257 Brian Scudamore is the 1-800-GOT-JUNK CEO’s - Sharing his Advice for Entrepreneurs to Stay Creative, Play The Long Game & Achieve Greatness

Entrepreneurship PodcastOnline Business PodcastMarketingInspired Living Podcast

Jan 24

Brian Scudamore

Founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Brian Scudamore has always taken the road less traveled. At nineteen, he pioneered the industry of professional junk removal with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, turning a chore people avoid into an exceptional customer service experience.

He then scaled that success into two more home-service brands, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING and Shack Shine. Brian’s “Willing to Fail” philosophy stems from his belief in the power of dreaming big, taking risks, and learning from mistakes. Through franchising, he’s giving thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to live their dreams of business ownership.

Brian has been a dream guest of mine for many years, and I'm SO inspired by his kindness and willingness to give back to young entrepreneurs and emerging founders.

For anyone looking for a great book that will help you get a solid start in business and understand key success principles, you'll also want to pick up a copy of his book B.Y.O.B. (Build Your Own Business)

In this episode, we chat about:

How the idea for his first company, Rubbish Boys, came to him while sitting in a McDonald's Drive Through in Vancouver
The benefits of his "Can-Do" Attitude
Why he wrote his book, BYOB: Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss
Why he's passionate about innovative business ideas and customer-focused approaches
One of the character traits that he possesses that has allowed him to get THIS far in life and business.
The power of a Painted Picture / a Clear Vision
Brian's predictions for the future of his companies and the future for emerging franchises

To connect with Brian:

Website
Instagram
Buy his book B.Y.O.B. (Build Your Own Business)

Access the transcript for this episode:

Brian, welcome to the visionary life podcast I just mentioned before hitting record that you are our first episode of season 11, five years into recording this podcast, and I couldn't think of a better guest to have an amazing Canadian entrepreneur. And we're so excited to hear your story. So thank you so much for being here.
Yeah, I'm honored. Thank you. And I can't believe that 11 seasons, five years that's up. You've talked to a lot of people. So I'm honored to be one of them.
Alot of people and I think you've been on my list for actually a few years now. So this is a dream come true guest and I think where I want to start is, I was recording an Instagram story today, expressing my excitement. And I thought I wonder if one 800 got junk has one of those little emojis or gifts that you can add as a story and go figure there's a truck that's actually a motion movement graphic. And I was like, do you really feel like you've made it in the world when you have your own Instagram gift?
That's hilarious. I didn't even know we had one. So now I've got to actually look.
I mean, I know you're active on Instagram, so you'll definitely have to go check it out. It's pretty awesome. I don't know who made it. But yeah, I think that's a pretty great accomplishment to add to your resume.
So let's, let's rewind a little bit. I know that there is a drive thru in May in Vancouver at a McDonald's that was kind of the origin story of the idea for one 800 got junk.
So I'm wondering if you can kind of rewind the clock a little bit and tell us what went through your head when you were sitting in that McDonald's drive thru, and how the story evolves from there.
Yeah, I was in this drive thru 41st. And in our beautiful in Vancouver, and I remember sitting there just wanting to order a cheeseburger and my life changed in a moment I saw a beat up old pickup truck in front of me it had plywood sides built up on the box, it said marks hauling across the side. I was trying to figure out how I would pay for college.
I was one core short of graduation from high school, I talked my way into college, I needed the money. And it was a tight labor market at the time in 1989. And so there I was, I looked at Mark's truck and I'm like, I'm going to do that same thing. I went out and bought a pickup.
And two weeks later it paid for itself the the business paid for itself. And I had a company called the rubbish boys, which was the initial idea of just hauling away junk. Everybody's got junk. People don't have the time to take it to the dump or they don't have a truck. And we provided a service. And then what funded my college education the rubbish boys, ironically, inspired me to drop out of school, I was learning much more about business by actually running a business instead of studying in school.
And I made a very bold decision bold to me because my father is a transplant surgeon. He's done more schooling than anyone I've ever met. And when I told him I was quitting school to become a full time junk man, he just about fell out of his chair. But years later, here we are. I've got a great business and love what we're building with a lot of phenomenal people.
Did you ever have any doubt that this was possible for you? Because I know so many of us we get these ideas in the McDonald's drive thru. But then we're also washed away with all this self doubt of who am I to do this? Or what if it fails? Did you face that? Or have you always just had this can do attitude?
I'm definitely a can do person. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't have doubt. I mean, I have doubt. Every week I'm sure if not every day, there's times where you're like, Ah, how are we going to make this happen. And sometimes you just stay so focused and believe in your vision that one day it does happen.
But for me, it's sort of like these following peaks that keep on happening where you climb one peak, and then you're in a valley of doubt, but then you climb the next peak. And so big things continue to happen in our business.
Because we've got such amazing people working hard on building a billion dollar business, we're about 600 million in revenue. So we're on our way towards that billion. And by no means is it about the money, but I throw out that dollar figure to give a sense of significance and scale of what we're building. It took me eight years to get the company from zero to a million in revenue.
And now we do a million dollars in the morning. It's exciting to see what we're building but the lives we're changing for customers for our employees for our franchise owners. That's what keeps me going every single morning. But doubt delts an important thing I think doubt is about embracing the situation and going okay, why don't I believe and what will change my thinking?
So a quick story I had 11 franchise experts in the world that I went to go meet with when I looked at franchising the rubbish boys and calling it one 800 got junk. And I went to meet all these people from A senior VP at McDonald's to a franchise consultant. And they all told me that my business wasn't franchisable.
So there is doubt right away when you have experts tell you it can't be done. But the question I asked them, and I made lots of notes on was, why can't it be franchisable? What's in its way? What would make it franchisable? And they gave me the answers that I needed to retool my model.
And at a later date, I went back to a couple of these experts and said, What do you think now and they were like, wow, I think you're onto something. And I made the business work. And here we are today in a very successful franchise organization, not just with one 800 got junk, but we also own shack shine, which is Windows power washing, Gutter Cleaning.
And then we've got, wow, one day painting where we paint people's homes in a day. So not only were we told we couldn't franchise, we were told we couldn't be in the painting business, it would never work. But we've made it work. So I think doubt can be a fuel, that if you allow it to create concern in you, and get you to ask creative questions, once you figure out how to solve those questions. It's powerful.
Mm hmm. Yeah. And I love that you didn't take anything at face value, like they told you, oh, this can't be done. But it's like, let me go a layer deeper, it's almost back to first principles thinking of okay, well, what's the underlying issue here? And how can I ask a better question that's going to allow me to crack this open layer deeper, because I think people are so quick to dismiss an idea if it's innovative, or visionary. That's the name of this podcast, it's like, when you are somebody who maybe thinks outside of the box a little bit, you should almost expect to be met with doubt, and to get used to the fact that people may not see the same vision that you do. And that's okay.
Right. You even mentioned the peaks and valleys. This is inevitable in the journey of entrepreneurship. And I think that people don't talk enough about the valleys that we have to navigate and are quick to show the wins and the successes, but sharing these stories that you know, you could have quit at that moment. But there was something in you that said, You know what, I'm just going to keep going and see what is actually underneath this person's doubt. And can I move through that or apply a different technique to see if this is possible?
I think one of the difference, one of the key characteristic traits of entrepreneurs is that when they hear no, when they hear something can't be done, it lights a fire beneath their soul where they're just like, Okay, I'm gonna figure this out. I mean, if you even look at the sign behind me, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. I love when someone says this can't be done. I often say as well, when you said, not everyone will see your vision.
When someone doesn't believe in your idea, and you start to see the masses don't believe in your idea. You might actually be onto something. It was experts that told me I could not franchise this business. They had franchised hundreds or 1000s of businesses, but they said mine cannot be franchised. So, how can you take that?
No, and let it light a fire? To get you to go? Okay, let me figure out what would make this business work. And sure enough, we have it. Can you imagine all the times if most people as entrepreneurs heard no and said, Oh, okay, you know, they just the world wouldn't be the place it is today, if people didn't challenge the status quo and try and do things differently.
Do you remember back to some of those early successes that really gave you that feeling that I'm onto something here and rubbish boys, and which is now when 800 got junk? This actually might take off? Like, what were some of those early wins that gave you that drive to continue on. And that fueled the fire to think I should go all in on this and keep going because there's something here that one of the biggest, earliest, sort of most tangible wins was we ended up on the front page of a local newspaper, the biggest newspaper in Vancouver at the time, called the Vancouver province.
And I remember a bus driver passing us that day when we were on the front page, and he took his paper from the side of his charity, hold it out the window going, this is you guys. And I'm like, I know how awesome is that? Now, that was us, again, calling the press telling them we had a story for them, listening to any sort of rejection and refining it to give them the story they wanted. And it was probably honestly a slower news day.
We got I mean, ending up on the front page with our truck with our phone number our phone numbers one 800 got junk at the time. That was 738 junk that was a local number only. And to have that on the front page. You know who gets advertising like that, especially for free? So that told me someone loves our idea. They love that this is a student run business as a way to find college and learning the entrepreneurial life by getting out there on the streets. There was a story there.
And we were right, that we were on to something because we ended up parlaying that same story in the press from the Oprah Winfrey Show to the Ellen DeGeneres, I mean, New York Times Wall Street Journal, we took a simple story and started telling it to the world. And it allowed us to grow from Vancouver to Toronto through the United States, Australia. It's the momentum continues to build, which is what I love.
Yeah. And we're gonna get to a couple of questions around how the heck you got your name shared by Oprah, Dr. Phil on The Simpsons, etc. But first, I kind of want to stay in that early chapter of getting the business off the ground, you didn't have any experience starting and scaling businesses.
So I'm curious, were you just learning one day at a time? Did you enlist a team of mentors? Were you nose deep and personal development books, marketing books? How did you figure it all out in those first one to two years? Because a lot of people, they're probably wondering like, Okay, well, you were a high school dropout. So you didn't really know what to do. So how did you figure it out?
Yeah, I'm still a high school dropout, right? I never finished high school. I never finished college. I to say, Kelsey, that I figured it out. It wouldn't wouldn't ever be fair, I still haven't figured it out. I mean, the world changes, right, we get hit with COVID, we get hit with unemployment and inflation. We've never got it figured out. And again, that keeps it fresh. Yeah, I look at challenges. People go, oh, my gosh, the economy, we're in such a tough spot. How awesome is that? We get to learn, we get to be better. We get to try new things and innovate. So I think for me, it was just really trying to know that there are so many places to go for answers, and opinions. So mentors, as you mentioned, I did not get my own MBA.
So I created what I called my own version, which was MBA mentor board of advisors, I would read a book. And I would just connect with that author. And I would literally pick up the phone and get in touch and say, Hey, I loved your book, this is what I learned. What do you think about this? I would go visit other entrepreneurs in different cities, I'd knock on their door and just say, can I ask you for some time, Fred DeLuca, who has since passed, but the founder of subway was one of my greatest mentors ever. I bumped into him at a conference said hello, we exchanged words for 60 seconds, he gives me his card. I called them up. And we built this relationship to the point that he came to visit our office to see what we have going on. So why not learn from others? I am a big believer.
And I start to see this more and more as I get older, that some of the most experienced people in the world, the more experienced you are you think further in a box, and you're just restricted. And so the fact that I was 19 years old starting a junk removal business with zero business experience, that was a gift. Yes. Is nobody can tell me Well, you know, you've got an MBA and the here's how you do it. I just had to figure it out my own way. And in doing it my own way, we came up with some unique ways of doing things that we've kept to this day.
Hmm, yeah, it's an interesting visual of the older you get, the more constraints we feel like we have on us. And we've downloaded all these programs that tell us you can't do this, or you've never seen it done this way. So I think that's an interesting that because you were younger, maybe you did have that limitless kind of mindset. I know that one thing that keeps you in that visionary space and continuing to challenge what's possible is by this idea of having a painted picture. And I'm curious where that concept came from.
And if you can talk about that to our listeners, because that's something that the moment I heard you describe that story of your painted picture. It really resonated with me, and I thought I've never even done anything like that before. So how am I supposed to dream beyond my current circumstances? So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Yeah, I'll tell you the story. But of course, but before I forget, if any of your listeners viewers want a painted picture, a copy of what it looks like, as well as a process of how to create their own thing, go to my social media at Brian Scudamore and just say, can I see your painted picture, please, and we'll fire you off one. It's a powerful process. So if I think of my 34 years of building businesses, the most powerful thing I've done by far nothing mean even close to second is creating a painted picture. I stumbled across this by accident.
And here's how it unfolded I was I built a million dollar business after eight years in the junk removal business. And I thought, I'm not in the greatest industry in the world. There's no branding, it's fragmented.
I don't necessarily have like, didn't have the education. I didn't have a lot of money. What am I going to do here I was in a bit of a doom loop. And so I went to my parents, they had this little summer cottage, little shack on the water, about an hour from Vancouver. And I went and sat down and I took out one sheet of paper. And I said, Brian, no more doom loop, enough negativity of you've got a bad business, and you're not good enough.
And all your friends are gone off to university and so on. What could you do if there was just pure possibility, and nothing was in your way? What could you do with this business? So I started to write and it was a little bit of a Jerry Maguire moment if anyone seen that movie, and I said, we will be in the top 30 metropolitan centers in North America by the end of 2003.
That would have been five years into the future. I said, we will have clean shiny trucks friendly uniformed drivers will be the FedEx of junk removal, we will be on The Oprah Winfrey Show. I came up with big crazy ideas.
By the time I reread this painted picture, after writing out one page, double sided. I looked at it and I said, Wow. And I got chills. And I was remember, I'm like, I can see this all happening. I took the picture from my head as an entrepreneur, put it down in writing and said, this isn't where I'm going to try and go. This is where I'm going. I see myself taking this trip this journey. And I took the painted picture. And over coming weeks, I started to share it with people around me.
Friends, family, and employees. And my employees separated into two camps. One camp that said, Brian, you're smoking some hope dope here, like good luck getting on Oprah, and so on. The other half said, Wow, this is compelling. I don't know how we're going to get there. But I want to get there with you. And it weeded people out of the company. It had us take this vision. And we made those things happen.
We went from one city to 3016 days before the deadline of the painted picture, we hit our 30th City is that coincidental? No, it is having a clear path that you create over time to get to the place you're trying to go. So again, not to overcomplicate it, but I wrote an article on it happy to share it, send me a note. It is powerful, because most people sit there and they doubt themselves, as we talked about earlier. If you doubt your own ideas, rather than commit to them, put them in writing. dealt, we'll just make them go away. But by committing to them in writing, and then sharing them with your friends, your family, people that will support you, your team.
And people start to get excited about your ideas. I mean, again, the Walt Disney stuff, it started with a simple idea. Yeah, right, the happiest place on earth. What did they do, they did it. And they did it together. So I could talk, I could do 10 podcasts in a row on vision, I just love it.
And if you look at anyone that's been successful in life, by their own definition of happiness, they've made money, whatever they've done to be successful rock stars in the world have, they've all had a vision. And you can't do anything great in the world without first starting with an idea, then you share that idea. And that's where magic can happen.
I think one of the most interesting things too, is that you said you had to go to a creative place like so often I feel like we can be in the constraints of the four walls of our office. And we're like, Oh, I'm just not able to, like dream as big as I want. Or I can't get through this goal setting or strategy. And it's like you need to get out, right? Like it's in the details that are surrounding you and getting out of just that mundane environment that perhaps is not stimulating you.
So I think that's an interesting part of the story too, is that you didn't do this in an environment where maybe you hang out every day, it was like go to the cottage or go into nature. And just allow yourself to maybe tap into parts of your brain that you don't normally get access to when you're sitting in front of a screen right
100% And even when we are as we are today, you and I are in Paris, Ontario and I'm in Vancouver and we talked before getting on this podcast about my background, my background as you can see it today is real. It's not a zoom background.
And because I get to constantly look at myself in the mountains with Little Bear poking its head out and motivational quotes, what we surround ourselves with on a daily bases I think is incredible credibly important. And, and your environment just plays such a big role in where you get your energy. So I love being back in the office again. I love being busy bustling coffee shop where there's this buzz and energy and I feel like I'm a startup entrepreneur, with my laptop working away in a Starbucks. Like it's important where we put ourselves. Mm hmm.
So I'm curious when somebody asks you where ote brands is today? How do you describe everything that's under that banner and give the listeners a picture of where you're at today.
So our parent company is OTV brands, which stands for ordinary to exceptional. We started by taking the ordinary business of junk removal and making it exceptional through the right people and customer experience in our brand. And we've now done done that with Wow, one day painting. Most people paint a home in two weeks, we paint it in a day with the same quality. It's just a numbers game of number of organized professionals inside the home at one time. We've done it with Shaq Shawn, you know, Christmas lights is the biggest portion of that business right now. And boy do we make home shine. So if I look at all three of those businesses, what binds them together? I think I said it before, but I feel like we're changing lives. franchise partners come into this business and they go, I've got a platform to start a business, I don't have to do it all on my own.
Or they come in and they get a business education. That's so much better than what you could ever get in an entrepreneurship school by doing. So we've created this unique way of taking ordinary people in ordinary businesses and just shooting for that bar of exceptional in everything we do. We make mistakes. Not all our brands are firing on all cylinders all the time. It's life we learn. But we're really proud of the people we bring in. I'm wearing this hat today. It's all about people, we find the right people and we treat them right. And that's the secret sauce to our entire business. So when I define ordinary, it's just ordinary good people that are becoming exceptional in everything they do with us together.
You have a great chapter in your book to where he talks about the fact that business is all about people, your team, your customers, the way that you guys have such a customer focused approach, like let's make the people feel amazing. It's so interesting how so many service business businesses that goes overlooked, right, like there's no interaction, there's no going above and beyond and creating a memorable experience. And it sounds like that's one of the things that you said right from the beginning, we're going to do this differently. We're gonna change lives and have meaningful interactions with our customers, rather than just delivering a mediocre service or product.
Yeah, and I said earlier, we do things differently. So as an example, most companies would hire people and train them on customer experience. Yeah, we hire people that just get how much you need to care about fellow human beings, and just put them in a position and let them go. You know. And so our belief is if we take care of our people, they will take care of the customer. If we take care of the customer, they will take care of the growth of our business or profits or reputation. And it works simply. So most people, most companies, I think, put the customer first, we put our people first.
We just launched a program, actually yesterday, where we are taking what most companies would do is statutory holidays. Are you get Christmas off? Well, you get Easter off. Yeah. What about people that celebrate different holidays, whether it's Diwali or the Lunar New Year, you take what holidays are important to you, and you take them as your step holidays.
So again, our people would see that as that's a move that allows us to show that we truly care about each other and our differences, versus just trying to say, here's what the company wants. And we're going to do it this one way. We give some flexibility to our people, they'll give flexibility to our customers. And it all works. It's magic.
It's so cool, because it's like a baked in referral and word of mouth strategy that when your people are happy, your customers are happy when your customers are happy. They're so delighted to talk to their neighbor and say, you'll never believe what an amazing experience I had.
And sometimes that can be such a key pillar of your marketing strategy and the growth strategy, as you mentioned. So I think it's something that you guys do exceptionally well, and it's something to consider to any of the listeners who have a business. It's like do you prioritize your people?
The power of referrals and everything. It's so you know, even if you look oh, you and I met Brandon Fong. He's got a podcast. I was on it. And he reached out he goes, Oh, I know. Kelsey wants you on your podcast on our podcast. You'd be great. It was good to connect. And so referrals if we take care of each other and people in this world, honestly it It is like magic, it just becomes easy.
Mm hmm. So I know you're often thinking about the future of where you guys are going. So I'm very curious if you were to magically go 20 years into the future, and see that ote brands is 100 times the size that it is today. Yeah, what is your best guess as to why that massive exponential growth had happened?
People no surprise, just people. The scalability in our business is when you've got somebody that just figures out how to leave and run a business and take care, they're people, when you can then have them show others how to do that, and put them in another business.
So part of the reason why we've got Wow, one day, and it's so successful, is we were able to take people from one 800 got junk, who said, Listen, I want to be a part of this next brand, I want to take everything I've learned in one 800 got junk and do that for a while one day painting. We've got you know, someone that worked in the call center and one 800 got junk, who jumped ship and went over to wow, one day painting and now owns a franchise. So to me the scalability, what would get us to 100 times the size is having so many more great people continue to spread the love of all their learning and everything they figured out into other brands.
Amazing. And as entrepreneurs, we're always learning, we're always needing to acquire new skills. So one of my final questions to you is, is there a skill or something that you are currently learning right now, in order to continue growing and building this company as you would like to?
Yeah, it's a great question. I'm trying to figure out how to better connect with people in our business as the company grows and scales. So we have 700 employees between two head offices, I sadly don't know everybody's names, you know, I try but I've got to figure out a better system. So the current best thing I'm doing to try and make this work is every new employee that comes into the organization because we're more virtual today with people working all over different countries. I send them a welcome video, a personalized video from me, citing something personal about them and a little one way conversation, but I get a lot of videos back from people saying how much they appreciated the welcome and they you know, have some words back.
So it's trying to figure out how can we scale the rapport building in a real way, you know, my one of my biggest portions of my job is to figure out how to cheerlead the culture, how to champion the connection between great people. And it's harder when you know what it was a three person little office is the rubbish boys. I mean, we eat together, we drank together, we worked hard together. It's different today. And it's exciting. But you definitely lose that. So I'm trying to learn and figure that out. If anyone has figured that out and has any ideas, I'd love to hear from them.
Well, it's incredible to to hear from someone like yourself that you do make the time to send that personalized video message. Because there are people who I'm sure are not as busy as you are, who are like, I don't know how to connect with my audience. And they're just shouting and mass marketing on Instagram. But it's like, why not go back to that one on one connection where somebody feels a true emotional connection or a real relationship building attempt from you. And I think that goes a long way.
So it's neat that you're able to do that video on your own time. But it still fosters a deeper connection than, you know, just sending out mass emails or sending out mass welcome letters. So I think that's really admirable that you make the time and space in your calendar for that, despite how busy and how many other things may fall on your plate.
Couldn't afford not to, you know, I love doing it, but it's important.
Absolutely. So before I let you go, you do have an amazing book, BYOB that I would encourage everyone to go out and read. It's so practical, and just have so many great stories from your entrepreneurial journey. So thank you for writing that it's an incredible resource. But what else is going on? Where should people connect with you find you and stay up to date with what's going on with ote brands?
Yeah, just put my name into Google and you'll find social media and different articles and so on. My first book, WTF, which stands for willing to fail. I recommend people start there. It's a short, easy read, but it really is. It's embracing failure. You talked about doubt, Kelsey, and I lucked out. I love the word no, I love making mistakes. And it's been a mind shift for me that has helped us be super successful.
So I'd love to know that people get out there and make mistakes and fail hard and learn from that to get to a better place. So yeah, Google, put me put me in there you'll find me and find What you're looking for and I just love sharing my passion on business and people with with others so thank you for having me awesome thanks so much Brian we wish you all the best in the future and hopefully see you out in the whistler mountains one day there you go awesome thanks Kelsey