How the Founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK Built His $700M Empire

Brian Scudamore: It is hard on the ego as an entrepreneur who, me, built things to a hundred million dollars. I had a COO in place that didn't work out, and I had to get that person out. My franchise partner said, “Brian, you're not…with all due respect, you got rid of this person, but you're not it either.” And I just felt crushed and hurt. I'm like, nobody believes in 1-800-GOT-JUNK? more than me. And everyone's like, “Yes, we know that, but you're not good at getting it to the next level. You've hit a ceiling and you can't do it.” They were right. So I had to accept it, and it was hard. But once I accepted that someone can do it better, my role became as the leader to find that person who can do it better, allow them to do it better, get the hell outta my own way, and that's when things started to grow.

Alex Lieberman: What's up, everyone? I'm Alex Lieberman. 

Sophia Amoruso: And I'm Sophia Amoruso. 

Jesse Pujji: Yo, this is Jesse Pujji. 

Alex Lieberman: And this is The Crazy Ones. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to The Crazy Ones, a show by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs. I am once again without my usual co-hosts, Sophia Amoruso, aka The Dean, and Jesse Pujji, aka Baby Buffett. They gave me the name, The Mailman. So I'm The Mailman, but I do promise they will be back with us again next week. I think Sophia was at some conference in Helsinki and I think Jesse's actually in New York. I hope I get to see him over the next few days. So instead we have yet another special episode for you.

Joining me today is a man that, if you're an entrepreneur you're gonna wanna hear from. His name is Brian Scudamore, and he is the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, the world's largest junk removal company. If you live in a larger metropolitan area in North America, it is hard to imagine that you have not seen one of these iconic blue and green trucks before. Brian also has launched two more businesses under his umbrella. Wow 1 Day Painting and Shack Shine. He published a book in 2018, which was a number one Amazon bestseller, called WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success. And he just has an amazing entrepreneurial story and a lot of valuable lessons that he's accumulated over 30 years of building this business. I'm incredibly humbled to chat with him. My full conversation with Brian Scudamore right after this quick break. 

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Alex Lieberman: Brian, thank you so much for joining The Crazy Ones. It's awesome to chat with you. It's been a little while. 

Brian Scudamore: Well, I feel at home with the name Crazy Ones. I mean, that was me. I've gotta say, true story. That's the only piece of poetry, if you can call it, the old Steve Jobs Apple commercial that I have committed to memory, and I am one of those, the misfits, the rebel, the troublemaker, the whole bit. 

Alex Lieberman: I love that. 

Brian Scudamore: So this is perfect. 

Alex Lieberman: Well, I love that you know the quote. And so what you'll also appreciate is, I was brainstorming with my co-hosts the last few days, what should we call our audience? 'Cause as you heard me reading the introduction, you know Jesse has a nickname now, Sophia has a nickname. I have a nickname. And I like the idea of nicknames, because then the audience starts clinging onto them. But the audience needs to have a name. And so I think—we're gonna see what our audience thinks. We're gonna start calling them The Misfits. 

Brian Scudamore: That's awesome. 

Alex Lieberman: So if you're a Crazy Ones listener and you're listening to this and you just heard that we're about to start calling you The Misfits, let me know what you think. Shoot us an email at thecrazyones@morningbrew.com. Brian, you have an incredible story. Like you have not just an amazing story around entrepreneurial success, but also you have a story around what it means to build something for a long time, stay committed to a long-term vision, and also be ruthless about fighting for doing something that you love doing, even when it's not easy. Not everyone knows your story. So can you just start by sharing how you got into the business of junk? 

Brian Scudamore: Well, it started 34 years ago. I was in a McDonald's drive-through, of all places. A beat-up old pickup truck was in front of me, with plywood sides built up on the box, and it said Mark's Hauling on the side. This truck was filled with junk. And I looked at that and I'm like, that's my ticket, my ticket to start a business that would fund my way through college. I was one course short of graduation from college. All my friends talked their way or were registered for college. I had to talk my way into college, but my parents were not going to fund that education if I didn't finish high school. And so I went out and bought a truck. I started a company called The Rubbish Boys. It was a week after I got that idea, went onto the classifieds, found a truck, 700 bucks, boom, off I went. And ironically, what funded my college education and got me started inspired me to drop out. Three years in, I had a year left in my Bachelor of Commerce, my business degree. And I just said, you know what? I'm learning much more by running a business, more than I am studying in school. And I sat my dad down, I said, “I got some good news for you.” He failed to see it as good news. And I said, “I'm quitting school. Found my passion.” 

Alex Lieberman: How long did it take for your parents to actually feel good about your decision?

Brian Scudamore: It took my dad 15 years. I was on stage at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, and that year I won Entrepreneur of the Year in my region. My dad shows up in a tux, he's excited to be there with me to see if I actually win. And when I came down and sat back at the table, he puts his arm around me and he goes, “You did it. I knew you made a good decision.” And he was referring back to when I quit school and I'm like, “You didn't think it was a good idea then, Dad, you know it.” And he's like, “Well, it turned out to be okay.” 

Alex Lieberman: It's amazing. So just to give listeners a sense of the trajectory over time, and then we'll work our way backwards to talk about moments throughout the history. Talk about what your business looks like today in terms of size, number of businesses, like what's the profile?

Brian Scudamore: So 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, the first baby in the family, so to speak, is about $600 million in revenue. We added on 22 years later a painting business where we go and paint people's homes in a day, no disruption. And that's called Wow 1 Day Painting. And that's about a $50 million business. We have another $50-ish-million-dollar business called Shack Shine: windows, gutters, power washing and Christmas lights. Those three brands, very similar but a very fragment…they're each in fragmented mom-and-pop type spaces. We have about 600 employees in the head office, about 250 franchise owners across Canada, the United States and Australia. Sold out with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, still plenty of territory left in Wow 1 Day and Shack Shine. 

Alex Lieberman: We're gonna get into all of these things, the decision to franchise, scaling up the business, but also difficulties in the scale-up over time, as well as the decision to go into other lines of business. 'Cause that's a very intentional decision and there are tradeoffs to it. But one thing I wanna ask you about is where your passion and motivation lies. And the reason I'm fascinated by this question is I think a lot of people in the startup world will say how you have to be passionate about what you're building, otherwise you'll burn out and you won't do it for a long time. And I think you are the perfect person to talk to about this question because if people looked at you, they'd be like, this guy has been building a junk business for 34 years. There is no possible way he's passionate about junk. So what are you passionate about, and how has that fire stayed lit for over three decades? 

Brian Scudamore: It's an interesting question, Alex. So I am passionate about possibility. I don't know if it's in the frame, but there's a sign behind me from Walt Disney. It's a Walt Disney quote that says “It's kind of fun to do the impossible.” The more impossible something is, the harder I chase it to try and prove that it actually is possible. So the never-ending challenge of building a business and growing it to different cities, different countries, other brands, that's what keeps me fired up.

Now it's interesting, 'cause I think most entrepreneurs and people in life think, find your passion and commitment will follow. I actually write in my book WTF?! that I think it's the total opposite, because from my experience, commit to something and the passion will follow. I've got a kid, I've got three kids and my 10-year-old is into ski racing right now, hardcore. 

Alex Lieberman: Love it. 

Brian Scudamore: In the beginning he hated skiing and it was really hard to just get him to wanna ski like his siblings. But he committed to a point that he was never passionate about skiing until something just clicked. And now it's his life. Like he's counting down the days till ski season, which actually starts tomorrow. He is so stoked. And so to me, if I look at my business, it was a way to pay for college when I was in that McDonald's drive-through. All I was committing to was a business, a source of funding short-term. But I found my passion in developing people, watching them grow, watching them build bigger and better opportunities together. And I couldn't give up on this after 34 years. I've stuck with one thing because I wouldn't wanna start again 'cause it's so special what we've got. 

Alex Lieberman: It's so special and it's so incredibly difficult what you've been able to build, and to build something like it, to your point, takes decades. You talked about this idea that you're passionate about the possibility, you talked about the quote on your wall of proving the impossible is actually possible. Talk about, I don't know, one or two examples in your business that it seems like an impossible insurmountable challenge for you to be able to overcome, yet you were able to do it with the business. 

Brian Scudamore: So we have a belief all around possibility and we call it, Can You Imagine? We have this wall in the office, the head office called The Junction, and it's people putting up with a big vinyl decal, permanently, what is a vision they see happening in the business that they can play a role in. So I had to lead the charge and say, hey listen, we are going to build a possibility business here. A big bold idea to start the wall off is, can you imagine being featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, the mother of all media hits? Yeah, I mean we were good at getting press, but this was the big one, and nobody thought it was possible. And I said, it is going to be possible. We're putting it up on the wall; we're gonna make it happen. And 14 months later we did. I was sitting there on stage in Chicago, 35 million viewers watching us all at the same time. No one thought it was possible. But once it happened, we got press on the fact that we were on Oprah. We had big newspapers saying, “How did you do it? You're a junk removal company.” 

So it's interesting, and when things are so impossible, but you lay them down in writing, you put them in a painted picture, you share your vision with others, they start to go, “Hmm, I wonder if Brian's not crazy. I wonder if this actually could happen, and how can we make it happen?” So a more current day example was, we got on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in May or April. Closing season, 19 years. I met Ellen DeGeneres the first time we were there with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?. I wasn't on stage. It was a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? skit and I wasn't there. But I met her behind stage, told her that I wrote about her in my book WTF?!. And that I said that one day we will be, or I will be on stage talking to you about this big movement, Can You Imagine?, that I'm building. And she loved the idea. She connected to it. Her head people for the next month or two tried to put together something that would work for us to get me on the show. And they said, you know, the dealbreaker here is we've never had a CEO on the show in 19 years, we've never had a CEO on Ellen. 

Alex Lieberman: That is wild.

Brian Scudamore: I know. And I said, what about Bill Gates? They said, well, he's not CEO anymore, he’s a philanthropist and a big one. I said, okay, fair enough, but I think you need to go back to talk to Ellen. And so I felt arrogant, almost, kind of, who am I to tell them to go talk to Ellen? But I go, “Ellen gets it. She sees what I see in that idea of possibility.” And sure enough, she said, “Yeah, bring Brian in.” And I was the first CEO on Ellen in 19 years. 

Alex Lieberman: That is insane. 

Brian Scudamore: And Alex, I share that not for any moment as bragging. I didn't make the Ellen piece happen. In fact, it was in our vision and someone in our marketing department made it happen fully on her own without even checking with us and got the gears moving. But I share it as if you have a big crazy idea and you put it out to the world, to the universe, so to speak, someone aligns with it and goes, yeah, I see what Alex sees. We're gonna do this and I don't know how, but we're going to make it happen. 

Alex Lieberman: I love that. And you know, this is a specific question, but I have to ask it because you're, I would say, in a very small minority of people that have been able to be on both Oprah as well as Ellen, and I have to wonder, what was the impact that being on those shows had on your business? Because I could see it going other way. I could see it like, you know, literally phones ringing off the hook, or crickets. So what did it actually do for your business? 

Brian Scudamore: So with being on Oprah, it was phones ringing off the hook. We quadrupled our number of phone lines. We had 70 phone lines at the time. We literally brought in family, friends, parents to sit down and answer phones. They're like, I don't know how to book junk removal. It's like, just be friendly, just take down their number. We'll call them back, months later if we need to. And so we stacked our phones and we still got busy signals. Customers got busy signals at the end. It was insane. Every hour that it ran across the country and Oprah said 1-800-GOT-JUNK? a couple of times, the phones just lit up.

Now by total contrast, the biggest show in the last year on daytime TV was Ellen. And it was crickets. It was absolute crickets. 

Alex Lieberman: Why do you think that is? 

Brian Scudamore: Well, I think it's two things. I think one, we live in a world of social media, and we take shows and YouTube and everything as we want in a self-serve way. We're not glued to a screen in the same way we would've been in the Oprah days. I think the second part, so that would spread things out. The second part is that our brand is established. We're a $600 million junk removal brand. Our phones aren't going…we're not going to go from zero to a hundred really, really quickly from someone like Ellen mentioning us on the show. But it did have the impact of friends, family, people talking about it. “How did you make it happen?” And it gives the credibility to us as we're building a happy brand. We want people that love seeing the possibilities we've created that they can be a part of as a franchise owner, as an employee. And it's brought more people to our businesses. 

Alex Lieberman: This begs the question around just PR, any earned media in general. I feel like it is such a hot topic because a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, will say PR is a total waste of time and money for a long time in your business. But I'm interested to hear your perspective, like do you believe in PR and spending money on PR?

Brian Scudamore: So I don't know if I believe in spending money as much as I do spending time. So of course it cost money. We had six people in our PR department in the early days. So yes, that costs us money. But it was them picking up the phones and calling Oprah and the like to say, “Got a great story idea for you.” We always have stories. And I think today more than ever, we live in the storytelling age. I mean, what makes Morning Brew so special? Stories, stories about current events in the markets, what's going on in the world, what's going on in business. We want information, but we want entertainment. And I think PR is just getting out and telling your story in an outlet where things can spread. Most people don't get it, and most entrepreneurs don't realize they actually have a story. But I have yet to meet an entrepreneur that doesn't have just a fascinating story when you start asking questions. 

Alex Lieberman: Yeah, I absolutely can agree with that. That in a world where most things are becoming commoditized by technology, storytelling and, say, creativity more broadly, is gonna be one of the last things to be commoditized. And to your point, every entrepreneur has an interesting story. They don't necessarily have the self-awareness to realize that their story is actually fascinating to everyone but them. 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah. Oh, it's true. 

Alex Lieberman: So 1989 is when the business was founded, right?

Brian Scudamore: Correct. 

Alex Lieberman: Okay. And 1994, after…I believe in that year you did $500,000 in revenue. That was the year that you decided to fire everyone in the business, which my understanding is, it had 11 people at the time. Talk about that decision and why you had to make it. 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah. An incredibly important decision. So I'm wearing a hat right now that says “It's all about people.” The day I discovered that that's what an entire business is about is the company of great women and men that we recruit into our possibility thinking, it was the day I fired my entire team. Now literally I didn't preserve one. There were 11 people in the company. I always say that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. And I think I had nine out of 11 that were bad apples. Now, not bad human beings, but just they were the wrong fit. They didn't fit my happy culture, my optimism. We didn't believe in each other, and it was time to part ways. I didn't keep the remaining two, 'cause I just wasn't so sure, was this a bit of a, something that was spreading. So I wiped out the entire team. And I did it…the way I did it, I think, is what matters, when I look back. I sat down with these people and I said, “Hey listen, I'm sorry, I'm sorry that I let you down as a leader. I didn't give you the love and support you needed to be successful. You didn't believe in me. I didn't believe in you as a young leader at 24 years old. I need to learn. And I'm sorry, the only way to deal with this is to start again.” 

But the “it's all about people” approach got me to, instead of hiring people that can load junk trucks that had, you know, the strength to do so, the experience to do so, was finding people that I wanted to hang out with. I wanted people that I felt like I could have a beer with and chitchat, have a shared common interest and passion. And it didn't have to be, of course, in junk removal, but maybe in helping customers, maybe in growing a business. And that was absolutely the right thing for me to do to completely transform my company, because my business would become…I mean it's junk removal, it's a dirty industry, but we said we would have clean shiny trucks, friendly uniformed drivers. We'd build the FedEx of junk removal. I couldn't have done that without happy, smiley, friendly employees. 

Alex Lieberman: I think some people who listen to this, that they're probably gonna say to themselves, you know, whatever Brian's drinking, I wanna drink some of that. Because in a perfect world, I would hire a bunch of happy people that are positive and optimistic. But at the end of the day, if I'm hiring for certain roles in a company that have specific skills that I need and certain experience, not every happy person is going to have the qualifications needed to do the job well. And some people may even have, you know, skepticism of like, yeah, that's great but like your company isn't your family. There's a big debate around is your company your family? People will say company is not your family and it's more like a team and you want the best athletes who can help you perform. So what do you say to people who hear, who feel skepticism around this idea of just hiring happy people?

Brian Scudamore: It works for us. I mean, who am I to say? Yes, we have a track record of doing it. It doesn't mean it works for everybody, but here's a real-life example. The early two thousands, we had a CFO that we had hired, all the experience in the world, one of the best CFOs you could ever find, at least in our city. Wrong fit. Wrong fit culturally, not a pleasant, smiley, optimistic person. Great at their job, cared about people, but it was just, it was too prickly, it wasn't the right fit. And then years later, we learned we were better having someone greener, less experienced, who had the right culture and real deep care for their people, and groom them, give them the runway to grow. And we've got the best CFO you can ever imagine today. 

Alex Lieberman: Yeah. That CFO that you were just referring to, did you ultimately have to let them go? Did you fire them? 

Brian Scudamore: We did let them go. 

Alex Lieberman: How do you, I'm just super interested, how do you have the conversation with someone, at least as you described them, who is skillful and they're good at the job, and where they're missing the mark is on cultural fit and that's not something they're going to be able to change? How do you let them go? What is the rationale you provide to someone like that where they're actually doing the job well? 

Brian Scudamore: It’s challenging. I mean it's challenging as things can go, because as humans we don't want to upset our fellow people. But at the same time, it's not the fit for us. And we've had plenty of people over the years that we've had to let go because they're not a fit with our values, they're not a fit with our culture. They don't take it well at first, but they need to find a better place for themselves. And I do believe that when you know that one door closes, a window opens somewhere else. How do you as a leader show them that this will probably be a better opportunity for them as well? People need to find, you know…we're an extroverted but we've got lots of introverts. We're an extroverted culture that just is a little quirky, a little out there. You know, we, our company would fit into that “crazy ones.” It's okay if someone's not the right fit. But let's make sure that we're not bringing people in who aren't a great fit and if we ever make a mistake, let's deal with that. 

Alex Lieberman: Totally. So in 1997 you did a million dollars. It took, I guess, eight years to get to your first million in annual revenue. Today you do more than a million dollars in revenue per day. What were some of the most important decisions you made from a strategy perspective or from a process perspective that allowed you to grow to, you know, being a business that does well north of $600 million a year?

Brian Scudamore: It's a great question. So I think the first thing we figured out was clearly, it's all about people. Find the right people, treat them right. We then realized that if you find the right people and you take care of them, the people will take care of our customers. People often in businesses put the customer first and they say the customer is king and queen. The holy grail. No, your people are, in my opinion. Take care of your people. They will take care of the customer. When you take care of the customer, the customer will take care of the growth of your brand, your profits, your opportunity, your reputation. So the way I looked at this is I said “We got the people part right. What about systems?” 

You asked me earlier, you said we get to why franchising? I think the thing I love most about franchising, and I wanted to take Ray Kroc’s, McDonald's brothers recipe of consistently executed with excellence on everything. It's just junk removal, it's just house painting. But if you have the step-by-step checklist of how people should do things, we inspect what we inspect and we keep them delivering with excellence, systems make a difference. And so I want my brand to look, feel, and act the same in every city so that people know what to expect as a customer. So when people say, like, “Your team is just awesome,” you can add whatever city, whatever franchise to that and that's what I expect to hear. So it's the consistency of systems. 

Alex Lieberman: And what does that look like? Is that literally, like, you know, digital? Is that digital files of all marketing materials? Is that language you use with customers? Like what does that actually look like in practice? 

Brian Scudamore: Yes and yes. So we're big into scripting things, to not have anyone sound robotic, but to know the framework within…with how you play. Here's how we show up to the customer. Our sales center agents, when they're answering the phone, the customer can't see them but we still teach 'em to smile, 'cause you can hear the smile. So it's how we train people, it's how we recruit people, and it's how we operate the business.

So again, we're not absent of innovation but we err on the side of, let's build momentum on what we know works really well. Let's do more of that. We're a PR-centric business. Let's continue down the storytelling track. We're in a guerrilla marketing business. We park our trucks, all 2,000 of them, in high-profile visible intersections for people to see. Let's do more of that. We always try consciously not to be all things to all people. Let's pick what we're great at and go do more of it. And it's worked for us, you know, it's…business, as you know, is it can be a simple formula, a simple recipe to get it right, but the execution of getting the alignment of all those people over and over and over to do it the way that we want to do.

So storytelling. You'd commented before we went live on my background, and there's sort of a Whistler-ish mountain cabin scene with snow, and we've got storytelling in our office like you wouldn't believe. Every image tells a story about something that's important to us. And the story isn't necessarily obvious at the beginning, but it could be about our values, passion, integrity, professionalism, and empathy. It could be about visioning the future, it could be landing The Oprah Winfrey Show, the mother of all media hits. But we tell stories as a way to entertain the people that we're trying to train, the people that we're trying to get to believe that this is, and we agree, the best way to do everything we do in our business.

Alex Lieberman: Yeah, I love that. For our listeners who aren't maybe familiar with the franchise model, can you just talk for a second about how that works? Like what you provide to a franchisee, what they have to provide to you? Like what does that relationship look like? 

Brian Scudamore: So someone gets first and foremost a brand. When we start a 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchise in Tulsa or in New Jersey or in Los Angeles, customers move. So when they move from one city to another and they go, oh this is the same company I used in Vancouver and they're also in Toronto, that's useful to everybody. When you're building up customers or you're getting free press, everybody benefits. Everyone in our system benefited from Oprah, from Ellen, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times. So it's the power of building a brand together. That's the most important thing they get. They then get this whole, you're not in business for yourself…sorry, you're in business for yourself but not by yourself. So there's support. You built things with your partner from the ground up and there were things where you're like, is this gonna work? What are we gonna do? I'm making a mistake, are we gonna survive? Whatever might have happened as entrepreneurs like us would do. In a franchise system, you get to be an entrepreneur, but with the support and guidance of others. One thing I talk about in my book is Shaquille O'Neal. I got to meet Shaquille O'Neal a few times recently and we were…

Alex Lieberman: As big in person?

Brian Scudamore: Oh my gosh. Huge. Seven foot two, and I'm just like some six foot little white guy, right? He's amazing, and the thing that I got super excited about Shaq on is that Shaq said to me, he goes, listen Brian, I asked him why he does what he does now and what he gets out of it in terms of business, and he’s got a half a billion dollars in wealth. He said, Brian, I can go into…just like I did with sports, I can go into franchising and rah rah, cheerlead, coach, execute with excellence, build something great with a bunch of great people. He doesn't need to be the entrepreneur that's creating the idea from scratch like I did. He needs to be the guy that goes, I wanna build a team, a winning team, by scratch.

So a lot of our franchise partners would say to you, they weren't the idea person, they wanted a formula like a McDonald's to say “Here's how you market.” They will come up with new ideas and it will help make the whole system better. But it really is in BYOB, build your own business, be your own boss. My second book I talk about how there's two paths to entrepreneurship. One is a blank sheeting like you and I would've done. We see an opportunity to do something differently. There's also the other side, which is the Shaquille O'Neal. Like he doesn't need to build the race car, he just wants to drive it. 

Alex Lieberman: Totally. 

Brian Scudamore: Here's the formula. Get going. Scale quickly. 

Alex Lieberman: And just to kind of round out this question, within the franchise model, it's my understanding a new franchisee assumes like part of the cost of starting up their franchise, and they give you a percentage of revenue back to 1-800-GOT-JUNK? every single year.

Brian Scudamore: Exactly. So they would pay a royalty back to the parent brand. It could be McDonald's, it could be our Shack Shine or Wow 1 Day. And that is to keep the brand building and growing and get more PR and add more people to the team and greater support and so on. We see that if someone buys a franchise, if someone started Jack’s Hauling and they went to their town in New Jersey, they're gonna find that with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, they're gonna charge more. And that incremental value that you get being able to charge more is because of a premium brand that we've created that has huge credibility. So that incremental amount more than covers, generally, the royalty they'd be paying to us. So yes, someone can go off and do it on their own and not pay a royalty to a business, but they often grow more slowly without the support, doing it by themselves. 

Alex Lieberman: You just mentioned this idea of charging more and I feel like you'll have a good story about this. How did you decide what to price 1-800-GOT-JUNK? services at? 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah, so I looked in the papers at the time, the classifieds, to see what the competitors were charging, and I came up with sort of a middle rate fee of $130 a truckload for a pickup truckload. We ended up on the front page of our local newspaper, and there we were The Rubbish Boys, a phone number, the whole bit and it was unbelievable. And we got a hundred phone calls in 24 hours, and it was so awesome to get to first experience that free press. The only thing I was upset about with that media hit, and it drove me nuts, is they got our pricing wrong. They said it's only $138 a load. So they were off by eight bucks, which for me as an 18-year-old kid, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is awful. This is gonna destroy our business. And then I realized, well, no, everybody called, everybody who was still interested. So we kept the rates at $138 instead of making it a mistake. That was our new rate.

Then we realized over time that to be positioned in the market as the best junk removal company in the world, which we then became, it was to price accordingly. The cheapest in the world of Walmart, big box retailers, it's the ones that are super hyper efficient that can run a massive business with very, very tiny margins. In services it doesn't work that way. The biggest and the best in every market, let's call it HVAC or window washing, doesn't matter, is usually generally the most expensive or close to the most expensive, because it costs a lot of money to find great people. As we all know today, everything's getting more expensive, but you do get what you pay for, and people want that service. So our pricing was literally a mistake in a newspaper article. But then once we understood that our position in the market, we needed to be the higher cost provider, not necessarily the highest, but people go, yeah, you're on time, you show up, you do what you say you'll do, we trust you, we use you over and over and over. And that makes a difference, and that costs money.

Alex Lieberman: Totally. Something you've said in the past, and I resonated with this completely, so this is a very selfish question, is you've said you're very ADD. I am very ADD and when left to kind of my own devices, I will doomscroll through Twitter, I'll go search for junk food in the snack closet in my apartment. I'll do everything but the work that I'm supposed to do. What sort of structures have you created for yourself and your business so that you're effective with your time? Because clearly you figured something out that works.

Brian Scudamore: Yeah, so ADD is real, as you know, and I don't know to what level my ADD is other than off the charts. Like, I mean even like, I'm glad you're in a little box right now so I can stay focused on you, right? Like, it's hard. And so I've got these life hacks or whatever you want to call them that are systems, structures, you said, that allow me to stay focused, that kind of gamify my own life. So here's a couple of them. Number one is, I'm a big believer in screen time on my phone. So Apple's screen time, I set it up with all these limitations, I give my phone to my assistant, and I say, can you enter your password? She has the password to my screen time, not me. I can't make changes.

Alex Lieberman: I did the same exact thing with my fiancée. 

Brian Scudamore: Oh, it's unbelievable. When I go away on vacation and I love to get outta my ADD and just recharge and have fun and not have to worry about the business, I get my assistant to change my passcode on my email and my social media. So again, I can't even get in. And that whole “going dark,” we call it, we try and get everybody in all our brands to do that same practice, 'cause you need to recharge. And no one can recharge if you're “Sorry, what was that? What was that?” And you're constantly scrolling. I've tried to, as a parent with my kids, not be the dad who's always on my device. And I know there's exceptions, but you know, it's a tough thing and we need to be disciplined. But with ADD it's hard to be disciplined. So I turn to others for help, like my assistant or Eric Church, who's our president and COO. When I've got ideas, entrepreneurs are like, “Hey, I got this great idea. And another one, another one.” It's like, whoa, slow down. Eric, who's the implementer, will say, “Okay, great idea, Brian. Can we park that away and look at that in six weeks or six months? Hey, maybe that's not a great idea. Can we talk about that some more?” Or he'll go, wow, that's actually rarely, but “Wow, that's a really good idea that we need to start getting in place now.” He becomes a filter to, in a more rigorous and disciplined way, adapt and help me determine where that priority fits. So it's turning to others. That structure. Others support me with my ADD, those who don't have it. 

Alex Lieberman: I'm so fascinated, now that we're talking about kind of what allows you to spend your time, how you wanna spend it. Now I wanna talk about how the way you've spent your time has changed over time. So I'm gonna give you three snapshots of the business at different stages and I want you to just ballpark how you spent your time directionally. I want you to talk about roughly how you spent your time in 1997 when you did your first million dollars. I want you to talk about how you spent your time, I don't know, let's say when you were at $10 million. And I want you to talk about how you spend your time today. Like in an average week, what you're spending your time on. 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah, so it's a great question which I will answer. I'm gonna give you a quick story first. I know you're the interviewer so I shouldn't be taking control, but it's a good story. I joined YPO, the Young Presidents’ Organization, years and years ago. I'm no longer a member. I gave it to my president, and I'm still in EO, the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. When I was in YPO, you have many hundreds of billion-dollar companies. My small little company at 26 years old, when I joined YPO, I interviewed people so I could learn and I said, “Okay, Mr. and Mrs. billion-dollar company leaders, does it get easier? Does it get harder? What's the deal?” And everyone, without exception of dozens of people I interviewed, said, the easiest is a billion. The hardest is a million. From a million, it starts to get easier, at 10 million, easier at a hundred, and even easier yet at a billion. That blew my mind. But it actually is proven in my situation as we're two thirds of the way to a billion to be exactly true. 

Alex Lieberman: Explain why. 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah. So at a million I did everything. I was in my own way at a million dollars in revenue. I was doing the payroll, I was dealing with managing the call center, managing the trucks and our hiring, trying to figure out how we would market everything. I mean, I literally, the buck stopped at me on everything and every decision. I didn't know how to delegate, I didn't know how to give control to others. I read the book, The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, E-Myth Revisited, taught me how to systematize and scale my business so I didn't have to be Brian in a junk truck. 

Alex Lieberman: And just explain what that is for a second, 'cause I dunno if you remember the last time we spoke, we spoke about E-Myth, because we were at this inflection point in Morning Brew where everything had been, let's make decisions that are helping the machine operate today. And maybe if we're lucky, we're thinking a day ahead, not even a week ahead. And we're at this point where we said to ourselves, we want to think months, quarters, and years ahead. We had just started reading Traction by Gino Wickman, which is the entrepreneurial operating system. And I remember at the time you had told me about E-Myth. So just talk for a second about what that allowed you to do. 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah, so it allowed me…Michael Gerber studied McDonald's and said there's a cookie cutter formula. People don't fail, systems do. If you don't have the systems in place to recruit the right people, train the right people, and help them operate with excellence, you can't scale and be successful. So you could look at me as someone who's done a great job with PR. I can't continue to do all the PR and the business over the years. I had to give it to someone else. I gave it to a guy, Tyler Wright, who had no PR background whatsoever. We trained him because he was just great at telling stories, had all the energy and enthusiasm in the world. He chased Oprah, he made Oprah happen for us. I would've given up 'cause it was too hard and it took too long. So yes, I got in my own way, but I learned that through trying to scale something, if you can empower someone else who will actually potentially be able to do things better than you've ever been able to do, give them that opportunity. So I found from $1 [million] to $10 million, someone who's better at running finance and doing payroll than me, easy. Someone that was better at hiring and interviewing than me. Someone that was better at doing the operations, building the manuals, doing the training, running the call center. So it was putting the right people in place who were way better than I could ever be that allowed us to scale.

And then all we did from $10 million to $100 to $600, is that on steroids. Now, I would say the downside for us being at $600 million in revenue, versus say $10 million, we've become more bureaucratic, accidentally. I think it's just turned into this…and I don't think the pandemic helped at all. I think that the Zoom disconnected world has made it a little bit bumpy. But full disclosure, we're working through that. We love our company, we're proud of all we're doing, but it's like, how do we get some entrepreneurial spirit back? We are no longer the $1 million speedboat that would navigate so fast. And you could say, “Go there,” we go. We're now this big cruise ship at $600 million that, “Let's go over there.” Okay, let's plan on it. Let's talk to the team, let's make course adjustments. Things can take longer. I want us to be a little more entrepreneurial and get it back to there. But my role is, today, PR, culture, vision. I'm more of a cheerleader. I weigh in on some strategy, but I'm not executing on much. And I liked executing, but it wasn't my strongest suit. I love inspiring possibilities in our franchise partners to think bigger and bolder and achieve their dreams that change their lives. So the more the entrepreneur can take themselves out of everything they don't love to do that they might not be good at, that they can inspire others to do in a better way, that's how you scale a business. 

Alex Lieberman: Did you find that transition hard at all? And again, I asked this question selfishly because when I moved out of my role as CEO of Morning Brew in April of 2021, and my co-founder Austin, who was the COO of the business, took over at that point, I found that to be very difficult because I found myself to feel insecure about not being good enough at certain things to continue doing those things. Did you ever feel those feelings, or how do you think through that transition? 

Brian Scudamore: Yeah, I mean, getting vulnerable here, it is hard on the ego, right? So as an entrepreneur who, me, built things to a hundred million dollars, and I had a COO in place that didn't work out, and I had to get that person out. My franchise partner said, “Brian, you're not, like, with all due respect, you got rid of this person, but you're not it either. You can't grow it, you can't scale it.” And while I was looking to find this next person, Eric Church who we found, everybody kept telling me what a terrible job I was doing, and I just felt crushed and hurt. I'm like, nobody believes in 1-800-GOT-JUNK? more than me. I bleed blue and green. I love this business. And everyone's like, “Yes, we know that, but you're not good at getting it to the next level. You've hit a ceiling and you can't do it.” And they were right. So I had to accept it and it was hard. But once I accepted that someone can do it better, my role became as the leader to find that person who can do it better, allow them to do it better, get the hell outta my own way. And that's when things started to grow. Eric took the business from a hundred million to the combined family of the three brands doing $700 million. I couldn't have done that. We would've lost the business, we would've bankrupted it. I just, it's not me. 

And so that's been the gift in that sort of ego reset for me. What do I want to do? Inspire possibilities in others. How do I best do that? I have three businesses that allow franchise opportunities to be given to those willing to take them, wanting to grow with us, and me getting outta my own way.

Alex Lieberman: So good. I want to finish up this interview with a final question. We do this thing called Startup AMA where listeners, viewers, The Misfits of The Crazy Ones, submit questions. So we have a question from John in St. Louis. John asked, “How do you think about what to do with the cash flow of your business? You're a business that has never raised money. And so you have the choice of reinvesting versus taking distributions. How do you make that decision? And when you do reinvest, how do you choose what to reinvest in?” 

Brian Scudamore: It's all about reinvesting in growth. Now, I might be different than some entrepreneurs, where I know the Lamborghinis and the boats won't make me happy. And I love what I've got. I've got a great ski house up in the mountains in Whistler. I got a healthy family. We've got a home in Vancouver. I'm good. I got my Ford F-150. It's a hybrid. Like yes… 

Alex Lieberman: Got your home office with decals. 

Brian Scudamore: Exactly. I got it all. So I'm not looking to take money out, short of philanthropy to do anything with that money. I'm not looking to spend other than, you know, experiences and traveling, and we brought friends to Italy and to France and we get to enjoy this great blessed life, but it's investing back in the business so that we can grow something and help our franchise partners grow something bigger than they ever imagined. So how do you decide where? We have a strategic plan every year and we decide what's the next level of growth? Where are we going, how do we get there? What investments, technology, and so on. And so it's very planful. You can imagine it's not me leading it, it's Eric and his team, and I think we make, you know, some pretty good decisions. 

Alex Lieberman: I love it. Brian Scudamore, always great to chat with you. Thanks for joining The Crazy Ones. 

Brian Scudamore: I didn't join, I've always been one. Thanks, Alex. 

Alex Lieberman: Thank you. And to our listeners, thank you so much for coming back to the show, the best startup show on planet Earth. And remember to email us at thecrazyones@morningbrew.com. Ask us questions, give us feedback, or just introduce yourself. And I promise Jesse, Sophia, or myself will respond and we'll get a conversation going. Thanks, everyone, and we'll catch you next week.