Blaze Your Own Trail - How to Build Your Own Business with Brian Scudamore

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

About Brian: Serial entrepreneur and author Brian Scudamore has always taken the road less travelled. At just 19 years old, he pioneered the industry of professional junk removal with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, turning a chore people avoid into an exceptional customer service experience. Then he scaled that success into two more home-service brands, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING and Shack Shine, under the O2E Brands banner. Brian learned the ins and outs of business by running his own, and believes that anyone with a fire in their gut and a vision for doing something incredible can do the same. His philosophy, WTF (Willing To Fail), 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 BYOB (Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss), and live their dream of business ownership. Find Brian's books, WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success, and BYOB: Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss at BrianScudamore.com Connect with Brian: Facebook: @bscudamore Instagram: @brianscudamore Twitter: @brianscudamore LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scudamore Websites mywtfbook.com o2ebrands.com Amazon genius link to WTF book: http://geni.us/wtfbook Connect with Jordan: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/therealjordanjmendoza/⁠ Clapper: ⁠https://clapper.vip/jordanjmendoza⁠ Join my Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/linkedintrailblazers⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.blazeyourowntrailconsulting.com Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had a total of 11 jobs between the age of 11 and 17, just trying to help and support my mom. When I gave away my ATS resume template, that I used to charge $3,000 for. If I were someone that wanted to work with you, I think the thing that would resonate with me the most is a fact that you have been as far as they will fall. I gave her all my videos, and today she's a message saying I got my first client, and it could not be happier for her. On my show, one thing I love to do is really get context into people's journey. I saw eggs, I saw vegetables, door-to-door. I saw newspapers. I do it because they truly care to help.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I've got a very special guest today. His name is Brian Scudamore, and I'm going to let him tell you who he is and what he does today. Amazing. Thank you, Jordan, for having me.

I'm Brian Scudamore. the founder and CEO of O2E Brands, which stands for ordinary to exceptional. Everything we do with our three companies is about building ordinary businesses into exceptional machines that help people grow, make things easy for our customers, building exceptional brands. So my first baby in the family, so to speak, of the three brands is 1-800-Got Junk, started that business right out of high school and never graduated. from high school and today we're a 600 million dollar business on our way to a billion. I love that sign behind you, blaze your own trail.

Yeah, with the B, with the B, guys, with a B, one billion. And so I've been blazing my own trail for a long time with this brand. It's been 33 years, as people say, these overnight success stories sure take a long time. And then we've got two other brands under the O2E umbrella. The other brand is wow one day painting where we go paint people's homes in a day. instead of painting someone's home in two weeks, which would be more typical, the lack of or the absence of any disruption, we get in and out done in a day, same quality, but just a faster pace. And then we've got shakshine, windows, gutters, power washing, and Christmas lights.

It's the house detailing business. And that's been the newest in the family and it's growing the fastest. So we are a franchise organization. We find amazing people who want to build a business with a proven plan. platform, a proven recipe. And off we grow together. And yeah, here we are. Awesome, man. We appreciate you sharing that context. And man, I've got a ton of questions about each of these brands. But, you know, the format of my show is going to have me reserve those for later. So we'll be asking you those later. But, you know, my favorite part of the show, man, is we get to rewind,

really dive into who you are, right? From a context of childhood all the way back to today. So if you can share with the audience a little bit, you know, let's talk adolescent years, elementary, middle, the high school. So, you know, where did you grow up? Where were you born and raised? And then what kind of kid were you? What types of things did you get into? Well, so today I'm in Vancouver, Canada. I'm a Canadian. I was born in San Francisco. I lived in San Francisco. My mother was, she raised me as a single mom. She worked in a bank. She worked an ultrasound. And she was a busy mom. And she, you know, inspired me in terms of a work ethic for sure. We moved to Canada when I was seven years old and my mother married a liver transplant surgeon, my dad, and, you know, discovered a whole other country in a different way of doing things. And Canada's certainly home, but got family in the U.S. And I used to go back to San Francisco every summer vacation, Christmas vacation, and I would go work in my grandparents' army surplus store. They had this old surplus store and a dodgy end San Francisco and I got to play the game of business, ring the cash register, talk with customers,

sell goods, and I had a blast. I was just learning about business and I fell in love with watching how my grandparents ran that business. They took care of people. Given that it was in a poorer neighborhood, they'd get a lot of homeless and street people coming in asking for money. My grandparents never gave them money, but they always gave them an ear. They gave them the love that they needed. they gave him support. And it paid off because my grandparents, in 20 years, 30 years of that store, they got robbed twice, whereas everyone else on either side of them was getting robbed almost weekly.

People didn't mess with my grandparents because of who they were and their reputation of taking care of people. So I used to go work in their store, got inspired, and I would run businesses of my own as a kid. I ran a car wash in the summers, and would recruit friends to do marketing on the busy streets and wave down cars. And I'd have lineups of cars as a kid and making tons of money. And again, realizing how fun business was.

I went to boarding school for a year because I was a bad kid. You said, you know, tell people what kind of kid you were. I was very much a disruptor, not in the sense where it's kind of cool today as an entrepreneur. I was a disruptor. My class report cards all said, you know, Brian's got a behavior. your problem. He can't focus. He's the class clown. I think you're reading my report card. Exactly. Mine was very similar to that. Oh, and it drove people nuts. My teachers maybe hates a strong word, but they had a hard time with me. There was one teacher, and I write about this in my book,

WTF, willing to fail. I've had so many failures, but they've all been gifts that have taken me to another place. And I read about a guy, Mr. Dodds, who was my third grade teacher. And he was the only one that ever saw the gifts in me. My ADD, my hyperness, my class clowning. He was like, you know, Brian's a good kid. He isn't able to focus, but let's do things differently with him. So after school, he'd always get me into the gym playing floor hockey with the other kids. He did things to burn off my energy, but he believed in me and saw something that others

didn't see. And I felt that was fantastic. So as a kid, I was a disruptor. I loved leading the charge, not just getting the rest of the class to goof off, but getting out there and starting businesses. And again, making money, having fun, that was what drove me. That's awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah, we have a lot of similarities.

I can remember very similar notes, very similar comments, you know, class clown. I did good, I think, in elementary and middle school, but once we got to high school, it was just, I became a nuisance, right? So the teachers would just kind of send me to the principal's officer detention. And obviously I'm not in there learning now, right? I don't know if you had that experience. It's like, how am I supposed to learn if I'm not here? But when I'm here, I can't focus because I've got all this energy.

I need to get out. And the school system wasn't really built for that. What I like about 2022 is I have a daughter who's 10 and she just finished fifth grade, about to go to middle school. well, she has a lot of similar traits that you and I have, Brian, but they actually accommodate for it now where she'll, they'll actually have different chairs set up, like bean bags and some will be regular chairs.

And they put little fidget toys at people's desks and things like that. And I'm like, wow, if we would have had that, maybe it would have been a little bit different of the situation. But it was just like, you're a disruptor, get out of class. Like, you know, you're disrupting everybody else. And then we couldn't learn because we can't be in class. You know, so I don't know if you had that similar experience of that. Exactly.

It was we would break rules when again, as an entrepreneur, it's about breaking the rules and doing things differently, blazing your own trail, taking the road less traveled. But as a kid, you're taught that's a bad thing. And I think that you don't want to break rules that are going to hurt people and be dishonest and that sort of stuff. But trying to find a different way of doing things with different energy is okay. How do you encourage that? And I think today you're right.

I've got a 10-year-old as well, and he's got a lot of the similar qualities. And how do we embrace that? How do we let him know that there's some gifts in those things? You still have to conform in certain ways. You know, you can't shout out in class. And there's certain social rules that are important. But it's also hard for kids. They get excited.

You give them the littlest bit of sugar. And then it's all downhill from there, right? So I think for me, it's how do you find the gift in everybody? Marcus Buckingham said, first play to your strengths. Every kid has a strength. They've got gifts. But we're always telling them, no, you can't do this. No, you can't do that.

What about just finding a unique and better way to empower them? And I think part of the reason why many of our franchise owners were similar to you and I, is entrepreneurship attracts that skill set of people that really were told no and had to figure out their own trail and blaze it on their own and their own unique way. Yeah, 100%. And so let's go back to school, right? So disruptor very similar in high school. So didn't finish. Obviously, you had the skill sets to create income for yourself. So I'm going to make an assumption that that's what you did, right? You created businesses and just continued that. I think, I think that, you know, the business that we were kind of talking about offline. I'm a big systems and process guy. So I like going through workflows. And I gave you the compliment that 1-800 got junk. It was, easy. It literally took me probably less than 90 seconds to book something and someone's going to show up tomorrow to pick up junk that I don't need. So, you know, ease of use, it sounds like that's

something that's really important to you and not just with this one company, but across all three organizations. Is that a safe assumption? Absolutely. And it's funny. It's interesting. I wonder why you and I both as disruptors, both as sort of ADD types, why we like systems and processes. because I'm the same. And I think for me, it's process helps keep my mind organized. It gets rid of and eliminates some of the noise. So I want to eliminate the noise for our people.

I want to eliminate the noise for our customers and make it easy. So I'm glad to know that you found 1-800 got junk easy. I think that all of our brands are much easier than you would typically find out there in home services. So if I look at wow one day painting, most people are used to someone showing up a couple of painters and they'll be there for a couple of weeks getting the whole house done. But we just put a number of people into the home in a coordinated, planned way where we can say one room, yeah, it usually takes one person to paint that in a day. Everyone knows that's possible. And it's a bigger room. You might need two people.

So you just stack the house in an organized way. Nobody's bumping into each other. They just have a dedicated project to get done that day. And that's how I found the company was I hired this company one day painting to come in. And at the end of the day, I come home, floor to ceilings, molding, trim, everything was immaculate. And I said, wow. And so I bought the company, called it wow, one day painting. And here we are today building the largest residential painting company on the on the planet through a franchise model. And it's just about making it easy. Who would want their home painted in two weeks if you knew at the same price with the same quality it could get done in a day? Yeah, I mean, you just think about the standard inconveniences like you can't be in the home because of the smell.

You know, you have to if you have pets now, you got to have your pet somewhere and you're working. So there's there's probably a list, right, of reasons why no one should do it in two weeks. You should always do it in the day, right? Because it's going to it's going to take pain and suffering and throw that right out the window because literally the next day it's done and you don't have to worry about it anymore. Yeah, you have drop cloths moving around. You got paint cans moving around. You've got a mess. You got furniture covered in sheets. And it's just, it's too much. But if you can get in and out, you come home. We'll get customers that will come home at the end of the day. And they literally, their jaws will drop. And they're like, wow, it's a complete transformation. And all they had to do was be out for that day. We've cleaned up. Everything's back to normal. And you've got this beautiful refreshed home. And it was done all the, the while while you spent the day, you know, having a walk in your city and going out for meals and enjoying yourself rather than having the ongoing disruption. So for us, it's disrupting industries and doing it differently. The biggest critique, critiquer of our industry of Wow,

one day painting is painters. They're like, you can't do a home in a day. Now, don't even let them tell you it's possible. But we're doing thousands and thousands of homes in a day. Of course, we can do it. We figured it out. And challenging the status quo is something really important to us. Love it, love it. So let's talk about challenging the status quo at the birth of 1-800 got junk. So what did that look like? Because I know that you disrupted it even back then.

You had to have a model that was doing something a little bit differently than somebody else, right? That was your concept of business. So what did it look like in the beginning? talk, you know, first 90 days of operation, I'd love for you to kind of go back down memory lane and give us a peek on the inside of what the business look like. And then also, what did your marketing efforts look like? I'm sure a lot of door knocking and things like that were involved, but I'd love to just hear what the early days of marketing look like and then share with the audience what it looks like today. Yeah, well, it's interesting. What it looked like and what it

Looks like today in many ways are very similar. We go find people that have junk through different ways, more digital now than it was door knocking back then. And when someone's got a pile of junk, they go online or they call 1-800 got junk and boom, a truck is there within 90 minutes or as late as the next day. It's a simple business model. We recycle up to 61% of what we take away. Two friendly uniform drivers show up.

They do a sweep up. They're happy. They're friendly. It's professional. a brand that never had that professionalism. If I go back to those first 90 days, it was me buying a beat-up old pickup truck, putting plywood sides on the box.

I was inspired to start the business after I was in a McDonald's drive-through, trying to find a way to pay for college. I see this old beat-up truck with plywood sides, and it says Mark's hauling along the side. And I'm like, that's how I'm going to pay for university. I talked my way into school, having not graduated from high school.

I bought a truck of my own, and I had $700 is what I paid for that truck. And off I went hauling junk. That funded my way through college, but I was learning much more about business by running one versus studying in school. And I made the bold decision to drop out. My dad was a liver transplant surgeon

thought I was nuts to leave college, but I was learning more about business running it. And I said, I'm going to do this full time. And the first 90 days, if I think back, I was in those trucks or in that truck, hauling junk, doing it myself, little ads in the classified section of the newspaper when that used to exist. And that's how people found out about me. My side of my truck had my big phone number and blazoned on the side and people would see the truck parked in the neighborhood. And they'd call me.

And I realized that put more trucks on the road with more 1-800-Gunt junk phone numbers on the side yielded more phone calls, that they were these massive billboards driving around town and everyone kept calling. So my business grew through a lot of guerrilla marketing tactics. And we realized getting free press, free trucks parked around. That was our ticket. We were on the Oprah Winfrey show. We talked our way into some little local shows, local newspapers on the front page of the province newspaper, our big local paper in Vancouver. And then big TV shows like Oprah and Ellen, and you name it. And we became storytellers. My job as a visual. visionary CEO was to get people excited, tell them the story, and then get on the Jordan

Mendoza show, right? Like, it's just whatever we need to do to get out there and tell stories to different people. That became a big driver of our business then and a big driver of our businesses today across all brands. Awesome, awesome. And would you say that, you know, landing Oprah or Ellen or, you know, one of the bigger names that you guys have been able to get interviewed by, does the process look the same or different than maybe someone that isn't as notable? I'd really love to figure it out. Because again, some people have, you know, they're like, oh, it doesn't matter who it is. I literally use the same exact script.

It doesn't matter because we have it so dialed in that it doesn't matter who's on the other end. We're going to be able to relate. We're going to be able to, you know, get them to see the value and what we're bringing to the table. Does that make sense? So I'd love your feedback on that because I think it would give people some access that most people probably wouldn't get. Well, I think you sort of gave the answer, I think, was the direction you were going sounded like you believe that whether you're calling up the Oprah producers or you're calling up your little local newspaper, the process is the same.

We as human beings connect over stories. You go to a party, you tell stories. You have dinner with your family. You tell stories. You connect with people based on a great story. So you have to have a great story. And whether you're calling your local newspaper or the Ellen DeGeneres show, it's figuring out how to get someone excited about what you see, about what your story is. So my opening line was generally, I've got a great story for you.

Well, okay, what is it? And while the Ellen show took us call after call after call for many years, it was refining the story. It was understanding the timing of when the right story would resonate with them. but it really is just connecting over story. And sometimes you get lucky or sometimes it takes a bunch more phone calls, but you're just connecting on a human level. Look at our social media. Social media is just connecting over story.

You know, why does someone get more clicks and likes and all those things that really don't matter at the end of the day? It's, uh, you know, a story. It's a better story than someone else's. Yeah,

you can mess with the algorithms and do all that black hat stuff, but really good stories go viral because they're good stories. 100% believe in that. And I love your sign behind you. It says, you know, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. Yeah, that resonates with me a lot because it's like, hey, when someone says it can't be done, that's when I get super pumped up. You know, that's what I kind of take it to heart and it gets me motivated. You know, I can remember you named a teacher that inspired you.

Well, mine inspired me, but I think for other reasons, my buddy Tyler and I were skipping class. We were at the vending machines, buying some gummy bears, as you do, you know, as a freshman in high school. And my teacher, literally at Ms. Green English teacher, brings the entire class down, finds us and says, you guys are never going to amount to anything. Might as well just go home. And we did. We left. And, man, that motivated the heck out of me. I was like, who does this lady think she is?

She probably skipped class, I'm assuming, you know, but the audacity to bring the entire class. and try to roast us like that. It literally fired me up. Well, and that's where, again, my book WTF willing to fail. It's those mistakes. In that moment, you're like, oh, man, I failed. Mrs. Green told me this, this and that, and I'm a terrible person,

but it will let you up in a positive way and help make you who you are. Every failure is a gift if we're willing to unwrap that gift and go, what had I learned from this? You know, so it's funny. And you point out the sign is kind of fun to do The Impossible. That's a Walt Disney quote. To me, when someone says something's impossible or don't do this, I find out a way to get lit up,

as you mentioned and make things happen. So my teacher and candy story was French class in 10th grade. And Mrs. Hallinen comes up to me and she goes, Brian, right in front of the class makes a big deal. You're chewing gum. What are you doing chewing gum? You know, you can't chew gum in my French class. And she starts berating me and I'm embarrassed. And she goes, if there's not enough gum for everyone, you can't chew class. And so I heard that idea of, oh, if there's not enough for everyone. So the next day, I went and bought these two penny double bubbles. And I bought a whole bag of them.

And I put the beginning of the class, the next class, I put like two or three on everyone's desks. Everyone's chewing this gum. Ms. Hallenden walks in. She's like, what is going on here? And I put up my hand. And I said, you said if there wasn't enough for everybody, so I brought enough for everybody and literally it shut down the class because everyone was sitting there you can't speak french while you're chewing a bunch of bubble gum and she just didn't know what to do and we all laughed

and i don't know i was a disruptor i feel bad mrs hallen and if you're listening i'm sorry oh man i love the story and i love that you you took it literally like okay well challenge accepted let me go figure out how to get this how to get this gum we talked about the first 90 days let let's get into after year one because you know you mentioned trucks multiple having multiple trucks as part of a marketing strategy i'm i'm going to assume that you started filling the trucks with people to expand and to you know take up some more space with the goals i i know that early on you had to been been thinking hey how do we make this thing you know the biggest company in the world so what did that end of year one look like yeah so it was you know the first year was really just sloth

logging along, still knocking on some doors, trying to grow the business. I'd say it was year three when I dropped out of college, 1993. Actually, that would have been, I guess, year four. I dropped out of college, told my dad I'm learning more running the business than studying, and I added a truck. So I quit school and added a second truck. The next year, I added a third. The next year, I added a fourth. And I started to grow it slowly. But by 1997, I, guess, eight years into the business, I hit a million in revenue. And that felt significant to me in two ways. One, I got to join the entrepreneur organization. And that would be my way of learning from other entrepreneurs around the world. But the other significant thing was a million dollars

made me go, okay, I can build this. I've got something here that's worthwhile that if I built it to a million, why not two million? Why not more? And I started to think ahead. It was interesting. In 97, when I joined EO. I started to be surrounded by other entrepreneurs and realized there were a lot of bigger, better, smarter entrepreneurs out there. I didn't have my college education. I didn't necessarily have a sexy business idea. And I thought, okay, what am I going to do with this? I was in a bit of a doom loop, a little depression. And I went to my parents' summer cottage. They had a little shack on the water, about an hour from my home. I sat down on the dock and I pulled out a sheet of paper. one page double-sided. I decided to just write, almost like a journal, what could five years out look like?

And I said we'd be in the top 30 metros in North America. There's 30 cities bigger than Vancouver where we started. We would be the FedEx junk removal. We'd be on the Oprah Winfrey show. And I started just to list all these big things. I went immediately after reading my painted picture from a doom loop to, wow, I see possibility. This is unbelievable. Look what we will. build. And from that day on, I started to be driven by a five-year vision. And we made it happen. Oprah, the FedEx junk removal, clean, shiny trucks, friendly uniform drivers. We grew this business into the top 30 metros exactly within five years, actually 16 days early. And I proved to myself and my team that this is special. We can do this. So the business really started to grow. And, you know,

Today, again, $600 million will be at a billion in the next four years. But our other brands, Wow, and Day Painting and Shack Shine, finding an amazing franchise owners that have always wanted a proven recipe. They didn't know what their business idea was that they should chase. Some people start with a blank sheet idea like you and I might and they get out and build something. Others want a proven formula. Someone I've had the pleasure of meeting lately and I'm having dinner with them next

month is Shaquille O'Neal. And Shaq is someone who spoke at our conference to all our franchise owners. And he spoke about franchising. And this guy's the franchise king. He did not need to start new ideas. He goes, listen, I want to race the race car. I don't need to build the race car. He took what he had in sports, put leaders in place in teams, you know, build that team, that culture. he knows how to lead, he knows how to win, he knows how to set goals. He's done that same philosophy into franchising. He's bought franchise concepts, puts the right people in, and fires these up. And he's got a half a billion dollars in net worth as a franchise king.

And here's a guy that he's not creating five guys hamburgers or anti-anis pretzels. Like he's just getting involved in them and growing the heck out of them. And it's what he did in business, they're in sports. And it's been exceptional. So I think a lot of my why is inspiring people who have always wanted to start their own business but don't have an idea to maybe look at the gifts and franchising. I love it. I love it.

And I love that you mentioned Shaq because the guy is the king of franchise, but he's the king of branding, personal branding. I mean, you can't look in a hundred foot distance in a Walmart and not see his face somewhere. I mean, that's incredible, right? You see him on cereal. You're seeing him on shoes. You're seeing him on magazine. You see him in the toy aisle.

Like he has got his face all over the place. You know, I've a little bit into him and his story. And he's got such a large family. You know, he takes care of his entire family and all the kids and pays. He's like, that's why I do what I do is I have a lot of people to provide for, you know. And it's just so awesome the way that he is leveraging his brand that he's built from, you know, the NBA to get involved in so many other things, but also like you said, using those skill sets from a leadership standpoint, you know, bringing it back to basketball and how to actually bring people

together and really create a culture because that's what that's what you've done a really great job at. I've noticed is just creating that culture of continuity. It's family like. And people want to be around that. You know, people want to be around a positive, you know, inclusive culture. Yeah, for sure. And what Shaq does really well, of all the things, he does well. I think what he's best at is making people smile. He knows his why. He knows what drives him. I asked him. I said, check. So what's the deal? Like why franchising? Why are you in business? And he goes, man, I just, I love to make people smile. So everything he does, whether it's his DJing, or whether it's big chicken, a franchise that he started from scratch. Like it doesn't matter what he's

doing. He goes, listen, I just love making people smile. And he's good at it. And that's what drives him. he doesn't need more money. I don't even think he wants more money. He just knows that everything he does is an avenue to make people smile. Yeah. I don't know how many people know about DJ Diesel, but I mean, if you,

you see, if you ever seen him do one of his DJ sets, it's, it's incredible. I mean, he just, he puts just as much into that as he did playing basketball. You know,

and I feel like he probably puts, you know, just as much into all of his other franchises. as he did on the court, you know, and for someone to keep up that same level of energy, no matter what platform he's on or no matter what side of the business that he's doing it, that's, again, that is like, it's charismatic, it's attractive. People want to be around that. That's a leader that people want to be around.

Yeah. And again, I think it's clarity of why you do what you do. He makes people smile when he's DJing. He makes people smile when he's playing on the court. He makes people smile when he's walking up to someone in Walmart and giving out, you know, some life-changing sort of gift to someone buying him a car. Like, he's unreal. So it's kudos to that guy for the magic he's creating in the world by just being himself.

He's the only Trailblazer that was never in a Trailblazer uniform in his NBA career. So I'm a little disappointed, you know, growing up in Portland, being a big Trailblazer fan and having to see him dominate us and take our championship dreams away. So when you see Shaq, tell him I'm still upset that he beat us Blazers, but he's probably going to say just look at all the rings. So let's talk when when you launched the second brand. I know you already had a ton of success with 1-800 got junk before launching brand number two. So what was it that made you want to, you know, buy this? It seems like it was the ease, the system and process, the model where you said, you know what, this can be replicated over and

over and over again. But I'd love that kind of your take on how quickly you knew this was that second thing, and then when all this transpired. Yeah, right away, I knew and how it unfolded was needed to get my home painted. I went out to Facebook and said anyone know any great painters and get in my house painted. I need some referrals. And I got three referrals. And the first two came by, cigarettes hanging out of their mouth when they show up. They showed up late. I felt like they were going to move in for a couple of weeks to paint my home. But the third guy shows up, uniformed, presentable, clean cut. on time, even a little bit early, shiny van out front.

And I knew something was different. And he said, listen, here's the three things about me. My prices are the same as everyone else. I know the market pricing. My quality is amazing. I've done this for 22 years. But the kicker, what got me excited is he said, when we agree on painting day, we'll paint your home

and it'll be done by the end of that day. And I didn't even believe it was possible like most people. But he did what he said he'd do. 6.30 p.m. I come home, moldings, see, floor to ceiling done perfectly immaculately. And I was blown away. And I said, have you ever tried to franchise this thing?

And he said, yeah, it doesn't work. And I said, well, would you be interested in having a beer? I might disagree. Let me see if I can help you. And we had a beer and we chatted and the rest was history. Ultimately, we partnered and then I bought them out. And here we are today building what will be the largest painting company on the planet. And so for me, it's doing big things.

It's doing the impossible. What I saw in 1-800 got junk and the ability to build the world's largest junk removal company, I wanted to do it again in another space. And this space had that potential. And are we the largest right now? No, far from it. Will we be the largest one day? Of course.

And it's that doing it in a day, the quality and the speed that go together. And it all boils down to in every business we own and run, finding the right people and treating them right. When we look for franchise owners, the number one thing they need to get right is finding the right people and treating them right. People often say in a business, Jordan, they say, you know, it's, it's, customers always right. Customers king or queen. I disagree. The person who is the most important in the equation is your employees, your people. And if you treat them well, they will treat the customer well.

The customer, if you treat them well, they will go on to grow your brand, your profits, your reputation. and that's our magic formula for how we build businesses. And so I knew right away because we found another business with game-changing potential. It has been an unbelievable journey and we're really just getting started 10 years later in the wow one-day painting brand. Awesome. So officially, you know, a decade in the books, which is amazing. As you know, most businesses don't really make it out of the gate, let alone, you know, a decade. So congrats and kudos on the success so far.

and I definitely know you'll hit your goals. You know, I always tell my clients, I'm like, listen, if your dreams do not scare you, they're not big enough. You know, they should scare you a little bit, you know, because that way, if you achieve them, man, like you said, when you achieve those things, you're like, I hit everything on this five-year list. It had to feel incredible. But how many people do you know had goals that were anywhere near that level of capacity,

right? I don't know if you knew many people. people that were dreaming that big. Yeah. Well, the quote I always throw out there is if you can get your life's work done in a lifetime, you're not dreaming big enough. We all have a gift. And some people listening to this might go, well, Brian, Jordan, you know, this is what you guys do. Everybody can do big things if they just put pen to paper, taking their imagination and putting it in writing and commit to something big. And it doesn't even have to be for you. It could be just strictly to help others. but we've all got a gift in this world and we've all got our life's work ahead of us.

Why are we here? What are we meant to do? Part of the journey is just uncovering that. I was fortunate enough to have Simon Sinek spend a night on my couch before he was famous and he helped me uncover my why. And I talk about it in my second book, which just came out, B-Y-O-B, build your own business, be your own boss and meeting Simon Sinek before he was famous. and hearing how people buy why you do, not what you do, that resonated for me.

And my why is imagining big possibilities and inspiring others to dream big for themselves. And if you dream big, you never know, some of these things might actually happen. Like, what if you get on Ellen? You know, we were able to do some game changing things as a result of being on that show. And it started as an idea and it took 20 years for us to chase it and make it happen. and, you know, we get on her show in the last year before she says goodbye. It was unbelievable. Love it, man.

Love that for sure. So before we get into brand three, because I definitely want to talk into, you know, how this one came to be. And what a great space to be in, I think, in making it more convenient is your goal with all your brands across the board. So when you think about the experience of going on a show, you know, like Ellen, Was it everything that you hoped it was and more? You know, that think about the timeline of how long it took you to get that accomplished. So I just wanted you to give the audience context of, you know, was it worth it? And then, you know, what was that experience like?

Yeah, I mean, if anyone in your audience is interested, if they Google Brian Scudamore, Ellen DeGeneres, and you watch the clip, Ellen cried at the end of the clip. Like, she was moved. And so was it everything I thought it was beyond that? We have this thing in our office called the Can You Imagine Wall, where we invite people to dream big. What's something big in the world that can benefit the business that you could make happen, whether it's being on the Oprah Winfrey show, that was the first Can You Imagine, being on the Ellen show, being on the side of Starbucks cups. They used to have these campaigns on the side that were quotes from famous authors and actors and actresses and famous people.

And we got a quote on the side from 180 Got Junk that said, you are what you can't let go of on 10 million cups worldwide. It's on this can you imagine wall, an idea that turned into reality. Can you imagine being featured in a Harvard business case study done? Some big things. So we took this can you imagine wall and we said, how do we go out to schools and inspire kids, children to think big? You and I both have 10 year olds and I bet there's not a lot of the world encouraging them to think big.

And so I said, let's go to my kids school and build a cany Can you imagine wall? Let's find out what big dreams the kids have. Can you imagine curing cancer? Can you imagine playing in the Olympics? Can you imagine playing in the World Series? Whatever their dreams are, let's get them up in writing with their names below it. And so I went out to Ellen and I pitched this, Can You Imagine, dream of creating walls and high schools and businesses everywhere. And so she matched me up with a guy named Dorell, a band teacher from a school at Ballou High School, Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., a rougher neighborhood, a challenging school. They've had a challenging time during COVID.

And we are going out in September to launch the school year and building a can you imagine wall with Derell. And so Ellen just love this idea. They're going to dream big. They're going to have some amazing things happen in D.C. as a result of their students imagining big possibilities for themselves, their community, their friends, their family. and it's been fantastic. So was it worth it? I mean, Ellen is one of the most generous, loving, kind people I've ever met in my entire life.

She's the real deal. Not only did I fall in love with her and her movement, but like the people she associates with, Dorel and I are already fast friends and excited to make a big difference in Washington, D.C. That's awesome, man. And D.C. has a special place to my heart. My dad lived there for over 25 years, I'm in Northwest D.C.

So I spent a lot of summers when I met him when I was 12. And from 12 to early 20 spent most of my summers in the D.C. area. So I heard you mention Marcus Buckingham a little bit ago. And I'm a huge fan. I actually at my last company before I blazed my own trail into entrepreneurship full-time, I taught a six-month leadership program. And it was predicated on Myers-Briggs. So everyone had to take, you know,

MBTI prior to session one. Then we did the debrief session one. And then each session, we jumped into different topics. We jumped into emotional intelligence. We jumped into strength-based leadership, where we use the Strength Finder 2.0 or Clifton strengths tool. So it sounds like that's something that at least you've taken. I don't know if you have your team take that or if you have as part of your curriculum.

But how much value do you see in Strength Finder? in knowing what that top five strengths is, either for yourself or people that are on your team. Yeah, so we've done a lot of personality profiling and motivational needs. PI is a big format that we use and love. And so there's a ton of tools out there. I think the key is that you use a tool and you back it up with leadership training, development, and you do something about it.

So Strength Finder is one example. I believe in the philosophy of first play to your strengths. why take your weaknesses and fix them? I'm always going to be weak on the area of focus. I'm an entrepreneur. I can't sit in class. I can't sit still for very long. Like even sitting on this Zoom for 45 minutes,

you know, there'll be like 10 minutes from now. I'm going to be like, okay, let's wrap. You know, it's hard for me to focus. I can't really get a whole lot better at that weakness, but take the things that I am strong at and how do I get stronger? Storytelling, culture, rallying people,

getting people to think big. we do better when we find our strengths and just escalate them and elevate them to greater heights. So I think we've grown up in a world, especially when you and I were in school, where people said no, no, no, no, no. They're telling us all the things we're weak at that we need to change. And yeah, we need to learn and we need to grow up and fix some things. But it's really about how do you continue to take what you're best at and give those gifts to the world in a bigger, better way.

100%. Yeah. When we, when we don't use our strengths, they, they can start to diminish over time, you know, so I'm constantly encouraging my kids. We've got five, the 10 year old. We talked about, well, we've got a 17 year old, a 13 year old, a 5 year old, and a 2 year old as well. And so with all of them, I'm like, you know, we recognize their gifts and their talents early on, right? Some of them are more athletic than the other ones. And some of them might be better at academia than the other ones, right? And so you notice, things. And so what I try to do is encourage them, hey, you want to draw, let's go buy you some stuff and like figure out how you can draw better. Maybe next we'll get you a tablet so you can, you know,

learn how to do it in the digital age, right? It's like, how do we invest in these talents and strengths so that they can be at their highest capacity? Because as you know, Brian, like these brands that you started, all three of them, they didn't start when you were like halfway at your capacity of strength. Does that make sense? Like they start, they all got started. and the second one got started because you were at, you were operating in those strengths with this other company, and you're like, this is a plug and play.

Literally, I'm going to get it. I'm going to plug and play a system and process, and this thing is going to be at revenue, like instantly. That's probably how you were thinking about it. And so let's talk about the third brand, like how did this one come to play?

I believe you mentioned earlier, it happened kind of during the pandemic, if I'm right somewhere around there, but I'd love the story on how this one came to be and then we'll wrap up and make sure we get everyone the info on your new book and where to find you. Yeah, so ShackShine is the newest brand. I think it's been six years. So it actually started before the pandemic, but we've really been ramping it up.

Now, how Shachshine started is I was looking for someone to do my gutters. I had water overflowing through my gutters and my wife and I were getting soaked every time we went in and out of the home because we're in rainy Vancouver. and I went through online trying to find someone that could do my gutters, couldn't find anyone that would return my call. So I met a guy at work who said, listen, I know actually he heard me talking about how hard it was to find someone just to do a simple job like my gutters. And he said, oh, I happen to know someone who's starting a business called Shack Shine. You should get them to come by. So I did. And on the day of doing my house, I go outside and I'm leaving for work and there's a van nice and shiny.

And there's six people behind the van, all uniformed, having a little powwow meeting before they come into the house. And I remember asking the guy that started the business, what was the deal with that? He said, we really wanted to make it right and get this job just nailed because my goal was to have O2E partner with us on our brand. And so he nailed the job. And sure enough, we did a deal together. and a couple of years later, I bought him out and we took it to the next level.

And so we created what I called the house detailing business. Somebody details their car. Everyone understands that, you know, clean shiny tires, the inside, the outside. Why not detail your house? Do the windows, the power washing of your deck, your sidewalk, and even Christmas lights. So we do everything to make that shack shine. and it's been unbelievable. Over 30% of our business currently is Christmas lights.

So during the slower season of the year, what a great compliment to the business. We've already got guys on ladders, and they're putting up lights. So it's been a brand that's just taking off. And it's been exciting because it's growing more quickly than the other brands. So if I look at the $100 million benchmark, we will not bring on a brand that doesn't have at least $100 million potential.

And hopefully billion dollar potential. like 1-800-junk, and we get out there and find amazing people that want to come into an ownership role and build a great business with us. So it's the newest baby in the family. It's still crawling, so to speak. It's starting to walk. And it's an amazing brand that I feel so, so good about. You mentioned the word brand a bunch, right? So I know that's important to you. And brand is synonymous with reputation, right? So customer experience and service are two qualities that are super important to you. So when you launched a new brand, like let's say when you went from 1,800 Got Junk to the new brand, after you bought them out, of course, how much of the previous

brand did you leverage for the new brands from a marketing perspective, hey, new to the family and leveraging that audience to let people know because each of these services, if you haven't caught on yet, folks, that people that are going to watch this or listen to this, they all compliment each other, right? Because who in the United States, right, or really anywhere in the world doesn't have junk? I don't know. Most of us do. Okay. Who doesn't, you know, maybe want to change up the appearance of their house through painting? And then who, who doesn't want their house looking, spick and spank and spanned and nice? And who wants to get on a ladder? Like, no, nobody does, right? So if you literally solve all these problems. So what I want to find out is,

you know, was any of that marketing synonymous, you know, when, when, when each, brand launch you was like a new addition to the family thing to capitalize off these audiences. And then the next thing is how many of your customer base currently is a partner of all three brands or a customer of all three brands? Yeah. So lots there. I will start by saying, we do not believe in putting partners into multiple brands because we've seen that it doesn't really work. What works best for us is taking a franchise owner and saying like Paul Guy in Toronto started 1-800 Got Junk, his first franchise. He now owns a dozen plus.

He's doing over $100 million in revenue across them all in total. So it's really buy one and go deeper. Go deeper with your markets versus trying to disfocus into, I want to do Wow One Day Painting and I want to do Shackshine. They're all great brands, but pick one and go far with it. And we tried. We've put people in multiple brands and it just focuses them. and they're going back and forth.

They're trying to run them together. It just has not worked. And that seems to be a common theme out there in franchising. Other franchisors would say the same thing. Now, in terms of branding, branding, people buy why you do what you do. It's a feeling. People buy people they like to do business with. So our brands are all happy brands.

The names are happy. Wow, one day painting. When I bought one day painting, we renamed it as wow, one day painting. because I wanted it to be a clear feeling. That's what I felt when I came home on Painting Day. It was, wow, transformation. Like this is unbelievable. So wow, one day painting, we took, you had asked,

did we use some of the existing branding? The initial colors were a dark blue and sort of a yellowish gold. And it felt very college, collegiate-like football, perhaps. And we just said, listen, in a student painting world where there's a lot of college painting companies, We need to differentiate and not look like a college football team. We need to be that professional design-oriented brand.

And if anyone Googles and finds Wow, one day painting, you'll see it is up there with great design brands. It's amazing. And we worked very carefully on the look, the feel of what we do to make a promise in its look and feel that customers believe in. Shachshine. When we looked at doing a deal with a. guy that did my gutters. I liked the name. I didn't care for the look. And so we got our designers to redo the look and feel and presented it to the guy we were going to acquire his business or partner with. And we invested a bunch of time and money in rebranding the business before we even

had a deal. But part of getting the deal done was this founder of Shackshine looked at the new look and feel and said, wow, this is unbelievable. I'm all in. And so it was us having the courage to approach him and actually change it. It was his baby. He created it, but we didn't like the look and feel. And we changed it to something different that has proven to be wildly successful. Love it. Love it. Thank you for sharing that context. So, you know, as we wrap up here, I'd love for you to share with the audience, you know, what's the best place you want them to reach you at? I know people are going to have questions. They're going to want to reach out to you. So is it your website? Is it an email?

I'd love for you to share that. And then we're going to get the link to both of your books. We'll get that in the show notes as well. Looking forward to hearing this. Yeah, if anyone wants to connect, you know, if I can help with anything or you want an idea to share or comment on the podcast, put Brian Scudamore into Google and you'll find me. And whatever your sort of poison is, social media-wise, if it's LinkedIn, Instagram, send me a note.

You can go to Brian Scudamore.com. You can check out the books. Whatever interests you. I love connecting with entrepreneurs and love every day of what I do. I feel very fortunate to be in this world of entrepreneurship. And the more I can inspire others to follow the same path, it's unbelievable. Appreciate that, my friend. And you are definitely a true trailblazer.

You know, you've blazed your own trail ever since you were a kid, essentially, right? In high school, coming up with this idea. And I really love a lot of the things that you shared because if you really look at the totality of your journey to date, you had a problem as a high school kid, and that problem was you needed money. So you solved the problem by going around and picking up people's junk, right? You saw this sign that said, you know, the hauling, and you're like, wow, I could definitely do that. And then these other companies, while you have this wildly successful brand, you had a problem. Right? You had a problem each time. One, you needed your house painted, and then one of these

three quotes happens to be the next addition to your brand, right? And then the other one is you had another problem, you know, and these guys came and they showed up and already wanted to partner. So, man, there's, there's, you know, all these problems that you figured out how to solve. And then you saw other people's brands and wanted to associate with them. So you're an entrepreneur through and through. I love how you like to help people that I see you just adding value. And a lot of that is through stories, you know, when you can tell someone about a time that the experience wasn't as great, right, and be humble about it and talk about failure, which you do so amazingly well. It actually, it helps people, right? Helps them see that it takes a lot of

failure to get to a little bit of success, you know, and I know you've seen that along your journey. Yeah, you can't succeed, at least my belief, Jordan, is you can't succeed in life unless you've had some failure. You need to taste those failures and then you need to reflect and say, well, what do I learn from this to take it to the next level? And so it's a pretty simple recipe. My wish for people is to not be so afraid of failure. And when it happens, celebrate it. Go, okay, uh-huh, made a mistake. Yeah. What do I learn? And how does that make me better? My businesses would not be half of what they are today if I hadn't made a ton of mistakes and been open to the teaching of what that mistake taught me. So thank you for having me, Jordan.

It was awesome meeting you and connecting with someone who's got very similar background of the ADD, can't sit still in class type world, a lot of fun. Yes. Hey, I appreciate you coming on. Keep blazing your own trail. And I look forward to chat with you soon.