From Junk to Giant: How Brian Scudamore Built a Billion Dollar Brand

At 18 years old, Brian Scudamore had a vision—one that started in a McDonald’s drive-thru and turned into 1-800-GOT-JUNK. What began as a one-truck operation became a franchise empire spanning multiple industries. But the road to success wasn’t easy. In this episode of Breaching the Boardroom, host David Mauro (NetGain Technologies) sits down with Brian to talk about the failures, risks, and unconventional strategies that built a global brand.

Together, they discuss how culture, leadership, and relentless vision shape long-term success—and why hiring for attitude over experience can make all the difference.

💡 What You’ll Learn:
✔️ How a beat-up truck and $700 sparked a multimillion-dollar business
✔️ Why Brian fired his entire team—and how it changed his company forever
✔️ The power of vision: How the Painted Picture strategy turns goals into reality
✔️ The $29 guerrilla marketing tactic that made 1-800-GOT-JUNK stand out

📢 Want to grow your business with the right people and culture?
Learn how to apply Brian’s strategies to your own leadership journey, create a vision that drives growth, and build a business that lasts.

👋 Connect with Us:
🎙️ David Mauro – VP of Business Development, NetGain Technologies
🎙️ Brian Scudamore – Founder & CEO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, WOW 1 Day Painting, Shack Shine

📖 Resources Mentioned:
🔹 Brian’s book WTF (Willing to Fail) – Lessons on resilience and growth
🔹 The Painted Picture framework – Creating a vision for your business

🌟 Who Are We?

NetGain Technologies is a leading managed IT and security service provider with over 40 years of experience helping small to mid-sized businesses succeed. 💻✨ Specializing in IT management, cybersecurity, and strategic consulting, we empower businesses in healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and beyond to turn technology into a competitive advantage. 🚀

🌐 Website: www.netgainit.com
💼 LinkedIn: NetGain Technologies
📅 Meet with Us: Schedule a Meeting

Meet Your Hosts

• Ashley Sebastian, NetGain Technologies
• David Mauro, NetGain Technologies

Transcript

At 18 years old, Brian Scudamore told his parents he was dropping out of school to become a junk collector. They thought he was crazy. Maybe. But the rest is history. This is his story. He's the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. His greatest success is his family. He had stared at a pile of garbage in a McDonald's parking lot while going through drive-thru being 18 years old. Today, he took that moment.

and that idea and followed its trajectory despite all the challenges, despite all the people that told him no. He's created a multimillion dollar brand. He's become a celebrity entrepreneur with guest appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America, the Canadian version of those shows and is a best selling author and has overcome failure time and time again. He also hosts the Canadian

Dragon's Den, which was a spinoff from the UK Dragon's Den, a very big hit show over in the UK. He invests and mentors entrepreneurs on a regular basis. And he has an unconventional approach to things that I think and I know you're going to find refreshing. He has tackled guerrilla marketing like nobody else. He's become the poster child of convincing anyone to go ahead and to start

business and he has a unique philosophy his belief is that business is about people and if you don't understand people you don't understand business. Leaders have to care, genuinely care. This exclusive interview is all about building positive culture the 1-800-GOT-JUNK story. This is the story of co-founder and CEO Brian Scudamore

Brian, welcome, sir. Awesome, David. Thank you for having me. And I can tell Mark, we're going have a lot of fun here, you guys. I like the way you roll. It's to be good.

So I feel like I'm at home. This is all about branding and here's a guy that believes that you always wear the brand. That's exactly right. So I would like to start right from the top. And with you, it's not what you're doing today because we all know about it. It's everywhere. You've been in Forbes magazine. You're a published author. Everybody knows you.

curious is tell us what inspired you to do it, you know, that one day back in what was it? 89? Yeah, 1989. So was there an event or person? Was there something that happened that pushed you? let's because that's we always find that to be a look. Everybody has a springboard and it's always interesting to hear what that is. Yeah. So my aha moment, my

The time when I started my day was I was in a McDonald's drive-thru. Now a pretty incredible brand. I don't necessarily love the food. I try to eat healthier these days, but I love that brand and Ray Kroc story. so ironically, I was in a McDonald's drive-thru contemplating what my future was going to be for college. All my friends were going to college. I never finished high school, so I was actually one course short of graduation.

I figured I was going to talk my way into college and I then had to find out how to pay for it. So I'm in this McDonald's drive through it in front of me is a beat up old pickup truck, a Ford F-150 with plywood sides built up on the box. And I looked at that truck and I was like, wow, there's an idea. It said Mark's hauling on the side. And I thought I'm going to go buy my own truck and that's how I'm going to pay for college. And a week later I spent $700 on my own Ford pickup built plywood sides.

and thought I'm going to drive down alleys and laneways and introduce myself and start hauling junk. My company name, the first brand was called the Rubbish Boys. was sounds like a good band. you made it plural. Like you were like, I am by myself. I'm 18. But I'm gonna call myself the Rubbish Boys. So that way they feel like I have an employee. Yeah. And

you know, I had a vision for something bigger. This wasn't just going to be me. And so something that's always been near and dear to my heart of why I've gotten into business is I find it fun. I used to work at my grandparents army surplus store in San Francisco. Used to get a small little shop in a dodgy area town, but I'd go there every Christmas holiday, every summer vacation, and I'd work in their store. And I saw how much fun grandma and grandpa had with customers, with their employees. And so I was always sort of drawn to business and wanting to

play that game. So the Rubbish Boys was a way to go. Okay, here's my team. I got him. Yes, so many people get caught up in work and like, I've got to go to work. And it's that and I'm like, if you if you do it right, it's it's, it's not I mean, it's not fun. It's not something you're gonna love all the time. There's good days and bad days. But you know, it's it's it takes on it becomes allows us to become something bigger than ourselves. Right? Like it allows us to become part of something.

that can grow and become eternal almost. absolutely. You made a comment earlier, like everybody knows me. I don't think that's true, but flattery, thank you. I want everybody to know my companies. 1-800-GOT-JUNK, we've got WOW One Day Painting, we've got Shotshine. And why that's important to me is I planted the seed of an idea that brought in franchise owners that helped us build something bigger and better together.

It doesn't have to be my idea. It doesn't have to be my leadership. It doesn't have to be anything. I'm building it with a team of great people and we're having a blast. So I want people to know the brands. want people, you know, I drive a Toyota Tacoma pickup truck, a little truck, but it's branded like you can imagine with all the brands on all over. It looks like a NASCAR. That's what I want people to know because I believe in our service and I believe in growing entrepreneurs. That's fantastic. What is the, I read one of your,

articles and you talked about the painted picture process. that kind of how, what is that? Can you explain that? Yeah. So in 19, let's see 1994, I'll start with a story just to lead up to 1994, five years into the business, I fired my entire company. I had a half a million dollars in revenue as the rubbish boys. I had 11 employees and they say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. I think I had nine bad apples.

It's not that they were bad people. They were people that just didn't fit my happy professional model of what I wanted to build. the right people in the right seat. Yeah. And so I just thought the only thing I could do is fire everybody. So I sat everybody down at a morning meeting and said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you down. Didn't give you the love and support you needed. I wasn't a great leader and I take ownership, but I've got to start again. So I fired my entire company of 11 people, went from five trucks down to just the one I could drive myself.

and off I went to rebuild the business. Wow. So I started to rebuild and I started to have fun and I started to see that, okay, bringing in the right people and treating them right was a secret sauce of ours. Probably again, from my grandma and grandpa and learned how much they cared for people. But I got to then a point where I hit a million in revenue with this new way of doing things. And I started to feel challenged with where I was going and what the potential was.

I joined an organization called EO, the entrepreneur organization, and I was surrounded with bigger, better entrepreneurs. And I thought, I'm not feeling so great about my little tiny million dollar junk removal business. So I went to my parents' summer cottage. They had this little shack on the water and it was a place of inspiration for me. I sat on the dock eight years into the business, we were doing a million in revenue, sat on the dock, pulled out a sheet of paper and I said, Brian, enough of this doom loop garbage.

Enough thinking, I can't do this. I don't have a college education. I don't have the money, maybe not a good idea. And I started to say, going envision what the future could look like if I was optimistic. So I took out this sheet and I started writing, we will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003, five years out. We would be on the Oprah Winfrey show. We'd be the FedEx to junk removal, clean Chinese trucks, friendly uniformed drivers. And I started to list it all out with language that

saw it happening, not I hope to be and gonna try to be, but we will be in the top 30 metros. And then as if by magic, five years into the future, it all happened, about 96 % of it, including Oprah, including the top 30 metros. But the last thing I'll say, so we can go back to conversation, the most interesting part of me painting that picture was taking that sheet, sharing it with people around me, and it did two things.

It separated some of my employees into the camp of, well, you're smoking hope dope here, dude. Like there's no way this is going to happen. To the other half who said, wow, 30 cities. only in one right now. Oprah, look at this. Wow. I want to be a part of that. They didn't know how to get there, but they knew they wanted to be a part and the painted picture was born. And it's something we use. Uh, what brands are all about. mean, that's what brands are all about. That's what, I mean, that's that vision.

And that process, actually have like, that's like, you created a process for actually developing vision. And that's so remarkable. Go ahead, go ahead, Mark. You touched on one of the points that David and I, excuse me, that we really share is kind of a fundamental belief. And that is if you bring on the right people,

and you put them in the right seat and have them doing the task that they can do and perform to, that it creates a culture that really can grow business just from the culture. And I think you kind of touched on that when you said you had to hit reset and start all over because you didn't have the right people in the right seat. So I think that's really interesting. It rings true to both David and I very Well, yeah, because what I didn't hear was, they didn't have the right technical skills.

Right. Or they didn't have the right education. None of that mattered. It was, it was the, it was, it was the wrong culture. was the wrong cultural fit. Right. And, know, so a tool we use and, it's kind of fun. It, got branded as the beer and barbecue test. So if we were interviewing, if we were interviewing any one of you, let's just pick on David right now. I said, Hey, you know, you're in our office or in these zoom days, we're doing an interview.

The question I would ask myself as the interviewer is, would I want to have a beer with you? You know, maybe a Mountain Dew like you're drinking, but hey, would I want to have a beer with you? Do I find you interesting, interested? Do we have a shared passion? I mean, we both love Paris. can tell. What do we have in common? How are we going to change the world together? Would we have a beer or coffee together? The barbecue test is then, you know, how would you fit at our company picnic, at our company barbecue?

If you showed up and we're all having barbecue and a bunch of beers and hanging out, do you fit in? Now that doesn't mean we need all extroverts or all introverts. It's just got to be a good party that fits lots of diversity, diverse opinions. And, um, that's how we do our interviewing. So it becomes less of the formalities of all the technical skills. Now, if we're hiring a CFO, we're going to take KPNG, our auditors and say, interview the heck out of this person and make sure they got the actual teeth to do this.

But we're hiring on attitude and we're growing this thing based on cultural fit. As Mark, you say, you can find the right people and that builds businesses. You guys are about building brands. That's what this podcast is about. A brand is people. It's people coming to life through a company. Absolutely. Now, and obviously you're doing it and it works. So that just shows our listeners that yes, what we've been talking about on every podcast that culture really is the key.

Absolutely. So you have some quotes or some statements that you kind of take to heart. And I know that you have a couple of very, I mean, you're a very employee centered organization. Can you just explain to us kind of some of those quotes? I've heard that when you walk into your main building there, you have the quotes on the wall and you have things there.

maybe like your first truck or something like that. Can you explain that? Yeah. Yeah. People say it's almost like walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Yeah, that's kind of her. And it's not a bad thing, right? I love that. love chocolate. decals, decals, quotes everywhere. And people can see our stories come to life. know, pictures tell stories. So why not get out there and talk about our values, passion, integrity, professionalism, and empathy? Why not talk about the story of the first truck and how it started?

Why not talk about the story about how we got the 1-800-GOT-JUNK phone number from the Department of Transportation in Idaho? These are all stories on our walls. Quotes, one of my favorites is, it's kind of fun to do the impossible, Walt Disney. I love when we come up with impossible, seeming ideas, and then we make them happen. Look at the Eiffel Tower behind you, Gustav Eiffel. mean, come on, that was an idea that everybody told him it couldn't be It couldn't happen, yeah. That's exactly right.

It was no longer impossible because he made it possible in the 1800s. It's what I love about business and building things together is you bring it. So our parent company is called O2E Brands, Ordinary to Exceptional. We take ordinary people, ordinary ideas, and we just fire them up and we create awesomeness together. And the way we're doing that is just challenging ourselves to go out and do the impossible. And it makes life great. I mean, even during a pandemic.

Even as we're, you I we're not necessarily on lockdowns anymore, thankfully, but we're all still working from home and so on. There are so many opportunities during this pandemic. In fact, I can't even believe the opportunities out there to start businesses right now are hotter than ever. There are, you you look at challenges and you go, wow, there's an opportunity there for someone to make money, to grow a business, for someone to start a franchise with us, whatever it might be.

and pandemics, it's lent itself to some future awesomeness. That's fantastic. So I just have a quick question. You were born in San Francisco, right? And you went to school originally where? That's a good one. Because I saw you went to so many different schools, I just figured I was getting confused. I figured I'd just ask you rather than try and write it out.

Yeah, no, no, I get confused. So the shortest way to explain it is I've gone to 14 schools from kindergarten to college. And the only one I have a diploma from is kindergarten. Kindergarten. I'm not trying to be funny. It's actually true. I never graduated from high school, talked my way into college. For me, I am a very ADD entrepreneur. think many of us are. I learn by asking questions, by talking with people. I learn by doing.

I don't learn in the classroom. so part of it was my dad as a liver transplant surgeon moving around. We lived in England for a while. We spent some time in Sweden. But a lot of it, most of it was just my sheer sense of I don't know how to focus. So, yeah, where did I end up going to school? I mean, I was in Montreal, which I moved to on my own to try and get away and learn from another part of Canada. But I never graduated. How did you go from San Francisco to Canada? Usually people

Yeah, I was born in San Francisco. born in San Francisco. My mother remarried, met my father and my father adopted me and we ended up moving to Canada where he was from. And he's a liver transplant surgeon and this was home. And yeah, so I'm a Canadian. I love Canada, but most of my family is in the United States. Most of my business is in the United States. So I get the best of both worlds.

Speaking of schools, I know you've you're part of doing some work with MIT. Is that right with the birthing of giants? Yeah, so I started a program I think 18 years ago. Started in a program called Birthing the Giants and it was affiliated with MIT, Inc. Magazine and the Entrepreneurial Organization. You had to apply to get in. were 60 of us high growth entrepreneurs.

And we got together for a three year program and it was just learning from other entrepreneurs and different speakers we'd bring in. And we decided, four of us, myself included, to extend the program and keep it going forever. Literally, we've got no expiration date on this. mean, we'll expire before the program does, but it's really getting out there and going, we are going to continue learning. And we've been going every year, except during the pandemic. We did it online, but we've gone every year and it's been absolutely unbelievable. It's our peer network.

and watching those same 60 plus entrepreneurs having gone through great growth in life and in business. We've all had hurdles and bumps, speed bumps on the way, but total awesomeness in terms of what we've learned from each other. That's so great. Now you met somebody from Kinko's there, I think that made an impression on you as well. Yeah, Paul Arfala. Yeah.

You want to talk about ADD. don't know if any of you have met Paul, but man, is as ADD. mean, he's way worse than I like he would have been off the zoom right now. It's like, it's hard to stay focused. Super, super great funny guy. But an impression he made on me is I remember asking Paul, said, or someone actually in the class asked, what is success to you? That's what here was a guy that just sold out to FedEx for a ton of money.

Yeah, he never disclosed how much money because I think it was so much and you know, you'd think by all standards, you know, he's got his private jet. He must be incredibly happy and successful and he said, so someone said, what is success to you? And Paul said, that's easy. If my kids want to spend time with me when they're grownups, that's success. And I love that. I've got three young kids. I mean, they want to hang out with me right now, but

You know, that's because the youngest one's eight years old. mean, he has no choice, but when they're grown up, will they spend time with me? That's fantastic. I absolutely love that. As a father, that is the pure definition of success. You've got a really good question, and it's really, I guess it's a tech technique as well. And it's something that actually David and I use.

Working with clients and with each other to keep each other accountable. That's the if money was no object What would you do but applying that to your career? And that's it. That's a unique application of that. Can you can you help them? Vision that how does that work? I think our listeners will get a lot out of that. Just always want to know what makes people tick. Yeah, I mean if truly money was no object if you had enough to just eat sleep

do the things that were, you to survive and have some fun on the side. You know, if money were no object, what would you really do? Where would you spend your time? You know, I took my kids, my wife and I took the three kids to India to help build a school with a charity organization. We ended up going to Kenya, did the same thing. I've never asked my kids what they want to be when they grow up, because I just want them to be happy and feel like they're contributing in the world.

So it's trying to expose them to different opportunities. And so when I think of, you know, what would you do if money didn't matter? I think too many people make decisions going, I want this type of car. I want this type of house. If you think of what really matters to you and how you can be the best in the world at that, the money will come guaranteed. I mean, when I stopped caring about money, which was an awful long time ago, it was like, what do you do as it keeps on coming?

you now we put our money back into the growth of the business because we want to see entrepreneurs grow along with us. But I think that people need to figure out how to make meaning more than making money. That's fantastic. So one of the challenges, one of the things that they told you you can't do was franchise your organization. Right. So how did you how did you figure out how to do it?

Yeah, I figured out by doing I figured out by making a lot of mistakes. I went to you know, a dozen ish mentors or people that I met that I wanted some coaching and help and feedback from. And I brought a notebook and I said, Okay, you know, I want to franchise and how am going to do this? And what does it look like? And, and, unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess, but at the time, everybody said,

junk removal, that can't be franchised. Who's gonna, you why wouldn't you just get out with your own pickup truck and start your own business? Why would somebody join you? And what was interesting is I took all the nos from all these experts. One of them was a senior partner in McDonald's and I took all these smart people and I said, okay, so it can't be franchised. Why not? What would make it franchisable? What's missing? What don't you like about it? And I wrote down all the answers and I went away and I retooled my model.

And I came back to a couple of them and said, what do you think now? And they were like, wow, you might be able to do this. And the rest is history. So I love the concept of when people give you a no, find out what's behind that no. What can you learn? When we go pitch the press, I remember back in the days, we'd call some of the big CNNs and Wall Street journals and they'd say, I don't think this is a great story you're pitching. What's missing?

And they would give us the answers as a journalist that wouldn't necessarily sway them and get them on side at that time. But it would be information we could arm ourselves with when we called Oprah or when we called USA Today. And it works incredibly well. How do you learn? How do you make mistakes? So you asked about franchising and how we did it. Lots and lots and lots of failures. And so what's interesting is I wrote a book all about failure called WTF.

stands for willing to fail. Willing to fail. the title came. Thank you. The title came after we wrote the book. My co-author Roy Williams, who's the wizard of ads. He does all our radio creative. He and I closed off the manuscript and he just said to me as a big branding guy that he is, he said, let the title come from the book, wait till the book is done. The title will come. And we looked at the book and went, this is all about failure.

after failure, after failure. I did, but each failure was a gift that got us to the next stage in the business. so it just became, you the title was WTF, willing to fail. I'm willing to make mistakes because I know that's where the great learning comes. And in franchising, an incredibly difficult game to play made an awful lot of mistakes, some that nearly killed the company, but here we are today. You know, that's interesting that your outlook on

Failure is one of an opportunity for growth That it seems like yeah, it's if I fail that's fine. But what do I learn from it? How do I move ahead? What how do I leverage that failure to? Move the needle forward and I think that's a differentiator and a lot of people is that attitude or that outlook? So it's really cool that you've got that I want to ask you on the on the franchise part So I heard a rumor is it true you had but like a $29 gimmick that you use with the franchisees about

marketing is can you talk about that? that true? that? Yeah, no, it's true. It's exactly $29. It was a $3 blue wig, a $26 bowling shirt that had one 800 got junk on the front and the back. And what I was trying to accomplish was our franchise partners were giving us a bit of grief in saying that we needed to do TV and radio and spend a bunch of money on some of the big plays to really grow the business.

I said, A, we don't have the money and B, I think we can do it in a more guerrilla marketing type way. So I said to this group of franchise partners, we had a franchise advisory council. I think there were six of them. I said, so where would be the city that would be the hardest to stand out in and get attention? And people said New York city. They said Vegas. go, ah, Vegas, we're going to Vegas. And so we bought everyone $29 sort of outfit, right?

the bowling shirt and the blue egg. We went to Vegas and we started going into bars and casinos and the whole bit and we're giving out one 800 got junk tattoos and little spray bottles of water and putting them on people. were all we looked like a cheesy rock band and people were just like who are these guys and people were coming up to us and talking to us. They're like are you guys on a bachelor party? What's going on? Who are you? And we owned Vegas that night. I mean people were just like

talking to us and they were like, we see you everywhere. And so I tried to show people that a city that's so difficult to stand out in, 29 bucks times, you know, six people plus, you know, maybe a little airfare and some alcohol, but it was, it was a good experiment to show that, you know what you can stand out if only you think differently and figure out how to do that. And that is, that is a brilliant mind. know, I know you're like, you're like the godfather of

branding. I love it. It's getting out of your comfort zone and it's saying what could I do that's a little bit crazy here where we might just have fun. know getting on the Oprah Winfrey show was very much guerrilla marketing for us. We constantly emailed and phone called into phoned into Harpo studios for 14 months. weren't stopped back when it was in Chicago back when I was in Chicago.

Oh my gosh, yeah. And it was just phone call after email till finally they gave us a call and said, let's do something, get out to Los Angeles. They were doing a hoarding cleanup for a woman whose mother was a hoarder and we were asked to clean it up and do our magic. And then Oprah really loved the clip and said, Brian, you got to come out onto the show. And I got to sit on stage, look at Oprah. Wow. was pretty fun.

That is really cool. one thing the listeners need to understand is, you know, because for some of them that might be just hearing for the first time about 1-800-JUNK, right? 1-800-KATCHUP. But two things. One, I want to talk about some of your other brands, but it didn't happen overnight. Like I was looking in like 1989, you had one truck. By like 92, you had

trucks and like in 93, you had three trucks. That's like three, four years later and you've grown to three trucks. this is not, you know, wasn't an overnight success. No, I think funny how those things take so long to happen. People think of think of startups and they think of like Elizabeth Holmes and you know, the the huge

some of the massive venture capitalists that she obtained and she became a billionaire before 30. That's not reality. Isn't there the Steve Jobs quote that you favor? What is the quote again, I think Mark just said it. These overnight success stories sure take a long time. there you go. Yeah, that's it. Steve Jobs. Yeah, and they do. You look at this.

to give you the numbers on my business in sort of the simplest form, it took us eight years to get to a million in revenue and we'll do a million bucks today. I mean, so like in one day we'll do over a million bucks. Just showing you that these things kind of the hockey stick, very much a Canadian analogy. As quickly as they grow, they fall or they're not sustainable long-term.

And a lot of it can be hype. Now there's lots of great brands that have also done it and been very lucky, whether it's an Instagram or so on. But it is very much iterating as you go and learning. And I do believe slow and steady wins the race. And so it takes time. You we've got our newer brands like Wow One Day Painting and Shack Shine, which are growing more quickly than 1-800-GOT-Junk did in its early days.

but they're still, they're going a bit slow until we're going to get this momentum that goes hockey stick. So, explain to us those brands. Can you explain real quick kind of just high level overview, but what those other brands are and like what the model is? Yeah. Yeah. So they're all franchise models. we've done it and they come in and they follow our proven recipe and we support them forever. So wow. One day painting 22 years after I started one 800 got junk. I said, we've had great success. Would love to get into another business by

almost accident. I was getting my house painted. There was three people that came to my door that I'd asked for estimates on. And these people come to my door and I go, the first two smell like cigarette smoke. They show up late. They're not clean cut. And I'm like, you know, they're gonna move in. It's gonna be like Murphy Brown and they're gonna be here for ever painting my house. That's the third person shows up. And his name is Jim.

Prices are the same as everyone else. very much at market quality. I've done this for 22 years. I know what I'm doing. So does my team, but the kicker and the third point, which got me excited, these, said, when we agree on painting day, the end of that day, your house will be painted floor to ceiling moldings, trim the whole bit and you'll be thrilled. And so sure enough, I gave him a chance. I come home day 30 PM, all in one day. Wow. Yeah.

His company was, well, so his company was called One Day Painting. The feeling I got when I came home, I walked in the door and sure enough, it was all done. It was incredible. And there was no compromise in quality, speed and quality could go together. And I was like, wow, how did you do this? Have you looked at franchising? He said, I've tried to franchise. can't franchise this business. said, let's grab a beer. might be able to help. Yeah. Let's talk about that. And, and I learned that, I mean, you know,

We've probably all painted at some point, right? everyone understands you can paint one room in a day with one person. If it's a big room, you might need two people. The whole secret sauce is coordination, preparation and coordination have one person in each room, sometimes two, they're not in each other's way. And it's amazing. So even during this pandemic we're in, our value prop on our business for a wow one day painting, and I had no idea this was going to happen.

completely exploded because when people in sort of May were ready to have people in their homes again, they're like, okay, so if I don't have to be home and you're only there for a day and I can leave and all your people are wearing masks, they're socially distanced in the house, they get it done in a day. I mean, that just made our value prop go right through the roof. So that business is growing incredibly quickly right now during a pandemic, which completely shocked me. And then the last brand, Shatchine.

windows, gutters, power washing. We make your house shine, right? Shack shine. And we love what we do because it's become a business that adds a level of magic to the home. We do Christmas lights. 25 % of our business is Christmas light installations. And so everything it takes to shine the outside of the house, that's the model. And I discovered it by trying to get my gutters cleaned. I couldn't find anyone to do it. It was introduced to someone that was starting the business called Shack Shine.

we actually rebranded the look and feel and said, let's do a deal. So, you know, we've now got these three amazing brands with young, hungry franchise partners that are coming in that are like, let's start a business together and let's grow this stuff. And we've got over 50 partners in each of those brands and they'll be bigger than 1-800-GOD-JUNK at some point. That's fantastic. That's so cool. So what's next for you? Like what is on the horizon? Unless it's, you know, intellectual property or

confidential, but I mean, what can you share with us? What's coming up? Yeah, so, you know, my wife doesn't let me call trades businesses in anymore because she worries that I'm gonna buy another business and get even busier. It's a legitimate worry, I think. It is, you know, what's next? We will have more brands at some point. We're not looking right now because we're just so busy with our own growth that's ahead of us.

You know, it's sort of like the analogy of kids. mean, we've got three young kids, maybe one that's kind of growing up into a teenager, but these two other young brands, they need our attention and our love. Let's not go out and have another set of twins or something, right? So it's a busy time and we want to do it right. You know, this has never been a money-making thing for me in terms of like, I need to get rich so I can buy big boats and fancy cars and homes. Like this is just love life.

grow and have fun with people and help people accomplish their own dreams. mean, nothing gets me more energized than watching people live the dream of business ownership for themselves. And that's my that's my purpose. That's fantastic. What is your what is what advice would you give to someone that is starting a business and they're so they're worried about money. They're worried about making payroll. They're worried about, you know, expanding or scaling.

What advice would you give them in terms of keeping their culture good? What would you say to them? Yeah, mean, culture is everything. You can't build a brand without the right culture. You one of my favorite brands is Starbucks. I've had the good pleasure of meeting Howard Schultz, the founder, several times and always inspired by his vision and his style. And it's always been about taking care of people. And so as you grow, as

quickly or slowly as you do, you can't ever take your eye off of culture. And so it's paying attention to finding the right people and then treating those people right. So we've learned a lot about ourselves as a company during the pandemic because we've said, wow, you know, it's, harder to show care for people when you can't be, you know, with them in the office. And, you know, we've had a few cases of COVID and I've picked up the phone and called every single one of them. We've had people that were furloughed or laid off when things were scary in the beginning.

I called every one of them to check up and see how they're doing and say, I'm sorry. you know, so it's, there's different ways to connect. But I think in building a culture, first and foremost is, is showing that you truly do care that first and foremost, this is a people business, not a money-making machine. Yes, you want the money to come. Nobody buys a business or starts a business thinking that they're never going to generate a bunch of money or that's not the hope and desire, but it's finding a way to take care of the people that are building this with you.

And so never take your eye off of culture ever, ever, ever. That's great advice. Speaking of that, that's really one of the, the foundational reasons that we started this was to pass along knowledge in words of wisdom and inspiration to, you know, startups and to entrepreneurs and you know, millennials just coming up. And, there's two, I guess, practices or disciplines that you have that I maybe want to see if you could touch on for me. One is,

Going dark and the others, the two second, could you maybe elaborate a little bit on those? Yeah. So the going dark was, I mean, I've done it for well over a decade now. I don't remember for how long, but I decided I need to recharge. We all do. I need to have balance in my life, especially as I started having kids. And so my, my belief was on summer vacation, Christmas, whatever I was going to take for vacation, long weekends.

was I was gonna go dark. So no technology, I'm not checking email, I'm not checking in with the office, I'm not doing Zoom calls, I literally go dark. And so when I started doing this, I found it difficult where it's like, let me just check a couple of things. So my hack, what worked for me was I got my assistant to change my passcodes on everything. And I said, if I can't get in and I don't know those passwords,

That's the deal and it worked. And you know, my assistant years ago said, well, what do I do if the office burns down? Then I got to call you. I'm like, no, call 911. What am I going to do? Right? And so I mean, in all the years when I've gone dark and all over vacation in the summer, do four to six weeks at a time, I won't have a clue what's going on with my business, but it's because I have a team and people who I trust, who I empower, and I'm able to go dark. Now,

going dark, I wrote an article about it in Wall Street Journal. And I got a bunch of negative feedback from people going, ooh, it must be nice to be King. You know, like, oh, Ryan as a CEO can go dark. and I took the feedback to heart because I was like, oh, I misunderstood. This wasn't just about me going dark. This is about the company going dark. And so we really systematized and put together a process where we said, every person in the company gets five weeks paid vacation in our business.

We want them to be able to use that and disconnect. We want them to have a partner in their business where we can say, hey, it doesn't matter what role you're in in the company, right? You're back up so that you can go dark. And we constantly work at it because some people are very addicted to their technology. But yeah, during the pandemic, when it's so easy to be, you know, we're blessed to have a home in the mountains in Whistler. I'm a big skier. The family loves to ski.

During the summer, we spent a bunch of time up there in August and took a vacation and you you can't go travel across our borders are closed. And so I said, okay, I still need to lead by example and go dark. actually during the pandemic wanted the distraction of work. I wanted to connect a little bit because it's like, what am going to do at home all day? I mean, yeah, we can go mountain bike and do stuff, but it was harder for me this year, harder than it's ever been. Still changed the passwords and had to just be disciplined with no, I need to do this.

because I need to give other people who are at home a reason to go dark. The second one you talked about was the two second rule. Yes. Sometimes people can't make decisions. They get really stuck. And I'll just say to them, you got two seconds to make a decision. They're like, well, what do you mean? I'm like, no, one, two, what would you do? And all that is is a test to get what does their gut say they should do? People are often too afraid to say it. And I go, no, literally, you got two seconds. Right. Is it a?

or is it B? And you give them the two seconds and they go B. It's like, okay, can we live with that? And we don't make all our big decisions that way. Right. a way to sort of pull out from someone. What do you really feel? Right. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book Blink. We do have this rapid process. that book. I love that book. That's what I was just about to say. I said, this sounds like Blink. funny. Yeah, I love that book. That's a great book. So

I've read part of it. I'm a terrible reader, but I've read enough of it to know that you've got this rapid processing of what you hear, see, smell, your senses, your experience in life. And you quickly go, yeah, my gut tells me this. Your gut isn't a spiritual, let's flip a coin. It's literally your mind taking all your experience and going, I trust this guy. I trust this person. I believe this is the right direction. I can't put a pin on it, a finger on it and figure out why, I do. And so make the decision.

versus getting all paralyzed with analysis paralysis. Yeah, that's a great practice. I appreciate that. you know, I want to respect your time too. You said about 10 minutes till we were going to call it. we're going to let you go. I wanted to ask them one last thing though. Go ahead. I always like to ask this at the end and this would be a really cool one. So when you were a little boy, what did you want to be when you grow up?

Are you still trying to figure it out? Well, I used to wear these Superman pajamas and a little cape and fly around the house. I think every kid had a dream of being some sort of superhero. But you know what? I feel like I'm living a superhero life. I love what I do. Like it is each and every day. Now the pandemic's hard. So I'll be honest and say, you know, there's days where I go, man, like, doesn't everybody have a little low grade depression right now? Like it's harder. It's not as fun. It's not as easy. Yep.

But man, I'm living the dream. love connecting with people and watching people grow. So whatever I wanted to be when I grew up, grew up, I'm it, you know, like who dreams of being a garbage man? You I don't know, like, that's so cool. You put it that way. That's right though. Right. That's, that's it. That's it. I actually will turning, but we'll include links right now to all the organizations to make sure everybody can easily find you after listening to this podcast, man. I really appreciate you being on if,

I would ask the listeners to yes, please look at these opportunities, look at these organizations for services. Brian's got such a good energy, man. I can just tell you're a good person. You're a cool dude. And I think that's a lot of the reason for your success. I appreciate all the transparency and words of wisdom. I know the listeners are get a whole lot out of this. Great. Scudamore, thank you so much,

Yeah, thank you for having me and I will close by saying if anyone wants to know how to create a painted picture, connect with me on any of the social mediums and just send me a message saying painted picture, please. I'll fire you off a structure that I created on how to create your own. And thank you to both of you. It's been awesome to be here and you guys have great energy yourselves. So thank you. Thanks so much, Brian. Have a good day, buddy. Thanks, You too. Take care.

Breaching the Boardroom AI (42:05)
That's a wrap on this episode of Breaching the Boardroom. We hope you're walking away with fresh insights and a new perspective on leadership that you can apply to your own journey. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with other leaders looking for real strategies and inspiring stories.