Building Success From the Ground Up With PODS Founder Pete Warhurst

Advice for building a successful business

• We all have these great ideas that come along. The challenge is picking out the right one. 
• You’ve got to have the guts to go for it. Have that fortitude to keep moving along.
• Surround yourself with people smarter than you. With a lot of highly-skilled talent, you can hire the right people to provide guidance and help you navigate challenges.
• Work ethic is contagious. Set the example, culture, and expectations and you’ll get where you need to.
• Success is a product of risk and effort. You don’t start at the top; you must climb the mountain. Nobody is going to do it for you. 
• Success doesn’t happen overnight. You are going to have bad days. You grow and improve by dealing with adversity, not by running from it.

Additional resources

• Redrovers.com
• How to develop a career plan
• How to set career goals
• Tips for restarting your career after a break

Transcript

Pete Newsome  00:01
You’re listening to the Finding Career Zen Podcast. I’m Pete Newsome. And my guest today is Pete Warhurst. Pete is is an interesting guest for me today. 

Pete Newsome  00:09
And one I’m very excited to have is the founder and former CEO of Pods, and the current CEO and founder of Red Rover Moving and Storage. Pete, welcome. How are you today?

Pete Warhurst  00:19
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on. 

Pete Newsome  00:22Tthank you so much for taking the time. I’m going to just get right into this because you could be doing anything in the world right now. 

Pete Newsome  00:29
You sold the company that you started for a lot of money. I’ll say by any standard a lot of money. Hopefully, you don’t mind me saying that. 

Pete Newsome  00:39
But why are you still at this gets I think anyone who hasn’t had the level of success you’ve had wanders out as I do, you could be doing anything.

Pete Warhurst  00:49
I got asked that just yesterday, again, I get asked frequently and stuff. And the only thing is it’s the same reason my blood pressure is so high, my doctor says it’s my personality, right? 

Pete Warhurst  00:58
And I’m a type A and, you know, we posit is very successful, we did a lot of things, right? But Hindsight is 2020. And, there are a lot of things we could have done better. 

Pete Warhurst  01:10
And, you know, that’s really what drove me to start Red Rover and stuff. I literally went up to pods, the CEO, and offered this share the idea with him. 

Pete Warhurst  01:22
And now he’s looking to make five or $10 a container every time they went to the container, stay retired, you know, that was my ambition to stay retired. But he said no thanks. 

Pete Warhurst  01:33
And he wouldn’t sign a non-complete non-disclosure. 

Pete Warhurst  01:35
And I waited another couple of months and called one of the board members on pods from the investment group that owned them at the time. 

Pete Warhurst  01:43
And, and same pitch, I said, I have this idea. I think it’ll add 50% to your top line with better margins at the bottom line. 

Pete Warhurst  01:50
I said, find a non-compete non-disclosure, I’ll tell you all about it if you want my help, and they wouldn’t sign in southern and so it’s just too good of an idea to get a product for me not to have come out of retirement to do it again. 

Pete Warhurst  02:03
So you’re right. I didn’t have to come out of retirement. I’m here I’m enjoying myself and we’ve gotten a lot of traction.

Pete Newsome  02:09
Well, you’ve been billed as a serial entrepreneur. Is that a fair assessment? That’s a fair description.

Pete Warhurst  02:15
Yeah, I mean, I started off I was a firefighter paramedic and got involved with putting the 911 systems in Pinellas County and then ended up starting a company with the fire chief and software engineer, and myself. 

Pete Warhurst  02:30
And we ended up being the second largest 911 provider for police fire and EMS software in the nation cutting Okay, and we ended up selling that to Bell Atlantic, which is now a TMT, and I was at age 40 and thought I retired. 

Pete Warhurst  02:49
So that was one of course, have pods, and in the interim, I did a mini storage that I did pretty well with and I did a carwash chain that I stopped and started the chain that did pretty well. 

Pete Warhurst  03:00
And so yeah, this, I guess is my fifth venture. And all of them have been successful so far. 

Pete Newsome  03:08
It sounds pretty serious to me. And well, no, no. Let’s start a little further back. If you don’t mind, I was listening to another podcast that you were on you and I have something in common. 

Pete Newsome  03:20
Where our first jobs were both working at a gas station pumping gas, which is a foreign concept today. Of course, you know, my kids, I don’t think Believe me when I tell them that I stood out in the sun. 

Pete Newsome  03:31
During the summer it was a 15 walk to the gas station that was close to my house and I pump gas and cleaned people’s windshields all day. And that sounds similar to your experience. 

Pete Warhurst  03:43
It absolutely was. I was still in high school when I had that job. 

Pete Warhurst  03:47
And it was a local gas station that had two locations and one of the pet peeves of the owners was to keep the pumps clean and why always wash them down and you know, obviously greet the customer and be pleasant and so forth. 

Pete Warhurst  04:04
And yeah, so that’s where I started and unfortunately one day I was out cleaning the pumps and heard a screech. And in a scream and a young girl, I’m gonna say she was five, six years old got hit by a car. 

Pete Warhurst  04:20
Oh, wow. That’s what drove me to the to becoming a firefighter and ultimately a paramedic. 

Pete Warhurst  04:26
I was one of the first paramedics in the state of Florida but yeah, that tragedy just I had no skills. I had no idea what to do. 

Pete Warhurst  04:35
And all I did is I ran in 911 wasn’t around those days I dialed the seven-digit number in the fire department came down and I joined that fire department within six months or a year whatever it was. 

Pete Newsome  04:47
So this incident that no one could have seen coming out of the blue really altered the path of your life just in that one. That one instant. Did it was it an immediate thing that you just couldn’t shake?

Pete Warhurst  05:02
Yeah, no doubt, it was absolutely devastating, you know, to see something like that and not know what to do or how how to react. 

Pete Warhurst  05:10
And all I did, like I say it’s called, called the fire department and they came down and they were, well shoot less than a quarter mile away, and they got there. 

Pete Warhurst  05:20
And unfortunately, the little girl did not make it. And that was life-changing for me. 

Pete Warhurst  05:27
And so, you know, when I joined the volunteer fire department up in New York, I left there and joined the Largo Fire Department in Florida, and all Stanley, Florida. 

Pete Warhurst  05:39
And when they said, Hey, we’re looking for people to go to the paramedic school, my hand was the first one to go up, I was ready to jump in on that. 

Pete Warhurst  05:46
So and I will tell you that being a paramedic is the most rewarding thing of all the careers I’ve had everything I’ve done, being a paramedic was the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Pete Newsome  05:58
Can’t be it’s not for everyone, though, I would imagine. I mean, you have to have a special kind of tolerance. To do that. I mean, my wife, when she was working as a pediatric nurse on an oncology floor. 

Pete Newsome  06:11
And she would come home at night, and I couldn’t even hear the stories, you know, without just being a wreck and let alone living it and every day and then thinking of your job as a paramedic, that’s even more intense constantly. 

Pete Newsome  06:24
I mean, that’s just got to you. It goes without saying that it’s not for everyone.

Pete Warhurst  06:29
It’s not, and they had a thing back in my day that there was paramedic burnout. 

Pete Warhurst  06:33
And there really were paramedics, you know, see enough, bad things happen to enough people and it can be very life-changing in a bad way for him, you know, so I always just felt like I had the confidence that I gave whoever that was.

Pete Warhurst  06:51
Whether it was a child or an adult or whatever, I gave them the best chance they could have I felt I knew my skills well enough that you know.

Pete Warhurst  06:59
If they were going to survive, and he did, you know, I was confident in myself and I had peace within myself that I knew I did the best I could do and it was in the Lord’s hands at that point. Right.

Pete Newsome  07:14
It sounds like a true calling. 

Pete Newsome  07:16
Right that you couldn’t have predicted that would happen and then and then something else dropped into your lap that it sounds like you couldn’t have predicted but I just have to let you know we have something else in common. 

Pete Warhurst  07:27
Apparently. I’m a Largo high graduate. So really, yes. I’m a proud Packer go back from quite a few years ago, and the school that I went to is no longer standing. 

Pete Newsome  07:40
They but I as you’re talking about, I’m trying to do the math on when you would have been a paramedic and hopefully, I was never there, and when you came over the apartment.

Pete Warhurst  07:48
Okay, I moved to Florida in 73. I arrived on October 6 and 73. And I was on the job on November 1st.

Pete Newsome  07:56
Why Largo of all places, how’d you end up?

Pete Warhurst  07:59
They were hiring. And I was looking to get hired. Okay. Yeah, the amazing thing that that my first day on the job was November 1. 

Pete Warhurst  08:09
And if you go back and look, you’ll see that Halloween there was a tornado that went through Oh, boy, only been in the state of Florida for three weeks, October 6 November. 

Pete Warhurst  08:20
And I show up to work and we go out in this houses gone, people killed cars turned over. So I think to myself, What the hell have you gotten yourself into? Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. For three weeks. That’s my first damn job.

Pete Newsome  08:34
Welcome to Florida hurricane season for the first time, but you’re actually having to go out in it where everyone else is running from it. 

Pete Newsome  08:40
That’s a big introduction to what Floridians have to have to deal with right? No doubt. 

Pete Newsome  08:46
Well, so. So how did so then, you know, from what, from what I read, you had an opportunity to, you know, to get into the software world a little bit, but you didn’t necessarily seek that out either, right?

Pete Warhurst  09:00
I didn’t. This was the late 70s, or early 80s. I forget the exact timing of it. But 911, as I said earlier, didn’t exist back then. And it was coming into Pinellas County, St. Pete Clearwater, Largo. 

Pete Warhurst  09:17
And there are at the time, there were 23 fire departments in that county all doing their own dispatch and not you know, taking emergency calls and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  09:27
And the fire chief actually went to my paramedic partner, who happened to be the union chief, and said, Who do you know, that knows anything about computers? He says I don’t know. 

Pete Warhurst  09:37
He said, What do you know about communities? I said, not a damn thing. He said, Well, are you willing to learn? And I said, Sure. So I got involved with my own installation in Pinellas County. 

Pete Warhurst  09:47
That system may still be running. This was the early 80s. That system may still be up and running. I heard just recently that they were going to take it out finally. 

Pete Warhurst  09:57
But we ended up growing that business I quit the Light department and ended up growing that business to being the second largest 911 provider. 

Pete Warhurst  10:06
And it’s really not the phone call my one but it’s records management and dispatch for police, fire, and EMS and built that up across the country and up through Canada. And I ended up selling it to Bella with Elena, who is now a TNT.

Pete Newsome  10:26
That’s a unique path, right? 

Pete Newsome  10:30
I mean, and one of the things that I found just fascinating since starting this podcast about a year ago now is how unlikely most career paths end up being where you know, you know. 

Pete Newsome  10:42
I suspect I always joke being in the staffing industry, no one dresses up as a recruiter for Halloween when they’re little. And I’m sure you didn’t dress up as a storage professional. 

Pete Newsome  10:52
Right when you were little for Halloween either. So So we’re so you retired then, you know, air quotes, right? What? What happened next? How did you get into storage? But it sounds like there was something in between.

Pete Warhurst  11:07
No? Well, yes. No, something in between pods, I guess. But yeah, I retired, I was age 40, when we sold the 91 business to Bell Atlantic, and played golf for two or three years and just got bored. 

Pete Warhurst  11:23
And I wanted to do something that I didn’t have to have a lot of employees. And just so that I could go and kick the tires, and there’s an empty lot. 

Pete Warhurst  11:33
Oh, less than a quarter mile from my house. Right on the main thoroughfare, that I said, I’m gonna put my swords here. So I got, you know, I got did my research back then the internet wasn’t real, real big. 

Pete Warhurst  11:45
But I did my research and said, Okay, I went to the bank and said, I want to build a nice storage over there. And I was looking for a little financing. They said, What do you know about building? 

Pete Warhurst  11:55
And what do you know about many sources? 

Pete Newsome  11:58
I did not know, I have to ask you where it was a lot since I’m from I grew up there where, you know, it’s right in Bel Air.

Pete Warhurst  12:02
If you make a left off of Fort Harrison to go down towards the Bel Air Country Club on the right, just before that is Florida Mini Storage, okay? 

Pete Warhurst  12:15
Yep, I lived inside the Bel Air gates, but Mini Storage and, you know, built a mini storage and it was taking off. And that was pretty popular business back then is still popular, you know, and I had two employees, you know, husband and wife that lived on property and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  12:33
And when we opened the business up, yeah, well, we actually took one of the shells one of the units, and turn into a little office for what became pods. 

Pete Warhurst  12:46
And then so what happened is we got the first one built. 

Pete Warhurst  12:51
And the way Mini Storage works is you take like a three-mile radius from where the mini storage is going to be built, and you capture how many people are in that area. 

Pete Warhurst  12:59
And then you say that, okay, if everybody takes six square feet of storage, that’s how much storage you can build. But then you got to back out of the overlapping competition. 

Pete Warhurst  13:07
Anyway, there’s a mathematical formula to figure out how big to build, and so I said, I want to go build a second one. And we started driving around the county. 

Pete Warhurst  13:15
And as you know, Pinellas County is very, very densely populated into find a piece of property without the right zoning on a major thoroughfare without overlap too much overlapping competition was very, very difficult. 

Pete Warhurst  13:29
This is serious, just sitting there said what if we brought the storage to the house? And that’s, that was the end of this pod?

Pete Newsome  13:39
In the storage business? I’m sure the numbers are massive as $70 billion. 

Pete Warhurst  13:47
That is accurate moving forward? 

Pete Newsome  13:49
And I’ve had to experience it I’ve experienced towards a few times and it seems like it just continues to become more in demand. I see more storage facilities. 

Pete Newsome  13:58
And recently as my daughter just graduated from college past year and I have another son in college, we’re constantly moving them in and out of places as semesters end, and they have there’s always a delay in between. 

Pete Newsome  14:11
And it’s almost impossible at times to even find storage units, which I never would have as an outsider would never have imagined it would. It would be so-so when demand but it really is.

Pete Warhurst  14:24
It’s crazy. Yeah. When I started to get into the Mini Storage business, my wife’s in was lived in Flippin Arkansas, which is where Ranger Boats are built, but I think it’s a population of 1300 and this is farmland with everybody has basements and barns and all this stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  14:45
And I was driving through there one day and in 1300 population. People in this community I think I saw eight.

Pete Newsome  14:54
I believe it yes.

Pete Warhurst  14:57
And they have basements and it’s not a wealthy community so they don’t have a lot of assets that they have to take care of. But I mean, as Americans, I think we’re just like our stuff.

Pete Warhurst  15:10
We love our stuff. It was hard to say goodbye.

Pete Newsome  15:13
I wrote something down a couple of years ago, I had this idea that popped into my head that I needed to I was someone else’s story, that sad story, actually someone who had a terminal disease and they traveled the world for a year with their children, you know, quit everything pack, stored everything and traveled the world. 

Pete Newsome  15:30
And I got this idea in my head. 

Pete Newsome  15:32
And I was telling my wife, I think our oldest was in eighth grade, at the time, it was 10 years ago, I said, we need to do this time’s going to power we’re gonna regret not doing it. 

Pete Newsome  15:40
And, and, and, and then I was like, we could just give everything up. 

Pete Newsome  15:44
And then, you know, live on a boat and just change our life. You know, I started to build that I went, Wait a minute, I really liked my stuff. Like, I don’t want to give up my stuff. I like it. It’s comfortable. 

Pete Newsome  15:54
So it’s hard. To give it out. 

Pete Warhurst  15:58
It’s hard. It’s us it’s our culture. It’s our nature. So people are making a lot of money because of that.

Pete Newsome  16:04
Yeah. So is this. So did when you started pods? 

Pete Newsome  16:08
Did you see an idea? Right? Did anyone else buy into the idea was it your vision? Did you have trouble convincing others of what it would become?

Pete Warhurst  16:19
No, I did not. And, you know, a couple of things. I wanted to build a second mini-storage and couldn’t find the right one. And then we say Whatever brought the storage to the house. 

Pete Warhurst  16:29
And then that was just sort of coming out. This was like 95, 96, something around there, that we were doing this and there was nobody really out there doing it at a residential level. 

Pete Warhurst  16:40
They were the big steel cargo containers, shipping containers that, you know, people like a mobile many were putting at construction sites or behind Kmart, some things like that. 

Pete Warhurst  16:49
But there was nothing really that was residentially favorable, right? 

Pete Warhurst  16:55
So, so we said, you know, what, what if we built 100 boxes, and we brought them to the house, and then we got rented a warehouse, and said, you know, let’s go put these containers in the warehouse. And the math was really simple. 

Pete Warhurst  17:08
And I went to college for one year, it wasn’t for me. So you know, but I was always good with numbers. And I kid with people I said, You didn’t need to understand MBA language. 

Pete Warhurst  17:19
To understand the math in economics, we were renting a warehouse for $5 a square foot, we were getting about $15 a square foot for I think it was $97. 

Pete Warhurst  17:29
We were renting the warehouse for $15 a square foot for a container, and we’re stacking in three high. So you’re generating $45 a square foot $7 a square foot, I can do that math. 

Pete Warhurst  17:40
I mean, anybody can get that, that math. 

Pete Warhurst  17:42
And so that was a pretty easy sell. And so we built 100 containers, and we rented a little warehouse and we had to build a contraction to build pick them up and sell them down and things like that. 

Pete Warhurst  17:53
And we did that I had two of my firefighter buddies or paramedics that were my partner and then another guy that was in the same station with us and we started building the first box in his driveway literally cutting the steel and building the first box in his driveway. 

Pete Warhurst  18:09
And my paramedic partner fortunately had some construction background. 

Pete Warhurst  18:12
So he sort of engineered the box and we built 100 boxes and we started to put them out you know, advertising was easy back then you had a radio, you had cable TV satellite was even around that unbelief. 

Pete Warhurst  18:27
And you know, the web wasn’t really powerful. So yeah, basically, or yellow pages. So it was you know, radios TV, or the yellow pages. 

Pete Warhurst  18:35
And so we decided to do a morning commute ad and very first ad and we knew when it was gonna play so we were all sitting there listening Senate huddled around the, in this in this mini storage container, huddled around the phone, and the radio listening to it and this ad comes off and also on the phone rings, and pick it up and tell me more about this. 

Pete Warhurst  18:56
I want to compare the phone rings again, tell me a little bit about this, about what we got, I don’t know 578 cold calls, more of the calls or I want to learn more about your business. 

Pete Warhurst  19:08
I want to invest. Okay, then I want to rent your product. It’s so it was fairly intuitive and I tell people you walk right. I tell people that what really drove pods is that we opened a new product in Clearwater, Florida. 

Pete Warhurst  19:30
Pinellas County and we were sort of dropping this product between full-service movers and truck rentals really back then it was really you all and may floppy on that type of thing. 

Pete Warhurst  19:42
Both of those industries needed some shake-up right so we dropped the innovative product between those two if you didn’t have if you didn’t rent a U haul and you didn’t have a moving service. 

Pete Warhurst  19:53
You use it, yeah, I’d have a pickup truck there was so something that was desperately needed. We dropped it in Pinellas County, Florida where there was huge tourism. 

Pete Warhurst  20:04
We’re putting these containers in residential neighborhoods. And it’s fairly intuitive. When a consumer sees it. They say, Oh, I get that. Right.

Pete Newsome  20:14
I mean, I was gonna get there eventually that I and everyone else know pods because you had a walking billboard record. Right? That’s your like, what is that? What was really clear to see four letters? I know what it is. 

Pete Warhurst  20:29
So to segue into franchising, we started renting containers and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  20:36
And the next thing you know, somebody up in Largo, where you know, that was that is mid-County, had a container drive when they pick up the phone and said, Hey, do you mind I want I’m moving down to St. Petersburg, would you mind moving the box down to St. Petersburg. We never thought of it. We were putting them back in the warehouse. 

Pete Warhurst  20:52
We said, Sure. We’ll take it down to St. Pete for you. And that happened more and more and more and more. And so we’re starting to move people around, and people want to move down to Sarasota and move over to Orlando and this that. And the question. We didn’t have the network. 

Pete Warhurst  21:06
I said we’re gonna grow this thing now. And then. And so, you know, I was fortunate that it was intuitive to investors, I raised a lot of money in Tampa Bay, to get pods off the ground. 

Pete Warhurst  21:21
And the intuitiveness created people wanting to buy franchises, they came to me and said, I want to buy a franchise. And I literally promise you this, I had people lined up outside my door waiting to sign their franchise.

Pete Newsome  21:34
I mean, it had to it. Was there a moment, though, where you were? Once you had the idea? Maybe then maybe once you realize the idea was going to take off? 

Pete Newsome  21:45
Where you thought How did this? How does this not already exist? Because that’s the fascinating thing to me about the story is you came up with an original idea, but it’s an I mean, it’s incredibly unique and rare to come up with something. 

Pete Newsome  22:00
So logical, and so obvious now that there’s a need for it. 

Pete Newsome  22:04
But that no one had ever put it together before. I mean, it was your idea that when you want data.

Pete Warhurst  22:11
I couldn’t find a piece of land to build another mini-storage. And yeah, that’s the mother of invention and love it. Yeah, very fortunate, you know, it was in the right. 

Pete Warhurst  22:22
demographics and the help people are on vacation in Clearwater Beach, and all this, they see a container in their neighbor’s driveway or whatever it is, and, literally, people would come off of their vacation, and knock on our door and say, I’m gonna learn more about this business. 

Pete Warhurst  22:36
And we talked to him about it. 

Pete Warhurst  22:37
And a week later, they buy a franchise and open up your income a new franchise would open up, I know that they had started advertising because our phone would start ringing in Indianapolis is the one that I remember best. 

Pete Warhurst  22:52
They opened and I think 20 minutes after they aired their first commercial, we were having phone calls, I want to buy a franchise.

Pete Newsome  22:59
Now. So you know, to start a business. I started my staffing company 70 and a half years ago, and there’s a this, there’s no real roadmap for these things, as you know, right? 

Pete Newsome  23:09
You’re kind of on your own, the world doesn’t necessarily encourage that. 

Pete Newsome  23:13
So you have to just go and do it and learn along the way. 

Pete Newsome  23:16
And then I’ve realized over the years starting businesses one thing, right, you have to have a certain fortitude to do it and have the right idea and skill and work ethic, all those things. 

Pete Newsome  23:26
And then to have a business succeed for some period of time another thing, right, like and I someday will look back and say, Okay, I’m, I should be proud of the fact that I could do that for a long period of time. But to scale a business, something I haven’t achieved, and very, very few achieve. 

Pete Newsome  23:42
To me, that’s an entirely different skill set in some regard, but you stuck with it the whole time. And how did you? How did you make that shift? I mean, why are you right? 

Pete Newsome  23:53
Because there are lots of great ideas. There are very few companies that scale relatively speaking, right most fail, then there are a lot of small businesses like mine, but you scale that which uses rare air, to say the least. Do you have any when you look back and say, What made you do that where so many others can’t?

Pete Warhurst  24:10
Right? Well, I mean, again, I had a product that consumers understood where the value was right and what the value proposition was. We were being pulled to move. Our first franchisee was Sarasota. 

Pete Warhurst  24:24
Yeah. And we were being pulled to move to Sarasota and then we sold Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. And, so increase our footprint and increase our footprint. 

Pete Warhurst  24:34
What I didn’t want to happen to me is to just have Tampa Bay I think we had Fort Lauderdale at the same time as well. 

Pete Warhurst  24:41
We open for a little bit, but I didn’t want to have one or two markets open. But I didn’t want to I recognize I had to have a footprint nationwide in order to create all the lanes and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  24:53
And so you know, I looked at the franchise program as a financing tool. I mean it really is a financing tool to get a footprint and get the brand established and the creek the lines and things like that. 

Pete Warhurst  25:07
So I did that. And that gave credibility to the concept. So that when I went out for a second, third, fourth, and fifth round the financing, I was able to raise enough money. 

Pete Warhurst  25:18
And we ended up opening up 10 major markets around the US and all the bigger markets, Chicago and LA and New York and Seattle. 

Pete Warhurst  25:27
So we opened up 10 major markets and we opened up 110 franchises Wow, throughout the US. And then we franchised up into Canada, and somewhere in the middle of all that we opened up Canada. 

Pete Warhurst  25:39
And the reason for that is it was actually posted 911. And so the reason we open Canada was I wanted to figure out if we could get a container that we have no idea what’s in it. 

Pete Warhurst  25:51
And there’s a padlock on it, the consumer packs something in this box, and there’s a pile off on it. 

Pete Warhurst  25:56
And I want to take it across the border post 911. And we figured out how to do that and customs on both sides worked with us. And we got that working and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  26:07
And you know, we were moving people from Toronto to Florida or wherever it was and vice versa and stuff. So that really grew us. 

Pete Warhurst  26:15
And then the next step was you know, and I was envisioning opening up all around the globe. 

Pete Warhurst  26:22
So if you’re in Italy, and you see an antique set or whatever that you want to buy or whatever it is something large, and you want to buy it and ship it back, you just order a pod and Italy it’s a shipper to Wargo Sure, right? 

Pete Warhurst  26:37
That was so the vision, it still can be the vision. 

Pete Warhurst  26:41
But the next problem was okay, I can cross the borders. How do I get my container across the ocean? Right? So we opened up Australia. And when I sold the business, we had all of Australia up and running. 

Pete Warhurst  26:57
And I did that for two reasons. One would educate us on how to ship across the ocean. And that’s halfway around the world. But the other half of it was that segment of the business failed, nobody would ever know. 

Pete Warhurst  27:09
Because it was all the way halfway around the world. Back then and say okay, we don’t know how to do that one. 

Pete Warhurst  27:15
But as it turns out, we were able to open Australia, we actually opened a call center there the plan was we had a call center in Clearwater, one in Dallas, one in Australia, and I figured I’d do one over in the UK or whatever it is the sun went. 

Pete Warhurst  27:31
So with the call centers, open and closed, sure active and stuff that all comes from my SAT software background. I had those. With that background, if you think about what portable storage and moving are, it’s a lot of logistics. 

Pete Warhurst  27:45
Absolutely. Fire and Police and fire and ambulance dispatch are a lot of logistics, getting the right piece of equipment going to the right place. So you know, the pieces just sort of fell into place. And franchisees helped me grow it.

Pete Newsome  28:00
And while you’re making it sound, you know, simple, right? 

Pete Newsome  28:04
You’re making it sound like it was just, you know, the right idea. And it’s so much more than that. I know that because it’s like I said it’s something I’ve chased and not achieved and had great. I think I’ve had lots of great ideas over time. 

Pete Newsome  28:17
But I haven’t been able to execute that level. And I’ve seen many others in the same boat. And it did you? Did you? You had to learn as you go right, like you’re saying you had to try something and then assess how it worked. 

Pete Newsome  28:29
Did you were you reach out to experts and you mentioned logistics Now I happen to know is a pretty big logistics company in Clearwater Tech Data Corporation, you know, in your backyard. Did you tap into folks from there? 

Pete Newsome  28:42
Because they had a very large global distribution arm? Or did you just do it with your own team and buildings? Those are very different paths.

Pete Warhurst  28:50
Yeah. I’ve got a couple of things. And the first one is, you know, we all have these great ideas that come along. And we you know, and we have tons of ideas that come along for making money in businesses and things like that. 

Pete Warhurst  29:07
And the challenge I think we have as individuals are number one, you have to pick out the right idea. 

Pete Warhurst  29:13
And from all the other garbage out there which one is really the homerun right and that’s number one? Number two, you’ve got to have the guts to go for it right and chase it and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  29:25
The other one I have is I surround myself with people smarter than me. My staff isn’t smarter than me and their respective areas. Why do I need them if I know the answer and they don’t? 

Pete Warhurst  29:36
Why don’t why do I need it so I surround myself with a lot of highly skilled talent one of which was a gentleman that was a logistics who came from all over Orlando it’s I can’t think of the name of it I’ll think of it but it was it’s a distribution company and stuff.

Pete Newsome  29:51
It wasn’t Jeff, was it? 

Pete Warhurst  29:54
Yep, it was. Now can I add a talk to those guys? 

Pete Warhurst  29:57
But anyway, yeah, there’s a lot of people have smart people out there that can help you build a business and you can’t hire them all out of the gate because you’ll go broke dead broke, just paying, you know, salaries and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  30:09
But as you, as you’re growing and you’re expanding and you’re taking on newer and bigger challenges, hire the right people that will help you walk through that, navigate through that. 

Pete Newsome  30:19
I’m gonna take advantage of having you here right now. 

Pete Newsome  30:21
So apologies in advance for this next question. But, you know, I’ve recently started my second business which is engaged, which is, which is why we’re on this podcast today. And I believe it’s, it’s, it’s a potential homerun. 

Pete Newsome  30:34
Now, I believe it is sure as I’m sitting here, but in order to achieve that, I have to sacrifice a lot. And, you know, I have to take a huge risk, a huge risk worth it or play it safe. 

Pete Newsome  30:48
You know, how do you balance that out? 

Pete Newsome  30:50
Where, you know, because, look, I’m 52 Taking a risk now is putting, it’s not just me when I started my first business, I remember having a conscious thought, hey, I do this for a year after I quit my job. If it doesn’t work. I’m back to working for the man in the same place. 

Pete Newsome  31:04
I am, right, I didn’t have as far to fall. It further falls now. But I know a lot more. And the idea is infinitely you know, it’s something that I wake up every day thinking about and go to bed thinking about. 

Pete Newsome  31:16
But how do you mitigate that risk? When you think you know, how do you weigh that out? Did you ever have to face that?

Pete Warhurst  31:23
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I sold that software business. And it did. Okay. I mean, it wasn’t it was a home run for me at my firefighter.

Pete Warhurst  31:33
Now. Relatively priority, right? Yes, it was a home run for me. I wasn’t Bill Gates, you know, but I put a wall at risk when I started. Sure. I put it all at risk. It did. Okay. I was younger have 40. Right. 

Pete Newsome  31:50
But still, I assume you would your lifestyle was one you didn’t want to go backward to firefighter lifestyle at that point, I would assume. Right. So. So that’s, that’s a lot to lose.

Pete Warhurst  32:02
It’s that having the guts to go for it.

Pete Newsome  32:04
Is it really that simple?

Pete Warhurst  32:06
mean, as You sound very convinced that you have the right idea. And it’s a home run, just have to have that fortitude to keep plugging along and move it move the ball up the hill. Yeah. 

Pete Newsome  32:17
And that’s, uh, you know, I think so many people probably don’t take that step in the first place for that very reason, as I’ve sort of alluded to earlier, I personally don’t think the world really encourages you to quit your job and to go take a risk, you know.

Pete Newsome  32:30
And I remember when I first did that, I was in a good spot working for a large company. Ironically, a spin off of 18 T. So I come from that world to I sold enterprise call center solutions, and I made lots of money and life was good. 

Pete Newsome  32:42
And I and I just had this idea that didn’t go away for 10 years. 

Pete Newsome  32:46
And I thought, If not now, when, and I remember telling my wife, you’ll appreciate that she was pregnant with our third child at the time, I said, I think I think I’m finally going to do it. And she’s like, well, just don’t be stressed when the baby comes. 

Pete Newsome  32:58
And that’s been a running joke for 18 years now. Because I’m like, I’m going to be stressed no matter what when my third child is born. 

Pete Newsome  33:04
So I may as well be stressed about putting fate in my own hands. But you know, it’s different it’s, it gets different each time I think.

Pete Warhurst  33:13
You know what? It’s not that different, right? I mean, yeah, you rolled the dice, and you put a lot of your net worth into your career and your future and your family and all that. 

Pete Warhurst  33:23
But you’re convinced it was the right thing. And that’s what I that’s where I started. I said make sure it’s the right one. We all have great ideas. 

Pete Warhurst  33:30
I got another 50 ideas. I bet you do. In case any of them. Okay. But this one, this Red Rover, I couldn’t let it go.

Pete Newsome  33:39
Yeah, so let’s talk about that. So you’ve you sold pods for more money? I mean, what I have to ask so before we get in, remember, what’s the first thing you did? 

Pete Newsome  33:49
And what did you have to do something crazy? I mean, the number you know it’s public, right? You don’t mind if I say it to you? For $430 million. Is what the pod sold for? 

Pete Newsome  34:03
Put all that in my pot. You didn’t get off course. Right. But I did. Okay, let’s say you did. Okay. Okay, from that deal? What do you do first? What do you do after?

Pete Warhurst  34:14
You know, I was already living a pretty nice life. Yeah. Okay. I’m a pilot. I fly around in private planes I did back then I do now. 

Pete Warhurst  34:28
And you know, I had a nice house on the beach here and I have had a nice house in the mountains. Got it. 

Pete Warhurst  34:34
Okay, so when I travel wherever I wanted to travel, so it wasn’t that life-shattering you know, or altering for me it was it just afforded me the luxury to continue doing what I was doing right. 

Pete Warhurst  34:48
And I knew I could do that for the rest of my life and live a nice life. So but going into it, as I say I put everything I had into this round Right? 

Pete Warhurst  35:01
And, you know, so I had a lot of sleepless nights and I didn’t have any babies to cry in that I had to worry about, but a lot of sleepless nights. 

Pete Warhurst  35:12
And you know, I had, amazingly I would shoot a text or back then was Blackberry, I guess, something that somebody three o’clock in the morning just because it was on my mind, and I figured they’d read it when I get up. 

Pete Warhurst  35:23
My staff was the same way they were emailing me back. And before, you know, we were all up just chatting and stuff like that.

Pete Newsome  35:30
I mean let me ask you about that a little bit is that I was listening to a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and the guy who did it was invited by Elon Musk to go out and interview him. 

Pete Newsome  35:41
And this is a guy who came to us, he lives in Florida, I flew out to California. 

Pete Newsome  35:45
And the first night he got there, Ilan had to cancel, you’re too busy. 

Pete Newsome  35:48
And then so we went back the next day. And the way he told the story is that he was waiting for hours and hours. I don’t know what time the interview was supposed to begin, but he didn’t get to get into Ilan’s office until 2 am. 

Pete Newsome  35:59
And as I’m hearing the story, and Ilan, your work ethic is legendary from everything I hear. 

Pete Newsome  36:06
And it kind of takes that doesn’t it? I mean, you know, where, and it’s a, it’s interesting, because as you build a business, you have to do that, and you don’t think about doesn’t feel like work. It’s not a thought you just do it. 

Pete Newsome  36:18
And I tell everyone freelancing is becoming very commonplace now, and it’s in, it’s growing. 

Pete Newsome  36:24
And I’m a big fan of the freelance market and working that way. But it takes a special you have to be disciplined and have the right work ethic, it is not for everyone. But how did you find others to do that with you?

Pete Newsome  36:38
Because you know, that’s a hard thing. I mean, it’s one thing for you to do it, but to get others to do it, too. It was it’s a whole different deal with

Pete Warhurst  36:46
I think it’s contagious. If you set the example, you set the culture and you set the expectations and stuff and you reward those, you know, that helps you get to where you need to get, and but I think I really do think it’s contagious.

Pete Newsome  37:01
Do you think that’s harder to come by today than it was when you were building pods? 

Pete Newsome  37:04
Because I do and just somewhat Incidentally, one of the reasons I started thinking zengig was needed is because I think there’s we’ve almost gone too far culturally with not realizing that success is a product of hard work. 

Pete Newsome  37:21
Success is a product of risk and effort over time. And that’s why a story like yours, to me, is so meaningful. You didn’t start off at the top, you had to climb the mountain, and no one was going to do it for you. 

Pete Newsome  37:33
But, you know, generally, there’s been generational and societal changes that make that work ethic, not collectively, not what it used to be. Right. And I am sure you know that too. So today, it seems hard. 

Pete Newsome  37:46
I mean, do you think you’d have that? Do you see that now with with with Red Rover?

Pete Warhurst  37:51
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I have a very, very sound team. You know, I was fortunate, I live in Orlando. Now I commute to Tampa and Tampa. Okay, start the business because I had success here. 

Pete Warhurst  38:05
And I knew I had some investors that would want to invest in this. But I also knew they had a huge employee base here that I still had relationships with and reputation with and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  38:16
But yeah, they today’s society, my senior team is sort of the old school, you know, they have to put in the sweat and things like that. 

Pete Warhurst  38:27
But with, you know, working from home and COVID and meetings, like we’re having right now, right? 

Pete Warhurst  38:33
Tell telecommunications and stuff that people are remote and I don’t care what you say if somebody’s working from home and the baby’s crying. 

Pete Warhurst  38:41
The customer that they were supposed to be talking to just took a second seat, right, they got up and they went and take care of the baby and so it takes a certain discipline to be able to do this and then I think we’ve empowered the employees to say, Okay, well I’m having a bad day. 

Pete Warhurst  38:57
Today, I’m gonna start working again on some websites. And also history job, let me put colons and I’ll just throw a hand grenade in and see if I can get a job with one of these guys. 

Pete Warhurst  39:06
And they’re offered $20 More whatever it is, and, and they bail on you, there’s no loyalty back, you know, back in my parents, they you know, you got a gold watch, because you put 30 years in the business and you gave your heart and soul to that business. 

Pete Warhurst  39:20
And you were rewarded with a golden watch and you took a lot of pride in being with the same company for that long, right? 

Pete Warhurst  39:27
And the employers you know, took the pride in saying my employees stick with me they know we treat them well. And so you don’t have that today to your point you just don’t have it today. 

Pete Warhurst  39:37
You know people jump from job to job and yeah, just stepping stones, right?

Pete Newsome  39:43
I just did a podcast actually we put up a blog on the website just a couple of days ago about is that bad is a red flag.

Pete Newsome  39:52
And I was on my mind because I saw one of the job boards one of the big job sites of course are only paid when when When there are vacancies, right, so of course, they’re gonna have to say, No, it’s not a red flag. 

Pete Newsome  40:05
And after two decades and staffing and placing 1000s and 1000s of, of employees and working with hundreds of hiring managers, I can tell you without exception, it is a red flag.

Pete Newsome  40:15
There isn’t. I’ve never had a hiring manager, you know, say, Hey, I like resumes where there’s no longevity. There’s never, that has never been a thing. 

Pete Newsome  40:25
And so, you know, the, what we’re trying to do was send gig, and again, why a story like yours is so important. Because we have to share, not what young professionals want to hear, but what I believe they need to hear.

Pete Newsome  40:39
Which is success doesn’t happen overnight, and you’re gonna have bad days, and you grow and improve by dealing with adversity, not by running from it. 

Pete Newsome  40:47
And it is so easy. Just like you said, it clicked 10 times on a website and you apply to 10 jobs. And we know that there are lots of jobs out there. 

Pete Newsome  40:56
And that’s, that’s easy to do. But I think I think it doesn’t serve the individuals well. And that’s my concern with it, you know because they’ll say, look, the employers aren’t loyal either. 

Pete Newsome  41:08
And I don’t think it’s that simple. Right. 

Pete Newsome  41:11
I think I think businesses have to make decisions, but there are individuals that are extremely loyal, and it is personal to them, as managers and directors, and even executives and owners, but I think that’s been blurred, you know, because of just bad information that’s out there. 

Pete Newsome  41:27
And the easy answer, right? I mean, that’s kind of how I think of it.

Pete Warhurst  41:31
Yeah. I mean, as one of these employees that jump from job to job to job, you’ve never seen anything through how do you ever get a sense of accomplishment? How do you contribute? 

Pete Warhurst  41:42
Yeah, I mean, you’ve worked here for two years, and he did a little something, but you’ll never be remembered or recognized. And I don’t know how you feel good about yourself, if if you don’t see something through or commit yourself to a project. So it’s a different culture

Pete Newsome  41:59
It is a different culture. So now you’re back in the fray, you chose to do this. And you said you didn’t want to do it, they made you do it? They wouldn’t, they wouldn’t listen. 

Pete Newsome  42:13
And so was there a moment where you had to kind of sit back and say, okay, because you, you know what you’re committing to right? 

Pete Newsome  42:20
When you decide to take this step. It’s not an insult insignificant decision, in terms of commitment and effort. And I’m sure at this point in your life, if you’re going to put your name on it with your reputation history, you’re going to make sure it works. 

Pete Newsome  42:34
And that’s a huge commitment. What was the ultimate catalyst for you said kind of said, You just couldn’t let go was at it.

Pete Warhurst  42:41
Yeah, you know, you can only play so much golf, and you can only do so much fishing or flying or whatever it is. 

Pete Warhurst  42:46
And, and, yeah, the more I thought about it, and the more people I’ve talked to about it, I was just convinced, right, I was convinced it’s the right thing. 

Pete Warhurst  42:55
As I said earlier, we pods is a great company, and we did a lot of things, right? But, you know, times have changed. Our culture is changing every day. 

Pete Warhurst  43:07
COVID comes along, and people working from home and people want to take on well, you know, technology has empowered us to take on more sales and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  43:14
People don’t want to talk to people in a call center, they want to do something. So you know, all of those things that we did at pods that we could have done better or can be done better today because our lifestyles have changed is sort of what we’ve rolled into this role. 

Pete Warhurst  43:32
Red Rover, you know, we, we empower the consumer that just got on the phone, typing an order, drives up to a lot, gets into access to the gate, gets in the truck, drive the truck home, literally push one button and the container comes off the truck releases itself when the truck comes off the truck, puts itself in your driveway, and then puts it back and he brings the truck back. 

Pete Warhurst  43:53
We didn’t charge you for the truck, you get the container at your time, on your schedule at your convenience, and put it exactly where you want it. 

Pete Warhurst  44:00
And it didn’t cost you a dime, you know, with pods, and that’s a three to $500 series of events to have the deliveries and the pickups and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  44:09
Ours is for free. But you’re doing the driving.

Pete Newsome  44:12
And but at your convenience at your choosing which is I mean, did you I mean, again, just like when you describe, your idea for pods, it sounds so logical. 

Pete Newsome  44:24
And yet you’ve presented it to the people who had the opposite you were already you know, halfway there, right? And chose not to do it. Why do you think no one’s thought of that before? 

Pete Newsome  44:34
I mean, is it you know, there are other big industries now.

Pete Warhurst  44:38
I do think there are people that just sort of plug away and do their assignments and things like that. People know, no pun intended to think outside the box. 

Pete Warhurst  44:49
I’m one of those guys that I just anything I look at I think how can I do that better and you know, at the end of the day, the delivery side I have our pods business back when I owned it.

Pete Warhurst  45:02
And I can sort of confirm this with the CFO, their 20th anniversary that I did a little speech, the 20th anniversary and they didn’t pods doesn’t make any money on the delivery side of the business. 

Pete Warhurst  45:15
I mean, they make it here, but they lose it there. And it’s more of a breakeven huge headache. Sure drivers show up late, they put the container in the wrong place, they crack the driveway, they run over the mailbox, all of these things.

Pete Newsome  45:26
They’re relying on individuals at that point, right? 

Pete Warhurst  45:32
And the staffing guy, often consumers paying three to $500. I just took all that away and said, Listen, I’m not gonna tell you, here’s the truck, come get it, it’s sort of a blend of U haul and pods, right? 

Pete Warhurst  45:44
Sure. You drive with a portable container on it. And we engineered, we have two styles of trucks, one’s got an electric ramp that goes around and lets you lower the ramp in front of the door anywhere around the side of the container. 

Pete Warhurst  45:57
And the other one literally picks the container up and sets it in the driveway. 

Pete Warhurst  46:02
And you bring us the truck back. 

Pete Warhurst  46:04
And it’s there for as long as you want when you want to pick it up and bring it back to us. Are you done with it, you get the truck again, you back up to it, we push a button and it picks it up and brings it back. 

Pete Warhurst  46:13
Nobody else in the world can do that. Okay. And I think that’s what Americans and especially the, you know, the millennials and stuff, that’s what they want. Today,

Pete Newsome  46:22
it’s a better way. I mean, it’s efficient, it’s clean, it’s quick. I mean, these are, your technology is giving us, you know, convenience and comfort. 

Pete Newsome  46:33
And that’s what you’ve delivered with a solution that I just know that anytime you’re dealing with drivers and moving things, convenience and comfort, it’s not what come to mind, right?

Pete Warhurst  46:49
 And you just, you’ve solved all of which is Microsoft perspective is if you run over your mailbox, I say, Hey, is I’m sorry to hear that I hope you didn’t hurt my truck, rather than Oh, I’ve got to come out and fix your mailbox, right? 

Pete Warhurst  46:59
It’s just, it’s just a complete game changer. We actually are offering a full spectrum that will drive a truck. Yeah, there are people that are intimidated by but they’re smaller than u haul trucks. 

Pete Warhurst  47:12
I don’t know why we have backup cameras and lane departure and emergency braking and all these things in these trucks. Now they’re all brand new. 

Pete Warhurst  47:19
But people don’t want that. So we’ll do delivery. 

Pete Warhurst  47:22
So you can go from doing the entire process of coming, getting a truck, taking it home, loading the container up, and bringing the container back to us. And you know, it goes into storage. 

Pete Warhurst  47:32
And you can do the entire thing. Or you can go to the other end of the spectrum and say, I don’t want to touch the thing I want you guys come to do it. 

Pete Warhurst  47:40
And we’ll have a truck delivered to you with a crew to pack your stuff, wrap your dishes, all this stuff, whoa, the container and put it back. 

Pete Warhurst  47:47
So anywhere in between if you want to do all that, but the heavy stuff you’re completely due to a solver, but you can’t lift up the gun safe or whatever it is. 

Pete Warhurst  47:57
We’re all your money in New York, you’re safe. You say come and I want you guys to come and just do the six heavy items for me. 

Pete Warhurst  48:06
We’ll do that we’ll send out a crew when you’re ready for us. And we’ll just do this sucks me out. And so nobody else offers that’s full spectrum. 

Pete Warhurst  48:12
And nobody else has a truck that the consumer can drive and offload a 10,000-pound container in the driveway.

Pete Newsome  48:18
Again, it just makes sense. 

Pete Warhurst  48:24
Not a hard sell. No one understands it right now. 

Pete Newsome  48:28
Are you going through the same model? Then? Are you going franchise model again, this time?

Pete Warhurst  48:32
Who are you know, we’ve already opened up 15 markets, I’ve got a great partner in Oppenheimer out of New York financial institution that in New York, I’ve got a great partnership with them. 

Pete Warhurst  48:46
I’ve raised a lot more money than I raised the pod. 

Pete Warhurst  48:49
So we’ve got 15 markets open, but to open the entire US and maybe Canada and things like that on a balance sheet is a massive, massive requirement. 

Pete Warhurst  49:00
So I have people that call me every day and say I want to invest in a company I want to invest. Well, the way you can invest in a company is you buy a franchise. Sure. Right. 

Pete Warhurst  49:08
And you, you build your marketing, yeah, you capture some of the longer distances that help the brand and help all the other stores that are open. 

Pete Warhurst  49:18
When we exit when we have an event or something. You can tag along with us and get 70% of our multiple yon exits, which is a better multiple than you’ll get any other time. 

Pete Warhurst  49:29
And yeah, that’s how Pods has grown since I sold the business. So we had buybacks and roll-up clauses in the franchise agreements, and they’ve been buying back those 110 franchises that were out there and now it’s 99% company. 

Pete Newsome  49:44
I wasn’t really interested in that. Okay. How many franchises Do you have? What do you have so far? How many franchisees?

Pete Warhurst  49:51
We don’t have any we just started franchising in January and did okay contract negotiations for three markets out West we got a couple we’re not in negotiations with EPA.

Pete Warhurst  50:03
We have people looking at things like entire states or multi markets you know large area developers type things I’m convinced the first one is always the hardest right first franchises are the hardest shore. 

Pete Warhurst  50:17
Once we get the momentum on their belt that I’ll have people waiting outside my door and our network will build and the value in the brand will build and you know, I’m gonna be knocking on pod store and I wanted to this business and I want to pitch it the podge pods.

Pete Warhurst  50:32
I was thinking to myself, you know, this is really a business that will go after U haul. Sure you can use the truck for free with absolutely all the alternatives and you got to pay for the truck and then pay for it from the mini storage and unload it. I’m giving you the truck for free. 

Pete Warhurst  50:48
I’m thinking this is a huge opportunity for somebody to grab this and really shake up the U haul site I think we’ll get a lot of pods customers because it’s a cheaper solution and you don’t pay for the delivery and things like that and it’s a convenient solution. 

Pete Warhurst  51:04
But you know we dropped I dropped pods between full-service movers and truck rentals. I’ve dropped Red Rover between pods are all affordable storage companies and

Pete Newsome  51:16
smart it’s so smart How many do you have a sense of how many Utah U haul trucks there are out there? I haven’t got a clue. 

Pete Warhurst  51:27
Yeah, we’re gonna have a ton of them but times have changed I think we’ve introduced a new product at the right time.

Pete Warhurst  51:36
The housing market was was at a peak when we started Yeah, then started the business and stuff and it’s slowed down but we don’t see ourselves slowing down.

Pete Warhurst  51:46
And we’re going into Moon season that’s April May to September you know, type timeframe we’re going to the moon season we’ve got over 1000 lines between our markets now and as people come on duty or on duty on online we’ll have more lanes and so

Pete Newsome  52:05
it’s so exciting now I have to put you on the spot for a second time to have you live and I’m recording this will you come? Can I have you can interview again in a year and get an update on where you are because now I’m invested in this fool and now that I know I’ve been put on then you full well I invest in?

Pete Newsome  52:27
Can I put you on the spot and invest in zengig but no, I mean it. Well, that’s the last question. I’ll ask you from a franchisee standpoint, I, don’t know, truth be told a whole lot about franchises. 

Pete Newsome  52:41
But how much experience and knowledge you have to have in order to set yourself up for success as a franchisor campus can be as simple as just writing a check.

Pete Warhurst  52:51
It’s not that simple. But we do a large majority of the call for all the calls coming into our facility. So we do all that we do all of your logistics for you. 

Pete Warhurst  53:02
All your scheduling on we do all your collections, you keep your own balance sheet and p&l, you know but that’s all on QuickBooks and it’s all set up a chart of accounts and Everything’s all set up for you. Yeah, we had 110 franchisees a pause and we didn’t have a single failure every one of them walked away multimillionaires. 

Pete Warhurst  53:23
Wow. I believe that the best franchise programs and the most successful franchise programs are those that are fair to both sides.

Pete Newsome  53:33
Yes.

Pete Warhurst  53:33
I know there’s a lot of give and take in the franchise world and if you’re gonna be a franchisee you need to understand that there’s a way in a methodology to do things and we’re going to teach you what that is. 

Pete Warhurst  53:44
If you won’t be an entrepreneur and go off and do everything your own yourself, then that’s great, you know, go off and be an entrepreneur but if you’re buying a franchise, just recognize that there are processes and procedures and rules around how you grow. 

Pete Warhurst  53:58
But yeah, as long as the core philosophy is right as long as it’s fair for both sides, we both win.

Pete Newsome  54:04
And I don’t have the perspective of being a franchisee but I do have the perspective of being an entrepreneur who didn’t think about all of the other things that come along with running the business that you mentioned QuickBooks, just something as simple as that and setting up a chart of accounts. 

Pete Newsome  54:23
I knew how to sell staffing and I thought I could do this I was confident enough to do that. I never opened QuickBooks before I didn’t establish but all of those things are necessary it’s not as simple as the surface-level idea or thing that an individual has experienced knowledge execute it is so complex.

Pete Newsome  54:42
And so I’ve always from afar admired the franchise model because it once again just makes sense that you get to combine the best of multiple ideas and areas of expertise which sounds like has been your specialty all along. 

Pete Warhurst  55:00
But it is, is a powerful tool. Franchising is a powerful tool, you get the advantage of somebody with local knowledge in Podunk Nebraska wherever it is, okay? 

Pete Warhurst  55:12
They have local knowledge of that market, they have friends that they can leverage in, and they can find the warehouse and they can have people that they can put to work that they can trust and stuff. 

Pete Warhurst  55:20
So their job is to manage the operations and, and, and the PR with the local consumer and, and do some guerrilla marketing and those types of things, which, as somebody living in Florida is going to have a hard time having those connections and making that so it’s really, it’s really easier for a local to open up in a market that is for somebody to just come walking in and you know, take over. 

Pete Warhurst  55:46
So it’s a fun business. It’s a lot of growth left. Yeah. And Potts has been around for almost 25 years, I think. Don’t hold me to this, because I don’t have that record of Intel anymore. But I think they’ll do almost 2 billion in revenue.

Pete Newsome  56:03
And you must be so proud.

Pete Warhurst  56:08
40% margins, and then you put a 10 or 12 Multiple on that, you know, they’re multi-billion dollar companies today.

Pete Newsome  56:13
That’s amazing. I mean, really, it’s so great to know, to be able to spend time with you and hear your story, especially since you’re committed to letting me spend another hour with you later on. So I’ll take advantage and we’ll put this in our show notes, but just so anyone who’s listening can know how to inquire about becoming a franchisee where do they go?

Pete Warhurst  56:36
Well, they can go to our website, you know, redroversoracle.com. 

Pete Newsome  56:51
And we’ll put that in our show notes. So no one has to remember that write that down. We’ll have it for you. Well, Pete thank you so much. I mean, this has been like I said, an absolute pleasure and I can’t thank you enough.

Pete Warhurst  57:03
Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed doing it with you.

Pete Newsome  57:05
Wonderful and everyone. Thanks for listening and drive safe