The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 236: Brian Scudamore - CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK: How To Scale A Business

Starting point is 00:00:01 A word that resonates with me that I love that's in the title of your podcast is the word learning. I love to learn. So it isn't always what's next. It's often, hey, I'll stick with the four brands that we have under the O2E Brands umbrella, but how will they get better? How will they evolve? How will our people grow and get better? It isn't always what's the next greatest thing.

Starting point is 00:00:24 Often we just look internally and say, how are we going to improve what we've got? This episode is brought to you by Workfront. Workfront is a work automation platform that allows you and your team to do your best work. Focus on the right work and complete that work faster than ever. Workfront connects all the phases of your workflow from planning corporate strategies to tactical execution. And they go beyond just project and portfolio management. It delivers an operational system of record for today's largest and most innovative companies, including Fossil, Cars.com, and Old Navy.

Starting point is 00:01:02 and they also work with Focus Brands, whose C-O-O-Cat-Cole was featured on episode 78 of The Learning Leader Show. Workfront, because work matters. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-222.

Starting point is 00:01:28 Text learners to 44-222 in order to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders from all over the world to discuss the latest trends and topics in the space of leading and serving others. Text learners to 4-4-222. Now, on to tonight's featured leader with the CEO of 1-800-Got-Junk. Brian Scudamore started his business at the age of 18. Today, 1-800-Got-Junk has over 1,000 trucks on the road throughout 180 locations in Canada, United States, and Australia, and he leads over 5,000 employees.

Starting point is 00:02:03 It has received wide recognition in the media and business community. Been celebrated on Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, CNN, ABC Nightline at the day show, and The View. His message is so useful, as Peter Drucker would say, and I promise if you are in any leadership capacity, this will be helpful. Through the topics we got into, the painful process of firing his best friend who was his C-O-O at the time and why he did it. Then how to understand yourself and when you are at your best, this is a deep dive on self-awareness. And I loved how thoughtful Brian was during this part of the conversation. Then his unique philosophy on the profession of selling and why we all should implement it to be more successful. Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you will love this one with Brian Scudamore.

Starting point is 00:02:56 All right, Brian, a big fan of your work. I've been looking forward to this conversation for quite some time. welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. Thanks for including me, Ryan. I am very curious from your perspective. What are some of the common themes or characteristics you found in people who sustain excellence? Yeah, I would say if I have studied our franchise partners for years. I've watched many be successful.

Starting point is 00:03:23 I've watched some be not so successful. And I love to learn from others. So I will observe. I'll watch our franchise partners. and the things that I think that they have in common when they are successful with our O2E brands, and that could be one 800 got junk. It could be any one of our companies. But the patterns, focus, faith, and effort. So three things that we look for that I see in successful people that practice excellence. High degree of they've picked one profession, one business. It's not a side hustle.

Starting point is 00:03:53 They've chosen to be all in and they're hardcore focused. Faith, they believe in themselves. they believe in their vision. They've got an opportunity that's so crystal clear in their mind as to where they're going. They might not know exactly how to get there. But then that comes to the effort. The third part, having the work ethic, the discipline, the rigor to make their dreams a reality. Wow. Who are the first people that come to mind when you think of sustained excellence?

Starting point is 00:04:19 My top franchise partners wouldn't necessarily be people that your audience would know. But if I think of some of my mentors, people in life that I've met who've been, and unbelievable and sustained excellence. I'd pick Fred DeLuca, who was the founder of Subway. There was a guy who believed so wholeheartedly in what he was doing and his vision and mission. He's someone that visit us at the junction. He was our head office.

Starting point is 00:04:43 He was a great mentor and friend of mine. He's sadly passed on. But what he did was he never took his eye off the prize. He said, we're going to build a great business. We're going to revolutionize the sandwich industry. And what I loved about what he did is he had so much faith in his, vision that when him and his partner, Dr. Peter Buck, years ago, had said, hey, this first store isn't going so well. He sold $6 today in sandwiches, and things aren't really working out

Starting point is 00:05:11 as though we had anticipated. What are you going to do? And he goes, we're going to open up the second store. Now, how does that make sense to anyone unless you have a vision of something so clear in your head that even if the reality isn't there yet, you're still doing everything you can? He goes, we're not going to get to our goal of 32 stores in the next, I think it was 12 years if we don't add a second location. And so he went against his partner, added a second location. And of course, we know the rest of the story is history. Wow, I love that. And Brian, I'd love for us to scoot back a little bit towards the earlier part of your life because I'm fascinated by your story.

Starting point is 00:05:53 It feels to me like from afar, as a fan from afar, you are constantly, thinking about what's next while at the same time doing a phenomenal job of making sure you are sustaining excellence with what you're currently doing and I can't help but especially as a dad what was your childhood like and was something did your parents help create this or nurture this within you when it comes to entrepreneurship building something creating something because if you could just go through your resume and that's what you've been doing your whole, it seems like your whole life and certainly your whole adult life. And I'm just fascinating to learn where that came from. Yeah, I think entrepreneurs can be born and made. I think there's a bit of a

Starting point is 00:06:40 balance. I came from an entrepreneurial family in terms of my grandmother, my grandfather in San Francisco ran an army surplus store. I would go there every weekend, every summer vacation. I would work in the store and and I felt like I was helping them grow, but really I was just a kid absorbing what they were doing and really understanding what it was like to run a business. I was inspired to one day get out and create my own. I had lots of little ventures as a kid, anything from a car wash that I'd set up on the, you know, right out front of my house to selling candy outside of my dorm room one year when I went to private school. I felt that I had always had this hunger and desire to be an entrepreneur. Now, the creativity, the building, the always learning, I think that's just

Starting point is 00:07:27 a part of my personality. I have three young kids myself, so also a dad, and I watch their different personalities, but one thing my family has in common all my wife, my kids is we love building things and watching things grow. And that could be gardening, that could be getting out there and building skills on the ski slope, or that could be like myself, building a, business. A word that resonates with me that I love that's in the title of your podcast is the word learning. I love to learn. So it isn't always what's next. It's often, hey, I'll stick with the four brands that we have under the O2E brands umbrella, but how will they get better? How will they evolve? How will our people grow and get better? It isn't always what's the next greatest thing.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Often we just look internally and say, how are we going to improve what we've got? I think you're you're well known for being the guy who started 1-800 got junk. And I'm curious to hear what it was like at the very beginning because I feel like if somebody would have said that this was their idea as a business, you'd say, I guess you could do that. I don't know if you could scale it and who knows what really could come of it. I don't know if that would even be a fun job because who wants to work with junk all the time. I know there was a name prior to that too, so I'll let you tell the story. but why start this business at that point in your life?

Starting point is 00:08:54 It wasn't a glamorous industry, and it was never something that I had intended from the beginning to scale and grow. It was really just something that was going to pay for college. I was in a McDonald's drive-thru, saw this beat-up old pickup truck. It said Mark's hauling on the side. It was filled with junk, and I looked and went, hey, there's my ticket to pay for college. I was a course short of graduation from high school. I talked my way into college, had to find the money to pay for it, and that beat a bold pickup truck was going to fund my college education.

Starting point is 00:09:23 Three years in after starting the company, which was the rubbish boys, started with $700 in a pickup truck. I learned more about business by running a business more than I did studying in school. And made the bold decision to drop out. I sat down with my dad, who's a liver transplant surgeon, had him over for dinner the other night. And we continue to reflect on those startup days. But it was one of those things where I said,

Starting point is 00:09:45 Dad, I'm learning more about business running the rubbish boys. I'm going to quit school. I'm going to become a full-time junkman. He just about fell out of his chair. He's certainly on side and we're mutual fans of each other today. But it was one of those things where I had to make a decision. It couldn't be a side hustle. It couldn't be a project that I couldn't commit to.

Starting point is 00:10:05 I had to put all my time and energy into it and see what I could build with it. That's when the opportunity became clear to me that I can scale this. After leaving college, I went from one truck to three trucks, then four, then five. and the business started to take off and grow. But while it's an industry that might not appeal to many, as you had sort of referenced, you know, it's not a sexy business, it's a dirty business, it doesn't seem like it would be all that fun.

Starting point is 00:10:32 Man, it was so fun. It continues to be so fun because of the people we've surrounded ourselves with, because of the opportunity to build and scale. We've got over 2,000 trucks across Canada, the United States and Australia, and it's given us the confidence and the systems to get into other businesses. Wow, one day painting where we paint people's homes in a day, shack shine, where we wash their windows, clean their gutters, power wash their front porch.

Starting point is 00:10:58 And then you move me where we are a local moving business, where we'll move people from point A to point B from one home to another. And all four brands got their start from the early days of 1-800 got junk, understanding people, systems, processes, and building and scaling a great brand. I get the sense that no matter where you are or what you're doing, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the feeling yet that your mind has to always be at least a little bit. I know you've written about why you need to go on vacation and unplug, but your mind, to me, at least from afar, feels like you're always thinking about a potential business idea. Maybe you see something else out there and think, wait, maybe that could be a part of my business.

Starting point is 00:11:46 That could be something under this umbrella that you created that started from when 800 got junk. Is that how it works? Or what's your thought process about how you view opportunity? It's interesting. I think I used to think more and really try to solve problems and look for opportunities. I think as I've gotten a little bit older, I tend to just be open to opportunities and let them come to me. I get some of my best ideas on the ski slopes. I get some of my best ideas, having a beer with a buddy.

Starting point is 00:12:16 I don't try so hard, and I'm just open to the opportunities that are out there. And it's interesting. Somehow that going on vacation and just being free to what opportunities might hit me, I seem to get better ideas on vacation than I do at work. So my team often loves me to get out of the office. But an example, wow, one day painting, we were looking at rebranding the look and feel of the company. things looked too collegian. It looked like a student painting company and we needed to really professionalize the brand to take it to the next level. And so in rebranding, I was in Florence, Italy, family vacation, walked past one of the million gelato stores.

Starting point is 00:12:57 And this one flavor in particular grabbed me. I looked at the gelato and it had little lime wedges making the flavor sort of jump out and smile at me. You know, these lime wedges were put together in such a way where it had two eyes in a mouth. And I'm like, wow, if one flavor of gelato can stand out and smile at me, imagine what our logo and our brand, Wow, One Day Painting could do. And that literally became the inspiration. When I compare the photo that I took of that gelato stand, that one flavor versus the actual brand that we've created today for Wow, One Day Painting, it's amazing to see. How does ice cream inspire a brand that's in the home painting? business, but it did. And so my point again is getting out of the office, getting in nature, wherever I might be. Some of my best ideas just come to me when I'm not at work.

Starting point is 00:13:51 As an aside, do you go on walks? I do. Yeah, I love to. We often, in having a meeting, we'll say, let's go have a little walk and talk and weather permitting, not like today, where it's pouring rain here at our head office in Vancouver, but we'll get outside and have a meeting outdoors. And somehow the movement, the not sitting down at a desk, allows you to think differently. I believe that if all of our muscles are moving, it just gives you a level of creativity that's much different than sitting down in a cold, boring boardroom or something like that. My wife and I were scheduled walks too frequently and with zero agenda by design. And that's because for whatever reason, it just creates, it's a great place for idea creation. There's no pressure. You can go on an hour walk and not have a single idea. That's fine.

Starting point is 00:14:42 I think that's part of why it's so powerful. And I've also found that after doing 230 plus of these, Brian, that there are a lot of commonalities. I try to look at patterns as well. And that seems to be one too. It's something small, but it can be very meaningful. Like you said, you travel, you're on vacation, you're going for a walk, and you happen to see something that impacts one of your brands.

Starting point is 00:15:03 And so I like at points as we're telling these stories and learning about. people to find practical tips that people could potentially implement and try, experiment, and maybe it could help impact their life. And I found that this simple act of going on a walk with your wife or a friend can be very powerful. Yeah. And I think, you know, a key for me is understanding myself, where do I do my best thinking, when am I at my best, and paying attention, writing things down, making notes.

Starting point is 00:15:32 I've actually got a little note where I, in my phone, where I keep everything. and I've got this little note that says, when am I up my best? And I'll often reflect and jot down the things that are working in my life and why. So similar to a Tim Ferriss where he just loves to experiment and jot down everything, I want to understand where I'm operating at my best. So for me, it's getting up at 5.55 a.m., very precise time that just works for me. I spend my first hour doing what I call my power hour,

Starting point is 00:16:03 which is not going through email, not thinking about work, but focusing on myself. It's often exercise. It's focused on language learning. I love French. I'm working on Spanish, a little bit of Italian. And so it's one of those things where what is that first hour with before the kids wake up that I can do focused on learning, reflection. And so I'm at my best when I get up early, when I'm introspective, when I'm making notes, when I'm exercising, when I'm minimizing the alcohol, those types of things. And so I think people need to understand themselves and what works and what doesn't. What do you think of people listening right now who actively have a side hustle and either they're

Starting point is 00:16:45 okay with it continuing to be a side hustle or maybe they have hopes that one day it will become their full-time hustle? What's your thought process around that? Yeah, I think I'm not one to judge. If someone's got a side hustle and they're loving their life and it works, great. To me, I don't know if you can live the potential. the fullest potential of a business that you're trying to build if it's just a side business. I believe that if we divide our focus between things, it makes things tricky.

Starting point is 00:17:18 For me, I found it difficult to do university and run a business. Anything that we do on the side, I think is just a little bit of, hey, this is the back burner, the side burner, it doesn't get my full attention. Imagine the possibility when someone decides to quit their job and make their sidehub. their full-time passion and life's purpose. Again, not one to judge. If that's what someone's looking for and they love their job more than anything that they've ever done, but they're doing this on the side and that works, great.

Starting point is 00:17:52 If they think of what is the full possibility of this opportunity that's in front of me and they want to make it something bigger, I would challenge that someone can't make it bigger until they make the decision to go all in. I think that's great advice and Jim Collins share. the exact same thing. You said you're never going to get across that chasm if you keep yourself tethered to one side. Meaning at some point,

Starting point is 00:18:16 we're all in this low odds game that we're playing, right? Brian, and at some point, you have to go all in. And if you don't, the odds will get closer and closer to zero, that you'll have any sort of success. And I think that advice has had a profound influence on me.

Starting point is 00:18:36 and I noticed you mentioning that, which I completely agree with. The other part of you being able to have this sustained excellence in success in multiple areas, multiple life categories, I would say in different businesses, is that you've got to be a dynamic sales professional. I've grown up in the profession of selling. I think it's a very noble, one of the most important professions in the world. If every single thing on earth has been sold at some point. And you need people to do that work.

Starting point is 00:19:06 This is high level, but I'm just curious. What is your overall philosophy on sales? Well, I'm going to steal one from my good friend, Jack Daly, who calls himself the professional sales coach. He's been a mentor and friend for years. He sells like no one I've ever met. And he calls it the shortest course in sales, ask questions, and listen. And I buy in. You know, it's what I do.

Starting point is 00:19:32 Why would you sell someone a pen and just go, hey, you got to buy the business? pen, check it out, it's the best pen in the world. You've never seen anything like this when someone really has no need for a pen. They don't ever use a pen and they prefer a pencil or they write everything down, you know, on their iPhone and make notes. Ask questions and listen. Then when you understand the felt need, you can look to sell something to someone or match them up with a need that's appropriate. For anyone who goes to a job interview and has asked us to sell a pen, what advice would you give to them? I'd just get them to ask questions. Find out what someone is looking for. Don't sell a pen to someone that doesn't need or want

Starting point is 00:20:12 a pen. It's crazy, but I don't have pens. I really don't have pens. Don't sell me a pen. I don't care what it could be, you know, the faniest pen in the world, gold-clated, that would probably be even less meaningful to me. Maybe sell me an idea. Maybe find out where I'm having a challenge in my life and my business and where I could use some help and support. It certainly isn't that I need a pen. So when you think about asking questions and being a great listener, how did you get your initial, let's say, first 100 customers for 1,800 got junk? Yeah, first 100 would have been a pretty simple old school set of business practices, putting an ad in the classified ads of the newspaper back in the late 80s. It was really people calling me. It wasn't me out there selling.

Starting point is 00:21:01 It was just me out there advertising. Today, fast forward, 28 years, we have a whole team of people that are out there trying to build our commercial side. The business to business side of 1-800 got junk is one example. They're getting on the phone. They're calling into facilities management groups and realtors and big companies and trying to understand their needs and matching them with our services. Sales isn't something that came to me naturally. I would have been one of those guys who said, oh, you know, sales. kind of feels a little bit pushy. It's not my personality. I don't like to sell, but I certainly, when I learned how much I love to ask questions and how much I like to listen to people and their

Starting point is 00:21:45 ideas, it made me see well. I think I naturally have an ability to sell. What's it like now? Because now you're running businesses, leading a team, the actual selling. I don't know. What does it like for you? What's your day-to-day like? I have the best job in the world for me. I am selling ideas. I'm getting people excited about the future, about a vision that is only an idea in our minds. Well, it's also an idea. We've created something we call the painted picture. So that idea is in writing. And here's where we're going. We might not know how to get there. So O2B brands will one day be a billion dollar business, 10 brands, globally admired. I could paint the picture for what it looks like us, bringing all these amazing

Starting point is 00:22:33 entrepreneurial-minded people into our O-Twe Brands family. And I could tell you what it looks like, but I don't know exactly how we're going to get there by recruiting the right people and selling them stories, selling them the vision. And I don't want selling to seem like we're trying to talk anyone into anything. But by asking the right questions and listening, people hear our story when it's time for us to tell it and they see how their needs and what they're looking for in life, always wanting to start a business but not knowing where to start, they might see that there's a fit, that there's a meshing up of us and them. And that's where the real magic happens.

Starting point is 00:23:17 So for me, again, I feel like I've got the best, the absolute best job in the world for me. I love to be inspired. I love to watch others be inspired. I love to learn. I love to grow. And we've got this organization filled with such wonderful people. And that's what they get to do all day long. And I'm just the guy that happened to come up with some little idea that started the movement. But by no means am I doing the same work that everybody else is doing. How involved are you in the hiring process? At the highest level, if we're looking for a CFO, if we're looking for a head of marketing,

Starting point is 00:23:52 I would certainly be involved. But I'd say other than sort of a key set of 10 people, I'm not very involved. It's not that I wouldn't want to be involved. I just, when you're building a company and you're empowering people, we've got 400 people in our head office, we've got about 5,000 employees across our four brands. I just simply can't be involved. And frankly, there's better, smarter people at doing the hiring that are better at picking winners than I am. And so I've just understood my strengths, but also my limitations, and I've tried to stay out of the hiring process. What about at the very beginning or near the beginning, as you were building, as you were building,

Starting point is 00:24:31 your team. What are some of the qualities or characteristics in people that you were looking for as you were building your business in the earlier days? I don't know if I had any actual qualities I was looking for because I didn't understand interviewing and hiring and it was just really interviewing to me in the early days was what you did to find employees. So you'd put an ad in the paper. You're looking for people to haul junk. They'd come into your office. You'd sit down and you'd ask them some questions. There was no structure to the questions. If it was just before lunch and I was getting hungry, I might ask fewer questions. It was really something I was just figuring out along the way.

Starting point is 00:25:07 But in 1994, five years into my business, I fired my entire team of 11 people. I realized I wasn't giving them the love and support that they needed to be successful. I might not have recruited the right people. And I didn't have the processes to ensure that we were finding the right people each and every time. So I cleaned house. I let all these people know that I let them down. I failed them. It was my fault.

Starting point is 00:25:30 I was going to start again. And I started to put some systems in place. I started to learn from others and ask the right questions. And I started to think, what was I looking for? Learning from the 11 people that I failed, what was I looking for moving forward? I wanted people that I could work with that were like friends. I wanted people that shared an ambition and passion that I did, believed in where I was taking the company and the possibility of where it could go.

Starting point is 00:25:57 I wanted optimistic people that were able to serve customers, that were clean cut, the professional, that were friendly. And I started looking for people that it was called the beer and barbecue test, people that I could see having at a company barbecue who would get along with the whole company and someone who I could see having a beer with out on a patio after work, where we could have a great conversation and things would be meaningful. I love that test, but I also, I've hired hundreds of salespeople in my career. I've also made the mistake at times of, I guess, for lack of a better term, falling in love for the wrong reasons with candidates and hiring guys or girls because they were just instantly likable.

Starting point is 00:26:40 And that is certainly, it's very important, I believe. And you've got to have teammates who you actually like to be around. And I think they're going to be better in the profession of selling too because people like to buy from people they like. But there are other aspects of it in addition to that that I think are important. Did you find that the optimism, the energy, passion, the friendly, the beer and barbecue test, was that enough? Or did you make some mistakes along the way that you had to get even more, drill down even more as far as characteristics and qualities and people that you looked for? Yeah, big believer, Ryan, in hiring for attitude, train for skill. Now, if you need a CFO as we hired about a year ago, you need someone that's got all their.

Starting point is 00:27:21 papers and certification in that area. But I do that testing of someone's skill set. I leave that to someone else. I'll ask our accountant to interview them. I'll ask someone else on people on our financial team to interview that person. And so for us, it is, I'm definitely the culture interviewer. I'm definitely one looking for shared passions, beliefs, values, really finding that fit from a beer and barbecue sense first and then trusting others. And we will also often have eight to ten people here at the junction interviewing someone for one position on many different occasions. And so you're then getting a bit of the wisdom of crowds. What does your team think? What do they think when you all sit down together and debrief on that person's skill set, their values?

Starting point is 00:28:09 And it's just trusting more opinions. But also not being afraid to sit there at the same time and say some people aren't necessarily going to think that this person is the right person, understanding why, why not, and really probing and knowing that not everyone will always agree. I'm curious about one person in particular that you worked with who I mentioned to you before we started recording. So on episode number 48, I had former colleague of yours Cameron Harold on. He was fantastic. And I've also been fortunate to meet him at a conference that we both went to. And it was, it was great to see him. You guys worked together in the earlier days.

Starting point is 00:28:59 I forget the exact years, but you could describe. And then I think you guys had to split up. And I'd love to hear more of that story about you and Cameron working together in the earlier days and why ultimately you had to break up. You know, I'll start with Cameron and I are good buddies. We talked last week. I was the best man in his wedding. So we've maintained an awesome friendship for sure and great cheerleaders in each other's courts. why we broke up and why we stayed friends, what happened was two

Starting point is 00:29:29 entrepreneurially minded people who are too similar. It can work early on in a business at that startup phase, but when things got big, we realized that you can't have two fire-ready aim type people at the top. We started to make some decisions that weren't smart. We started to make some poor financial decisions and people decisions. We were moving too fast. It was a ton of fun. some of the best days of my life for sure.

Starting point is 00:29:55 But the company, you know, we grew it from two million together up to 106. Wow. While Cameron brought, you know, huge passion and energy and ideas and leadership, all sorts of great things, again, the business got to a point where today we're 310 million. We needed a different leader to take us from 100 to 300, from 300 to a billion. And so the challenge was saying, okay, this match was awesome and wouldn't have changed it for the world, but going to that next level, we need to do things differently. And while it would have been hard for both of us for different reasons when the breakup happened, if you talk to Cameron in today's world and said, hey, what do you think? He would absolutely say it was the right call and that it was the right decision.

Starting point is 00:30:44 and for both of us. Our lives have gotten better. The company has gotten better. It needed to happen, but it didn't take away from all the amazing things that we did together to get it for 106. I bet that's common in other places and for listeners here where you are attracted to somebody as a business partner because you probably have similar lines of thinking. And that worked obviously for a portion of time and it took a lot of maturity and on a I would imagine on both your parts to realize, okay, we did something that was, that's, that's really fantastic, but it's, it's probably time to move on. And that's still tough, though,

Starting point is 00:31:24 as being best friends and the best man in this wedding, I got to, I got to imagine how to be a painstaking decision. Yeah, it's a, you know, I took a deep breath as you were saying that, because it's still thinking back to the past. It was, it was not easy for either of us. But again, just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it's not the right decision. And How often as leaders in our companies do we sit down and have to have those tough decisions? Probably not often enough. We've had people leave the organization after 12 years and you just hate to see someone leave something they've been a part of for so long. Yet when you know that they're now opening up a door or a window to a new opportunity for them, maybe for the business, how can you not support those moves?

Starting point is 00:32:10 Yeah. but then you had to transition and find somebody else. And I believe you may have made a mistake within there. Could you share maybe the mistakes you made in hiring and how you eventually got to the right choice? Because I'm focusing on hiring a lot because I found in my experience that the who is more important than the what. And you got to find your who first. And if you can find a way to find those right people, it can change your life. And if you mess that up, it can obviously also change your life, but for the worse.

Starting point is 00:32:46 And so that's why to me it's so important to hear a guy like you who has done so many incredible things, sustained excellence for many years to hear your thought process around making mistakes, hiring, and just the way that you thought about it and how you eventually got to the right answer. Yeah, great question. So I would agree with you. Jim Collins always says first, who then what? you've got to assemble the right team, people that are loyal and committed to you, your vision, you'll figure out how to get there if you've got the right team. That's most of winning, I believe, is assembling the right team. Now, after the Cameron era, if you will, ended, I had reached out to a mentor of mine named Greg Brophy, who has built a company called Shreddit

Starting point is 00:33:31 to a billion dollars plus. Sadly, he's no longer with us. But he was, he was an amazing leader. and what I learned from him as a mentor was I reached out to Greg and I said, okay, Cameron's not here any longer. I've got to figure out how to get to the next leader. I've got to find the right COO. Tell me everything you've learned. And he said, okay, here's what I've learned. And it's textbook based on textbooks that he had probably had to look at over his life.

Starting point is 00:33:58 And what Greg said is the first leader is generally someone close to you, a friend, someone early in the business. Yep, check. The next leader is someone that we usually overhire. for because of what was missing in the first person. And then the third leader, after we've realized we've made a mistake, we kind of pare back and we really do some soul searching to find out who is the real right leader here to take the business to the next level. And I went through all three of those stages, just like Greg Brofey did, took him three tries to get it right. Textbook said

Starting point is 00:34:30 it takes three tries, and it took me three tries. So the second leader after Cameron was a woman who was the U.S. president of Starbucks, of their U.S. operations. I was so enamored with her pedigree that I said, oh my gosh, here's a woman that's working in Seattle, no longer with Starbucks, but wants to move back to Vancouver, which is where I head office was. She was a Canadian, wanted to come home. I was blown away, and I thought, imagine what she could do to my little company based on what her performance looked like at Starbucks. And she came in and we lasted 14 months together. Wasn't that we were fighting, I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with, I think. But what was missing was day by day by day, I felt we were diverging on the vision.

Starting point is 00:35:18 She wanted the company to go one direction. I wanted it to go another. And I don't know if she really believed in founders and entrepreneurs and their place in the whole piece of the puzzle. And so when I realized that my vision was getting lost, and while this person was you know, had a history of being a great leader, it wasn't going to continue to take me to the direction of achieving the vision. And so that had to end, which was very tough because I had to get on planes, fly over the United States, Canada, all over the place, trying to recruit the next COO. I wasn't the guy to run the business. My franchise partners knew that and told me that.

Starting point is 00:35:59 I'm the vision guy, the culture guy. I'm not the executor, the discipline, the rigor. And so I searched long and hard and I put together a little vision of what I was looking for, sent it out to all my friends, family, colleagues, and so on. Three different people unrelated came back to me and said the person you're looking for is Eric Church. What you describe you're looking for to be your yin-tier Yang, the two-in-the-box leadership model of a cultural leader and then a rigor and discipline leader, an implementer. That was Eric Church. And I got in touch with Eric. He was gamefully employed, was having a great run. But somehow he saw our story and where we were going to go and wanted to be a part. And he's been here six years and hopefully he'll be here forever.

Starting point is 00:36:42 We're having the time of our lives together. And we went from one brand to four under his leadership and growth from 100 million to over 300 million. So when you have the right fit, it can make your life a lot easier as an entrepreneur. When you've got someone who's got a side hustle who's trying to get something fired up, they're often missing the executor, the person that really can take their idea and vision and grow it. How does Eric do with the beer and barbecue test? He's more of a bourbon and barbecue guy. I thought for a second you're about to say like, uh, you know, he's just really good at his job.

Starting point is 00:37:19 Yeah. No, you know what? He's such a fun guy. We're great friends. He loves the team of people that he's built and he works with. while I might be the skinny jeans converse wearing t-shirt guy, you know, he's more the buttoned-up guy. He's definitely the two of us might look different and our roles are very different, but somehow we just fit. And it is like a yin and yang.

Starting point is 00:37:44 And so seeing the value in the leader who can come in and do the things that as a leader you can't do has been so liberating. So what I did before I found Eric, the final sort of piece of the puzzle for me was, I took out a sheet of paper. On one side, I wrote all the things that a company needs to do that I love to do and I'm great at. All the things on the other side that I'm bad at that I don't like to do. And it was a longer list than the previous side. I then said, okay, I need someone that is so good at those things I hate to do, don't, aren't good at. And that happened to have been Eric's talents. And so we really, while there is some overlap from time to time, for the most part, we divide and conquer. We come together and meet often, talk often, but we're really doing different things to together drive and lead the company forward. How do you guys handle disagreements?

Starting point is 00:38:37 It's interesting. We don't have a lot of disagreements. We really are good at talking through things. We're great at listening to each other and trying to understand, okay, why does Eric really believe in this opportunity? What do I like about it? What don't I like about it? openly discuss. We have an ability just to really respect and admire each other's positions and talk through them, knowing that what's best for the business always wins. And so it might be a

Starting point is 00:39:05 crazy idea I've got. And Eric says, you know what, we should talk about that again in a month. Let's see if it's still a great idea. We're able to park things that might not be the highest priorities and see if they still become good ideas. But yeah, open communication. And again, the beer and barbecue test. We got the fit right for both of us. The trust is there, the long-term relationship, and it keeps on growing. What's your process to learn something new? You talked about wanting to learn new languages, spending your hour or more in the morning

Starting point is 00:39:41 before everyone else wakes up. I have a very similar process of a morning routine because raising children and being married to you, sometimes that's the only time you get to yourself. So I'm with you. I'm curious from your process. Do you surround yourself with a really small group of advisors that help you? Do you do it on your own? Do you do a little bit of both?

Starting point is 00:40:01 I'm just curious about highly successful people who sustain excellence, their process to improve and to learn new things. Yeah, I've surrounded myself with a very large group of advisors. I call it my MBA, my mentor board of advisors. I never got an MBA in school. So this has been my learning. And what I do is I can pick up the phone and call anyone that I've contacted at some point in time that I think could be the best in the world at X. And I'll call them up and ask

Starting point is 00:40:29 questions. And it's amazing how quickly you can get to an answer to some advice, a shortcut, by just turning to others. I don't try and solve new problems on my own. I try and find experts and take shortcuts. Now, my ongoing learning and my leadership, my passions and all those sorts of things. One thing I do every year, and I've done this for the last 15 years, is I've been part of a program called Birthing of Giants. It was an MIT entrepreneur organization built event, and it was a three-year program. We graduated, and then 60 high-growth entrepreneurs. We all got together, and a few of us said, let's continue the learning. Let's continue bringing in great speakers, do it at MIT in Boston. And we've agreed that we'll do this for as long

Starting point is 00:41:19 as we possibly can, but it's been 15 years and it's, it's unbelievable annual learning, as well as a monthly phone call with many people in the group where it's just, I think I'm just a lifelong learner and I've got curiosity that has always got me asking questions and just looking at the world through different lenses and trying to understand how to make myself a better leader, how to make the business continue to grow. And I don't just mean financially, but people. How do we take the people in our business and make them better people, better leaders? And it just, it never ceases to be fun, even on bad days when things are going wrong or I've had to get rid of a COO who wasn't the right fit. Man, life is great and full of opportunity. Man, I love that. I want to,

Starting point is 00:42:06 I've been working on creating leadership circles in these mastermind type groups and excited to, as these kind of formulate, I've been talking to people who I think are just super impressive. I love this birthing of giants. program that you're part of it sounds like just an incredible way to continue learning and having those conversations as well as your answer to saying I just pick up the phone and call them and ask for help I think that's that's another commonality among the best of the best is absolutely no fear or maybe a better way to phrase it is they have no ego about thinking they need to know everything in fact they're the opposite like like you're saying just an inherent curiosity to say I'd love to figure this out and I'm lucky to have to have.

Starting point is 00:42:47 this person as part of my MBA, my mentor, board of advisors to call them. I think that's, that's incredible. Pretty powerful stuff. I mean, it doesn't take much to pick up the phone and reach out to someone. And even if you've never met that person, it's amazing how receptive people are to wanting to help a fellow human being. Yeah, because I think mentors are people, they're flattered. They want to help.

Starting point is 00:43:08 And inherently people are good. I believe for the most part. And I found that with this podcast. Same thing with you. This started from a cold outreach. you were kind enough to respond and your team help put this together for us. And I'm really appreciative. I'm curious, Brian, just a couple more things.

Starting point is 00:43:25 I would imagine you are on a lot of people's mentor, board of advisors meeting. They want to call you. And I'm thinking of somebody maybe a little bit earlier in their career. And I do some of this as well. And if there are a book or books that you hand to maybe somebody a little bit earlier in their career that say this could help you. And I know it probably varies based on their questions or their problems, but maybe there's some overarching ones that have you found most helpful. What do you give them?

Starting point is 00:43:54 Yeah, so two things. Number one is anyone wanting to build and scale an idea or a business. I suggest they read the e-myth. So e-dash myth by Michael Gerber. It is the single most impactful business book I've ever read. I'm not a big reader. I'm a big book buyer. But this one actually, I read it cover to cover.

Starting point is 00:44:15 and it changed my business life because it taught me how to scale something through people, through systems. The second thing, and I will throw this out there if any of your listeners want to get a copy of something I'm passionate about sharing, our painted picture, our vision of where we're going, I always get new employees, franchise partners to read our vision to not only get aligned with our vision and where we're going, but I challenge them to think about themselves and their own vision and where they want to go in life, personally, professionally. And if you don't know where you're going, any road, we'll take you there as the classic line goes.

Starting point is 00:44:53 So if anyone wants to see an example of what I created and where I created this was 1997. I was at my parents' summer cottage. They had this little cabin on the water, an hour from Vancouver, and I was in a doom loop, depressed, didn't feel like my business had much potential. And I closed my eyes, took out a sheet of paper, and I said, okay, enough. negativity, write down pure possibility of what the company could look like, feel like, and how we can act in five years' time. And I created this one-page, double-sided painted picture, which opened my mind to opportunity and made our vision a reality, everything from getting on the Oprah Winfrey show to be in the FedEx at junk removal, all these big, bold, hairy, audacious goals, and made them happen. And so if someone wants a copy of one of our painted pictures just to sort of see what that could look like, copy what you want out of it. Best way to get me just, you know, social media, send me a direct message on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:45:50 I'll fire you back a painted picture. And that way you can just get a sense of what that might look like. I know Cameron Harold, who was on your show, talks about vision, the importance of. I mean, that was something that when he was here, he was just like, wow, if everyone had a clear vision and knew where they were going, he felt he could help them. get there and that's where we made a great team. What's your Instagram handle? I'm going to send you a DM right after this. Sure.

Starting point is 00:46:14 At Brian Scudamore. B-R-I-A-N-S-C-U-D-A-M-O-R-E. All right, same for all my listeners. I can't wait to see that. And by the way, Michael Gerber was on episode 177 for people who have not listened to that one. He was phenomenal. He's the guy, as Brian just mentioned, who wrote the E-M-M-Hyth. I highly recommend that book and listening that episode

Starting point is 00:46:37 too. Brian, this is, I had really high expectations and you killed it. And I'm so appreciative. Thank you so much for joining me here on the Learning Leader Show. Where else would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? I think our website, O2E Brands, is a great place to start. So O2E, that stands for ordinary to exceptional. Letter O, number two, letter E. And everything we do is about taking the ordinary business of junk removal or painting, whatever it might be in making it exceptional through great people, exceptional customer experience and so on. So, Ryan, I appreciate so much you having me on your show. I know you've interviewed hundreds of incredible people and just throw me into the mix there with my story. I've been honored. And certainly what I love about

Starting point is 00:47:26 these shows is I learned so much by great questions. And so in terms of sales, you've sold me, man, because you've been asking great questions and getting me to learn and think. So, thank you for having me. Oh, I really appreciate that. By the way, what's next for O2E brands? You seem to always have something working. What's going on next? Yeah, honestly, nothing next. There will be something, but don't know what it is right now. We are focused. We're busy. We're in great growth mode with all four brands. Timing's not right for brand number five. But the way I think it'll happen as did with the previous brands is I see an opportunity when I'm on vacation or someone sends me an idea and wants to be a part of something, something great will happen.

Starting point is 00:48:07 And so it's being open for the possibility and not trying too hard to find something too soon. I love it. I love it, man. It's so great. Well, Brian, thanks again for being here. And I hope you're willing to be a part of my MBA. I'm going to steal that if you're okay with that because I love that aspect of having your own mentor board of advisors.

Starting point is 00:48:26 That's phenomenal, man. But I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both progress. Awesome. And if you're ever in Vancouver, come visit. Definitely, man. Thanks so much, Brian. Okay. Thanks for having me, Ryan. What an inspiring talk from Brian Scudamore. It's great to speak with the CEO who has started and scaled a business. I love learning directly from him.

Starting point is 00:48:50 If you enjoy that episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show in iTunes Apple Podcast. That's the best way to help the show grow to those who have not seen it yet. So please subscribe, rate, and review in iTunes Apple Podcasts. I'd really appreciate it. And thanks again for being here. Cannot wait for the next one. See you next week. This episode is brought to you by Workfront.

Starting point is 00:49:21 Workfront is a work automation platform that allows you and your team to do your best work. Focus on the right work and complete that work faster than ever. Workfront connects all the phases of your workflow from planning corporate strategies to tactical execution. And they go beyond just project and portfolio management. It delivers an operational system of record for today's largest and most innovative companies, including fossil, cars.com, and old navy. And they also work with Focus Brands, whose C-O, C.O. Kat Cole was featured on episode 78 of The Learning Leader Show. Workfront, because work matters.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 236: Brian Scudamore - CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK: How To Scale A Business

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