Hey Contrarians,

5 years ago, Robert "Bob" Balderas made a U-turn from his corporate 9-5, not sure where it would lead…

Today, his 15-person staff at Bob's Containers and a team of contractors take 4-ton metal boxes and whip ‘em into homes, offices, bathrooms, bars, kitchens, businesses, you name it. 

They’re growing methodically into an 8-figure business and have even made an appearance on Netflix. Has it been easy or risk-free? Absolutely not.

The fact they’ve pulled this off is nothing short of amazing.

Today in 5 minutes or less, you'll learn:

✔️ How it all started

✔️ 5 of Bob’s keys to success

✔️ What’s more American Dream than this?

How it all started

Bob’s background is in software engineering. So how the heck did he figure out how to get into… this?

“I worked for a pretty large company and, you know, was just stuck in meetings all day,” he told us.

“There’s that movie War Dogs, and it put the idea of requests for proposal (RFPs) in my head…”

In the movie, a request comes from the US government to get bids from suppliers for 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition.

For Bob, the request looked a little different.

The city of Austin requested bids on a project to convert 6 shipping containers to offices for a local community business office park.

“Having no experience, the day before, I filled out as much of the paperwork as I could and just made what I call ‘cowboy guesses’ on what things should cost,” Bob explained.

Miraculously, he landed the contract.

“I basically said, ‘What better way to capture the vision than to give the contract to a new business as well.’ I also was at their budget. And I could say I was at their budget ‘cause I had no idea what I was doing.”

That project ended up getting caught up in red tape, but being stubborn, Bob built a few containers anyway, put them up for sale online, and realized…

Wait a second, there’s demand.

“The wheels started turning from there…”

Bob says he probably cashed out about $15k from a 401k and used his partner’s credit cards to get things off the ground.

“It didn’t take too much to get going,” he explained. Partly cause he had a job at the time and wasn’t paying himself for the container business.

“I definitely moonlighted and leveraged that. So, a lot of long nights. Had this going for about a year and a half before I went full-time.”

That 1st year, Bob and his team were figuring out how to do the hard part, which is converting containers effectively.

“Year 1, we were building with anything and also buying and selling containers themselves, which is a pretty lucrative business. High volume commodity-based. You get all sorts of cool stuff in there. Tires, forgotten cargo, a lot of smells.”

“Humans?” we asked.

“Never humans,” he clarified.

Anyway… Around then, the pandemic came around.

“That’s when everyone was stuck at home. They needed more space, and we were one of the few websites with a container home or office online, with the price delivered and example photos,” Bob told us.

“Demand went through the roof. Phone calls like crazy.”

It’s not hard to see why

“We haven’t reinvented the wheel in construction,” Bob says. “We’re just using a different structure. The metal box is super strong. I mean, it holds 60k pounds.”

It’s so unique, the company was tapped to develop a home for Netflix’s show Queer Eye.

“We built [what’s now] one of our most popular models, the Joshua. That was great exposure. I think in the first 48 hours we got over $2 million in sales and a 3-4 month backlog. We had to figure out how to scale that up and build faster.”

Compared to traditional construction, Bob says, his builds take about 1/3 of the cost and time.

As an offsite construction provider, Bob’s team can control the entire building environment from their lot just outside Austin. “It’s more efficient,” he explained. “This takes weeks, not months.”

Residential customers love the modularity. Commercial customers love the speed and cost.

“These are Legos,” Bob will tell you. “You can add on to them later. If you need a starter home, you can add a 2nd floor or an addition pretty easily.”

Also cool — “It kind of lowers the barrier to start a new business,” says Bob, referring to use cases like:

• Bars
• Restaurants
• Gyms
• Bathrooms
• Kitchens
• Laundromats
• Storefronts
• Barbershops
• Dorms

… All of which are real builds up for sale on the company’s website.

This year, Bob says, the company is on track for $15M in sales. “Every day we have 1-2 trucks dropping off containers and picking them up to get delivered.”

5 of Bob’s keys to success

Most people will talk about their 1 key to success.

Talk to Bob, and you’ll quickly see he has about 100 — and they’re all so, so good.

Among them, these 5:

1. An agile construction model

This should sound familiar if you work in software development like Bob did.

“We follow an agile development model... Several steps and different builds are happening concurrently. We’re trying to optimize on supplies and vendors.”

Bob’s operates on a 30-40% gross margin. If it’s a fancier, $100k build that takes 4-8 weeks, Bob says they try to walk away with up to $35k in profit.

As for costs, here’s what a basic build could look like:

• Big metal box: $3k
• MEP materials: $5k-$6k
• Insulation: $2k-$3k
• Fixtures: $5k
• Glass: $2k-$3k
• Labor: $10k

For Bob, this type of construction process is the difference in making 3 houses in the time it would otherwise take to build 1.

“You have different trades going back and forth overlapping each other, and it works out really, really well.”

2. The right incentives

Most of Bob’s builders are contractors. He has about 15 employees across project managers, quality control, logistics, sales, and support.

The one thing keeping them aligned:

Incentives.

“I learned quickly — cause I didn’t come from construction — that to align everyone, they get paid when they’re done,” Bob says. “Productivity went up, build times [improved], and we just became really, really efficient that way.”

That way:

• A customer puts down a deposit on a build
• Bob’s puts down deposits for labor and materials
• Labor builds as efficiently as they can while ensuring quality
• The team delivers it to the customer
• The customer pays Bob’s and Bob’s pays for the labor

“It keeps overhead really low,” Bob says. “A construction business like this can be very capital intensive, but we found little ways like this to keep costs low so we can grow sustainably.”

Bob’s is also focused heavily on just-in-time inventory and leveraging the big box stores to buy, stock, and deliver all their parts.

“I think other companies have a different approach where they build inventory and then sell it. We do the opposite,” he told us.

“We have the orders and sales come in first and we build, we productize, and those lead to new sales. We’re not inside a German-style factory, we’re outside in a gravel truck lot. It’s effective. It keeps us really lean and efficient. The bottleneck wasn’t needing a fancy factory, it was having things figured out like good pricing and financing.”

3. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

“I like to think that the majority of people here can do my job if they have to because I document everything,” says Bob. “Almost everyone can do everyone else’s job because there’s a process documented on how to do it.”

At Bob’s, SOPs are super important. “For us, it’s our quality control,” he says.

At various stages throughout a container buildout, there’s a checklist of up to 100 things the crew has to check before they can move on to the next stage.

Among the 29 high-level steps to transforming a container into a container home, major ones include:

• Structural steel
• Interior framing
• Electrical
• Plumbing
• Insulation
• Walls
• Fixtures
• Lights
• Windows
• Trim

By aligning incentives and following SOPs, Bob and his team can ensure quality control.

“Quality is super important for us. Everyone wants to go really, really fast, but we don’t want any cutting corners because we are responsible, we warranty everything we build here, and we have to get them permitted, so all our interests are aligned to make sure this is built correctly.”

4. The customers guide the business

”We run [this] like an ecommerce business,” Bob admits. “If it gets clicks it sticks.”

When it comes to ideating new builds, Bob’s doesn’t have engineers and architects on staff.

“A lot of our menu is customer-driven. People bring us their vision, we build it, we document and process it, we productize it, and then we put it online and it leads to more sales. We’re successful because of the customer’s creative vision.”

According to Bob, that’s how the team’s built an entire menu of in-demand solutions without having to invest too heavily upfront.

“Everything’s just really data-driven. We let the consumers tell us what they want and then we scale it up from there.”

5. Make it a no-brainer

On Bob’s website, you’ll find a widget that lets you roughly calculate the potential return on investment on buying one of their container homes to use as a rental property.

Between tools like this and their work to offer a frictionless checkout process with financing options, Bob’s mission is to offer “no-brainer” solutions to interested customers.

“Mortgaging is the biggest breakthrough we’ve done,” Bob says.

What’s more American Dream than this?

One of life’s greatest costs? Where you live. It’s your rent or mortgage payment.

For many, it’s feeling more expensive than ever to afford those things.

And so the idea that Bob is building unique solutions that both:

• Offer new ways for more humans to have ownership of an asset
  
  
• Offer creative ways to build the infrastructure for a new business

…Is really quite cool.

What’s more American Dream than a house and a small business? And Bob’s Containers is in the business of building both.

We’re so inspired by their story and what they’ve built.

What do you think — should we get a container and see how far we can take it?

Hold up — you should read this

We meet people like this all the time:

They’re curious about buying a business but feel stuck in a container, unsure how to take action.

That’s why we’ve been cooking something up for ya...

One complete system to help you steal Codie’s blueprint to buying a business.

We’re calling it the Main Street Accelerator.

And now, we want to give you early access to a ‘lil sneak peek:

SO not boring...

▶️ Watch: We hung out with Bob for the day to see him in action. Then made an amazing, in-depth video about it.

 🎧 Listen: Why don't top earners stay in their hometowns? Codie’s latest podcast is out...

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