341. How to Unlock “Hidden” Revenue in Any Self Storage Facility (Immediately)
Self Storage Income
AJ Osborne
4.9 • 591 Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The biggest threat to your self storage revenue isn’t your market, customers, or the asset itself.
It’s you.
In the wake of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, I developed a simple yet powerful framework for mastering operations, unlocking hidden revenue, and increasing valuation. And in today’s market cycle, it’s just as relevant as it was back then.
At its core, it all comes down to how you view your self storage facility. Too many operators view their facilities as real estate “assets,” where they rent out “units” to “tenants.”
But that mindset is fundamentally flawed.
Self storage is a business, with real “customers” and different types of “products.” Once you understand this, you can begin implementing a pricing model that drives true revenue growth, and in this episode, I walk through real examples that demonstrate how these changes can impact your bottom line.
The truth is, occupancy doesn’t matter. It’s about revenue. Net operating income. Real cash flow. And when you make these changes, you’ll have more of it than you know what to do with.
What you’ll learn in today’s show:
- The best ways to increase the revenue (and value) of your self storage facility
- How to implement a profitable “tiered” pricing model at your self storage facility
- Why it’s crucial to operate self storage as a business (not a real estate asset)
- The biggest opportunities available to all self storage investors in 2026
- How different pricing strategies can impact your bottom line (with examples)
- Three storage unit “buckets” you need to track with every facility
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Occupancy and cap rates don't really matter. NOL matters. I would rather have more revenue and net income than I would occupancy. When I hear somebody bragging about being 100% occupied, man, I start to salivate. Because what that means is they're not actually looking at supply demand opportunity they're not pricing |
| 0:21.2 | has nothing to do with revenue at all that opportunity is where you make your money and |
| 0:27.3 | using this simple strategy can help you find the opportunity or maximize the asset that you already |
| 0:36.1 | own maximize the asset that you already own. |
| 0:51.4 | This simple methodology will show you facilities that have massive opportunity, income growth, and a lot of wealth to be captured through increased equity. Also, how to get it |
| 0:59.1 | out of your facility today. Now, this simple methodology that I use goes back to a core principle |
| 1:07.4 | that self-storage is a business more than it is a real estate asset. And when you |
| 1:14.2 | treat it like one, that's when you can get huge gains. This methodology was something that I worked |
| 1:23.7 | on and created after the great financial crisis. |
| 1:33.4 | Before that, all our facilities that we had and owned were treated a lot more like real estate, and I was trying to develop strategies and techniques to operate it like a business, like my other |
| 1:40.0 | businesses, to increase the value. |
| 1:42.6 | After 2008, we really worked and perfected this. |
| 1:47.1 | The reason being there was more inventory on the market. There was less demand. So this became |
| 1:53.9 | even more important. In times like we're in today, where demand is dropped after the COVID boom and occupancies have come |
| 2:04.5 | down and street rates have come down. This is more important, but it also opens up for way |
| 2:11.5 | more opportunity and upside. This methodology is simple. When we talk about things like dynamic, pricing, revenue |
| 2:21.7 | management, and all of this tech and tools, you can go back to a very, very simple process |
| 2:28.5 | that you can do on a spreadsheet. It's simple for everyone to do. This methodology can also show you the money on the |
| 2:38.0 | table, as I call it, meaning that asset that you're looking to buy, wondering what's the potential |
| 2:43.3 | and what can I get out of this? How can I increase revenue and net income through this asset |
| 2:49.9 | that you're looking at. It's on the market |
| 2:51.6 | or it's off market and you're really trying to understand. Not future. We're not talking about |
... |
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