81. Brian Scudamore: Author of BYOB

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 81 of our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors. And as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author Brian Scudamore. Brian is an American-born Canadian entrepreneur. He's the founder and CEO of O2E Brands, which stands for Ordinary to Exceptional. It's the parent company of some familiar companies like 1-800-GOT-JUNK, WOW 1 Day Painting, and Shack Shine. Brian is a regular contributor to Forbes, writing about small business ownership, franchising, and building corporate culture. Our conversation today was a lot of fun. It was all about Brian's brand new release, BYOB: Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss. This is Brian's second time on the podcast. He's been a huge supporter of Book Thinkers and everything that we've got going on. So I would love it if you could support Brian as well. If you like our conversation today, buy a copy of BYOB and gift it to an aspiring entrepreneur or a small entrepreneur who's looking to get to the next level like me. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with Author Brian Scudamore. Brian, welcome to your second episode of the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm awesome. I'm glad to be back, Nick. I mean, I always enjoy our time together and I love the work you're doing. I love the content, the type of content that you're spreading with the world. And I know you love the self-help kind of category. And my book is one that I think fits. And I know we're going to talk about that today, but I love watching people grow, nothing more than watching people get bigger, better. And so I'm excited to be here. Yeah.

One of my core values is progress. And so I'm always looking to make progress and Book Thinkers is continuing to grow over time. And so are you, by the way. I love the content that you put out. I love seeing you on TV when 1-800-GOT-JUNK commercial pops up and I, you know, I love this smile. I love all of it. So, you're amazing at what you do.

Oh, well, it's easy to be amazing at what you do when you love what you do so much. And more importantly, when you're surrounded by amazing people, whether it's people like you who are supporting our movement of all the possibilities that we're trying to create in the world and our teams. I have amazing people in this business. I've always believed that if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I am easily in the right room because I'm surrounded by just brilliant people with so much passion. They make it easy.

Well, human capital was one of the subjects that I wanted to talk about today for your new book. But before we do that, let's go back a little bit. For those that are listening today that are not familiar with you or what you do, your businesses, your books, can you introduce yourself to everybody?

Yeah. I'm Brian Scudamore. I'm the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. O2E Brands, which stands for Ordinary to Exceptional. We took the junk removal business, very ordinary mom-and-pop world, and made it exceptional through customer experience. And then we went to do it again in a couple of other industries in the franchise space. Wow 1 Day Painting, where we paint people's homes in a day, and Shack Shine House Detailing, which is— You do someone's windows, their gutters, power washing, you put up Christmas lights, the home loves you. We've got 3 amazing businesses and so much fun continuing to build them under the O2E Brands umbrella.

Perfect. And your first time on the show, we talked about your first book, WTF: Willing to Fail. And so here we're going to talk about your second book. It's coming out very soon. And it's, it's called BYOB. What does BYOB stand for?

Well, it's Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss. It's a bit of Why we called it both things, and, and here's the book just for a little visual, but why we called it both things, Build Your Own Business, Be Your Own Boss, is people have different reasons for wanting to build their own business. Is it the creative start from scratch, start from nothing and build an empire? Is it building upon a platform of a franchise organization, someone that's got a proven recipe? Do you want to be the boss, the leader, the head of culture, championing the vision. What is it behind why you want to build a business? And they say that 66% of Americans dream of building their own business. But where do people start? It's a big hurdle and obstacle. So my whole reason for being in this second book is help someone across that precipice. You've got the fear, you've got anxiety around it. You don't know if you have an idea where to start. How do I help give someone a gentle push or a nudge to take the step? You've done it. Everyone who runs a business knows that the beginning is exciting but hard, and the unknown is big. We live in a future that's always been uncertain. No one knows what tomorrow holds. And when you start a business, you wonder. But I can take my path and take some learning from 33 years now building businesses and helping support other entrepreneurs franchise owners of ours and package that to hopefully give some confidence to someone to take the leap.

Now, I'm curious, do you ever get feedback from those that have crossed the gap, that chasm between wanting to start a business and having started a business? Do you ever get feedback that that perceived barrier to entry was actually lower than what they thought it was going to be? Meaning, and let me ask it a different way, when I was dreaming of starting a business, I thought registering a business with the state, we're talking about the states, Finding a logo, naming your business, getting a domain. I thought those were all impossible barriers to overcome. And now in hindsight, I could start another business like that tomorrow. Do you ever get feedback like that?

I don't get a lot of that feedback. The feedback I get is, my regret is I wish I did it sooner. I hear a lot of people just, you know, so maybe packaged in a similar way, they thought it was so hard and it was insurmountable. but they realize, wow, I can do it. And they say the best way to eat an elephant, one bite at a time, or, you know, whatever the saying is. I hope people aren't out there eating elephants, but, you know, it's one of those things where it's so overwhelming, but every little step is exciting. It's a challenge. It's fun. You make mistakes. And even my attitude is the mistakes are fun. And so I think it's just, it's taking that step. And the first step of that journey is often the hardest. But it's committing to doing it. And my goal with the book is that someone just takes one step in that right direction of looking to be their own boss. We have more bosses, leaders, owners of businesses today than we've ever had in the history of the world. And it's an exciting time. But let's have more.

And chapter 1 of the book talks a lot about vision, which is sort of put the pen down on that blank piece of paper, and let's map out what you're going to do. So For those that are listening today, a lot of them are young aspiring entrepreneurs. What's your guidance around the right time to start a business? When do you actually take action on these ideas?

Yeah, good question. Tomorrow. Today. Today. When people put things off. So here's something for anyone that— and I get you have a young audience, but anyone that's ever been married or knows someone that's been married, you'll often hear people say, I'm waiting for the right time. I need to save up enough money. We need to make sure we've got this foundation financially. Whatever the excuses are, I think they're excuses. There's never any right time. You just have to dive in and do it. And I think a business is no different. It's going to be challenging. You're never going to have enough money. You're never going to have enough knowledge. The sooner you start, the sooner you can start building forward momentum. So it's interesting, but even if I look at my own past of my— I was in a McDonald's drive-through, beat-up old pickup truck in front of me, plywood sides, it's Mark's Hauling on the side. I committed in that moment. I said, I am going to go buy a truck of my own and start hauling junk. I didn't commit to building a— what are we at today? A $600 million 1-800-GOT-JUNK brand plus our other brands. I didn't commit to building a globally admired brand. I committed to starting a business with one truck that would pay for college. That was my tiny step. So again, commit to something. Commit to finding a franchise you want to invest in. Commit to finding a partner to invest with you. Commit to reading a book that's going to get you closer to your dream of starting your own business.

Whatever it might be, commit to doing something if it's really a dream you And assuming that there are some people today that aren't really familiar with starting something from scratch versus a franchise model, could you describe the difference between the two and give some examples with your businesses about what a franchise might look like?

Of course. So let me take 2 different people that are quite well known out there in the world, who have each taken different paths. And I talk about them, and I, I've gotten to know both of them and have mentors and advice from these people. One is Fred DeLuca. Fred DeLuca, since passed on, was an incredible mentor to me. He started Subway. Now Subway is built into a multi, multi-billion-dollar global behemoth of a brand. And when Fred started Pete's Submarines, it was him and Dr. Peter Buck. And the two of them got together and he said, you're the money, I'm the brains and the operator. I'm going to start this business. Fred started from scratch. He took a blank sheet and said, I'm going to start a business from nothing. Yes, Subway sandwiches, sub sandwiches weren't necessarily completely new, but he built out a business and a formula that he would franchise that was totally from scratch. Now you take someone like Shaquille O'Neal. Now I'm actually not going down a sports path with this. I'm also going down a business path. Shaquille O'Neal, which many people don't know, has amassed a half a billion dollar fortune by owning and operating franchises. He has bought so many franchises, but what he's done is he's taken everything he's learned from a proven recipe, a formula that he can plug people into. He takes it from sports and he goes, I know my skills as a winning multiple championship NBA superstar. I am able to take what I do best, find the right people and lead them and get them excited and let them win the game. He puts people into franchises that he owns and they are super successful. So you can compare and contrast between the two. Fred DeLuca wanted to start from scratch. I started from scratch. We both had probably much longer paths, many more mistakes, so many times where we almost lost our shirt. and had to start again, or maybe did start again in many ways. Or you can take someone who's got a proven recipe and goes, I don't need to come up with the original idea of Subway or 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I can hitch my wagon to someone else's star and off I go. So there's 2 different paths that I think are 2 of many paths into business ownership. I'm trying to give someone a set of options, a fork in the road to say, Which one of those might work for you? Which path do you want to really start walking down?

And with your book, is it geared towards one of those options? Or is it sort of for everybody? Who's the target reader?

I think it's— I think that it's an equal weighting between the two. Here's what I'd say. I wouldn't have made a great franchise owner. I needed to start from scratch to build something for franchise owners. So it's about a conversation. Now, BYOB could also mean bring your own beer. So I say in my opening introduction, grab a cold beverage, whether it's a beer, an iced latte, sit down and read the book in one sitting. I don't want someone to read this in multiple bits. I want them to sit down and just take the whole thing in and go, okay, what's at the end? A choice. So I want someone to look at this and fairly say, what's best for me? I have franchise partners that would not make great entrepreneurs starting from scratch. I know great entrepreneurs starting from scratch that would make terrible franchise owners. It's understanding you and yourself and what your needs are. Both are very viable, valuable ways of growing.

Could you tell the story of how you founded your business? And we're going to walk into the direction of chapter 2, which is all about human capital. But I think it's such a fascinating story and it's one of those colorful sort of in your garage to major business sort of entrepreneurship stories that we all think about. So could you tell that for a few minutes?

Yeah. So I will start by saying, and I'm very ADD as an entrepreneur, I see squirrels, you know, running across my desk all the time. I have trouble focusing, and school was something I had a real hard time focusing in. So it's kind of ironic that I can write. I'm a terrible reader. I just, I can't stay in a book for very long, and school was very challenging for me. So I didn't finish high school, talked my way into college, went to a bunch of colleges, and then didn't finish because I was learning more running a business than studying. And why I share that in the beginning is why I went out to start a business was I never finished high school. I talked my way into college. My father is a liver transplant surgeon and has done more college than anyone I know. And there I am trying to impress him and Have my dad, you know, love the direction I'm going. And I talked my way into college, but I had to pay for it. I didn't finish high school. My dad wasn't going to fund my college education, nor was my mother. So I find this truck, that serendipitous moment of, I'm going to start a business. $700. I see this beat-up old truck, buy my own for $700, and off I go down alleys, laneways, hauling away junk. What I started as the Rubbish Boys— that was the initial name of the business— was just me, but a vision for something bigger. And off I went, starting to add trucks and running it during school until I made a tough decision to say, Brian, you're learning more about running a business doing it than studying. I dropped out. My dad thought I was nuts. Doesn't think I'm nuts anymore, but did at the time. And the rest is history. And I really was in pursuit of building a great business. And it started to build some momentum because everybody had junk, not everybody had a truck. And there was a need for our service, and it started to grow.

And a little bit later in the book, in chapter 7, you talk about applying an attitude of gratitude towards your competition. So for those of us that are thinking about starting a business, and we're listening to you talk about your story, Was there a preexisting competition in the area or was this a brand new concept? And I know that eventually you had some competition, maybe even with some people that you were pretty close to, but should that deter people from starting a business? Yeah.

So maybe I'll tell a story just leading up to that. In 1994, 5 years into the business, I had 11 people and they say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. I might've at that time had 9 bad apples. And I don't mean to say that they weren't good people, but they just didn't fit the clean-cut professional image, the happy smiley optimism that I wanted and needed in my business. So I sat down with the whole team. I didn't even know if the 2 that weren't bad apples could be saved. And I said, I'm sorry, I've let you down as your leader. I've not given you the love and support you need to be successful. I'm going to make a change. And I got rid of the whole company and started again. And And I started to recruit people that I wanted to spend time with, who I could have a beer with. And one of those people was Mike McKee. Now, Mike McKee, we became buddies. We had beers together. We talked about the financials. We talked about everything in the business. And one day he said, Brian, are you sitting down? He called me up. And I said, no. He said, I think you should sit. I said, I think I'll stand. What's up? And he said, I'm going to the competition against you. I said, wow, when? He said, tomorrow, my truck's hitting the road tomorrow, Trash Busters, off we go, and we're going to compete. And it hurt. And it sort of put a dagger through my heart. I spent time focusing, shifting my energy from my own business to Trash Busters. I started worrying about the signs they were putting up, the customers they were wowing, the job they were doing. And soon I was focused so much on Mike's business. Who was focused on my business? Mike wasn't focused on mine. He was focused on his. So I had to sit there and go, Brian, something needs to change here. And I realized shortly thereafter, and shortly might have been months and months, but I got there. They were looking to expand into the United States. They were doing a great job. I decided to expand into the United States. I decided we were going to put a truck in Seattle, and that we would compete with them now in one of their cities. And we did it. But what was interesting, the competitive spirit went away. And my heart filled with gratitude. I was like, wow, I wouldn't have entered the United States if I didn't feel this fire under my feet to go compete in another market. So I started to realize that they were opening my mind to some new possibilities. And ultimately, years later, they went out of business. I've kept in touch with Mike and his ex-partner and ran into one of them on the ski hill just a couple of weeks ago. We're all friends now. Everything's great. But I don't think that would have happened as well if I wasn't able to have an open mind to what are the good things that my competition is bringing me. So long answer to your question, should people worry about the competition? They should be worried about how well they're doing versus the competition. They should be thinking, what is the competition doing better than I am? What can I learn from the competition? Can I become friends with the competition? We have a daily huddle meeting at our head office, The Junction. We invite competitors in all the time, and they're dumbfounded. They're like, why should I— why would I come in? And I'm like, I don't know, it's better to keep your enemies close and not even be enemies at all. We can learn from each other. And truly, we do.

That's really interesting. Now I'm trying to put myself back in the, in the shoes of the version of me that was just starting Book Thinkers. And I had so many questions about entrepreneurship. Something that I've struggled with personally is business partners. So I'd love for you to give a little guidance on business partners. For aspiring entrepreneurs, do you recommend starting by yourself, working out the kinks by yourself in a funnel in a vacuum? Or do you recommend starting with some people that pass the beer and barbecue test?

Yeah, it's a good one, Nick. I don't know if there's any right answer, and I'm by no means any expert. I've had some partners and I've got a lot of partners today. I think the thing with partners is you've got to be really, really, really careful who you pick. It's no different than a marriage. I mean, you pick a life partner, When you get into business with someone, you're picking someone who, they might not be there their entire life, but they're going to be there for a long time. And you should choose them as closely and carefully as you would someone you're going to marry. And it's got to be complementary. You have to have strengths and weaknesses that work well together. I think all too often, and I've been guilty of this and certainly did this, I brought on a partner in the early days, a fellow named John, who I just wanted to hang out with because we had so much fun together. I'm like, imagine how much fun this business could be building it together. And while we went at it together and had a great time, we had overlapping skills. And it ultimately didn't work because there was just the challenge of, we're not bringing different things. If I look at today, I've got a partner who started as an employee in the business. He's been with us for 10 years, Eric Church. Eric and I are like a yin and yang. I've been able to hand-select someone and be very careful who I brought on board before years later brought him into the partnership, so to speak, because I love vision. He loves implementing. One of the books I bet you've probably talked about at some point is Rocket Fuel. And it's the visionary and the implementer. A visionary isn't necessarily good at the execution. An executor or an implementer isn't necessarily good at the vision. bring those 2 together and really work together. And so I've been lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, where I've brought in some people and been so careful that it's worked like magic. And so partnerships, as you probably know, and in your journeys, more fail than succeed. And when they fail, they can be a real big distraction for the business. So really try hard to get them right. And it's finding the right people.

I actually, I haven't read Rocket Fuel, but I know that in Michael Gerber's work, the E-Myth books, which you're a fan of, and you talk about in this book quite a bit. Yeah, he has those buckets, the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician, I think is what he calls them. And we'll jump, we'll jump into that in a minute. But a couple more notes on the human capital piece, because this piece has been hard for me to figure out. So I'm sort of asking for a friend, wink wink, but it's really me.

Right.

Human capital is so interesting. And you give an example in the beginning of chapter 2 about basketball teams and their value and how it sort of changes with human capital. And that was the first time I had ever thought about it like that. So could you give that example to everybody? Maybe not all of the numbers, but—

Yeah, take a team like the Lakers. The Lakers was valued dollar-wise as a business the same the day Shaq started as the same it was the day before. But it went up astronomically because of the value of human capital. The only thing that changed on that team was Shaq and some of the magic that he had behind what he was building. And so a brand like the Lakers, you've got to pick someone so carefully and say, do they add to the brand? When you're doing the beer and barbecue test and you're recruiting someone for your business, Or for your basketball team, the only thing that a company really has is its people. I mean, it doesn't matter. You know, people look at Amazon and go, it's all technology. I don't know what an Amazon employee looks like. You don't need to. But the people behind the scenes, it's the people, the culture, the energy, the enthusiasm behind any business, good or bad. It comes from the type of people you select. So be really, really careful who you bring into your organization. And as entrepreneurs, we often have to realize that we have to make changes. Shaq didn't stay forever. That's okay. But was he— did he make it a better winning team? Of course he did. And so who are the players we need to bring into our teams to help us win? How did we develop those players moving forward? How do we add players and take away players as the business continues to change? It's very fluid.

Yeah, it is. Something that you're very keen on is having people around you that are smarter than you. You talk about it in the book. I heard you mention a little bit earlier, fill the room with people that are smarter than you are. What's a good example of that? Who is somebody that you've brought into the business that's smarter than you are, that enabled you to grow faster than you could have if you had hired somebody that wasn't as smart as you were, using the sort of Russian nesting doll example that you have in the book? Hello, Book Thinkers family. A quick word from today's podcast sponsor. Today's episode is sponsored by Audible. Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment and audiobooks ranging from bestsellers to celebrity memoirs, business, and my favorite, personal development. And as part of Audible's partnership with us, we're actually offering listeners a free 30-day trial. This trial includes 1 credit good for any Premium Selection titles you'd like on the whole platform. So that's pretty much any book, including the one we're talking about today. That book is yours to keep even after the trial is over. Now, this trial also includes access to Audible's Plus catalog of podcasts, audiobooks, guided wellness programs, and Audible Originals. You can listen all you want, no credits needed. Now, everyone on the Book Thinkers Instagram knows that I love physical paper books. There's nothing better than having a book in your hand Scribbling notes everywhere in the margins. I kind of tear those things up, but I've been completing an additional 20 to 30 books every single year using Audible by listening when I'm in the car, doing chores around the house, or while I'm on my morning walks or runs. You could take advantage of this free trial by clicking the link in today's show notes or going to www.bookthinkers.com/audibletrial. You will not regret it. Now, back to today's episode.

So, take someone like Carrie Shakespeare, who is our Chief Purpose Officer. She heads up our communications. She's been with the business for 15, 16, 17 years. I'm losing track. She's phenomenal. But where she's so incredibly smart is any communication challenge we have, and so many challenges are related to communication. If I take a story or an example, and I go to Kerry and say, what's missing? What would you change? I mean, she's just able to see it and recognize it in an instant. Now, what she's so talented at is Kerry understands that our culture is all about people, finding the right people and treating people right. So any challenge we have, it's easy for her to say, What's the best thing for the people? What's the best thing ultimately long-term for our people in this business? And how do we get that right? So if I look at someone like— I've been obsessed a little bit lately with— I'm not a big TV guy, but I've gotten into 2 shows, Super Pumped, which is the Uber story, and WeCrashed, which is the WeWork story. Both great visionaries. But 2 visionary leaders that got people very, very wrong. And so, we need to be so careful in making vision, people, systems all work together and having people that we can listen to. My take again from the show, from Uber, is that they didn't listen. Travis Kalanick never listened to his people that were smarter than him because he was the smartest person in the room. If you watch that, that series, that's the takeaway I get is nobody was smarter than Travis, but he needed to flip it and go, everybody's smarter than Travis. He needed to listen to people with him on his team because they were smarter, they were better, and not let his ego get so in the way.

I'm curious, where do you do most of your learning? You know, you mentioned earlier that you're a great writer, not a great reader. So where do you get— where do you consume most of the sort of external information that helps influence the decisions that you're making as a business leader?

Yeah, it's interesting. So a bunch of things. Number one, though, I look at your bookshelf behind you with all those books. That's what my bookshelf looks like. But the difference between you and I, you've read them. I haven't. My wife is a voracious book reader. I'm a voracious book buyer. I mean, I buy them and I don't read them. Anyways, I want to.

I do both.

Okay, good. I struggle reading them because of my ADD. And that's the only reason. So where do I get my learning? From mentors. Now, a mentor can be someone you're sitting beside on a plane, on a bus. It can be anyone you meet in life. And everyone's got a gift. So I try and tap into that and just learn from people. I mentioned Fred DeLuca from Subway. He was a mentor of mine, but I sought him out. I saw him at an international franchise conference. Now, he didn't know who Brian Scudamore was. Nobody did. He didn't— had never heard of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. But when I saw him and sort of bumped into him and said, Fred, I'd love to talk to you one day, he gave me his card and said, yeah, let's, let's connect. And we hit it off. And he used to have me call into his car phone back in those days, and we'd have conversations while he was on a drive. And he was unbelievable. So I learned from mentors. I learned from everybody smarter than me, which is easy because most people are. And I also learned from— I took a program at MIT called Birthing of Giants. It's an entrepreneurial one-week executive kind of program that I'm now in my 21st year of. And 60 high-growth entrepreneurs, we put together a reunion class and we keep on doing it. But we learn from each other. The Entrepreneur Organization has been fantastic. Somebody who can give you, I think, as leaders, and this goes back to the Travis from Uber, not wanting to listen to people smarter. Someone who's truly smart and gets the value of feedback will let people approach he or her and say, like, Brian, you're missing the boat on this. You're not getting the point. Like, how do you listen and understand that you've got blind spots? That's how we grow. So for me, Well, education did not come from school. It comes from doing. It comes from conversations with people. And it's the curiosity that just lights me up nonstop.

Yeah. You mentioned one of the things that stuck out to me in the book. You mentioned that your curiosity is what attracts human capital. It's kind of one of your secrets, right?

I think so. I mean, I like to plant seeds in people's minds and Simon Sinek, who, you know, very famous out there, and I remember a night when he slept on my couch before he was famous. He helped me uncover my why while he was still figuring out his whole concept of why. And it was great because my why is about uncovering big possibilities, inspiring big possibilities in others. And I believe that sometimes if you just imagine big possibilities, you never know, they might actually happen. And so dreaming big, inspiring others is, is what drives me. And I'm thankful for Simon for helping me uncover that. But the curiosity behind that, that's what I think is a bit of a secret sauce, as you say, Nick. It allows me to ask questions of others and help them uncover big possibilities of their own. You know, if people are listening and can't see this, there's a sign over my shoulder that says it's kind of fun to do the impossible. That's a Walt Disney quote. My favorite quote, because it's only impossible until you do it. And then how fun is it that as a team of smart people, you've been able to do something that someone once thought was impossible?

One of the questions that I had written down for the end of today's show, but we'll sneak it in now, is can you tell the story of Simon sleeping on your couch? Because there are a lot of fans of Simon's work in my audience, and I'm sure they're going to get get a kick out of this.

Yeah, well, it was interesting. So we had an article in Fortune magazine, probably early 2000s. And I get this package sent from an ad agency in New York. And it's got Simon Sinek's name on it, never heard of the guy because nobody really had at that point. And he sent this viewfinder. And if anyone remembers these viewfinders or Viewmasters, They were those little things you'd get them at Disneyland where it was like click, click, click, click, and you'd look through the circle of different slides. It was like a mini slide projector that kids would look at that would have like, you know, pictures of Donald Duck or whatever. And you're like, okay, this is kind of a fun thing as a kid. Well, someone sends me one of these and I'm like, what's up with this? Simon Sinek, who is this guy? And I look at the viewfinder and I start click, click, click, and there are all these colored dots. I'm like, this is random, this is weird. I give it to Cameron Harold, who's my COO at the time, and I go, what's up with this? And he goes, yeah, it all says vision in a bunch of colored dots. And I go, why can't I see that? And he's like, well, because you're colorblind. And it was like colorblind tests with all the dots. I said, well, that's curious. This guy had no— Simon Sinek didn't know I was colorblind, and he was just trying to create this cool-looking thing. But he and I connected on vision. And he said, I just want to work with you guys. I don't know what I'm doing, but I want to work with you. And So, he said, I'll fly out on my own dime. And he helped us with some ad campaigns and some different cool work. But the beauty was, and we became friends, and him and Cameron and I, we'd have some scotch together, and he'd sleep on Cameron's couch, and he'd sleep on my couch. It was when he helped me uncover the why that really changed my life. It's never been the same since. So, before Simon Sinek was famous, and, you know, the moment that really did it for me was Simon Sinek brought out, we've all heard it, the The misfits. Steve Jobs came up with this, here's to the rebels, the troublemakers, the misfits, the round pegs in the square holes.

I love that quote. Yeah.

And I just remember him sharing that with me, Simon Sinek, and talking about culture and the value of storytelling and understanding your why. And it, it fired me up. And it's been amazing.

It's, it's fun to hear those little anecdotes. I know that you touch on it in the book. But just for everybody listening, I'm sure they're gonna get a lot of A lot of value out of that story. I mean, it's just fun. It's fun to hear about things like that, especially before somebody like Simon becomes really famous and he's sleeping on your couch. So that's cool.

And the things that Simon did really well was— Simon, when you ask, how did I educate myself? I mean, Simon reads a ton of books, but he also does that same thing I do, is just connects with people, ask questions, listen, learn, continue to grow. And the guy's a genius. And he's a genius because he listens to other people. These aren't all his ideas perfectly. They, they come together organically from what he observes and what he sees.

Yeah, I mean, that sums up how I respond to people when they ask me about it. I mean, I'm reading so many of these books and implementing so many great lessons. There are some from your first book that I can still recall, such as passion comes from consistency, not the other way around, that I've implemented and taught to so many other people. And you're a mentor to me, and we haven't spent that much time together, but I've consumed your books and I've implemented what I've learned from our conversations, whether they're actual conversations like this or the conversations I'm having with, uh, your book. And I mean, it changes lives. And anyway, I get so excited about it. And you were just talking about Simon and Vision. You talk a lot about visualization in the book. So could you tell everybody a little bit about the painted picture formula and what that means?

Yeah. I was at my parents' summer cottage, 1998. So what is that? 9 years after starting the business. I had just achieved $1 million in revenue after 8 years. I was in a bit of a doom loop. I joined the Entrepreneur Organization and I realized, you know, wow, there's people who've built way bigger businesses, way faster, more glamorous businesses than junk removal. And I questioned myself. And I compared myself to others, not a great thing to do, don't recommend it. And I said, okay, get out of this doom loop. I took a sheet of paper, one page double-sided. I sat down at my parents' summer cottage on the dock, I started to write. And it was sort of a Jerry Maguire-ish moment where it just came straight off the top of my head. I said, we will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003, 5 years out.

Wow.

We would be the FedEx of junk removal, clean, shiny trucks, friendly uniformed drivers. We would be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. And everything I could see in my brain as an entrepreneur, I wrote it down and I said, this will happen. And 5 years later, it did. We became the FedEx of junk removal. We were in the top 30 metros. We hit $100 million in revenue. We were in on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I mean, all these crazy things. And it really taught me that if you imagine big possibilities, you'd never know, they might just one day happen. Now, again, Simon Sinek helped me frame it as that. But that was really the idea is what can you imagine? And so we did everything from create a can you imagine wall in our office where people put big, bold dreams and ideas up in a big vinyl decal. And they're there permanently until they happen and they get a big green checkmark. What are the ideas that people can imagine that they can either put in their painted picture for their business themselves or on the Can You Imagine wall? And I'll, I'll give you one specific example that's timely. A couple weeks ago, we were on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. It's her final season, 19 years. She's never had a CEO founder on her business, on her show. It's not what she does. But we were there once where they did a little pitch or a little skit on 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I got to meet her. I gave her a book, WTF. And I said, Ellen, can I give you this book? You're in this book. It says that one day we will be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. And I saw it, didn't know how it would happen, and it did. But secretly in my mind, it was me on the Ellen DeGeneres Show because I wanted to start this Can You Imagine movement of helping inspire other big possibilities in so many amazing people. So after we were on the show, not me, I— we pitched and we said, could we ever come back? And it was back and forth, back and forth, until Ellen finally heard the pitch and said, I remember meeting Brian. His can you imagine philosophy is my philosophy. My life's been that way. She saw what I saw. And in that moment of magic, uh, the universe conspired and, uh, I was able to be on The Ellen Show a couple of weeks ago. It was in an old painted picture, and it had never happened. But someone on our team saw that old painted picture, decided to pitch that initial win of Ellen, and the rest led to that big magical moment. And was so proud of the team. But if you dream it, you never know, it might happen.

Stories like that get me all excited. There are 2 things that I want to touch on. First, quick question, have you read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho?

So I own it, it's on my bookshelf. I've skimmed through it a little bit. So being honest, no, I have not read it. And I've skimmed through a little bit. I know it's a Portuguese— he's a Portuguese author. It's a great book. I know there was a movie, it's on pause, that they haven't made and completed yet about it. So without watching the movie, without reading the book, no, I'm somewhere in the middle.

Well, that, that line about the universe conspiring to assist you once you state your intentions is a great theme within that book. So it'll align with your core values and what you teach. I think you'll really enjoy it. The other thing, it was a, it was a brief thing that you said, but how long did it take you to go from zero to the million dollars in revenue? Was it 9 years? Did you say?

8 years. I did the painted picture at 9 years, but it was 8 years. Long time. So on a day like today, we would do $1 million in a day or $1 million in a morning. And I don't share that to brag. I share that as, look at the momentum. I think entrepreneurs forget sometimes that these overnight success stories really take a long time. 8 years to get to $1 million. Our first franchise partner did $1 million in their first full calendar year. We do a million now in a day or in a morning, and it's momentum. And people forget sometimes, I think, the importance of sticking with something, sticking with what you're good at. Marcus Buckingham says, first, play to your strengths. I'm weak at so many things, but one of my strengths is finding people who are way stronger at other things than me and bringing them into the fold.

Well, I got a great reminder inside of your book When you said stop adding and start multiplying. And sometimes I forget, because now with hustle culture on social media, sometimes you want to be that overnight success. But the overnight success, every one of them happens just like your story did. It's 8 years to a million, and then you continue that momentum for a while longer, and then it's $8 million in a morning. But it doesn't happen overnight like that.

No.

And so you give me inspiration to keep going.

Thanks, Nick. And in an Instagram, somewhat at times fake world, right? Because we know that not every Instagram post or anything you see on social is perfectly legit and real. It is if people try to keep it real, but not all is what we see. And I think that there's stories out there that float around that, look at that person with that private jet. Yeah, but it's rented. It's not real. They didn't make it happen, or they're out of business by the time you see the post. We have to remind ourselves these, like, things don't happen overnight. They really don't. Because think of how long it takes to come up with a vision, to amass a team, to make a bunch of mistakes, to make more mistakes, to get it right and tweak it. I mean, it's just, that's the way it works. I think if we had success— I talk about this in WTF— if success was easy, it would feel like a hollow victory. Instead, we want stories of longing and regret and how, like, we just tirelessly worked through making something happen and getting to celebrate those wins versus them just coming to us with ease.

Yeah, something that I talked about on a different podcast episode with Guy Raz— I know you're friends with Guy— yeah, um, is that one of the best parts of his podcast and something that I try to do a little bit more often now is take the superhero cape off the superhero entrepreneur and expose them as humans to show everybody that entrepreneurship is a real possibility for anybody who's willing to work at it for a long enough period of time. And that's what he does. That's what I'm trying to do a little bit more. So can you give us an example of failure, maybe the You Move Me business attempt that you had there for a little while before you sold it?

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a great one. So You Move Me is mentioned in WTF. And I knew right when it was coming out and getting published that that story had changed. We couldn't take it out of the book, but nor would we have, because we knew that it was a failure and a mistake. And people needed to know that. It gave us permission to talk about it in interviews later as to why isn't U Move Me a part of O2E Brands anymore. And here's why. A couple of reasons. Number one, it's not an easy business. Not that junk removal or shining people's shacks with Shack Shine is easy, But how you make people feel at the end of the job— when the junk's gone, people go, what a relief. When you've painted with WOW one day and the walls are painted, people go, what a transformation. When you clean someone's windows with Shack Shine, they're like, wow, I can see. Those are great feelings. When you help move someone, no matter how amazing 5-star white glove service you've delivered with the, with the movers, the customers are still— mom and dad are fighting. They can't find stuff. Things are broken. Things are lost. The kids are in a new home, new neighborhood. It's stressful. Moving is stressful. And we weren't able to leave people with that long-lasting happy feeling. And we decided it wasn't for us. It was too much of a commodity-based business. We gave it 8 years. We sold it at breakeven. And we gave it to someone else to say, we hope you do something bigger with it. but we couldn't do it. Marcus Buckingham, again, first, play to your strengths. Our strengths was not in that space. Second reason, we had franchise partners from 1-800-GOT-JUNK. The first 25 franchises we launched for You Move Me were 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise partners, people who had tasted success with us who said, yes, we want to do something else with you, but it disfocused them from their core business. It got them taking their eye off the ball and putting it on the new shiny object. And that didn't help any one of us. So, you know, first 3, 4, or 5 years in, people kept dropping like flies. And it's like, man, they realized this wasn't the business for them sooner than we realized it wasn't the business for us. So great learning, but you make mistakes. You learn from them, you try not to repeat them. And Hey, it's— I would say failure is as necessary an ingredient in success as anything else. You got to be willing to make mistakes, and it might feel like it's a setback, but it's how you frame it and look at it and go, what do I learn that is going to open up a bigger, better opportunity for me down the road?

Well, thank you for being transparent about that. And I think what it does is it gives everybody else who's on the fence about starting a business a little bit more confidence. Like, You know what, Brian is extremely successful, but sometimes he still makes mistakes. And that's okay. It's part of the process. Like you said, it's as necessary of an ingredient as anything else in the formula. So, well, thank you.

And I have no problem being transparent. And as you know, before we started recording, you said, is there anything offside? And I said, no, like, you can't as a leader inspire anyone unless you are yourself. So, if I'm not transparent, if I'm not truthful, if I'm a fake Instagram post, that's not inspiring someone with reality. What I want people to see at the end of the day is if Brian can do it, I can do it. 33 years ago, when I dropped out of high school, the whole bit. Like, I want people to know I'm not the smartest person in the room, and that's true. And that there's other people who— everyone who's listening today has a gift. How can you use that? You need to be hearing from people in a transparent way, or it's just not reality.

Preach. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. And there's a concept that I'm toying with right now with a new hire at Book Thinkers about documenting some of the behind-the-scenes struggles as a small business owner in your 20s, especially in the age of social media. How does it work? How do you make these decisions? Because I want to give people in my community more encouragement and So we're going to start, we're going to start documenting that in a little bit of a different way. Before we wrap up, I know we've got to wrap up in a couple of minutes. One thing that I'm sure a few people are interested in, if they want to become a franchise partner of yours, if they're interested in the franchise business model itself, and they are interested in one of the business models that you described before, what do you look for in a franchise partner? And what's the startup cost to get involved with one of your businesses?

Yeah, good question. And I'm not here trying to promote any of that. So I would say the number one thing if someone was interested is buy BYOB, it's 99 cents on Kindle, read that and see if you think that we might be for you. So I appreciate you bringing that up. But I will say the number one thing we look for is something called 4 H's. And it's these 4 things: happy, hungry, hardworking, and hands-on. Now, I think that's important not just for our franchise organization, but if someone's looking at a franchise elsewhere, Or if someone's starting a business from scratch, a happy, smiley, optimistic attitude, because business is too hard to do any other way. Hungry, you've got to want to make that work. Someone coming in purely as an investor buying a franchise, no, it doesn't work for us. We need someone that's going, yes, I need this to work. This isn't just another one in my basket. Hands-on, this has to be their full-time focused effort and energy until they've built up this empire that they can then put other people into to help run it. Happy, hungry, hands-on, hardworking. Someone needs to be hardworking. I mean, you know, as an entrepreneur, it's not easy. And we have to work hard to get to the other side, to get to the point where you can build up that flywheel momentum. So 4 H's, we created that as our own kind of summary of what it takes to be successful as a franchise owner. And people that do that, we see them win.

Well, amazing. And, and I would encourage everybody to grab a copy of the book as well. We will put a link to it in the show notes below. And Brian, thank you so much for coming on today's episode. And I'm excited to hear sort of what you're going to be doing in the future. So could you tell us, is there anything special coming next? Maybe another book concept in your head? What's the deal?

Yeah, so it's funny, I never knew that I wanted to write the first book and We talked about that in the second book. Now we're already— Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads, he does all our radio creative and he co-authors our books. He has already got me set up this week for the first interview on the third book. Now the third book, we love acronyms. So WTF, BYOB, the third one is CYI, Can You Imagine? And so it's taking the Can You Imagine wall and movement I would challenge people to go search Brian Scudamore Ellen and watch that clip because Ellen cried. Like, it was awesome. It was a moment where we are going to make a Can You Imagine wall for someone she's had come onto the show. And I won't tell the whole story, but we want to create a movement with Can You Imagine. So we want to give people in their businesses, in their workplaces, in their schools, in their communities, a way to come up and dream big ideas and imagine big possibilities. We're in a place in the world right now, we need possibility more than anything. It's been a hard couple of years. We need to dream big. And can you imagine some movement that we will be writing about and sharing with the world as days go by?

Thank you for doing what you do, man. I love it.

It's easy. Thank you.

For those that want to learn a little bit more about you, your book, where should they go? What should they do? I mean, we'll toss it all in the show notes.

Google. I mean, that's what you do. You find everything on Google. So put in Brian Scudamore, put in O2E Brands, see where it takes you. We got lots of fun content. And yeah, it's— I'm just, I'm so inspired by people that are entrepreneurs and by the people who haven't yet become them that want to and have that fire in their belly just to like, just run with it, but they're scared. I feel that if I can help in any way, people like you helping It's about encouraging others to live their dreams, and it's pretty awesome.

I look forward to the third conversation then.

Amazing.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers, Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives. By reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.