Business Podcast | Are You Looking for a Real Plan to Grow Your Real Business? Discover How the Founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK Successfully Grew From Startup to 300+ Franchise Locations + Join Trump & Kiyosaki March 6-7

Audio Transcription

Alright, guys, I’ve been to the mountaintop and I got something to say, alright? I’m unveiling the new long-term profit goal. Are you guys ready for this? Drum roll please. This is going to blow your mind, okay? This is what we’re going to do.

This is good.

$30 million?

There’s only two of us.

We made $63,000 in gross sales last year. That’s everything.

Okay, look. I’m a visionary.

Okay, what you’re witnessing right here, this is leadership. I’m looking at where we’re going to be 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now. Did Henry Fonda, when he invented the Model T, were they sitting around going, How are we going to build this car?

No. Okay, they got their hands dirty, they grabbed the bull by the horns,

and then they killed it.

Okay, so what’s the plan?

Step one, okay, we’re going to maximize efficiency.

Number two, write this down. Number two.

Step three, emulsification. Listen, you guys follow those steps? We’re going to hit our goal by the winter of 2032. Okay, what an incredible Christmas that’ll be. Alright, so you guys know what you’re doing? No. Awesome, alright, I’m gonna hit the links.

Ooh, daddy likes.

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 and successfully scaled 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Wow one day painting. You’ve moved me and Shaq shine.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Brian Scudamore. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women, thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Thriving Time Show. One, two, three!

We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

We started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Yes, yes, yes!

And Thrive Nation, on today’s show, we have an incredible guest. This guy is the CEO of the 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. Ladies and gentlemen, the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Brian Scudamore. Welcome on 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 partner and friend Jonathan Barnett has built a major very successful franchise in Oxifresh carpet cleaning and we’re always hearing the praise reports of how great your brands are doing. So I’d like for let’s kind of start at the bottom if we can here. Where did when did you get the idea to first start 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

I was in a McDonald’s drive-thru of all places. There I was, a beat-up old pickup truck in front of me. I had just dropped 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 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-thru There’s a beat-up old pickup truck in front of me with plywood sides on the box It said marks hauling across the truck and I was like, wow, that’s what I’m gonna do I’m gonna go buy myself a pickup. I’m gonna start hauling junk and There I was 18 years old Running a business that in two weeks paid for itself

At the end of the summer, it gave me enough money for college and I was off to the races. That was 1979, right? 1989.

I’m not quite that old, but sometimes I feel it. Well, you look like you’re drinking a lot of fish oil. You look like a young man. I was wondering if this was 1999. I wasn’t sure. Okay, now, 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 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. You can imagine when I sat down to say, hey, dad, I’ve got a year left of college. I’m dropping out because I’m learning more about business by running one. He thought it was a foolish decision, but certainly is on side with that decision today. Did he name your company Rubbish Boys?

Who named the company? He said, this is company’s crap. We’re going to call it Rubbish Boys. Who named the company Rubbish Boys?

That would be me. 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. I started hiring friends and they would be fellow college students and they would be running the business alongside of me. We’d build it together. It was a ton of fun and continues to be fun almost 30 years later.

Now, when you started this company in 1989, my understanding is you guys hit a million dollars in revenue in 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 fun part is today we do a million dollars 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 of people, and

we’ve been able to accelerate things significantly.

Do you have a favorite band, like a favorite 1990s, 80s band, a favorite rap group? Do you have a favorite music group?

Oh, gee, a lot of British stuff. What was I into? I was into New Order, The Cure, a lot of new wave type. Yeah, I know a little, yep, I was probably wearing eyeliner back in the day.

Really? Okay, so you were into Cure, you’re into The Cure, and when you’re into Cure, you know how a lot of times these bands, they break up, they get into disagreements, they say, hey, you know, we should stop wearing eyeliner. No, we need to stick with the eyeliner.

We need to change it up. No, we gotta, you know, next thing you know, they end up breaking up. Then they get back together and they perform at a casino. My understanding is that you guys, you decided to break up the band.

You said, listen, rubbish boys, rubbish guys, rubbish dudes. 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 has 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. But this is a leadership issue. This is my problem. And time to own up and start again. One bad apple spills the whole bunch had nine bad apples and got them all out

of the business. And the next day went from five trucks down to one. If you think of the analogy of a band, a one-man band, it’s tough to play the guitar and the drums and sing and do it all at once. It was a struggling point for me for the next several months, but I learned that a business is all about people. Finding the right people and treating them right became my focus.

How did you fire them all? Did you say, hey guys, come here, I got a little secret, let’s just all gather around. You’re fired! I mean, did you do it nicely? Did you freak out?

Did you throw things? What happened?

Yeah, I think I got real and sat down with everybody and just brought them in the room at one point together and ripped off the band-aid and said, you know, I’m sorry. I started by apologizing because it really was my leadership challenge

and it was no one else’s fault. These were people that weren’t clean cut, professional, they had 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 can imagine one guy in 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? 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 I made that scary decision.

What town did you start your company in? Where was this geographically?

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

one Canadian, okay, let’s say you could export you know, Justin Bieber or Brian Adams in favor of, you could make a swap for a bunch of more new high-quality, highly motivated 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchisees, which Canadian would you give up?

I like Bryan Adams. Bryan Adams is a good guy. I would give you, you know what, you could probably have Bieber.

You’d give us Bieber?

You could take the Biebs.

Really? You could have the Biebs. Here’s what I heard, and I could be wrong, but I heard that the GDP of Canada is comprised 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 gonna give one-fifth of the economy away?

Well, you couldn’t have beer, but you can have the beach.

Yeah, you can have them. Okay, my final Canadian question here. How often do you end a sentence with the letter A? I mean, is this… I’m from Minnesota, which we’re kind of like cousins, and if I go up there for two weeks in a row, and I start this, oh, don’t you know A, 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 say, A, a lot up there? Or is it just in Minnesota?

No, no, we say it a ton. I have to think of, I think it depends on what I’m drinking, who I’m with, how much I’m drinking, but I will definitely say, A, a lot. And it depends who you’re around, for sure.

Don’t you know.

Okay, so let’s talk about 1-800-GOT-JUNK. When did you rename that thing?

Almost 10 years into the business. So I came up with this idea. The company name was the Rubbish Boys, but the truck said 738 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 as 738 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, as we’re going to expand in 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 out 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 I wanted so badly. And I begged and pleaded, 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 AT&T forms to sign off on and there we go. We got the number and 1-800-GOT-JUNK was born.

You know, Drake up there in Canada, he’s the Canadian, you know, king of rap there. You’re kind of the Canadian king of franchising and so you know a lot about the industry, you know, and there’s a lot of inside nomenclature. I don’t want to get lost in a lot of it. We have Wes Carter on the show who is one of the top attorneys on the planet and you in my opinion Wes, in my opinion legally speaking.

Thank you for covering me. And you are indisputably, it’s irrefutable, you are one of the top franchise oars 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. It’s an FDD and right away you start talking about legal stuff, people, their eyes glaze

over and they say, I don’t want to 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, territories, initial fees, litigation, blah, blah, blah. A lot of stuff. It’s a big document. Why do franchise disclosure documents cost people so much money?

People out there listening say, I want to franchise my company. Why are people paying $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 to write a franchise disclosure document?

Yeah, it’s a lot of money. I’d say it’s hundreds of thousands, because if you want to be in all the different registration states and you want to register with the Federal Trade Commission, 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 franchisor you’re looking to invest with. Here’s the one that you’re partnering with and they’re a franchisor that they’ve got some blemishes and some wounds.

It’s meant to highlight, has there been litigation? Has there been any big problems? What’s their financial situation? These are things I think people need to know up front before taking a leap into a franchise business.

How did you know it was time to franchise? And walk us through the process of franchising 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

Yeah, so I was always a big fan of Ray Kroc’s 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. He really took the McDonald’s Brothers business and made it something that many people owned and thrived with.

And I always wanted to build something bigger and better together. And so that ownership model, we could have gone the private equity route, we could have gone raising capital, do an IPO. I mean, 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. I just felt like it was something I wanted to be a part of. 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 things started

to work for us.

Wes has a question here for you, but before we get to Wes’s question, it will always one up my question. I would like to clarify, how many 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchises are out there today?

There’s about 150.

So in our busiest period in time or our highest volume number of franchises, about 2007, we had 329. Now we still service the same footprint. So while our sales have actually quadrupled since that time. The business has shrunk in a sense 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 it gives us fewer franchise partners to have to support, which means we can give more support to the people we have.

You talked about how important your franchisees are to you. Do you accept anybody that sends in the right application or do you have a criteria? How do you pick what’s a good fit for you and the applicant that’s trying to become a franchisee?

Yeah, so of about 100 people that apply, 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 we believe in, or has a proven track record of success, they might not be a leader. So things we look for, we look for 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 purebred entrepreneur who wants to do everything their way and reinvent the system. This is about a, how 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, you know what, that right there, 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 want 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 hike Machu Picchu, or they go on these adventures and 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 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 working the system and making this their entire bet? And so franchise owners, whether they get into 1-800-GOT-JUNK or Shack Shine, our 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.

Speaking of thin, by the way, people Google search you. You are looking good, man. What are you doing? What are you up there in Canada? Are you going beer-free the last few years? What are you doing?

I think it’s the glacier water that’s in our beer, the mountain-fed springs. No, not going beer-free. Enjoy my beer, as all Canadians do. But, thanks, I appreciate you. You think I look young. I feel young as well.

You do, you’re looking very young. Now, as you’re turning back the time, you look younger than when you started the company. What’s going, this is, he’s like a time machine kind of a franchise, or I’m kind of worried about you at this point now.

Now, you have-

Now you got everybody Googling me.

That’s what we gotta do. I just share the eye candy freely. Now, you started a franchise called Wow One Day Painting. I’d like to talk about, I’d like for you to, 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 Money 100 and got junk to the next one and the next one, because you are

on fire. Yeah, things are growing. You know, we’ve got one big business, so of our $365 million is 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 pick 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, 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 uniformed, and he says, here’s the deal. We’ll get it done in a day. Once you tell us to go ahead, we’re going to need one day to do the job.”

And I said, what, one day for prep? He goes, no, 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 p.m., floor to 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 compromising quality. And so that is our biggest 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 in their city. And it’s been super exciting. It’s been fun to watch it grow. And I had a lot of naysayers that said, you can’t paint a home in a day, especially some friends of mine

that were in the painting business that I went to as experts. They said, you know, you’re freaking nuts. This can’t be done. One of the guys that told me I was freaking nuts is now running that company, which is fun. Every day you just walk up to me and say,

you’re doing a good job, in your face. Yeah, exactly. Now, you wrote a book called WTF, Willing to Fail, How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success. Brian, my friend, what inspired you to write this book? WTF, my man. And WTF, why did I write a book?

I have a hard enough time reading books, let alone getting out there and writing. I’m so focused and 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 does all 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, OK, fine. He said, I’ll make it easy. And we ended up storytelling, recording them all and starting to put them together in a book.

I love the book we wrote because it has inspired. I had a video testimonial from a nine-year-old the other day. I also had 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, 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, do you have a few highlights in the book or maybe a thing where you go, hey, 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, our vision for the future, of how we were gonna get on Oprah, how we were gonna build the FedEx to 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 one of my quotes at the end is there’s a real big difference between making a living and making a life. And I think the book is a life strategy book that teaches people not just about business, but shares wisdom from all of us who’ve been a part of creating 1-800-GOT-JUNK at O2E Brands of how to make a great life. I think North Americans often have it wrong, and they focus so much on the living part

and the things and collections. 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’re a guy who, you’re very passionate about what you do. You can sense it, you can feel it, it’s worth Googling your name there. It’s just, you have a lot of passion for what you do. I think a lot of entrepreneurs 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 franchisable, right?

Because it’s just a vague idea. How do you know when something is able to be franchised? 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, you know, it’s hard to replicate that. To me, a franchise organization 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 franchises, those little hamburgers and french fries and the way they look and feel and everything is consistent in Tulsa versus Los Angeles. It doesn’t matter where you go. I think looking at a 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, this is Wes. You talked about how important it is to be happy, which 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 them? That’s good. Are there characteristics or certain traits you look for 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 sort of throw back is I’d say to you, and you don’t necessarily need to answer this But 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 because you just kind of know You’ve got a good gut feel you you got a sense of this is a good person

This person’s interesting 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 cultural fit first, look at skill second. Higher an 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 auditing firm to have a look at the person’s skillset. So the right people for me and my company

might be different than the right people for any other person that’s listening in their company because we all have different friends. We all have different things we look for, but it’s finding people you wanna spend time with that you can care about, that you can help cheerlead 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, get those people out. Help them free their future up for a better place for them, and you’ve got a spot filled or vacant in your company that’s for the right person who can come in.

We have three final questions for you. Now Wes has one and I have two here for you. So this is my, one of my final two questions I’ll ask you here. Your company, when you sell somebody a franchise on a very practical level, right, and they’re a great fit, they’re a new franchisee, they’re excited, things are good, and they’re a 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, and they’re trying to go like a rogue entrepreneur. They’re not trying to be a 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 in doing that so that they don’t come back and say, oh, no, no, I want to try this and you didn’t tell me that I couldn’t. We want them to run with our systems for the first year.

The systems weren’t created by Brian Scudamore, they weren’t created by The Junction, they’re created by all of us, everybody a part of the O2E Brands family, and they work. And so we’ll often get franchise partners come into us late in the game, a couple of years into

the business, and they’re like, oh man, I should have followed the systems more closely because you’re right, they do work. Now if someone wants to try something new and wants to be innovative, we like doing experiments. We want to pilot different things and try. One of our franchise partners came to us and they said, you know, I want to stay open until

midnight. We’re like, well, that sounds crazy, but they wanted to test it. We then ran a national radio set of ads and it’s been the most impactful radio programming we’ve done. Staying open till 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 Alan in Baltimore decided to be the one to step up and say, you know what, I’m 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 gotta try new things and take some risks.

So if you’ve got an employee or a franchisee or just a friend that they’re wanting to learn more about business or leadership, 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 sort 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 an oldie but a goodie,

and man, that book is just unbelievable. I think scientifically, data-driven, here’s how to build the right leadership style. On the running a business side, on building systems and processes, whether you want to franchise or just grow and scale a business, the e-myth revisited by Michael Gerber. Michael Gerber has become a great friend, and I just love the impact that that book had on our business.

So E-Myth by Michael Gerber and Jim Collins, a good to great. Now I can tell you this, I believe Jim Collins and I, we’ve begun a special relationship. It’s really one-sided right now. I invite him on the show and I don’t hear a lot back, but what I feel…

Unrequited love.

You know what I mean? Sometimes people want what they can’t have. And I think he’s making me want it. He’s making me want it. We have Daniel Pink on the show. We got John Maxwell.

We’re having some BFU on the show. So maybe if you can just, Brian, maybe you can throw back a Canadian beer for me tonight, you know, and just pour out some liquor for my homie here, Jim Collins, and see if you can get him on our show. That’s my only request there this year. So I’ve got a final question here for you.

Yeah, well, you know what you’re doing. You’re doing what I do with the vision, the painted pictures, just throwing it out to the universe. You never know, someone might hear this podcast who knows Jim Collins, who is connected with him. These things have a magical way of happening the more that we manifest it and talk about

it.

Good for you. Here’s one thing I’m working on too. It’s a subtle move I’m trying here. Brian, a lot of times I’ll say, Jim Collins, if you’re listening right now, your name is Jim Collins. Call me, pick up the phone, Jim Collins. It’s kind of a subtle move, it’s subtle, it’s very classic.

That is so good, that is so good. Wow, I did, yeah.

Now I wanna ask you this, I wanna 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, you fired the band,

you restructured and you said, okay, we’re gonna franchise this baby. What did your schedule look like during the first four hours of your day and what time did you wake up?

So back in that day, I probably would have woken up at seven o’clock and into the office and just deal with fires, letting people get out in the trucks and scheduling, dispatch, dealing with customer issues and dealing with happy customers as well, but just trying to manage it all, a volume, a fire hose of things going on.

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 a.m. 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 focus on myself. My best days, if I look at today for example, 5.55, grabbed a cup of coffee and popped on

the bike and worked out hard and felt great afterwards. When my kids were up and my family was up this morning, they’re like, what are you smoking? What are you drinking? Why are you so 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 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.

So you would advise people to get on a bike, be proactive about your day. Maybe don’t start your day by smoking and drinking.

And no smoking and drinking. That was just my family wondering why I was smoking.

Okay, there’s somebody out there.

I’m happy, but yeah.

We have a literal listener who’s like, I’m going to wake up every day and smoke and drink if that’s what I have to do. Okay, I 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 one big ask of our listeners, anything you want them to do today as a result of listening to today’s show?

I’ve got no ask. I’m about giving back at this point, and if there’s something I can do to help anyone there, don’t hesitate to reach out. Whatever your social poison is, you can Instagram me, at Brian Scudamore, send me a direct message, and let me know how I 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 the show Clay and it was really fun chatting with both of you and thanks for keeping the the legal questions light which is also fun but you know you guys

were in a great show hey well I hope you have a great day and if you’re looking for a for a ton of Bryan Adams. If you watch the movie Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, it’s all sang by Bryan Adams, I believe. So, hopefully that works for you. But have an awesome Canadian day, my friend.

Thank you very much. Thanks again to both of you. I appreciate it. Alright, 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’s Clay Clark. This is the Thrive Time Show and we like to end each and every show with a boom. And now without any further ado, 3, 2, 1, boom!

I’m going to be honest with you guys, we’re not executing.

We’re not getting things done.

Alright, so I went to the library, I found this. It’s a seminar on how to execute. I think it’s going to help you guys a lot. So take some notes, pay attention. Here we go.

♪♪

Hey, Jeffrey. Are you okay?

You look frustrated.

It’s just so hard to get things done, especially in the workplace.

Ugh, tell me about it.

Has this ever happened to you?

Well, if so, you’ve come to the right place. Hi, I’m Ron Dawson and you’re watching Getting It Done, Executing in the Workplace. In this video I’m gonna show you three easy steps to help take your business from last place to first place. So let’s not waste any more time, let’s execute this lesson.

Step 1, keep the pace with technology. In this fast-paced world of technology it’s important that you keep up. So make sure you have the following. One, a cordless phone. Two, a fax machine. And number three, a lightning-fast connection to the World Wide Web using a secure dial-up modem. Don’t let the 90s pass you by. Hello.

Step 2. Communicate with colleagues. I’m here for the meeting at 3.

Jeffrey, the meeting was at 1. What? Uh oh, looks like these two didn’t communicate. Avoid these and other time wasters by communicating with colleagues, using inter-office mail, and writing things down. Step 3, use effort to succeed. I have a lot of work to do but I’m tired.

I’m gonna take a nap. Jeffrey,

what are you doing? You know you can’t reach your dreams if you don’t do anything. Try using effort to succeed.

Now you got it Susan! In order to succeed you have to try. Even if you want to quit, don’t. Because you are too legit to quit. My name is Ron Dawson. Thanks for watching.

Alright, let’s go execute.

company as witness security. For the past 18 months that we’ve been working with Clay, our growth was averaging pretty close to 10,000 a month on a regular basis. Shortly thereafter, we doubled that to close to 20,000, and now we’re close to 40,000 on a regular basis every month. We heard about Clay Clark on the radio.

My son heard it on the radio and had been listening to it for a couple weeks and said I ought to listen to it. I gave him a call and within a day or so, Clay gave me a call and we came in for an interview. Clay has helped us grow our business in the aspects of individuals, you know, how to hire people, how to manage people,

how to necessarily organize our business, how to structure, you know, the functioning of our business. Though we’ve been in business for close to nine years at that time, Clay has revamped everything we do to a much more better operational business than what it ever was before. Working with Clay is a little bit different than what you’d find in most. Clay pushes you to the point you get out of your comfort zone.

As long as you continue to do what he asks you to do, you will continue to grow. But if you don’t, then you won’t. Clay has restructured everything we did when it comes to selling the security systems. Being a local company, we do things quite a bit different. And by doing so and restructuring everything he did in the nine years that I was in business, trying to do it on my own, he came up with a package deal within less than 10 minutes

and revamped everything we do. Clay has helped us increase our sales in every aspect when it comes to the calls that come in to our business, helping us to hire people to be able to do that and follow a good script, you know, setting up the appointments and how we do them when we go into the appointment, the sales pitch and how we do it, you know, and then from then on forth, just the SEO and everything he’s done has increased our sales exponentially. He’s helped us in our search engine optimization by helping us with the

actual Google ratings when it comes to being placed on the map in multiple locations so that we dominate the industry, you know, on the map as well as organically so that when people are searching in a variety of different words, we always pop up on multiple locations on the first page. You know, that of which he did, it’s a long process, but it works very well. And Google how their algorithms work, it doesn’t change in what he does. So we’re always on top.

The accountability aspect that Clay has provided by once he asks you to do something and you follow through with it, the accountability aspect of working with Clay makes it to the point where he’ll ask you to do something, and though it may seem a little bit out of the ordinary what you ought to do, he’ll keep pushing you until you do it. And it becomes easier once you actually follow through with whatever he asks you to do.

You know, that becomes easier, and you’ll finally see the success that he is asking you to have accomplished by. I mean, it’s just good in how he works. If you’re looking for, coming to Clay Clark for asking him to help you grow your business, I can guarantee it’ll be a success if you follow through with what he says. You know, you have to follow through with what he says in order to make it work. And so you have to come to the table making sure that you’re going to do what he says.

Be teachable, and you will be successful.

Clay Clark is here somewhere. Where’s my buddy Clay? Clay is the greatest. I met his goats today. I met his dogs. I met his chickens. I saw his compound. He’s like the

greatest guy. I ran from his goats, his chickens, his dogs.

So this guy’s like the greatest marketer you’ve ever seen,

right? His entire life. Clay Clark, his entire life is

marketing.

Okay, Aaron Antis, March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th, guess who’s coming to Tulsa, Russia?

Ooh, Santa Claus?

No, that’s March. March 6th and 7th, you’re going to be joined by Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki! best-selling author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, probably the best-selling, or one of the best-selling business authors of all time, and he’s going to be joined with Eric Trump. He’ll be joined by Eric Trump. So we’ve got Eric Trump and Robert Kiyosaki in the same place.

In the same place. Aaron, why should everybody show up to hear Robert Kiyosaki? Well, you’ve got billions of dollars of business experience between those two. Not to mention many, many, many millions of books have been sold. Many, many millionaires have been made from the books that have been sold by Robert Kiyosaki. I happen to be one of them. I learned from the man. He was the inspiration. That book was the

inspiration for me to get the entrepreneurial spirit, as many other

people. Now since you won’t brag on yourself, I will. You’ve sold billions of dollars of houses, am I correct? That is true. And the book that kick-started it all for you, Rich Dad Poor Dad, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, the guy that kick-started your career. Yeah. He’s gonna be here.

He’s gonna be here. I’m bummed. And now, Eric Trump, people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. There’s not 50 employees. The Trump Organization, again, most people don’t know this, but the Trump Organization has thousands of employees. And while Donald J. Trump was the 45th president of these United States

and soon to be the 47th president of these United States, he needed someone to run the companies for him. And so the man that runs the Trump Organization for Donald J. Trump, as he was the 45th president of the United States and now the 47th president of the United States, is Eric Trump. So Eric Trump is here to talk about time management, promoting from within, marketing, branding, quality control, sales systems, workflow design, workflow mapping, how to build.

I mean, everything that you see, the Trump hotels, the Trump golf courses, all their products, the man who manages billions of dollars of real estate and thousands of employees is here to teach us how to do it. You are talking about one of the greatest brands on the planet from a business standpoint.

I mean, who else has been able to create a brand like the Trump brand? I mean, look at it. And this is the man behind the business for the last, pretty much since 2015. He’s been the man behind it. So you’re talking, we’re into nine, going into 10 years of him running it. And we get to tap into that knowledge. That’s going to be

amazing. Now think about this for a second. Would you buy a ticket just to see Robert Kiyosaki, Eric Trump? Of course you would. Of course you would. But we’re also going to be joined by Sean Baker. This is the best-selling author, the guy who invented the carnivore diet. Oh, yeah. Dr. Sean Baker. He’s been on Joe Rogan multiple times. He’s going to be joining us. So you’ve got Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Eric Trump, Sean Baker. The lineup continues to grow and this is how we do our tickets here at the Thrive Time Show. If you want to get a VIP ticket, you can absolutely do it. It’s $500 for a VIP ticket.

We’ve always done it that way. Now, if you want to take a general admission ticket, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. And the reason why I do that and the reason why we do that is because we want to make our events affordable for everybody. I grew up without money. I totally understand what it’s like to be in a tight spot.

So if you want to attend, it’s $250 or whatever price you want to pay. That’s how I do it. And it’s $500 for a VIP ticket. Now, we only have limited seating here. The most people we’ve ever had in this building was for the Jim Brewer presentation. Jim Brewer came here, the legendary comedian Jim Brewer

came to Tulsa, and we had 419 people that were here. 419 people.

Yeah.

And I thought to myself, there’s no more room. I felt kind of bad that a couple of people had VIP seats in the men’s restroom. No, I’m just kidding. So I thought, you know what, we should probably add on. So we’re adding on what we call the upper deck,

or the top shelf. So the seats are very close to the presenters, but we’re actually building right now. We’re adding on to the facility to make room to accommodate another 30 attendees or more. So again, if you want to get tickets for this event, all you have to do is go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go to Thrivetimeshow.com. When you go to Thrivetimeshow.com, you’ll go there, you’ll request a ticket, boom.

Or if you want to text me, if you want a little bit faster service, you say, I want you to call me right now. Just text my number. That’s my cell phone number, my personal cell phone number. We’ll keep that private between you, between you, me, everybody. We’ll keep that private.

And anybody, don’t share that with anybody except for everybody. That’s my private cell phone number. It’s 918-851-0102, 918-851-0102. I know we have a lot of Spanish speaking people that attend these conferences. And so to be bilingually sensitive, my cell phone number is 918-851-0102.

That is not actually bilingual.

That’s just saying one for a one. It’s not the same thing.

I think you’re attacking me. Now, let’s talk about this. Now, what kind of stuff will you learn at the Thrive Time Show workshop? So, Aaron, you’ve been to many of these over the past seven, eight years. So let’s talk about it. I’ll tee up the thing, and then you tell me what you’re going to learn here, OK?

You’re going to learn marketing, marketing and branding. What are we going to learn about marketing and branding? Oh, yeah. We’re going to dive into, you know, so many people say, oh, you know, I’ve got to get my brand known out there, like the Trump brand. You want to get that brand out there.

It’s like, how do I actually make people know what my business is and make it a household name? You’re going to learn some intricacies of how you can do that. You’re going to learn sales. So many people struggle to sell something. This just in, your business will go to hell if you can’t sell, so we’re going to teach

you sales. We’re going to teach you search engine optimization, how to come up top in the search engine results. We’re going to teach you how to manage people. Aaron, you have managed, no exaggeration, hundreds of people throughout your career and thousands of contractors, and most people struggle with managing people. Why does everybody have to learn how to manage people?

Well, because first of all, people are, you either have great people or you have people who suck. And so it can be a challenge. You know, learning how to work with a large group of people and get everybody pulling in the same direction can be a challenge. But if you have the right systems, you have the right processes, and you’re really good at selecting great ones.

And we have a process we teach about how to find great people. When you start with the people who have a great attitude, they’re teachable, they’re driven, all of those things, then you can get those people all pulling in the same direction. So we’re going to teach you branding, marketing, sales,

search engine optimization. We’re going to teach you accounting. We’re going to teach you personal finance, how to manage your finance. We’re going to teach you time management. How do you manage your time? How do you get more done during a typical day? How do you build

an organization if you’re not organized? How do you do organization? How do you build an org chart? Everything that you need to know to start and grow a business will be taught during this two-day interactive business workshop. Now let me tell you how the format is set up here. Again, folks, this is a two-day interactive 15… Think about this, folks. It’s two days. Each day, it starts at 7 a.m. and it goes until 5 p.m.

So from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., two days. It’s a two-day interactive workshop. The way we do it is we do a 30-minute teaching session, and then we break for 15 minutes for a question and answer session. So Aaron, what kind of great stuff happens during that 15-minute question and answer session after every teaching session?

I actually think it’s the best part about the workshops because here’s what happens. I’ve been to lots of these things over the years. I’ve paid many thousands of dollars to go to them. And you go in there and they talk in vague generalities and they’re constantly upselling you for something, trying to get you to buy this thing or that thing

or this program or this membership. And you don’t, you leave not getting your very specific questions answered about your business or your employees or what you’re doing on your marketing. And what’s awesome about this is we literally answer every single question that any person asks.

And it’s very specific to what your business is. And what we do is we allow you, as the attendee, to write your questions on the whiteboard. And then we literally, as you mentioned, we answer every single question on the whiteboard. And then we take a 15-minute break to stretch and to make it entertaining when you’re stretching. And this is a true story. When you get up and stretch, you’ll

be greeted by mariachis. There’s going to probably be alpaca here, llamas, helicopter rides, a coffee bar, a snow cone. I mean, there’s just, you had a crocodile one time.

That was pretty interesting.

You know, I should write that down.

And I can tell you, sorry for that one guy that we lost.

The crocodile, we duct taped its face. So that, right, we duct taped. It was a baby crocodile. And we duct taped. Yeah, duct taped around the mouth so it didn’t bite anybody.

But it was really cool passing that thing around and passing it. I should do that.

I should.

We have a small petting zoo that will be assembled. It’s going to be great. And then you’re in the company of hundreds of entrepreneurs. So there’s not a lot of people in America today. In fact, there’s less than 10 million people today, according to US Debt Clock, that identify as being self-employed.

So if you have a country with 350 million people, that means you have less than 3% of our population that’s even self-employed. So you only have 3 out of every 100 people in America that are self-employed to begin with. And when Inc. Magazine reports that 96% of businesses

fail by default, by default, you have a 1 out of 1,000 chance of succeeding in the game of business. But yet, the average client that you and I work with, we can typically double this. I’m just no hyperbole, no exaggeration. I have thousands of testimonials

to back this up. We have thousands of testimonials to back it up. But when you work with a home builder, when I work with a business owner, we can typically double the size of the company within 24 months. And you say, double? Yeah, there’s businesses that we have tripled, there’s businesses we’ve grown 8x, there’s so many examples you can see at Thrivetimeshow.com.

But again, this is the most interactive best business workshop on the planet. This is objectively the highest rated and most reviewed business workshop on the planet. And then you add to that Robert Kiyosaki, the bestselling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. You add to that Eric Trump, the man that runs the Trump Organization. You add to that Sean Baker. Now you might say, but Clay, is there more?

I need more. Well, OK, Tom Wheelwright is the wealth strategist for Robert Kiyosaki. So people say, Robert Kiyosaki, who’s his financial wealth advisor? Who’s the guy who manages? Who’s his wealth strategist?

His wealth strategist, Tom Wheelwright, will be here. And you say, Clay, I still, I’m not going to get a ticket unless you give me more. OK, fine. We’re going to serve you the same meal both days. True story.

We cater to food. And because I keep it simple, I literally bring them the same food both days for lunch. It’s Ted Escovedo’s, an incredible Mexican restaurant. That’s going to happen. And Jill Donovan, our good friend,

who is the founder of Rustic Cuff. She started that company in her home, and now she sells millions of dollars of apparel and products. That’s rusticcuff.com. And someone says, I want more. This is not enough.

Give me more.

OK. I’m not going to mention their names right now because I’m working on it behind the scenes here, but we’ve got one guy who’s given me a verbal to be here, and this is a guy who’s one of the wealthiest people in Oklahoma, and nobody really knows who he is because he’s built systems that are very utilitarian, that offer a lot of value. He’s made a lot of money in the… It’s where you rent… It’s short-term… It’s where

you’re renting storage spaces. He’s a storage space guy. He owns the, what do you call that? The rental, the storage space? Storage units. This guy owns storage units.

He owns railroad cars. He owns a lot of assets that make money on a daily basis, but they’re not like customer facing. Most people don’t know who owns the mini storage facility or most people don’t know who owns the warehouse that’s passively making money.

Most people don’t know who owns the railroad cars, but this guy he’s giving me a verbal that he will be here. We just continue to add more and more success stories. So if you’re out there today and you want to change your life, you want to give yourself an incredible gift, you want a life-changing experience, you want to learn how to start and grow a

company, go to Thrivetimeshow.com. Go there right now. Thrivetimeshow.com. Request a ticket for the two-day interactive event. Again, the day here is March 6th and 7th. March 6th and 7th. We just got confirmation.

Robert Kiyosaki, best-selling author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He’ll be here. Eric Trump, the man who leads the Trump Organization. It’s going to be a blasty blast. There’s no upsells. Aaron, I could not be more excited about this event.

I think it is incredible. And there’s somebody out there right now, you’re watching, and you’re like, but I already signed up for this incredible other program called Smoke Your Way to Thin. You think that’s going to change your life? I promise you this will be ten times better than that.

It’s like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

Don’t do the Smoke Your Way to Thin conference.

I’ve tried it. Don’t do it.

Chain smoking is not a viable… I mean, it is life-changing. It is life-changing. If you become a chain smoker, it is life-changing. It’s not the best weight loss program though. Right. Not really. So if you’re looking to have life-changing results in a way

that won’t cause you to have a stoma, get your tickets at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Aaron Antus. I’m Clay Clark. And reminding you and inviting you to come out to the two-day interactive Thrivetimeshow

workshop right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I promise you, it will be a life-changing experience. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

We can’t wait to see you right here in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 

Transcribed with Cockatoo