Man
very single person on this planet has experienced some kind of hardship. It’s so commonplace that we all deal with it the best way we can, then move on with our lives. And since we also have routines and obligations, it’s really easy to forget how fortunate we are when something is going well, such as having a loving family, a secure home, or being in good health. If you’re lucky, you have all three.
But AJ Osborne doesn’t take anything for granted. Even the simplest of actions, such as getting out of bed or going out for a walk, are huge reminders that the little things in life are actually the big things.
He spent a lot of time outdoors, enjoying the mountains and fly fishing in the backcountry. “I loved it. It was rural, but Boise was relatively close by, and even though it was a small city when I was growing up, it felt like we kind of had everything.”
very single person on this planet has experienced some kind of hardship. It’s so commonplace that we all deal with it the best way we can, then move on with our lives. And since we also have routines and obligations, it’s really easy to forget how fortunate we are when something is going well, such as having a loving family, a secure home, or being in good health. If you’re lucky, you have all three.
But AJ Osborne doesn’t take anything for granted. Even the simplest of actions, such as getting out of bed or going out for a walk, are huge reminders that the little things in life are actually the big things.
He spent a lot of time outdoors, enjoying the mountains and fly fishing in the backcountry. “I loved it. It was rural, but Boise was relatively close by, and even though it was a small city when I was growing up, it felt like we kind of had everything.”
By the time he got to high school, he realized that school wasn’t his favorite place. “I was dyslexic and I had ADHD. School wasn’t set up for me, even if I worked hard. So my parents said I could test out if I could. I took the high school equivalency test and passed it, so my freshman year was my only year of high school.”
While in college, he went on a mission trip to São Paulo, where he lived with Brazilians and learned to speak Portuguese fluently. He was so immersed in the language that he even started dreaming in it. It’s a time in his life he remembers fondly. “I loved it with all my heart, and I wanted to stay to live there forever, but my parents wanted me to come back after the two-year mission because they wanted me to finish school and get my life started.”
Soon after going back to Idaho to start his career, he met his wife, Tessa. “When I first started selling insurance, I only earned commissions; and at first I didn’t make anything, so we lived off the tips from the restaurant Tessa worked at. And once I started making money, we’d live on a fraction of the income because it was never steady and we wanted to be responsible with our money.” Thinking back on this time in his life, he sees it as a really good experience for someone who’s an entrepreneur. “We lived far below our means, and I think that helped us develop some very good skills about cash flow and money management. Those are good things to learn as a young person.”
Later on, he went back to Boise to work with his dad at his dad’s brokerage firm. They sold the firm and he worked for a national insurance company, where he ran their U.S. division. It was the first time he ever had a salary and could enjoy the stability that an assured paycheck can bring. However, it was a short run. Two years into it, he became paralyzed from head to toe and put on life support. He spent so much time hospitalized and unable to move that he lost his job.
This part of the story feels like a really loud, almost deafening record scratch—the plot twist you didn’t see coming. But what happened next is nothing short of a miracle.
During a trip with Tessa, their fourth baby, and his parents, he started feeling sick. “We were in California for the PGA tour,” Osborne recalls. “The night before we came home, I went out for a run in the golf course, but I couldn’t get very far because I felt weak and was out of breath.”
The family traveled back to Boise the next day, and they went to a friend’s wedding. The day after that, Osborne was planting trees and had to stop to throw up. “I thought that maybe I was sick because I had been working so much, been traveling, then went to a wedding, and was exerting myself planting trees,” he says. “I went to the doctor, and they told me I was fine, so we went back home.”
The moment was terrifying for obvious reasons, and it was compounded by the fact that the doctors wouldn’t find the cause of it. There was no diagnosis, yet he could only communicate by blinking his eyes.
Eventually, the doctors discovered that he was suffering from Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), an autoimmune disorder that causes the immune system to attack the central nervous system. “What happened was that my immune system thought my nervous system was a virus and it ripped it apart, until it shut down my brain. I was 33. One minute I was fine, the next my legs didn’t work, and the next I was on life support.” Sobering at breakneck speed doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Following this medical mishap, he and his family practically lived at the hospital. “My youngest child, Theo, was still a baby, and the only way I could interact with him was when Tessa would place him next to me on my pillow,” recalls Osborne. “He’d reach out his little hands to touch my face.”
He had started breathing on his own again, but doctors didn’t know if he was going to live. Eventually, there was nothing else the medical team could do for him, so he was transferred to a rehab facility. “At this point, I had feelings in my fingers again, and they trained me to live in a wheelchair,” says Osborne. “I ended up staying there for a month, until the insurance company kicked me out.”
His daughter, Alexa, would come over to lay next to him and cuddle. His oldest son, Tristan, would hang out with him in the mornings before school, move his legs, and talk to him.
The physical therapists told him he’d never be able to walk again, but something extraordinary happened when his son Atlas kept prodding him to walk—not because he believed in miracles but because he remembered his life with his dad before the illness paralyzed him and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t being as active anymore. “He would want me to hold him and carry him like I used to,” says Osborne. “When I used my crutches, he’d say, ‘No, daddy!’ and push them away so I’d have to try to do those things on my own. He really pushed me.”
Trying to lift his legs to go up the stairs was hard. It took him a few years to be able to do it.
Eventually, he strengthened his legs enough to start walking without the crutches. “That was my goal when I kept trying,” Osborne says. “I just wanted to walk.”
At some point, he was able to do it without leg braces. Today, he can walk on his own. “I’m much better than anyone ever expected me to be. I still have to deal with pain, and I still don’t have total functionality of my legs. I can’t run, but nobody would ever know. This is more than we could’ve ever imagined.”
The more he thought about it, the clearer the answer became. “I was in the hospital on Christmas Eve,” he recalls. “It was snowing outside my window, and I was so excited to go home the next day and see my kids open their presents. I knew my wife was going to spoil them.”
While he didn’t really have to work, he decided to teach other people about how to become more financially independent through self-storage. He started the Self Storage Income podcast. He wrote two books on the subject to teach others how to invest in self-storage to become more financially independent (Growing Wealth in Self Storage and Growing Wealth in Self Storage 2.0). “I say self-storage saved my financial life. Even when I couldn’t work, my assets were working and paying me.”
His books became best-sellers. “I was really surprised about that, because I thought no one would care; and now I have over 100,000 podcast listeners every month because people see the value in learning about investing in the industry.”
And he wasn’t doing that for an additional stream of income. He sold the books only at the price Amazon requires so that they can get their share. “I made nothing from it because I wanted to give away all the knowledge for free,” says Osborne.
In a world where financial literacy is not as widespread as it should be, every educational tool helps. “At some point in their lives, everybody will lose the ability to work; and it doesn’t have to be due to something as drastic as what happened to me. But we all get older and will have to retire. You’ll either have enough money or trust the government to cover just a bit.”
He also became a founding member of Store Local and participates on the board of Tenant, Inc.
And no story is truly complete without mentioning the pets. “We have to Bernese mountain dogs, Oakley and Teddy Bear.” Don’t let the name of the latter fool you. He’s 145 lbs, but he’s still their little bear.
It’s been eight years since that fateful day that upended the entire family. “A lot of people have asked me if I ever get mad at God, or if I hate that now I live in pain every day,” says Osborne, “but honestly, I’m so overcome with gratitude—it outweighs everything else. Being on life support, not being able to communicate, and now look at how much better I’ve gotten. I’m literally so overwhelmed with gratitude for everything that I have. I feel very, very fortunate.”