Welcome back to Exit & Equity, the email for serious self storage owners.

This week I'm pulling back the curtain on how a data engineer looks at facility performance.

Let’s go!

Most storage operators can recite their occupancy percentage like it's their phone number. 89.7%. They check it every morning, watch it tick up or down, drink the expensive bourbon when it crosses 90%.

Ask those same operators what it costs to acquire a tenant, and you'll get a vague answer. Ask about the revenue gap between physical and economic occupancy, and you'll get a blank stare.

I came to storage from a strange angle. I spent years trying on different careers - finance, real estate, recruiting - feeling like something was off. Then I stumbled into data engineering and everything made sense. Code, systems, patterns - this was the work my brain was built for. Turns out data engineering was the thread connecting everything: the financial analysis, the real estate market dynamics, the people side of operations. Now data drives how I run my facilities.

Here's what a data engineer does: we build systems that turn messy information into clear decisions. We find patterns in noise. We automate the repeatable stuff so humans can focus on judgment calls that actually matter.

That mindset completely changed how I look at storage operations. Most operators are drowning in reports their management software generates - 126 different ones, according to one industry analysis. All that data, and most of it doesn't drive a single decision.

The difference between successful operators and struggling ones isn't more data. It's tracking the right data consistently. Here are the five metrics that actually tell you where money is leaking and where opportunity exists.

If you spend $500 on Google Ads and get 5 new tenants, your cost per acquisition is $100. If you spend $500 on billboard ads and get 1 tenant, that's $500 per acquisition. Which channel deserves more of your budget?

Most operators can't answer that question because they don't track CPA by channel. They know their total marketing spend, they know move-ins are up or down, but they can't connect the dots between specific dollars spent and specific results.

Calculate this: Marketing Spend ÷ New Move-Ins = CPA (do this separately for each channel - Google, Facebook, referrals, drive-by, aggregator sites).

Your goal is a customer lifetime value to CPA ratio of at least 3:1. If the average tenant is worth $1,400 over their stay and you're spending $167 to acquire them, that's an 8:1 ratio - excellent. If you're spending $400 to acquire a customer worth $500, your margins are razor-thin.

Track this monthly. When one channel's CPA is 3-4x higher than others, you've found where your marketing budget is bleeding. Cut the expensive channels, double down on the cheap ones. It sounds obvious, but you can't do it without tracking.

Watch for CPA creeping up over time - it signals increased competition or declining marketing effectiveness. If it used to cost $100 per rental and now it's $200, something changed in your market.

You spent money to generate a lead. Someone found your facility, called or visited your website, maybe even made a reservation. Then... nothing. They rented somewhere else.

Lead-to-lease conversion rate tells you how many interested prospects actually become paying customers. Formula: Leads (or Reservations) ÷ Move-Ins = Conversion Rate.

Industry average hovers around 35%. If you're converting at 25%, you're leaving revenue on the table with the exact same lead flow. The math is brutal: 100 leads at 25% conversion = 25 rentals. Improve to 35% and that's 35 rentals - 40% more revenue from the same marketing spend.

Here's what kills conversion: slow follow-up. Storage customers call multiple facilities. The first one to call back usually gets the rental. If inquiries go to voicemail and you respond the next day, you've already lost.

Track conversion by channel too. Web inquiries might convert at 50% if you have online rentals dialed in, but phone inquiries might convert at 20% if your staff is weak on the phone. That tells you where to focus training.

If conversion drops suddenly, investigate immediately. Maybe a new competitor opened, maybe your best manager quit, maybe your phone system is sending calls to voicemail. Catch it early before it shows up as declining occupancy two months later.

This is where most operators fool themselves.

Physical occupancy measures how many units are rented. Economic occupancy measures how much revenue you're actually collecting as a percentage of potential revenue. Formula: Actual Rent Collected ÷ Gross Potential Rent × 100%.

You can be 95% physically full while only collecting 80% of potential revenue. That 15-point gap represents money you're leaving on the table - typically through excessive discounts, underpricing, or delinquent tenants paying nothing.

A facility that's 90% full at strong rates outperforms one that's 100% full because half the tenants got "first month free." The second facility looks better on paper but makes less money.

The gap between physical and economic occupancy should be minimal - just a few percentage points. If you're seeing a 10-15 point spread, you're buying occupancy with discounts instead of earning it with rates.

Track both numbers monthly. If physical occupancy rises but economic stays flat, you've sacrificed profitability for a vanity metric. It's better to be 85% full at premium rates than 100% full by giving away revenue.

This metric also exposes long-term tenants on outdated rates. If someone's been renting the same 10x10 for five years at $75 while you're getting $120 from new tenants, that's pure leakage. Economic occupancy reveals it.

Average monthly rent multiplied by average length of stay. That's your tenant lifetime value.

If tenants pay $100/month and stay 14 months on average, LTV is $1,400. That number determines everything about your customer acquisition strategy.

Remember that $167 CPA we mentioned earlier? Against a $1,400 LTV, it's a no-brainer investment. Against a $300 LTV, it's a disaster. You can't make intelligent marketing decisions without knowing what a customer is worth over their entire relationship with you.

LTV also reveals the power of retention. If you can get tenants to stay one additional month on average, that's pure additional revenue per customer with zero acquisition cost. A facility with 12-month average stay and $100 monthly rent has LTV of $1,200. Push that to 13 months and LTV jumps to $1,300 - an 8% increase in customer value by improving retention slightly.

Calculate this annually by analyzing tenants who moved out over the past 12 months. Average their length of stay and average monthly payments. Break it down by unit type - climate-controlled might have different LTV than standard units, which should inform where you focus marketing.

If LTV is declining, investigate whether tenants are leaving sooner or paying less. Both signal problems worth solving.

Your occupancy report shows 90% full. Great, right? Except 15% of those occupied units haven't paid in 30+ days. That's not occupancy - that's charity with a late fee attached.

Delinquency rate measures what percentage of your occupied units are behind on rent. Track both the number of delinquent units and the dollar amount tied up.

Most operators are too soft on collections. They don't want confrontation, so they let tenants slide. Meanwhile, that "occupied" unit is generating zero cash flow and blocking a paying customer from renting it.

Set a clear collections process: payment due on the 1st, late fee on the 6th, phone call on the 10th, lock goes on at 15 days, auction notice at 30 days. Stick to it. Tenants will quickly learn whether you're serious or pushover.

Delinquency directly impacts economic occupancy. A facility that's 90% physically occupied but has 10% delinquency is really only 81% economically occupied (90% × 90% paying = 81% effective).

Track delinquency weekly. If it's creeping up, tighten your process. If certain unit types or customer segments have higher delinquency, consider requiring deposits or running credit checks for those rentals.

The goal isn't zero delinquency - that's unrealistic. But keeping it under 5% of occupied units is manageable and protects your cash flow.

You don't need fancy software or a data science degree. You need consistency.

Pick two or three metrics from this list. Calculate them for last month using whatever data you already have - it doesn't need to be perfect. Put a recurring calendar reminder to update them monthly.

Consistency beats complexity. A simple spreadsheet updated every month reveals more than perfect data collected once and forgotten.

Track trends, not snapshots. This month's conversion rate means nothing in isolation. Plot it over six months and you'll see whether you're improving, stable, or declining. Compare to the same period last year to account for seasonality.

Watch leading indicators alongside results. Occupancy and revenue are lagging - they show what already happened. Inquiry volume and conversion rate are leading - they predict what's coming. If leads drop or conversion declines, occupancy will follow in 60 days. Catch the signal early.

Here's what happens when you track these metrics consistently: patterns emerge. You'll notice conversion always drops in December, so you adjust marketing. You'll spot that one channel has terrible CPA, so you reallocate budget. You'll see economic occupancy lagging physical, so you audit your discount policy.

Most storage operators make decisions based on gut feel and occupancy percentages. Track these five metrics and you'll have a level of control over your business that most competitors lack.

The best operators combine experience with disciplined measurement. Data doesn't replace your intuition - it sharpens it. You'll still use judgment on pricing, marketing, and operations. You'll just be making those calls with clear information instead of guesses.

Start with one metric this week. Build the habit. Add another next month. Six months from now, you'll wonder how you ever ran your facility without this visibility.

Excel is fine. I still use it. But once you're tracking the same metrics every week, manually exporting and updating gets old fast.

I set up a system where AWS automatically pulls data from our storage software every night and feeds it into a database. Metabase connects to that database and keeps all my charts current. When I check performance in the morning, I'm looking at yesterday's numbers - no exports, no copy-paste, no "did I update this?" Same metrics you'd track in a spreadsheet, just automated.

Is it overkill if you're running one facility and checking numbers weekly? Probably. But if you're managing multiple properties or you're tired of the manual grind, this setup scales. Metabase is open-source and free to self-host. The heavier lift is building the data pipeline, which requires some technical knowledge. If you've got those skills (or access to someone who does), it's worth exploring.

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control

— Epictetus