Failing To Succeed w Brian Scudamore of 1-800-Got-Junk, #EEP Entrepreneurship Elevated Podcast #278

Strap on that 5-point seatbelt of yours. Oh my God. That's a throwback to the past, Mike. Yes, it kind of is. Cause, cause, uh, cause Kelsey and J Bone did not give me an adjective and a noun. So I had to do a throwback. You, my friends, you're about to discover how willing to fail is the best philosophy you can have to have a successful business. You're about to discover that and so much more in today's episode of Entrepreneurship Elevated. That's right.

Good job, Mike.

Thank you. Good recovery. Hi everyone, I'm Mike Michalowicz. I'm an author on a very specific mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. You know what entrepreneurial poverty is. It's that belief that the day you started your business, everyone's like, oh my God, you're a billionaire now. Oh my God, all you do is walk around the beach and drink, you know, your margaritas and just hang out and you have a cash ATM. But the reality is you work your butt off. You work harder than anyone you know and you don't make the money. It's a constant struggle. That's entrepreneurial poverty, but it's fixable. And that's what we fix on this show. So welcome.

Welcome.

And hey, Kelsey Ayers.

Hey. Hello, friend. Thank you so much for listening to us. Please don't forget to subscribe.

Did you say listen on us?

To us.

Oh.

Right? Is that what I said?

I don't know. It sounded good.

Please subscribe wherever you're listening.

Yeah. Wherever you're listening right now, just click on that subscribe button. And, uh, Yeah, and that's what we want to do, you know. So, Kels? Yeah, how you been? What you been up to? Anything you want to share?

Um, I can tell you that I drained my well this weekend because I really wanted to paint my deck, so I power washed it and then I ran out of water.

So yeah, so does it start spitting out mud?

No, it didn't. It just stopped. Yeah.

And then how do you— do you just let it refill?

That's how.

So that was the goal, and then the plumber came like 4 hours later and I I had zero water. Like, we dropped a rock into the well and it just hit bottom. Like, there was no water in it. So he's like, uh, I think you need to hydrofrack.

Hydrofrack?

Yeah.

What's that?

So my understanding is basically like you can crack into other aquifers to pull in more water. I think you blast it with water that's supposedly in the well already and then it opens up new.

So are you waterless right now?

No, so what happened then, I shut the pump off for a day, and then the next day when the well guys came, there was some water in the well, so he was like, I don't want to hydrofrack if we don't need to, so we'll just monitor it, and if you keep getting water, then you're good. And so far, I've had water.

Huh.

What have you been up to, Jay Scalone?

Eating chicken wings. Yeah.

Dude.

That's pretty much it. Yeah, I was, I was, uh, testing the, um, the Scoville unit level for Buffalo Wild Wings.

Oh, that's the heat, right?

Yeah, yeah, the picante. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need, we need to get you involved on this little wing challenge.

Oh yeah, oh, I'm up for it, I'm up for it. Hey, if you're willing to bring him into the office one day, we can have a wing eating contest. Didn't Mike Scalise, the Hawaiian Lumberjack—

yeah, he didn't though.

He's like, we're having a wing contest, and it was a total disaster. Like, he's like, I Nothing happened.

Yeah, so one of the restaurants we used to work at, pre-shift, if like let's say it was like a slow night, we didn't have much to do, all the cooks would have a little competition, a wing competition beforehand. We would like maybe like once every couple weeks.

I love it. I love it. Yeah, so last night, here's what I'm up to. Last night, it's, it's maybe—

here's what I'm up to since you guys didn't ask.

You guys would never ask. It's like 11 o'clock at night, I'm sitting there and And sleeping, you know, not sitting, sleeping. I'm sleeping on my back and all of a sudden, Kris is like, don't do it, don't you, and then she starts swearing, don't you fucking do it, you know, blah, blah, blah, yells.

She's dreaming?

Yeah, and I'm like, what am I doing, what am I doing? And I shake her, she was sleeping. First time ever she spoke in her sleep.

It's freaky.

Yelling at me. And she had this dream that she was laying on her back too, that she was facing the ceiling and you know those Christmas lights that come like almost a net, you can throw it over a bush? She's like, the whole ceiling was that, and that she saw me in her dream going up there, pulling it down, and she didn't want me pulling it down. Dude, it scared the hell out of me. Don't you effing do it. I'm like, I still apologize, J Bone, just like any good husband would. I'm sorry. Kelsey, before we get into our interview with Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the author of Willing to Fail, and this philosophy that all entrepreneurs need to follow, Just real quick, I do wanna thank our corporate partner Nextiva, voice over IP phone system, NextOS. They hooked up with Don Miller, they called me yesterday. They went to StoryBrand, they love Don Miller. Don, remember we went down there ourselves and he spent an afternoon with us? He did the exact same thing for Nextiva. I said, hey, would you be willing to help these guys? He's like, yeah, no problem, just have them come down, no charge, no nothing, spent Sunday, Sunday. Don Miller's insane. He's the best guy ever.

And now you have no sponsor.

I know. I didn't know Steve was leaving us.

That's funny, actually.

That's a good point. Um, do we have any, uh, any listener shoutouts?

We do! This one comes from Peter Erickson. He writes, hi Mike, thanks for writing about your business experiences and the Profit First solutions. Profit First makes more sense to me than all of my education in accounting. I'm just now starting my own small practice and hope to guide small business owners into financially rewarding futures using your systems.

Peter, nicely done, brother. Thank you for saying that, and thanks for listening to our show. All right, I think we get into the, uh, the work at hand here. Yeah, Willing to Fail, it's the book that you need to read. It's written by Brian Scudamore. So Brian, uh, and I met through this thing called Birthing of Giants. This is maybe almost 15 years ago, and there's a guy sitting next— he sat right next to me You don't know, no one knows anybody. And I'm full of bravado and ego. And I'm like, hey, so what do you do? And Brian's like, we remove junk. And I'm like, do you mean garbage? And he's like, oh gosh, like already he rolls his eyes back. He's like, no, garbage and junk is totally different. Which I didn't appreciate. And he had this business called Rubbish Boys at the time. And he's like, I got this vision to make this into an international brand. Fast forward like, Just years later, 1-800-GOT-JUNK is an international brand. They do hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of business. They're on, I think, every continent except for maybe Antarctica, if that's a continent.

I don't even know.

Doing this, and he started based upon a philosophy of failure, accepting and embracing failure. And actually, recently I heard Sarah Blakely, she's the founder of Spanx.

Yeah.

Like, didn't her parent or father or mother would go to him every dinner and say, how did you fail today? At least I heard that story.

I don't know. I haven't heard that.

Okay. So maybe I'm making it up, but I thought I heard the story of embracing failure. Well, finally, there's a book out there called Willing to Fail, written by Brian Scudamore himself, who shares this. So with no further ado, let's get Brian on the show. Brian, welcome, sir.

Welcome, Brian.

Awesome. Thank you for having me. Super stoked to be here.

Do you remember that first Birthing of Giants where we all met?

I do. I do. And I was getting all snobby on you on garbage removal.

You're like, yeah, I knew you were. No, but it was— I'm sure you hear that all the time though. Like, I think many people misconstrue, the laypeople, what the difference is between junk and garbage. Or maybe not.

Not as much anymore. We've got so many competitors. We've built an industry in junk removal. I started by calling it junk removal when really back in the day it was rubbish removal. You'd look in the Yellow Pages if you remember those, and they didn't have a junk removal section. So we had to educate people that there was a difference. And one of the key things we did was we made sure that the word junk was in our name, got junk and we started to transform and create a new category.

So that's so smart. And you've defined the category. J-Bone, you ever watch Undercover Boss?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm watching Undercover Boss. Brian, true story. I'm flipping the channels one day and I'm like, hold on, I know that guy. Brian Scudamore was on Undercover Boss.

That's awesome.

Oh, cool.

Tell us just a little bit about that experience and I'm going to see how this parleys into willing to fail.

Yeah. So a couple of things. Number one was I love the fact that the film crew shows up. My wife's pregnant. They take me upstairs and they said, we'll be back with Brian in a few minutes. I come down, they've got the cameras on my wife. They just, they had just shaved my head and capturing that reality moment of my wife going, what, what happened to my Brian? And it was, it was funny. So, you know, that was one of the few moments that was real, you know, real shaved head, real reaction. And I went out on the road for a week and I thought, this is going to be so fun. And it was. But you are undercover and you've got a backstory. I was a guy looking for a bunch of different jobs and trying different industries. I'd been laid off from an accounting position, but people, my truck team members still had cameras on them 24/7. So they're on their best behavior. They know what's going on, even though they didn't recognize me, which I thought was strange, but so much fun. They didn't. And even one time I was in a boardroom meeting with the team and I started introducing myself and my, my backstory, my name was Hugo. Hugo Ward. And so there I am introducing myself, and to one person I shake my hand out and said, hi, I'm Brian. I mean, 40-some-odd years of being Brian, it's easy to slip up. Yeah. And somehow nobody caught it, but it made for great TV.

Oh my gosh. But it's so funny because you are very recognizable. The commercials I see, the ads, you're on the radio all the time, so you're— I hear your voice all the time. Like, we point to it and it disappears. Like, I know your commercials. I'm just surprised that people don't see you. I wonder if it's because they're under the scrutiny of the camera that maybe they're even too nervous to really pay attention to the details.

You know what? So it's interesting. I had a real-life test the night before I left to go on the road for Undercover Boss. They shaved my head, we'd filmed that first scene, and they said, have your bags ready for tomorrow, we're off to the airport. I went to a housewarming party that close friends of mine had, and there was about 80 people there.. And I showed up in my disguise. I had the glasses that they gave me and my bald head, and I was sitting and standing beside friends of mine that I'd known for 20 years having conversations, and they didn't realize. No, it is— you know what, if someone wants to do a social experiment, shave your head, put on glasses, or change your look slightly, it was mind-blowing. I'm like, how did you not recognize me? And it was just It was unexpected. So that gave me confidence that on the road, people that knew me from any promotional material in 1-800-GOT-JUNK?'s story wouldn't recognize me. And they didn't. Yeah.

Just the voice. How do they not recognize your voice? I mean, I would recognize your voice in a second. Yeah. It's strange.

I think there's some familiarity there, but they can't quite place it. Yeah. I don't know. It was legit. I mean, I had asked all 4 of the employees that were featured on the show at the end off camera. I'm like, you must have known. They're like, no, I had no clue. It was fun.

That is wild. That is wild. So that's awesome. Part of this, this journey with 1-800-GOT-JUNK, or much of the journey was the inspiration behind your book, Willing to Fail. So tell me a little bit about Willing to Fail and what was the inspiration behind your book?

We've got a guy, a genius who does our radio creative, Roy Williams. He's known as the Wizard of Ads. He's got a wizard's tower in Austin, Texas. He's phenomenal and he's bought more radio than anyone on the planet. His claim to fame. So we go down there one day and he goes, Brian, I say this to you every year, but I'm serious. We have to write a book. You got to write a book. And I said, I just— my ego doesn't need a book. I don't have the time to write a book. And he said, I'll make it easy. I'll help you. I'll interview you. We'll transcribe it and we'll create this book together. And so he convinced me. He said, this story isn't about your ego. This is a story about sharing things you've learned in your 30-year journey with others so you can help them. It's about culturally connecting our truck team members across any of our 4 brands with our stories. So we did the book less than a year later, we put it out there and, uh, it did exactly what the wizard said it would do. It connected people to stories and people started to look at this and go, wow, I didn't know that story, or I didn't know you learned this. And one of the most interesting parts, my favorite part of this process, was Roy Williams said to me, "Don't worry about the title." And I said, "I'm a branding guy. I've created Wow One Day Painting. I've created Chat Shine. We've created brands that have led with fun names that work." He goes, "No, no, no, just trust me. Let's write the book. We'll close it. We'll figure out what the title is later." And sure enough, the title jumped out as WTF: Willing to Fail. We have this meeting room called WTF: Willing to Fail.. And we, after reading the 30 years of stories, I'm like, wow, Roy was right. The title did jump out. I failed, I learned, I grew. I failed, I learned, I grew. And so goes 30 years of stories.

Well, tell us about the philosophy then. Give us some more details of the willing to fail philosophy.

I didn't have the philosophy going into my business, of course, but looking back, it's now what I embrace and we teach others here as our franchise owners and our people in the junction or head office, that every failure, if you allow it, will lead to a better place in the world. So one of my first big failures, 5 years into the business, 11 employees. They say one bad apple spoils a whole bunch. I had 9 bad apples. I just, I decided to start again and I got rid of all 11 people and I said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I let you down and find the right people, give you the love and support you needed to be successful. And I effectively downsized everybody to then recreate the right culture in my business. Something that was so painful that took me from half a million in revenue down to just driving a truck by myself. I was able to rebuild and I learned that day it's all about people finding the right people and treating them right. And if I had learned that, if I didn't learn that lesson, we wouldn't win all these awards for great workplaces and most admired cultures. We wouldn't have built the right type of company. I, as a leader, needed to fail. I needed to fall flat on my face and learn a tough lesson before I could grow. So my advice to everybody, and I do this constantly when I make a mistake, I often write down when I'm ready— sometimes it might take weeks— but what's the one thing I learned here that will help me be a better leader, a better person, and create a better business? And I've never been let down. Every mistake has led to a bigger better place.

Huh. So, but is it necessary? I mean, I thought the whole goal is to avoid mistakes. Just, you know, just crank forward. And the less mistakes you make, the faster you move. But now I'm hearing something that sounds like the polar opposite. Is it necessary? Is it really necessary? Or can be avoided?

Or should it be avoided? No, I think if you try to avoid it, you're going to make mistakes, your ego is going to be bruised, and you're gonna have a harder time. I think it's embracing those failures. It's like my kids, I've got my eldest is a ski racer. And I remember the amount of times they used to go through these awful winters and they'd fall and they'd get slightly hurt and discouraged, but they knew that one day it would take them to a place where each fall would lead my kids to going, okay, I got this. I know how to avoid that type of fall. You know, and I know enough about your story and I'm not going to share all sorts of details right now, but Is it safe to say that you've had a number of failures in your life and that you've taken those and you've said, okay, what do I need to tweak? What do I need to adjust? I have not met an entrepreneur, at least one that's got transparency as a value, who says they haven't failed. And it's those, even if I look at our franchise partners, some of them have made grave mistakes, but they've been able to get out of them and learn how to further develop and grow their business. And, you know, Something I've noticed with our franchise owners, whether it's Shack Shine Wow and Day, it doesn't matter. They are building businesses and it's never easy in the beginning because you're making so many mistakes. But those who have succeeded wildly have had these unbelievable experiences where they say like, this business has changed my life. And I always try to remind them, you've changed your own life because you've taken the dark days, the bad moments, and you've learned and you've improved. I think it's a must.

You know, with your business model though, people are able to benefit from the mistakes you've made. I know, for example, Craig Minter, he's an owner in, uh, of Wow One Day, um, one of your franchise locations that they paint an entire home or residence in one day. Like, the entire house can be painted one day. It's a really cool model. And, um, this has been, if I can speak for him, his most successful business ever. And when I was interviewing him, because we included him in one of my books, is that he took a lot of the hard lessons that I guess you learned and built systems around so that he could avoid those questions. So does every entrepreneur need to go through every mistake, or is there a way to learn from each other?

I think you can learn from others. Absolutely. I mean, that's what school is about. That's what learning on the internet's about, is understanding what mistakes others have made so that you don't have to repeat them. I even talk about in WTF in my book, I made some hard mistakes that I want to share so that you don't have to do the same hard things the hard way. However, you're going to make other mistakes that others might not have made. Craig Merrill's a great guy, love him. He's so, so good.

Oh, Merrill's not Mentor, right?

He's so good at what he does. But if you ask the guy if he's made mistakes, absolutely. I mean, he's hired some wrong people. You can learn from the franchisor and all those processes and systems we've laid for you. But some people will find as franchise partners don't trust the systems and they come in and they'll often say, yeah, I should have followed the recipe. I, you know, I thought I knew better. That's a mistake. But they learn and then they start following the recipe and contribute to the recipe betterment for everyone else who comes behind them.

Why do we lose this willingness to fail? Because I think about it when I was raising my kids, I remember the first time Jake started to walk, and I'm like, oh, you got it! He looked like Frankenstein, Brian. He's bumbling around, he falls down. That was amazing, go for it again, right? Like, you embrace failures. But now, as an adult, shame on me, but if my son doesn't get an A+ on his report card, I'm like, mm, you could have done better. I'm not embracing the failure. Do you see that as a trend? What's going on? Why am I losing, and why do others potentially? Lose the concept of embracing failure?

I think we're scared of failure. I think in a social media world, you don't see many people posting on Instagram, look what I screwed up today. Maybe they should. Maybe they should share those lessons with others. I've heard stories of plenty of friends that have posted things on Instagram and they're like, if you really knew what was going on in my life when I posted that happy smiley picture, you'd be surprised. So I think It's okay to be vulnerable, to be transparent and say, I don't have all the answers. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. I never will be. What can I learn today? How can I make a mistake? How can I be better? So we try to, as a culture here at O2E Brands, which stands for Ordinary to Exceptional, it's all the brands we're building. You can't make a leap from ordinary to exceptional if you're not willing to embrace failure. So last weekend we had our O2E Brands leadership team retreat. 10 of us went away to Lake Country in Ontario. And our president, Eric Church, said, I'm going to push you guys out of your comfort zone. And not everybody ended up doing this, but those that wanted to take some risks, which was 6 out of the 10, we went dirt biking. I've never been on a motorcycle in my life. I didn't know how to work a clutch and the brakes, and it was complicated. But we were prepped. We learned carefully from 2 great instructors, and then they took us on a terrifying trail ride. But you know what? While I fell and my bike went flying, I wasn't injured. I wasn't going fast enough to be injured. But every time I did fall, I would get up and try again and say, what did I do wrong? And I'd reflect. So I think with employees in the business, what works well for us is saying, okay, you made a mistake. Awesome. Congrats. What did you learn? When people know that they can be empowered to make mistakes, And you don't want them to make massive financial mistakes and ruin the reputation of the company. But allowing people to make a mistake and then ask them, what did you just learn? What would you do differently? It's that reflection that becomes incredibly powerful in their own development and the growth of the company.

You're clearly a beloved leader. I had the privilege, Kelsey and Jay Sloan, to visit Brian's offices. This is maybe 10 years ago. Though. And I can just tell your colleagues adore you. They love you because your humbleness. And is that— is that a necessary part of this formula for, for thriving through mistakes in that, that you have a community that embraces you? And is humbleness one of the key factors or the key factor?

It's hard to say. It's a good question. I'm just being me. But I think what is important is a leader needs to be honest and transparent and willing to encourage people. I think as leaders, humble or not, part of a leader's job is to say, you know what, I see something in you. Here's a blind spot or here's a potential opportunity I think I can help you with. And give them some freedom to make some mistakes and allow them to learn. And it sounds simple and nobody wants to fail. But again, you take it back to the simplest thing like playing ice hockey or skiing. Two very Canadian things that I'm passionate about. You have to fall, you have to fail. And that's how we all get better. You know, I think there's very few people that went straight from putting on skis to doing some massive jumps and getting air.

I mean, it just doesn't work that way. It's funny, one of our colleagues here, Amy, she has a propensity to always say she's sorry. And they're not even like, even like mistakes, like this, just whatever. She interrupts you, it's like, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. And so we came up with a stick. It says ass on it. It says the Amy Sorry Stick, or ASS. And we swatter with it. And part of it's a game, but part of it too is to, to not be fearful of putting ourselves out there. Is there a way, Brian, that you're inspiring or encouraging your colleagues to make mistakes, to actually encourage it to move faster?

I think the one thing I do, we do, is encouraging people to admit admit their mistakes. You're going to make mistakes whether you like it or not. So I don't need to do anything to say get out there and fail. But I want to give people a safe platform to say, yeah, I screwed up. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done it this way, but I did. And here's what I learned. So I very much try and parent in the same way, you know, kids are gonna do things that teenagers do and little kids do. It's okay.

What did you learn? How do you get them to admit it, though?

Well, they don't always admit it. I mean, I know that when I was a kid, I certainly kept almost everything from my parents, but it's just trying to build, uh, build trust and, and show them that it really is okay. I think kids get fearful of going, oh, I'm going to be in so much trouble from my parents. But if they find out they mentioned something and they weren't in trouble and they were asked that question, what did you learn, They kind of go, oh, okay. I don't think it gets them to do more mistakes. I think it gets them to come to you to say, hey, Dad, I kind of messed up with this at school and, uh, curious what you think.

What, what should I have done? Yeah, yeah. And I think just fessing up to a mistake too, there's relief that you don't have to keep a secret from your parent or your boss. So even if there's no resolution to it, the fact that you're not— there's no punitive consequence, it's just now it's off your chest might be helpful too.

Yeah, and there's emotion behind mistakes. So I'm not suggesting to people don't be real. You know, somebody ends up losing you a million bucks, you're probably going to be upset about it. But again, what things can you reflect on and how do you improve the direction or the way a company gets to its painted picture and its vision by tweaking behavior?

Do you have any favorite failures of your own as you reflect back on your journey?

I think my biggest failure certainly was being on the show. Yeah. So if I had to pick a close number 2 right now, it is right now a close, a close number 2. No, my, my biggest failure would be, I think, when I had hired an ex-president from Starbucks and I brought this person into my business and I was so enamored by their pedigree and the fact that they led 30,000 employees. I love Starbucks. I got one in front of me right as we speak. And so I thought, wow, what can this person do to my tiny little company? This person wanted to move from Seattle back to Vancouver where they were from. I'd hit the jackpot. I didn't actually hit the jackpot. What happened was I found a leader who was a very good leader and great at business and doing very well today, but wasn't the right leader for me. Didn't understand and relate to an ADD quirky entrepreneur that is always coming up with new ideas and shooting from the hip and the importance that my role played in the big picture. And so, while we got along, we weren't really joined at the hip like my new COO of 8 years, Eric Church. This guy and I are so different, yet we trust each other implicitly. We are so aligned in everything we do. And it works out so incredibly well for both of us. We've quadrupled the company since he's been here under his leadership. With the Starbucks person, revenues dropped immensely. We almost bankrupted the company. So when you ask me what's my biggest failure, I was 3 days away from signing over the papers to a private equity firm that was going to give us enough cash that we needed to stay alive.

And I ended up changing my mind, which also means they would take the business from you, right?

It was an equity deal that was more than 50%. And I would lose ownership and I'd be kicked out of my own business. And we know how those stories play out, but that would not have been a good direction. So I think in moments of failure, it's also having the courage to stick to your gut, to trust that you know what's best for the business long-term. And I laid off a bunch of people, including that ex-president and their entire team. And restructured the company and hunkered down, and everybody thought I was crazy. But today people look back and went, okay, that was a good decision.

That reminds me of the story, uh, I can't remember the founder of Clif Bar, uh, Gary Erickson. Gary Erickson. Nicely done. Gary Erickson, uh, gets approached by a private equity deal to make more money in one moment than he ever has in his entire life to become financially independent. And he sits there and he had that gut moment. He said, this, this is the worst thing for the brand and therefore the worst thing for me, and walked away while they were starting to sign checks. I mean, I— that sounds like that's 11th hour. Yeah. Is, is catching a failure sooner better than later, Brian, or, or is there value in getting up to the wire because of the intensity of the awareness?

I think it's just finding awareness at some point where hopefully you can make a decision and you've got enough time to execute. Clearly, had I signed those papers, that would have been a whole different type of failure that would have taken myself and the business in a, in a different direction. But I think it's just being open to making mistakes, making tough calls. The Clif Bar story that you tell, which I think is amazing, my similar version on a smaller scale, I'm sure, was I was out on a fishing boat with two executives from Waste Management. And I talk about this in the book. And Waste Management had approached me and wined and dined me and took me on this amazing fishing trip. I'm in the boat, two garbage company executives, we're in the middle of nowhere. They're trying to get me to sell my business. And I said, no, sounds like you're about to get killed by the— exactly. So there I was saying no. And I thought maybe I was saying no to a future of any type. But these, these guys basically, you know, they were talking $75 to $100 $1 million, which would have been more money than I could have ever imagined. And I said no. Yeah, because I didn't believe I was motivated enough by money to want to take that money. But even bigger, I saw a vision. I knew what I wanted to build. I had my painted picture clearly in my mind and I wasn't done. So I kept at it and continued to build.

It's like exactly like an episode of The Sopranos. They're in a boat on the water.

Yeah. Hey, I'm gonna give you $175 mil.

Here's what we're gonna do. Well, according to them, waste management is their bread and butter. That's where they make all their money because the mob was so like—

yeah, the mob. Oh, the mob was big into that. Yeah. But Brian, do those guys look at you and say, are you crazy? Is that like they look at you like, son, this will change your life, your next generation's life, and the generation after that, and probably a couple more? Are you crazy? Like Did you get that look from them?

I did. And I remember I responded with them and we were having some beers and we still had a great time. And I said, I said, you guys could give me a ridiculous sum of money, like $1 billion, which I knew you— I know you won't, but you could. And I would still say no. I would still say no to $1 billion because it's not what's driving me. It's not what I'm looking for. And it's not the right thing for the future of the business.

So this is an aside, not really about failure, but it's a real curious point of mine, because I'm writing about this in my new upcoming book, is there's a certain transition point where money is no longer a motivator for entrepreneurs. I mean, if you can't feed yourself, money's probably a motivator to feed yourself. But for you, Brian, when did it come to the point where it's really not about money now, and it's about— tell me what it is about. I don't know.

It was years before I started making any significant amount of money where I could do anything I wanted to do. I think part of it is I grew up with a family in San Francisco where my grandparents worked in an army surplus store, and I saw how happy they were taking care of customers and working with employees. And they just had a love for life, and none of it seemed to center around money. So I know what makes me happy. I've got my little Toyota pickup truck, which can basically drive anywhere in the mountains and I love it. I've got my family, our health, our skiing. We don't— I'm not one to want to take money to go spend it on things, but more experiences and love to travel and love to see people in our company grow. I love to watch how lives are being changed by our franchise partners who have levels of success that they would have never dreamed of. That's what juices me. So it's different. I get that a lot of people want yachts and cars and different things. I'd rather put money back into the business and create more opportunity for others with O2E Brands and all that we're creating. And that's the game I'm playing. That's the fun. When you talk about our Gathering of Titans, GOT class in Boston, if you look around that room, most of that group is driven that way. And I think that's part of what's kept us together for coming on 20 years.

You know, so it used to be called Birthing Giants. It transformed to Gathering Titans. And like Brian said, it's quite 20 years now. One interesting thing, I won't mention the person's name, but last year during one of the meetings, one person made $80 million, went into their pocket, and he says, you don't understand. I don't know if his word was dread he experiences now, but he says, I'm devoting my life to the retention of this money. He goes, the money has now controlled me. I'm so fearful of losing it. It's retention. He goes, I almost wish I didn't sell the business. I wonder if his story is a harbinger for the challenges entrepreneurs will face when it's all about money, and if there's something beyond that, this impact that you're having. Do you see that with other entrepreneurs, that they kind of level out at the money, and then the fear of losing money is their biggest fear of failure, and now you're playing defense as opposed to playing offense? Do you see that in other entrepreneurs occasionally?

Yeah, I think money, once you come into it and you'll see some people get out there and go buy fancy cars. There's another person related through that program and I won't mention names either, but I remember they bought their Ferrari, they bought their 7,500-square-foot home, they had all these things and they got so sick and tired of the way people treated them differently because of the Ferrari, the extra costs on all their bills around their house and everything. People wanting what they had. And they just said, you know what, we're going to downsize, we're going to go to a normal-sized home and drive a normal car. And that brought greater happiness. So, I think you have this North American way of life where people are often chasing money. But once you get there, you go, wow, this isn't really what it's about. It's making meaning, not money. And I think that if people talk about Simon Sinek and understanding your why and all that sort stuff. If you can understand what really drives you, you will be even that much more successful. And I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who's really truly, when you get down to it, driven by money as their big motivator. It's a scorecard. It's an ego play. It can create opportunities for yourself and others. But if it's your main motivator, I think you're— I think that you've got to question yourself and ask if it really is.

I was talking with an entrepreneur yesterday and he said it was in his opinion we're moving away from starting with the why to starting with the who, that people are buying more and more into the who. And Brian, I think you, you are an extreme example of this. Is it because of your willingness to expose your failure, to humanize yourself even with such a successful company that inspires people to work with you? As employees, but also as clients to engage your company's services?

That's a tough, tough question to sort of look myself in the mirror and say, you know, I hear from people that they say, hey, Brian, we love your vision, we love the culture. But let's be clear, there are hundreds of people here, you know, 600 people in the head office who are really creating this. We talk about building something bigger and better together. This isn't me. I got to be the guy with a a little bitty idea that then started to recruit some of the right whos. So, I agree. Look at the story of the Starbucks person versus Eric Church. When I got the right who, my why started to really shape and take form. So, I would agree. And there's different ways you can look. Jim Collins says, first who, then what. I mean, the who, what, why, where, all these things matter. But start by getting clarity on one of them. And wherever you start, just be consistent. Understand who you're looking for, why you're driven, what you want to accomplish in a painted picture. There's all sorts of ways to slice and dice it, but I think they're all important.

So last thing before we start letting you go is, um, with your book Willing to Fail, um, what's maybe the core philosophy? Maybe that is the core philosophy, but is there any kind of core steps or something that you're encouraging readers to embrace, to leverage in their own lives?

Yeah, it's really— so again, the philosophy came out of looking at my life and going, wow, dropping out of high school, dropping out of college, tough conversations with my dad, lots of failures that led me to see, wow, there's been a pattern here woven through my life so far that's helped me be more successful. So my advice to people, if someone said, you know, what's the core philosophy? What are you trying to part. It's the next time you fail, and you will because we're humans, pull out a sheet of paper when you're ready. It could be an hour later, it could be days later, but write what's the one great— what's one great thing that will come from this seemingly tough decision or mistake. And I often find when I do that, I'll write down 3 or 4 things, and it takes you out of this Okay, this sucks, to a, all right, grateful for the tuition, grateful for the mistake. The learning is a good one. And now how am I going to use that? And there's great power.

These have been great insights. Brian, where can our listeners get Willing to Fail?

Amazon, the world's biggest bookstore, so they can go search for it there. And if they want to get in touch with me in any way, @BrianScudamore on Instagram and Facebook and all those sorts of things. But love hearing from other entrepreneurs. We— one thing I think that makes us unique and special is that people like you and I and everyone we know in this entrepreneurial world, we love to share lessons learned so that others can avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes.

Brian Scudamore, what a great interview. Thank you so much.

Thank you to both of you.

It's awesome. Thank you. We'll see you. Cow scary dance. Can't touch this. Yeah, so Brian purportedly drives in in his Toyota pickup truck. You just said it. Toyota, right? Toyota. I did say it wrong. He comes in his Toyota pickup truck. He's got these huge speakers in the back every morning through Vancouver at 4 AM. Can't touch this. Wakes up the city. Callis, we're gonna talk about what you learned. Are you feeling the energy today? Yeah. You are? Okay. We're talking about what you learned, J. Sloan. I learned a lot. We're going to not do listener mail because we got a little new thing we're doing, so we'll share about that. But we do have a little game to play. Okay? Yes. But first, I missed the button. But first, I do want to thank Nextiva. They're working with Don Miller now. StoryBrand. And so I talked to Don yesterday. Did I say it weird?

Dory brand.

Dory brand. Dory brand.

Dory brand. So they're having a great experience with that. And I called Don Miller. I'm like, dude, thank you for spending that time with Nextiva. He says, oh, we're going to get the Nextiva NextOS integrated at his company.

Can we get it at our company?

I'm working it. I'm on the board, Kyle Zane.

I don't know. You've lost your shine now that they found Don Miller.

I know, I totally did. They're like, oh, we're hooked up with Don. I'm like, what do I get? They're like, um, there was a silence. Yeah, you already got phones. Okay, but yeah, their phones are amazing. So check them out, nextiva.com. It's integrated phone and CRM. No one else is doing stuff like that. All right, Kelsey, uh, you go first.

Okay, what'd you learn today? I loved this. I love that he said it's all about the people finding the right people to create the right culture, and I feel like Creating that safe space is so much easier when you have the right people. Like, the people that work here are such a gift because they care so much about the work that they do. When they mess up, I don't, I don't have to reprimand them. Like, they care so much that they self-reprimand, and that's the beauty of making mistakes is you feel that pain and it makes you want to do better. You don't want to hurt the people that you work with and the impact it has on the greater community. And that's— I think when you cultivate the right people, it comes naturally.

You know what happens here is like, if someone makes a mistake, they feel so bad about it.

You, Kelsey, as our president, have to go to them like, you know, it's okay, I know you can get through this. Lisa literally messaged me last night, like, in the middle of the night, and she was like so upset. And I was like, this is the process, like, this is all part of it. You're doing amazing, and it's okay. Like, this is how you learn.

I know. And I got I got an email through, I'm like, oh, all I did was, there was a couple mistakes that were made, and actually not by her, by a different employee that Lisa just didn't see and couldn't correct, therefore. But I just pointed it out, I'm just like, hey, here's a couple things we missed, so in the future, I get this email, like, I'm so sorry, and I may commit hara-kiri now, it's like, oh my God, settle down. And then she's like, oh, I'm not settling down enough, and then she got upset, I'm like, no, it's okay, she's like, I'm not okay. Jay Shablone, what'd you learn?

I think that this interview was probably the most amazing information condensed into one podcast that we maybe have ever done. Yeah, seriously. Like, I'm not even kidding. There's like 5 or 6 things that I think that if people actually really listen to and try and realign with that, that'll help them immensely. Just a real quick anecdote. When I was younger, when 100 Got Junk just started, there was literally no competition, and now there is competition everywhere. Yeah. So that's a testament to just how— yeah, how much, you know, they've grown the company. Um, I love what he said about, uh, be willing to fail and, um, and, and own it, and it helps build your character. I think like the culture nowadays is to build, you know, everything with bubble wrap and protect everybody. And it's like nobody wants to, you know, ever, ever feel scared or fearful or, you know, make a mistake. But it's like, embrace that. Like, I mean, yeah, post, post to social media, hey, I screwed up today, here, here's a lesson for you, or something like that. I just think it's— that's amazing. Yes, Jacob Lone.

Thank you, sir.

Um, I thought you're gonna fist bump me for a second. I just like pulled it right back.

Yeah. That's embarrassing. It happens. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I, I was on a flight, uh, and this guy next to me was super just nice guy, and we're talking on the way out. I wanted to say goodbye, so I did like this, but as I was putting the hand up, he thought I was going for a fist bump, and I was doing the thumbs up. So he came at me, and it was like this awkward, like, no touch. And then I went for the fist bump, and he's doing thumbs up.

Worse than that is if you do the high five.

Oh yeah, the fist five. What do you do?

Do you just grab and shake? Just awkwardly, and then change to the high five.

It ruins everything.

Yeah, but then sometimes people see that you're going for the high five and they're fisting, and then they start to do the high five, and then you go to the fist, and it's like, ah, we can't do this.

We can't. No, okay, so there's one thing worse than that. It's the shake hug. When you go out to do a shake and the other person goes for the hug, and then your hand's pinned between the two of you, and they're double hugging you. You can only one-arm hug.

Yeah, same thing with the like cheek kiss hug. Like sometimes they just do a cheek kiss, but sometimes they like do a cheek kiss and then they do a hug too, but you're like, your body is in the guy's face.

Your tongue ends up in the guy's ear. Yeah. Women are like, I told you I used to like, oh, I think you're supposed to kiss on the cheek. My wife says never do it again, so I don't now.

And some women kiss on the lips. Yes, yes, yes.

My book club does that.

Who does that? My book club does that.

It's like, it's so far over the corner of your mouth that you're basically kissing.

No, they'll do like like front on. Oh really?

Yeah, like, no, you don't know what's coming, and then sometimes your lip gets pushed up and now it's just, you know, someone's stuck to your face. Yeah, it's almost like a leech. Yeah, it's like they're— right. So my takeaway after that, I liked Brian's exercise of writing down the mistake, and, uh, he said a day later or even a, you know, a few weeks later, and what I learned from it. I really like that he calls his company's collective brand O2E because every single time you hear it, it's ordinary to extraordinary. It just drives home their mission.

Yeah, I love that too.

We want to know what you learned too, our dear listener friends, so just post that in whatever podcast you subscribe to. All right, you guys want to play a game?

Yeah, I'd love to.

Okay, you up for it, Jay Shablone? Yes. Come on, man. Okay, here it is. These are 4 companies. You recognize all these companies' names. Don't look at the paper. Are you looking? No. Okay. No. Because I don't want you to cheat. One of these companies is not— so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you the previous name the company had. So, for example, the first one I'm going to say, Best Buy is the company that everyone recognizes here. Prior to that, they were called Sound of Music. Now, that could be true or it could be false. That's going to be one of them.

I like that name, though.

That's such a ripoff. I don't like that one. But I'm going to give you 3, 4 of them. One's fake. I made it up, the rest are real. Hold on, I gotta grab my pen. Jeremy, you cough it out. You do background music, I'll find my pen. All right, first company, Best Buy, was originally called Sound of Music. Next company, Bank of America, was originally called the United Alliance of American Financial Institutions. Oof, that's a mouthful. Yeah. BlackBerry was initially called Research in Motion. What the fuck? What was that all about?

She just sounds like she ate something bad.

Hertz Rent-A-Car was originally called Drive Yourself, but the U is UR, so Drive Yourself.

I feel like you made that up. Okay, so one of them is true.

No, no, no, three of them are true. That's the title. Oh God. Okay, now, now, yeah, you want to hear them again? Yeah, yeah. So pretty awful. Jacob Blown Best Buy was originally called Sound of Music. Bank of America was originally called United Alliance of American Financial Institutions. BlackBerry was originally called Research in Motion. And Hertz Rent-A-Car was originally called Drive Yourself. So 3 of those are actually factually true. One's not.

I feel like Hertz was around before the, like, fad of you are, like, yourself.

Yeah, that was— there was a period of time where people were just doing like— they weren't using the actual word. Yeah, that would make sense. Does this help? They were founded in, uh, 1923.

That absolutely helps.

Okay, just make that up. No, it's a fact. I'll read that up.

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's what I'm going with.

That's a faker. Okay, what about you, Jake Malone? Uh, and just so you know, Kelsey, you're wrong.

I would say, I would say, uh, the Best Buy is Incorrect.

All right.

J. Bone. I feel like research in motion.

Okay, so they were called RIM, and I'm not kidding, they were called RIM. They were. So that was true. So you got them all wrong. Even your second guess was right. The Alliance one? Yep, yep. That's the one I made up. A mouthful. I'm so proud of myself. So, Sound of Music, an electronics store specializing in high-fidelity stereos, ultimately became Best Buy. It was founded in 1966 and transformed into Best Buy. Okay. Research in Motion, RIM, was the first wireless technology developer in North America, was founded in 1984. In January 2013, they renamed themselves to BlackBerry. In 2014, we named them CrackBerry. And then, Hertz Rent-A-Car was, it was started in 1923 as Drive Yourself. It was acquired, so this guy Walter Jacobs in 1923 started Drive Yourself.

And he spelled it U-R? Yeah, isn't that crazy?

Yeah. Yeah. Very innovative for its time. But then John Hertz, who had a little bit of an ego, bought it and said, we're renaming this to Hertz. That hurts. Can you imagine the jokes he had growing up? Everyone would punch him down the hallway, be like, ow! And be like, oh, does that hurt? Does that hurt? So the only one that was a fake was the Bank of America. It was always called Bank of America. It was not the United Alliance of American Financial Institutions that Mike Michalitz himself made up.

Touché, Mr.

McCallowits. Oh my God, I first— that was the first time you won. First victory. First victory. We've been playing these stupid games for what, like 15, 16 times by now?

I think more than that.

20 episodes. It's the first time ever I won. I'm so proud of myself.

Um, they say it's your birthday.

Anything else we gotta talk about, or can we start fading out?

We can start fading out. Didn't do it. Yeah, but hey, we have a YouTube channel and we have some nice videos for Ask Mike. So if you have questions, feel free to email them to askmike@mikemakalowicz.com.

Yeah.

And what's the YouTube channel again? So you can just search for Mike Makalowicz, or we just actually just set up— so it's /c/mikemakalowiczofficial.

So youtube.com/c/mikemakalowiczofficial is the YouTube channel. All right. All I can say is good luck. Good luck. You know, we'll put a link on the Mike McCallow site if we don't have one.

Yeah, yeah, let's do that.

You can find it easy by searching. All right, go to mikemotorbike.com for everything else. See ya.