The Wealthy Barber Podcast - #22 — Brian Scudamore: Building a $700M Business

Episode Date: July 29, 2025

Our guest this episode is Brian Scudamore—founder and CEO of O2E Brands, the parent company of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the world’s largest junk removal business. Brian started the company at just 18 years old after dropping out of high school, and has since built it into a $700 million empire.  Along the way, he’s expanded into other home service brands like WOW 1 DAY PAINTING and Shack Shine, and today is also a Dragon on CBC’s “Dragons’ Den.” In this conversation, Brian joins Dave to share the story behind his entrepreneurial journey—from naming the company after a phone number to franchising it internationally to turning “ordinary” home services into premium, trusted brands. They dive into the lessons Brian learned while building the business, why he believes anyone can be an entrepreneur and how his grandfather’s advice on kindness continues to shape his leadership style.  Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or just curious how a scrappy Canadian startup turned into a household name, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration.   Show Notes (00:00) Intro & Disclaimer (00:57) Intro to Brian Scuadmore (02:47) How Brian’s Grandparents Taught Him to Treat People Kindly (04:23) 1-800-GOT-JUNK Today (08:10) Brian’s New Brands (09:26) Business Differences in Canada vs. the U.S. (11:23) How Brian Started 1-800-GOT-JUNK (13:54) Naming the Business a Phone Number (15:32) Keys to Success in Home Services (19:23) Successes and Failures of Growing Internationally  (20:56) The Franchise Model (23:54) Premium Pricing in the Service Industry (26:55) Finding $400k in the Floorboards (28:13) Business Formation in Canada (30:31) Starting New Home Service Brands (37:54) Dragons’ Den (41:54) Anyone Can Be an Entrepreneur  (42:45) The Future of Brian’s Businesses (44:39) The Impact of Dragons’ Den (47:52) Conclusion

Hey, it's Dave Chilton, The Wealthy Barber and former Dragon on Dragonstant. Welcome to the Wealthy Barber podcast. Well, we'll be hosting some of the top minds in the world of personal finance. Yes, that's to balance me out. The podcast is about making this subject not just easy to understand, but dare I say, even fun, honest. Whether you're trying to fund your retirement, figure out how to build a down payment, save for your kids. education, managed debts, whatever, we'll be here to help you do it. Before we jump in, a quick but important note, nothing we discuss here should be taken as

investment advice. We don't know you and your personal financial situation, so we're not here to tell you we're specifically to put your investment dollars. We're here to educate, get you thinking, and we hope entertain. But please do your own research and or consult with your financial advisor before taking any action. Hey everybody, it's Dave Chilton the Wealthy Barber here with episode 22 of the Wealthy Barber podcast. Very excited. Today, we're going a little bit different route. We tend to bring on personal finance experts from a wide variety of fields, but today we're going with one of Canada's most well-known, most well-respected entrepreneurs. Brian Scudamore, Brian, of course, as all of you know, is 1-800 got junk. He

has lots of other businesses we'll talk about. Interesting guy. Very compelling background. Grew up in San Francisco until he was seven or eight, moved to Vancouver at that time. Wasn't a particularly strong student. We'll get into that in a few moments as well. Saw an opportunity and took it and, of course, the rest is history. He now runs a company that's really impacted a lot of people's lives positively. His franchisees have done very well. It employs a tremendous number of people.

We'll get specific numbers in a few moments. It's broadened the tax base. It's provided a great service. And it's set a great example. I said a few weeks ago in the podcast, I'm very concerned with business formation numbers in Canada. They are extremely weak. We need people starting businesses, taking chances, fixing problems, seeing opportunities.

So people like Brian who inspire our fantastic guests. He also knows a lot about personal finance and other subjects. So off we go. Brian, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. And you were always one of my favorite dragons. And a fun fact, the first business book I ever read in my entire life was the wealthy barber.

It was given to me as a gift by my girlfriend at the time, her dad, said, oh, Brian, you always talk about entrepreneurship and making money and you're going to enjoy this book. And thank you for the impact you've made on Canada and the world. I thought for sure you were setting up me up for I got the book and it was 1-800 got junk. Like I looked at it and the state was tragic and I chucked it away. One of the things that jumped at me about you was you went on Dragonstead last year. You're taping or you taped season two of your tenure already. when you went on, you got a lot of attention, obviously, because your brand is so well-known.

But the thing that I was most impressed by was how many people talked about how nice a person you are, how you treat people kindly, you've been very employee-oriented over the years, et cetera. What do you owe that to? Do you have great parents? Yeah, I've got great parents. I think my grandparents, frankly, they inspired me in how to treat people in this world, especially in business. They ran an Army surplus store in San Francisco and a dodgy entity.

town, small business. And I used to go down there every Christmas break, summer break, and I'd work in their store as a young kid. They were the only store that did not get robbed on a regular basis in that neighborhood. Stores would get robbed all the time. And the word on the street was their place was called Lorber Surplus. Don't mess with the Lorbers. They're good people. And they would listen to the homeless or people who would come into their store and complain or have an issue or ask for money, and they would just listen with a heart and treat them well. They didn't have to give money. They just gave an ear.

And somehow that word traveled. And it made me realize, like, how you treat people in your business as employees, customers, anyone, that's what matters most. And it really, all you have in the end of the day is your reputation. So learn from them. Well, good for you. And they're all dodgy corners of San Francisco now. There aren't too many great areas there anymore. Yes. Okay, let's begin at the end. So before we go back and look at how you achieved all of this, let's talk about where you are right now. It's a stunning success. It really is. Just walk us through some of the numbers.

Yeah, so today, 36 years in, and these overnight success stories sure take a long time, as they say, it took me eight years to get to a million in revenue. And we did a million in revenue this morning by 10.30. And so we're at a run rate of about 700 million right now with 1,800 Got Junk. And then, of course, we've got wow one day painting and jackshined. So we're three quarters of a billion dollars and growing and loving what we do in terms of the impact, not only that we make with customers, but we have something like 440 entrepreneurs in our organization who might have started in the trucks, took on an investment from family or friends, and ended up buying into the business and now they're running, it doesn't matter.

Knoxville, Tennessee, Toronto, Ontario, you name it. And people are building great lives for themselves by having this business format franchise that they have been able to build and grow. Do you have corporately owned stores or all of these franchises? They're all franchised. We have started buying back some locations

so in terms of a franchise partner ages out and decide they want to retire. We created a bit of a fund so that we can buy back some franchises if they're underperforming or someone wants out, and then we end up typically doubling them in two or three years. But we really are in the business of franchise development, finding great franchise partners and helping them be successful. It's amazing to me that all these years, all this success,

you've never taken on outside capital. We talked off air. You're not planning on going public or selling to a private equity firm. You love what you do. You're adding great value. You like the back and forth with the franchisees, et cetera. Why leave? Yeah, I really love what I do.

So short of philanthropy, I don't know what I would do with the money if I sold the business. Right. Waste management years ago when I was probably $75 million in revenue, early, early days. They took me on a fishing trip to Sonora Lodge and beautiful British Columbia. And I was out on a boat, 25 miles from shore, something crazy, with two garbage companies. executives it was a little sopranos sort of feeling i was going to say that they said they're like we're going to give you an offer you can't refuse and they were talking a hundred million dollars for my business which would have been enough money back then to retire and do whatever i wanted to do and i said

no i said you guys could give me a billion dollars and i'd still say no because i love what i do i'm not done and i know i'm really just getting started and even though we're almost at a billion dollars today, we now start to talk about, what does $2 billion look like? What does $5 billion look like? And when you're building a business that's all about people, finding the right people and treating people right, it becomes this team slash family that makes this place so special to be in that why would I sell to then go take a pile of money and not know what to do with? Again, one day, philanthropic, there'll be something there, but it's like right now we're just we're making a big difference developing entrepreneurs and great leaders with inside our

business. Now, how's your organic growth on a franchise numbers basis, say year over year or five year period over five year period? You're obviously adding franchises, but are you also having good growth within the franchises? Yeah, so we're actually, we haven't added a franchise partner into 1-800 got junk really for years. We might add one here and there with a small new market, but we've effectively been sold out for a decade. Right. So all our growth, all our growth is organic and 1-800 got junk. Now, shakshine, wow, one day, we're looking for franchise partners actively

and trying to grow that one day. I love shakshine. Oh, nice. No, seriously, I do. I love the business. I knew about it before we started talking about you coming on. I love just the basic concept of it because I'd love to get my windows clean,

my gutters cleaned out, all of those types of things. It just made perfect sense to me. Yeah. And how's that doing? Are you pleased with its growth, its traction? Yeah, so Ontario would be the biggest province slash state that we would be in right now in terms of penetration, which is where I know you are.

And we're doing great, putting up people's Christmas lights, doing their gutters, doing their power washing in their windows. And it's growing like crazy. It's now just how do we expand that throughout the rest of Canada and the U.S. And so we'll get there. And it's really about a franchise development plan. We just hired now a new head of franchise development to help us find franchise owners who want to build a great life for themselves. But it's a fun business. It's similar to 1-800 got junk. It's a little more complicated. It's not just throwing junk in the back of the truck,

but it's a business that people love, and we become their one-stop shop for all things, you know, sort of taking care of your home on the outside. No, I think it was a brilliant idea, and you've really harnessed your great experience. Now, you've done well crossing borders. You've done well going down to the States. A lot of Canadian franchises struggled to make the transition.

There's a lot of legal issues, state-by-state, et cetera. They just didn't have the kind of success you have. What do you owe that to? What do you think you did well that maybe they didn't? Well, so it's interesting. I think as an American-born entrepreneur, but Canadian raised, my family, I've got half my family down there in San Francisco and Seattle. I've spent so much time down there that I felt like I had a good working knowledge of

the differences between Canada and the United States. And frankly, I don't find there's that much of a difference. I find people get very intimidated and think, oh, my gosh, the U.S. is different, but I can't really find many ways other than maybe some different laws and legislation. It's pretty business-friendly. They love entrepreneurs. They make it easy for entrepreneurs. They do, especially in the financing front. There's a lot more capital available. Now, what about the litigious nature of the U.S. though? Is that jumped up and bitten you? Do you have to protect against that more carefully? Yeah, so it's definitely different. I mean, you hear

this often, but most of our lawsuits have been in California, most exclusively. And it is a litigious state, and it's unfortunate. But you just try and find good people and treat them well so that you don't have to deal with lawsuits. But occasionally they happen, and it's a part of business. It's an unfortunate part. But, yeah, we don't get sued in Canada. It's interesting. That is a point where I would say it is very different than the United States.

And when a business deal goes sideways and isn't as people planned, I think the best way is just to talk about it and work it through. And I think often when people work through those things without lawyers and have a proper conversation over it, it can be cheaper and more effective for everybody. But it has been harder in the U.S. Yeah, that's always the big challenge, but you've obviously overcome it brilliantly. Now, let's go back to the very beginning. You're in high school. You end up dropping out prior to graduation. The story, of course, is quite famous now.

You're a McDonald's drive-thru. if I'm not mistaken, you see a truck in front of you. It's delivering junk and this triggers something and off you go. Is it really that simple? Yeah, it was that simple. There I really was behind this truck and looking at this thing going, okay, I need to find a way to pay for college. Now, my dad is a recently retired liver transplant surgeon. My mother was a realtor.

And the two of them believed that I needed to earn my own education, especially having not graduated from high school. I didn't finish my school. I dropped out with one course left. And they're like, we're not going to fund your college education. And so I ended up finding a way to pay for it. And it was a serendipitous moment of seeing this truck in a drive-thru going, I'm going to go buy a truck of my own and haul junk. Two weeks later, you'll love this, Dave.

I had a business. And it had made more money. It had paid off all its startup expenses, including the cost of the truck. And I was just like, okay, this is great. And then it inspired me. I was learning much more while I talked my way into college, funded my own college. I was learning much more running a business than I was studying in school. Entrepreneur programs didn't exist back then.

Right. And so I made a bold decision to drop out with a year left. And I remember sitting down with my dad who's done more schooling than anyone on the planet. And he's like, what are you doing, Brie? And I said, you know what? I'm just learning so much here. and I'm loving life. And so he trusted me, and today he thinks I made the right decision.

Yeah, they must be incredibly proud. Now, I've got to ask you, I mean, back in the day, when people did the junk moving in those trucks, they always put those plywood sheets up on the side to contain the junk. Did it have that? And did you do that initially as well? Oh, of course I did. I copied everyone else out there. And I started to realize that these trucks were junky and not safe.

So one of the first things I did in the industry was starting to build these proper metal boxes. out of an outfit in Calgary, and we started having this franchise look and feel to the business even before we had actually franchised the company. So it was about safety and professionalism and having clean, shiny trucks, friendly uniform drivers. We'd always said we wanted to model after FedEx. They had always had such an incredible look and feel to everything they did. I said, why can't we bring that to the junk removal business? And with the name 1-800 got junk as a professionally sounding national brand, even before we were national, that became a marketing sort of piece of marketing gold for us.

Well, the name was brilliant. Let's be honest. I don't think anybody else has ever used a phone number as their official name. At least they hadn't at that time. From so many perspectives, it was great. It was memorable. Did you come up with that? And was it available?

Like, how did you just go out and get $1,800 got junk? Yeah, so we modeled the idea after $1,800 flowers out of the year. US, a big fruit rest. So they had done it. And we thought, okay, I need to get this phone number. We were called the rubbish boys throughout Canada. We were, our phone number was 738 junk. And it was just a local number.

So if we want to expand this, we need a name and a phone number that are one together. And we came up with this 1-800 got junk. Now, in calling the number, I couldn't find out who owned it. It was a working number somewhere. And I finally tracked down after 59 phone calls. It was the Department of Transportation, the government, who owned this phone number in Idaho. And they said it's a working number and they didn't want to give it up. And so I found a guy Michael in the phone room who took a liking to me.

And after three calls to him, he said, you know what, just take the number. And he did all the IT&T paperwork, got it over to me. A couple of days later, I get on the phone to thank him. He's no longer with the business. I have no idea what happened to Michael, but I got the number. And I got it for free. And so there we were, the rest became history, and it was really a marketing win for us. Oh, huge.

I mean, when I first heard about all this, I was fascinated by it because you, to your credit, we're really ahead of the curve. When you look now at the private equity landscape, et cetera, we're seeing so many roll-ups in the professionalization of businesses, whether it's veterinarian clinics or dentist's office. But to some extent, you went into what has always been a mom-and-pop industry, the junk removal business, and you brought branding. You bought professionalism.

You mentioned bringing uniforms and bright colors, all of those types of things, helped you to stand out. That's common today, but when you did it, you didn't see it that often. No, it's table stakes today, but back then no one was doing it. And we would push hard on some things that our employees or franchise owners said didn't matter. Our franchise owner said, it's expensive to wash your truck every day. It's expensive to clean your uniforms every day. And we would say, yeah, exactly, but you never get a second chance to make a friend. first impression. It matters. And people would argue with us and say it doesn't matter. Clients

don't care. They just want their junk on. Well, you know what? They're right. They do want their junk on. But the reason they care is you want people coming to your home that you feel you can trust, that you don't mind men and being around your family and your pets and so on. And so we had to get that right. And professionalism mattered even in the junk removal space. I love the fact that unlike so many businesses, you didn't have to worry too much about damages. You pick up junk. It's junk. You can just toss it in the back and then take it to wherever you're taking it to and toss it there.

And that part of it had to be fairly appealing and let you go for a lower skilled labor as well, somebody who may be a little quicker and moving, et cetera. How did you pick the labor? How did you pick the franchisees? Did they have to have some physical skills as well, some strength? Yeah, I mean, you're not lifting like thousands of pounds. I mean, you're lifting sort of, everyday stuff that, you know, two people can lift and throw in the back of the truck.

And you can always figure out a way with as long as you've got a partner. So with two people in every truck, we were really looking for smiley, friendly, friendly, customer service-driven people that would want to run almost an efficient business for the day. How much junk could they get in the truck? How efficient could they be in terms of where they dropped it off? Could they upsell a client by letting them know that, oh, by the way, here's extra things we take.

Do you have any of those? And it became this lesson in entrepreneurship, almost in the way that college pro painters, if you remember them. For sure, of course, very well. Teach students how to run a business. And that's what we did. So finding people was much more about finding future and our early day employees were future doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, people who were going to school for something that would do this during the summer months. And so we got really smart, happy go lucky people who really impressed our customers. And it made a massive difference on our growth in the early days.

And we've stuck to it, just making sure that we find the right people and we treat them right. You must have benefited from the technology of the last 10 to 20 years, GPS, for example, now allowing you to lay out your routes much more effectively. And to some extent, that's what this business is all about, the logistics and the efficiency of how you pick up, what you pick up. Have you harnessed all that? And did you get on it right away? Yeah, so we became a tech company right from the beginning.

And maybe it was my love for technology. we built out a website that it was called Junknet, and it allowed us to do our booking and dispatch of all our jobs, to all our franchise partners, whatever city they were in, they would get notifications on their cell phones. They would get notifications on the web. And so as early as the late 90s when we franchised, we made every use of technology we could. We created a call center where we took all the calls for 1-800 got junk and we still do today, albeit that all our agents work from home and now we're starting to use AI and technology even further. But we couldn't have grown as an international franchise, Canada, US, Australia without being adopters of

these great technologies. Why Australia, by the way, is the third country and why not some others? What keeps you out of some regions? So Australia and the UK, we launched at the same time. We decided we were going to go into some international markets just because it would be a great possibility to see happen. You wanted to travel? Yeah, travel, and we wanted to actually just enjoy building something in another country and see if we could. Now, we succeeded in Australia and we failed in the UK.

We picked, obviously, English-speaking countries. Right. And they both seemed to make sense to us. But the UK, they had much smaller trucks, they had much smaller alleys. People don't throw things away nearly as much. And it became a challenge. So we gave it a year and realized it wasn't working and we needed to focus and pick a country. So we closed down Birmingham, England, which was the first city we started in.

And we just went all in on Australia. And now we're in every market in Australia and doing great. And maybe one day we'll go back to the UK and figure out how to do it right. When you go into these countries, do you use corporately owned stores initially to get the lay of the land and then worry about franchising after you have established the right procedures? Yeah, that's what we did in Australia. and we did it corporately, sold off corporately when we got it to a level where, as you said, we did it right. Yeah, it's a fascinating. I mean, I love the master franchise business model.

Do you run in a fairly typical way you're paid a royalty of the revenue of the franchisee, and do you provide other services to them as well? We do. So we do all the booking and dispatch. So let's pick ShackShine as an example. We'll book all the customer jobs. We've got a marketing engine that does all the direct mail and email marketing to customers and gets them in for repeat business.

We have the software that we create for our truck teams across different brands to track all their revenue and so on. So a lot of different services we provide, we charge a royalty, and they can focus on pounding the pavement, driving their business, building a great team of technicians in Chachshine or painters for a while one day painting,

and we focus as the franchisee on getting national press attention, national accounts, and really helping them build and scale. business. When you look at the three businesses and you look at the franchisees who've done very, very well, even relative to a solid area that they're in, what are the common denominators you see? What are the good franchisees do well over and over again? Is the consistency of sticking to the system? Is it their personal relationships? All of the above. What do you see in these people? Yeah, all of the above, things that you would expect, I think. Number one is

that they really care about their people in the same way that we do. Find the right people and develop. So if I pick Paul Guy, the first franchise partner who started in Toronto, took me eight years to get to a million in revenue. He did a million in his first year. And then he started to scale and they're up to 100 million today with all that they own throughout Nashville. They own all over New York. They own in Australia. And what they've done is they've taken a lot of their truck team members and said, hey, listen, do you want an opportunity one day? You might not afford to be able to buy in, but we'll help you earn in. And one day you go run a franchise in Charlotte, North Carolina as an example. And so they've built a master franchise model in that way of

other entrepreneurs. But we find great people. We treat them well and develop them. And what makes these amazing franchise partners amazing is that they really understand the importance of people and the importance, like you said, of following systems. We give them a recipe, something I loved about the wealthy barber and still do today. It is a system of how to financially build wealth throughout your entire life. And if you follow it, the 10% pay yourself first, low-cost mutual funds. Like, all those things make sense. They have and always will.

And so if people are looking for a system, this is a way to be successful in business. A lot of people get out there and invent the idea from scratch like I might have. But then I spent eight years figuring out how to get a million dollars. All of this goes, give me the keys, dude. Let me start this thing up and a million in a year. Yeah, no, that's a great example. It really is. Let's go back to the early days.

How did you figure out your pricing model? That's one of the most challenging things to do when you first enter a service industry. Did you just look at the competitors and basically take the average number? What did you do? Yeah, that's exactly it. So I looked at what all the competition was doing, and they were between $80 and $120 a load. And so I said, I'm going to charge $120 a load. And I'm going to do a really good job.

And I didn't try and undercut anyone, and that all worked. And then we got an article in the Vancouver province, the front page of the local newspaper. And they misprinted our pricing and said it was 138 a load. And I was like, oh, my gosh, our pricing just went up by 18. bucks. We're in trouble. People said, oh, it's 138 bucks. That sounds reasonable. So we actually kept that as our new prices and realized all it did was help grow the business. And so, you know, pricing, we got a little bit lucky. But copying the competition is what I think has worked for us. We've always held a belief that the, the low cost provider in retail, for example, Best Buy or Walmart,

you know, they often are the biggest. they can make it up on volume. But when you're in a service, you need to hire great people and that costs more. And so the high cost provider, as long as you're not extorbitant, you know, we've got a pricing scheme that still makes sense and you're still in the market, but on the higher side, because it costs good money to find and keep good people. And that's what. No business has proved that more than landscaping. I mean, you go in city after city across Canada and the landscapers that have thrived and been around for decades are the ones that have been the higher cost providers. They've done a wonderful job.

To your point, they've had the revenue to support good people, support good training, keep their equipment modernized, et cetera, et cetera. You get what you pay for. And what helped you when you got to the 138, of course, is there's a perception out there that you get what you pay for. So sometimes people see a higher price. They assume you're going to do a better job and then you guys backed it up. Interesting question.

What challenges do they run into most often during the pickup? Just tough to get at stairs, that type of thing, poor weather. Like, what are you up against in some of these places? Oh, yeah. I mean, it can be very physical. It can be, you know, if you're cleaning up a construction site and it's all a little bits of wood that you've got to pick up all by hand, if they've got to carry things a long distance. So it can be physically demanding weather, as you mentioned. I mean, it's no fun hauling a whole bunch of construction.

In the rain, in the snow, you know, in the intense heat and Phoenix. So these things happen. But I'd say weather's the big challenge. Customers are the fun part. Because most customers are just so relieved when we take away their junk to do something they didn't want to do. Have any wives tried to send their husband along when you guys did the pick up? Most overused jokes. I bet my ex-wife.

Here's her phone number. Here's her email address. Go get her. I mean, happens all the time. Ex-husbands. And then we found some cool things, which surprisingly sometimes you're on site and you're like, oh, my gosh, there's like treasure here literally. So the biggest best find ever in history was actually in Vancouver

and we found $400,000 in cash. And so it was the floorboards of a house slash old restaurant that was being renovated and one of our truck team members noticed between two floorboards what looked like money. He brought over the customer and said, what is this? This looks like money. And they said, oh my gosh, I think it is.

They used a crowbar, brought up the flooring, and then ended up taking up the entire floor in the whole house. They found $400,000 in cash in 1932 circulation bills. So when they did the calculation, it was all covered in the press. It was $5.3 million back in the day. And nobody... Were it come from a bank robbery or something? Nobody knows.

Still to this day, the house had changed hands so many times. Nobody knew what it was from. But the owner's got a $400,000 cheaper renovation is all we know. And a serious question, did they give a big tip to the fellow who spotted that initial bill? They were very generous. And they, you know, they felt like the truck team members not only helped out a customer and made their day, but as two students who just got a big whack of cash, they were briefed. I'm pretty excited. Now, I mentioned earlier that I'm worried about business formation in Canada. The stats aren't strong. What are your

thoughts on why we're running into this? Do you think it's regulation, taxes? Are we doing something wrong in terms of trying to ignite the interest in young people? Where's this problem coming from? I think a lot of it is related to the economy and the technology world has been pretty strong for a long time. And so there were people leaving our business and leaving any company to go work for another big company and making ridiculous money. It was easier to go find a job and make money and have the security than to go out and start your own business. And I think that you get different circumstances that necessitate change. I think that we're going to see my prediction anyways, who knows, is that with all the AI that's happening, there's going to be people losing their jobs as we're seeing some large numbers and being replaced. There's going to have people then where they're forced to go, I can't depend on anyone else.

What am I going to do to take my own livelihood into my own hands? And they'll go start businesses. And so it's generally some down economies where people, the Great Depression, 29, where people would go. oh, wow, I just, I have to start a company. I've got to do something on my own and they think creatively. Or when all the baby boomers came back after the war, there were all these people that were untrained in terms of career set who said, I got to do something for myself. And that was one of the biggest waves in the growth of entrepreneurship. So I think it's just the situation we've created, neither good nor bad, but just the growing technology world and the stable economy for so many years. has said to somebody, they know that starting a business is hard. It is. But when you've got to get out there and you're sort of forced to do it differently, I mean, my business was partially started because not only was I looking for a way to pay for college, but it was a tight summer job market, and I was having a hard time finding my own job.

So I went out and created one. You and I are the exact same. I was in co-op, a laureate. It was one of those down economic cycles. And so Alex Mastakis and I started up at GIC agency. because, in essence, you're forced to, to get creative and look new opportunities. So now you started two more of these businesses as opposed to just focusing on the one you already have. Why?

You knew the formula. You saw opportunity there. You thought, let's do it again. It's fun to grow. Growth is different than when you're in a mature industry. All those things drew you in. I think we were motivated. I mean, part of it was ego going, hey, we could own other places as well.

We're the world's largest junk removal company. What about being the world's largest house detailing company? And so part of it was ego-driven, for sure. But part of it really was just, wow, what another unique challenge and opportunity. Now, I think we were a little arrogant in the beginning when we started the other two brands thinking, oh, we've done this once and built a business that's hundreds of millions of dollars. This will be a piece of cake. It was really hard and it still is hard because they're very different businesses. But they're equally as enjoyable and there's lots and lots of opportunity. And so the challenge is a little bit of how do you evolve? evolve yourself and evolve a brand in a different space to make sure that it succeeds. And it's that opportunity of just, well, we get to do this. I remember Robert Herchievich, who we both know and who was also a dragon. I interviewed him once at one of our conferences, and I said in front of our franchise partners, what advice do you have for our entrepreneurs to get through tough times?

And he's like, Brian, we have to remember we get to do this. As entrepreneurs, we get the ups and the downs. and we've got to approach them both with curiosity and a smile and just make it happen. And so some of the best days in my business career have been some of the most challenging ones in ShackShine and Wow one day going, okay, this is harder than we expected. What are we going to do to modify that business and that model to make it succeed? What has the painting world, for example, thrown at you that you weren't expected? So when you talk about it being tougher than you thought, why?

I think there's just so many mom and pop one shop sort of painters. It's easy for someone to buy a brush and take the bus. They don't even need a van to get to work. They can just show up at someone's house. I'm a painter and I've got the experience. So a lot of competition, but the exciting part on the flip side is there's not really many brands in that space who stand out. If you think of, oh, I need my house painted. Who's the 1-800 got junk of the space?

it's often challenging to think that way. So the two kind of balance each other out. And one thing we're looking at right now is similar to 1-800-Got junk, we will find people, even if they don't know how to paint, but they want to run a business and lead people. That becomes compelling to them to learn how to build and scale a business, even in a space that it might be harder to find people. You figure out these things as you go.

I mean, look at the door-dashes of the world or the Ubers of, of the world. They found this gig economy and they've been able to hire all these amazing people who run a side business. Why can't we in the painting space? No, that makes a lot of sense. It's residential only or not doing commercial? Is it inside only or do outside as well? We do inside and outside. Yeah, interior and exterior and we do some light commercial. But the focus is more, especially with the name, wow, one day painting. We go into someone's home as when I discovered the brand. I was looking for someone to paint my house. And at the end of the day, It was this one company that floor to ceiling, moldings, trims, had my entire house done within a day.

And I was like, wow. And that became the name of the business. And that's cool. That's what we're trying to grow. Well, I'm going to give you a third franchise a plug. I am old. And when you get to be my age, it's amazing how many people fall off ladders. And I can say anybody 55 and up, do not clean your own eaves troughs.

No. Do not go there. I mean, I have so many friends who, had major accidents falling off ladders, it's just not a good thing. Bring in an outside firm and let them do it for you. Now, you did something very clever that got a lot of attention and I thought it was brilliant actually. You're looking to fight off the seasonality of that particular business. You're obviously slowed down to Christmas. Some people say, so what? As long as you're making enough money, the other nine months, whatever, the problem is employees. How do you keep them busy? How do you

keep them motivated? How do you keep them period? And one of the ideas you guys came up with was to put up Christmas lights for people, did you know it was going to be this big an idea when you first brainstormed it? No idea. No idea. I mean, it is the biggest, most profitable part of Shackshine. It's done in a smaller seasonality for sure. It does keep people busy. But you've got ladders, you've got vans, and it's like, why not put those people to work? And it's been exceptional. I mean, we're putting up Christmas lights. We're putting up lights for Diwali. We're putting up seasonal lights for, you name it, Easter. People's got a sports team, an NFL team that's in the playoffs, and they want their

lights put up in those colors. And it's really taken off. And it's been a fun business that really makes people smile and feel happy. And then it goes viral in a sense that when we start doing a block and we have our shack shine sign out front, others go, oh, wow, I need to get shack shine. And it starts to spread. So the business fits very well. we just had no idea that it would end up being about a third of our revenue.

Can they ever get the lights from you too? Do you go that far to actually provide the, you do? We do, yeah. So there's a factory in China that creates all of these. They come in so many different custom sizes and colors and shapes. And that's where we're able to give a customer a real, of, hey, you want something unique on your house. Let's do it.

I'm going to get Detroit Lions lighting next year from you guys for sure. Now, I talked about the ladders. You didn't have a chance to comment. Was I not right there that that's something older people should be staying away from fully? Yeah, so I literally have a friend in Long Island, New York, who called me after he fell off his ladder, and we were in a forum group together through the entrepreneur organization. And so he should have used shakshine. He knew about shack shine, but I don't want to bug them.

And you know what? I enjoy getting outside on the ladder. He's up on a ladder. He fell, broke his shoulder or collarbone. and the first thing he said when he hit the ground was, I should have called Shack Shine. They're marketing for you. Yeah, there's your next commercial for sure.

Do you run into insurance challenges in that industry? Is it expensive to insure all of this? I mean, it's not ridiculous. It's doable. I mean, insurance is a fact of life and it's something you've got to have in business. It's not ridiculous. What does the extreme weather do to any of these businesses?

Has it been a bit of the help to the latter of them? You know, what, it can be a good thing and a bad thing. you end up getting flooding that's happened recently. Texas, for example, horrific downpour that, you know, takes lives. We do see whenever there's a big flood that we get a ton of business for 1-800-goth junk. And people will have all this stuff, flooded basements, garages, you name it. So weather does have an impact. Weather, as you can imagine, can impact shakshine.

No question. Dust starts going everywhere in Phoenix and people now need their windows done. and extreme cold, though, can make it tough when you can't access water in Chicago. So every region is different and has sort of some puts and takes, if you will, and you just work through it all. Interesting. Now, let's talk a little bit about your Dragon's Then experience. Have you enjoyed it? Have you ended up getting involved with some of the deals?

I mean, I met so many wonderful people through that show. It was amazing. Yeah. It is so fun, Dave. So I remember talking to Robert Hergevik before I had officially accepted and trying to sort of put my my name in the ring and he's been a friend and, you know, he asked me why I wanted to do it. And he was really pushing me to like, why do you want this? Do you want to be famous? What's the deal? And I said, I just want to inspire entrepreneurship. I love the fact that I've been able to

build these three businesses. I want to take Canadian entrepreneurship and help be a part of inspiring the next generation. It doesn't mean they're going to come join us in our business, but in any business. And it's done that and more. And I remember Herjavik said to me, he goes, tell the producers that. Tell them you're a why. So I did and I got the role and I filmed my second season and the dragons as you know we become friends and close. And we we work together and Arlene will sit there and coach me on how to do a deal. I'd never done a deal in my life. And then suddenly I'm sitting beside Arlene, the OG and she starts sharing all this info with me and we have fun. So last year I did eight deals and three got funded. We didn't close them all.

We thought we were going to close a fourth, but the woman didn't want to partner last minute and backed out. This year, I did seven deals on TV on this next season, and we'll see what it turns into. I don't know if I'm going to have the same closing ratio that you do, but certainly having fun and meeting really neat people. And one thing we do is we bring all the entrepreneurs to Vancouver once a year. Forever, you know, the people that we do deals with, we're trying to build a little community where they can cover. learn not just from us but from each other and they've been staying in touch and having so much fun so it's it's been neat it's a it's a I feel you're very good you know you really are you're such an authentic person and again I'm going to toot your horn a little bit when you talked about

your why you've accomplished it because you're not coming from just high tech so many of the entrepreneurs that draw all the attention are tech geniuses they're so good at the digital sphere and a lot of Canadians don't relate to that as well yeah they don't feel they that confidence. They didn't have that educational background. They see someone like you in more traditional industries who's come up with innovative ways to draw attention, build momentum, et cetera, and it is inspiring. And they think I can do that. They watch you on the show where I think you're wonderful. And again, you come across very authentically and you're very nice to people on the show. I know when I was at first on it was nice to people. That was unusual. But now

more dragons have kind of swung over that way. And they're trying to help. They're trying to raise others and be kinder. So that's all very, very good. I'm glad you're doing well. by the way, you brought up an interesting point. You're saying that one woman changed her mind. A lot of viewers are critical of the show because they say, oh, I hear a lot of deals didn't close. Well, a couple things. Naturally, a lot of deals aren't going to close because, to be honest,

you get a lot of misinformation on the show. Of course. A lot of the answers aren't right. And it's not that people are intentionally misleading you. In most cases, they don't know their numbers particularly well. It's true. But there's a second thing that comes into play much more often than the viewers realize that people aren't really there to get the money.

They want the exposure of the show, the content, tax, maybe a strategic partner, but they're already financed, don't need it or don't need it under the terms they're talking about in the show. Like, I remember Bruce Croxon had a run where he said yes to several deals in a row, and the people didn't need the money. Yeah. And people might sell, Bruce, you didn't close those deals. Well, they wouldn't let me.

And so it doesn't work quite the way people think. So I'm not surprised one person changed their mind, but three closings in one year is excellent. And it's so much fun. It's so much fun staying in touch with the entrepreneurs, helping them out, making introductions, all of it. Yeah, it feels impactful, right? to have so many mentors in my life that have helped me so generously with their time and

energy to help make my business better now to be able to give back and watch others and just give them one little tip that might make a big difference. It's really rewarding. Are you ever going to go back and get that last high school course or is this just over? It's not happening for it. Absolutely not. I think it's one of those things that I held on to for so long that I fought with my dad where my dad was like, just go back and finish your one course, sure, blah, blah, no. I kind of have fun with the story. And so I'm glad I didn't. And where it sometimes inspires people is people will say to me, you know, Brian, I didn't finish high school either. Or Brian, you know, I don't know how to read books. And they'll tell

me something that they find relatable in me that they go, hey, Brian, you're so ADD, you have trouble reading. So am I. Yet they, it gives them permission to go be able to start a business. So you nailed one there. I mean, the percentage. of successful entrepreneurs who have ADD is through the roof. It's like a blessing not a curse when it comes to entrepreneurship. It's crazy.

If I were in your shoes, I think the thing I'd be most proud of is that if you look at Canada, that's probably true in the States too, but it has to be 60 to 70% of Canadian households have at some point used $2,200 a chunk. Like everybody's used as a service

of one point or another. That's exciting. It is. It feels good. It's been 36 years of building it. We got lots. lots of great things that continue to get better and we've got such wonderful people. But we talked about it today that on a given year, we have enough customers to fill every

single stadium, baseball stadium in North America, every single fun with people still standing outside. And so it's amazing how much it's grown. And again, I just, I feel like, why would I ever sell this if I'm still having this much fun? No, I agree. And you've got relatively young kids. It's how old are your kids?

Yeah, they range from 13 years old up to 20. And do you think that any of them will step into the business at some point or too early to tell? It's early to tell and they've never really expressed interest, but there is, there's entrepreneurial sparks there. I don't want to, I don't want them to feel like their dad wants them to join the business. I want them to go, hey, dad, I'd really love a chance at this and they come to me. So we'll see what happens. Are you going to open up a fourth and a fifth at any point? Are you going to focus on these three for a while?

I think if the opportunity strikes itself, I mean, we're busy. We've got her hands full with three brands right now. And it's a lot. And there's challenges always at different times with different brands. So to us, it's all about the right people. If we've got a leader that's leading one of the brands like we do, an incredible woman leading shakshine right now, she is on fire. And it's like, we don't have to do a lot in that business because she's so good. And so would we start another? I think if we found the right business and the right leader, we probably would. Now, you must have come to know Canada's most famous franchisor, Jim Tree Living very well over there is Boston Pizza, former Dragon. One of the nicest people I've ever met. He and his wife Sandy are incredibly giving, very involved in the community to cross paths with him and shared stories about the business. Yeah, many times. So a couple of fun facts there is when I auditioned for Dragons Den the first time, it took me three times. The very the first time was the first season before it was actually a show. And in the end, when they gave me a no, they said, actually, you lost out to the Boston pizza guy. And I was, okay, well, that's

okay, knowing that, like, he's awesome. And then I got to know Jim over the years. I reached out a couple of times. We actually just had lunch recently together. And he's fantastic. He is, gentlemen. I, at 84 years old, and his age can be in the business as actively involved and still feeling so lucky to be a part of the business. I mean, wow, that's where you've really won in life. But yes, him and Sandy, great people. They are. And they've done a similar type of thing where you know, you look at you, me, him. Like, we've all loved what we've done. Very lucky. And you two. And we take the ups and downs. And both of them are like, okay, let's go. Let's continue on. This is fun. And he's an amazing guy. You know, it's funny, you bring up, we talked

about Jim and Sandy, but you look back at Dragon's then, 19, 20, 20 years. It's the 20th year this year? Yeah, this was the 20th season. And people love to take shots at the CBC, but they've done a wonderful job of choosing the dragons. Look how involved in the community across this country.

Most of the dragons have been. Like, the charity involvement levels are through the roof, the giving back, the taking of the calls like Jim did when you call. All of that. I find the dragons have been amazing. And the current crop is very good still. Yeah, no, I think there's so much fun to work with. And yes, people don't get to see the behind the scenes of what really happens when the

cameras are off. But I will say that when I look at those five dragons, everybody there is like in it for the right reasons. They care about Canadian entrepreneurship. They want to help. They're willing to give time even when they don't do a deal. Like they're good people there for the right reasons. No, I agree. I think the show has really helped a lot of people. When I go on the college university campuses, especially five, 10 years ago, I couldn't believe how many people came up and said, I got involved in business at the University and College level because of Dragons and Shark Tank.

I grew up watching them. They lit the fire. They showed me the possibilities and pulled me in. So the show has done some very positive things on that front. Very much so. And again, the brand that they've built versus, say, a Shark Tank, what I love about the Canadian brand and the CBC has done is they're not trying to make people look bad.

They're not trying to catch people like, oops, you screwed up here, ha ha, they are just treating people with kindness and respect. And if something's not a good idea, they're still saying it in a nice way. And maybe that's just us all being Canadian and polite and apologetic. But the people that leave Dragons Den, even when they don't get a deal, they'll often reach out to many of us,

and they'll still say what a difference it made to them. Well, listen, we really appreciate coming on. You are a true Canadian icon. I mean that. I mean, what you've been able to achieve here, everybody knows your brands, everybody knows your success. Just to finish up, tell us the name of your master company, the one that owns the brands. I find that very cool. Yeah, so it's O2E brands, which stands for ordinary to exceptional.

We take ordinary services like junk removal and make them exceptionals through service. We take ordinary people like Tyler and Josh, who started in the trucks. They bought out their franchise owner, and now they do $200 million in revenue. So it's taking that ordinary and just going, how do you make it exceptional? O2E. Yeah, that's very cool. I was telling you off there that ours is E2O. We take exceptional people like Marine, and we've turned her into something very ordinary.

In fact, maybe even below average. I'll have to come up with a new acronym for her. I don't know what we do. Anyway, wonderful getting to know you this way. Thank you so much for coming on, and I'm sure we'll see each other again. Well, thank you very much, Dave, and I don't think I honestly would be here today if it wasn't for the inspiration of your book, The Wealthy Barber, which really helped me see the world of making money and making a difference. So thank you. I will take shares as compensation, Brian. I'm not above that. Oh, you're cutting out, Dave. Dave, are you there? Oh, you've got out.

Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you.