Bill Mottram on How Extra Space Storage Manages 300+ Store Transitions a Year

In episode five of the Inside Extra Space Storage podcast, McKall Morris sits down with Bill Mottram, VP of Operations Support at Extra Space Storage, to talk unexpected career paths in the storage industry and his role in overseeing store transitions across 4,200+ facilities in 43 states.

Discover what it really takes to onboard and transition storage facilities on a massive scale, hear anything but boring stories from the field, and learn the secrets behind building high-performance teams.

Transcript & Chapters

00:00 — About Inside Extra Space Storage Podcast

Morris: Welcome to Inside Extra Space, a podcast with Extra Space leaders—our best thinkers at the company. We ask some questions. We learn a little bit about what they're doing, about what makes this company great. Today we have Bill Mottram. Bill is our VP of Operations Support. Bill's been with the company over seven years, and we're glad to have you on.

Mottram: Thanks for having me, McKall. Happy to be here.

01:05 — An Unlikely Career Path From Retail to Storage

Morris: So let's just start at the beginning. How did you come to Extra Space? How did you get here? What is your career journey that led you here? And if you wouldn't mind telling the story of how you got to your position currently?

Mottram: Yeah. So it's actually a great story. At the time I was working retail, so I grew up sort of in a retail environment, did retail my entire life, started at the video stores when those were around.

Morris: Don't date yourself.

Mottram: Blockbuster Video and Hollywood Video—shoutout for me always. And I later transitioned and was working retail for a sports headwear company, and loved it because I love sports. I love stuff like that. Same thing with movies, right? I was always selling something that I loved.

Mottram: And retail is a grind. Retail nights, holidays, weekends. I was at the point in my life—you'd be trying to time eating so you could get up and be up by midnight so you're in stores. At the time, too, my wife and I were dating. We had a wedding date. So I started looking at things outside of retail that maybe translated similarly.

Mottram: I actually had a couple of key people that I looked up to at the company I was with leave, and some of them went into storage. And what's interesting is I was able to reach out to them and there were two different storage companies involved—one of our competitors, and then there was Extra Space. Shoutout to Amanda Miniard, who's still with us as a Senior District Manager. Awesome person.

Mottram: The key thing I noticed in the process: the whole recruiting process felt different. And I'll be honest, the Extra Space process was slow. It was like, "Let's do three or four meetings. Can you come have lunch with us?" Which was confusing to me. Like, what do you mean, come have lunch? You just want me to come down to the office and hang out?

Morris: You're like, "What is the dress code for that step?" I don't know.

Mottram: It seemed odd. But the key thing with Amanda was she didn't talk so much about the industry. It was all about the company, the people, the culture. And she even told me, "I know it sounds cheesy, and it sounds like I'm telling you something that there's no way it could be true, but I mean it—this place is really different." And so that was kind of how I got involved.

05:50 — The Interview That Changed Everything

Mottram: As I went through the interview process, two months later I was offered a position. At the time I was living in the Bay Area, and me and my now-wife had moved around quite a bit in a three-year period from Chicago to the Bay Area. And there was a goal somewhere in the future, didn't know how it would happen, to maybe get back to Vegas. The reason to get back to Vegas was that at the time, my dad had some health stuff going on, and we just weren't sure what that was going to play out to.

Mottram: I was excited about this opportunity with Extra Space. I was told, "Yeah, we're always growing. Vegas is probably an option for you down the line. You get started here." So I'm ready to go.

Mottram: I signed an offer letter on a Friday. And I got a phone call from one of the top people at the job I was at at the time over the weekend, "Hey, what's going on? We didn't see this coming. What happened?"

There was a counter offer. The main thing was they said, "We'll move you back to Vegas now. Give me a month or two. We're going to move you back to Vegas. We'll put together a group of stores." Very persuasive. There was a selling point with Dodger stores being involved, and I'm a Dodgers fan.

Mottram: I'll never forget—I called the DVP who I had met with on Monday, and my exact words were, "I hope I don't regret this, even though I feel like I will, but I need to go back on the offer." And I said the truth: my father's sick, I don't know what that's going to play out to be, and it's nothing to do with the counter offer. Rather, they can get me back to Vegas now. And that DVP said, "Hey, completely understand. We understand family here at this company. Let's keep in touch."

Morris: You could see that going differently. An offer letter is out there —that could have been it.

Mottram: I thought for sure I'm on some blacklist. "Never call us again. Bill Mottram's dead." And I'm not kidding, we kept in touch. Then fast forward a few years, about two years. I am in Vegas. I had left that company and went to a different company and was not enjoying things there. I got a LinkedIn invite from another DVP at Extra Space that I didn't know at all. I reached out to that original division vice president and said, "Hey, I was contacted by someone. Is there an opening in Vegas or something?"

Morris: What is this about?

Mottram: And he says, "Hey, I'll call you. We're probably going to give you a call tomorrow." So that's kind of my story. And then I'll never forget, when I went through applying again, I sat down with Matt Herrington.

Morris: Our Chief Operating Officer. At that time he would have been the region SVP.

Mottram: Yes. I sat down with him. He starts asking me questions, and then I realize he's looking at something on his screen every once in a while. He has all these notes from the first time he interviewed me in Livermore, California, in a hotel lobby.

Morris: Notes from two and a half years ago.

Mottram: Thankfully I told the truth. Yeah?

Morris: The story was consistent.

Mottram: Fact-checked me on it. Absolutely. So yeah, that's my story. And honestly, it's been a fascinating industry to be a part of. Everything that Amanda told me about the company has been true.

07:16 — Learning That Storage Isn't Boring

Morris: We love to hear that. So you started as a DM in Las Vegas. And then what were the next steps for you?

Mottram: Started as the DM in Las Vegas.

Morris: And I guess you should specify—DM is a district manager—so your role there would have been over, what, 15 to 20 stores?

Mottram: I don't know if he trusted me entirely—I got 13 stores to start. At the time Vegas wasn't as big as it is today. It was two districts. And he said, "Hey, at some point we may add on to this district, but for now you have 13 stores." And in that first six months I experienced every type of disaster or emergency situation you can experience.

Morris: People will sometimes say, "Oh, storage—isn't that kind of boring?" And it's like, not on the operations side.

Mottram: Never. And in places like Las Vegas, the entertainment ramps up and the experiences and the learning curve. So I started there, and then six to nine months later I picked up South San Diego. And then later that switched to Boise, Idaho.

Morris: I remember that—when we opened our four stores in Boise, a small portfolio there.

Mottram: Yep. I kind of took over leading that up until moving here. And so I've been here at the Store Support Center about five years. I started in transitions as the Transition Manager, then later promoted to Director, and now currently Vice President.

08:48 — What "Transitions" Means at Extra Space Storage

Morris: Yeah, it's an awesome story. Let's start at the kind of end of that with transitions. What does that mean at Extra Space? When we say "transitions," that can mean a lot of things, but here it's very specific and it's a huge task. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Mottram: Yeah. It is kind of funny when you tell people outside of the company, "I work in transitions," that doesn't translate very well. Usually what I'll simplify it as is: we onboard and offboard all stores to the Extra Space platform. What does it entail? It's controlled chaos. It's trying to communicate with several things outside of your control and manage them all at once. Mainly, keeping everyone on point with what's coming next—timelines, due dates.

Morris: And usually for that process you're collaborating with a ton of departments here internally, but also collaborating externally—whether that's with a partner, a buyer, a seller, whoever that might be. What does that collaboration look like in a transition?

Mottram: The collaboration is pretty dynamic. You have some partners that are really involved. They're communicating with you up front, they're there every step of the way. You have some that communicate early on and then they're kind of more on the back end waiting until the site's opening.

Mottram: The communication is probably the key ingredient, the secret sauce—that's what makes everything go well. Things always come up, the unexpected happens. But when communication is really flowing both ways, our district managers—which I came from that background—play such a key role in letting us know what's happening. And as long as communication is flowing, we can usually solve for anything.

Morris: Yeah. And when we say transitions, in some real estate companies a transition would be like one or two properties a year. You're talking—I think this year, what, over 300? Were you close to 400 this year?

Mottram: The last two years.

Morris: That's just a huge volume of stores that we're onboarding and offboarding. How does your team manage that volume?

Mottram: Really organized. Some of us more than others. So Meghan is our Transition Manager.

Morris: She's awesome.

Mottram: She's fantastic. She really keeps things moving. And I would say we rely on a lot of systems and tools. A lot of the systems and tools help keep things at the forefront, making sure that no step is missed in the process.

Morris: Every T crossed, every I dotted for you guys.

Mottram: That's it. Because one key thing can be pretty catastrophic in terms of the journey of a store opening. If we don't get a bank account opened, if we didn't give Treasury enough time to get tokens to process credit card payments, we can't open the store. And that obviously is the scenario we never want to happen.

Morris: It's awesome seeing what your team can accomplish. It's a really cool process.

11:47 — Day in the Life of a District Manager

Morris: Okay, so going back to your story a little bit—you're in Vegas for a few years. Tell me a little bit about the day in the life of a DM. How would you describe the work that you did?

Mottram: Yeah. I loved it. Some of the weeks kind of had a template to them—Monday I'll be in the office, travel to stores the rest of the week, Friday I have some flex time built in—but most weeks you'd never really know where your week might go. And I think that's different, depending on the market a district manager works in. But I loved having that flexibility and freedom.

Mottram: And I would tell you that the district manager role is probably the most important in our business, in my opinion. I think in a lot of people's opinions. Your hands are in everything. You touch every part of the business. You're really the connective tissue from the Store Support Center to the field. You're the face of the company for the store employees 90% of the time. And I loved that. I loved being with the team. I actually got to like doing site audits and things like that. It's a good mix of your day. You're walking a property out in Las Vegas.

Morris: Nice Nevada sun. Yeah. All day.

Mottram: My DM trainer, first thing he gave me was a hat. He worked in Arizona, Clint Kleppe. He right away was like, "You need this. Walk in the shade." Little tricks of the trade. But yeah, the DM role is really exciting.

Mottram: And the thing that's most impressive to me is the field team. I was blown away coming to Extra Space with how exceptional our store employees were. As part of the recruiting process, DMs and applicants go shop some stores and get a sense of what that looks like. I was blown away then. And then I got placed into my district with this team of people who had been in storage much longer than me. The way that they trained me and taught me everything about storage, and the way that they just gave me so much grace to know, "Hey, we get it. You're two months in, you don't have a clue, but we like you so far. We're going to work with you." That by far is the most exceptional thing I think about our field team—just how graceful and how knowledgeable they are.

Morris: Our employees and stores are just so impressive. I feel like every time I get to interact with a store employee, whether it's in person or making a call to get information from them, they're just the kindest and most thoughtful people.

14:31 — What Makes Exceptional Storage Employees

Morris: What do you think makes a successful Extra Space store employee?

Mottram: We talk a lot about culture at Extra Space. And what's interesting is I don't think I've ever worked in an environment where if you do not fit the culture, you stick out as much as you might here. And I think that's apparent even at the district level. As a district manager hiring and filling those positions, it's very apparent who's on board with the mission. The level of passion is what really comes through.

Mottram: We used to do town halls regularly. We were a little bit smaller then. Because of this Vegas/San Diego situation, I ended up doing a town hall with my Vegas team and then less than 24 hours later we're in San Diego.

Morris: For reference, a town hall would be the CEO traveling to your area and sitting down, having a conversation with your employees.

Mottram: Exactly. Making themselves available, sitting down face-to-face. The San Diego team I think I'd had with me maybe two months. I had visited maybe once or twice. We were doing everything through Teams calls. And at some point at Extra Space I was told, encouraged, to create a team name for our district. Honestly, I was pretty hesitant to the idea. I'm like, this is very cheesy. I don't even know what to say. Anyway, I turned it over to the team: "Hey, we've got to come up with a team name. What do y'all like?" And so we came up with the Wasabi Knights, which was a play on a Vegas hockey team.

Morris: And this other savvy green color.

Mottram: So we're at the San Diego town hall doing introductions. The Division Vice President is up there and says something about the Wasabi Knights, and two or three of the San Diego team members just start roaring, cheering, "Yeah, Wasabi Knights!" And he looks at me like, "How did that happen?" I have no clue how we were that excited already. And it just showed me again how accepting the team was. If you're on board with the mission. They thought I cared, I wanted to be with this company, I understood the mission about taking care of the customers. They accept you, and now you're one of them.

Morris: Passion. I think people don't expect that from storage. People will be like, "Storage—it's this, it's that." But it's exciting. And the people here care deeply, whether it's about each other, whether it's about our customers, whether it's about the experience. There's a lot of care.

Mottram: Yeah. I remember talking to family and friends and being so convinced. I was with a pretty big company when I left and officially came on board with Extra Space, and it was like, "Are you sure about this? You're doing storage?" And when you come from retail, some of the retail companies, it just feels cooler.

Morris: Yeah. They have the bigger name.

Mottram: Right. I worked at stores on State Street in Chicago and Mission Avenue and Fisherman's Wharf and things like that. And now it's like, go to the storage facility. So I think there is some of that. And it's always funny when I talk to people, "Hey, where do you work?" I often start with, "It's not that exciting. I work in storage."

Morris: But then you get talking about it and the passion comes through. You can't hide it.

Mottram: Yes. I love it. My daughter just turned five, and it's so neat to me that she must see me wearing Extra Space Storage or she sees it on things at home. But we'll be driving around town and she's like, "There's daddy's work."

Morris: She sees the sign. Yeah. I like that.

Mottram: She noticed, too, when some of the new ones around town opened recently.

18:33 — Wild Stories from Vegas Storage Facilities

Morris: I do love that. That's so cute. Okay. Talking storage stories—I know there's no one who worked in our field operations who didn't come out of some time in the field with some good stories. What's something from Vegas? Tell us about one of these crises you hit. Or what's the weirdest thing you found in a storage unit? Give us something from the ground in Vegas.

Mottram: So much good stuff to talk about. A lot of the times, honestly, it's kind of gross. There's the gross stories. There's a lot of different things that happen in Vegas. The one that always sticks with me—hold on, let me try to think of how I'm even going to explain this story in a PG-13 way.

Mottram: So we had it at one of our North Las Vegas properties. The manager was like, "Hey Bill, when you come today, I need to show you something." Okay, no problem. The manager didn't tell me what it was, just "You need to come see it. Follow me." They start to crack open the door, and we stumbled upon a romantic getaway in a storage unit—meaning a full bed, decorations on the wall, I want to say there were some candles. Luckily they were put out already.

Morris: That's an interesting use for a storage unit, for sure.

Mottram: Very interesting. I'm looking at the manager. I'm like, "Okay. So we know what's happening here and we know what to do next." They're like, "Yes. I just needed to make sure you saw it, to know why I was going to go that route." And I was like, "Understood. We're done here." I'm not kidding—there was a full rug. This thing was well decorated.

Morris: Like, they had to show you. You wouldn't understand until you saw it. Too funny. The amount of creative and interesting—and maybe not according to our lease—uses of storage that we've found through the years is wild. I know every DM has a story. Every single one is always a surprise. It is fun to hear the stories of storage. It's an interesting place. Give us that credit.

Mottram: Never a dull moment.

Morris: Never a dull moment.

21:00 — What Bill Would Tell His 20-Year-Old Self

Morris: Looking back on your career more broadly, if you're looking back at Bill at age 20, what career advice are you going to give him to help you get to where you are faster, easier, better? What's something you've learned where you're like, "Looking back, it really would have helped me if I'd learned that faster"?

Mottram: So what's interesting about Bill at 20 years old is I had started college early, graduated high school early, had done all these things, and I went really fast and hard to get that bachelor's degree and complete that. And then I did a hard aggressive turn to the left to say, "Hey, now there's time for me and all the things I want to do in my 20s." Being in Las Vegas, there's so much to distract yourself with. So if I could go back in time, it would have been: put off some of those distractions and focus on investing in the future.

Mottram: If I could go back in time and think of financially investing in the future, my education and things like that—it's never too late. I'm someone who went back to school in my 40s.

Morris: I think we were both working our master's degrees at the same time, after being here at Extra Space for a minute.

Mottram: That's true, I remember that. Yeah.

Morris: Good times. Complaining about homework mid-workday.

Mottram: Yes. My wife thought I was crazy.

Morris: Yeah. That advice to look back and be like, "You paced yourself a little differently—you went too fast at one point and then slowed down too much." It's like "slow and steady, pace yourself."

Mottram: There's time for both, right? There's time to be in your 20s and there's time to continue to invest in your future. And I think some of that even goes to pacing. I was going to school, working full-time, and doing all those things at once. There's pacing there so you don't burn yourself out. Yeah, if I could have done things like invest in real estate or rental properties earlier I would've. There's a lot of things you're told in your 20s. You just don't always hear them until later.

23:24 — Building High-Performance Teams Through Mergers

Morris: You have always had really great teams that are high performing, whether it's your store teams in Vegas or your team here. What do you think makes for a great team that can work together to accomplish really impressive goals?

Mottram: I think what really makes a great team is a little bit of vision. And then selflessness, I think 100%, is a difference maker. We've seen that recently here. Megan stepped away, had a beautiful baby boy.

Morris: Great maternity leave. So happy for her.

Mottram: I mean, it was amazing. And what was really impressive to me is how the team just came together. There was no need to ask. Everyone just understood the assignment. And I don't know how many times we talked about wanting to make sure that when she comes back, things are where they need to be. She's not buried. And I saw this over and over again in the field, with any team really. When you put the team and the greater cause first, and there's less of "what's in it for me," the return is there. Everyone succeeds, everyone elevates, and we all get better together and get more opportunities.

Morris: Yeah, I love that. Your team was obviously heavily involved in our mergers—Storage Express in 2022, Life Storage in 2023. What's a big takeaway or learning you've had from those big projects, those moments where we have to swallow the whale, so to speak?

Mottram: I could think of that first Storage Express meeting that we were going to have. At the time, there are people that know and people that are going to be informed later. And I would tell you it was so intimidating, because the assumption I made was that I had to have all the answers. When you're told, "Hey, you're going to play a big role in this, you're going to lead something," the lesson learned in the rear view is I didn't have to have all the answers. And when you work for a company like ours with so many exceptional people, you just need to know who to direct the questions to sometimes. That was one of the biggest learnings—you do something like that collectively.

Mottram: And it's relying on your teammates and figuring it out. Another big thing is you have to start somewhere. Start outlining what this might look like, and then you have your long list of "we don't know, we need to solve this." And then collectively bring those minds together to start to outline that and get answers.

26:10 — Operating 4,200+ Stores Across 43 States

Morris: Speaking of working collectively on big projects, I think about our operations team. We have over 4,200 stores, we're across 43 states, 8,000 employees. What is the secret to having a team that can work together while being so spread out? There's consistency in the operations team. You're working on transitions with teams all across. There's consistency to the quality of the work. What do you think is the sauce for that for our operations team?

Mottram: Great partnerships. When we're looking at onboarding new stores, we're figuring out, "Okay, here's how we think we might operate from here." We're physically in Salt Lake in an office, not at the property, not in the city or the market. It's bringing that input together and partnering to figure out what's best. And that's what's great—there are times where something makes sense here, and you partner with someone in the field, a Division Vice President or one of our district managers, and you realize, "Hey, we missed something." And on the flip side, that can go the other way too. So I think partnerships is key.

Mottram: And then I would say pride is a huge difference maker for us. How do you make store number one and store number 4,000 just as important? It's taking the same level of pride and ownership. It doesn't matter if we own it, if we're managing it for a partner, if it's a JV store—it's the same sense of pride in what we want that experience to be for a customer and how we want that asset to look and present.

Morris: Yeah. That's 100% responsibility for the store. That's your store. Absolutely impressive to see.

Mottram: Yeah.

Morris: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about our operations, about transitions, and a little bit about yourself and your career journey. Before I end, is there anything else that we didn't touch on that you want us to hear?

Mottram: So we didn't get to ask you any questions.

Morris: And we're out of time. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for the podcast episode today. Please, if you enjoyed this conversation, find our other conversations. We have multiple conversations. A lot of leaders. Follow us, subscribe where you can, and we hope you join us again.

Mottram: Thanks, everyone.

About the Host and Guest

Bill Mottram, Vice President of Operations Support

Bill Mottram has been with Extra Space Storage since 2018, first serving as a district manager. He's held multiple roles, including Director of Transitions, helping to oversee Extra Space Storage's acquisition of Storage Express and the integration following the Life Storage merger. He currently serves as the Vice President of Operations Support, managing day-to-day facility operations and transitions.

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 about Bill Mottram 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.