From 1 store to over 100: Adrian Lee, Big Yellow

Adrian Lee helped start Big Yellow in 1998 with three others and no experience of self storage. They floated on AIM within three years and grew past 100 stores. He talks to Gavin Shields about what actually changed as the business scaled: when the founders had to stop running everything themselves, who turns out to be good at running a store, and the three levers of revenue management he'd want every operator using. He's blunt about where smaller operators leave money on the table, and about how much of the UK market is still untouched. At the point he retired, 70% of Big Yellow's move-ins had never used self storage before. Also: metro storage, drive-up, and where he'd start if he began again today. Chapters 00:00 Intro 00:23 How Big Yellow started 07:27 What Big Yellow did differently 10:51 One store to 100, and who runs them 16:28 Capital, AIM, and the public markets 21:52 Occupancy, rate, and the two numbers that mattered 24:27 The three levers of revenue management 31:05 Where operators leave money on the table 36:44 Three markets: traditional, metro and drive-up 44:54 What he tells operators, and where the tech goes next Scaling Self Storage is hosted by Gavin Shields, co-founder of Stora, the self storage software built for growth. Visit https://stora.co to learn more.