YouSaid · the spoken record

Pete Warhurst

lines on the record: 99
first: 2022-05-09
most recent: 2022-05-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, we haven't had much of that in our experience here so far. But I remember things like one guy put a car in one and didn't secure it very well. And as it was driving down, the pod delivery truck was driving down the street. It actually rolled out the back door and turned off the back of the truck.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think being blessed and being cared for has gone a long way. I also believe I'm very lucky. I think that being at the right time at the right place, having the courage to take the chance, I tell people all the time it's a great idea. Are you willing to walk away from everything to pursue it? I see my job seriously is just listening to your employees and your partners in the business and coming to an agreement so that we're all focused on the same goal line and showing the growth and sharing in the growth. All my senior staff and many of my employees have stock in the company, so they're motivated to help grow. It's just doing the right thing for people, doing the right thing in life and, you know, having the willpower and the strength to... The chance”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's fun. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm having fun. I would tell you that we've been in this now called two years. I'd say we're at the same level Pods was seven years into the business. Our growth, our capital raising. This year is going to be unbelievable growth. And, you know, it took me 10 years to build pods and ultimately sell it. We're going to be on everybody's radar by the end of this year. I think I've told my investors in the Oppenheimer group out of New York that this is a three to five year program. I think there's a chance that something could happen earlier than the five years. I think it could happen in three or four. But the team I have around me does all the heavy lifting. I'm sort of the guy that points. Let's take it this way. As long as it stays fun, I'm happy to do it.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“$50 million from the Oppenheimer group out of New York. So that capital is going to let us grow nationwide. All the major markets. The franchise question comes up almost on a daily basis, but certainly on a weekly basis. Right now it looks like we probably will enter the franchising later this quarter. That decision isn't finalized, but there's a great likelihood. Even with that much capital, we're going to open 2025 big markets, LA, New York, all the big Chicagos, all the big markets on top of what we already have opened. But that doesn't handle the Boise and the Schenectadies and things like that. And that's a great... Vehicle for a franchisees to get involved. The reservation and the concern around it was how do we avoid the pitfalls that we had in the Pods franchisee?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You pay the storage, you pay one month for the storage, but you're just paying the storage on U-holes. I think we're going to grab more customer share from U-Haul than we will pause, but we will certainly get the portable storage customer as well. But I always ask the question, how does U-Haul compete with a free truck?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So he's at a financial plateau in life that's what he's going to do. attracting the lower income folks, you know, the young families and the startups and some seniors that are on fixed incomes that see the value proposition that we offer. And I say we're really stealing more customers from U-Haul, right? You have to go rent the U-Haul, fill it, drive it to a mini storage, unpack it, and then take the U-Haul back. Or is you get the truck for free. Fill it and you're done.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are, but to be honest with you, I feel our product is a price point product, right? And I kid and I say, Bill Gates is never going to use a pot of Red Rover or a U-hole, right? I can't.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you're not really a truck rental, you're given the truck away for free, number one, and number two, you got the container on there. So he said, let's create a new industry and call it fetchable storage. So you come down and you fetch the truck with a container, you take it home, you load it up, you bring it back, you're done. And let's call the company Red Rover. So fetchable storage brought to you by Red Rover. And we have created a whole new industry this month, just like we did with”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. That's right. Yeah, the same guy that came up with the pod's name, I reached out to him and I said, listen, this is what we're doing. What do you think and stuff? And he came down, he said, well, first of all, Pete, you're not really a pod, okay, or a portable storage company. And you don't want to go against. Pods and portable storage. As you say, there's hundreds of them out there, right? Sure. You're a startup.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. We're giving you a free U-Haul. Don't have to unpack into the mini storage, as you said. Giving you all the advantages of a portable container on a free UL.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I didn't. And then I actually confirmed with the CFO at the time, Are you guys making any money on the deliveries and stuff? And he said, no, we don't make any money. He says, if I can get rid of that piece of the business, I do it in a heartbeat. Not knowing what I was thinking, you know.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. And I was willing to offer to help get it off the ground. I believed it would add a third revenue stream to their business, right? Didn't currently enjoy CEO refused to sign it, so I waited another three, four, five months, and I finally called one of the board members and said, listen, same thing. He refused to sign it. Ended up getting invited to their 20th anniversary. And before I went, I said, listen, I'm glad to come and say a few words at the anniversary, drink your drinks, eat your food. But I got to be honest with you. I'm going to start this business that you don't want to hear about. And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, come to the party, right? And so.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's And what we basically did is we dropped this company, Red Rover, in between U-Haul and Pods. I said earlier we dropped pods between U-Haul and the movers. Now what we did is we dropped a new company, new solution, a new offering for the consumer between U-Haul and Pods that saves the customer money, lets them take everything under their own control, saves us a ton of logistics and headaches, and we don't charge a dime for the truck. So we give the truck the mileage, the tolls, the fuel, and even a free hand truck to the consumer. So it doesn't cost a customer a dime for the truck. Come get it, they take it home.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and that was the key. And so we had to develop a truck that the consumer could drive. So it had to be under the 26,000 GVW”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You eliminate 40, 50 people in a market that are doing that delivery service. And it's a win-win. The customer saves money. They do it at their own time, on their own pace. And the company eliminates a whole division with logistics and all these headaches and problems No, I just felt like it was a win win.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The consumers having to pay two to five hundred dollars for a service that makes them mad that you're not doing a very good job of and you're not making any money on that why have that service? I said I would have said let's develop a truck that the consumer can drive themselves and bring the container home, load it up and bring the truck back so that the company can never be late, can never run over the mailbox. If the customer calls up and says, I ran over the mailbox, the answer is I'm awfully sorry to hear that, but I hope you didn't hurt my truck, you know, you reverse that whole thing.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the consumer is paying $200 to $500, whatever. It depends on the market, whatever it is. And the company's not making any money. So who's winning on that process? And so I went to them and I said, listen, I got this new idea. I said, you know, signing on, compete, non-disclosure. And I'll tell you what it is. And I was looking to make $10 every time.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem with pods is the delivery system. As powerful as it is and as successful as it has been, the company can't make money on the delivery system. So what happens is the customer is paying two, three, four, five hundred dollars for delivery services and the company's trying to dispatch their certified drivers in these complex trucks to make the delivery and they show up late. They put the container in the wrong place. They run over the mailbox. They hit the rose bushes or whatever it is. And it's a huge dissatisfaction for the consumer.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I felt that, let's face it, 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 100 boxes. I don't know how many hundreds of thousands they have now. But obviously, when you do something like that, hindsight's 2020, right? And I look back and I saw two or three things that I thought, you know, if we had done it this way, or if pods would convert to doing it this way, they'd have a much better product and a better customer experience and better margins and all these things.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never stopped thinking about. To make things better, or how to change things. My mother used to say that to me, she says, No matter what it is, you look at it and you say, I can do that better than that. And that is my nature. I look at things and say, there's got to be a better way. So that's sort of what happened.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was. At least I believe I was. It certainly changes your perspective on a lot of things. And you do make life changes and stuff. But I've never been one to jog and run and eat right and things like that. So I have a lot of bad habits. I like to think I corrected a lot of them. The stress didn't help, let's put it that way. And that's really all contradictory to starting another business, right?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was an obvious blockage, and they literally five minutes from the time they opened the ambulance stores to the time I was okay. It was unbelievable.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The body was shutting down, and they couldn't get another IV, and they said we can't Medevac, yeah, because of the weather. So I had a three-hour ride down to a hospital that could treat me. And I swear that ambulance backed up and the doors opened. Within five minutes of opening the ambulance doors to the time they had a stent in me or within five minutes they had a stent in me. I ended up very lucky, no heart damage at all.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was, I was. And I looked up at my wife and I said, I'm having a heart attack. I think she thought I was saying it just so I didn't have to snow as our ski in that crappy weather. But no, I did. And the ambulance came, tried to get an IV in me. I finally said, put it right here or I'll do it type thing. And they got it in. So, you know, I think that the doctor, when he put me in the ambulance to head down, didn't have a lot of faith that I was going to be there. They gave me some medication stuff. They tried to get another IV, and I was already in collapse. My arms, my legs felt like they were going to fall off of me.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually went up to New Hampshire area and went skiing my first run of the day and because it was a cold, you know, the cold air was snowy, rainy and stuff. And I fell and got back up. I honestly believe if I had not had that training, I would not have made it because I would have kept going.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh boy, everywhere. We all have cruises. I don't know if you know that, but I am a pilot, so we would fly around the country and down to the... Caribbean and so forth.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was an ugly divorce. You can imagine money doesn't do good things in the divorce. It makes life difficult. That process took two or three years to go through, and finally settle and try and part friends. Unfortunately, I had a stepdaughter that I adopted and things went south with her and I as well. And so it wasn't fun. And I ended up deciding that maybe just a restart was in order. So I moved over to Orlando. The started fresh over there.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, let's face the, you know, I'm sure 90% of the issues were generated because I was a workahog or I am a workaholk. And yeah, this family. That generated friction, obviously.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“were dealing with hundreds of Yeah, well, and that was part of the reason. The other part of the reason is I had these early investors that had been in now for 10 years. And really had seen no return on their investment and certainly were entitled to it. And so I was taking care of them. And the timing just seemed right and I teamed up with an investment bank that Felt that they could get us a pretty good offer. And in fact, we did. Said, you know what? It's time to retire. I was tired, and why not?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, they just want a bigger piece of the pie and really had no justification for it other than they felt entitlement and stuff. And I told franchises no to many things. I'm willing to make the tough decision, even if it's disappointing to whoever it is, even if it's a friend that I've had for a while.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were saying, yeah, they were almost tag teaming me as to we need you to do this and we need that. And so one guy had come in and petitioned me for something. And, you know, I try and be a team player and I try and be fair and stuff. So I may acquiesce on something. And then a day or two later, somebody else would come in and hit me for this. And of course, if I do it for one, I have to do it for all of them and stuff. And it was just getting exhausting.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did not get bored with it. And, you know, timing is everything. And I think a lot of different factors, the system had grown and the franchises were wonderful, but you always get those bad apples, right?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's how Tampa started, and the next thing we sold Sarasota, and somebody wants to move from Sarasota to clear water, and all of a sudden we're one of the nation's largest moving companies.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 into a new house down in St. Pete. Will you move me down to St. Pete? And we thought, well, why not? Right.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now I think I said I thought we were going to build 100 boxes and put them in this little 15,000 square foot warehouse or whatever it was. And that was going to be my bolt onto the mini storage. It just took off. 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 warehouse. And then all of a sudden people started to want to store them on their driveways during remodeling or for whatever behind their businesses and stuff. So that's another branch.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were, and of course, we're creating a brain while we're doing it and increasing our footprint and attracting customers and investors.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Also in Florida, right in the Facility, but we ended up actually creating seven manufacturing facilities for the containers across the country.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were doing that in Florida. Then we ended up building a more sophisticated manufacturing line for the containers that would start at one end of a big Costco, bigger than Costco. It started... As raw materials and come out the other end is a finished product”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we ended up putting together a fairly low-cost production line that we could just move the lift systems. We didn't build the trucks. We just built the lift systems that sat on the trucks, right? So that became a component manufacturing facility that you welded the pieces together, you slid the rams inside and you connect the hoses and out the other end of the door.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it was a chore. We worked with the city and tried to present our arguments. Truth be known, if I parked the truck with the box on it, I was legal because it was a registered vehicle and I could park it in that place. So I was legal. But if I take it off and get rid of the truck, all of a sudden I'm illegal.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No doubt. I mean, it's an industry that should be regulated, and it is. I was disappointed because Clearwater is where we started. My argument. With them was that you guys don't like mini storage. My mini storage I built was in clear water. And, you know, they just don't like mini storage. They take up nice highway frontage and they're not that appealing or attractive. So they really try and regulate those out of being able to do the zoning and so forth. And then I come up with this business and I say to them, Listen, guys, you don't want mini storage. I'm taking the mini storage business and I'm putting it back in the industrial parks where it belongs and getting it off your highways. Why are you giving me a hard time, right? This day, I think Clearwater is still the hardest city to do business in.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. The way to grow a business without capital is through franchising. Franchising is really a financing tool. So we start a franchising program and people saw it and said, I'm going to take this back to Indianapolis. I'm going to take it back to Baton Rouge, where it is and open it up. And so we start a franchise business and we started selling those which become immediately profitable for the parent company because you really have no cash out. All you collect for services and licenses and royalty fees and things like that. That's how we got around the lack of capital.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're called said, I want to invest in your business. And that just threw me back. You know, I thought, hmm, you know, I'll make a note of that one, right?”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cable TV was just sort of Coming of age, or had just become of age, and then there was this new. Channel Bay News 9 in Tampa Bay, which was just coming out at that time, and it was a 24 hour news channel. And they came to me and they pitched me to advertise on Big News 9. They said, we can control down to the neighborhood where you advertise. What was interesting before I did that, I actually was doing radio, and I had my very first ad on the morning commute. I don't remember what that cost me, but we were all sitting around listening to the ad and stuff and anxious to see if we got any response. We got five, six, seven phone calls off that first radio ad. And two of the people said. Tell me more about this. This sounds like an interesting business. I may want to use you in the other four or five.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I started smaller than that because I thought I was only going to have 100 boxes. Stack room three high. I didn't need Costco.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I insisted that we had two primarily because if one broke, you had to have a backup, right? I insisted we started with two I want to say Tampa Bay now has 40, 30 to 40 somewhere in there.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Exactly. And so we were putting billboards in residential communities, but we disrupted an industry with an intuitive product and we did it in a tourist community. So people would come into Tampa Bay on vacation, drive down the street, or pass the hotel or pass the guy, whatever it is, and see these boxes. And they'd say, I get it. I get it. And literally, they, they, uh... Stop the vacations and came and visited us.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we disrupted an industry moving in storage industry with a new concept that was price point in between them, had a lot of flexibility. And so that was step one. Step two, we were sticking these things in people's driveways and they were huge billboards. Think of another business you can put a billboard in somebody's driveway for six months.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did raise enough money in Tampa Bay grew. We started in Pinellas County and spread over to Tampa and stuff. And, you know, I tell people one of the reasons, 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 guys. Yeah. And the truck rental people, U-Hole. If you think about it back in those days before portable storage, if you want to move from house A to house B, you had those two options. Neither of those two options had or even have great reputations, right? I mean, they're not the best experiences in the world”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the trucks were built. There were a lot of materials, but we were building them ourselves, buying stock trucks and building them ourselves. And so we could build them and we could finance them. That's an asset that we could finance. The asset we couldn't finance, we leased the warehouses, but the containers, you take a wooden box that some guy built in his driveway to a bank and say, I need to buy 10,000 of these or build 10,000 of these. 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. That was the real weightlifting is getting those taken care of.”
2022-05-09 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · PODS & Red Rover: Pete Warhurst · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT