1-800-GOT-JUNK founder Brian Scudamore on How to Nail and Scale Any Business Model

Audio Transcription

 

How does one man grow a business that he started with just $700 into a business that now generates over $300 million in annual sales on today’s show, our Canadian brother from another mother, Brian Scudamore, shares with us how he founded in successfully scaled 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Wow. One day painting. You’ve moved me and shack shine. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Mr Brian Scudamore.

Yes, yes, yes. And try. Based on today’s show, we have an incredible guest. This guy is the CEO of o2e brands. The parent company of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Wow. One day painting. I said, wow. One day painting. You move me and shack shine the ladies and gentlemen, the man, the myth, the legend. Mr Brian Scudamore, welcome to the thrive time show. How are you sir?

Well, I don’t need any more coffee. Thank you clay. That is quite the introduction and huge energy. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Well, I’m excited to have you on the show. You know my, my partner and friend Jonathan Barnett has built a major, a very successful franchise in Oxi fresh carpet cleaning and we’re always hearing the praise reports are how great your brands are doing. So I’d like for, let’s kind of start at the bottom if we can hear. Where did, when did you get the idea to first start? 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

I was in a Mcdonald’s drive through of all places there I was a beat up old pickup truck in front of me. I had just dropped out of college or out of high school. I was one course short of graduation. All my friends were going to college and so I figured I needed to follow them. But first it meant talking my way in to college. I met with the admissions group and and said, you know what? I’m smart enough. I can do this. Even without a high school diploma. They somehow gave me a chance and then I needed to find the money to pay for it. So I was in that Mcdonald’s drive through, there’s a beat up old pickup truck in front of me. It was plywood sides on the box. It said Mark’s hauling across the truck and I was like, wow, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to go by myself to pick up, I’m going to start hauling junk. And uh, there I was 18 years old running a business, but in two weeks paid for itself or the end of the summer gave me, gave me enough money for college and I was off to the races.

No, it was 1979. Right?

1989 I’m not quite that old.

Well yeah, cause you, you look like you’re drinking a lot of fish oil. You look like a young man. I was wondering if you know, this was in 1999 I wasn’t sure. Okay. Now you said you bought this first truck, am I correct? Was it $700? Was it $7,000? How much money did you spend on that truck?

Yeah, 700 bucks. It was my life savings. I had $1,000 in the bank, 700 on the truck, the rest on flyers and business cards. And then off I went to start building a business, which ironically there I am in college, uh, learning more about business by running a business more than I was studying entrepreneurship in school. So I made the bold decision to drop out. My father is a liver transplant surgeon. He’s done more schooling than most people I’ve ever met. And uh, you can, you can imagine when I sat down to say, Hey dad, I got a year left of college, I’m dropping out because I’m learning more about business by running one. He, uh, he thought it was a foolish, foolish decision, but certainly, uh, as onside with that decision today,

did he name your company rubbish, rubbish boys who named the company?

That would be me. You know, I, uh, I wanted to name it something that sounded bigger than just me. So it was the rubbish boys. It was plural. It was a vision for something greater. And I started hiring friends and they would, you know, be fellow college students and they would be running the business along side of me. We build it together and yeah, it was a ton of fun and continues to be fun almost 30 years later.

Now my understanding is you guys hit $1 million in revenue and 97 is that correct?

Yeah, so it took us eight years to get to a million in revenue, which is pretty slow growth. I was excited when we got there, but the, the fun part is today we do $1 million on any given day, so eight years nice and slow, and then boom, the ramp up through franchising, finding the right franchise partners and a great team, the people, and we’ve been able to accelerate things significantly.

Do you have a favorite favorite rap groups? You have a favorite music group?

Oh Gee. A lot of British stuff. Uh, what was I into? I was in the new order. They cure a lot of [inaudible] type. Yeah, I know. A little. Uh, Yep. I was probably wearing eyeliner back in the day really.

A lot of times these bands, they break up, they get into disagreements. They say, Hey, you know, we should stop wearing eyeliner. No way to stick with the island. We need to change it up. No, we gotta you know, next thing you know, they ended up breaking up and they get back together and they perform at a casino. Uh, my understanding is that you guys, you decided to break up the band. You just said, you said, listen, rubbish boys, rubbish guys, rubbish dudes. We know where and why did you fire everybody at the same time?

Fired my entire company. I had 11 people in the band, so to speak. They were employees, not partners, but I sat down one day and I said, you know, I’m not having fun. I’m not smiling anymore. I’m not happy with my business. The Fun is gone away. And so I sat down with my team and I just said, guys, like, I hate to do this but this isn’t working for me. I either didn’t bring in the right people, didn’t give you the love and support you needed. Um, but this is a leadership issue. This is my problem and time to own up and start again. One bad apple spoils the whole bunch at nine bad apples and got them all out of the business and the next day went from five trucks down to one. And if you think of the analogy again of a band, you know, one man band is, is tough to play the guitar and the drums and sing and do it all at once. And so it was a struggling point for me for the next several months. But I learned that, you know, what a business is all about. People finding the right people and treating them right became my focus.

I mean did you, did you, did you freak out? Did you throw things? What, what happened?

Yeah, I think I got real and sat down with everybody and just brought him in the room at one point together and ripped off the bandaid and said, you know, um, I started by apologizing cause it really was my leadership challenge and it was no one else’s fault. You know, these were people that weren’t clean cut professional. They have a bit of attitude. They weren’t the ones that I needed to help me build the Fedex of junk removal is what I started talking about. And so it was time to clean house and it was a tough thing for me to do. A scary thing for me to do. You know, you can imagine one guy and a little office with 11 other guys, many of them bigger than me saying what? You’re firing us, we’re losing our job. Are you kidding me? You know, it was a scary moment, but it was the right thing to do and my business wouldn’t be what it is today. Hadn’t time aid that scary decision.

What town did you start here? Geographically?

Yeah, Vancouver in Canada. So I grew up in San Francisco and lived there at least till I was seven or eight years old. Mother remarried and moved to Canada and that’s where I started the business and that’s where we are today.

If you could export one Canadian, you know, Justin beaver or Bryan Adams in favor of, you know, you could make a swap for a bunch of more new high quality, highly high motivated, uh, 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchisees. Which Canadian would you give up? Would you give us, would you give us beaver? Would you give us Bryan Adams? Who would you give up?

I like Bright Adams. Brandon had, this was a good guy I would give you. Yeah. You know what? You could probably have beaver.

You give us a table. Really? I, you could have the beads. Here’s what I heard and I could be wrong, but I heard that the GDP of Canada’s comprised of, of shale exploration, 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Bryan Adams, Bieber and Canadian beer. That’s what I heard. The entire economy is comprised. You’re going to give one fifth of the economy away.

You couldn’t have beer.

Okay, wait, I’m on my final Canadian question here. Do you, how often do you end a sentence with the letter a? I mean is this, I mean, cause I’m from Minnesota, which were kind of like cousins. And if I go up there for two weeks in a row, all don’t want you to know and I find myself going, why did I just say that? And I can’t stop. Is it a bad deal up there? Do you you say hey a lot up there or is it just a Minnesota?

I have to think. I think it depends on what I’m drinking, who I’m with, how much I’m drinking. Definitely say hey a lot. And uh, it, it depends a year around for sure.

Don’t you or no? Okay. So let’s talk about uh, wanting a hundred got junk. When did you rename that thing?

Almost 10 years into the business. So I came up with this idea, the company nameless, the rubbish boys, but the trucks said seven, three, eight junk with a big phone number emblazoned on the side and half the customer base referred to us as the rubbish boys and the other half referred to us the seven, three, eight junk. And many people thought the two were competitors and they got it wrong because we weren’t clear. So I said, you know what, let’s as we’re going to expand into the United States and the rest of the country, let’s create one brand. And so there was this ad campaign for milk called the got milk campaign. And I thought, you know, that’s not a bad idea. Why don’t we do 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And so I got up to try and get the phone number. I came up with the logo, hired a design company to make it all fancy and the way it looks today, the same colors and design and hired a company before I even had the phone number, I reached out to the Department of Transportation in Idaho who finally was the holder of the phone number. You know, luck would have it that government owned

the number that

so badly. And I begged him to lead it and three calls through to the telephone room. I get Michael who says, you know what, just take the number. And he sent me the forms to sign off on and there we go. We got the number and 1-800-GOT-JUNK was born

up there in Canada. He’s Canadian, the Canadian king of Franchising and there’s a lot of inside nomenclature and I don’t wanna get lost in a lot of it. We have a, we have Wes Carter on the show who is one of the top attorneys on the planet and you, in my opinion, west. So my opinion, legally speaking and uh, you, uh, are indisputably, it’s irrefutable. You are the one of the top franchise orders on the planet. And so I want to get into this. There’s a thing called the franchise disclosure document. You’re going to hear it a lot in the franchise space as an FDD. And right when you start talking about legal stuff, people, their eyes glaze over and they said, why don’t I do it? But you have to make a franchise disclosure document to sell franchises in the United States and it has 23 items in that franchise disclosure document. You know, where you’re clarifying trademarks, territory’s initial fees, litigation, a lot of stuff. It’s a big document. Why do, why do franchise disclosure documents cost people so much money? People are out there listening saying, I want to franchise my company. Why are people paying fifteen thousand twenty thousand thirty thousand dollars to write a franchise disclosure document?

Yeah, it’s a lot of money because if you want to be in all the different registration states and you want to register with the Federal Trade Commission and you know, it’s just a big painful, expensive process that I think is necessary because it sets clear expectations. Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly of the franchise or you’re looking to invest with, here’s the one that you’re partnering with and they’re a franchise or that, you know, they’ve got some blemishes and some wounds and it’s meant to, to highlight, you know, as there’s been litigation, has there been any big problems? What’s their financial situation? And these are things I think people need to know upfront before taking the leap into a franchise business.

How did you know it was time to franchise and walk us through the process of franchising when 800 got junk.

Yeah. So I, I was always a big fan of ray Krocs model with Mcdonald’s of having people have ownership, have skin in the game, and he created something remarkable across the world in a brand that never existed. You know, he really took the McDonald’s brothers business and made it something that many people owned and thrived with. And I was wanting to build something bigger and better together. And so that ownership model, you know, we could have gone the, the private equity route, we could have gone, uh, raising capital, do an IPO. I mean, you know, the Starbucks model or the subway model, we happen to have chose the subway model, the franchise model, which I believe in because we’ve got franchise owners who take great pride in their market, in what we’re building together. And I just felt like it was something I wanted to be a part of. And so I started to research it, realized how expensive it was, how little I knew, made a bunch of mistakes trying to franchise. But eventually we started to figure it out and, uh, things started to work for us.

I would like to clarify how many franchises are out there today?

There’s about 150. So in our busiest period in time or highest volume number of franchises, uh, about 2007, we had 329. Now we still service the same footprint. So while our, our sales have actually quadrupled since that time, the business has shrunk in a sense, uh, in terms of footprint, but that’s made it easier for us and easier for our franchise owners. They own more, they control more and uh, it gives us fewer franchise partners to have to support, which means we can give him more support to the people. Have

you talked about how important your franchisees are too? I mean, is do you accept anybody that sends in the right application or do you have a criteria? But how do you pick what’s a good move or you and the applicant that’s trying to become a franchisee?

We will accept one. So what we do, it’s about an eight week process of us screening people out, weeding people through and saying, you know, we’ve got someone who’s got the money but they don’t have the attitude, they don’t have the cultural fit. They might not be somebody who, uh, we believe in or, or has a proven track record of success. They might not be a leader. So things we look for, we look for in leadership attainment, the ability to set goals and get them done. Tenacity to follow through when the going gets tough. And we’re looking for people that want to learn, that want to follow a system, not someone that’s a pure bred entrepreneur who wants to do everything their way and reinvent the systems. This is about a, can we do this bigger and better by doing this together?

What kind of personality type is just a disaster of a franchisee where you look back and go, oh, that, that, that, that right there. Oh, I should not have sold a franchise to that kind of person. And then what’s the best kind of person to have a franchise?

Yeah. So I would say, I don’t think it’s personality type. I mean we definitely take people that are a little more social, that wants to do something with people because we want our franchise partners to pick up the phone and call their neighbors and call people across the country to say, what are you doing? What’s working? And a lot of our franchise partners do some pretty cool things together, whether it’s hiked Machu Picchu or they, they go on these adventures in these trips and they get together with their families. We want that social connectedness. But I think it’s less about personality and it’s more about their, their attitude. Are they focused? Are they trying to run this one business versus running a bunch? Are they really putting all their eggs in one basket and really work in the system? And, and, and making this their entire, uh, that. And so, you know, franchise owners, whether they get into 1-800-GOT-JUNK or shaft, shiner newest business, which is windows, gutters, power washing. We want people that are all in when they try and do a job and a business, we find that they’re just spread too thin and things fail.

What are you doing? Are you, you just, you, what have you up there in Canada? You’re going beer free the last few years. What are you doing?

I think it’s the, uh, the glacier water that’s in our beer. You know, the, the mountain fed springs that, no, not going beer free. Uh, enjoy my beer is all Canadians do, but thanks. I appreciate it. You think I look young?

You’re looking at, you’re looking at very young now it’s your turn it back to the time look younger than when you started the company. Let’s go and this is, he’s like a time machine, kind of a franchise where I’m kind of worried about him, about you at this point now. Now, now you have, that’s what, that’s what we gotta do. I, I just share the ICANDY freely. Now you started a franchise called wow. One day painting. I’d like to talk about, I’d like for you too, in whatever order you want to. I want you to talk with us and share with us about shack shine. You move me? Wow. One day painting. You’ve got four different franchises going on now. Walk us through the timeline of how you kind of went from 100 got junk to the next one and the next one because you are on fire.

365 million is what we approximately what we finished our revenue at for 2018 across all brands. 310 million of that is 1-800-GOT-JUNK. So the three up and comers, the babies in the family if you will. I’ll take one. Wow. One day painting. I got into that by accident. I was looking for someone to paint my home. I called three companies through referrals. The first two came in cigarette smoke smelling people who were late who just didn’t give me any sense that they were actually going to get the place finished quickly. You know, kind of like that show Murphy Brown. I thought they were going to move in and live with me for a while. It was going to take forever, but I get the third guy comes in and he’s got this shiny van, he’s got an Ipad, he’s uniform that he says here, here’s the deal. We’ll get it done in a in, in a day.

Once you tell us to go ahead, we’re going to, we’re going to need one day to do the job. And I said, what one day for prep you. Cause no, no one day for the whole thing. We’re going to paint it, get her done and get out so that you don’t have a disruption here and you can get back to living. And so I didn’t think he’d be able to do it. I came home at the end of the Workday, 6:30 PM Florida ceiling moldings, Trim, everything done immaculately and was so loud. Yeah, that’s what I said. I was so loud. I ended up buying the company. And so what this guy did is he said, we come into your home with enough people, you can paint one room in a day. Everyone knows that, you know, maybe you need one or two people depending on the size of the room.

Just put the right number of people in the right rooms and you get it done without rushing, no compromise in quality. And so that is our biggest, uh, franchise. Other than 1-800-GOT-JUNK. We’ve got over 50 franchise owners and not people that get into it because they love painting, but people that want to build and grow an empire and their city. And it’s been super exciting. Um, it’s been fun to watch it grow and I had a lot of naysayers that say, you can’t paint a home in a day. Especially some friends of mine that were in the paving business that I went to as experts. They said, you know, you’re freaking nuts. This can’t be done. Uh, one of the guys, what are the guys that told me I was freaking nuts, uh, is now running that company, which is, uh, which is fun

every day you just walk up to me. So you’re doing a good job in your face. Yeah, exactly. Wrote a book called WTF willing to fail. How failure can be your key to success. Brian Scudamore, my friend. What, what inspired you to write this book? WTF My man

and WTF why they read a book? I, you know, I have a hard enough time reading books, let alone getting out there and writing. I’m still felt just focused in add at times that it can be a challenge. But you know what? I love writing. I love storytelling. And Roy Williams, who’s the wizard of ads as we call him, he’s the guy that doesn’t hold our radio creative across the country. And Roy kept pestering me, write a book, write a book, Brian, you got to write. And I was like, you know, Roy, I don’t need to write a book. My Ego doesn’t need it. I’m not one of those entrepreneurs. He said, no, no, you don’t get it. It’s not about you. It’s about storytelling to others because your stories are inspiring. What you guys have built together. You need to tell the world. So I said, okay, fine.

He said, I’ll make it easy. And, uh, we ended up storytelling recording them all and starting to put them together in a book and loved the book we wrote because it, it has inspired. I had a, a video testimonial from a nine year old the other day. I also had a, a testimonial from an 89 year old, so from nine to 89. That’s the range we’re working in right now. And we seem to be inspiring people and encouraging people to go down the road. Less traveled of entrepreneurship either with us or without us, but anything we can do to help inspire, uh, we feel it’s worth it.

If somebody is going to get this book today, they’re going to go out there and buy WTF. Um, do you have a few highlights in the book or maybe a thing where you go, hey, if you’re going to love this story, is there a particular story they’re going to find in the book that is hot?

Yeah, I mean there’s stories about how we created the painted picture vision for the future of how we were going to get on Oprah, how we were going to build the Fedex of junk removal and against all odds we did it. There’s stories of, we already talked about firing the entire team and what that was like and what that taught me. The entire book is ups and downs of these WTF moments where I am actually failing, but I learned from that failure. People say, what would you change if you could change one thing? Are you kidding me? Nothing. I needed to learn those lessons to get to where we are today and so I don’t know if there’s one thing that stands out because I hear such different things from different people, but the one of my quotes at the end is a real big difference between making a living and making a life. And I think the book is a life strategy books that teaches people not just about business, but shares wisdom from all of us who’ve been part of creating 1-800-GOT-JUNK at o two e brands of how to make a great life. And I think North Americans often have it wrong and they focus so much on the living part and the things in collections. And it’s like, you know what? Life’s too short to not have fun and to not be making a difference in this world. Let’s make meaning not just money.

Now you are a guy who, um, I could, you’re very passionate about what you do. You’re, you’re, you can sense it. You can feel it. It’s just, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s worth googling, uh, your, your name there. I mean, you’re, it’s just, you’re, you’re very, uh, you have a lot of passion for what you do. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs don’t have a lot of passion for what they do, but they never can sit down and make all the detailed systems and checklists needed to franchise. So it’s not really a franchisable right, because it’s just a vague idea. How do you know when something is able to be franchise? Like what level of detail do you need to have? What kind of systems, what kind of processes and checklists and things do you need to have in place before you really should look to franchise your business?

I think if a business can look, act and feel the same from city to city, that’s the key. You know, if your business needs an artist, if your business needs somebody who really has a creative bent, who can do things differently, um, you know, it’s hard to replicate that. To me, a, a franchise organization is, is a recipe. You’re creating a recipe that if people follow that recipe, they’re going to be successful. They have to do all the same ingredients and follow the process, the recipe the same way. But if they do that, they will be successful. So think Mcdonald’s, one of the original franchise is those little hamburgers and French fries and a, the way they look and feel and everything is consistent. And Elsa versus, you know, Los Angeles. It doesn’t matter where you go. I think looking at the business, it doesn’t have to be food. It doesn’t have to be home service. It has to be something though that can be consistently replicated in each market.

Brian Scudamore, this is less, you talked about how important it is to be happy with, I can’t agree with more and at least in my experience, my happiness level at work has a lot to do with who I surround myself with. And you’ve had that experience of having to clean house and listeners that go read your book are going to hear other great stories about hiring the wrong CEO and other things. I’m curious, you’re sitting there as a one man band. What’s advice you would give to our listeners? How do they pick the right employees? People that they’re going to bring underneath it? That’s good. Um, are there characteristics or certain traits you look forward to pick the right, not your franchise, but the team that you’re going to bring underneath you?

Yeah, so it’s a great question. So what I’d, I’d sort of throw back is I’d say to you, and you don’t necessarily need to answer this, but you’ll, you’ll get the question is, you know, how do you find friends? How do you recruit friends? You know, I’m guessing you, you don’t have a checklist and go, oh this guy loves Canadian beer and he seems funny and this and this and that. You find friends cause you just kinda know. You’ve got a good gut feel. You got a sense of this is a good person, this person’s interest. I’m interested. You got something in common. I think that the same thing applies to how you find employees, how you find people to be on your team. All too often people get out there and they look at the skill first. I believe, look at, look at cultural fit first, look at skill second, uh, higher and attitude.

Train on skill is what we say. Now if you’re looking for a CFO, you’ve got to find a financial person and they have to have all the credentials. But still I believe you then look at the cultural fit before you get your accounting. And auditing firm to have a look at the person’s skill set. Um, so the right people for me and my company might be different than the right people for any other person that’s listening and their company. Because we all have different friends. We all have different things we look for. But it’s finding people you want to spend time with, you can care about that. You can help cheer, lead and encourage them to hit their dreams and goals. And that’s what makes it all work. And then once you find the wrong people, if you’ve made a mistake and you’ve compromised, if those people out help them free their future up for a better place for them, and you’ve got a spot filled, a or vacant in your company that was for the right person who can come in.

We have three final questions for you now. Where’s has one I have to here for us? This is my, uh, one of my final two two questions I’ll ask you here. Um, your, your company, when you sell somebody a franchise on a very practical level, right? And there are a great fit. There are new throw new Franchisee, they’re excited, things are good and there are really good franchisee. But then they ask you, is there any way that I can do this? Can I try this instead? Can I change the logo? Can I change the website? Can we change the print piece? Is there any way, how do you handle that when a franchisee asks those initial questions about, you know, can I pivot? Can I, they’re trying to go like rogue entrepreneur. They’re not trying to be an nefarious, difficult person, but they’re just, you know, kind of seeing the boundaries. How do you handle that kind of thing?

Our advice is take the first year to follow our systems and we try and be very upfront in the process with them and doing that so that they don’t come back and say, oh no, no, I want to try this. And he didn’t tell me that I couldn’t. Uh, we want them to, to run with our systems for the first year, the, the systems weren’t created by Brian Scudamore. They weren’t created by the junction. They were created by all of us, everybody, a part of the o two e brands family and they work and so we’ll often get franchise partners come into us late in the game, you know, a couple of years into the business and they’re like, oh man, I should have followed. The system’s more closely because you’re right, they do work now. Someone wants to try something new and wants to be innovative. We like doing experiments, we want to pilot different things and try in.

One of our franchise partners came to us and they said, you know, I want to stay up until midnight. We’re like, well, that sounds crazy, but they wanted to test it. We then ran a national radio ad set of ads and it’s been the most impactful radio program programming we’ve done, staying open until midnight has shown we’re committed, we’re all in and people had to operationalize it, but you know what? It was a smart thing to do all because Allen in Baltimore decided to be the one to step up and say, you know what? Going to try something new. I think we should pilot it and it worked. Not all experiments do work, but that’s what you gotta do is you’ve got to try new things and take some risks

or just a friend that they’re wanting to learn more about business or leadership. Or do you have like a go to book, whether it’s an autobiography or a business book that you’re like, hey, go read this. You can learn a lot about business leadership running your company. Do you have a favorite book that you suggest for people?

Yeah. So for two different, two different sorts of questions I think in there. One is on leadership and one is on running your business on the leadership side. Huge Fan of Jim Collins. Good to great. It’s a, an Oldie but a goodie and man, that book is just unbelievable. I think scientifically datadriven heres how to build the right leadership style on the running of the business side, on building systems and processes. Whether you want a franchise or just grow and scale a business. The e myth revisited by Michael Gerber, Michael Gerber’s become a great friend. And, uh, I just love the impact that that book had on our business.

Okay.

By Michael Gerber and Jim Collins. Good to great. And I can tell you this, um, I believe Jim Collins and I, we’re, we’re, we’ve begun a special relationship that ha it’s really one sided right now. Like I advised him on the show and I, and I don’t hear a lot back, but what I feel unrequited love as people want what they can’t have and I think he’s making me want it. He’s making me one time we had, we had Daniel Pink on the show. We’ve got John Maxwell. We’re having some, we have you on the show. We’re going to, so maybe if you can just, uh, Brian, maybe you can throw back a Canadian beer for me tonight, you know, and just pour out some liquor for my homey here, Jim Collins and see if you can get him on our show. That’s my only request there this year. So, uh, I’ve got a final question here for you.

Yeah, good. Well, you know what you’re doing to year, you’re doing what I do with the vision. The painted pictures just thrown it out to the universe and you never know. Someone might hear this podcast, who knows Jim Collins, who is connected with them and you know these things have a magical way it happened. The more happening in, the more that we manifest it and talk about it. So good for you.

Here’s one thing I’m working on too. This is a kind of a, it’s a subtle move I’m trying here, Brian. Lot of times I’ll say Tim Collins, if you’re listening right now and your name is Tim [inaudible], pick up the phone. It’s kind of subtle move. It’s subtle. It’s very class.

That is so good.

Wow. Yeah. No. I want to ask you this. I want to ask you this now, the first four hours of your day, now, obviously your schedule’s different now, but when you were starting the 1-800-GOT-JUNK. When you finally, when you fired the guys, the rubbish boys, don’t, you fired the band, you restructured. You said, okay, we’re going to franchise this baby. What did your schedule look like the first four hours of your day and what time did you wake up?

So back in that day, I would probably would have woken up at seven o’clock it into the office and just deal with fires, letting people get out in the trucks and scheduling, dispatch, dealing with customer issues and you know, dealing with happy customers as well. But just trying to manage it all a volume of fire, hoses of things going on. Um, I was probably 40 pounds heavier, was stressed out, was not feeling like I was in necessarily a great place. If I look at today, I get up at 5:55 AM I know it’s very precise and strange, but it’s just my time to get up an hour before my kids, an hour before my world starts to get busy and I focused on myself. So my, my best days, if I look at today, for example, five 55 grabbed a cup of coffee and hopped on the bike and worked out hard and felt great afterwards.

I mean, when my kids were up and my family was up this morning and they’re like, what are you smoking? What are you drinking? Uh, why are you still happy? You know, my best days are starting with exercise and starting with an intention. What am I going to do today to help change our world? What am I going to do to drive us closer to our dreams? And uh, it’s fun when I set an intention and I’m clear about it, awesome day when I forget to set it or I get too busy, things just kind of go all over the place and don’t go as planned because there is no plan.

Okay.

So you would advise people to be proactive about your day. Maybe we don’t start your day by smoking and drinking

and no smoking and drinking.

That was just my family wondering what I’m going to wake up every day and smoke and drink. Just want to clarify that for the literal listener out there now, hey, I appreciate you so much for being on the show. I appreciate you so much for writing this book, WTF and for building these franchises. A franchise really is you’re creating an opportunity for somebody to create time freedom and financial freedom. You’re creating opportunities for people. Thank you for doing that yet again by being on today’s show. Do you have a one big ask of our listeners? Anything that you want them to do today as a result of listening to today’s show?

Okay,

I’ve got no ask. I’m on about giving back at this point and if there’s something I can do to help anyone there, don’t, don’t hesitate to reach out. You know, whatever your social poison is, you can Instagram me at Brian Scudamore. Send me a direct message and let me know how it can help. And I’ll always do my best. But yeah, happy to help. I love entrepreneurship. I love watching people grow. I love optimism in this world and we need more of it. So glad you had me on, on the, the show clay. And it was really fun chatting with both of you and thanks for keeping the, uh, the legal questions. Light

is also fun,

but uh, yeah, no, you guys were in a great show. Hey, well, hope you have a great day and you’re looking for a for, for for 10 or Bryan Adams. If you watched the movie spirit, stallion of the Cimarron, it’s all sang by Brian Adams, I believe. So. Hopefully that works for you, but how have an awesome Canadian day, my friend? Thank you very much. Thanks again to both of you. Appreciate it. All right. Take care. If you went missing for a month, what would your company look like? Do you have the systems in place for your business to grow or is it completely dependent upon you? Is Your Business completely reliant upon you? If you want to scale a business, you want to build a business model that does not require your personal involvement, my friend. Once you nail it, then you can scale it, but you have to build a business model that’s not dependent upon your direct involvement in the business on a daily basis. My name is Clay Clark. This is the thrive time show, and we’d like to end each and every show with a boom and health any further. I do three, two, one, boom.