The Home Service Expert Podcast - Dominating The World Using The Franchise System

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

Brian Scudamore is the Founder and CEO of O2E Brands. O2E Brands is the banner company of the biggest hauling company in the world, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, as well as WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, You Move Me and Shack Shine. In this episode, we talked about franchising, leadership, management...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Hey there, folks. Tommy Mello back here with the home service expert. And I got a really special

guest today. His name is Brian Scudamore. And he's the founder and CEO of OTE Brands, and he also started 1-800-GOT-JUNK, as well as Wow One Day Painting, and You Move Me and Shack Shine. It's quite a lot of stuff. Huge following. Done a lot of stuff. So, 1-800-JUNK has celebrated appearances on Undercover Boss Canada, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, CNN, and a lot of other popular TV shows. Brian contributes to many national magazines, including monthly column on The Profit magazine. In 2004, he was inducted

into the Young Presidents Organization and served on the board for the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, which is YEO. In 2007, he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the International Franchise Association. In 2012, he became a CEO Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Inductee with the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization. Fortune Small Business Best Bosses Award, the Globe and Mail's Top 40 Under 40, three best company to work for awards, and the Entrepreneur of the Year Award to B2C Services in British Columbia. Coming up soon will be the book WTF, Willing to Fail, which is going to be October of this year, 2018.

Brian, I'm really excited to have you on. How's your day going? So far, so great. Always awesome. I really appreciate to have you on. How's your day going? So far, so great. Always awesome. I really appreciate you coming on today. I think the fact that you started your company when you were 18 is phenomenal. You've got 30 years experience. You started 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and it's just massive success.

Tell me a little bit about some of your companies, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and how you became who you are today. Yeah, well, whoever said the quote, these overnight successes sure take a long time, was right. It's been almost 30 years, but fortunately, I love just about every day of it. The way I got my start, I was in a McDonald's drive-thru of all places. There was a beat-up old pickup truck with plywood side panels built up on the box that said Mark's Hauling on the side. I saw the truck, the light bulb moment connected, and I said, you know what? I'm going to buy a truck. I'm going to start a business. I called it the Rubbish Boys. Really, it was just myself, but I wanted a vision for something bigger. So it was the Rubbish Boys. And off I went with my truck, hauling junk. And what ultimately

funded my college education inspired me to drop out. I was learning much more about business, running a business, more than I was studying in school. So I approached my father, a liver transplant surgeon, and said, Dad, got some news for you. I'm dropping out of school to become a full-time junk man. And here, 30 years later, it took us eight years to get to a million in revenue. We now do a million in revenue. We now do a million in sales on a given day.

So it shows you that flywheel momentum. I mean, these overnight success stories, they take a long time to build up and grow, but once they do and the momentum accelerates, that's when life gets pretty darn exciting. That's absolutely incredible. You know, I think, what do they say? One man's junk is another one's treasure. Yeah, I'm a minimalist, so I'm not really into collecting junk, but I sure love having a business that holds it away. So explain to me the whole process of how you've monetized it. I'm very familiar with your company, but I think it's just incredible what you've done

over the last 30 years. And I just want to explain to the folks out there that you can take something so simple and make it convenient and easy to make money. Yeah, it's really a simple service, but I decided I was going to do it better than anyone else on the planet. You have to be great. You have to be great. You have to be exceptional. And the word exceptional is important to me.

Let me explain that for a second. Our parent company that you mentioned, my parent company is called O2E Brands. That stands for ordinary to exceptional. When you're building a business, an ordinary business of junk removal and trying to make it exceptional, you've got to have exceptional people, exceptional training, support, and so on. So we really prided ourselves on taking a fragmented mom-and-pop business where it used to be just a guy in a pickup truck driving down an alley, cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

We've FedExed that industry. We've made it a clean, shiny truck industry with friendly uniformed drivers. There's many competitors out there following our footsteps. So having that first mover advantage has been helpful. We've got about 2,000 trucks out there just for 1-800-GOT-JUNK, not to mention our three other brands. Talk to me a little bit about your other brands

and how you decided that a million dollars a day just wasn't good enough for you well it's not that it's not good enough and i know you were kidding there but to me it's if you've got a great thing going why not have more of a great thing i love what i do i love watching entrepreneurs be successful with 1-800-GOT-JUNK, we sold out all of our territories in Canada, the United States, and Australia. So I said, how do we expand, not just organically with 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but at the same time expand our footprint into other opportunities for other entrepreneurs?

And that's when we turned to things like ChatChain, Wow One Day Painting, and YouMovie. I've stumbled across all of them to some certain extent in terms of serendipitous moments. If I give you the Wow One Day Painting story, we're about seven years into that business, 50 franchise partners, and it's right at that hockey stick moment

where things are starting to really pick up and accelerate the growth. The Wow One Day story was I was looking to get my house painted. I had three different referrals from friends and family. The first two came in, cigarette smoke is what they smelled of. They were late. They just didn't seem like they were professional. I was worried they were going to move in for two weeks while painting my home. And I decided, okay, like, this is what I expected, but I'm not happy with it. But fortunately, the third person that came in, a guy named Jim Bodden, he had created a business where he had figured out a system of how we paint your home and we agree on the date we'll have it done

by the end of the day and i couldn't believe that this was even remotely possible some walls needed three coats of paint but jim came in with his crew i'm home at 6 30 p.m that night wow absolutely and the company that i ended up acquiring his business we rebranded wow one day painting going to people's homes put enough numbers in there in a day to get it done it's not really that much of a secret but the level of branding and quality of people putting into that space is absolutely revolutionizing the home painting world you know painting's got a bad cliche, I think, because a lot of times people, they don't get the best service and painting. Cause I used to paint garage doors before I got into the garage door industry itself is the prep work. It's all paintings in the prep. And if you

prep properly and use a good product and you keep your tools, your brushes clean and your paint gun doing its job correctly, You could do very well, but you're right. You could take an ordinary business. I love that. So I had a guy on my podcast who's very interesting and it's interesting. His name's Kevin Wilson and he's part of the dryer group and he started Mosquito Joe's and he's starting a cleaning business and he's starting a pool service business. And I just get really excited when I talk to guys like you who have done a franchise model. And I think a lot of the people out here, I've thought about licensing. I've thought about franchising. And I also thought, I've talked to a

lot of franchises that said, dude, if you franchise, you're no longer in your garage door business. You're now in the business owner turnkey business and you're dealing with customers now, but now you're going to deal with somebody that just, it's hard to get rid of them. So tell me a little bit about the success of a franchise and the good, bad, and the ugly. Yeah. You know, the good, the bad, and the ugly, I think is this. A franchise system is not for everyone. Now, you mentioned the Dwyer Group. I know Dina Dwyer.

We were just down to visit her a month or so ago in Waco, Texas. She's been an incredible mentor of mine. So if I can one day get my business to be half of hers, I'm a pretty happy, smiling guy. The franchise business is not for everyone. First of all, someone gets in as a franchise owner into a business they are making trades there's tops you get less say into creating the brand the business exactly as you want as an entrepreneur but you get proven systems track records support from other

non-competing franchise partners who are in the same business alongside. So when I look at franchising, I think, have I ever been a franchisee, a franchise partner? Probably not. I tend to have been a rule breaker as a kid. I tend to have, you know, been too ADD to stay focused on doing it someone else's way. However, again, on the other side, franchising is one where when we're building something much bigger together, our franchise partners have been able to come in, put their egos aside, and say, listen, we are building the system together. So if they say two heads is better than one, hey, we've got 200 heads, and that's way better than one because we can all contribute ideas to the betterment of the system. It's not Brian Scudamore creating the system.

It's not the head office creating the system. It's all of us building it, and it's bigger and better together. So in hindsight, I might have at a later stage in my life when I understood franchising might have become a franchise partner and learn from others. But when I was younger and couldn't put my ego aside, it was something that I don't think made a lot of sense to me. You know, I think you hit a great topic there. I think a lot of us in our lives, you've done a couple of things. You've done YEO, you've done, you said you've done EO, and you've probably been involved in a lot of different things.

So we've got different mastermind groups that we've all joined. And what do you think the benefits are and how important is it to build successful people around you? Yeah, you know, the importance of building people around you is you really have to have people that you feel are, here's the quote, when they say, if you're the smartest person in the are, you know, here's the quote. When they say, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. I'm always making sure I'm in the right room, which means I'm not the smartest person. I'm finding people that I can really look to and learn from. Now, I think I can learn from anyone. You know, you and I could spend a ton of time on the phone,

rapping about different things going on in our businesses. We would both learn together. I learned something each and every day from every person I talked to. And so something I did is I said, if I didn't get a real MBA in school, I dropped out of college. What about creating my own MBA? And what I did is I created something called a mentor board of advisors. Now, this isn't a formal board where we have meetings. This is me reaching out to people. If I want to talk to the

smartest, best, and brightest on the planet in some area to get some advice, I'll do it. I'll reach out years ago. Before our business was even a recognizable brand, I reached out to Seth Godin, who's one of my favorite authors in the area of marketing. And he gave me some thoughts, some support. If I want to understand how to recruit people, who's the most talented recruiter out there in the world? If I want to get PR, who do I turn to that's been there, that's done that? And so my MBA has really been my learning, my own education that I've created. I'm not anti-school. I think entrepreneurs often don't go to school because they're too ADD to stay focused.

And the real learning happens from getting out there and making mistakes. So I'm a big believer in a WTF attitude, which actually stands for willing to fail. Get out there, make mistakes, screw it up, learn. Like you said, don't repeat those mistakes and continue to evolve and grow. I think that's huge. Some of the people that have said, I've got a couple of employees that have given me some good props over the past 10 years. And one of them comes up to me and he goes, Tommy, you know, one thing about you that I've not seen in the other owners I've worked for is just, you got balls and you're

willing to take chances and you take a lot of chances and you fail, but you don't make the same mistakes twice. And I said, oh, glad you noticed. It was a backhanded compliment, but I took it the right way. But, you know, I mean, it meant a lot to me to hear that from someone that works for me that said, you know, you're not an amputee owner, you're involved. And, you know, I mean, it meant a lot to me to hear that from someone that works for me that said, you know, you're not an advocacy owner, you're involved. And, you know, one thing that I find challenging, because I'm one of those guys that I have, I live in the clouds, I get to get up in the morning or eating right, or building a new habit is probably the majority of my success. And I believe process dictates everything. People say, well, I think people are more important than process. And I say, your process dictates the people that you get. I mean, process is everything. So you got Marcus Limon that says products, people, process. And I'm

like, the process dictates the product and the people. So tell me a little bit about, you said today you have a sharp cutoff on this interview because you have a, I do the same thing I do. What's the big thing where each, all my senior management, there's about 25 of us, we get together, we talk about what's the one big thing we're going to do today to work on the business. Tell me a little bit about how you've developed your process and refined them to do what you're doing today, which is monumental. Yeah, well, the best thing that I can share there in terms of any advice on creating process is read the e-myth. The e-myth by Michael Gerber. Michael has become a friend. He came into

our office. He was loud with how well we e-mythed the business and followed his business model of people don't fail, systems do. Create the processes and systems on how to find the right people, train the right people, treat them right, build and grow them. And so what we did is we did it simply like this. We took out one sheet of paper and I said, every process in the business has to fit on one sheet. How do we price jobs when we're doing junk removal jobs? You know, when I was back in the truck from the day, I wanted it down to one page. How do we price jobs? What's our best practice on how we answer the phone? How we greet the customer with that first energetic impression? How do we market the business from a PR perspective? How do we get out

there and spread the story? So we created these best practices that would evolve over time. A best practice is only the best one you have available. It doesn't mean that it ever gets to a point where it's perfect. They change. They're dynamic. But it's creating the processes and systems on which to scale and grow your business. Someone who's got a $100,000 revenue business probably doesn't have any process. Someone who's got a million-dollar business probably is starting to think about it or maybe putting a little bit of process in place. Someone that's got a $10 million business, I guarantee they've got process. And when you get to $100 million, it's becoming a very well-oiled machine and process driven. You know, I just talked to a venture capitalist

the other day, and we talk about EBITDA and your multiplier and understanding how much you're worth. And one of the biggest things, when you hit 100 million, when you get a much better multiplier, it's because the processes dictate the outcome. And there's no key man anymore. You know, if Brian was to go away, and instead of getting hit by a bus, I say win the lottery. But Brian won the lottery, and it's a billion-dollar lottery,

and he just decides to live on his helicopter and massive yacht. The process is not going to let the company fall apart. So that's why it's very, very attractive when the business is built on processes. And that's something that we had to do. We had to come up with a very, very, very refined organizational chart. And each role has a very good manual. Now, the manual is 80-20, right? It's 80% of what you're going to hit, but it should have what shows you're doing a good job and what's a bad job. Because I think that's the hardest part about having a

small business is most people that work for this owner, they say, really nice guy, really nice woman, but just don't know if I'm doing good or bad. I don't know how they're judging me. And you know, how is it that you've worked on your business and grown so fast and you really let people know where they stand and you grow those people? Yeah. You know, I think that growing people is incredibly important. I think finding the right people and treating them right is something that I try and live by each and every day. And by the way, you know, stepping back for a second, if I won the lottery and it was a billion dollar lottery,

I guarantee beyond philanthropic contributions, I'd pour money back into the business and still be working every day because I really, really love what I'm doing. There's no helicopter that could get me excited or any sort of dream house or anything that would pull me away from the business. If I've got my health, my family, and my business, I'm a pretty happy guy. Now, if I look at the people and developing people, the best thing about O2E Brands, in my mind, is we get to watch others be successful. We get to watch others grow businesses, whether it's through Shack Shine, which is window washing, power washing, better cleaning.

These young, hungry entrepreneurs that come in for the first time and run their own business and grow. That is best to me. That's why I would never cash out and leave the business, because watching other people evolve and grow is pretty darn exciting. I'm the same way. It's just kind of fun. People always ask me, like the Simon Sinek question is and it's really cliche and it's probably way too macro, but I'm a macro guy is I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it with whoever the hell I want to do it with. And that means if I want to go see you today in a plane, I can do it without any consequences as far as my company's not going to fall

apart. Compound interest is working in my favor, you know, rich dad, poor dad stuff. And, uh, that's, I guess what I want overall, but I also want to create something big and do the best I can do. I always tell people if I shoot a 70 at golf, I'm not going to quit. I want to shoot a 68 next time. And maybe I want to shoot a 65. And if I get a 65, I'm not going to quit.

Now this is nine holes, but I'm just kidding. So what do you think your why is? I mean, overall, what do you think drives you to that next level? Yeah, Simon Sinek, a big fan. He was actually on our board for quite some time, years ago in the early days. And then, you know, he became very famous and too busy. He was actually on our board for quite some time, years ago in the early days. And then he became very famous and too busy. And we also got rid of a board because it was, I guess that's another story, but it added complications to the business.

So my why would be dreaming up big things and then you never know what's possible. So I'll be coming up with big ideas, and I've got to thank Simon Sinek for being a part of helping me uncover my own lie. So dreaming up ideas and then just finding others who know how to execute who can help them happen. We encourage our employees to dream up big ideas. We have something called a 101 Life Goal Program, where we turn to them and say,

hey, what's something important in your life that the business or this team of people in the business might be able to help you with to help make that dream happen? And we put together a book, 101 Life Goal Annual, if you will, that has all these great photos and stories of 101 people accomplishing 101 goals and that becomes a little cultural yearbook if you will for our people i love that these little things you know this for me is having somebody like you that's that's really walked the road i want to walk on and just there's little gold throughout these podcasts that I just, you couldn't take this away from me now. I've been doing this for a year and I just, I learned so much and you've done so many things that you, it's really, I think what defines you

and I think what defines relationships is not everything that happens good. It's when a mistake happens and what you've learned to overcome that. And that's why I think the college is not as important because they don't teach you how to handle obstacles. They say, this is how you should do. This is what the textbook says. And, you know, I did go to college, but I went to rate my professor. And at one point I was going to community colleges so I could get through organic chemistry and biochemistry and all my crap that I was going to community colleges so I could get through organic chemistry and biochemistry and

all my crap that I was taking. But I didn't learn as near as much as I learned from the students that I got to know there and the alliances that I built. So very... If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, college is essential, right? Who wants to have a doctor operating on you that doesn't have a degree? But I look at entrepreneurship and I think, I don't know if school's the right place. I think college teaches entrepreneurs how to be conservatives. Someone that has an MBA, I find, is way more conservative than someone

who has not gone to business school because they learn all the formulas and they learn all these theories and getting educated and there's no doubt they're they're working hard to get that education but i find that it creates a level of conservatism in people because they have all this information and rules to now play by versus you and me tommy we get out and go, hey, we're entrepreneurs, we're flying by the seat of our pants. Sometimes flying by the seat of your pants is the best way because you don't know what you don't know and it doesn't hold you back. That's so true. I feel the same way as far as

just go out there and try it and if it works. The hardest part for me is I think it's hard to keep things implemented. I think when someone listens to this podcast, they say, you know, it's easy. You know, Brian just talked about a million dollars a day was one of his tons of brands. But, you know, if you got to go back and you're talking to a guy with two trucks and he's going, Brian, Tommy, you guys, yeah, you're living the dream, whatever. But I'm having a hard time finding an employee because now the minimum wage is going up. I don't have all these life insurance and health insurance and I don't provide the truck yet. I just don't have the money. I'm having a hard time finding another employee and I can't keep up with the cost per click on Google. Yelp's

charging me too much money because I'm not getting any leads through them. Everybody's talking about CRMs and I'm still using paper invoices. What do you say to those guys to say, look, step one, step two, step three to the small guy out there? You know, they're just overwhelmed. They're going, I don't know who to hire. I can't compete on the marketing because I can't spend as much money as those guys. I think hiring and marketing are the two biggest questions I get most of the time. What would you say to the small guy, you know, the David and Goliath story? Yeah, you know, I'd say pick one priority. So as human beings, we often try and do everything at once.

So I'm guilty of this. I'm a human being. When I get out there and I go, okay, so summer's over. I'm going to get extra healthy again. I'm going of this I'm a human being when I get out there and I go okay so uh summer's over I'm going to get extra healthy again I'm going to eat right I'm going to exercise I'm going to get great sleep all the things we look at doing and the plans and commitments we make we overwhelm ourselves and we set ourselves up for failure because we try and do all of it now I love tracking stuff so I'll put stuff in my phone and I'll be like, okay, I got up at my 5.55am seven days this week. I got on the bike four days this week. I've been eating this, this, this, and that. I log it all. But what ends up happening is if I

take on too much and try and go all out, gung-ho with something, with too many things, I end up getting tired, failing, and falling apart. So my advice as taking that analogy, in a business, pick one thing. So on the personal side, is it diet? Focus on diet. Don't worry about exercise for the first month. Get your diet in check. Eat right. Get rid of carbs, whatever you're doing.

Eat good quality food, then layer on exercise. It'll happen naturally. By eating well, you'll have the energy and you'll want to exercise. What is it in your business that will allow you to have that same philosophy? Pick one, one thing. Is it hiring? Is it marketing? Is it someone on your team that is holding you back that you got to get rid of just tackle one thing at a time so people as you said small business owners and hey i was there you know you can't become a big business owner without starting somewhere and when i was small for eight years it took me to get to a million in revenue i remember the hr

nightmares i remember the accounting nightmares i was doing the accounting nightmares. I was doing it all. But when I read the emails, learned to grow and scale in a systematic way, I also met with Dan Sullivan, who is an incredible coach. He's got an incredible program there that helps people get focused and pick their top three and what are their priorities? And that was probably the turning point in my life. Michael Gerber said, don't work in your business, work on it. You've got to get to a point where you pull yourself out of the day-to-day, what some would call a grind, and really help yourself and start growing. And that's very difficult, and I agree with you.

I've read that book a dozen times. I have seven copies right now. I'm looking at it on my shelf because I give them out to a lot of the employees. You know, the first thing is I'd say, look in the mirror and say, not everything is going to be done perfectly my way, but what you should do is say, this is the way that I'm going to teach. And I'm going to write it down and have a small manual, even if it's a one pager on the way that I want it done. And I'm going to start cataloging the way I do it for the next week. Then I'm going to give this to my next person and I'm going to, you cannot train somebody to do it your way and it will not be perfectly

your way every time. I mean, that's the biggest problem is sometimes I'm like, that's not how I would have done it. And it might not have been as good as I thought I would have done it. But guess what? You can't be in 20 places at once. I don't even open up my own mail. I don't open up my own mail. I don't even know if I get a birthday card. My CPA gives it or my controller gives it to me now. I mean, I'm talking from my house. I bring in my mail. And it's tough because so many early entrepreneurs and when you've got a small business is you don't have the trust. You know, you got your mom work

or your sister and your wife and your kids working for you. So the first thing is open up the trust and realize everything's not going to be done as if it were you. And they go, you know, many times I've heard and tell me if you've heard this, Brian, if I don't do it, it won't be done right. Right. You know what? It's so true. And I learned that lesson in the way that I used to feel like nobody could do PR

like I could. I found that I would get out there and pitch shows and I would make sure that we get new CNN and Wall Street Journal and all this great stuff. I wasn't able to let go of it because I didn't think someone could do it better than I. But when I was again able to put my ego aside and realize what if I brought someone else on board and allowed them the freedom to get out there and pitch and do it on their own and make some mistakes, what could happen? We brought a guy, Tyler Wright, with our first PR hire. The guy got us on the Oprah Winfrey show. How's that for letting go? You know, tons of learning there. But we think if you want something done right, do it yourself. Yeah, I disagree with that. If you want something done right, give it to someone else and let them fail.

You know, that's so hard to let that go. But I had a guy that came in the other day last week and he said, Tommy, I just, I'm so amazed how you just, you sit in the backseat a lot more than I would expect. And you just go to the meetings and you let people control it. And you just kind of live in your own world. And I'm like, it took me a long time to be able to do that. I don't like, you know, there's times that I'll distract the meeting and kind of throw in stuff. And I just find that that's a distraction and it's hard to get stuff accomplished. I will say we need to have another meeting because you reminded me of something and I'll write it down and we'll set that meeting up. But I think that's,

it's very difficult to do. And even, I think there's valleys of, I call them the valley of death of your business is when you grow from three to 10, and then you go from 10 to 50 employees, from 100 to 500, because you got to look at how many direct reports you're getting. And with an owner of 10 employees, you're getting a lot of people and you're wearing a lot of hats. So you need to find somebody that you trust that will do a great job. And me and my manager kind of got into a small bickering the other day. It wasn't a huge deal, but basically we talked about, you know, just focus. I want to have people now that are laser focused rather than wearing too many hats, because when they wear too many, they all blame it. And they say, I'm doing too many things

instead of, no, this was your one focus. This is your main job. And they, I think accountability is the best word to describe it. I love that word. Now I'm obsessed with it. I have a personal trainer, not because I don't know how to work out or go to the gym is because now I can't, I don't like to call them and tell them I'm not going to make it. I'm paying for it anyway. So, you know, what is your thoughts on accountability and trusting people? Yeah, well, we actually do a morning huddle, a phone call where we get everybody together on the leadership team. Now, I'm not a part of this because my president, Eric Church, runs the company and runs those meetings. But it's an 8 a.m. call. Everyone calls in no matter where they are. They're traveling, whatever the case may be,

unless they're on vacation, of course. And they call in for that 8 a.m. call. And the main purpose of the call is, what is your top one for the day? Not just for accountability. I mean, we're all adults and we're working hard, but it's a chance for people to share their top ones so that the rest of the leadership team is aligned with what's going on in the business and where it's going. And if there's any blocks or any obstacles along the way, that's where things can come out into a quick discussion. You know, how many times have you been at that meeting ever? You don't attend, but I can tell you that this is the biggest challenge is somebody will be like, I got three customer fires to put out today, or I got to organize the warehouse or,

you know, I got to run to this. And I'm like, that's day to day. You're still working in the business and it's fine to work in the business, but what are you doing today to work on? What's the one thing to grow and make your life easier? And there's a great book that I talk about here and there on the podcast. It's called The Two Second Lean. And it talks about going lean with your business, but really about efficiency. And it's just, it's just an amazing book because it really talks about how to get more efficient in everything you do from your personal life to your business life. And I'm just a big fan. I started in Japan with Toyota and it's efficiency, everything you do, take less steps, make yourself more effective. And these meetings, sometimes when we have meetings, I know people that hate meetings because they go, these meetings, everybody chimes

in, it takes so long. Nobody, there's no structure to it. And I won't say that we're a hundred percent perfect, but I will say that they're pretty good and concise meetings now. I mean, did you go through that when you guys started to get bigger and start having more meetings and say, man, some of this stuff, do we really need to have all these people involved? And is it just taking up too much time? Yeah, you know, no one gets anything done really by committee. And I think that if you look at meetings, my Bible of how to do great meetings is Pat Lencioni writes a book called Death by Meeting. Great book. It's how to make meetings entertaining and fun.

You and I, ADD entrepreneurs, we can go to a movie. I'm assuming you like to go to movies or watch something on Netflix, but you can sit there and go, wow, this is exciting. This is great. I love this. And time flies by. You sit in a 90-minute movie, you love it. You sit in a 90-minute meeting, you want to put forks in your eyes.'s because we just sit there and go oh we're not getting anything done people are rambling on and on but putting in process to make that meeting not just efficient but entertaining exciting cut to the chase i strongly advise people read death by Meeting. It's a fantastic book that Pat wrote. I'm ordering it right after we get off the phone. So look, I know we got about six minutes, so I'll kind of wrap up. I want to know more about WTF, Willing to Fail. Tell me a little

bit about the book and tell me how we can get it when it comes out. Yeah, so WTF is a book that I wrote to inspire people to take my lessons learned, which have all been either mistakes I've made this book, it's a simple book written for entrepreneurs. I can rarely have a book and read it. So how the heck can I write a book? It's kind of a bit of an oxymoron, but I did and I'm excited to share it. So WTFB is a philosophy. It's a willing to fail philosophy that I believe that you can't get to success without failing when you succeed without experiencing failure I think it's a bit like a hollow victory you got

lucky you know okay great the success that I want to be a part of that I want to inspire people to be a part of is how do you succeed where you then have stories of disappointment and regret a longing refusing to give up even when you're giving up might have been your best option but you made it through and you succeeded that's the success i want to experience and i want people at o2e grants to be a part of so the book comes out at the end of October. Any of your listeners can go to mywtsbook.com, simple URL, take people to the O2E brand site. They can figure out how to get the book. I'm making it real inexpensive just so I can get as many people to get their hands on it so that they can have a read and hopefully learn a lesson. And then, you know, ideally, I love the fact that people might share their WTF moments back with me so I can learn from them. I love it. There's two questions I always ask to close out and we'll make them quick. The top three books. Can you tell me your top three? Obviously, the E-Myth is one of them. Give me two more. And you've shared some with us already,

but is there two other books that you'd say, you got to check these out? Yeah, so assuming that your audience are other small businesses, I would say the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. I would say Death by Meeting for Pat Lencioni. And I would say Vern Harnish, The Rockefeller Habits. As Your Business Grows,

he's got a second book called Scaling Up. So four books, three authors. Go get them. All right. And finally, to close out, I like to think about what's the biggest, most impactful thing that we might have not covered that you want to leave the listeners out there? Something to hold on to, a little gold nugget, something that you think is very, very important, whether it's about the way to live, how to succeed in business, how to hire, what's the one large takeaway you'd like to leave the listeners with? Create a painted picture. If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. What does your future look like? And not, I want to make a lot of money. I want to grow something. What is it specifically? When I sat down at my parents'

summer cottage in 1998, I said, I will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003, five years. I said, we'd be on the Oprah Winfrey show. We'd be the FedEx of junk removal. I said, whole bunch of different things that on one sheet, one page, double-sided, I can share with my team. I could read every day. I could rally around and get excited. And I'd say, if you don't have a painted picture, create one. What is your vision? If anyone there wants a vision document that I've created just to get some ideas to borrow for their own, just Instagram me at Brian Scudamore. Send me a message just saying, hey, I'd love a painted picture and I'll fire one out to you. I'd love to share. All right. I'll be emailing you here shortly.

Well, Brian, it was a pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on today. I'd love to do a follow-up call once I read your book, once it comes out. If you need anybody to proof it or anything. I love this stuff. I am. I'm a huge reader. And like I said, you've done so much things to be successful. I hope one day I get to shake your hand here in the near future. So thanks again for coming on. And I hope you have a great rest of your week. Yeah. Good to meet you, Tommy. You've got great energy and I feel honored to be included in your podcast. If you're ever in Vancouver, make sure you come say hello and we'll grab a beer.

Sounds great, buddy. Thank you so much. Thanks Tommy. Hey guys, I just wanted to say thank you for listening to the podcast. And I wanted to talk real quick about the new book I have coming out in November. It's called The Home Service Millionaire. And I discuss everything it takes to hire the right people, train your salespeople, how to get tax breaks. It talks about how to sell your company for the most amount of money. We've got a lot of great contributorships coming on. Everybody from Paul Akers about how to go lean to how you do sales from enterprise, how to get the best write-offs in the industry and save a ton on taxes and actually make your company look more professional.

I got the CEO of Service Titan. I got the CEO of Valpak. We've got great people on here that know everything there is to know about marketing and Google. And there's basically no secrets we left out of this book. Literally, there's people that have read it so far say, I cannot believe you're giving all this information away. And the reason I did that is, I just feel like you guys could just take each one of these gold nuggets and run with them. I mean, the ultimate goal of the book is to make sure that everybody is successful and makes money. If I could contribute to your lives, then that would be amazing. And I feel like it's the least

I can do. And I really appreciate you listening to the podcast. I hope you enjoy the book. Go to Home Service Millionaire. That's homeservicemillionaire.com and pre-order your book today. Thank you.