02E Brands (800-GOT-JUNK) CEO Brian Scudamore on Creating an Entrepreneurial Culture

Care about each other and we care about the gospel.

And by the way, it's, it's not up here, it's here, it's in the heart.

My next guest is Brian Scudamore, CEO and founder of O2E Brands, featuring 1-800-GOT-JUNK. O2E Brands is the parent company of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, Wow One Day Painting, and Shack Shine. It's focused on making ordinary home services exceptional. Brian founded 1-800-GOT-JUNK in 1989. He was a 19-year-old high school dropout who still had his eye on a college degree and was on the lookout for a side hustle that could finance his education. One day, while waiting in the drive-through lane of a Vancouver McDonald's, Scootermore spied an old beat-up pickup truck with a sign advertising Mark's Hauling, a trash removal company which later became 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and he built it into a hugely successful brand and franchise company named O2E Brands. Recently, Brian wrote a book called WTF: Willing to Fail: How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success. Brian's company, O2E Brands, became one of the top 100 America's Most Loved Workplaces in Newsweek and certified by us as a Most Loved Workplace. As for his O2E Brands, great benefits and culture.. How about a 5-week annual vacation, and you're required to take at least 2 of those weeks at the same time? Daily company huddles celebrate wins, and an outstanding sense of learning from mistakes and constantly improving makes O2E Brands a workplace that is most loved by its employees.

Welcome, Brian, for having me.

Oh, here I am right here. So we have someone here that misses you. It's Ellen DeGeneres. Ah, come in. Oh, okay. All right. She missed you. She was waiting for you. What is there?

Is there something bad?

Too bad. What's good? Is something happening in Vancouver? Tell us, Brian. There's like snow and you're skiing to work. What's happening?

Yeah, this is just my basement until we're all 100% back at the office. Working in that vibrant electric atmosphere. This is my stage. This is my home office basement with a little wrap of all the things in the background that are important to me. I got my book there, WTF. I got on this side, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible," my favorite quote by Walt Disney. And yeah, love what we're doing and love what we're building. And to be recognized as the most loved workplace is pretty spectacular.

It's outstanding. You know, I know you do focus on culture quite a bit, and that's part of not just your brand, it's also part of the fabric of your company and how people are and this kind of awesome entrepreneurial spirit that is pervasive throughout your company. And you really help people become, well, successful in their lives through your franchise business. Tell me how that kind of germinated, how that began for you, and what motivated you to start that up.

Yeah, well, you sort of referenced the McDonald's drive-through. If we're going way back to 1989, I was trying to find a way to pay for, for college. I was one course short of graduation from high school, and there I was in a McDonald's drive-through with the Marks Hauling truck in front of me, and I was inspired to start a business, which was just to pay for college. But ironically, I was learning much more about business by running a business more than I was studying in school.. And I made a tough decision to drop out. My father's a liver transplant surgeon. He's done more schooling than anyone I know. And I made a tough decision to leave. But what I started to realize very quickly was how much I enjoyed running a business, building something special with a team of great people. And it's interesting because I didn't really discover my secret sauce of building culture until 5 years in when I had the wrong culture. I had a toxic culture. I had 11 employees, and they say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. I had probably 9 bad apples and decided to get rid of the team and start again. But I owned that decision, and I told them, I'm sorry that I didn't find the right people, treat you right, give you the love and support that you needed to be successful. And I think it was that day that really inspired me to get into franchising, to realize that we could build something bigger and better together. I just have to provide a proven recipe to others in which to, in which to grow.

What a cool way to make that shift in knowing what you should change and must change in order to grow. And so in that franchise business, you found out that's the way you can sort of appreciate the customers the most, appreciate employees the most, so that you're building kind of this exponential effect in the world.

Yeah, if we, we have something that we refer to as our strategic model of growth, our strategy to grow all our businesses, whether it's 1-800-GOT-JUNK!, Wow One Day Painting, or Shack Shine: take care of your people and they will take care of the customer. If they take care of the customer, that will take care of the growth of our revenue, our profits, our reputation, and, and our brand. And so it really starts with people. Most companies say, you know, the customer is king or queen. They're always right. We believe our people are always right. And that's where we start.

And I always go back when I, when I've been looking at your work and how you became CEO, how you, how you created your brand. I think back to when I was a kid and I had a business. I had my own 1200 baud modem selling, you know, computer peripherals. Literally, that's what I was doing. And it felt so great to have a business. And I remember the first day I opened up was this, to this infinite possibilities. And I always looked at you and I thought, that's, that's like how I felt. And when you opened up and you, you have that spirit, how do you recommend to others to have that, to get that same spirit of entrepreneurialism, or to recognize it when it's, it's, uh, it's there?

Yeah, I find that it's— if it's there, it's trying to uncover it and recognize that it's there. I think it's hard to make someone an entrepreneur if they don't already have that bug. I think entrepreneurs are— you have it by design. It, you know, there's the nature-nurture argument, and who knows which one is right. But I think that all the entrepreneurs I know, most of them have always said I've always wanted to run my own business. I always saw myself building a company. And whatever their motivation is, they saw themselves doing that. We, uh, we've seen sort of the data out there that says about 66% of people have always dreamed of running their own business. So if you have that entrepreneurial bug, it's recognizing it and acting on it. How do you take that first step? And I think there's two paths that people generally go down. You go down the I'm going to blank sheet this. I'm going to start from scratch like I did, building your business, figuring it out, tinkering. It took us 8 years to get to $1 million in revenue, which is an awful long time. Or you can take the other path, find a proven recipe, copy a competitor, or look at a franchise. A franchise is a proven recipe. You know, if you want to bake a cake, what do you do? You go to Google, you find a recipe, you follow step by step, and chances are you get it right. With a business, a franchise is very much that proven recipe. Follow the proven systems that have been laid out by all the franchise owners before you and, uh, get the recipe right. So two paths, two paths to business ownership: blank sheet it or a franchise. I think many people look at franchising and they think, ah, you know, it's McDonald's, it's Subway, there's no— absent— there, it's absence of any sort of freedom. To me, it's freedom within a framework. And there's many people out there that have done very well with franchising that you might not expect are franchise owners, like Shaquille O'Neal. Shaq took his experience with 5 or 6 winning teams and said, 'I'm great at building teams and leading them to wins. Why not take what I've learned?' And after retirement, he went into business and he owns franchises all over the place. He's done exceptionally well. Building franchises because he didn't want to recreate from scratch. He wanted to exploit a proven recipe and really leverage that.

One of my favorite quotes is, uh, smart people borrow ideas but brilliant ones steal them. Einstein said it from Tolkien. Tolkien took it from 100 other people. So you have this proven recipe, right? And other people can learn from it, uh, work upon it. Software, software engineers do it. They reverse engineer things that already exist that people spent like you did 10 years to perfect and all the 10,000 hours that went into it. How do you, when you're finding franchisees or franchisors, I'd say, you know, what is it that you look for in people? Because I'm sure it's not just everybody, right? You want to find certain people that works within your construct, your model. What are they like?

Yeah, when we're looking for people, we as franchise owners, we call them franchise partners. We partner on our success. If we don't do well, they don't do well. And sorry, if they don't do well, we don't do well. We depend on their success and they depend on us for the support. So it's a mutually beneficial partnership. So franchise partners, what we look for is 4 things. We call it the 4 H's: happy, hungry, hardworking, and hands-on. So first and foremost, the number 1 is happy. Are we dealing with positive, optimistic people? When the going gets tough, they will figure it out. They will endure. They will persevere. We're looking for hardworking people, people that want to actually roll up their sleeves, learn the business. We're looking for people— so with Wow 1 Day Painting as an example, we don't want people painting walls and that being the core of their business. We want them building a business empire, building and leading a team. But you do have to understand the role and roll up your sleeves and be willing to work hard. Hungry. They've got to be— they have to need this to work. If somebody goes, hey, I've made a whole bunch of businesses work and I've cashed out and I've got this big retirement, uh, stack of money, we want them to be hungry. We want them to need this to work, to know that they will push themselves to, to make a go of this. And, um, happy, hungry, hard-working, hands-on. We want them to be hands-on. We want them to understand the business in the early days. The very early days, but then get out there and leverage the systems, leverage their learning to really scale and grow the business. We don't want them being in the business forever. We want them working on the business. And so 4 H's, that's what we look for. And our formula has been, been good, you know, not only a proven formula for franchise partners to be successful, but we've got a proven formula and what we look for and how to find those people.

And it really sounds like something that you've learned, and at just even starting as an entrepreneur, all 4 of those and how you've become successful, you're sort of competency model for success, so that learning and development transfers to all of your franchise partners and everybody gets to, to learn from it. And WTF is really cool because in WTF we learn about how to learn from our mistakes, right? So we're constantly evolving, constantly improving. It sounds like that has become a part of the fabric of not just your company, also the success of your franchise partners.

Yeah, WTF. I happen to have the book right here. You know, WTF, Willing to Fail. It's interesting, the story of— thank you— how we came up with the title, I think, is a good place to start because it's an interesting little story. But Roy H. Williams, who is the Wizard of Ads, he's famous for having done more radio creative than anyone on the planet. And Roy kept pushing me to write a book. And every year I kept saying, I don't want to write a book. I don't need to write one. My ego doesn't need one as an entrepreneur. And he said, this isn't about you. This is about the other people that can learn from your mistakes, can learn from your stories, can really grow as a result of the things that you've brought to this world. And I said, okay, if it's not about me and it's about others and I can help, let's do a book. So he interviewed me for a whole bunch of hours in his wizard's tower, and we put together the manuscript. And I said, I want a title. We need to start with the title. He said, I've written a ton of books. It doesn't work that way. The title jumps out after you've written the book. So sure enough, I go through the book and it's a little success, failure, another success, failure, success, failure. And it was like a set of stairs. And I was like, wow, every failure has gotten me to bigger success, to bigger goals, to bigger dreams.. And I realized that failure was such a gift to me in my 32 years of creating businesses. And so it became WTF, you know, what the— being willing to fail was such a crucial ingredient in my success. And so I try to embrace that every time I fail and pull out a sheet of paper and I write, what's at least one thing that will be better because of this failure in my life or in my business. And it never lets me down. So failure is a gift if we're willing to unwrap it, if we're willing to embrace that failure and learn from it. And it's a powerful ingredient that most people go, "I don't want to fail. I've got a big ego. I don't want to admit my mistakes." If you could admit your mistakes and your teams can learn from those mistakes and see that, wow, our leader is not afraid to fail, I think that's a powerful, powerful trait.

And most people think of willingness to do something, right? So it's always, are they willing to do this and do they have the skill to do this? And you've sort of turned that on its head and said, look, are you willing to fail doing this? Because you can always develop your skill to do it. And it opens up a huge new avenue for people to examine how we work. How we were and how we work well.

Yeah, you're right, Louis Carter. I mean, if people aren't willing to make mistakes, I think they're saying they're not willing to learn. We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. If we were to win each and every time without failure, I think it would feel like a hollow victory, would feel like we didn't earn it. And instead we get to have the stories of the longing, the regret, all the things that go into trying so badly to win, but to learn along the way. And it's never let me down. It really has not. I mean, you think of— I can take my— one of my kids who was learning to ski years ago, and she used to fall all the time and hated ski school. And I said, you know, she wanted to stop. And I said, what's going on? She said, I want to quit because I fall all the time and it hurts. I'm like, you fall all the time? Wow, you must be getting good. You must be really learning. And so I said, that's so much a part of your journey. Fail, make mistakes, but then learn how to get better, learn how to not fall again. And sure enough, she ended up becoming a great skier because she was able to recognize that failure was a stepping stone. And at the end of that next ski lesson, she came up and she's like, guess what, I fell today. And, you know, a little celebration and big smile on her face. So clearly it resonated. And and I felt like I was a good dad in that moment.

It's because most of us, and I can understand this, want to be the protective dad, right? I would say, you know, protect helicopter father. Don't fall, don't fall, be careful, don't get hurt. And that, you know, I'm sure you're like that as well, right? And at the same time, it's learn to adjust, right, the way you ski so you can stay safe, you can get, you know, get down the mountain in a fun and cool way, right? And become a better skier, become the best skier that you can become. And that both are, both are great. And, uh, feeling some guilt right now for being— can you tell?

It's one of those things where, you know, it depends on what, what you're failing at. Um, you know, failing at skydiving or failing at motor— high-speed motorcycle racing, I mean, you know, what, what are the stakes? And I think if someone's failing at skiing, you know, odds are what, you know, one of my daughters broke a bone and, you know, it's not fun, but Again, it's probably made her a better skier as well as her sister.

And they say the bones fuse back even stronger the second time, and then you get that muscle memory, and this time bones coming back. So there you go. Yeah, so it's all good. So you've had massive success. You've built this great empire. Your employees and your franchise partners are doing wonderfully. What's next? What's next? You know, you've done so many amazing things. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing more you could do, right? I mean, tell us more. What's next?

There's always more we can do. I mean, to me, it's more of the same. We found a vehicle, our business, for doing good in the world. We are building great leaders. We're building franchise ownership for people that might not have had a business idea and couldn't find what their sort of magic bullet was to start a business. We've given a lot of support and direction to a lot of people and we're having fun. You know, to me, we're building a billion-dollar business. We're a little more than halfway there. And I don't share that as money's important to me, but as a measurement of the significance we're having on the world. We believe we're changing lives. I mean, we really are. We've got entrepreneurs coming in who are building great lives for themselves., and then building great lives for their teams and their families. And I take such pride in our culture because, again, if you take care of your people, it will take care of everything else that's important. And what's next? More of the same. You know, we're again halfway, a little more than halfway to a billion. Getting to a billion just means we've got more great people developing more great opportunities. And really growing all 3 of our home service brands.

So what is— so I'm curious, what does growth look like for you? What is that? What— how does it— I know you've gone on an Ellen DeGeneres show, you're having lots of fun, and you're growing sort of in a global brand as well, right? I mean, you're growing globally. Tell me, what does it look like for you? What are your plans for growth itself? What do you do?

Yeah, you know, my role is sort of a chief storytelling role. I love uncovering stories in our business and telling them. I love imagining big possibilities and working to make those things happen. We used to have this wall. We still do. I'm just not in the office today. But we have this big wall called the Can You Imagine Wall. And it's asking the question, what can you imagine? What can you imagine for our business, for our group of businesses? And it started where I led by example and I put a big decal up there that said, "Can you imagine being featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show?" And a little over a year later, we made it happen. And you know, I got to be on stage with Oprah, 4.5 minutes of coverage, and it was free press that money couldn't buy. And then we started to say, well, what other things could we do? And we get our people to imagine big, bold dreams and ideas. And you mentioned Ellen DeGeneres. Our company was on the Ellen DeGeneres Show a couple of weeks ago, which was a big win. I had nothing to do with making that happen. The only thing I had to do with was putting it in our painted picture, putting it in our vision, sharing it with the world. I wrote about Ellen DeGeneres in our book. In WTF, I shared my painted picture, the vision for the future. And at the end, I said, not everything in here has happened yet. For example, getting on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. But if anyone knows Ellen, you know, hook me up. And sure enough, our team really worked it and made magic happen. So I love when you can imagine big possibilities and inspire others to get out there and achieve greatness because it's kind of fun to do the impossible.

And so absolutely. So Brian, you keep drinking. I take your word. So I have some more questions for you because this is, this is cool. What do you want to manifest next? Like, do you have a sort of a wish that you want to put out there right now? Or you had Ellen, Oprah, right? Are there any wishes right now, you know?

Yeah, there, there's always wishes. Um, what's a current one? You know, one of the things we're really trying to do is to figure out how to widen the group of people that we turn to to provide opportunity. So with a franchise for Shack Shine, for example, you know, someone still needs about $100K in access to capital they might need $25K in cash, but they need access to about $100K. And people often go to an aunt or an uncle or family member, but there's some people that just can't figure out how to come up with the money. My wish is to figure out how could we offer up opportunities to people that just don't have the cash but have the brains, the work ethic. Like, they will make magic happen if we give them the proven formula. They just need some financial help. So trying to figure that one out in our, in our brains, our collective brains. But to me, that's a massive opportunity, matching up franchise owners with, with money or franchise prospects, prospective owners with money. And there's a lot of people that have done well in this world who've made their money and would love to see others be successful. How do we create that match?

Putting that out, I know a lot of people want to help you with that. So, and there's so many options in different ways now that exist. So that's a wonderful thing. We do have a question. They say they want to— you have two of them here— want to learn more about the single most important thing that you do as a leader to create a love workplace at O2E.

We, you know, I think the real answer to that is finding out from our people. Why did they vote us to be a Best Workplace? I can tell you what I think. But, you know, you guys do this for a living, as you, you do survey our people. And what I love about this award was it wasn't just our people. I know you get out there and you talk to customers and franchise owners and all sorts of people to collect information. If I had to guess, I think it's that we find the right people and we treat them right. We really put a lot into caring for our people. So if somebody's got a personal problem, if they need some time off, they need a mental health day, they need a mental health month, You know, we want to do and will do whatever it takes to make sure that person is okay. We take care of our people like they are a family member. I mean, they're part of the O2E Brands family and we take that seriously. Giving 5 weeks paid vacation, as you had mentioned in the lead-in, that's something I'm proud of. The bigger challenge right now, especially in an often work-remote type environment, is getting people to actually take that time. So they've got lots of time to take, but people feel the pressure when they're at home to continue working these days. So something I'm trying to role model a bit more is some work-life balance. Our company is not perfect by any means. We can win, you know, these beautiful awards, but I think we're able to look at ourselves and be humbled and say, okay, we're not perfect. We've got areas of weakness, but we ask our people, what do we need to do to be better? In this world of the Great Resignation, We're losing some people. Everybody is. But I don't think we're losing as many people as many companies are because people know they're cared for and they do feel like they're a part of a family or a tribe, so to speak.

And it's actually the other question is around the issue around Great Resignation and where we're at today and sort of things to avoid when becoming a love workplace. Are there things to avoid that that leaders should avoid in order to become that love workplace?

Yeah, the number one thing to avoid in creating culture or creating a great workplace is don't hire people that don't fit. Don't hire people that don't add to the culture that you're creating. It's like a good house party. You know, you show up to a house party, you're like, oh, there's just a vibe and an energy. It could be a diverse group of people from all sorts of backgrounds, but there's just a connection. And when we bring people into the family, we make sure that they add to our culture and that they truly fit. And every time you compromise and you bring someone in that doesn't fit, I think it comes to haunt you at some point. So the example I would give is, you know, years ago we were interviewing for a CFO candidate and this person had all the skills, was one of the best CFOs out there from a resume and reputation standpoint. But they weren't a cultural fit. You know, this was well over a decade ago, and it was a challenge because, because that person didn't fit culturally with our energy and our vibe. The optimism wasn't there, and the optimism in the leadership for the team wasn't there. And it became a real challenge, and it was a big mistake for us. But it's a reminder again, find the right people and then focus on treating them right.

I like that about you, what you're saying about a vibe. It really is a vibe, that, that feeling that you had when you're creating, the feeling that you have when you're making mistakes and knowing that you can always get better, to when you developed your brands. It's that feeling, the 4 H's, and what you're all about. Brian Scudamore. Scudamore. Brian. Brian, it's been great meeting you, and, uh, congratulations on all of your success. I wish for financing help for your your, uh, your franchise partners. And, um, and for you to continue to all the way to that $1 billion, congratulations on becoming Most Loved Workplace.

Well, we're thrilled, and it's not an award I had anything to do with other than starting a company. We just really brought in great people who are remarkable and who have made this a great workplace. And so I think you showed the shot earlier where we've got this screenshot of everybody on Zoom at one of our huddles, and they all put a little heart on the, uh, on the board there. Just everyone's proud. So enjoyed having coffee with you, a nice way to start my morning. And, uh, thank you, Louis Carter.

Thank you, Brian.

All right, cheers.