The Exchanges

Q Right. So the first challenge is you got to come up with the box, right? And so you knew how to build things, right? You know how to build things. So, so did you do it yourself? Did you bring some friends in? What did, how did you just build a prototype?

A Well, you know, Dave Revelle, my paramedic partner and the fire union president and stuff, helped me build the mini storage. And then he, uh, he was with me then. And so I was bouncing these ideas off of him and he said, well, let me, Draw up a box, you know, and, and, you know, he probably, uh, is a much better woodworker than I am, but, uh, he, uh, he optimized, uh, the dimensions of, uh, off-the-shelf materials and said, we can build a box this way, and we think it'll hold up, and, you know, we can build a hundred of these, and I could do the math and say, okay, that's what it's gonna cost to build a hundred of these things, and so that's what we set off to do.

AI assessment note: “Dave Revelle, my paramedic partner... helped me... Draw up a box”

Q Why, why mini storage? What, what was attractive to you about mini storage?

A Well, the number one thing is that you only need one or two employees. So I thought, okay, that's a lot better than what it came from, right? Um, so having one or two employees, um, it was a recurring revenue. Um, you know, you didn't have one key Customer. You had 500 customers, so if you lost, you know, five or 10 of them in a week, it's no big deal. You, you replace them, and you know, it was a high return. I mean, the, the margins were good, and I just started looking at it, and I had a coincidence, uh, you know, an eighth of a mile from my house was a four acre, three acre piece of property that was sitting there vacant, and I thought, well, what if I put in any storage?

AI assessment note: “Well, the number one thing is that you only need one or two employees.”

Q dumped, right? Especially demolition stuff. Dumped into the container, and then eventually a truck comes, picks up the container, and then takes it to a dump. So that concept was out there. But you're, essentially, what you started to think of was, wait, what if we take that concept and turn it into a storage unit in front of someone's house that we just drop off and then pick up?

A Exactly, yeah. And I definitely looked at the big steel cargo containers, and I thought to myself, you know, that's not the right container. I said, well, my wife, I used yours, the litmus test, right? Well, my wife put our stuff in that, in that steel container. Rusty steel container. And I, I said, no, that's not the right container for us. And internet didn't really provide anything. And I thought, well, you know, I'm sort of into building and things. I bet you I can build a box. And I knew that, uh, I knew that the, the most popular mini storage was a 10 by 10. So, you know, I thought, well, what if I do a 12 by eight box, which sort of met the dimensions of plywood, um, I felt my wife would put our stuff in these wooden, nice wooden boxes that were clean and fresh, and, and so the next challenge was, you know, how do I deliver them? And then I had to, before I did any of that, including build the boxes, I had to say, you know, what, what do the economics look like?

AI assessment note: “Exactly, yeah. And I definitely looked at the big steel cargo containers”

Q 7000 cities in more than 40 plus states in the United States. I mean, that is a massive expansion from going from nothing to 300 franchise locations in six years. Initially, when you thought of this idea in 1997 and worked on it, was, was it in your mind going to be a Florida local business? Or did you really think this is going to be a national, international business?

A No, I, uh, I think I said that I thought we were going to build a hundred boxes and put them in this little 15,000 square foot warehouse or whatever it was, and, um, you know, that was going to be my bolt-on to the, to the mini storage, and, you know, it just took off, and, and then what was really happening is the consumer was dragging us into more and more Options. I mean, when we started out, we thought all the containers were going to come back to the, to the warehouse, and then all of a sudden, people started to want to store them on their, in their driveways during remodeling, or for whatever, behind their businesses and stuff, so that's another branch. And then the next thing you know is, you know, we loaded somebody up, or gave somebody in Clearwater container, and they said, well, I'm moving to a new house down in St. Pete, will you move me down to St. Pete? And we thought, well, why not, right?

AI assessment note: “I thought we were going to build a hundred boxes and put them in this little”

Q All right. So at this time, right, these nine one one systems are rolling Out across the country. And at some point, I guess, uh, your fire chief comes up to you and asks if you want to help with the, the new system for your area, right?

A Exactly. So the chief came to me and said, Pete, would you be interested in helping me implement the nine-on-one system? I said, well, sure. I mean, I'm willing to look at it and stuff. He says, well, what do you know about computers? And I said, not a damn thing. He said, are you willing to learn? I said, sure. So, The, uh, the goal was we had, uh, I think it was 23 or 21 fire districts within Pinellas County, which is St. Pete Cora, basically, and I think there was 21 independent. So anyway, the, the problem with nine-one-one is, is they're gonna, people are gonna be able to dial that three-digit number, and it's got a ring somewhere, and, you know, they didn't know where to, to ship that Call or whether to the 23 or 21, whatever it was, departments, where do I, where do I transfer that customer to?

AI assessment note: “Exactly. So the chief came to me and said, Pete, would you be interested”

Q To, uh, help, and you go to him, and you say, hey, what, what do we do here?

A Right, right. He was involved in building the boxes, and, uh, we started talking about it, and, and, uh, You know, and so we went through version after version after version after version, and I think even today they still make minor tweaks to it, but, uh, we ended up building a lift system that looks a lot like a bed frame, you know, with the posts and the rails and stuff, and, uh, somebody fondly calls it, uh, uh, Podzilla. It evolved into a piece of equipment that, um, Has never dropped. They've done over four million pickups and deliveries. They've never dropped a container, um, never had a bottom fall out of a container. So the containers were built well, and the machinery was built well. And, uh, um, that's a pretty good testimonial.

AI assessment note: “we ended up building a lift system that looks a lot like a bed frame”

Q you'll be 70 in twenty-twenty-two. Um, I mean, you're a startup. You got another startup going. And that's a lot. That's a lot. Right? And there's a lot of, I mean, it's a lot of time. It's a lot of moving parts. It's a lot of logistics. You've done it before. But clearly you're not doing this for the money at this point. You're doing this for some other reason.

A No. It's fun. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm having fun. I would tell you that, you know, we've been in this now call two years. I'd say we're at the same level pods was seven years into the business. You know, our growth, our capital raising, um, this year is going to be unbelievable growth. Um, and, uh, you know, it took me 10 years to build pods and ultimately sell it. Uh, we're going to be on everybody's radar by the end of this year. Um, I think, you know, I've told my investors and the Alpenheimer group, uh, Add in New York that, uh, you know, this is a, uh, a three to five year program. I think, uh, there's a chance that something could happen earlier than the five years. I think it could happen in three or four. Um, but you know, the team I have around me, uh, does all the, the heavy lifting, you know, I'm sort of the guy that points, let's take it this way. And, and so, uh, as long as it stays fun, I'm, I'm happy to do it.

AI assessment note: “No. It's fun. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm having fun.”

Q And was that enough to, to like prototype or build the first truck?

A Oh yeah, the trucks were built. Um, there were a lot of materials, but the, we were building them ourselves, uh, buying stock trucks and building them ourselves. And, uh, you know, so we could build them and we could finance them. That's an asset that we could finance. The, the, the asset we couldn't finance, we leased the warehouses, but the, uh, the containers, you take that, like a wooden box that some guy built in his driveway to a bank and say, I need to buy, you know, 10,000 of these or build 10,000 of these. Yeah. They look at it and say, what am I going to do with that thing if you don't make it, right? And of course, nobody had ever heard of portable storage before this time, and so financing those containers was a bear, you know, virtually impossible, virtually impossible, without personal guarantees and things like that, so that was the, the, the real weightlifting is, is getting those taken care of, but, uh, Uh, we, we did raise enough money and Tampa Bay grew. Uh, we started in Pinellas County and spread over to Tampa and stuff. And, you know, I tell people one of the reasons, three, three major reasons why pods grew and was so successful. And number one is we dropped right in between two major industries, the full service movers, the Mayflowers, the Allied, those, those guys.

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah, the trucks were built. Um, there were a lot of materials”

Q this new business, right? So you could completely not do any of this stuff, but, but you can't get here. So tell me the genesis of, of, of the next idea. I think initially you thought, all right, I want to work with pods again. I miss those guys. Let me go back and see what, what I can do with them. What was the idea you brought to them?

A Yeah, I, I, I, I felt that You know, let's face it, we, we started an industry and built it from the ground up and didn't know what we were going to grow up to be, right? I thought we were going to have a hundred boxes. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands they have now, but obviously when you do something like that, hindsight's twenty-twenty, right? And, and I look back and I, I saw two or three things and I thought, you know, if we had done it this way, or if pods would convert to doing it this way, um, They'd have a much better product and a better customer experience and, um, you know, better margins and all these things, so.

AI assessment note: “I saw two or three things and I thought, you know, if we had done it this way”