Building a Self Storage Brand with Extra Space Storage President Noah Springer

How did Extra Space Storage grow from 100 to 4,000 storage facilities in just 20 years? In this debut episode of the Inside Extra Space Storage podcast, McKall Morris talks with President Noah Springer about the strategy, culture, and key acquisitions behind the company's success. Springer reflects on what he has learned over two decades at Extra Space, the company's growth, the lessons that come with scaling a business, and the role culture plays in how teammates serve customers, support each other, and build lasting partnerships. He also shares his perspective on hiring, leadership, and what's ahead for the company and the people behind it as automation and AI reshape the self storage industry.

Transcript & Chapters

0:43 — Meet Noah Springer, President of Extra Space Storage

Morris: Welcome to Inside Extra Space Storage, a podcast where we gather some of our leaders, put a mic in front of them, and see what happens. We're so excited to have Noah with us.

Noah Springer was recently promoted, so it feels strange not to use his former long title. You were the Chief Strategy and Partnership Officer, which was a lot of letters.

Springer: It was.

Morris: And the abbreviation was tricky too, as the comms person, trying to remember it, "CSPO? C-3PO? What are we doing here?"

Springer: When they told me they were giving me a chief title, I said, "If I could be Chief Silver Fox, I think that would be a good idea." It didn't stick. I wanted it, but it didn't work.

Morris: Your title now is President of Extra Space, and you've been with Extra Space for over 20 years.

Springer: Yeah. This year I hit 20 years. I started at the end of 2005, beginning of 2006, so it's been 20 years.

1:54 — Growing Up in Rural Illinois

Morris: When I was first hired here, one of our early conversations was about where I was from. I said the middle of nowhere Nevada, from a cattle-ranching family, very rural, and you immediately connected with that. Can you tell us a little about where you're from and where you grew up?

Springer: I think there's a difference between ranching and farming, and my family background is farming. I grew up in central Illinois, in corn and bean country. It's not really the middle of nowhere, because for somebody it's the middle of somewhere, and for me it's the middle of everywhere.

It was a great place to grow up, but it was very rural. My high school had 90 kids in the graduating class. The population of our town was about 230, I think. White Heath, Illinois. We do have a store nearby in Bondville, which is close to my parents' house. I have buddies from high school who rent there, so it's kind of cool to see that connection.

Morris: We were kids dreaming of living somewhere with sidewalks, so it's an honor to be here.

Springer: It's rough to get a skateboard for Christmas when you have four squares of concrete and a gravel driveway. If you want to see kids fight, give them sidewalk chalk on a gravel driveway.

Morris: The rollerblades didn't hit the same way either. How do you think that background motivated you or gave you drive in your career?

Springer: Number one, I started working when I was young. As a kid, I was detasseling corn. Every once in a while, you get that Social Security statement that shows how long you've been working, and mine starts when I was about nine years old. As a farm kid, you can get those jobs young, and I started working every summer in the cornfields.

Work was important because that's just what we did. It was something we had to do, and something I liked to do. I wouldn't say the work we do now is hard work in the same physical way, but that mindset was instilled in me for a long time.

It also shaped what I imagined for my life. Coming from where I grew up, getting to a place and a career that looked different from what I expected has been a fun journey.

4:39 — Two Decades of Growth: From 100 to 4,000 Storage Locations

Morris: You've been at Extra Space for 20 years, and most of your career has been on what I'd call our growth teams—third-party management, acquisitions, that kind of work. Can you talk us through what growth has looked like over the last 20 years at Extra Space and how that's different from our growth strategy now?

Springer: I've been with the company through a lot of growth. I came on right after we bought Storage USA, so that was really interesting because people were still getting used to what we were and what we were becoming. That was a huge acquisition where Extra Space bought a company that was larger than we were. We probably had about 110 stores, and Storage USA had about 450.

That was a big deal for Extra Space. Last year, between third-party and acquisitions, we probably brought on almost 500 stores. Now that number doesn't seem huge, but back then 500 stores propelled us into being the second-largest storage company, which was a big deal.

It was also different culturally. Every time we bought a store, we'd celebrate with pie or cake or something. We'd say, "All right, we're going to get this deal done." Now we're buying and adding things almost every day. It's just what we do. It's not a major celebration every time, but it's been really fun to see the company go from small to big.

Morris: You've been along for that whole ride, from around 100 or 200 stores to now over 4,000. What's one big takeaway from that growth? What have you learned from going from a small company to a big company?

Springer: One thing I've learned is that what works in one stage doesn't necessarily work in the next. What worked at 400 stores doesn't work at 4,000. Sometimes we look back and ask, "When we did the Life Storage deal, what did we do in the Storage USA deal?" But that was so long ago. We weren't even really online back then.

Now we ask different questions. If we do a deal today, we might ask what we're going to do with AI. We didn't have that question then. So I think we have to keep reinventing the rules instead of always looking backward.

7:17 — Lessons From Leading the People Team

Morris: After leading our third-party and partnership group for a long time, the people team moved under you, so our HR functions became part of your reporting structure. What have you learned working so closely with the HR team over the past couple of years?

Springer: Number one, deal people and HR people are different kinds of people. Deal people are out hunting deals. HR people are great, but they're just different from what I was used to.

The first meeting I joined was funny because everyone had their screens up in a Zoom meeting and people started posting heart emojis and clapping emojis. I was like, "I didn't even know this existed." Deal people are never going to start putting heart emojis up.

But that difference is a good thing. That feeling on the people team helps our company be what it is. If everyone were built the same way, the company wouldn't work. People have to be different for the jobs they're in.

Morris: I love that takeaway. Our people team is awesome. They're emotionally intelligent, data literate, and the things they deal with are hard.

Springer: They're dealing with thousands of employees. Renting units is one kind of hard job, but when you're dealing with people's lives and livelihoods, that's often much more difficult than dealing with a unit and the stuff inside it.

9:17 — What Makes Extra Space Storage Operations Special

Morris: Earlier this year, when you were promoted to president, our operations teams moved under you too. What have you learned traveling with our ops teams? What makes our operations so special as you've been diving more deeply into that team lately?

Springer: Number one, it has to be the people. It isn't really about roll-up doors. The property is important, and it is an important asset, but our number one asset is our people.

If you talk to the managers, district managers, and facility service managers, the people at those stores keep us running. They deal with our customers, and our customers are often in some kind of transition in life. That could be something good or something difficult, but something happened that led them to storage.

Our managers have to be empathetic, curious, and helpful, and that can put them in a hard spot because customers are often coming from a hard spot too. But they do a really good job with that, and it's impressive to see.

Morris: Every time you travel, you come away thinking our store managers are incredible. The things they deal with, and the ease and grace they bring to it, really stand out.

Springer: It does. And it's not just that one person can work at a store. It's our people at our stores. If you visit other properties before we take them over, the managers you meet who aren't Extra Space managers are often very different. Extra Space managers are a cut above. They really are somebody special.

Morris: That comes from who we hire, how we train, and all of those things together. It's probably the culture too.

Springer: Exactly. It starts with looking for the right person, and our culture helps people stay or go.

11:30 — What Extra Space Storage Culture Means

Morris: When I think of our company culture, I think of our values, mentorship, and a lot of other things. What does Extra Space culture mean to you?

Springer: It probably goes back to the people and the experience you have at Extra Space. It goes back to our values. It's how you feel at the company, how we treat customers, how we treat each other, and how you approach your career and your job.

It's hard to point to one thing and say, "Culture is this." It's more of an overall feeling. You can hear it in the way people answer sometimes. They'll describe how they deal with a job or a customer, and you can feel whether that sounds like Extra Space or not.

In some departments, there can't always be a black-and-white rule. But there is an Extra Space way of handling things. You can usually tell what aligns with that and what doesn't. It affects how we deal with employees, customers, and partners.

12:48 — A Defining Partnership & Career Highlight

Morris: When you think of your 20 years here, what have been some of the highlights for you? What are the moments that make you think, "This is why I'm staying"?

Springer: Let me go back to third-party management. We had a partner named Joel Gamard. Super good guy. When we brought him on, he was probably in his late 80s.

This had to be 10 or 12 years ago. Joel called me and asked, "Tell me about your third-party management. Do I want to have my property on it?" I told him the whole story—what we do and how we do it.

Then he basically said, "Tell me the real deal." I told him, "No, this really is what we are." Sometimes people are surprised when I explain what we're really like, but that goes back to the culture and what we do. Eventually Joel brought his property on.

He lived in Northern California, and because he was older, I didn't meet him in person for a long time. We just talked on the phone. I'd invite him to visit, and once I asked him to come to a partner conference in San Diego. He said, "Noah, I'm 90 years old. I'm happy if I get to the mailbox and back. I'm not making it to San Diego."

We built that relationship over a long time and worked on a lot of properties together. Then, about two years ago, Joel called me out of the blue and said, "I want to talk to you." I asked what was going on, and he said, "Noah, I only have a little bit of time left."

I told him I was sorry and asked what I could do for him. He said, "I'm not calling because of what you guys did on the property, although you did a great job. I'm calling because the interaction we had made it so fun for me, and I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated what you brought to this partnership."

At that point, it wasn't about how well we ran the store. It wasn't about the profit or the analytics. It was about the experience of being with Extra Space and how he felt about us. That elevated it for me. It wasn't just about what we did. It was a real partnership and relationship.

Joel passed away just a couple of weeks later. I still have one of his last voicemails because it was such a meaningful reminder that this isn't just about running a store for somebody. It's about the relationships we have with people, and those relationships can mean a lot.

Morris: That's true throughout our business—with our partners, with our teammates, and with each other. Those relationships give meaning to our work.

Springer: That's right. It's more than just storage.

16:14 — What Noah Looks for in New Hires

Morris: You've been here 20 years, which means you've helped build our teams and our culture. When you're looking at adding someone to Extra Space, whether it's an entry-level role or a leadership position, what are you looking for?

Springer: I think we can teach storage to just about anybody. The bigger question is how they're going to show up as a teammate. Do they fit the culture? Do they have that fire and competitive spirit? Do we want to be around them? Are they going to be here for a long time?

Our tenure is really good, and people stay because they want to be here. You want someone who's not just looking for a job, but for a career. You can see it in the new people we bring on. They show up, they push, they're competitive, and they're also kind. You can feel that balance.

Morris: That balance feels really important to our culture.

Springer: Absolutely.

17:23 — Noah's Leadership Philosophy

Morris: What is your leadership philosophy? How do you think about leading teams and leading the company?

Springer: Number one, I think you have to set the example. I don't think it's fair to ask anyone to do a job leaders aren't willing to do themselves. Leaders should be willing and able to jump in and do anything they ask their team to do.

Number two, I think we should have fun with it. You should know your people and have fun. You can still work with your teammates, accomplish a goal, and have a good time doing it. That's part of what keeps people here.

You can work really hard and still find joy in it. In any job, you can find fun, but you have to make it that way. It comes down to attitude. If you decide you're going to make it fun and exciting, you can get there regardless of the work.

Morris: It's so much more fun when the team energy feels like, "We're all rounding up and working together," instead of, "Here's your task list." That's something we see in your leadership style a lot. You bring people together with a lot of energy.

Springer: That's up to the leader. I'll go back to the third-party group. Not many people are calling that group just to say thanks. They're calling with issues. So you have to lead that team in a way that brings in a little more fun and pulls them out of the hard sometimes, because they're always working on the hard stuff.

19:16 — Life Storage Integration & the Future of AI at Extra Space

Morris: What has you excited here at Extra Space right now? What has the team recently accomplished that makes you want to give them a shoutout?

Springer: Number one, what we did with LSI and bringing on the Life Storage deal was awesome. I know that was a couple of years ago, but it was amazing what we did.

Morris: For added context, Life Storage was a $15 billion merger between Extra Space and Life Storage, which grew our company by about 50% in one day. That meant 1,200 stores and thousands of employees.

Springer: It was amazing. We were able to take all those employees and all our employees here and say, "We have a big task at hand. We have to push this up the hill." Everyone did it together. It was hard, but it was also fun to accomplish something difficult and look back and say, "Wow, I can't believe we got that done."

Looking ahead, I think the things we're doing with AI are going to be really cool. That's still an unknown. It feels a little daunting and a little scary because we don't know exactly what it's going to become yet, but there's a lot of opportunity there.

I'm also excited about what we're doing with leadership, especially coming off FLC, the Field Leadership Conference.

Morris: That's the conference where we gather all of our district managers and field leaders together. It's about 500 people.

Springer: It was really cool to see the focus on leadership traits, our values, and how people can become better leaders. I'm excited to see what comes out of that and how those ideas help develop new leaders.

I'm also excited to see where storage goes. The product type is maturing, which brings some good things and some challenges. There are new products, more automation in the field, and really interesting things happening in human resources and across the people team. There are a lot of cool things coming. There's more runway ahead of us than there is behind us.

Morris: It's exciting to hear. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for joining us for this conversation.

Springer: For sure.

Morris: And listeners, if you enjoyed this, check out our other conversations with Extra Space leaders.

About the Host and Guest

Noah Springer, President of Extra Space Storage

Noah Springer has served as President of Extra Space Storage since January 2026. He joined Extra Space in 2006 after several years in the banking industry. His initial responsibility was acquiring third-party managed contracts from the newly acquired Storage USA portfolio. Springer later helped create Management Plus, Extra Space Storage's third-party management platform, which has since become the sector's largest. He has also been responsible for joint ventures, the human resources department, and other strategic initiatives. Springer holds a Bachelor's degree in Finance and an MBA from the University of Utah.

McKall Morris, Director of Corporate Communications

McKall Morris is the Corporate Communications Director at Extra Space Storage. She joined the company in March 2019 after several years in the airline industry. Since joining Extra Space, Morris has played a key role in advancing internal and external communications initiatives, helping shape how the company is represented across all channels. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications from Brigham Young University and an MBA from the University of Utah.

Read more from Noah Springer in this Q&A. To learn more about Extra Space Storage, visit our investor site, or explore the next step in your career by viewing current job openings. This transcript was auto-generated and edited, including paraphrasing for readability. For the full conversation and exact quotes, listen to the complete episode on YouTube, Apple, or Spotify.