Looking for a high-income side hustle without the cost of buying property? Discover how savvy entrepreneurs are earning passive income using shipping containers – the modern alternative to real estate investing.
In this video, we break down:
✅ How the container rental business works
✅ Startup costs vs long-term profits
✅ Real-world success stories in the U.S., Canada, UK & Australia
✅ How to get started with little upfront investment
✅ Why this trend is booming in Tier 1 countries
💼 Whether you're chasing financial freedom, looking for a new revenue stream, or just tired of traditional investing – this side hustle could change your game
#Passive income
#Side hustle 2025
#Real estate alternatives
#Financial freedom
#Container rental business
#High income side hustles
#Make money without owning property
#Tier 1 business ideas
#Smart investments 2025
#Modern landlord strategy
Must Watch
Share | Like | Follow
In this video, we break down:
✅ How the container rental business works
✅ Startup costs vs long-term profits
✅ Real-world success stories in the U.S., Canada, UK & Australia
✅ How to get started with little upfront investment
✅ Why this trend is booming in Tier 1 countries
💼 Whether you're chasing financial freedom, looking for a new revenue stream, or just tired of traditional investing – this side hustle could change your game
#Passive income
#Side hustle 2025
#Real estate alternatives
#Financial freedom
#Container rental business
#High income side hustles
#Make money without owning property
#Tier 1 business ideas
#Smart investments 2025
#Modern landlord strategy
Must Watch
Share | Like | Follow
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00Imagine buying a shipping container for $3,500
00:04and selling it three weeks later for $35,000.
00:07Our man Bob thought he could use all the old recycled containers
00:11and turn them into profit.
00:12And it looks like he did.
00:14He did $1.5 million in his first year.
00:17Now, five years later, they're doing a whole lot more.
00:20How much more?
00:21They're doing $15 million this year.
00:23And in this episode of Main Street Millionaire,
00:25Bob takes us through the unique opportunity
00:26he found in containers.
00:28The nine things he does to differentiate himself
00:30from everybody else.
00:31I also run some heavy equipment.
00:33And most importantly, how you can steal his homework.
00:36Let's get into it.
00:37Let's go.
00:38So the thing is, whether you want a small side hustle
00:41or a multi-million dollar business like Bob,
00:43turns out you could do it with shipping containers,
00:45which is wild.
00:46Yeah, we use mostly new shipping containers,
00:48so they're used once.
00:49There's a huge supply of them because the US,
00:52we import way more than we export.
00:54So these sort of accumulate and they get used
00:56for several different things in a second life.
00:58Our particular niche is that we use them
00:59to make really cool homes or bars or anything really.
01:02Sky's the limit.
01:03And you transform it into something like this,
01:05which is a bar, right?
01:06Yeah, this is a container bar.
01:08So like a lot of new venues and hospitality,
01:10you'll see them in like all over now.
01:12They may not want to build a whole new building.
01:14They might want a backyard bar or it's their first serving
01:16station so we can convert shipping container into that,
01:19into kitchens.
01:20This one's a walk-in cooler and a serving area.
01:22It kind of lowers the barrier to start a new business
01:25like Toronto Bar.
01:26How fast can you make these things compared to most people?
01:29Compared to traditional construction,
01:30we're about a third of the cost and time.
01:33This takes weeks, not months, to build.
01:34This particular one is about six weeks.
01:36So this thing, I order it online.
01:38How much does this cost me?
01:39This one's around 60K.
01:4160K for an entire bar and a walk-in fridge?
01:44Yes.
01:45And it delivers to me in six weeks?
01:46Yes.
01:47If you were going to build this,
01:48how much do you think it would cost not to do it
01:50the container way?
01:50Stick frame or brick and mortar would take you three months
01:53and over 100K easily.
01:55And you probably have a lot of delays that are unexpected
01:57and you have to really find people that you trust
02:01in every sense of the way as opposed to this,
02:02you just have one person you go to for the entire thing.
02:05So we fall into what's called off-site construction
02:07where we can control the environment and build really fast
02:10versus building on-site where you have crews and materials
02:13land at different times.
02:14So it's a little more, it's more efficient.
02:16So we're able to capitalize on moving fast.
02:18So you might be thinking that I would love to buy a property
02:21for $30,000 and Airbnb it and get it in six to 10 weeks.
02:25That would be pretty crazy.
02:27But maybe you don't have 30K lying around
02:29or even up to some of your biggest models, 250K.
02:32Can you mortgage these things?
02:33Yeah, we have a lot of financing options,
02:35commercial, just lines of credit,
02:37but mortgaging is the biggest breakthrough we've done.
02:39People can now buy land and their first home,
02:41put them together, get some place to live.
02:43That would be a really affordable price.
02:45So let's say I don't have a ton of money.
02:47I would like to move into my first place
02:48and I want a one bedroom, you know, nice-ish container home.
02:53How much would that cost me from you guys?
02:55Not including the land, but you're starting around 50, 55,000.
02:58And then if I wanted a two bedroom?
03:00You're going up closer to 80 to 100.
03:02So 80 to 100K, you get a cool container home,
03:05you place it on a piece of land, you Airbnb that bad boy,
03:08or you live there instead of like an Amazon box like this.
03:12On this channel, we don't just cover Main Street millionaires
03:15who do the dirty work, we do it too.
03:16We own a bunch of businesses just like this.
03:18So we're going to go get in there.
03:19We're going to see how useful these guns are.
03:21The answer is going to be not very useful, but we're going to try.
03:23We're going to try to help them out.
03:24You also have Netflix here, right?
03:26Yeah, we got called on the show Queer Eye.
03:28We built one of our most popular models now, the Joshua.
03:31And so that was a great experience.
03:32How much money do you make after you do something like going on Netflix?
03:36That was great exposure.
03:37I think at the first 48 hours, we got over two million in sales.
03:40What?
03:41We got like a three to four month backlog almost immediately.
03:43We had to figure out how to scale that up, you know, and build faster.
03:47Yeah, that's what nobody tells you is that there's something called float,
03:49which is when you get more people who want to buy your stuff,
03:51you have to be able to buy the stuff to create the stuff to sell to the customer.
03:54We learned quickly we had to take deposits.
03:56We use that to buy materials to set up the labor and it helps us go faster.
03:59So you take the money up front, some portion of it.
04:02Yes.
04:02Use that to cover all your floats.
04:03You're never out of pocket.
04:04Correct.
04:05And then they do not take actual possession of it until they've paid your final amount.
04:10Correct.
04:10Yeah.
04:10And so at least you don't have a problem, which many e-commerce companies do,
04:15which is you've got to buy inventory way in advance before you can ever ship it to somebody.
04:19And you've avoided that entirely.
04:22Like I should be doing this part, right?
04:25I should be lifting stuff.
04:26Okay.
04:28Kalinzi?
04:28Necesita ayuda?
04:29What's happening here?
04:31We're just going to do some containers so we can start a project.
04:33We're going to make these in the restrooms, but every day we have one to two trucks dropping
04:37off containers and picking them up to go get delivered.
04:39So do you ever find anything weird in there?
04:41Year one when we were building with anything and also just buying and selling containers,
04:45which is a pretty lucrative business, high volume, commodity based.
04:48We could get all sorts of cool stuff in there.
04:49Really?
04:50Tires, forgotten cargo, weird, a lot of smells.
04:53Oh, I bet.
04:54Humans?
04:55Never humans.
04:56Okay.
04:57That's good.
04:58These trailers that you see being delivered on, being pulled by pickups, that was sort
05:02of a good timing and a key to our success.
05:04We can move empty containers with a pickup truck and a trailer and not have to register as a DOT
05:10super expensive trucking because that truck and trailer combined are under a certain threshold.
05:14Call it the Amazon Prime loophole.
05:16When you see those delivery vans being driven by teenage kids, they don't have CDLs or high-end
05:21driver's licenses because they're underweight.
05:23We move a lot of containers that way, especially in year one when all we did is buy and sell
05:26those.
05:27Como así?
05:28La marca.
05:29Ah, la marca.
05:30Uh-huh.
05:31This is complex work at this part.
05:35They brought in the big guns for it.
05:38As I get my oat milk in between takes.
05:41So how many employees do you guys have now?
05:44So most of our builders are contractors.
05:46Yeah.
05:47Employees, I have about 15.
05:49That's our project managers, quality control, logistics, sales and support.
05:54I learned quickly that, you know, because I didn't come to construction, in order to
05:58align everyone, they're getting paid to do the job.
06:02So they get paid when they're done.
06:04Productivity went up.
06:05Build times went up.
06:06And we just became really, really efficient that way.
06:08So one of the keys is making sure that people have a really direct deliverable in this industry,
06:13where instead of just an hourly wage, they get paid when it gets done.
06:16Yeah.
06:17So one thing we're really big on is making sure everyone's interest in line.
06:19We get a deposit from the customer.
06:20We put our deposits for the labor materials.
06:22They build as fast as they can or, you know, comfortable.
06:24When it's all done, it passes all the quality control checks.
06:27We send it to our customer.
06:28They pay us.
06:29Then we pay labor.
06:30And so it keeps overhead really low.
06:32Interesting.
06:33A construction business like this can be very capital intensive.
06:36We found little ways like that to keep costs low so we can grow sustainably.
06:41What else have you learned from a cost perspective?
06:43I do not hold inventory as much as possible.
06:46So I do a lot of just-in-time inventory.
06:48Yeah.
06:49I learned in the past career.
06:50So, and I leverage a lot of the big box stores to hold all our parts.
06:53You know, Homebeupo has like over 5,000-person procurement team.
06:57We give them product lists of everything we need to build a home and we have them stock
07:01it and we just buy it and have it delivered when we need it.
07:03Whoa.
07:04Right?
07:05Because they have the capital for that.
07:06Now, what about equipment like this?
07:08Like, are you buying these bad boards?
07:09Because these are expensive.
07:10What would one of these run you?
07:11A forklift can run you anywhere from $25,000 to $100,000 depending on how big they are.
07:16We lease some of our equipment or we'll buy it at auction.
07:19We don't need anything pretty.
07:20We just need it to be functional.
07:21So we do a lot with very little.
07:23I think other companies that have a different approach where they build inventory and then
07:27sell it, we do the opposite.
07:29We have the orders and sales come in first and we build those.
07:32We productize them.
07:33They lead to new sales.
07:34Smart.
07:35And you know, we're not inside a German-style factory.
07:37We're outside in a gravel truck lot.
07:39It's effective and it keeps us really lean and efficient.
07:42It's like the bottleneck wasn't having a fancy factory.
07:45It was having things figured out like a good price and financing.
07:48Love that.
07:49You know?
07:50It's out behind you.
07:51Woo!
07:52Yeah.
07:53Coming through.
07:54Should we help him with something?
07:55Does he need two by fours?
07:56All right.
07:57You have to grab some too.
07:58I think he already has pre-cut ones.
08:00Yeah.
08:01These are probably too long for him, huh?
08:02Too short maybe.
08:03Good for the video?
08:04Yeah.
08:05Yeah.
08:06So starting a business that now does $15 million a year in five years is intimidating.
08:10What's fascinating about you is you used to do this for a living and now you do this.
08:14I worked for a pretty large company and, you know, you're just stuck in meetings all day.
08:18You get a little disfranchised and there's a movie called War Dogs.
08:21It put the idea of RFPs in my head and my partner at the time, she was really wanting to start a business.
08:26The city of Austin put out a bid for a project to convert six shipping containers to offices for, like, a community park they were building.
08:33Having no experience the day before, filled out as much of the paperwork as I could quickly and just made, what we call it, cowboy guesses on what things should cost.
08:41He interviewed me and I sold myself on the project and that's how it all started.
08:45What did you say in that interview that sold them?
08:47Basically, we sold them and said, hey, this was a project for helping new businesses start.
08:51They were going to give them office space and I said, what better way to, you know, capture that vision is to give it to a new business as well.
08:58And I also was at their budget, which I could say I was at their budget because I had no idea what I was doing.
09:02I wasn't accounting for my time and what that would cost or, you know, a lot of things, to be honest.
09:07That project got caught up in red tape, but being stubborn, we built a few, put them online and someone bought them immediately.
09:13So we saw there was immediate demand, we had revenue, and so the wheels started turning from there.
09:18How much money did this business take for you to start?
09:21I probably cashed out about like 15K from a 401K I had at the time.
09:25And my partner had a great credit, so we used her credit card to get everything going.
09:30So it didn't take too much to get going because, of course, not paying yourself.
09:34Did you quit your job before you started or did you kind of, you know, did you kind of monkey bar between the two for a minute?
09:40No, I definitely moonlighted and leveraged that.
09:43So a lot of long nights had this going for about a year, year and a half before I went full time.
09:47How much money are you making in that first year?
09:50So that first year we were pretty break even, but we hit about a million and a half in revenue.
09:54The first year we were figuring out how to do the hard part, which is this value add converting them.
09:58Well, I saw a huge opportunity just to buy and sell empty containers.
10:01And the reason why is because when I tried to buy a container to start my project, I got burned.
10:06It's a very unregulated market and anyone can do it.
10:10Being pissed off from getting burned on buying containers never got delivered,
10:13or when they get delivered, they're poor quality.
10:15I couldn't use them, but I had to make commitments to buy and sell so many.
10:18I e-commed it, made a website, put them online with simple things like here's the price delivered,
10:22no hidden fees, and the demand was there.
10:25And it just took off from that.
10:27And something happened, which was COVID.
10:29Yeah, two things happened.
10:31The world's shipping demand went through the roof, so you couldn't get containers to buy and sell.
10:35So a lot of companies had to sit on the sidelines or just go under.
10:38We were already getting back into more modifications.
10:42We made our first container home, which was a test, and that's when everyone was stuck at home.
10:47They needed more space.
10:48We were one of the few websites where we had a container home or a container office online
10:52with the price delivered and example photos.
10:55And so, yeah, just the demand went through the roof.
10:58Phone calls like crazy.
10:59On the internet, I know people right now are thinking, well, I could never do that
11:02because I don't know how to do construction.
11:04Well, I could never do that.
11:05He figured out because he was a software engineer.
11:07But often, none of us know what we're doing.
11:10And the only difference is are we willing to be humble enough to ask the questions
11:13that show that we're willing to do the work.
11:15We just need some direction.
11:17So I love owning my own businesses.
11:19And I think you should have ownership too.
11:20But let's be straight here.
11:22It is hard.
11:23Life alone is tough enough.
11:25Then add making sales, managing people, running an actual business.
11:30You can't even underestimate how tough this is.
11:33That's why I partnered with BetterHelp, the sponsor of today's video.
11:36If you go to BetterHelp's site, they'll ask you a couple questions.
11:38And based on your answers, they'll match you up with one of their therapists
11:41who they think can help you out the most.
11:43The therapist they pick for you will have tons of experience dealing with whatever you're going through.
11:47Every single one of their therapists is licensed, has a master's or doctorate degree,
11:51and has spent over three years and a thousand hours working with people just like you.
11:55And if the first match doesn't work, that's okay because there are over 30,000 therapists in their network
11:59that you can switch to at no additional cost anytime so you can find the right fit for you.
12:04Life is tough.
12:05If you want a little help along the way, go to BetterHelp.com slash Cody Sanchez
12:10or select Cody Sanchez at sign up and we've got a little discount to help you on your very first therapy session.
12:16Let's talk about transforming a container.
12:19I want to get down to the nitty gritty studs of what it takes.
12:24We're in the middle of a container that's right in the middle of probably the framing stick phase, right?
12:29We're at what's called MEP. Mechanical Engineering Plumbing is almost done.
12:33So this is about 50% complete.
12:35Rapid fire, how do we transform a container in 60 seconds? How many steps? Ready, go.
12:40There are 29 steps, high level steps.
12:44I'll go for the major ones. You get structural steel, your interior framing, electrical, plumbing, insulation.
12:52Then we'll sheath the walls. We'll install the fixtures, including lights, windows, and then do the final finish, your trim.
13:01What I took from this is it's fast, but how much does it cost?
13:05We operate on a 30-40% gross margin. That's our goal.
13:10What that looks like, you know, if it's a fancier 100k build, we're trying to walk away with anywhere 25-35k profit.
13:17Nice.
13:18It'll take us anywhere from four weeks up to eight weeks, depending on what we're building.
13:22So if I had to think about the costs and how they sit on a pie chart, I go the container itself costs, this container costs what?
13:29This metal box costs you about $3,000.
13:31Metal box, $3,000.
13:33Then we've got this next step, right?
13:36Yeah. So all your MEP materials is going to cost you another, let's say $5,000 to $6,000.
13:41Okay. And then what's next?
13:43Insulation is another $2,000 to $3,000.
13:45Okay.
13:46And then we're going into your fixtures. We'll get you up to $5,000.
13:50Okay.
13:51Your glass is another $2,000 to $3,000. I don't know where this is adding up right now.
13:54Public math. We don't do it. We'll have them do it later.
13:56Then your final finish, then labor, that's the most intensive. High cost, it takes the most time. That's costing me another $10,000.
14:04Amazing.
14:05And all in, we have this for your container. What is your business model? What exactly do you do here?
14:10We run like an e-commerce business. If you look on our website, there's a set menu, products with the pricing online and variants.
14:17I try to keep it a slim in and out menu where it's no more than four products and three variants and people can mix and match.
14:25Half the business where it's like a self-serve model. And then the other half is a consultant where someone found us online, Instagram, our website, gave them a great idea.
14:34They made a phone call. They book an appointment on the phone or a video consult and we build them a solution.
14:40So we got two business models. Well, the business model people think you guys do is I build containers.
14:45But what you really would say is I am an e-commerce company that does a productized service, aka containers, or I am an e-commerce company that does bespoke build-outs.
14:55Correct.
14:56Those are my two business models. It's all just wrapped in a steel box.
14:59Yeah, what we like to say is that we build solutions, right? Somewhat incidental, it's a container, but that's our medium and we can do it really, really well.
15:06Do you ever write little notes to people on here?
15:08Um, sometimes, you know.
15:10Should we write them a note?
15:11Yeah.
15:12Welcome home.
15:13Go ahead. This will be part of history.
15:14If anybody wants an autographed container, you can find them over at Bob's Containers from Cody Sanchez. Marginal markup on it.
15:20We'll talk about the royalties again on this thing later.
15:22Okay, I can't this up, can I?
15:24No, we'll just re-weld it.
15:25The guys are like, great, we'd love her to show up again.
15:28The fascinating part about your background is that you run this business not like a typical construction business.
15:33And let's break down some of your key frameworks about that.
15:36We call it agile construction, so we follow sort of an agile development where if you look out there, it's not a build happening in sequential order.
15:44There's several steps happening concurrently and different builds happening concurrently as well.
15:48So we're trying to optimize on supplies and vendors.
15:51If I was to explain agile construction, you have two different types, right?
15:56You have sequential and you have agile.
15:58And in a sequential model, you might have one house being built and all your dudes are sort of building the same house at the same time until the house is fully done, right?
16:08Correct.
16:09And then you have agile where you actually have, in your case, their containers, so they might look like this.
16:15You have people in varying stages working on each house so that simultaneously you're more likely an assembly line than you are a vertical construction crew.
16:25Correct.
16:26And the difference there is this could take months to complete one house before you start the next one.
16:30In the same amount of time, you completed three.
16:32So you have different trades going back and forth, overlapping each other, and it works out really, really well.
16:37And so basically the other thing that you have is the second that this guy's done here turning the light bulb on, that's a light bulb.
16:44You're welcome, Picasso.
16:45He can then go over here and turn the lights on over here.
16:49Whatever the that kind of light bulb is.
16:51And then when he's done doing the lights over here and like the kitchen or whatever is ready over here, he goes here.
16:58You get the same guy on site for longer, which means you don't have as much disruption waiting on people in between in the trades, right?
17:03Exactly.
17:04I didn't say guys two and three, they're over in the side prefabricating parts to go fast for the next one.
17:09People are constantly moving.
17:10So it's an assembly line except the human machinery are moving around.
17:13But you're also adding what sounds like an actual assembly in prefabricated doors, windows, et cetera, that they are inserting.
17:23Yeah.
17:24Any parts that we can buy, we'll prefabricate, have stock ups.
17:28They can grab and go.
17:29You know, I think one of the hardest parts in a business is getting people to do SOPs.
17:32I don't know about you, but it's always pulling teeth for me to get people to do SOPs.
17:36And in my mind, SOPs equal freedom.
17:39And until you have them, you are stuck in a job.
17:41You can never be a leader.
17:43You can never really hire other people because it's all in here.
17:45Talk to me about what do SOPs mean to you?
17:48How do you guys use them?
17:49Are they important?
17:50Oh, they're super important.
17:51For us, it's our quality control.
17:53So at various stages throughout any build, there's a checklist of sometimes up to 100 things that
17:59they have to make sure are correct so they can move on to the next stage.
18:02And the way that we make sure they happen is that they're sometimes tied to milestone payments to the contractors.
18:08So if they get to 50%, they have to pass their quality control to go to the next phase.
18:14And they can't go to the next phase or get paid until it passes that.
18:17So this is how we control the process and really the quality.
18:20Super important for us.
18:21So that, it kind of lights to what I mentioned earlier, keeping interests aligned.
18:25You know, everyone wants to go really, really fast.
18:27We don't want any cutting corners because we are responsible.
18:30We warranty everything we build here.
18:32And we have to get them permitted where there's rules on.
18:34So we make sure that they are adhering to our process even though they're not employees or contractors,
18:40but all our interests are aligned to make sure this is built correctly.
18:43Well, the other awesome part is for those 15 employees you have,
18:46if one of them wants to go on vacation for a month somewhere,
18:49they can actually do it because you have systems and processes in place.
18:52Maybe you're not going to pay for all of it, but until you have,
18:55you can have a great employee, but they're not that great of an employee until they've actually optimized their SOPs
19:00so that you can place somebody in in their absence.
19:02I like to think that majority of people here can do my job if they have to because I document everything.
19:06Almost everyone can do everyone else's job because there's a process documented on how to do this.
19:18I am nailing this, by the way.
19:20I also feel like we should upsell this one, you know?
19:23So you built a full e-commerce solution, which is fascinating.
19:26Can you show it to us?
19:27Real quick, biggest thing we ever found people calling us about is where's the pricing.
19:31So learn that pretty quickly to put pricing in the header menu.
19:34You'd be surprised how many people don't do that.
19:36Yeah, they don't.
19:37Yeah, so this is one of our standard menus.
19:38And the one thing I want to chat about this is that, you know,
19:41we don't have engineers and architects on staff.
19:43You know, we contract it out, but we didn't design any of our products.
19:47These are all consumer driven.
19:48This one was designed by Netflix.
19:50This is a, that's like our flagship model because it has the most Airbnb rentals consistently of anyone.
19:57But what I'm trying to get at us here is that this is a consumer driven menu.
20:01Someone brings us the design.
20:03We'll build it.
20:04We don't exactly know what we're going to get into.
20:05You know, we kind of quote a little higher.
20:07We do a cowboy number.
20:08Now we have experience.
20:09We'll build it.
20:10You know, hopefully we break even if we lose and we definitely keep it a little bit longer.
20:13We market the heck out of it.
20:15We take lifestyle photos.
20:16We get, we bring in models, furniture as much as we can.
20:19Put that out on social media, on the website.
20:22And we do the role of e-com.
20:23If we get clicks, it sticks.
20:25And that's how we built an entire menu of products we know people want to buy
20:30without having to put a lot of money up front.
20:32You know, everything's just really data driven.
20:34We let the consumers, the data tell us what they want.
20:37And then we scale it up from there.
20:39You have a checkout process.
20:41It's frictionless.
20:42They can go to your website.
20:44They can select a model.
20:45And then what happens?
20:47They can choose a few variants like this one.
20:49We will limit some variants depending on the model because we just know what people want.
20:53They'll see the price up front.
20:54They can go into financing options.
20:56They can add to the cart or request a quote.
20:58You know, anything over 50K, people are going to give us a call anyway.
21:02You know, they want to make sure they know who they're working with.
21:04But it really filters out a lot of the leads and gets people's information they want right away.
21:10And for us, it helps me maintain a pretty lean sales team because they're not spending all day answering queries
21:16where people, all they want is what's the price, what's the price of the price.
21:19It sounds like a small thing, but it's kind of a big issue in any construction and building homes that people want to know the price pretty quickly.
21:25And they have to go through a whole set of appointment or, you know, get a call back.
21:30How much money do you think this has made you, this technology?
21:32How important is it just even your purchase flow?
21:35Oh, it's like, you know, several times the value of the company.
21:39We could white label this and use it in other industries to be honest.
21:42Wow.
21:43There's a lot of industries that if they simply did this, I think they could grow faster, you know, and become more efficient.
21:48If I look at your business model, it seems to me like there are a couple of key things that matter.
21:52So first you've got e-commerce website leading.
21:56You've got everything from pricing to one click options.
22:02Then you've got, in my opinion, one of the other really interesting things is like proof of concept with real images, because a lot of them don't.
22:14Then you have very different than other people, a productized service as opposed to straight only custom builds.
22:23But you're really smart because you do custom builds.
22:27But when you do them, you turn those into future productized services, which is brilliant.
22:33And then finally, you have agile construction, which allows you to decrease costs.
22:40And overall, you think about everything you're doing in this company like a mixture of tech plus e-com as opposed to straight construction.
22:53What do you think I missed?
22:55Information.
22:56A lot of our internal wikis, that information is already on the website.
23:01Oh, yeah.
23:02We're giving it away because the consumer or customers, they want to know.
23:05They want to know how we build.
23:07So I think one of our websites has some of the most like how to do it, like repositories out there.
23:12We get a lot of people who want to do it themselves.
23:14And they might buy from us in the future.
23:16They may just be really appreciative and give us a good review because we put it all out there.
23:20So having a website that has a lot of information will save you a lot of time.
23:25You'll keep your, you know, you keep your leaves very clean because they may use to ask questions.
23:29But also, you know, it helps us iterate faster.
23:33Dude, it's so true.
23:34So number eight is really share everything and content first.
23:44And maybe in order to have eight, you have to have nine, which is SOPs.
23:50Yeah, correct.
23:51Love that.
23:52So nine steps to a company that in five years does $15 million in revenue from a guy that started it with 15K and a keyboard.
24:06Went out the other side a little bit.
24:08If you want to figure out how to make money off shipping containers right now, I think one of the most interesting ways is Airbnb.
24:14You could have a shipping container that starts as low as $30,000 and start cash flowing on Airbnb's.
24:19But how do you know that?
24:21And you know it a particularly interesting way.
24:23Yeah.
24:24So we got that question a lot.
24:25So using some of my background, we built a quick little widget tool that you can go to our website, click investment, choose a model, you know, somewhere popular there.
24:34Quantity will probably be one.
24:36You can feed in your address or you can put aesthetically how much you want to rent per day, what you think occupancy can be.
24:43And they'll give you your ROI.
24:45So this one says your monthly income will be $4,600.
24:48You'll get your return in 26 months.
24:50It can vary by market.
24:51So we have a couple of versions of this app where we can dynamically pull in your address using some rental data that's out there.
24:57And so it's we try to make it a slogan, a no brainer.
25:01You know what you're getting into and when you're going to get your return so you can rinse and repeat.
25:05So with one Airbnb, you could basically make back your money in two years and two months if you use this model theoretically.
25:14And these are using like pretty conservative estimates on an average.
25:19You'd want to get really particular for where you live and what the land is and all of that particular.
25:22But that's fascinating.
25:24The other part that's really interesting on this is you guys finance.
25:27Right.
25:28So you could pretty quickly get into the money.
25:30If you use this for financing, you're going to cash flow pretty quickly.
25:33I mean, you've got to have people that are cash flowing in the first three months.
25:37We've had some people who within the first month, they're booked, you know, even pre-sold.
25:41And they're profitable.
25:42Yeah.
25:43Yeah, that's wild.
25:44Well, it's not that hard.
25:45I mean, I'm no mathematician, but if you buy a fully kitted out Airbnb, plop it on and set it up and your all in cost is somewhere between, I don't know, $80,000 and $200,000.
25:56And you can rent it out for somewhere between $150 to $200.
26:00You're cash flowing to the tune of a couple thousand dollars a month.
26:04Yeah.
26:05On top of your costs.
26:06And some of our finest options are pretty aggressive.
26:08They're zero interest.
26:09And so they can be making money very, very quickly.
26:12I like zero interest.
26:14I like this for us.
26:16The five steps you would need to Airbnb on a container home right now.
26:20One, you come to the site.
26:21You pick your model.
26:22Two, you go to the calculator.
26:24You make sure that model makes sense for your physical address.
26:27Three, you look at what the cost of land would be and or additional build out besides the containers.
26:33Four, putting in the furniture that you need for it to outfit it.
26:37Then five, whatever your residual monthly costs are.
26:40Then six, the taxes and, you know, percentage fees that Airbnb takes.
26:45You put that all together.
26:46You list it.
26:47You take some photos.
26:48And you're inside of a new Airbnb in six to 12 weeks, which wouldn't even happen if you went out to buy a house right now.
26:55It would take longer to close, get financing and do all the furniture and fixings as opposed to do this.
27:02That's wild.
27:03I think the ones we're mortgaging now for clients, they're taking about three months to close.
27:07What is one of the biggest costs for any human before they've really hit financial freedom?
27:13And it's where do you live?
27:15And it's what's your monthly rent or mortgages?
27:18And it's getting the financing to be able to do it.
27:20It's really hard for people these days.
27:21And it's more expensive than ever to live, just live these days.
27:26And so the idea that you could come up with creative ways for everyday humans to have ownership in their home and then add on income properties is incredibly important.
27:37Above and beyond, you little on there making a bunch of money on Airbnb, which is cool, too.
27:42This one kind of freaks me out.
27:45It's a nail gun.
27:46I refuse to touch that at this stage of my career in construction.
27:50You want to show us some of your favorite builds?
27:52We have one here that's getting rid of the ship.
27:54It's the Marble Falls.
27:55It's one of my favorite because one thing that we say is these are Legos.
27:58You can add on to them later.
27:59If you need a starter home, you can add a second floor or an addition pretty easily.
28:03And this is like our best model exemplifying that.
28:05Here we have a 20-foot container, which is its own contained bedroom.
28:10And above, a 40-foot container that's a whole one-bedroom with kitchen, washer-dryer, everything.
28:15And there's actually a bunch of really cool examples online of sick builds that you've had like this.
28:20A lot of our menu is customer-driven.
28:22People bring us their vision.
28:23We build it.
28:24We document and process it.
28:26We productize it.
28:27And then we put it online and it leads to more sales.
28:29We're kind of successful because of the customer's creative vision.
28:32Here we're walking into a 40-foot shipping container.
28:35This could be a small living room, an office, or a bedroom.
28:38Yeah.
28:39So what you can see here is that we build them like an interesting home.
28:43So this is drywall, wood-framed.
28:45It's nothing.
28:46We haven't reinvented a wheel in construction.
28:47We're just using a different structure.
28:49The metal box is super strong.
28:51I mean, it holds 60,000 pounds.
28:52It holds itself up.
28:53And we just made the interior look like a home.
28:56So now we're walking into a nice kitchenette area.
28:58You can cook, clean everything there.
29:00Doesn't this make you want to go like .
29:04A common question is like, do these get hot or cold in the winter?
29:07Yeah.
29:08No, not really.
29:09We over-insulated.
29:10We over-engineered that part of it.
29:11So it's actually super energy efficient.
29:13And you just probably lock this bad boy up and you're done with it if you Airbnb it.
29:18A piece of metal we cut out here.
29:19We put it on a hinge.
29:20They can lock it up, close the bed and the hatches.
29:23Also hurricane-proof.
29:24So it makes it really easy to come and go.
29:27It actually fits, you know, full-size bed comfortably.
29:29A queen-size wall-to-wall.
29:31But you can get your own private space here.
29:33And then on this model, we have a whole upstairs.
29:35So what we find when people do Airbnb, they put the kids down here.
29:38And the parents will sleep upstairs and have their privacy.
29:41So.
29:42Let's check it out.
29:43So you see up here, we have a rooftop deck.
29:45So if you have a great view, there's Austin over there.
29:48Or wherever you're placing this.
29:50That's great for Airbnb guests.
29:52And we have a whole other suite up here.
29:54Yeah.
29:55I can see some lounge furniture, some plants.
29:57Yeah.
29:58Like that.
29:59What's really popular is the rooftop hot tub.
30:00So we find when we build these, what gets more dollars per night is not fancy like cupboards
30:05and customizations like that.
30:06It's more space.
30:07Rooftop deck.
30:08And things, amenities like hot tubs, fireplaces, things like that.
30:11I accidentally told them that I've driven a forklift before, which is true.
30:16There is picture proof.
30:17But now he thinks that I could move his containers.
30:19And I don't know about that.
30:20So there's a likelihood I murdered myself, him, and I ruined Bob's containers.
30:25So we're just going to have to see.
30:26In your business, have you had moments where you're like, oh my God, we made a huge mistake.
30:30And if so, what are they so they can learn from our pain?
30:34I mean, to start off not taking a risk, right?
30:36And you have to do that, you know, like strategically.
30:39But anytime we get a little safe, I feel like we sort of just, you know, things stagnate a bit.
30:45So we're always looking to take on at least one unique portfolio project I call a quarter,
30:50which means that something we've never built before.
30:52And it seems risky, but it helps us build a new product.
30:55It helps get marketing attention and then not listen to your customers.
31:00So we try to take surveys like crazy.
31:02That's how we figured out that, hey, you know, consumers, they may want more model examples,
31:07or maybe they don't, what they really need.
31:09They needed financing.
31:10So we put a lot of time and effort hitting the phones,
31:12finding the right lending partners to get people financed.
31:15Be sure to constantly keep your ears to the ground,
31:17figure out what the consumers want.
31:19And scaling.
31:20Something like this, I think we told you we did a few tech incubators.
31:24We tried to scale up too quickly.
31:25That was dangerous.
31:27You can't listen to the VCs.
31:28Yeah, we definitely had to scale that back and now we're doing it in a very sustainable way.
31:33So sometimes you need to not take other people's advice who haven't done the thing that they're advising you to do.
31:38Yeah, take some advice with a grain of salt.
31:40First of all, Bob the Builder. How do we not make a joke about this? Incredible.
31:44Second of all, how rare is it to find humans who choose to build in a world of people who choose to just consume and take?
31:52Well, this is what America was built on.
31:54People going out, starting something new that's never been done, employing a bunch of other humans to build something to better somebody's life.
32:01And what's more American, an American dream, than the house?
32:04This was the core thing that all of us used to think that we had as Americans.
32:08I am so inspired by Bob's story and what he's built here.
32:12And actually, you guys, do you think I should buy one of these containers for Bob and see how much we can make on Airbnb?
32:17We could even give something away.
32:19I don't know.
32:20Tell me in the comments.
32:22I don't know.
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