290. The Secret to Building a Highly Profitable Self Storage Business in 2025

Self Storage Income

AJ Osborne

Entrepreneurship, Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.9 • 591 Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Self storage is much more than a piece of real estate, and if you’re not “in the business of storage,” your investment is doomed to fail. Today, AJ and Conner will give you the blueprint for running not just a functional self storage facility but a profitable self storage business you can scale!

Your customers might see a large metal box, but there is much more going on behind the scenes of your self storage business—including people, operations, systems, and processes—that will make or break your success. In this episode, AJ winds back the clock and shares why he got into self storage investing in the first place, the four “pillars” he used to build his business, and the secrets that allowed him to scale a company that is now worth several hundred million dollars!

Along the way, you’ll learn why you need to prioritize talent—even if it means taking a temporary cash flow hit—and how to transition from “wearing many hats” to creating specialized roles and departments in your business. You’ll also learn the dos and don’ts of people management and why you can’t afford to stop learning, even as you delegate responsibilities!

What you’ll learn in today’s show:

How to build and run a profitable self storage business in 2025
The four-bucket strategy AJ used to build his own company
The number one mistake that causes new self storage owners to fail
Common operational expenses that many investors don’t account for
How to effectively manage the people within your self storage business
The one thing you can’t afford to do when hiring a new employee

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Transcript

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0:00.0	When you look at the business of storage, this adds a whole layer of things that you can do,
0:07.0	which allows you to create massive returns.
0:11.0	The storage facility is the asset of the business. That's the product, right?
0:16.0	But you on the side, the business is people.
0:19.0	Self-Storage gave me all of those components to build
0:23.5	what ended up becoming a company worth hundreds of millions, and we will absolutely surpass the
0:29.2	billion dollar market. Welcome everybody to self-storage income. And today we are talking about the business of self-storage. And I'm a little overdressed, but that's because it's a fancy Friday. So no reason. There's no reason to have a reason. It's just Fancy Friday around here. So people start dressing up and I'm like, you're not leaving me out of Fancy Friday. Yeah. So I'm bringing it. Yeah. Coming in hot, dude. I mean, you even kind of dressed down a little bit. Yeah. I think you had a tie. I did. I, for this podcast, I'm like, I don't want this to be too obnoxious. So I dressed down a little. Yeah. Open it up. Like, you know. You gotta.
1:14.6	You gotta. this podcast. I'm like, I don't want this to be too obnoxious. So I dress it down a little.
1:11.4	Yeah.
1:11.8	Opened it up. Like, you know, you got to. You got to. You got to rock the chest here a little bit.
1:16.6	You know, let those puppies free. Oh, yeah. That 80s look. Yes. Yep.
1:22.4	Need a gold chain. Exactly. You need the chain. Maybe some, some cool shades.
1:26.6	Yes. You know, yes. All the good things, a perm here or there.
1:30.1	Perm. I don't know. That'd be an improvement. Yeah. No, it's funny. Yeah, we got fancy Fridays. It's cool. You know, we like doing some of those things.
1:40.0	Getting the fancy Friday going on, the flannel Friday. We always have something going on.
1:45.1	Yeah, they have something.
1:46.0	I like the fancy Fridays too to see how, like Chuck wore the cowboy tie today. Yeah, yeah. A little bolo thing. Yep. Situation. I went with the polo today. Yeah. Very fancy. Very fancy. Very, very fancy. It's a lot more fancy than my my flannel with the duck,
2:02.1	ducky, rubber
2:02.8	ducky tie that I wore a couple weeks ago for fancy Friday. But anyways, yeah, man, I'm excited to
2:09.4	jump in and talk the business side of things, man, because there's so much on the execution
2:14.9	of, you know, finding the deal going in, funding the deal, doing all the just granular things. But, you know, when you have the deal, and especially if you have partners, all those different things, how do you actually run all of those things that you don't see until you're usually like in it? Yeah. And there's so much to it. A lot of times we look at it just on the investment side.
2:34.7	You know, you're just looking at here's a storage facility.
	...

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