SHEET*. You have nothing until you have a term sheet and even then, you don't have a deal. 6) As soon as you have a term sheet, begin aggressively marketing your Company to other potential acquirers. 7) Try and put the impact of the financial outcome aside for a moment (very hard to do) and begin evaluating your suitors based on who you really want to work for over the next 3+ years. Do your due diligence on this question as much as possible. 8) Don't take your eye off the business or celebrate the deal until it's done. I've seen too many friends celebrate prematurely only to see the deal die or radically change at the last minute. Happy to talk through this in a call with you in more detail.

I co-founded and owned what became the 13th largest Century 21 franchise in the USA. I did the majority of the training. We hired hundreds of new and experienced agents each year maintaining an average active agent count of around 95 in our single office. Here is some of the advice I gave each prospective or new recruit. 1. Make sure you have a cash reserve to cover your personal and real estate business overhead for 3-6 months. 2. Treat your real estate business like you are in business for yourself even though you are not by yourself. Sound business principles still apply. 3. Networking and relationship nurturing are the keys to the kingdom. Prospect, prospect, prospect. (The agents that were proactively prospecting for clients were three to four times more successful than the ones that merely placed ads and waited for the phone to ring.) 4. Avoid the busy-work-trap. That is, do all the non-income producing work during non-prime time hours. If you can be prospecting, showing property or writing contracts, do it. Don't organize your desk, configure your CRM, write your ads, etc., in lieu of the activities that will earn your income. This happens more frequently than you might think. 5. Ignore the naysayers. My best agents earned between $250,000 and $500,000 regardless of the housing market or economy. Ironically, some of them were "intentional" naysayers. It was part of their strategy to discourage the new people. 6. Become a student of the business. Attend every conference available. Read every book. Listen to the CD's/DVD's on how to master the art of selling real estate (to borrow a title from Tom Hopkins). I've traveled the country training real estate agents & brokers. Give me a call if you have any further questions or would like a coach to accelerate your learning curve and success rate. All the best! Kevin McCarthy

This should help you out: 1. Property Development for Beginners: A Beginners Guide to Property Development by Steve Chandler http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1482580551/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1482580551&linkCode=as2&tag=pittspropedea-20">Property Development for Beginners: A Beginners Guide to Property Development</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=pittspropedea-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1482580551 2. Real Estate Development: Principles and Process by Mike E. Miles http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0874209714/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0874209714&linkCode=as2&tag=pittspropedea-20">Real Estate Development: Principles and Process</a><img src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=pittspropedea-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0874209714 3. http://www.masterycoachingterence.com/

There is a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding content marketing and its need within a brand’s overall marketing strategy. Doing content marketing is much more than publishing on your blog occasionally and posting your thoughts on social media. “Do stuff and maybe it will work” is not a strategy, it is a gamble. A risky and expensive one, at that. Even so, many brands have yet to create an effective content marketing strategy. What does such a strategy look like? Where are the examples of brands doing it well? Here, I will show you examples of an effective content marketing strategy and offer ways for you to craft your own for your business. What is Content Marketing Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it. This generation of customers are taking drastic steps to avoid marketing messages. As consumers, we use DVRs to skip television ads, pay internet radio subscription fees to avoid commercials, mentally block out — or use plug-ins to avoid — internet click ads, and gloss over road-side billboards, rendering them useless and ineffective. So how are marketers supposed to combat this shift? Education. Consumers are still buying and making purchases, but the way they go about making a decision has changed. With all of the world’s information at their finger tips, savvy consumers are doing enormous amounts of learning and self-education before stepping into a showroom or talking to a salesperson. Knowing this is a huge opportunity for brands. If you know consumers are looking for information, be the source of that information. Not with sales-y content that puts your priorities before theirs, but information that the buyer really wants and needs. The Marketing and Sales Departments must align to create a buying path for this new era of consumers that provides authentic and transparent information about a product or service (the mission of Marketing) and closing the sale (the mission of Sales). Content marketing closes this gap by using brand-created educational content to satisfy the prospective buyer while helping the sales team convert anonymous visitors into buyers. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present (see the video below on the history of content marketing): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHgMMpGLzk The key ingredient to using content to attract new customers is in the advanced planning. The strategy. What is a Content Marketing Strategy A content marketing strategy is a roadmap; a “User’s Guide” to how your brand will do the following: - Meet the customer at their specific point within their buying cycle - Align the customer’s needs with your knowledge and expertise - Use your brand’s assets to meet these objectives Business-to-Business marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy are 66% more likely to consider themselves effective compared to only 11% of those without a documented strategy. A content marketing plan helps you see the end-game before you have even started. Further, it gives a clear, articulable vision for your entire team and keeps you on track throughout the campaign. Just like New Years resolutions often fade into a foggy memory, our intentions are good – but we allow resolutions to fail. To be successful in any strategy, we need to be intentional. For proper sales and marketing alignment, and for the success of your bottom line, you must have a plan in place. How to Start Your Content Strategy The framework of a content marketing strategy is fairly straight forward: - Who are you targeting? What are their needs? - How are you going to reach them? (Attract new and nurture existing) - What content do you have now to get started? - What is your plan to develop and share more - How will you measure your efforts 1. Personas Take some time to consider who you are targeting. Are they male or female? Does it matter? Do they have a career? Children? Are they affluent? Coupon cutters? What are their goals? What happens if they do not reach them? Is their a monetary penalty for them? Will meeting this goal further their career? Will it make them happy? Clearly defining your targeted personas will save you a lot of time, energy, and money as you continue your business. With this person in mind, your content marketing strategy will begin to fall into place and you will feel that you are having a conversation with this “person”, rather than blindly throwing stuff out there. 2. Outreach Content marketing and social media are often used synonymously. This is a mistake. Content marketing is a broad method of marketing whereas social media is a tool that complements getting your content seen. Imagine your website as your online hub, where all of your brand-controlled content resides, your social media profiles are spokes that lead back to your home base. Social media has the power to reach incredible numbers of potential customers, influencers, existing customers, and even the opportunity to convert customers from competitors. Social media, in and of itself, is not content marketing. It is one of your outreach tools. 3. Available Content Next, take stock of materials you have on hand already. Many of us sit in offices filled with brochures, flyers, handouts, manuals, and documents loaded with helpful information, but we do little to extend that information to potential customers on the web. Make a list of the content available to you immediately and start identifying which persona is most aligned, where they are within their sales process, and what pain point they are currently facing. Getting started, you can use what you have on hand. But I recommend expecting this low-hanging fruit to run out. You should plan on developing your own, unique content. For a number of reasons, search engines reward fresh, unique content. Further, your prospective customers will be looking for information that is not available everywhere. Your unique perspective and “voice” (the tone in which you talk, the way you communicate, and what you share) may be the first experience a prospective customer has with you. This is the beginning of a long business relationship. 4. Schedule and Share Your Content After you have compiled your educational materials, grab a calendar. I recommend looking out 3-4 months to start. Mark holidays, special events, and milestones. Working backwards, prepare your marketing message for these campaigns. For example, one client of ours hosts 4-5 annual sales. They all surround major US holidays (New Years, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving/Black Friday). By knowing this, it is easy for us to prepare everything from banner ads, Pinterest images, blog posts, Facebook Status, videos, and even newspaper ads (don’t shoot the messenger). Once you have those events marked, consider a “theme” of the week for those 3-4 months. With that theme, and your personas in mind, write out the following for each week: - 2 Blog Posts - 8-10 Facebook updates - 20-30 Twitter updates - 4-5 product photos for Pinterest - 3-4 Instagram ideas - 1 Video By no means is this list all-inclusive. It is a starting point to get you thinking about how to plan content. To get a specific content marketing plan designed for your brand, I need to interview you and understand your goals, personas, and timeline. 5. Analytics Finally, how are you going to measure your work? Remember when we set up our goals earlier? Were you specific in identifying how many leads you want to generate? “Get more leads” is a horrible strategy, better is “Gain 50 new leads by September 1st” or “increase from 6% conversion rate to 12% conversion rate” These types of goals are easily measured and tracked. Do you have a mechanism in place to measure, monitor, and gauge your efforts? Further, do you have the right people on your team to help you know what is working and what is not? Can you explain why certain marketing dollars are generating a return on your investment while others fall flat? Final Thoughts Just like runners know the course of the race before they start, your brand should know the route you will take to your finish line. Having a strong content marketing strategy in place will ensure your team is setup for success. I'm happy to help and provide more specifics. All the best, -Shaun