The Five Things for me that Made 2024 Stand Out

What happens when a challenging year pushes you to redefine success?

Scott reflects on the highs and lows of 2024, unveiling the five keys that fueled his personal and professional transformation.

From exploring the unconventional benefits of psychedelics to saying “yes” to life-changing family experiences and delegating for maximum impact, Scott shares the wisdom, gratitude, and strategies that set the stage for massive success.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
3:45 – Scott’s Psychedelic Journey
12:30 – Delegation and Empowerment
16:15 – The Power of Focus Time
18:40 – Lessons from 20 Years of Growth

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Chapters

• 3:45 Scott’s Psychedelic Journey
• 12:30 Delegation and Empowerment
• 16:15 The Power of Focus Time
• 18:40 Lessons from 20 Years of Growth

Transcript

Announcer (00:03):

This is the Self Storage Podcast with the original Self storage expert, Scott Meyers.

Scott Meyers (00:12):

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Self Storage Podcast. I'm your host Scott Meyers, and we are going to do a solo episode today as we wind down 2024. And what I wanted to do, as so many of us are doing right now, we are focusing on the big goals, the big plans, the big hairy audacious goals, our BHAs for 2025, that we certainly have it as well, but it's also very important to look back on as we compare. So we're setting new budgets or even new goals and maybe setting the bar 10%, 20%, 50% higher. We have to measure and understand where we came from. And so 2024, by all measures, was a good year for us and for many reasons, which I'll go into and I'm thankful for that. And that was intentional. It was intentional by myself and our whole team to make it that way because 2023 was not a good year professionally.

(00:57):

It was okay, we had our challenges in our industry and in my own businesses, but more importantly on the personal side, outside of business, I lost my dad, my wife lost her stepdad, and we had another good friend die of cancer. Very early on in the beginning of the year, we walked through a divorce to someone very close to us, and we also had an unexpected larger tax bill that came through as many of our strategies that we put in place. Well, one of 'em from our CPA said, well, that one didn't really work. And so we were faced with a pretty large ill at the end of 2023. Well, thankfully we were able to mitigate and handle all of that, but at the end of the year we were just like, good grief, could there be any worse or any more? And so that led me on a journey in 2024 of being as I somewhat jokingly, but then not to my family and to my staff called it the year of Scott, and that I was going to do things a little bit differently than I had in 2023 because when you have a year with lots of challenges in, it causes a lot of time of reflection and some time of just asking questions and sometimes bigger and deeper questions as well.

(02:00):

And so as I began the year of Scott in 2024, what we're going to focus on are the five keys as to why 2024 was such a successful year for me, both personally as well as professionally. And I really have to go back to really the middle of the year. It was not aiming at the beginning where I had an experience. And lemme give you some context of this first. So I also continue to sharpen the sword and iron sharpens iron. And I am in a number of masterminds where I'm a participant in some, were there as capital raising partners and others. I'm there just because I'm being fed and I don't want to be. And I'm thankful that I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I'm exposed to several folks in several different industries outside of self storage and even different walks of life.

(02:46):

And I met a gentleman in one of these masterminds that I'm involved in. So he works in psychedelics and he helps with all sorts of challenges and he does this with the aid of psychedelics. Now, he doesn't get into the heavy stuff and hear me out here for some of you that are ready to tune out and saying, gosh, what is Scott? I thought he was a man of faith and he's messing with psychedelic. So this gentleman happens to also be a man of God. He went to a seminary and he's now helping people with the aid of a medicine in the form of MDMA and psilocybin. So ecstasy is a street name for MDMA and psilocybin is more or less mushrooms. And so I've done this in a legal setting and in a very controlled environment going through a guided journey with this gentleman.

(03:28):

And as he's talking about the way that he helps people, I was kind of ticking off boxes. I had Covid in 2020 and I felt like when I came out on the other side of that, I wasn't processing very well. And he talked about helping people in marriages. And although our marriage is very strong, I think every marriage could be better. And there's usually a couple of areas in which maybe you don't see eye to eye are not on the same page. And I was like, yeah, okay, that may help. It sounds like he helps an awful lot of folks that are in much worse shape. He helps an awful lot of folks that get beyond some huge issues. But then also he talked about CEOs that have glass ceilings and we've accomplished and we've achieved quite a bit around here, and we continue to set our goals pretty high, but at times I kind of feel like there is a glass ceiling, like some of my efforts aren't being rewarded in terms of success in the business.

(04:09):

And so after having a private conversation with him afterwards, without hesitation, I signed up, I said, I'm in. And so went down to Nashville where he's located, and I went through a guided journey with both MDMA and then psilocybin to help you beyond some of these challenges. And I went in basically tell him, I said, Hey, here's the four or five things that I want you to fix. And he said, well, Scott doesn't really work that way. He said, the medicine's going to kind of guide us. And without going into a lot of detail, because we are going to go into a little more detail, I've decided to have Mike on the podcast keep an eye out in 2025 to share a little bit about my journey, but more importantly, what he does for individuals to help them personally, which also helps them professionally to break down some of these barriers that have been put in place, sometimes from childhood, sometimes from other people.

(04:56):

He helps people with PTSD in a number of different areas. And so no matter what that looks like, I think that's something that you want to tune into. And in the meantime, certainly I would advise anyone to look into the Netflix special on how to change your brain. I believe that's it. Or how to change your mind where it talks about five different episodes about the different psychedelics that are helping people to achieve incredible breakthroughs. And this isn't the drugs of the sixties that we're talking about. Nothing heavy here as well. And those have a place, they don't have a place in my life and I certainly don't have those types of issues, but boy, oh boy, what we're seeing right now in terms of advancements in these psychedelics and helping people in many, many ways, it truly is getting a lot of attention recently.

(05:38):

And as a result of coming out on the other side of this, I will say that I showed up differently at our events, in our meetings, in my marriage. There's a whole lot of folks that recognize that, yeah, I was processing better and things were operating on all cylinders. Again, I felt like a weight had been lifted. I felt a lot lighter as a result of going through this. And I've shown up again jokingly on the other side of this, we said, I'm acot 2.0 and I really feel like that. And if I could describe it, I could say that I could go back to a place in time when I was operating on all cylinders and almost at different points in my career and in my life all happening now at the same time. And it's like everything is plugged in and wired up correctly and where it's supposed to be the second half of 2024 was absolutely amazing.

(06:23):

Which leads me to number four in terms of the factors that led to our massive success in 2024. And that is I decided after 2023 that certainly life's too short and through my inflection time to realize that I'm going to say yes to the things that I've been saying no to, and I'm going to say no to the things that I should be saying no to. And so that meant that my family has certainly not been neglected. This industry, this business has allowed us and afforded us the ability to raise our kids, to homeschool them, and to go all around the world and have amazing experiences and take four to five weeks off during that time to be on the mission field and on vacation. And it has been incredible. But I wanted to take that a step further as my kids become now adults and be able to bend those precious few moments and days and weeks that we have with them right now before they go off on their own journey was a critical.

(07:11):

And so at the beginning of the year, I was able to take my youngest daughter on her senior trip. I told each and every one of my kids I would take them anywhere they want to go in the world when they graduated from high school. And now my youngest daughter wanted to go to Saudi Arabia to see the Formula One race there, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. And so yeah, I didn't have to ask twice for that one. We had an amazing time in Jetta, Saudi Arabia, seeing this incredible city, seeing the race and hanging out there for three days. But also my daughter is an equestrian. She loves anything and everything. Horses rides all the time, teaches lessons. And what she wanted to do is to be able to ride an Arabian horse in Arabia. So this was no doubt, an Arabian horse because they were in Arabia when we mounted them.

(07:55):

My youngest daughter doesn't get excited about too many things and to see her face light up when she got on top of that horse and then took off, that was the only glimpse I got because I am not an equestrian. And she took off and 40 minutes later I caught up with her and the smile never left her face for the rest of the day, and what an incredible experience that was. And so I got on my Arabian gold, I think is what they gave me, given my experience, but had an amazing time. We both had an amazing time riding these amazing horses out in the desert. I was also able to meet up with my oldest daughter in Portland, Oregon. She was spending the summer out there. And so my wife and I were able to go visit her in wine country and spend time with she and her friends for just an amazing adventure.

(08:38):

And again, marking a time in which we don't, she's our oldest and she's out of the house. And to have that time anytime to have her say, Hey, why don't you come out to her parents? Why don't you come out and spend a week with me and my friends? And anytime that our kids are asked that to have the ability to do that and to drop everything that we're doing because I decided to say yes instead of, or maybe in the past I may not have, was an amazing freedom that allowed us to have that incredible experience. My wife and I had always talked about going to Hawaii. There's no reason why we couldn't. We have the time. We have the means and the resources to be able to. And so I was asking a good friend of mine at the beginning of the year and I said, what is a good Christmas present to get Christina this year?

(09:17):

And she said, well, Tiffany's is always good. We're at Louis Vuitton. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. And I said, we're more along the lines of experiences. And she said, well, how about Hawaii? And I was just like, well, we haven't been to Hawaii yet. I mean, we've been many, many places around the world even farther than that. And so my bride and I were able to go to Hawaii. We did so on our anniversary, which was absolutely magical as well. And so just saying yes without hesitation to a suggestion that somebody had not worrying about the time or what was on the calendar, just making a commitment to do that. And we had an amazing time and just an amazing experience in this incredibly beautiful part of the world. And time for she and I to just be able to wind down with all the travel that we have together.

(09:57):

And many times for business, it was good to be able to settle into a place that wasn't even tied to business or didn't have the kids around, and to be able to just focus on each other and on this incredible place that we were in, in the experiences that were waiting for us when we got there. And also to be able to say yes to an additional house build in Ensenada, we typically build two to three houses per trip twice a year when we go to Ensenada. And this year we built seven houses altogether and we took 177 people down there to Ensenada Mexico to experience a short-term family friendly mission trip. And again, I think many of you are, if you've been listening to podcasts that is the DNA of our company. We have a heart and a passion for doing so and allowing people to have that experience and then to be able to see the ripple effect of what that means for these folks to then go out to do good in their own communities and in the world and to also come alongside of us and build houses with us through the years.

(10:49):

We've been doing this since 2013 now, and it continues to grow. And although it's easy for me to say yes because my wife is in charge of all the administrative, she loves that. And we absolutely love the way that God has been able to provide for that. And in terms of the funding and the resources and the people to be able to change the lives this year of seven more people, seven more families, we were able to end in generational poverty for seven more families in 2024, which is more than we've done in the past. So by all measures, 2024 was an incredible success just for that reason alone. Which leads me to success factor number three for 2024. And that is on the opposite side of yes is no, and saying no to those things that steal my joy, that aren't a good use of my time, those things that I feel compelled to do, but I really shouldn't be doing that I have no business doing and that are better suited to hand off and delegate to somebody else in my organization.

(11:40):

And so after 130,000 miles of traveling all across the globe last year for business and for personal pleasure and enjoyment, that means that I had to delegate a lot to my staff. And that the good news is, is that my staff, I am blessed beyond measure. We have an incredible organization and I have lieutenants that are underneath me that are handling what needs to be handled in terms of their own departments and capable of running independently without guidance and direction for me on a regular basis. And so we set forth a plan, a vision each and every year, and then we hone that plan specifically with key performance indicators, and then we meet at a regular basis and have a regular cadence of our weekly level 10 meetings. We follow the traction system to make sure that we are on task. I don't have to attend those meetings.

(12:23):

However, every week everybody's very clear on what needs to happen. And so for those things that either are left at to Scott or that I feel that I need to take on, well, this is the year that my staff was stretched and I was stretching, giving up out of that control and handing it over to them. And the good news is I'm happy to report is that as no surprise to many of you who have gone through this exercise or about read the books on what happens when the boss leaves, things run better. The place didn't fall apart, it didn't burn down. There was nothing fell through the cracks and allowed me to be able to focus on the things that I really needed to do, which is continue to feed into my staff and to be able to train them and equip them with the tools, the resources, the confidence of knowing that they can carry out these roles and responsibilities even better than they were before.

(13:09):

And so it was a year of a growth for all of us and being able to hand off and delegate those things that were tying me down to the business unnecessarily. And this is nothing new, especially for those of you that have once again been listening to this podcast and listening to us for years. We talk quite a bit about delegation and KPIs and carrying things out and staying in your zone and the things your superpower doing, the things that only you can do and spending 80% of your time there and then offloading the rest, those things that are distractions that you shouldn't be doing. And we follow the four disciplines of execution. We follow attraction. You've read a number of books. And so it's just really getting back to that place where you draw a line in the sand and say, this is what I'm going to commit to do after handing everything else off and then delegating.

(13:50):

Well, that leads me to number two, and that is a massive execution on the things that are left back to me, my superpower, which is raising capital, analyzing deals, creating partnerships, and then focusing on and building and building into my team. And so that was freeing in itself. But then also as I freed up more time to do that, I realized that once again, this is what I love to do. I love to talk to people about self storage. That's why we started this education organization. We were pulled into that. I was led into that side of the business by a chance meeting with Dave Ramsey who said that we are supposed to go out and do this, and this is our mission field. But also I just absolutely love it. I love seeing the look on people's faces when they realize that we've given them the roadmap to be able to succeed and then to have them go out and do it.

(14:34):

And that's the same for my team to be able to build into them and show them how they can succeed in their role and how collectively we can all continue to move forward and win by all measures that we measure success in our business. And we celebrated a lot this year, which is also fantastic by every measure everybody loves to do, to be able to create a milestone, to create a key performance indicator and a level and a baseline, and then to just blow past that is so much. Once you catch momentum in an organization, when you start doing that on a regular basis and you recognize those people and you celebrate the successes as an organization, I can't tell you what that does. And you'll see the snowball effect in your organization if you're not doing that on a regular basis. So if you haven't even gone through that exercise, if you haven't read any books like Dan Sullivan's on Unique Ability to understand and find out what is your unique ability and then doing everything you can to delegate everything that you possibly can in your business so that you can spend 80% of your time on the things that matter to drive the business forward, then maybe 2025 is the year in which you decide to do that.

(15:39):

And I remember looking back 20 years ago when I joined Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach and going through the exercises and finding what my unique ability was and then being able to delegate and shed everything else, the freedom that came with that of understanding, Hey, I get permission to do this. And recognizing that here's where I bring value the most and now I have permission to delegate the rest. I don't have to answer all my emails. As a matter of fact, my emails come into my assistant now and I'm going to schedule my focus time for me and nobody can barge into and schedule meetings over those times. I blocked out my calendar for focus time to be able to strategically think about how to grow the business and what direction we're going to head. I blocked off our vacation. So with my family ahead of time, nobody gets the leftovers anymore.

(16:22):

And so going through that exercise, if you haven't done that, I would suggest in 2025 that you take a little bit of time out in the beginning of the year to be able to understand what that looks like so that you can effectively plan to be in your unique ability for 80% of your time in 2025. And that leads me to the number one success factor in how I measured our success as an organization and personally in 2024. And then is starting with an attitude of gratitude. And no, it's not a cliche term. It truly means that taking that on and that every day when my feet hit the floor, thanking God for another day to be able to go out and serve him and do the things that he has gifted me to do with the resources and the tools and the people that he is a given to me, and to be a good steward of all of those.

(17:03):

And when you start at that place, not rushed, not stressed, not without a huge sense of urgency, but just being thankful for where I am and the ability to go out and better myself today from where I was and that we were yesterday. It's a different place. And again, having that clarity and showing up different in 2024 that was seen, that was recognized by my staff, by my family, and it's a leadership quality that is contagious to all of those around you that are watching to see that, hey, that guy over there, that gal over there, she is content and things seem to be going well, it seems to be under control, and they seem to be very comfortable where they're at. And that's because I am and I was. It doesn't mean that I don't get rushed, and there's some certain things that need to be done by certain deadlines, and we all feel the pressure of that.

(17:49):

But at the end of the day this year, those things didn't stress me out as much as they used to. As you get older, I think you'll find that the things that we stress about, the things I stressed about in my twenties or my thirties and my forties, or even just those individual events, when you come out on the other side, you recognize, wow, it's a whole lot of growth that happened there. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, and there was blessings that came out on the other side of it. And so we lean into those now and just understand, you know what? Even though it's hard to have an I of gratitude when something like a tax bill or the death of a loved one falls in your lap, in your face with it, to have an I of gratitude and you recognize the good that comes in all of it and that life is messy no matter what, and it's going to be messy.

(18:30):

And if you start the day understanding, hey, it's going to be messy, but I'm thankful for what I have, then you too can maybe show up a little bit differently. And it's amazing when you start from that place every day and you start from a place of gratitude period in your life, that life personally and professionally, it just tends to flow a little bit better when you come from that place. So for 2025, for those of you that are continuing to create your 2025 business plan, or that are honing it or building it as the plane is taking off the ground, it's okay. And hopefully one of those five that we've shared with you today is something that you can add to your goals. The way that you show up, just the emotions, maybe it's just a bullet point, one or two of those as to how you go about creating massive success no matter how you've defined it for yourself and your organization in 2025.

(19:21):

And just know that once again, we are always here to support you. That is why we do this. That is why we love to be able to spend time with you all here on these podcasts with our incredible guests, but also that I get an opportunity to be able to share the things that we've learned in this industry and in life as we go about celebrating this year is going to be a big celebration in our organization with regards to our tenure at the top of the heap as we go through 2025. We hope to be able to share those successes with you as well as we have a surprise announcement coming up here in 2025 that we are going to celebrate and we want you to all be a part of it as well. So with that gang, let's go out and raise this host to 2024 start 2025 with an air of gratitude, but then also with an eye towards up making it the best year ever for you personally and professionally, knowing that we've got your back and we are here for you. So with that, this is Scott Meyers with these Self Storage Podcast, signing off for 2024. Take care everyone.

Announcer (20:20):

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