How I turned a defunct business around

I have a side hustle.

I am a small-time real estate investor.?

Since 2019, my husband and I have been fixing up and providing rental properties for #militaryfamilies and their community. In September, we will open a new self-storage facility in Cape Carteret - a coastal community an hour north from where I live.

It's not been easy, but this is how we built $500,000 in equity and a path to $40,000 of #passiveincome annually from one project.

#1. Solve someone’s problem

We were driving out for a hike, listening to a BiggerPockets podcast, when inspiration struck us simultaneously. We found ourselves pointing to three decrepit looking concrete buildings by the highway and yelled out, “Let’s buy that!”.

We pulled up property records and cold-called the owner. We had a deal in a week, and closed a few weeks later.

The owner abandoned his business because he could not collect the rents. His business was built on a cash-only system, he had storage units full of junk from non-paying customers, and he had another business to tend to.

We bought it as-is and made it very easy for him to transact with us. We relieved him of a headache.

#2. Add value, then add more value

We bought the property with 66 units across three buildings. Since it was more cost effective to demolish and install new metal buildings, we went for larger-sized units to make a total of 53 units.

We reduced the number of customers we could take in by 19.7%, but in doing so, increased potential revenue by 33.5%.

Then we spent months convincing the township to let us put in a fourth building. Our property is not zoned for self-storage, but we were “grandfathered” into the zoning because of the previous business use. So while it was a tough fight, it was worth it because no one else would be permitted for the same business use within our zone in the future.

With some legal assistance, and a lot of charm, we won the Board of Commissioners over, and were permitted to install a fourth building. This means an additional 37.7% in customers or 35% in revenues.?

We found a way to grow the business by 80% within the tiny half-acre plot of land we bought.

#3 Share the solutions for your most painful problems

I am no guru nor mogul, and I am not at all embarrassed by the many mistakes I’ve made in my side hustle. When I speak to someone who is getting into real estate investing, I tell them how I messed up due diligence, how I ended up with a lien on my property, and how I did a deal I shouldn’t have. Then I tell them how not to mess up like me.

So they don’t have to go through it too.

Somehow, that has earned us karma credits. My husband and I are seeing more deals come our way through our network.

From Steel to Cloud

These same three steps of solving problems, adding value, and sharing solutions, are just as applicable in my full-time hustle. It’s how we manage ourselves within the company at Tidal , and it’s what we do for our customers everyday.?We help enterprises solve for business agility, we accelerate their cloud migrations to save millions in IT OpEx costs, and we share our war (or horror) stories so they don't have to go through those too.

Do you have a #sidehustle too? How has it helped you improve your main hustle?