Exceptional Inductee: Maurice Pogoda Joins SSAM Hall Of Fame

Raise your hand if you’ve ever made plans, only for life to throw you a curveball. Raise it again if you’ve allowed it to stop you in your tracks and feel dejected. Then think about how you got out of that situation. More often than not, the challenging times eventually pass, and it’s those who handle them with an open mind who find themselves on the other side, flourishing despite the odds. 

Such is the case with Maurice Pogoda. For those who’ve been in the self-storage industry long enough, the name definitely rings a bell. After all, Pogoda Companies has been around for almost four decades. When he tells you the story of how it came to exist in the first place, you’ll likely find yourself nodding and thinking about all the challenges you have faced along the way. It may also remind you of how, despite hardships, which are always guaranteed, no matter who you are), being grateful for what is going well will always have a major impact on your quality of life—perhaps the biggest one. 

Ingrained Independence 

Pogoda was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. When he speaks about his childhood, he’s very aware that he grew up in very different times. “In the 1960s, kids had a lot of freedom. Even from a very early age, we played outside all day, coming home only when the streetlights came on. Helicopter parenting wasn’t a thing. Being independent was part of who I am; and it has served me very well. As the common saying goes, you can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can’t take Brooklyn out of the boy.” 

His upbringing shaped him in many ways. “My father was a successful criminal lawyer, representing all sorts of colorful characters in Brooklyn,” says Pogoda.  

He was brought up financially comfortable and received a regular allowance, so he could’ve just enjoyed the ride, but Pogoda was always striving for more. He had a paper route. He shoveled neighbors’ driveways after snowstorms. He worked as an usher at an off-Broadway theater. 

When Pogoda was 17, he went to college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English and history. In college, he always had a part-time job, even though he didn’t need one. He simply had a knack for business and making money.  

“Back then, school was for learning, not just to get a job,” he says. “It was also a counterculture time, and I was very idealistic and thought we could save the world.”  

Between studying, listening to music, reading books, and his part-time jobs, Pogoda kept busy. Not knowing what he wanted to do, he decided to take a few years off from “real life” after graduating and see where destiny would lead him. 

He waited tables to make ends meet, and even managed a restaurant in Philadelphia. To this day, he says it was one of his favorite jobs, Pogoda Co. included. It was a great time with no responsibilities except to pay rent, add to his record collection, and upgrade his stereo system.  

During one of his breaks, he drove to Florida with a friend for vacation. On a whim, they detoured on I-26 and ended up in Charleston, S.C. “It was a bit run down, but just so beautiful that I knew I had to live there,” he says—the kind of response that makes you question what you’re doing with your life if your life consists of sitting at a desk in a cubicle. 

Pogoda lived in Charleston for a couple of years, focusing exclusively on having fun and getting by. At some point, however, he realized that what was meant to be a short break from “doing something with my life” could just as easily turn into something permanent.  

“I told myself that even though I was enjoying myself, being aimless wasn’t how I really envisioned my life,” he says. At the end of the day, Pogoda had always been a go-getter. It’s why he graduated high school a year early. It’s why he went to an Ivy League school. So, after much introspection, he decided to go to grad school. 

“My parents thought I’d be a good attorney, and that I should go to law school, but that wasn’t something I wanted to do,” he says. “My sister did, and now she’s a judge in New York City. I was business oriented and decided to get my MBA.” 

Pogoda applied to several schools in the northeast and to the University of Michigan (U of M). Although he was admitted to a few different schools, he decided to go to U of M, not only because it was one of the top schools in the U.S., but also because he had never been to the Midwest and thought it would be fun. “It seemed like another adventure,” he says, “and I thought, ‘Why not?’” 

He studied finance and marketing, skills that are fundamental in any industry. “Finance made sense because I was always great at math—at least until I got to calculus,” he says. “And marketing was intuitive to me as my mind seemed to naturally work that way.” 

Serendipitously, that’s also where he met his wife, Lori. “She was an undergrad, studying to become a speech pathologist. We were great together from the very beginning.” He graduated in 1982; she graduated in 1983. They married soon thereafter. 

After getting his MBA, he landed a job at Lever Brothers in New York, working in the landmark Lever House. “I rapidly rose up the ranks,” he says. “I did that for three years, and although it was a great experience, I realized pretty quickly that I’m not a corporate guy. I didn’t like playing the corporate game, such as staying late just for face time. Once I finished my work, I wanted to go home but couldn’t.” 

Around that time, Lori’s dad asked him if he’d consider moving back to Michigan and joining him in his successful real estate business. “He said that we could build industrial buildings together. I thought that was pretty cool and that I’d be a millionaire in no time flat,” Pogoda says, laughing. 

But after working with him for about a month, he realized that he didn’t know anything about real estate or have anything in his background that would be helpful. So, he decided to leave and to get another job in the industry, where he could learn the ropes. 

“I started working at a commercial real estate brokerage company, selling apartments, strip centers, and office buildings,” says Pogoda. He worked there for several years, learning to analyze and value properties. While it was another great experience, after a couple of years, he started thinking that he didn’t want to work for someone else. “I wanted to do my own thing.” 

Finding His Niche 

Around the same time that Pogoda was feeling the urge to start his own business, he went to a family gathering where one of Lori’s cousins mentioned that she and her husband had built a self-storage facility. He didn’t know much about self-storage at the time, but he was certainly intrigued. A few months later, at the cousin’s suggestion, he attended his first SSA convention in Las Vegas. It was an eye-opening experience for him that turned on a light bulb in his head. This was in 1986. 

Returning from the expo, Pogoda found himself at a crossroad. He wanted to work in self-storage but wondered in what capacity. “I started exploring self-storage in Michigan. Storage didn’t dot every corner like it does now. At that time, there were very few brokers who were selling self-storage. A key marketing principle is that to be successful, you really need to find a niche. And when I couldn’t find anyone focused on brokering self-storage facilities in Michigan, I thought, ‘Well here’s my opportunity.’” 

In 1987, he left his job, so he and Lori could open their own company. “It was a very different time to do business,” he recalls. “You didn’t have the internet. Everything had to be done the old-fashioned way. Yellow Pages was king, and if we wanted to develop a database of storage facilities, we had to look up properties in multiple phone books, drive around the state to find them, take photos, count buildings and doors to figure out how big they were, go to the assessor’s office to find out who owned them, then make phone calls to see if anyone would be interested in having me sell it for them.” 

He borrowed $20,000 to get the business off the ground. “Most of that money went to purchase a computer with hardware that had less computing capacity than any app you have on the smartphone in your pocket,” he says. Between their rotary phones and Rolodexes, the Pogodas did everything: drafting press releases, printing out letters, stuffing envelopes, affixing postage, and mailing letters themselves. Every quarter, they would send out communications to people in their database. It didn’t matter what it was, as long as it was related to the industry. “We became known as the self-storage experts in the state of Michigan,” he says. “I tell everyone in our company that without this regular PR, we wouldn’t be here today.” 

Pogoda goes on to say, “Things started to pick up, and we started making good money in ‘88 and ‘89. That’s when we bought the first house I ever lived in. Though it wasn’t an expensive house, the mortgage payment seemed so high. We had a one-year-old, and it was very scary.” 

Making Lemonade  

Things went really well until 1990, when the savings and loan crisis hit. Banks stopped lending, tenants stopped renting, people stopped buying real estate, and the Pogodas stopped making money. But something unexpected happened. “I started getting phone calls from banks that were foreclosing on storage facilities.” 

One day he received a call from a banker who said that he knew the Pogodas worked in storage and asked if they also managed facilities. “I said, ‘Of course we do!’” The truth was that he had never run a storage facility in his life. But money wasn’t coming in and they needed the cash flow, so he seized the opportunity. By the end of 1991, he was managing a half-dozen storage facilities.  

“I think I was a pretty good broker,” Pogoda says, “but I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t like cold calling or being at the whim of a capricious buyer. But I enjoyed management. I hired someone else to do the storage brokering and went full steam into management.” 

Managing storage properties for banks led to buying opportunities. When the economy eventually picked back up, he cobbled money from friends and family to buy a few of them. That was the start of it all. “I bought some from the banks in the early ‘90s and then started building them myself. The first ground up was in the Ann Arbor market in 1995. After that, I bought one facility after another, developed a few, and had a pretty good portfolio.” As they grew, they opportunistically sold some and then built back up again, as warranted by market conditions. 

Fast forward to today: a few things have changed, but much is the same. The biggest change is that Pogoda Companies has welcomed the second generation. The Pogodas’ three adult sons (Adam, Daniel, and Michael) all decided, one by one, to join the business. Each had successful careers but found the opportunity to join a successful family business to be too enticing. Maurice now has the enviable role of guiding strategy for the business while his “boys” aggressively grow it and take it to the next level.  

“We discuss everything. Whatever we do is a group decision,” he says. “I may express strong opinions, but I never veto anything out of hand. They are continuing our growth in the Midwest with the goal of further expansion into markets that fit our risk profile. We’re a top 30 owner-operator now, but I can easily imagine the boys growing the business and our becoming a top 15 owner-operator in the next five years.” 

What Matters Most 

In November 2024, during the Self-Storage Association of Michigan (SSAM) annual conference, Maurice was inducted into the association’s Hall of Fame. This honor crowns four extraordinary decades in the industry. The accolade is most certainly well deserved, and he is extremely grateful and honored to have received it. While his work ethic is laudable and his success is impressive, he has learned to balance being a dedicated business owner with being a good husband and dad. “Throughout my entire career, I’ve made sure to be home for breakfasts and dinners with my wife and kids, unless I was attending a storage convention,” he says. “I never missed any of my kids’ school or sports events and was always present at all family gatherings.” 

Pogoda adds, “I’m so lucky that I have such a great marriage, and that I have three wonderful children.” Boys who, just like their father, grew up with everything they could ever need, yet are still down-to-earth, have outstanding work ethics, and have always been driven to accomplish great things within their careers. Equally important, he’s taught them to roll with the punches.  

“We’ve had some of our properties for 20-plus years now, so of course we’ve had ups and downs,” he says. “And every time you’re in the middle of a downturn, you always think it’s never going to end, that things are going to keep getting worse. But inevitably, the tide turns. The key is being patient and continuing to work hard.” It’s a lesson that sounds good on paper but can only be truly learned through experience. 

“You just have to keep rolling,” he says. “My father-in-law used to tell me that whatever period you’re in, you can’t think about what will happen next week or what happened last week. You have to deal with conditions as they are right now. All you have is now.” 

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Alejandra Zilak studied journalism, went to law school, and now writes for a living. She also loves dogs. 

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