Self-Storage Construction in 2025: Avoiding the Costly Mistakes

[00:00:00] Jared Gabaldon: Thank you for tuning in today. We're talking about storage construction in 2025 with the CEO of storage building company, Patrick McAllister, and we're also joined by our Southeast regional sales manager, the legend, Tony Domicolo.

[00:00:13] Jared Gabaldon: Thank you for being here, guys. And Pat, if you could just get started with talking about your history in the business, how did you get into construction? How'd you get into storage construction? And then to becoming a business owner.

[00:00:26] Pat McCallister: Yes so I graduated from Auburn University back in 2008 and straight out of college. I've always worked for steel fab shops started working for a steel shop in Polk County, Florida, and then spent a couple years there and then took a job up in Philadelphia building some more complex projects and eventually work my way back down to Florida.

[00:00:46] Pat McCallister: And then I started working for a, steel construction company that focused on self storage. And I stayed there for about four and a half years, learned the ropes, figured out the pros and cons of the business and thought I could do things a little bit better. Started [00:01:00] SBC back in 2019.

[00:01:01] Pat McCallister: And for the past six years, I've been here growing the business and working on making storage easier for our contractors.

[00:01:09] Jared Gabaldon: Right, and so, you mentioned the pros and the cons. And so that's what we're getting started with here is talking about some of the common mistakes that you see developers make when working with their contractors. And, I think from talking to folks in the business, you hear that, no, build is going to be perfect, like where there's just flawless, top to bottom, there's always going to be mistakes.

[00:01:29] Jared Gabaldon: What are some of those big ones that you see commonly? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:01:31] Pat McCallister: So for especially specifically in self-storage construction and again I can speak more to the metal building side of this business, but I got three things that I would say, I see commonly would be the use of patent framing systems. I think they're interesting. They're great.

[00:01:47] Pat McCallister: Some of these systems that I've seen out here are nice and they work fine. However my, my problem with that is if you're a developer and you hire an engineer, a patented framing system, you are [00:02:00] using just that metal building company and you're subject to their numbers, their design and however they want to go with it.

[00:02:07] Pat McCallister: Where if you use conventional cold form metal framing or tube steel column framing, you now open the ability to bid it out to multiple metal building contractors and, get the most competitive price. So, I'm not saying these patent framing systems don't work or whatever.

[00:02:23] Pat McCallister: I think what it does is it sucks you into one contractor specifically. And doesn't allow you to get the best price. And so that I would say that's the first one. Funding, when it comes to funding on these projects, I think that's key for these jobs. A lot of guys, whether they're going to self fund or they're using the banks to get things done.

[00:02:41] Pat McCallister: You've got to make sure your money is flowing to the job site. I've seen jobs dragging on to where they're not paying every 30 days. They're getting into the 90 120 day turnaround. And then the owner of it's all upset because production's slow. There's not enough people in the job site.

[00:02:56] Pat McCallister: Put some money into this job site and you can see, things will move a lot quicker, we [00:03:00] do about 70 jobs a year. Currently, and some jobs are funded every 30 days. I'd say your typical is going to be about 40 to 50 days. And, the jobs that go to 90, definitely there's subs that aren't showing up like they should be.

[00:03:13] Pat McCallister: They got smaller crews where jobs that are funded every 30 days. It is just moving, so I say funding is a very important thing for a developer. And then the other like key that I would say is make sure you're working with companies that have good oversight, have strong teams, they have good project managers.

[00:03:29] Pat McCallister: They have superintendents, guys that know how to build storage. What you don't want to do is work with companies that are smaller, that, the owner is also the project manager, the detailing manager, the field superintendent. And those companies can build storage. I'm not saying they can't, if you have a massive team and the ability to run these jobs, with a lot of oversight and, for example, our company, every job gets a project manager, a detailing manager and a field supervisor.

[00:03:56] Pat McCallister: So you have three guys dedicated to your job, for every single one of our projects [00:04:00] and not one guy because, and then my PMs and all those guys are running multiple jobs, but if you have one PM, that's also doing all the RFIs, all the submittals, all the scheduling, all the field traffic. And then he's doing that for 10 other jobs.

[00:04:13] Pat McCallister: I would imagine. You're going to start seeing stuff slip. And so those are my three key things. You don't have to use a patent company. I think those are one things, just, making sure that you guys get the most competitive bid. There is, dozens of metal building companies that can bid anyone's drawings.

[00:04:27] Pat McCallister: But if you go with the patent framing systems, only one company can bid it. And then making sure you got good funding and money flowing to the job site and then making sure the teams that you hire, your general contractor and your metal building guys have the oversight, have the ability to handle your project.

[00:04:41] Jared Gabaldon: Yeah, that's interesting, talking about the relationship between a component manufacturer like us and a contractor, ensuring, project success. And something that I've heard through the grapevine anyways, is I was hearing about a facility where the component manufacturer like us couldn't get doors to a job. It was like a multi story facility. [00:05:00] They ended up having to just leave, they just opened the bottom floor.

[00:05:03] Jared Gabaldon: They're like, we need to open, for business, but the top floor is still, barren for now because it couldn't get doors on it. And so, I'm curious of, what our role is as far as getting you guys over the finish line. You're working with a bunch of different vendors and manufacturers, not just us, And so, when things go awry, how do you even salvage it like I said, for another facility that I was hearing about, they were able to at least open one floor, but I'm sure that's never in the plans really.

[00:05:26] Pat McCallister: So I think communication is key. Scheduling is key. Typically when you hire my company, we are at a minimum 4 to 6 months away from delivery. When we get started on these jobs, our goal is to, if you hire us, we do the buyout quickly. We have a 72 hour rule where you have to purchase all materials, lock in your vendors, and then beyond 72 hours, they go into these weekly meetings.

[00:05:49] Pat McCallister: So the contractor couldn't have maybe not even mobilized yet, but already my company is talking to the vendors and we're saying, Hey, we're being told we're going to deliver in five months. We have our field supervisor going to [00:06:00] that job site that week. He's taking notes and saying, Hey, there's no job site trailer here.

[00:06:04] Pat McCallister: There's still trees on the lot. They're not ready. And so we're having these weekly communication meetings. Tony's part of them. They're probably a little bit over commutative, but at this point, we're always pinpointing and letting our vendors know and our clients know like, Hey, we're still tracking an August delivery date, and then if we see that it slips to September, then we're letting everyone know, and they're knowing in months advance, so there's no surprises.

[00:06:28] Pat McCallister: Never in my company should we be like, Oh, you guys deliver it next week and no one's aware of it. We would have been aware of it for months. And then, like I said, communications key, you mentioned earlier projects aren't perfect. There's always going to be problems. There's always going to be an issue.

[00:06:42] Pat McCallister: And I guess, what I always tell people is, SBC is not going to be perfect. What you're paying for me and my people is our reaction to the issue. Do we pick up the phone? Do we come and instantly get on the problem and try to solve it? That's where I think, you're going to find working with SBC makes your project easier.

[00:06:59] Pat McCallister: We don't hide from [00:07:00] our problems. We get ahead of it. We try to communicate about it, get with our vendors. We do have a mass network of steel shops cold form suppliers and they're all regional as well so if I can't get a certain member out of the shop that we're using for a job, I can find it within two days or something from another, one of our manufacturers or steel suppliers.

[00:07:19] Pat McCallister: So communication's key, staying ahead of the schedule and then expecting these projects to have issues and just making sure you're reacting quickly to them.

[00:07:26] Anthony Domicolo: Part of that with you guys though, Patrick, too, is with the scope of work that y'all provide, you're not necessarily, on some projects you are, but not always just supplying the metal building. It could be, miss metals, staircase, doors and hallways and all that. I think for you guys on those types of projects, that helps the developer from a perspective of they got one finger to point and it's pointing back at you.

[00:07:50] Anthony Domicolo: And then you guys with your project manager and everybody that's involved, they're calling me, they're calling other people to get those issues taken care of. And [00:08:00] I think that's a great thing. And a lot of people appreciate that, but that there's one point of contact when you guys get in there

[00:08:06] Pat McCallister: It is. And we always realize we're like critical path. That's term we use in construction all the time is, in order for us to mobilize, we definitely made changes to this, but we typically like to see a full foundation, your two stair shafts and your elevator shaft, whether it's a double car cab or two singles, all built up, it's the three story we would like to have all that complete before we mobilize.

[00:08:26] Pat McCallister: And, with that, as soon as we show up there, we're framing reframing, putting the deck down, and then we're turning it over to the concrete guy to pour. And then we keep going the next thing. So typically once you go vertical, you'll start to see some rough in on plumbing and electric, not a lot happens until we dry in that building, and so once we show up, the contractor, in my opinion, is always behind schedule, needs me to do what I can to get it faster, get it done quicker, so that's and my team's trained for this, we know from the time we go up that, and there's a standard in storage, you should be flipping a floor a month, so and that's on your typical, 25 to 30, 000 square foot [00:09:00] facility.

[00:09:00] Pat McCallister: And so we have expectations to try to get everything done in about three weeks and then turn it over for the last five days of that month for the concrete guy to throw his wire mesh down or his rebar down and then pour concrete, let it settle for a couple of days and then get back up and do it again.

[00:09:15] Pat McCallister: So being critical path, we're always in stressful, intense situations, but yeah, We've done a lot of it now. So we know what to expect on these jobs.

[00:09:22] Jared Gabaldon: And also, with that, I also think about, the finished product and for myself I'm on Tik TOK, I'm watching inspector Tik TOK. I don't know if you've ever seen any of these guys, but they're always going through, there's all these little issues throughout the builds that they're, marking up.

[00:09:36] Jared Gabaldon: And it made me think about, from your side of things and, you're working with developers and you have pressure to, finish by a certain time. And it makes me think is there ever a time where they're asking you to cut corners, whether it's in any of your processes or any of the components that you are ordering or is it always very things are structured out a certain way and, you're not even allowing a corner to be cut. And it's more just by the time [00:10:00] it gets to the inspector, it's just a mistake that had happened and, it gets corrected.

[00:10:03] Pat McCallister: Right. I mean, we follow plans and spec pretty strictly, everything during the submittal process has to be approved. And so, steel's getting checked deck and where it's being manufactured is being checked. If we're putting on a metal roof or using a certain installation, all that stuff has to go through a submittal process

[00:10:18] Pat McCallister: and, we're getting approval to use these products. And then from there, yes, you're right. Our guys are framing up everything. That's why we have the full time superintendent on the job site. Those guys are there for three things, safety, quality, and schedule. And so those guys are out constantly making sure these guys are safe for one number two they are going behind them and checking all their work and making sure it's per plan and what's going on, but you are right I would say our common issue or problem that we have is you know header screws have all kinds of crazy patterns anywhere from eight screws to hell, 25 of them or so.

[00:10:53] Pat McCallister: And so, as they're screwing them in, they put in 22 screws, we're gonna be short 3. And so that'll get called out in inspection. It's not necessarily [00:11:00] a cut, a corner there, it's just these guys are moving quick, tons of screws, and, it's an easy remedy to fix it, but I would say, I wouldn't call that cutting corners, just moving quick and us not having a guy that's constantly checking.

[00:11:12] Pat McCallister: But, we try to get it all ready for the inspector before they pour and we do pretty well with that, I would say.

[00:11:18] Jared Gabaldon: Yeah, absolutely. Something else you also mentioned was steel and that's something that's on everyone's mind right now, the rising cost of materials. There's supply chain challenges that dates back to COVID and maybe even before, before it was really on everyone's radar. And does that really affect you on your side of things? And how does it, if it does.

[00:11:36] Pat McCallister: It does. Right now our current administration has put in a tariff on Mexico, Canada, and China for a lot of the steel and aluminum products we come in. However, we all need to keep in mind America still does produce a lot of our own steel I would say at least 75 percent maybe more is produced here locally in America.

[00:11:52] Pat McCallister: So, the effect on this is to get more americans to work obviously put more manufacturing here if it's more expensive to buy that 25 [00:12:00] percent that america needs then they're going to boost production here and put more people to work. So I think the tariffs are fine. However, it is going to make like already a lot of our vendors are implementing 10 percent price increases that we're getting right now in the month of March.

[00:12:13] Pat McCallister: And then I'm hearing over the next two months, we'll probably have another 10 percent increase. But again, you guys got to think if my contract on average is, I don't know, 1. 5, 1. 6 million, it's not a 10%. So you're not going to see 150, 000 increase on the price. You do have a lot of labor. My overhead's not, increasing.

[00:12:30] Pat McCallister: It's just a steel product. So it's your deck, your structural steel, your cold form, your PBU exterior metal wall panel systems or roof systems, insulation still, as it should be labor still as it should be. So I would say on average you're seeing anywhere from 80 to a hundred thousand dollars or so on these projects, maybe a little over a hundred thousand dollars.

[00:12:49] Pat McCallister: But what you are seeing is. We had a mad rush over the past, 30 days of guys trying to purchase to avoid this 80, 000 increase. And I'm not against that. We definitely [00:13:00] had a very good quarter one right now, but this is not COVID era. COVID was doubling your price overnight and no one could hold pricing for more than 24 hours.

[00:13:09] Pat McCallister: That was ridiculous. But I do want everyone to know that as they engage with SBC, we, are one of the few companies that will guarantee our price. So if you were to actually hire SBC and lock us in with a deposit, we require 10 percent down on our contract amount. We will then actually go buy your raw coil for your decking cold form PVU, and put it in our warehouse in Savannah, Georgia.

[00:13:34] Pat McCallister: And then, we will wait. Obviously, like I said, four to six months is when we show up. So we will hold your coil and then wait for the project, eight to six weeks away from delivery. Then we'll run your steel for you and that's covered in the contract amount. There's no storage fees.

[00:13:50] Pat McCallister: There's no nothing. It's just us saying, Hey, we're going to lock this in. We're going to prevent any escalations, any change orders, any of those talks on this contract and just lock it in today. And then [00:14:00] we'll deliver whenever you guys need it and we've now been doing that since the COVID era. So that was

[00:14:04] Pat McCallister: something I had to come up with quickly because we were a new company during COVID and I couldn't go in sending guys half a million dollar change orders being only a year old. They would have just dropped me and moved on to some of the guys that have been around for 20 years. So instead, what we did was invested in a warehouse in Savannah and just started hoarding coil.

[00:14:23] Pat McCallister: So, we'll do it again. I don't think we're in COVID type situations, 100, 000 increase on our steel package is, this is also probably going to affect rebar, so there's other components that I don't sell. I'm sure in the door and hallway game, you guys are probably going to see some increases coming soon.

[00:14:39] Anthony Domicolo: And we're doing the same thing, trying to get people locked in deposit, guaranteeing the price staying in front of it, just like you getting our raw materials bought so that we know, where we are longterm or medium term, so to speak because we all need to see where this is going, six, eight months from now.

[00:14:57] Pat McCallister: Yeah. And, so you specialized in [00:15:00] storage building, it's in your company's name, and with that, I'm curious of why not, residential side of things, for myself as a, millennial, we all want to buy a house and there's that problem of the supply, there's no supply for us to buy up and yet your company is, staying very busy in the storage building world.

Yeah. So, I feel like everyone in construction will choose their path, when they get started and get into it, you can either go the residential route or you can go the commercial route, Florida, where we're located has a huge residential market and it's been blowing up, ever since COVID to be honest with you.

[00:15:31] Pat McCallister: Since I graduated, I've always dealt with heavy structural steel. You don't see heavy structural steel in a lot of residential elements. And so, I kind of always have been in the commercial realm. I do enjoy it. I'm actually in the process of building a house right now, and that is a lot.

[00:15:47] Pat McCallister: These things are drawn up. Architect calls everything out on the drawings, makes it very easy, and you can just build. And then and a lot of our owners don't come to our job sites every week [00:16:00] and look at it and pinpoint that or look at that. Whereas as we're building this house, my wife's showing up every other day and just driving our contractor nuts.

[00:16:09] Pat McCallister: And, so, it's, I don't know if I could deal with that. There's always, this is construction . We're going to be out here for three months building a floor. If we're missing a screw, I can't have our client have a heart attack. We'll get it in, wait till this thing's open.

[00:16:22] Pat McCallister: And so, I think the commercial world is more aggressive, it's quicker it's a more seamless build. And the owners, they're more worried about not what the tile looks like, what the paint looks like, and they're worried about, getting this thing rented, so they're not going to be focused on all these little details.

[00:16:40] Pat McCallister: And we're not a detail company. We're not doing the interior build outs and the bathrooms and the office. But, like I said, a lot of these owners probably. Don't visit their sites much. They're just more concerned is it open? Is it renting? And I like that construction. It is stressful, but not as high stress as residential.

[00:16:57] Pat McCallister: I feel bad for our residential contractor that's [00:17:00] working with our family on this house. So good luck guy.

[00:17:04] Jared Gabaldon: That was really interesting. But flipping it back talking about when you're choosing your component suppliers, like us, what are some of the factors that you consider when, choosing your suppliers and talk specifically talking about SteelBlue as well.

[00:17:16] Jared Gabaldon: Why'd you choose us? Why choose working with Tony all the time?

[00:17:19] Pat McCallister: For me, what I would be interested in when I'm working with a metal building guy is are they well funded? Cause again, you gotta think on average, if we get a contract for 2 million dollars, we're going to turn around and write anywhere from 11, I think the was, was how many contracts we wrote to the highest, I think we ever wrote with 17 individual contracts.

[00:17:37] Pat McCallister: And so when my company is dealing with 17 individual subcontractors of delivering materials and labor to this job site, all 17 of those people have different terms. Some guys want to get paid every 10 days. Some guys can do 30, sometimes 60, whatever the terms are. And so I think it's very important for your metal building company to to have good terms and good money. We all [00:18:00] know, like, all of our contracts are written 30 day terms, right? It's never happened. Rarely do people get paid every 30 days. And so, as a developer, the last thing I would want is to hire a guy who literally can't get any other product or person on his job site unless he is paid on that day 30.

[00:18:17] Pat McCallister: And, there are contractors and subcontractors we work with that way. But that's not saying you have to find someone that's funded to make things happen. Cause like I said, on average, it's 45 to 50, maybe 60 days to get paid. And some of the little guys, it all starts at the top and goes to the bottom of the guys at the bottom.

[00:18:33] Pat McCallister: They can't wait 60 days to get paid. So, you have to have a metal building company that's going to be able to pay their labor. Our labor gets paid every two weeks. Our deck manufacturers like to get paid every 30 days from the time they deliver, which that's always a wrench, I would never want to be a guy delivering on the first and the month, because you got to think our pay recs due on the 20th.

[00:18:52] Pat McCallister: The GC's pay recs due on the 30th and then that owner then has 30 days to pay from that pay rec. So if you deliver on the first, you're [00:19:00] guaranteed 60 days from your pay.

[00:19:02] Pat McCallister: And so, you just got to make sure the guys you're working with have good vendors and good subcontractors that are not going to say, Hey, it's 31.

[00:19:10] Pat McCallister: We're done. We didn't get paid. We're walking off the job site till our money comes in. And all these contracts are written paid upon paid, but I can't do that to my vendors. And then another thing I would say is like oversight. I think that's huge. Some of the companies that are in this business have 10 men operations and they do well, they do a plenty of storage. But at our company, we have over 55 employees and we're big into oversight. We've invested into our production side of the company. We definitely have a lot of guys on the job site. We have a lot of guys asking questions, going over schedules and doing coordination meetings. And it's because we got 17 different subs.

[00:19:44] Pat McCallister: I'm trying to get out to the job site right at the perfect time. And so just making sure your team knows what, metal building team knows what they're doing. They have the funding and they have the people in place to do it. So that would be key to me. And then, labor does your company have a safety and equality [00:20:00] standard, that these crews are out there trying to do and, ask for it.

[00:20:04] Pat McCallister: We have a manual that we give every single crew. We have safety meetings every morning. So these are things that like, removes liabilities from the owners, that potential issues, so those are things that I would make sure your metal building company has, and the majority of us do.

[00:20:18] Pat McCallister: There's some really good companies out in the industry. So. I'm not saying we're the only ones, we're the best one, but there's other guys.

[00:20:27] Jared Gabaldon: The one, so another, question that kind of came up as you were talking was talking about funding sources. And so does it matter where the funding comes from in your case where for example, private equity, they're always putting a lot of pressure on whatever project they have going on, extracting as much value and, to the detriment of a lot of the end product in some cases for them.

[00:20:49] Jared Gabaldon: Versus maybe something where it's like a group of people that, have been funding these builds for a long time and they give you a little bit more leeway versus maybe micromanaging the builds as much.

[00:20:59] Pat McCallister: I feel like I'm probably [00:21:00] more removed from that, I will say, the bigger the company that has hired the GC to build, the more red tape to get paid.

[00:21:09] Pat McCallister: Meaning if Tony just decided to go build a storage facility and it's just him and he's working with a bank himself.

[00:21:15] Pat McCallister: Him and the bank can approve quicker and stuff, but where if you have multiple layers of ownership and the development company, he's going to say, I think he's good to pay another guy's going to look at it and say I think , he needs to do more for this money. And then another guy, and then I've even heard from other people, the checks sitting on our CEOs desk, but our CEOs and Bahamas, and I'm like, we're at 65 days of no pay and, things are getting a little tight on the site here, so, whereas if it's a smaller company, I would imagine the money can get shooken out quicker, but in the end, I would say storage is pretty well funded. We've built over 3 million square feet of storage, not only with storage building company with my previous employer.

[00:21:55] Pat McCallister: And yeah. I have never really seen a job truly go 100 percent [00:22:00] dead and I wish I had some wood to knock on, but, it's I've never, they've always gotten funded. They've always gotten picked up and done. I've just never seen anyone just say we're out of money. The job's dead, so

[00:22:11] Jared Gabaldon: And finishing things up. You have a very famous tagline on LinkedIn and it's perfecting the storage building experience. And so if you just dig in, what does that really mean to you? Because as we talked about, really nothing about the process is perfect.

[00:22:23] Pat McCallister: Yes that what that means to me and why I say that is, construction's hard, you're mixing, dozens of subs on a job site. You got, general contractor wanting to build it this way. The owner wants to build it that way. The metal building guy wants to build it this way.

[00:22:37] Pat McCallister: And so to me, we do have a lot of scope. If you hire our company, you can do structural steel, cold form, miscellaneous metals. We do partner with SteelBlue a lot and get, some guys will buy door and hallway systems with using y'all's product standing seam metal roofs insulated metal wall panels.

[00:22:51] Pat McCallister: And so all these components, in my opinion, a lot of our labor crews can do, and they're all have some type of steel component in it. We're good [00:23:00] with building it all. So to me, I've packaged, in my opinion, anywhere from 35 to 40 percent of the storage project into one contract. Like I said, if they're not using us and they're going to want to go outside of the metal building world, they're going to write anywhere from 11 to 17 individual contracts and have to manage that process.

[00:23:18] Pat McCallister: And that process isn't easy. That's why I have a team of 55 people running that. It's a lot of stuff. And so to me, what I'm trying to do is make it easier on the contractor, make it easier on the developer that, Hey, all of these problems of managing these 17 individual subs actually becomes SBC's problem.

[00:23:34] Pat McCallister: We look cool like a duck on the surface but there's a lot of moving parts going on behind the scenes and to me in the end you get this product that looks great and it was efficient and to me that is perfecting the storage building experience, just making sure that this construction experience should not be horrible.

[00:23:52] Pat McCallister: You shouldn't be walking away from this project as a developer saying, I don't ever want to do this again. They should say that was easy, and that's why I always try to say SBC is [00:24:00] the easy button for storage. We're very flexible. Like I mentioned I typically to see a full foundation in and all the shafts up , 30 percent of our jobs I've shown up when they haven't had that stuff in and we worked on half a slab and only one shaft up and, we're flexible, we'll work with you, so, where I would say a lot of my other competition is more stringent on their rules and saying, Hey, we will need this to look like this for us to show up where we prefer it to look like this. However, we also know you have a developer who's saying you're a month or two months behind, you need to get guys out here and start building. And so we are going to try to make sure you get that next job with that developer again. That you were able to get what he needs and, hiring our company will guarantee your success on the job and you will also get more work with that developer.

[00:24:42] Jared Gabaldon: Well, I'm sure making, the process more streamlined, that's probably why you guys are so busy. People just like working with you guys,

[00:24:47] Jared Gabaldon: you know, that's

[00:24:47] Pat McCallister: is, we're, we've got a good team over here. Good guys. And we have fun and We're currently building in about 34 states, so we're all over the place.

[00:24:55] Jared Gabaldon: And for developers that are listening to the show, or they're earlier on in their career, they're [00:25:00] coming to us to listen to the show, really just to get advice and to learn about the business, and so, coming from your perspective. For these folks that are trying to get jobs over the finish line, and in time and, not, super behind schedule, what would be that one piece of advice that you'd give them,

[00:25:14] Pat McCallister: Don't be cheap, and again, these buildings are on the cheaper side. It's easier to build self storage than it is a hotel or a multifamily thing. But the way I would look at it is, your design team is key. Make sure you've got an architect that's built storage. Your unit mix is key.

[00:25:28] Pat McCallister: If you're going to build these things, you want to make sure you're getting the best unit mix, that's going to result in best rents for your project. And so, don't go buy an architect that has never done storage. And he's always done, parking garages.

[00:25:41] Pat McCallister: I'm looking at a parking garage, and then now you're questioning, why did this not go right? Or like when it comes to structural engineering, this guy's always building bridges, but he had a great price. And so we're going to hire him to do the structural design on the storage project. These are very light and efficient systems and they, sometimes get overthought by design teams that are new to the [00:26:00] industry. So to me, start at the very beginning, hire a great architect and there's some really great ones. If you guys ever want to know, I can talk to you about them.

[00:26:08] Pat McCallister: And a great engineer that knows exactly how to build storage. They've been doing it for years and they'll build you a very efficient or design you a very efficient building. And I would say that, just don't skimp on that. Like my mom always said, you pay for what you get, so if you want to go with the cheapest stuff on the street, don't be surprised if you have a huge issue down the road on your project or you're delayed or something's not right or whatever, and I would even say that on the contractors in the metal building, low bid is always not the best bid.

[00:26:34] Jared Gabaldon: Right? 100%. We've been hearing about some of that through the grapevine too, man. And yeah, just, looking at the year ahead, what does the year look like for you guys at SBC and, how can people end up working with you? And I know on the fun side. We have the storage invitational golf event literally coming up next week.

[00:26:50] Jared Gabaldon: And, Tony's kind of been, head on that a lot with Brad on your side and everyone else. And so, that's some of the fun stuff, but also, just what else do you guys have coming

[00:26:58] Pat McCallister: yeah, we I'm [00:27:00] expecting a very busy year again. A great example, we've bid about 600 projects last year. We've already bid about 150 so far this year. We've had the best Q1 in sales since we've been in business right now. So we have a very strong Q1. I think a lot of it had to do with the tariffs and price increasing.

[00:27:15] Pat McCallister: Storage still looks very good. There's a lot of projects, a lot of stuff going. We had a very strong year last year. So to me, I see us continuing to grow, continuing to take on more work, hopefully expand to more states. About a year and a half ago, two years we opened up an office out west.

[00:27:32] Pat McCallister: So you're going to see SBC really focus on the west coast, trying to get more clients, more business out that way. We do really well on the east coast. So, I'm going to focus more on the west coast and go try to get some more work out that way. But we're just going to grow. I'm trying to make this thing big.

[00:27:46] Pat McCallister: I'm trying to take on all the storage projects we can take on and work with some really good clients. And I'm thinking, 2025 is going to be a big year for us. I'm not that good of a golfer, I'm good at driving golf carts and drinking beers with some of the guys in the industry.

[00:27:59] Pat McCallister: So it [00:28:00] should be a, it should be a good time.

[00:28:02] Anthony Domicolo: Yeah, it'll be great.

[00:28:03] Jared Gabaldon: Yeah. And that's half the game anyways. Right. Just out there getting a little sunburn, hitting some balls out there.

[00:28:07] Pat McCallister: Course we'll be at all the shows. We go to all the major state shows all, we're going to probably try to attend about 15 or 16 shows this year. We'll also be out in Vegas. And then if you need to get in touch with us, always, you can find us on the internet or LinkedIn or I would give you my email address, but it's extremely long, but you can find us on the internet.

[00:28:26] Pat McCallister: You can find us at the shows or you can find us on LinkedIn. We're all over that. I'm sure they'll put our email accounts or so on this show, you can always reach me or you can call me on my cell phone. I'm accessible.

[00:28:36] Jared Gabaldon: Perfect. Pat, we really wish you much more success over the years. Congratulations on everything you've got going for you so far. And we've really appreciated your business and we hope for a wonderful relationship going into the future. So thank you so much for joining us and we appreciate your insights.