Suncoast Business Forum; Peter Warhurst

The song is a special presentation of w. we do YOU Tampa St. Petersburg Sarasota Every office has one. The chatterbox that Guiseppe. But no office ever had and she. Just said you name it she got 48 hours. Pretty tough stuff. If you go to the dictionary and look up pods you'll learn the traditional definition is streamlined enclosures or protective compartments. But if you visit the Tampa Bay headquarters of a fast growing company called pods you'll learn a newer definition of portable on demand storage. And you'll also learn the pods is revolutionizing the way we store and transport all sorts of things. You're about to meet the founder of pods who's building the company into a global phenomenon. Up next. On the Suncoast business for. Have you ever seen a business opportunity that was just begging to be filled and you knew

just what it would take. Well how often have you acted on that hunch. Most people never do. But former Pinellas County paramedic Peter Warhurst is wired differently than most people and that's how we build pods from a small storage company into a fast growing multi-million dollar enterprise in just 10 years. Peter welcome to the Suncoast business form. Well thanks for having me Jeff. Nice to be here. It's great to have you. It's you know it seems that it's only been. Just a few years since we began to see these brightly colored storage units with the big bold letters pods on the side of those storage units. How big is your market how many pods are there out there today. Well we have about 100 20000 pods out there will put another 40000 service this year. As far as the size of our market we're up in Canada or in Australia throughout the U.S. and we seem to be getting pulled into a lot of different new market opportunities and so we don't really know how

big we can actually grow this business. How many cities do you figure actually have access to pods in America were in 25000 cities give or take. We service about 200 10 200 20 million of the 300 million US population and we're adding some every month. Now if you were to compare pods to the life cycle of a person of a human being what stage of that lifecycle what stage of growth would you say the companies that right now we have were in our infancy who were still learning a lot. Refining our process is growing and as I say being pulled into new opportunities so you know when you think of businesses we were only eight nine years old 10 years old so we've got a lot to learn and a lot of growth left in us. But we're going to talk about that further but. But you did not start out that your dream was not always to be in the portable on demand storage business in fact this is your third or fourth career. This business pods Let's go back a little bit.

Let's let's go back to where you started where you grew up. Family and you know what it was like when you were a kid. While I was born raised up in Heinz in Long Island. Went to high school there high and high school I have two brothers two sisters that are scattered around now my folks live down in Venice so they're nearby. I have a sister locally but I want to wait a college for one year and figured out that wasn't for me and came back and moved to Florida in 73. I've been here for quite a long time. But let's talk about your child what good would your dad do. Well my dad actually had a tough career he was in the poultry distribution business he commuted into the city every morning at two o'clock in the morning you get home at 5 o'clock at night have a quick dinner and be in bed so he could be back in the city at 2 o'clock again so he had a tough life but very close family which remain close today.

And you know my mom was a school teacher in the local school system. Live near the water did a lot of time on the beach and things like that. Did you work as a kid were there any events you know while you were growing up that had a profound impact on you growing up. Yeah worked as a kid you know. My mom would love to tell you that's the answer to that question I started shoveling snow when mown grass when I was six or seven years old you know whatever I could do a paper route and things like that. I think probably the most impactful thing that ever happened to me was a tragic accident I was working in a gas station and they heard the wheels of tires of a car screech and a small child got hit by a car and it was right there you know 10 feet 20 feet from me and I ran there and there I realized I didn't know what to do I couldn't help him. And so I ran inside and I called the local fire department time and. That had a pretty big impact on me and my life I believe and I joined the local fire department shortly after that.

We were in first aid and that sort of carried through with me down here in Florida. The reaction of course that's a terrible tragedy and a shocking thing for a young person experience. What lasting impact do you think that had on you and your personality. Well I think I clearly learned that. I want to be able to help in a time of need I want to be able to respond quickly I want to be able think on my feet and that's truly what firefighters paramedics police officers do. And joining the local fire department there is a volunteer I found that opportunity presented itself and. Wanted to join the city fire department and do that but I was fortunate enough to get hired down here in Largo right after I moved and. Ended up being one of the first paramedics in the Tampa Bay area actually in the state. One of the first certainly for the city of Largo and. I tell people that's the most rewarding thing I ever did in my life and if I could go back to being a paramedic tomorrow I'd do it. It was that rewarding for me.

So in 1973 you moved from New York down here to the west coast Largo and got got your first job as a firefighter or were you a paramedic at the time. When I joined there weren't paramedics. There was just firefighters in 73 I think was 75 the paramedics were introduced and I remember the fire chief told us and saying we had to get into the rescue business and he said he wasn't really looking forward to it but he wants some volunteers in my hand I know was the first one to go up you know because that's what I really that's what I was passionate about. And so I went to paramedic school and back then if you could fog a mirror and pass the state exam you could get a job anywhere in the state. As a paramedic and once you finally trained became a paramedic. How was it the right choice for you. Did it do for you emotionally and psychically what you wanted it to. I think so I think so I felt really good about myself as I say it was the most rewarding thing. You know even through all that training and all that experience the only time I really got upset was when I was involved a child and you know like I couldn't help a child it was

too late one. But you know I felt that it was a very respected job and I felt that I could come in and make a difference. It felt good. Now back then the Nine one one system was developed and that had a pretty profound impact on your life. So you know we've all kind of taken nine one one for granted when there's an emergency call 9 1 1 but this created an opportunity for you right. It sure did. It sure did I was a paramedic in the field. My partner happened to be the union president of the fire union and the fire chief came out and asked him if he knew anything or anybody that knew anything about computers. And he said no he said but how about Pete. And he was my partner and so the fire chief asked me you know if I would be willing to learn about computers and I said Sure what are we talking about. And at that. There was 23 fire dispatch centers in Pinellas County there was a dozen police centers dispatch centers and they were bringing one into the county and

they needed to coordinate all that so that there was one dispatch center and so the fire chief at Largo at the time was given the task of trying to consolidate those and he asked me to help him. And so I quit running around in a big white box some putting Band-Aids on people and start to learn about computers and went out and met with other fire departments and tried to teach them and get them on the system and together we were able to get the first one center in Pinellas County put together. And as a result of this experience it created a business opportunity for you because Largo and Pinellas County weren't the only municipalities that needed to have a coordinated communication system to my right you're absolutely right. We had. An outside consultant. That was a software engineer and he ended up developing the software based on the input that we were getting from the fire departments in the in the systems integration. And I worked side by side with him learned how to make computers talk to each

other and we opened fire station doors and trip printers in the fire stations and we figured all that out on our own and he was smart enough to make a deal with the county that he get got to keep the rights to the software. So after Pinellas County got up and running. They start to show it off and we would show it off and before we knew it we were selling the systems all over the country and so I had to leave the fire department and the fire chief and the three of us set off to conquer the world in the not on software business and we did well we. We grew to the second largest software provider for not one services at the time. I built it over a course of seven eight years and then sold it off to Bell Atlantic at the time. It was it was a good experience for us. Well it's one thing to be a municipal employee and to be a paramedic and do all those things is another thing to be an entrepreneur and be a partner in a software company and grow it to become the size of a company that you describe. What kind of

lessons did you learn along the way as an entrepreneur. Well clearly I think the biggest lesson was our success was almost our demise we were able to grow that software company because it was a good product. It was known as the best fire dispatch system in the country. And so we were able to sell it very very quickly. Getting it installed and implemented and trained and serviced and then closing out the contracts was another thing the sales group was able to outperform the the actual implement implementation group so you know it was nearly our demise and we were almost forced to have to sell the business so that we could bring in additional capital and additional talent to help us fulfill our contracts and and so that was probably the number one lesson. Number two is. Rely on the people around you get some smart people around you. Important lessons for any entrepreneur. Absolutely. Now about 1992 you sold that

business bought it. You stayed for a while but eventually left. You were tired you're 40 years old how did you do it retirement. I'm not real good at retirement. My golf game got a little better. But yeah I thought I had retired I had just built a nice house and actually my first year retirement I was building the house and playing golf and then once the house was done you know you can only play so much golf. You know a place and you've also got bored you know too young. Forty to retire. But it was a nice break. And that's really what led us in to the pods to do traditional mini storage and there was an empty piece of property a block from my home. This is a Pinellas County Pinellas County right over near the Bellevue Biltmore over by the hotel there and built a traditional Mini Storage negotiate on a piece of property and the gentleman that had the property didn't. Once he heard I was going to many stores didn't want to sell me the property more he wanted to be my partner so I said great. You know I was going to build a mini

storage I was going to have two employees and I was going to go back to playing golf the Ellen. It shows you how smart I'm not I guess. Because I like my golf game is starting to stink in the. Morgue a lot more hours than I anticipated but well how did how did a fairly simple business a mini storage business turn into pods which is now with thousand employees strong and growing. How did you go from that one mini storage to where. Take a step or a question or a question. You know the mini storage was fun we hadn't even opened it yet and we said well when we go find another piece of property and you know palace County is a very very dense. And to find the right piece of property and that's that's crucial in the many storage industries you're going to have to have the right piece of property with the right highway frontage the right zoning at the right price. And we kept driving around driving around we couldn't find a piece of property and literally driving down the street. My partner said what if we brought the story to the house and we happen to be behind a box van and you know.

Truck basically and we said what if we brought the story to the house and. We started looking on the internet nobody was really doing it there was a big steel cargo containers that you know were at construction sites and things but we were thinking more of the residential. Customer. So. Our first challenge was the box. And we went and looked all over the country on the internet and couldn't really find a box and we thought we'd have 50 to 100 boxes I mean this is how big we thought this business was going to be. And so we said well what the heck we can build 50 boxes or 100 boxes and so my paramedic partner was actually had actually gone with me through the software business and I actually helped me build the Mini Storage and he and I set off to build a box and we recruit another firefighter friend and we had to build the first box in this guy's driveway and then we had to figure out how to pick it up. And so that was the next challenge and. This firefighter friend is very. Ingenious actually and so

we looked at overhead cranes we looked at the piggy back forklifts the Moffitt with systems we looked at the roll off techniques. None of those really fit the residential environment so. This buddy of mine and I engineer the lift system that we affectionately call pods Hill and so before we knew it we were in. We had 50 or 100 boxes and a lift system and we were going to set off to rent boxes. Simple enough scenes. All right so you had your Had your boxes a little bit bigger than just owning a you know a storage facility now you had some portable storage. How did it turn into such a big thing. You know I tell people all a couple things. One is I think we were blessed that we opened in an Alice County very high tourism in Pinellas County and we had a product that was very intuitive. And so when you have high tourism and you have a very intuitive product. It seemed to catch on very quickly and and caused us to grow rapidly and

I think the real first eye opener was when we did our first radio commercial. It was a morning commute to D.J. did a little one minute here's a snoop concept. And we listened to the to the deejay and the phone rang soon as he finished in three four five people said Tell me more about this pod thing I think oh alright one and three four five people said I won't buy stock in your company or I want to buy a franchise. And that's a very first our first attempt of putting this product out on the street. So you know I have an intuitive product that we were introducing in an age old and you know the moving industry is you know a hundred years old and I've been doing it the same way. And they don't have the best of reputations and you know truck ran all over all of us have gone down and rented a truck. You know in the morning and tried to get home and do what we need to do and get the truck back without going into a penalty phase and things like that. And so it was a product that was a perfect fit for an industry that needed it.

All right so you began to see that there was some interest but it was still a local concept had it all of a sudden you realize you know maybe 50 to 100 units in the local business maybe maybe we can make this something a whole lot bigger We're not talking Internet not only nationally now you're talking internationally how did you make that leap. Nice sized business to what we're talking about today. We did and you know when we rented the first four five boxes we thought they would just come back to our warehouse and we'd storm and bring it back to the customer also and somebody said well I will move from Clearwater down to St. Petersburg and we said well sure we can we down there we said it in a driveway in two or three people would see the sign and get it into a product and they call and they'd rent one they'd moved from St. Pete to Tampa and then from Tampa to Lakeland. And before we knew it we were servicing all the Tampa Bay area and we were building boxes fast as we could build them and sometimes they'd actually be going out with what paint and so we start a franchise program and we really use the franchise model as our growth

tool. The pods business is extremely capital intensive and to grow as fast as we have and as far as we have we need a lot of additional capital in the franchise model is really what it was. And so you know we never had to advertise for franchises when people saw it I could always tell when a new franchise opened because all the sudden the phone would start ringing from that community whether it was Orlando or Minneapolis you know people would start calling from the community saying Oh tell me about this business. I want to invest I want to buy a franchise and so it was a little like the gremlins when they poured water on they kept multiplying that's sort of what happened. Every time we'd open a new site on the other franchise it would get sold somewhere else and. In the course of about six seven years we we took over the US. Now even though you're franchising and you have locations all around the country you maintain a lot of that control because even if a franchisee has say Phoenix that phone number they call it's going to you.

Absolutely. Absolutely it's a little bit of a control freak want to know what's going on out there but it's also to maintain the customer experience and trying to give the same experience over and over again and so we have now three call centers one here in Tampa Bay one in Dallas and one in Australia. And we'll continue to add a few more as we go around the globe. But no matter where you are in the country all the calls come into our phone switch here even for Australia coming to our phone switch here and then go back out to Australia. And so we can guarantee that at least that the phone conversation and the sales pitch is consistent we're sending the same message and we're we're describing the product in a consistent manner and we can monitor the quality and the actual performance of the people that way and and the billing collections done through us all the training is done through us and then we go out and we actually inspect the franchisees and make sure that they are holding up to those standards as we go forward and I think that was a good decision early on is to centralize those

services so that we could we could monitor how we were doing. Well now that you are getting your handle around the big box phenomenon and getting distribution beginning to spread around the world what do you see as the future. Well it's a great question I almost hesitate to say it. You know a few years ago I said that we were going to move people across country and my franchisees looked at me and was wondering if I had been drinking or what it was what I was doing and just recently I've told people that I believe were the next U.P.S. or FedEx. I believe that if we can empower the housewife and empower the small business owner to ship virtually any product any way or that and do it simply and I use FedEx as a great example I mean we all know that you can take a document put it in a FedEx envelope drop it in a box and it'll show up across country overnight on time as promised. It's very complex how that happens but it happens and we have faith in it and we made it simple we made it simple

for everybody to do. If we can number one educate the consumer that the power of pods is there to do this and make it a simple transaction so that if I'm sending my son or daughter off to college or if I've got some exercise equipment you know hasn't gone to a good year so far you know I can sell it on e-bay to somebody from Tampa or send to St. Peter or whatever and sell it to somebody in Seattle you know and ship it there if you're over in Europe and your wife sees antique china hutch that she just can't live without and you're in a small town a small shop owner you just order you wrap it up and it shows up at your home in Clearwater and and we make it simple for the consumer to ship large items anywhere in the world and I think that's where we're going to take this. Well that's going to involve a lot more capital and and that's one of the areas that you have always been involved but of obviously spending more of your time in the capitalization of the company

and developing growth strategies. So the question really is as a as a manager what do you see as as your evolution you know you you've obviously been hands on you've built it in the driveway you got you marketed in the beginning have set up systems now for operating with a thousand people. As a as a entrepreneur and a business person how do you see yourself evolving. Well I think that's a great question I think probably my best attribute is that I'm a quick study that I can pick up on concepts and technology fairly quickly. But I'm also while you're right I've built pods I've driven the truck I've answered the phone you know of I've done all of those tests I've surrounded myself with a tremendous team. My part one partner from my software company is my CIO and I know what he's out there doing I've got a great CEO and and I just have a tremendous team around me so I'm able to take the hands off now and there's a lot that goes on isn't if I went to a franchise

conference. Annual conference about two weeks ago and I learned things that were doing that I didn't know we were doing so I've I've learned to back away from it and focus on the things I need to be focusing on and what I tell people is I just I'm pointing in the direction I want to take the company I want to all be aimed at the same target and I've got a great management team around me helping me get it there. So if we're all sort of pointing at the same direction at the same target I think I've got the team to get us there. Well since you left being a paramedic you've had several very great successes as an entrepreneur. What would you say differentiates an entrepreneur. From people who are not entrepreneurs. Wow. I think that's a great question too. You know I think every one of us comes up with an idea that we think will just set the world on fire. And some of them are are actually that good of an idea and some of them are maybe just a little smoke and mirrors and stuff and we're kidding ourselves and I think the first trick is as an

individual figuring out which is the right opportunity to pursue and separating it from all the other ideas that you may have had three o'clock in the morning. Separate that out picking the right opportunity. That's the first step. The second step is having the courage to go for it and you said that in your opening remarks that you know a lot of us have good ideas but haven't the guts to go for it. It's a bold move I left a paramedic career to this day still passionate about 20 something years I'm still passionate about it but I left that because there I saw the opportunity in the software business. It's a it takes a lot of guts and then just having the. The business savvy to execute well is the final step but I think the first two step or the crucial finding the right opportunity and having the guts to go for it. We have less than one minute to go but I want to ask you about philanthropy. Even though your company is really a fast growing startup philanthropy has been important to you on my right.

Oh absolutely absolutely. I'm a softie I shouldn't say that on TV because I get a dozen requests but we have a committee now that we do all our charitable work through but even when we were losing money we did a program called Run for the kids at Christmas and the police departments would go through Toys R Us and gather up toys and get them through a cash register and we would pay for those and I think we gave away a hundred thousand dollars worth of toys our first year and my board said what do you do. Pete we're not making enough money to do we're not making any money so it's near and dear to my heart. Yeah. Well Pete I'm for a draft time. It's been great having you as our guest. If you have any questions or you have any comments you can feel free to contact us at SPF at W edu dot org. Thanks for joining us. The Suncoast business for. Every office has one. But chatterbox. But no office.

Ever. Lets you name it. She got 48 hours. Stop. It.