Jeff Norman Explains What Makes Self Storage Resilient

In episode six of the Inside Extra Space Storage podcast, CFO Jeff Norman joins McKall Morris to talk about self storage resilience, finance leadership, and the culture that has shaped his nearly 14 years with Extra Space Storage. Norman reflects on a moment from his investor relations days when he offered candid feedback to a new CEO between investor meetings and saw that feedback welcomed.

Jeff also shares why self storage has remained a resilient real estate class through different economic cycles, including its broad customer base, low capital expenditure needs, stable cash flows, and long-term demand. He discusses how scale, data, bridge lending, third-party management, and other growth programs support Extra Space’s position in the self storage industry.

Transcript & Chapters

00:00 — About Inside Extra Space Storage Podcast

Morris: On Inside Extra Space Storage, we sit down with the experts building, operating, and scaling Extra Space Storage—not only the world’s largest self storage operator, but one of the most trusted names in the industry. If you care about where Extra Space and the self storage industry is headed, you’re in the right place.

Morris: Welcome to the Inside Extra Space Storage podcast, where we interview Extra Space leaders and get them behind the mic to see what’s going on at the company and in the self storage industry.

00:54 — Meet Jeff Norman, CFO of Extra Space Storage

Morris: Today we’re so lucky to have Jeff. Jeff Norman is the chief financial officer, our CFO here at Extra Space Storage. He’s been with the company nearly 14 years. Is that right?

Norman: That’s right.

Morris: And for the audience, just to clue you guys in on a little secret—if I seem like I’m being more professional than usual, that is because Jeff is my direct supervisor. He is my boss. Mid-year reviews are coming up. I’m on my best behavior.

Norman: And I also hired you.

Morris: You did. Which leads me to my next point—if you see me being way less professional than usual, that’s because Jeff is the one who hired me. We’ve worked together for seven years, and I think I’ve cried in your office on multiple occasions.

Norman: The thing I always think of when I think of your interview process and us hiring you is that you had a unique comment on your resume. In addition to your academic and professional qualifications, it said she’s the smartest of the Morris children.

Morris: And I think I have brackets around that “contested,” because it is heavily contested. I think every resume should have a little joke, just a little.

Norman: It worked on me.

Morris: It worked on you, and now we’re both here.

02:02 — Jeff’s Career Path from Banking to Chief Financial Officer

Morris: To just kick it off, how did you get to Extra Space? Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Norman: Sure. It was a little bit of an indirect path. I went to the University of Utah, graduated with a finance degree with an emphasis in real estate. I always wanted to be in real estate. But when I graduated, Salt Lake was kind of a small market, and the real estate market there was very family-oriented, a lot of family offices, and it was tough to get a job in real estate straight out of school if you didn’t have any experience.

Norman: So I went into real estate banking instead—the closest thing I could really do. I worked at Zions Bank as a commercial real estate lender for about eight, nine years. After the financial crisis, it had kind of just taken the joy out of working at a bank. It was a tough environment for those few years, and I needed a fresh start.

Norman: Luckily, through a friend, I heard about Extra Space and heard about a job opening in the Treasury department as director of financing. My job was to get loans for Extra Space. I joined in 2012 as the director of financing, did that for a couple of years, and have had a few different roles and worn a few different hats over the last 14 years. I have not regretted leaving banking for one day ever since.

Morris: We’re so glad to have you here.

03:31 — Key Projects & Leadership Lessons Speed Round

Morris: Let’s go into a couple of those different hats. Maybe we can do a speed round—I’ll name one of the projects you were in charge of, and you tell me one of the keys to success from it or something you learned. Let’s start with when you hired me; your title was VP of Investor Relations. What’s the key thing to doing great investor relations?

Norman: I think just building relationships. This is a long-term sales-type role, and trust is super important. You can think short term and try to push the stock and say only the good things, but long term, these investors want to know they can trust you, that they believe in the management team. So one of the things I’ve really focused on for all members of management at Extra Space is building a strong relationship with our investors.

Norman: Make sure they can trust us, and then build a brand around the company, so we’re known with our investors for being innovative, for being technology leaders, for being very transparent. We really leaned into that over the last ten, twelve years that I’ve been involved on that side.

Morris: Another thing you did is you developed our bridge lending program. You kind of came up with that idea. What did you learn about bridge lending? What’s one of the keys to that success?

Norman: I wish I could take full credit for the idea. The idea was really Joe and Noah’s. Through talking to partners, they recognized the opportunity, this gap in the capital stack to offer bridge loans to help our partners through lease-up. But I think what they recognized was: we have this idea, now we need to implement a program. And because of my banking background and experience, I could figure out how do we market this, how do we underwrite, how do we create a credit box around this? That’s where I came in.

Norman: I ramped that up as sort of a nights-and-weekends program for a couple of years with a lot of help from the investments team. At first it was really hard; getting that first loan done took forever. And then after a couple of years, we got about $100 million done, then $200 million done, and it started snowballing from there.

Morris: Three billion.

Norman: It’s about $1.5 billion on the books today, but we’ve done almost $3 billion over the life of the program. And now it’s a full-time team, which is awesome to see how it’s grown.

Morris: Okay, next speed round question. Let’s talk capital markets. That was another piece you were in charge of. I think you were VP of IR and capital markets?

Norman: It did evolve that way. We’ve always done equity capital markets, stock offerings. But we had never been in the debt capital markets. So around 2018, 2019, we were unsecuring our balance sheet—we went and secured credit ratings from S&P and Moody’s. Scott Stubbs and I were heavily involved with that. And once we had those ratings, we were able to access the debt capital markets and do bond deals, which is mostly how we raise capital now.

Morris: Finally used all those bond-pricing equations from MBA case studies.

Norman: Finally came to fruition 20 years later.

Morris: And then also during that time, you kind of led Extra Space’s sustainability reporting. What’s a takeaway from that project?

Norman: This kind of goes back to investor relations and creating that relationship with our investors. We have a lot of European investors, and sustainability was really important to them before it became popular mainstream in the US. The idea really came from feedback from them–listening to them talk about wanting to hear more about what we were doing in terms of solar, lighting retrofits, things like that. And what was great is we already had a great story to tell. We were doing all the right things. We just never really talked about it. So we put some guardrails around it as far as how do we report on this and how do we get credit for all these great things that we’d been doing for a long time?

Morris: And then maybe a year or two ago you were promoted to SVP of Treasury and were the treasurer officially for the company for a bit. What did you learn from that experience?

Norman: It was interesting. I was going from being kind of a lone wolf in IR to really working together as a team, which was a lot of fun. Running a full team day to day is really operational when you have 4,000-plus stores—that’s a lot of bank accounts to keep track of. Luckily we had a great team in place. I was able to step in and just keep running with it.

08:31 — Transition to CFO & Current Responsibilities

Morris: And then about a year ago, less than a year ago, you were promoted to CFO. Our previous CFO, Scott Stubbs, retired, and you got that promotion. What have you learned in the last eight months? What’s your big takeaway from your time as CFO?

Norman: When I came into it, Gwyn McNeal—

Morris: Chief legal officer.

Norman: Yes. Gwyn came and said, “Jeff, just don’t mess it up.” So I came into it with that framework. But honestly, that’s really all I’ve had to do—we had a great finance team in place already. We’ve got really stable, long-tenured leaders of each of the verticals that roll up to CFO. So really it’s been about keeping it going, continuing to optimize, and learning how to work well together. Like I said, the weight on the shoulders is a little different. I can’t blame the old CFO for anything. The buck stops with me. I’m getting used to that still. But it’s been great. So far, so good.

Morris: So far, so good.

09:47 — Why Self Storage Is the Perfect Real Estate Investment

Morris: Kind of talking more about your role as CFO—a big part of that is you’re the steward of capital. Why do you think self storage is a great industry for investment, for growth, or for employment? Why self storage? Why is this a great place?

Norman: Self storage is honestly like the perfect real estate investment. It’s highly diversified—we have 4,000 properties in pretty much every major market in the US. Our customers are everybody. We’re not reliant on one demographic or a specific category of people or place. We appeal to everybody, which is awesome. So it makes it really stable.

Norman: I think that’s the first thing investors really recognize and why they’re interested in self storage—this is stable. It’s also a little bit countercyclical at times. People have life transitions in good economies and in bad economies. So maybe in a good economy, people are moving from an apartment into a house, or they’re relocating for a new job, or something positive and exciting—maybe they’re having a baby. But on the other hand, in tough times, maybe you’re downsizing from a house to an apartment and storage provides a solution. Maybe someone loses their job and they’re moving cross-country to get the next job.

Norman: So in good times and in bad times, it’s proven to be really, really durable. Even in the financial crisis—which you think of as the most difficult economic environment I’ve seen in my career—

Morris: And especially for real estate.

Norman: Especially for real estate—our low point was same-store revenue of about -2.9%. So in your worst year, if you’re only down about 3%, and then in good years you’re doing great, that’s a pretty good investment. Especially when you think that a lot of our investors are large institutions who are charged to preserve and protect people’s capital—self storage investment is a really good fit.

Norman: A few other things that make it great: it requires low CapEx. If you’re an office REIT and a tenant moves out, you might have to rehab the whole space to make it attractive for the next group. For us, we can sweep out the unit, maybe clean it up a little, change the light bulb if necessary. Usually pretty minimal. So low CapEx, very diversified, stable cash flows. And demand has really just gone up and up and up over the last 30 years—it’s not a hockey stick, it’s just gradually creeping up as people learn about the product type and see all the different ways it can be used. It’s been a great, stable investment for people for a long time.

Morris: When I hear you guys talk about self storage, it’s just steady and reliable in a way that very few other real estate asset classes can brag about.

Norman: Definitely not as volatile as hotels and some of these other asset classes that are a little more up and down with the economy.

13:00 — Extra Space Storage’s Competitive Advantages & Innovation

Morris: So that’s the overview of self storage. Let’s narrow it in—why is Extra Space the place to be? The place to invest with?

Norman: I’m obviously a little biased, but it’s because we’re the best. Extra Space has found a unique spot within the market, and there’s a few things you can really only find with us. One is we’re the largest storage operator in the country. So we have scale advantages that, if you’re a mom-and-pop type operator, are really tough to replicate.

Norman: We have a brand that’s recognizable throughout the country. People have seen our properties everywhere. We have this data set and data science team that can leverage it to be really sharp on how we acquire customers online—what search terms are people looking for, how to price really quickly in a market because we have properties in all the markets. We can see what’s renting, what’s not renting. The scale is huge, and it’s almost impossible to overstate how helpful that data and that scale is.

Norman: I think also we’re an innovative company. We’ve always pushed the envelope from the technology standpoint. We’re usually a first mover in terms of anything technology related—whether that’s efficiencies in the back office, or customer-facing tools, or customer acquisition tools that help keep bringing customers into our properties.

Morris: And we’re also innovative in the way you brought up with the bridge loan program, looking for solutions to problems that maybe aren’t obvious, through partnerships and through all these things.

Norman: Yeah, that’s a great point. On the external growth side, we also have this innovation. We were the first company really to offer a robust third-party management program. And today it’s the fastest-growing and the largest in the industry. It continues to grow and be a big part of what we do.

Norman: And then there’s other things that feed off of that. It builds our tenant insurance business. We’ve tacked on the bridge loan product, which we primarily offer to third-party management customers. And if they’re not, that’s part of a way to bring more people onto third-party management, which then builds an acquisition pipeline that we continue to acquire properties from.

Norman: So it’s really become a flywheel—I’ve heard Noah Springer call it that—where because we’ve found all these different ways to partner with people within the sector, it gives us additional growth avenues. Even if property revenue is a little flat, overall earnings growth continues to climb because we have these other income streams.

Morris: There are so many interesting ways that Extra Space has been innovative. And it really does set—

Norman: You know, you hear people say imitation is the best form of flattery. You can tell it’s working because our peers tend to follow what we’re doing. Usually once we’ve launched one of these programs or built one of these platforms, we see it popping up everywhere else. And it just encourages us to keep running faster. But I think it’s also reassuring that what you’re doing is working.

16:25 — Career Advice & the Importance of Mentorship

Morris: Kind of switching topics a little bit more to you and your career. Like I said, you’ve been at Extra Space nearly 14 years and you have a banking background before that. What advice would you give, maybe, 18- or 20-year-old Jeff who’s in college picking what degree he’s going to do, looking around, thinking about real estate? What advice would you give him now that in hindsight would have helped you get to this spot even faster or better?

Norman: I think maybe the best advice I could give myself, or anybody coming out of school or early in their career, is find a good mentor. I think I was really lucky because I didn’t look for that intentionally, but both at Zions and then here at Extra Space, I’ve had a number of managers or people within the company—even if we weren’t in the same department—who have just been willing to invest that time to help me develop personally as well as professionally. And that’s huge. Making introductions to people you don’t know, helping you build bridges across departments, pointing out skill sets that could become valuable or help you become more marketable. And then also just having someone to model after who’s done it before, so you can see what they’ve done to be successful and try to follow their path.

Norman: I’ve been really fortunate—maybe even lucky—to have had some of those mentors. And if I could do it all over again, I think I’d be intentionally looking for those, rather than just relying on someone hopefully taking an interest in me.

Morris: And emphasizing that even earlier on. I agree. I think it’s something really special about the culture at Extra Space. So many people, in my experience, have reached out and given me advice and feedback. There’s just this culture of mentorship that really extends throughout the organization.

Norman: What I like about it here—and this is different than it was in banking—is it doesn’t have to be within your own group or your own department. Some of the people I’ve learned the most from were actually in totally different parts of the business. Because they can offer you a really different perspective, and you can learn a lot from them since they’re just coming at it from a totally different direction.

Morris: I think about how in one of our leadership programs I was partnered with Mike James, who’s now SVP of Operations, East Division. The amount of time he took to explain operational metrics and how certain things were looked at from the ops perspective. He didn’t need to take that extra time. He could have done the bare minimum mentorship. But instead he really dug into stuff that was so outside of my own department. Super valuable. Do you have any examples or names you want to name while we’re on camera?

Norman: I mean, just like you’re saying—not only for your own development, but if you have a better holistic understanding of Extra Space, or whatever company or organization you’re a part of, it just makes you a better-rounded, more informed employee and team member. For me, similarly, when I was in the EDP program, my mentor was Matt Herrington.

Morris: Our chief operating officer.

Norman: Yes. And to learn from him not just about operations, but how to run a large team, how to scale a team, how to communicate to a large audience instead of just a couple of direct reports—those were huge lessons.

Morris: He’s incredible at that. The way he takes notes so he can scale his message to the hundreds of employees he’s speaking to is really impressive.

Norman: Yeah. And that’s just something I couldn’t have learned within the Treasury Department or within the finance team only.

20:18 — Extra Space Storage Culture & Values in Action

Morris: Great example. And talking about things in the Extra Space culture—that’s like my favorite thing about it here, that mentorship. What else stands out to you about the culture? What is the reason Extra Space is a place you decided to stay for 14 years?

Norman: It’s going to sound cliché because people always say this, but it really is our values. Not just having them, because I think every company has them written down somewhere. But actually seeing people live them—seeing how they’re actually part of the discussion when decisions are made or when strategies are formed—that’s pretty unique. And I’ve seen that lived at Extra Space regularly, and it’s impactful.

Norman: I think of—this was probably my second week at Extra Space. We were in a company meeting, we were all in one room since we were smaller back then, and Spencer Kirk was our CEO at the time. He said something that at first I was like, “that’s kind of obvious.” And then I thought, actually, that’s really profound. He said, “None of us is smarter than all of us.” And I was like, yeah, of course. But then you think about it, and it’s like, that’s actually pretty impactful. Because no matter how great you are at your role, if you’re getting insights from the whole team, it’s going to make you better.

Norman: And I’ve seen that kind of lived as I’ve moved through my career here. One of the benefits of being in IR is you get to spend a lot of time with the executive team. It’s an interesting role because you’re the leader of IR in terms of communications and interactions with investors, but you’re certainly not the senior person in the room by any means. And I was always amazed how respectful they were of me, even as kind of a junior person, and how they would take my advice and insight even though it’s the CEOs in the room.

Norman: I remember this because I was really terrified when I did it, but it luckily worked out. When Joe was brand new as CEO, we were having an investor meeting. He said something in the first meeting. I knew how he meant it, but the way he phrased it meant something different to our investor. So after the meeting, we only had like five minutes before the next meeting, I grabbed him. I was like, “Joe, you can never say that again. Or at least not that way. And here’s why.” And right after I said it, I thought, I’m going to get fired.

Morris: You’re like, "Oh, I went over that line."

Norman: Did I really just say “never say that again” to the CEO? And he was like, “Okay, yeah, got it.” He altered his messaging. And then after that conference, he thanked me. He said, “Hey, thanks for telling me that.” And I was like, that shows a lot of trust, a lot of humility, and that “none of us is smarter than all of us” mindset. Even the junior IR guy has something to add.

Morris: I love that. Thinking similarly, I was just a comms manager working on, I think at the time it was COVID calls. It was during lockdown and we were having biweekly calls where Joe would speak to the entire company. I remember him coming to me and asking for my feedback on something and me thinking, I don’t know if you need that. But he was just so open and receptive to feedback—that idea that all of us have something to contribute in this way.

Morris: We also always talk about having a really open door policy here, and it is like that—every leader is really willing to speak to anyone. I do think that’s impressive.

Norman: Yeah. We have a really flat organization, and even though we’re an enormous company, it still feels pretty small because of that openness. You feel like everyone has a voice, everybody can speak up, which makes it feel different. Coming from a bank where you felt like a cog, and there are a lot of other cogs doing the exact same thing you’re doing—one thing that’s cool here is most of us are the only few people operating in any one role. So you need the insight of each team member. It’s pretty cool.

24:35 — Building & Leading High-Trust Teams

Morris: Talking teams: you have a really impressive team underneath you. Compliments to myself. No, I’m just kidding. I am on your team.

Norman: McKall is on my team.

Morris: I am one of about eight departments that roll up to you, including accounting, tax, internal audit, Treasury, risk, and others. When you’re looking at adding a leader to the finance department, what are you looking for in a person? What makes a great team member for you?

Norman: It’s a great question. I’m really lucky that I inherited a great team. I wish I could take credit for them—Scott Stubbs, the previous CFO, deserves the credit for really building the team, and I’ve been lucky enough to step into it. But all that said, and you know this from working closely together, I’m pretty particular about who we hire.

Norman: I would rather have a position sit open longer and really like the people that we hire than make a quick decision and then maybe regret it or feel like we settled. So hopefully it doesn’t drive my team too crazy, but I’m sort of the brake pedal on hiring a lot of the time, encouraging people to keep waiting. And even if they think they have something good, wait for someone who’s great.

Norman: If there’s an area of the business where I probably can’t spend enough time, it’s making personnel decisions—who do you hire, who do you transition, who do you talk to and figure out where they’d be a better fit, hopefully within Extra Space so they can keep growing and developing their career. The ultimate form of leverage as a leader is through the team and having great people on your team. Can’t overemphasize it enough.

Morris: Is there one or two things you’re like, "Oh, that’s the skill that I want on my side?"

Norman: For me it’s trust. My parents used to say—we love all our children, but we only trust some of them, or we trust some of them more than others. And I think that’s true for managers a lot of the time, where they may like their whole team, but there’s something different about someone you can really trust—that if we can talk about the strategy or the goal and then turn them loose, they just go do it. That’s tough to replace. So I really look for who’s a person who has the competence, has the drive, is going to work hard, but ultimately—do I trust them to deliver on whatever the responsibility is?

Morris: Finding someone who’s really deserving of the rest of the team’s trust and of the projects that’ll be handed over to them. That’s awesome.

Norman: And I’m going to jump in and say one other thing. That’s why I tend to promote from within because that relationship is there. You’ve seen them in action. It’s one thing to hopefully have trust through an interview process or be impressed. It’s pretty hard to replicate that without seeing it in action for months or years. So that makes me lean more towards promoting from within because you have that trust already.

Morris: And taking time to build talent within, we’ve seen that in a lot of different departments here, where you guys spend years developing leaders for their next step up. Because this is a great place to have a big, long career, not just a short career.

Norman: A good example I’d give of that is our current Treasurer, Corrie Sudbury. She was my right-hand person in Treasury when I was the Treasurer. And Corrie would take any assignment, just run with it. You knew it was going to be done on time, done really well, be accurate, you could rely on it. That’s the kind of trust I was describing. Even though it was a quicker transition probably than she’d originally imagined, stepping into the Treasury role, she was totally ready for it and has done a great job.

Morris: Perfect example. Well, is there anything we haven’t covered that you really wanted to hit on the podcast before we wrap up?

Norman: No, thanks for having me.

Morris: We’re so glad to have you. Thanks again for joining us on this episode and sharing some of your insights about the industry, about our company, and about your own career.

Norman: You bet. Thanks, McKall.

Morris: Thanks for listening to Inside Extra Space Storage. Each episode features conversations with the leaders and teams behind one of the most recognized names in self storage. To connect with today’s guest, reach out to them directly on LinkedIn, and don’t forget to follow the show for more insights inside the industry. Until next time, have a great day and an even better tomorrow!

About the Host and Guest

Jeff Norman, Chief Financial Officer

Jeff Norman has been with Extra Space Storage since 2012, and has served on the company's senior management team since 2014, operating in various roles including Director of Financing, Vice President of Investor Relations, and Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Treasury. Norman was instrumental in establishing the company's bridge lending platform, Extra Space Capital, as well as its sustainability program. Prior to joining Extra Space Storage, Norman served for over eight years at Zions Bank's National Real Estate Group in multiple roles and concluding as a Vice President. He holds a Master's in Business Administration and a Bachelor's of Arts in Finance 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 about Chief Financial Officer Jeff Norman in his 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.