Hello there, Alaskans, wherever you are. Welcome to the Must Read Alaska show Coming to you from somewhere in Alaska. This is a place where we talk about, you guessed it. Alaska where we keep the mainstream media on their toes and where we are standing up for what's right and a world run by leftists. You can find out more by heading over to must read Alaska dot com and also checking out the must read Alaska Youtube channel for some really great content. But first let's get this party started.
So welcome everybody to the must read Alaska show. I'm your host, john quick. Coming to you live from somewhere in Alaska. For those of you that have watched us already Today, you get a special treat two shows in one day, which is pretty awesome. Uh, I am live today with uh Galeano who is the founder of Box a Ball. He's also had many other successes in business. Welcome to the must read Alaska show galliano. Hey there, nice to meet you and thank you so much for having me.
And yeah, my name's galliano and I'm the founder of a company called Box Full where we are mass producing houses in the factory. So tell folks about a little bit about Box double And uh, why do you think there's so much excitement around Box Bill for, for those that maybe have been living in a closet under a rock. Maybe they haven't heard of you. So this is your time to give the elevator talk about. Why Box full. So awesome.
Yeah. So definitely I would suggest anyone just jump over to our website Vox a bl dot com. You'll quickly see a video of a house that unfolds and uh the reason the house unfolds is so that it can be ship a ble. So I'm actually sitting in our factory right now which we started about a year ago where we produced these houses that pulled up so they can ship.
And the reason they need to ship is so that we can scale up mass production and if we can scale up mass production, hopefully we can dramatically reduce the cost of housing. So this is pretty cool. So one of your houses I think is somewhere around $50,000, is that right? Yep. So what do you think? You know, let's say you're sitting on the beach 30 years from now sipping mai tais, what do you want? Box able to be remembered by, what's what's going to put a smile on your face?
Well um what we're doing here is really the biggest thing I possibly could imagine doing because building construction is such a large industry, it's like trillions of dollars around the world and it's so old school. So right now you have about 90% of buildings that are built on site by hand, one at a time literally with a nail gun and a guy standing on a ladder in the rain kind of thing.
So obviously that's very inefficient and we think that by making the buildings compatible with the factory mass production, that we can kind of produce a product that is dramatically cheaper, faster to build higher quality than any existing building system out there and hopefully take a large share of the entire world's building construction and, you know, just mass produced affordable housing for, for everyone, so it would pull it off, it's potentially a really, really big impact to, you know,
increase people's quality of life by reducing their housing costs.
So, you know, you've had a lot of success, I just googled you yesterday before, I wanted to have you on the show, you've had tremendous amount of success, your whole family has, what kind of advice would you give to somebody out there that's a young entrepreneur that's looking at this and being like, holy crap, this guy is literally changing an entire industry and I can't even sell something on shop of five, get what's some advice that you'd give them, um well, you know, it wasn't all success,
there's been a bunch of big hits um that have worked out, but there's been many more failures, um and just a lot of like grueling perseverance, so, um I would say if, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you really have to kind of work harder than everyone else, uh or else you're better off just going and lock me in somewhere, so um, you know, and then uh you know, you just kind of keep, keep grinding away and working harder than everyone and, you know,
kind of sometimes feels like you're just banging your head against a brick wall, but eventually you can break through. And um, when we started box Herbal, I was just trying anything under the sun to get people interested in it. And I kept going out there kind of chasing every possible idea I had. And at first no one cared. And uh, eventually I kind of figured out social media marketing and what it came down to, which is what I learned was basically, you just get get, you know, get views.
Um, then then you collect leads from those views and then you re market to those leads and you can basically saw anything with that formula. So then the question is, how do you get the views? Uh, and I figured out, well social media works good for that. And we first got a little traction when I went, reached out to a Youtuber who had a relevant channel about housing and said, hey, do you want to do a video on us? And she did a video on us?
And then I went from no one caring about possible to all of a sudden some web traffic, some email employees and just kept going and leveraging and doubling down on things that worked. And now, you know, we're sitting in 100 70,000 ft factory with several 100 employees that we just set up, You know, basically a year ago now, um, we've raised over 100 and $20 million from over 20,000 investors. We have a wait list for this product that's 100 and 30,000 names long.
And everything is just kind of snowballing right now. It's, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, snowballing in a good way. Well, I bet there was a moment where, you know, you potentially thought to yourself, holy crap, this is actually gonna work. Can you describe that feeling for folks that have never felt that before? What that was like? Yeah, it's pretty exciting. I mean, it's, it's, it's been really like pure adrenaline the whole time.
Like one thing after the next happens and it kind of gets crazier and crazier and uh, every, every time it almost feels equally good. But you know, there was a, there was certain kind of pivotal moments along the way. Um, 11 big one was our first order for houses came from the federal government, the Department of Defense.
So 1 1 Saturday afternoon, I was taking phone calls, um, with people because I was drumming up those leads and on the phone all day every day and talking to a lot of people who were just kind of interested and a lot of people who were full of ships.
And uh, when I talked to this one guy, he told me that he worked for the military base and he was going to order houses and I didn't believe him, but I was nice to him and I talked to him and, and then, uh, you know, a month later he reached back out and he was the real deal. And he placed a large order for basically about $9.5 million worth of houses before we had a factory. We didn't have anything except a few prototypes that I built by hand.
And uh, once I realized this guy was the real deal, I was like holy sh it. Um, and then at that point we also realized that we had to start bigger than we had plans in order to even have a chance at fulfilling this disorder. But we did, um, we, uh, we toured the military in this building when it was completely empty.
They placed the order, we got in here, we set up manufacturing equipment for an all new product type, hired several 100 employees produced that full order and and shipped it all out, you know, all within a year of production. So pretty, pretty cool.
So when somebody googles you, they can see pictures of you hanging out with like the ceo of apple and you know, different kind of business gurus out there who's somebody that you look up to that, you know, at the end of the day when you put in a 10 hour day and you've, you know tucked in your kids and you're sitting in your bed, who's somebody that you go look at their stuff. Um, um, who am I looking at?
Well, you know, obviously, you know, I gotta say uh Elon musk here because he was also another one of those moments where Elon musk was, was our first customer actually and before the government. Uh, I guess I guess Elon musk saw a tweet on the channel. He followed with our folding house video and thought it was cool. And then his, his assistant called me and they placed an order and bought one of the houses. So um, you know, he's doing kind of a similar thing or has done kind of similar thing.
It's a, it's a hardware manufacturing start up, a lot of marketing, social media stuff surrounding it leveraged like kind of a lot of big fan base and uh, you know, a lot of the principles that he talks about when it comes to manufacturing all kinds of stuff? Obviously everyone's, everyone's looking at me included. So yeah, that's awesome. So have you ever been to Alaska? And is it on your bucket list if you haven't, I have not been to Alaska. I would love to go to Alaska.
It seems seems amazing. I will definitely be there eventually. Um, maybe after I have some time. Yeah, right off too much free time right now. So how does somebody, you know, picture of the guy that's like living in the middle of nowhere, literally in Alaska and he's thinking to himself, holy crap, I could get a box, a ball or somebody that's living in Eastern Maine. Tell us, you know where they can find you. Let's say they want to potentially invest, where they can find that information.
Give us that skill. Yeah. So, um, right now we are still kind of a new company just getting started. Um, we actually already have factory to built the building next door and we're trying to scale up as fast as we possibly can. But overall like demand for this product is on the charts. And I think it's definitely a product that makes sense for an area like that where you may have limited labor availability and other issues of being in a remote area.
Obviously if you're trying to build a building and it can be done before it arrives in Alaska. You know, you're, you're in a remote area. Um, that, that makes a lot of sense. So I would say if anyone's interested in impossible head over to our website, put your name on the wait list that way we can keep you updated with our progress of weapons may be available in your area.
Um, if you're interested in in the company or investing, that's also on the website, there's an invest button on there and check out our Youtube, the last video on there. We, we did, uh, one of the last videos on there. We did a factory update video that shows a whole ton of different milestones that we've had and also our instagram page, We're basically posting nonstop, full transparency.
Everything we do is kind of live happening on social media and we also invite people to come and visit our factory anytime. We, there's a, there's a tourist page on the website as well. You can book a tour virtual tour or you can just even just show up here. We're in las Vegas about 20 minutes from the airport and strip. And um, you know, we, uh, we would, we're trying really hard to get into a third factory as soon as possible that we're calling the monster factory.
That would hopefully be, you know, 10 or 20 times larger than this one here would have a whole, another level of, of efficiencies and, uh, cost reductions and start getting closer to producing the amount of houses that we need to, to meet this demand for this, this product that, that people are going crazy for. Awesome. So, last question to you is this, what's one thing you wish you would have known or done differently two years ago that you've learned along the way.
Um, well, you know, on that front, uh, I wouldn't really change anything ever, no matter what or whatever bad things happen. It got me here. So I don't want to, uh, have any, you know, butterfly effect by changing the past. But um, you know, I think, uh, one big thing from beginning was, we've raised, you know, over $100 million from investors for this project. We did that all through crowdfunding. And we, it's really, there's no downside to it.
So if you're looking to raise money from investors for, for a startup, do crowdfunding because it, you're gonna be able to call all the shots, you're gonna be in charge, you're gonna get the best terms for yourself, You're gonna remain in control of the company, you're gonna build up an army of supporters and followers. And it's just also like, early on, I've never raised money for any previous businesses, but obviously, you know, this is not, not a, this is a heavy lift when it comes to money.
So you have to raise money for it early on was chasing down like traditional VC investors and just got really, you know, not a good vibe from, from any of that type of thing. And the crowdfunding has just been amazing. So I would say, you know, anyone who is interested in that check out crowdfunding and learn more about it. It's becoming more and more popular and more and more widely accepted as well. Nice. Was there any of the last things you'd like to say about boxing before we head off?
Yeah. You know, I, uh, thanks everyone for, uh, for listening and hopefully you can check out our stuff and learn more about this. Um, the upside here is just incredible. Like I said, this is a multi trillion dollar market around the world. It's an industry that's ripe for disruption. We were want to transition almost all building construction on the planet into the factory and into our factories and so the potential to kind of do good around the world and help a lot of people is really big.
Um, if you pull this off, so thank you for your, for your interest guys and thanks for listening, awesome. Thanks everybody for watching the second show for today, we wish you nothing but success. You've already had success. You're in the thick of it right now. And my guess is your only experience more so for folks that are wondering, go google box, double check them out and buy one of those for your cabin in the wood.
You don't need to hire a labor force to show up in an hour and a half later it's unfolded and ready to go. So thanks everybody for tuning in and tune into us on monday, we'll have somebody from the Mayor's office giving us a rundown on what's happening in the great city of Anchorage. Until then, I'm john coming to you from somewhere in Alaska