How To OVERCOME ANYTHING & WIN In 2022 | Brian Scudamore

To me, failure is a gift if you're willing to unwrap it. To me, failure is a necessary ingredient in success.

What is the one thing that you think is missing from early entrepreneurs right now? Because I know that you've obviously have a franchise model that allows you to pour it at other entrepreneurs on a regular basis. So what do you think's missing from the entrepreneurship game right now?

I think young entrepreneurs don't really get a chance to learn about entrepreneurship in school. When I was a kid and even when I look at my kids, they're not covering it as a career option as much as I would hope they would. I think our future is built on leaders and entrepreneurs create these new models of sort of changing the world. And I wish kids were inspired into entrepreneurship at an earlier age.

Yeah, well, no, I'm glad you mentioned that because, you know, I don't know about you, but I stumbled my way into entrepreneurship, totally stumbled my way into it. Got down to the necessity kind of thing of like this is the one thing that I can do, so I'm going to do that. Started started my business when I was like 19 years old and it was kind of an uphill battle from from there on out. Talk to me a little bit about your story about how you became an entrepreneur because it's pretty impressive from my perspective. Like again, I resonate with you quite a bit based on what you've done.

So I hear you are a fellow high school dropout, so yes sir, you and I have learned in similar ways. Now I'm not proud of being a high school dropout. I love to learn. I'm just so add that sitting in a classroom and learning from people who never actually ran businesses was hard for me. So the way I got my start I was inspired by my grandparents who had an army store in San Francisco. I used to work there every holiday break I could and I loved watching them and being a part of playing the game of business. But I started my own business when I was 18, one course short of graduation from high school. I'm in a McDonald's drive through of all places. I see this beat up old pickup truck with, with plywood side panels built up on the box. It said Mark's hauling on the side of the truck. And I looked at that truck and I'm like I should go buy a truck. And so I left that drive through and a week later I bought myself a Ford F100, built the plywood sides up and started driving down alleys and laneways and offering to Cart away people's junk. I charged a fee. The business was called the Rubbish Boys. It was just me. But I had a vision for something greater. And off I went, removing junk, funding my way through college, which I talked my way into as a high school dropout. And three years in, I'm learning way more about business, running a business more than studying in school. So I made the bold decision to drop out. And I say bold because my, my father is a transplant surgeon and has done more schooling than anyone I've ever met. So for me to sit down and say, hey, Dad, I got some news for you. I'm quitting school. He thought I was, I was off my rocker. And I made a tough decision, but it's paid off to be the right one.

Well, and I think it has, obviously not just because of a super successful company, but, you know, to hear your franchisees talk about you and the impact that you've made in their lives and helping give them a lot of belief on what's possible, I think is a, is a, is a legacy that will outlive you, Right?

That.

I think that at the end of the day, that's kind of what's going on. Now. You went on to start two other like, home services business. What is it about the home services industry that you really like? Because a lot of folks, you know, I'm always joking. One of the, one of the companies that I own is a construction business myself, like, specializes in siding, right? Not super sexy. Until someone needs something built, right? And then all of a sudden it becomes a lot sexier. So how did you find your way in this home service industry and why do you like it so much? Clearly it's been very successful for you.

I found my way into it by accident as I told you about the junk removal truck which became 1-800-got-JUNK. I love home services because if you look at Amazon, a company today that obviously is one of the biggest companies on the planet, they make it easy. You click, you order, it gets sent to you. But do you have any connection to your Amazon team? Do you see people come to the door, they usually ring the doorbell and they're gone off to the next parcel they're delivering. They don't cross, cross the threshold into someone's home. What I love about 1-800-got junk or wow. One day painting or shot shine. We're invited into people's homes, we get to come in and the smiley, friendly professional team that walks in the door gets to show how much we love our business and how much we love wowing our customers. That's a special place to play. And so I love building brands. I got into home services by accident, but 22 years into 1-800-got junk. I said, we're learning so much about business, call centers, marketing, booking and dispatch. We're learning about how to market and grow an industry in a very fragmented mom and pop space. And I thought, could we take that and parlay our knowledge into other home service spaces? We got into WOW one day painting and we go in and we paint people's homes in an entire day. It's a flash mob. In you go, the right number of people in the right number of rooms, Coordinated plan to perfection. And we get people's homes painted in a day, we save them the disruption. And so doing it in one business taught us how to do it in a second. They're very different businesses. We made mistakes. But it's a franchise ownership model where someone who goes, yeah, I've always wanted to run a business but I need a bit of a formula. I need a platform on which to grow from. Yeah, we've built, you know, dozens and dozens of entrepreneurs that have built hundred million hundreds of, you know, thousands of dollars and million dollar businesses that have been very successful with us with a proven recipe. And that's what really drives me.

I love it, man. Well, you know, when you think about it, you know, I know failure is a huge part of the story. Right. You know, as an entrepreneur myself, I, I feel like I've survived most of my mistakes, not necessarily thrived on them, but they did teach me a great deal.

How has failure played a role into what you've done and how do you look at failure now as opposed to when you were just getting started?

To me, failure is a gift if you're willing to unwrap it. To me, failure is a necessary ingredient in success. We don't learn from our bigger, our biggest successes as much as we do our biggest failures. That's where we grow, that's where we push ourselves and we're stretched. So I actually wrote a book on failure called wtf, Willing to Fail. And when I sat down with my co author Roy Williams, a wizard of ads, and we wrote the book together, I said, I want a title. I'm a branding guy. I start with brands. Wow. One day painting Shack Shine, 1-800-got junk. I lead with the brand name. And Roy said it's different in the book business. And he'd written dozens of books. He said, brian, we're going to choose a name after the manuscript is done. I said, okay, I'll trust you. You're the expert. I close off on the book, the manuscript and the title popped out WTF, willing to fail. Because my entire 30 year journey has been a little bit of success and then a failure, more success and then a failure. And it's this journey of constant mistakes and learning. And so I realized, wow, failure has been a real thing for me. But what I do differently than I think a lot of people and I hope to inspire others to do is to treat failure like it's your friend.

Yeah.

You make a mistake and then you immediately say, okay, I didn't mean to make that mistake, but what better thing will come in my business or my life as a result of that mistake?

Yeah, no, I think that's good because I know that at least early on I used to take a personal identity hit every time that I didn't measure up to my competition or my expectation or a job wasn't as profitable as it could have been, or any number of things. And especially being an entrepreneur, it seems like resiliency at the end of the day is going to be your. Is going to be one of. Become one of your best tools. Right. Because you're going to make mistakes. And I think it's almost intuitive for us to want to somehow hide the mistake or stay away from the mistake or somehow like cover it, cover things up, you know, And I, and I'm really happy. I know one of the things that I've. That I've heard you talk about before in a very transparent way is actually having to let go of 11 people all at one time.

You know, letting someone go is not an easy decision. So I. Cause I've been there myself. Right. Several times in my career. Talk to us a little about how that, how that happened and then what kind of things you learned from that. Because I, if I know that played a key role into the business, that what became your larger business itself.

Yeah. We have a mantra. It's all about people. Find the right people and treat them right. And that came from a big failure. Five years into my business, I've got 11 employees. They say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. And I probably had nine bad apples, but I picked that team. This was a leadership failure on my part. I sat down with the entire team of 11 and brought them in and said, I really don't know any way forward here. And I started with two words. I said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I let you down. Didn't Find the right people, didn't give you the love and support that you needed to be successful and was making a change. And so I got the team, I said goodbye and I vowed that day on to find the right people and treat them right. That my company from that day forward would be all about people. And so you can fire someone, but you can still treat them as a human being. You can apologize, you can own the mistake, and you can really help them get on their feet into a new position. We lose people all day long. And here we are, people are talking about the great resignation. We're going to lose people. We're all losing people. But if you treat them really well and show them the heart behind the business, you don't have to lose people. But when you do treat them like human beings with love and respect and well wishes in their new employment.

Well, from a process standpoint, what did you do differently after that shift? Like what? What was there one or two things strategically that, that allowed you to hire better, you know, to in essence, build a better culture?

Yeah. I started paying attention, paid attention to what I was looking for. The we've got something we call the barbecue, the beer and barbecue test. And what that is is would you have a beer with the person? If you and I met in real life, not on Zoom, would we hit it off? I think we would. Would we have a beer together? Are we interested and are we interesting? Are we interested in each other? Do we have something in common? We already found it. We both dropped out of high school and we'd probably have a beer or a coffee together. Every time we interview someone, we look for commonality, we look for a connection. We just say, listen, we spend enough time working together. Do we like this person? Do we think that they add to the value of our culture and our business? The second question we get people to interview with and really pay attention to when they're interviewing someone is the barbecue test. How would they fit at a company barbecue or a company picnic? Do they really add to the culture? We're not looking for everyone to be just like us. We have introverts, extroverts, lots of diversity of opinions and cultures and backgrounds. They don't have to fit perfectly, but do they fit, you know, a great house party when you show up to one. We want our company to feel like it's just this great, energetic, diverse place.

Yeah.

And that people really make it a special place by adding to the value that they bring by joining the team. So it's a simple way. You ask, you Know, process wise, what did we do different? We just started paying attention and not compromising on the quality of people we bring in. They might have the skill, but do they have the personality? Do they have the character? Do they fit culturally with our business?

I love that. I love that. You know, it's. I'm just. I was thinking back of all the. So obviously I spent a decade leading people really badly. You know, I didn't. I was telling somebody recently that I've, you know, my. My CPA, my CFO, all my ABCs and EFGs that were my management team, you know, they all had acronyms behind their name. And here I was, the high school dropout, and I didn't want to. And I didn't tell a soul. Right. They just thought they were coming into a successful business that was, you know, growing and had a great reputation, blah, blah, blah, only to find out that I was incredibly defensive, incredibly insecure, and it took quite some time to kind of outgrow that all the way to the point where I had to come back from a leadership conference that I went to, basically getting my teeth kicked in for a few days, come back and basically spend three hours apologizing for the doofus that I had been. And, you know, I know that leadership not done well can do a lot of damage. And you don't hear leaders a lot actually say, hey, look, I wasn't a great leader early on, and this is what I've expected and this is what I understood. You know, your brands all have a essence of playfulness to them. Yeah, like playfulness, behavior. I assume that's by design nowadays because obviously that's who you are as a person. But how do you get that to permeate through your entire team?

Yeah, I'm a playful person for sure. I take my business seriously, but not myself. I have fun. I'm able to admit my failures and mistakes and where my leadership fails have been and so on. So I think it comes from the top down, so to speak. But we just find great people who don't mind being real.

Yeah.

And I think that's the key for us is authenticity is something you hear constantly. Just show up and be yourself. Don't try and play a different character in this world. Show up and do a great job. Treat your people with a heart, have fun, and it shows in your business. Now, I love. You know, one of the things that you said is you were a doofus.

I didn't know. I totally was a doofus.

Yeah. I don't know you. If I didn't know you then and know if you were or weren't. But the fact that you're able to own up to that takes courage to be able to say, hey, I didn't have it figured out. And nobody's got it figured out even today. But you're constantly learning, getting better. And if we show up as ourselves, makes a massive difference.

Yeah. Now, are you someone who, like I. So I tend to invest in my team. We do various styles of team building events, both corporately, in the various states and everything. Is that something you put into your culture as well? Do you guys intentionally do what I call community time? In other words, we're guys, we. I'm sure you guys will talk shop a little bit, but the purpose of us is just for us to hang out. Do you, do you do that intentionally in your business as well?

Tons of times. I mean, during the pandemic, we did a lot of it over zoom, which can get tiring. It's not the same. But as we're coming back and getting together in person, I mean, it's so important. You can't, you can't replace that. You need to be together. You need to spend time connecting and having the community time, whatever you might call it, but having a cocktail, sitting down and just chatting about life and about business, what's working, what's not. We're in this business to have fun together. And I found that by being together is such an important thing. We do something in our business every single day where we all come together as an entire company. We've done that for almost 20 years called Huddle. And it's the stand up daily meeting. Now. It's being done a lot online now because we're all in different cities and we haven't been able to connect in the same way. But our virtual huddle, hundreds of people show up and it's a seven minute stand up. And it's unbelievable because every single day, everyone in the company knows the good news, where we're stuck, what we're excited about, and different people every day running the show and we just get a chance to come together and connect. It's kind of like the, the 6pm dinner as a family. You sit around the table and you ask your kids, you know, how was your day? What's going on? What'd you learn? We do that as a company for seven minutes every single day.

I love it. I love it. You know, we do this thing internally that I learned a long time ago that if we could do life, if we could do life well together. We can do business well together.

Right?

And that's essentially what you're talking to. And we do this thing called peaks and valleys. So once a week, we'll have a handful of team members. We've gotten to where our team is large enough now, where if we did it team member by team member all the way through the business, it would take a full day to get through everybody. But we have this thing called peaks and valleys. And once a week, we say, hey, look, somebody, you know, come up here and volunteer for your peaks. You know, what were the peaks of the week? You know, and nothing's off limits. You know, you just got a new puppy. Fantastic. Let's celebrate that. And then the same thing as the valleys, you know, maybe your puppy passed away. Let's, let's. Let's. Let's kind of mourn together, so to speak, and have some compassion together. Are you able to take a leadership team? Because obviously, you know, nowadays, it's funny. One of my goals is to actually get to the undercover boss stage, Because I know you just finished that not long ago. Because we hire people now that I've never met before, which is mind boggling to me sometimes. But how are you able to take your core values and put those into your leaders on a regular basis? And the reason I asked that is because I see a lot of leaders who are more concerned about a P and L statement than they are the business itself. So how do you teach them to? Because I assume some of the most talented people on the planet are more tactile than cultural.

That's a good question, Steven. I think leaders that care more about the P and L than the people are not the right leaders. If you care first about people, the P and L will come. It always does. I find everybody that can make a switch to putting people first, eventually it all falls into place. But when you focus on the numbers, the people don't feel heard and cared for. So for us, it's always developing our people to say, each business has a heart. And if you can realize that you can take a business and have such impact on customers, lives, your people's lives, your employees.

When you focus on finding the right people and treating them right, a business is a very impactful tool. And it sounds like you're doing it the right way. I mean, I love the peaks and valleys. When you come together as a team and you talk about the highs and lows, what you've learned, mistakes you've made. Talking as a company, a company of great Women and men coming together to do great things. It's incredibly important work.

Yeah, no, it totally is.

I am kind of like thinking in the back of my mind, my early entrepreneur days, my bad behavior days. Right. And I, and I wish that, I wish that, I wish somebody would just sat me down and say, hey, knucklehead, knock it off. Right. Kind of thing. And I would have to believe that we've, we're, we're going to have some viewers or some listeners that maybe are early in the early maturity cycle of becoming an, a successful entrepreneur right there. Maybe they're leading small teams, maybe they're leading bigger teams, but they're not doing it with a service first or a culture based mentality. They're doing it from, hey, look, I got to get the bottom line. We've got to get the widget out. We've got to do this thing and that thing and this other thing.

We know the benefits of running businesses culture first. How would we encourage or inspire that early entrepreneur, if you will, to maybe look at things differently? How would you coach them?

Well, I would say my experience growing up in this business for 32 years is it's all about people finding the right people and treating them right in our decisions. Whenever we are looking at the bottom line, are we treating our people right? When the pandemic hit, we had to let people go. We didn't know what the world was doing and where it was going and we let 52 people go. And it was hard. But I called every employee to check in to say I'm sorry and just to show that we are human beings and that no one knows what was going to happen during the pandemic, but just to check in on them. And we reached out again even later as we furloughed some people just to say, like, are you doing okay? Can we help you? And a lot of people came back when they could. They might have felt, if they'd felt mistreated and weren't treated with love and respect, they might have found another opportunity versus coming back to us. Yeah. So I think how you treat your people is everything. And so how do you inspire a leader that doesn't get that? I think trust, trust entrepreneurs that have been there before.

You, right.

You and I are showing up saying, listen, culture first. I can't afford to, I can't afford to do this. Someone might say, you can't afford not to just do the best with the resources you have. And it doesn't mean you've got to have, you know, fancy Lunches for every single employee and all these healthcare benefits and this and that. If you can't afford that, you can sure afford at least to build a relationship of love and respect with your people and show you care about them and show and perform acts of service that don't cost money.

Yeah.

Take care of your people. They will take care of the growth of the business. Yeah.

And it's interesting you say that because I, you know, we. But long before I could actually afford to have any kind of perks of any kind, like, it was like, I can barely afford the payroll, let alone perks. Um, a simple high five or a one arm hug went a long way for sure. Went a real long way. Um, I've learned that people will have this need to feel seen, valued, and val. Seen, heard and validated on a regular basis. And if you're able to see them.

They will do more and work harder and can more consistently because they know that you care. They know that you know that you care. And, you know, at least in my entrepreneurial journey, getting there was not easy, but it was worth it. Right? Your. Your right culture does precede, you know, high levels of profitability and P and LS and all that good stuff. I'm also thinking a little bit about the times that I've had to let people go and the times that I did that I did it really poorly. And the times that, you know, I. I feel like it. We did it well, because I was able to pick up the phone and see them a month from now, and them not hide around the, you know, in the grocery store or give them a big bear hug or still be invited to a baptism or a birthday party or something like that. Do you have any tactical strategies in how to dismiss someone with dignity and respect, or is it just something that comes natural?

I think just show up and have a heart and do it the way, you know, treat someone as you would want to be treated. The golden rule.

Yeah.

So Cameron Herold, who was our COO from 2 million in revenue to 106 million in revenue. I was the best man in his wedding, and then I had to let the guy go. We're still friends today. We text, we talk, we see each other a lot. And that's because while it was hard news for him to take, I still did it as a human being. He would tell you if he was on this podcast, he would say, you know what? It was the best decision in the end for him and me. It was a win, win. Although it seemed really hard at the Time. But you just, you apologize where necessary. You show a heart and care and you just say, hey, listen, like, I know this is a tough decision, but the reality was with Cameron and I, we were Both fire ready, aim types, very add leaders and what was needed from 2 million to 100. It was right having the two of us at the helm of the ship. But as the business grew, we needed more rigor and discipline. And Cameron wasn't the right leader for the next stage, but he was able to realize that he was able to launch three, four books and a speaking career and coaching career and all these great things that he's done that have been truly exceptional for him. Sometimes you just have to communicate again to someone as they're a human being and a friend. They might not agree with you at the time and they might be hurt, but they'll come back if you've done it properly.

Yeah. I mean, again, going back to just some of my history, thinking through things, you know, I've a couple of different realizations. First of all, I found out that in many respects we, me staying up at night worrying about should I or shouldn't I let them go. One was very painful. Two, every single time that I let someone go with dignity and respect and done so in love, so to speak, in almost every case that I can even think of to this day, they all went on to do better things for other businesses or in their own entrepreneurial ventures. And the people that we hired because we had a better idea of who we needed for that role, the hiring was better. You know, and I, and I think about the times when I held on too long because I would, I just, I don't want to hurt them. I've known them forever, that I know their kids. I know I've been to their, like all this kind of stuff. It ended up costing me money, time, resource frustration actually end up souring the relationship because it should have been dealt with on the front end. And I know that entrepreneurs on a regular basis deal a lot with. That they deal a lot with. Well, I don't want to let someone go because they've been here a while or I don't, you know, that kind of thing. Even though it's the right thing for the business. Let's talk to the entrepreneur for just a second and say, hey, dude or dudette. Like, like let's, let's, let's. Let me be honest with you. What, what would you say to them if they're, if they're maybe in that season where they're Trying to figure that out.

Yeah. I would ask the. The person, you know, if I had an employee, if I was an entrepreneur who had some employees, and I wasn't sure, I'd coach that entrepreneur to sit down and ask the tough questions. Is this working for you? Ask the person, are they happy? Are they loving life? Just because they've been around for a long time doesn't mean you should necessarily keep them around. They might have lost their mojo in the business, and maybe it's time to move them on to a better opportunity, free them up for another opportunity that's the best. You know, I want someone in my business, anyone who's ever been in my business, to be proud of their resume that they've built, where they can say after their time at 1-800- got junk or wow and day painting, shack shine, they can actually list that company on their resume and be proud of that time and show that that was a big growth block for them to the next place in life, in their career.

Yeah.

And so how you treat them during their time and how you exit them when it's the right time, you don't have to fire them. It could be mutual. Sometimes it's just a conversation, and that's okay. But free someone's. You know, you can take someone in sports. How many teams did Shaq play for?

Yeah.

People move on. You play for five or six teams. Like that's part of life.

Yeah.

And sometimes people need a push to go to that next place or sometimes some encouragement to stay and grow into another opportunity within the business.

Yeah. You know, I heard this interesting concept. I forgot where I heard it from.

But there was this key question that they asked, this phrase, and they said when considering whether or not someone should be freed. That was a word they used, freed. You know, free to go do what they're most passionate about kind of thing. When considering whether or not you should do that, ask yourself one question. I said, okay, what's that? Would you hire them again?

Knowing what, you know now, knowing kind of everything with, would you hire them again? And are they. And are they the right fit? And in doing so, I've been thinking through that every single time that I dismiss someone.

Like I said, with love and with the right respect, dignity, every single time that I've done that that way, the answer to that question is no. For the season the business is in today and the season of leadership that I'm under today, no, I would not hire them again. And 100% of the cases.

However, my most painful moments with building Teams were obviously the ones where I held on too long. I had a vice president of mine that went on to do some pretty dangerous stuff within my organization because they held on too long. So I don't want to be a dead horse, but I just want leaders to hear how important great cultures are working with teams are so they spend the necessary time to invest in it.

Absolutely.

Give yourself permission to know that. It's really hard to get right, but just work through it. Get to the next level in your business. Find your new team, your next leader, and know that we make mistakes and we learn from them.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to jump back into your book for a second, so help me understand, like, what was missing from the conversation of the world that you wanted that you said, I got to write this book. Like, what was missing? What made you set out to write the book?

I got talked into it. So my co author, Roy Williams, who's the wizard of ads, nobody's done more radio creative than him on the planet. He's an amazing friend and mentor and partner of the business doing all our radio. And for about eight years, he kept saying every time I went to go visit him in Austin, Texas, brian, you got to write a book. Brian, you got to write a book. And my answer was always the same, Roy, I don't want to write a book. I hardly read books. I actually can write and I enjoy it, but.

My ego doesn't need a book. And Roy's like, one year, he just said, roy. Roy said, brian, it's not about you. It's not about you and your ego. It's. You have great stories and experience from your business and all that you've all created together. The world needs to hear these stories so they can learn from your mistakes. They can be inspired by your successes. And I was like, okay, you're right when you put it that way. And it's not about me and my ego if you think it can make a difference to others. He said, I absolutely do. I said, great, let's do a book. And he said, I'll make it easy. I'll put you up in the Wizard's tower. We'll spend a day together and we'll record. He'll interview story after story after story. And that became the basis for the book, and I'm glad I did it. In fact, I'm on a second book right now. Roy and I wrote the second book and it'll be coming out in the early, early new year. So it's with the publishers right now. And yeah, you know, they're doing the proof.

So it's. So it's kind of hush hush at the moment then. If it was with the publishers, it's hush hush.

Well, it's hush hush just in. I mean, you know, it's not out there yet, but we're doing it. We've committed. And so it's interesting how you can go from a very passionate, I never want to write a book to someone showing you a different perspective to say, here's why you should write a book.

Yeah.

And then realizing the impact it has on people and going, okay, now I want to do a second.

Yeah, I love it. No, I'm super stoked. And we have to get you back on at the beginning of the year when you get ready for that one too. Talk about that.

Thank you.

Well, let me ask you this. You know, willing to Fail. You know, it's such a great message. The title itself, I'm glad you mentioned that. You know, the title, basically jumping out of the pages.

And seeing it as a gift and then working through that. How else or what other practical steps or principles.

Can you extrapolate from the failure concept? Because I feel like, again, people see failure in the wrong light.

Yeah. You know, for me, failure is. It is a gift if you're willing to unwrap it. And I think somehow how. Sometimes how you have to unwrap failure is you need to write down what just happened and what am I willing to learn from it? And so when I had to fire all 11 people on my team, okay, that was a tough decision. I now went from five trucks down to no employees. How am I going to rebuild this thing? Well, the lesson to learn, to write down, was company's all about people, find the right people, treat them right. It fundamentally shifted my path forward in my business, where I learned the valuable lesson of hiring the right people and treating them right. So you can look at every failure and go, okay, what's the gift? This is exciting. You know, one of my kids who, when she was a lot littler, was learning to ski, and she'd come back after skiing and say, ah, ski lesson. I hate it. I fell today. I keep falling. I'm like, you fall? You fell today. And she's like, yeah, it hurts. And I hate it. And I'm like, do you know that Olympians fall? Do you know that? That's how you learn that you fall and you learn how to not do that again and reflect on what your mistake was and how to grow and stretch yourself and literally, true story. The End of the next day of ski school, she came, she said, guess what? I fell today. Big smile. And I'm like, wow, my message landed. But we grow from our failures. And so people should, every time they fail, give themselves a pat on the back, congratulate yourself, and go, okay, this is good. I'm learning. And yes, it's hard. And yes, you might not be ready to write down at that exact moment what you learned. But after you're out of bed and over your depression and sulking and whatever's going on, depending on the failure, think about it, reflect and say, how will this change my future? And ideally, even the future of others, if you want to go big from making that mistake.

So good. I love the story with your daughter, too, because I can literally picture her falling down day one and falling down day two and coming back with big high fives like, I did it. I did it kind of thing. I could picture that. And I. And it's so true. I mean, it's so true. It really is. When it comes to failure, you know, I. I've kind of always adopted that principle. There's no such thing as failure. There's only learning. Learning and winning, I think is. I've heard, or something like that. But anyway, curious to know, what is your definition of stuck?

Of stuck, yeah.

What's your definition of being stuck?

I mean, we have moments where we just can't figure out what that next step is. And sometimes you're, you know, you're stuck in the mud of your. Of your business, of your thoughts, and you can't figure out how to get through. That'd be stuck for me.

All right, now, on the converse side of that, what is the definition of becoming unstoppable?

Unstoppable is there's. There's no friction.

Yeah.

Like, you can just. Anything you can accomplish. The sign here on my. Over my left shoulder that says, it's kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney. Yeah. What? What if you knew it actually was possible?

Yeah.

Would you do it? Would you try?

Yeah.

For me, I love attempting the impossible. A couple of weeks ago, we were on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. It was on our bucket list of things we wanted to see happen for the business for years and years. And we tried and failed and tried and failed. And till one day it happened. The impossible became possible. We were on Oprah. I mean, and I throw those things out just as here's a junk removal business. This isn't Google. This isn't Amazon. This is like, we got some Pretty great press in an industry that shouldn't have gotten it because we believed, because we persevered and we just kept going.

Yeah. No, that's so good. And it's a great reminder, too, because I. The people that I see that do extraordinary things.

They do ordinary things well.

Yeah.

And then they tend to elevate themselves based on whatever struggle they faced. It's almost like their. Their legs get stronger as they climb the mountain.

Right.

You know, during the climb, it feels painful, it feels uncomfortable. Legs are burning, sweat, going everywhere, freezing cold or whatever, depending on what mountain you're on. And yet when you get to the summit and you get ready to climb again, you notice that your legs are bigger and they're stronger, and, you know, the weight of your shoulders can carry more. You know, I think about entrepreneurs like yourself who's done, you know, amazing things, not just with their business, but more importantly with their teams, with the clients that they see, how they view clients, how they love clients. Right. You know, and I've seen some other. And seen how that. That methodology carries into scalability versus a company that maybe doesn't see their team that way or maybe sees a client as a number or.

And it's not even expense.

What's.

What's just a revenue source. Right. And I. And I think the moral of the story for today's show is more than anything else is, like, see people how you want to see yourself more than anything else.

Right.

And act with everything, with a little bit of love and a little bit of joy and some. Maybe some fun.

Right.

Willingness to be willing to, like, take. Take a. Take big, big, big chances, you know, and follow on your face.

Yeah. It's okay.

Yeah.

Okay. We all, like. I have not met one super successful person in life that doesn't have stories of failures and tons of them.

Yeah.

We were to cross the finish line and succeed at something without the failures, it would feel like a hollow victory. But when you've got the story, the stories of, you know, longing and regret and all the disappointment and all the challenges and pushing through the mud.

Yeah.

And it makes us go. Yeah. Like, we didn't just call up Ellen and get on Ellen.

Yeah.

We tried for something like nine years.

So it's those. Those moments that you celebrate as a team because you did it together, because we persevered and made it happen. It makes it fun. And it's. It's about celebrating the victories, but also the. The stories of where we've all come from.

Well, high fives everywhere for you and your team for the, you know, getting on Ellen and doing that. Right? That's awesome, man. Well, dude, I've enjoyed having you enjoyed and enjoyed hearing your concepts and your thoughts on business and leadership and failing. And I. Your voice is quite refreshing to a world that is normally celebrating success where I think the greatest weight given a lot of times is on the sacrifice. So I appreciate you coming on the show today, man. Thank you so much. Seriously, where can everybody else find more about you?

They can, you know, put Brian Scudamore into Google and it'll take you to places that, where you'll find articles or my Instagram, my LinkedIn. You can search any of our companies. 1-800-got junk. Wow. One day painting, shack, shine. It's all out there. Google's a beautiful place.

Very good, sir. Well, you enjoy the rest of your time, man. Thank you so much for coming on.

You too. Thanks, Stephen.

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