Embracing Failure is the Key to Success

Embracing Failure is the Key to Success with Brian Scudamore [Transcript]

Our guest today is Brian Scudamore, the legendary Founder of O2E Brands and 1-800-GOT-JUNK? His business doesn’t need much of an introduction, because you probably see their trucks everywhere. Brian has founded multiple brands, now grossing over $400 million. I first met Brian when he spoke at one of our past LTB Summit events about how business owners have to be willing to fail—and I know from the feedback I received from attendees that he forever touched so many people who attended his talk that day. In his book, Willing to Fail, he shares why it’s so important for business owners to embrace and learn from their failures. In our interview, we discussed incredibly important topics that are fundamental for all business owners—from how to learn from challenges and setbacks, to how to hire and cultivate a positive company culture, to how to achieve work-life balance. I hope you enjoy!

Brian, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s a pleasure to speak with you.

I’m happy to be here. Thank you.

You and I first met when you spoke at the Let’s Talk Business Summit a few years ago. It was such an amazing conversation and we still get so much feedback. What people appreciated is your willingness to share your times of failure. You’re respected in the business community for what you’ve built. We should dive into the launching of your book, Willing to Fail, because we need more people like you that come out in the open to speak about that.

I wrote a book, WTF?! (Willing To Fail), because I had this realization probably ten years or so into my business degree of learning on the streets running a business. I realized that failure is a beautiful gift. We make mistakes but every time we make a mistake, it’s an incredible opportunity to learn. I realized I needed to share that feeling in a book. I know you said you read the book cover to cover in one sitting, which makes me smile ear to ear. I believe if I can share with others some lessons learned along the way of how the power behind failure is such an important ingredient in success, then I feel that that time writing the book or the time doing a podcast like this is well-spent.

Which leads me to my opener question, which is when you look of what you have achieved with 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and the rest of the companies that you are involved with, a lot of the people in your space and your state of businesses will come out to speak all about their successes. What keeps you humble and approachable as far as to say, “No, I want to take the opposite. I don’t want to speak only about my successes. I want to be the person sharing the failures.”

If I look at my life, I want to leave a mark. I want to leave a legacy. I want to inspire others. I want to be successful. We all want to win, but to me, how you get there is embracing those failures. Call it being humble. I don’t know if it’s as much being humble as it is me being practical. People don’t get to that next stage in life, whatever their goals are, whatever their wins are without failing. I have not met a successful businessperson that has not had their own fair share of failures. It’s not possible. If you have success without failure, it would feel like a hollow victory anyways. We all make mistakes each and every day in life and in business. If you can take that opportunity to reflect and to say, “What did I learn from this? How will that make me better?” That’s what makes life so fun and worth living.

What I like most about what you said is the practicality of it. When you look at the business world and the coaching market, people selling or sharing knowledge for business owners, a lot of those people will speak about concepts. It leaves the business owner questioning, “I’m trying to make some change but I’m not seeing the success that I look forward to.” When you get practical to what you’re sharing in your book, those moments are the moments that are helping you towards the end goal. Don’t consider failure as the end game. Not every stumbling block is a reason to quit. Those stumbling blocks are part of your success and part of the journey of a business owner. I mentioned that we last met when we spoke at our conference but ultimately, I never forgot about you because every day on the Brooklyn streets and the New York streets, I travel and I see those trucks, the 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Those got you always stick with me. Bring us back a little bit to that stage where our readers could dive in a little bit. What you started out of college, you started that business. What is it and what was the idea behind it? Share with us the earlier stages of your business.

The inspiration or the light bulb moment behind 1-800-GOT-JUNK? was I was in a McDonald’s drive-through. There was a beat up old pickup truck in front of me with plywood sides built up on the box. It was filled with junk and it said, “Mark’s Hauling,” on the side. I remember looking at that truck and thinking, “Here I am, one course short of graduation from high school. I still wanted to go to university or go to college, but that meant talking my way in without a high school diploma.” I did that but I needed the money to pay for college. That old junk truck that I saw in front of me, I thought, “What if I got out there and bought my own pickup? What if I started hauling junk?” That became my way to pay for college.

A week later, I went out and bought a truck. $700 is what I spent. It was a beat-up old Ford F150. I remember I built plywood sides on it and started driving down alleys and laneways and whenever someone had a pile of junk, I’d offer to haul it away for a fee. What paid for college ironically inspired me to drop out with just one year left. I found out I was learning more about business by running a business more than I was studying business in school. I remember the fateful day of sitting down with my father who’s a liver transplant surgeon to tell him that I was making a bold decision. I’m dropping out of school to pursue the business full-time because I was simply learning more about business running one than I was studying in school.

[bctt tweet=”Failure is a beautiful gift. Every time we make a mistake, it’s an incredible opportunity to learn.” username=””]

I believe the tension in that room at that point.

The tension was high. Here’s my dad who has done more schooling than about anyone I’ve ever met. He didn’t understand or relate to the fact that I wanted to leave school to start this business. He said, “Why wouldn’t you go finish the one year you have left in your degree and then run the business?” I said, “This business opportunity might not always be there and I’ll strike while the iron is hot. If my business fails, I’ll learn something and then I’ll go back to university. I know the university will still be there waiting for me.” I didn’t have to go back and the rest was history.

I know that when you speak to a lot of business gurus and even looking backwards, is there a vision that you saw right from the get-go? When you started off with that pickup truck, was it only about paying for college or starting to make some money? Did you see that same vision that 1-800-GOT-JUNK? is now? At that time, it might be a blurred vision but have you seen that potential at the moment or did you reinvent that vision as you were going?

It was a tiny vision to pay for college, but that vision expanded over time. When I got the business to $1 million in sales in eight years, which is fairly slow growth, but I remember getting to that point. I started to see, “What could this become bigger than just Vancouver where I started?” I started to think, “Why couldn’t it be another market?” I was born in San Francisco. Why couldn’t I start this business in San Francisco as another option for example? What happened is I remember with $1 million in revenue, I joined an entrepreneur organization similar to the organization of business owners that you have. I joined and I said, “You need $1 million to get in. I was in.” I wanted to learn from all these people since I was not a high school or a college graduate. I wanted to surround myself with successful entrepreneurs.

What I did, which was a bit of a mistake, was I started comparing myself to others. I started to see that all these other entrepreneurs around me had bigger businesses, more glamorous businesses and it wasn’t lifting me up. It was bringing me down. What I did is I went to my parent’s summer cottage in this little cabin on the water. I remember taking out a sheet of paper and saying, “No more doom loop, no negativity. What if I could only imagine a pure possibility?” I wrote down on one page, double sided, what the future of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? could look like. We’d have clean and shiny trucks, friendly and uniformed drivers. I said we’d be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. We’d built the FedEx of junk removal. All these crazy big bold ideas. That vision or what I call the painted picture became a simple one-page document that I would share with those around me to say, “Here’s where we’re going, who’s on board?” Some stay in the company and some left but ultimately, it was that vision that gave us this guiding star of where we were going to go. I didn’t know how to get there, but the vision at that point had expanded to we would be in the top 30 cities in North America because there were 30 cities bigger than Vancouver. All the little details in that vision, we set out to make happen and they became a reality.

There is the leadership part, which is important and then there are the people around you that you mentioned how they are equally important to be on board with your vision. How stable and clear does the leader have to be by the time that he wants to bring in their team? How much of a buy-in do you need from your team?

In terms of stability, we’re human beings and as human beings, we’re unstable at times. Life gets in the way. From a leadership perspective, you’ve got to have clarity. You’ve got to have a clarity of vision in your mind. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. You’ve got to understand what the future looks like. You don’t have to necessarily know how to get there, but what’s the picture? To find the right people, you need to find people that are already bought in. I used that painted picture to share with people where we were going. I’d say, “I don’t know how we’re going to get there, but I know we will,” and that would become their job. How would they help us get to this point of building a world-class brand and getting on Oprah? We’ve got 2,000 trucks around the country. We’ve got revenue topping $400 million. We’re in a great place but it started with a team of people. You said, “How important is it that they buy in?” If they didn’t buy in, we would have never accomplished what seemed to be almost impossible.

Speaking on that topic, in your book you mentioned the time where you have to go into a room of eleven people and said that, “I don’t think we have a clarity of where we’re going,” and you almost took a pause and stop and a step backwards. Would you mind sharing a little bit more about what happened at that point?

It was a huge step backwards and in the spirit of being willing to fail, that was one of my first real big failures. I had eleven employees and I had nine bad apples. They say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. I decided to get rid of all eleven. I sat everybody down in a room for a morning meeting and I started with two words. I said, “I’m sorry.” As their leader, I’m sorry that I let them down, that I failed them, that I might not have hired the right people or train them right but it was time to part ways. I didn’t have the clean-cut, professional, happy, smiley employees that I had envisioned for my little brand in order to grow. I made a tough decision and that was to start again. I got rid of every single employee but that next day, I learned the lesson that it’s all about people, finding the right people and treating them right. I vowed to always be very careful in the people that I brought into my organization so that we could grow and scale things to where I had envisioned.

Speaking on the topic of people, as far as the hiring process, I know that there are different pieces to a good hire. There’s the team aspect. Are the team a good team player? There’s obviously the skill set and then there’s the type and the style of the person. In today’s day and age, there are all kinds of tests to know what type of person the person is. What would you say is the most important thing when you’re looking for your next hire? What are the things that are non-negotiable? That’s like, “Let me start there. If they have this qualification, then we could start training them or look at the rest of it.”

[bctt tweet=”If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” username=””]

Three things: culture, values and alignment with the vision. Culture, first and foremost, we will interview people and hire people base on cultural fit. Hire on attitude, train on skill. We will find people that we believe have an excitement, a passion, an interest to be a part of the movement we’re building. Finding young entrepreneurs and helping them grow successful brands with our O2E: Ordinary to Exceptional brands umbrella. What we do is we say, “Culture is first and foremost.” The questions we ask ourselves in an interview, we call it the beer and barbecue test. The beer test is do you like this person? Do you find them interesting? Would you sit and have a beer and enjoy their company? Do they have a shared a way to them that you just go, “This is a good person and I could see growing something with them?”

The barbecue test is how would they fit at a company barbecue? We’ve got great diversity in personalities and so on, but it’s finding people that just fit. Do they fit at a company barbecue? Can we see them being a part of this company of great men and women that we’re building? Values would be the second one. Values are, for us, passion, integrity, professionalism and empathy. Passion, do they love building things, taking care of people and having fun? Integrity, do they do what they say they will do? Professionalism, are they professional in every way they lived their business life? Empathy, having some belief that, “If someone screws up, let’s learn from those mistakes. Let’s cut each other some slack.” The last one is the alignment with the vision. This is the people come into your vision and go, “I see it. I don’t know how to make it happen, but I know we can.” Do they believe from the beginning? Those would be the three secrets if I was to come up with what works for us.

Our organization also have those as well, our core values and our vision and the team building. We look at the humbleness, hungriness, smartness and so on and so forth. To that point, we speak to many business owners and they say, “We can’t get good people.” I said, “Get clarity on your vision and put it on that paper, paint a picture. You can see how those people, like a magnet, will start coming to you because they believe in what you’re doing. If they come to the first interview, they have no clue where this company is going and they say, “I want to give my best years for your company, but I don’t know where will the company be in a few years but I’m giving you my best years.”

You might have the right person sitting in front of you, but if they’re not clear as to the vision of the company and the possibilities that you see, you might not connect with them being the right person.

Let’s dive in a little bit on culture. The reason is that people see culture in different things. I feel that Google does a disservice to the world because they are defined as having a good culture. Google good culture means ping-pong tables and babysitting services. Most people, when you hear about this company has a good culture, they start looking at the perks. Those are perks. That’s not a good culture. A good culture in my opinion is a culture of excellence, a serious culture of success and of teamwork and working together. How do you define culture and what are the things that you do within your culture that built the culture on a daily basis?

You and I are very aligned here because everything you’ve said is almost the way I would say, culture is not perks. They are two different things. Culture is how do you take care of people? How do they feel in your organization? Do you support each other’s dreams? Do you win together? Do you play together? Do you make mistakes together? You’re right. Google is a great company and I’m sure they’ve got some great cultural artifacts and things they do. Too often, companies that are so well-funded, that are making so much money, that they can get out there and buy the foosball, the ping-pong tables, the beer fridge, the daycare services, the dry-cleaning services. Those things aren’t culture. You are absolutely right there. They are just perks. I challenged people to look at their own business and say, “What do I want to stand for? What do I want my employees to be saying and feeling when they’re talking to their family at the end of the day when they’re sharing stories of the business and the challenges they’re going through and trying to overcome? What are they saying to friends and peers around them?” I don’t think that people are out talking about ping-pong tables and beer fridges in the same way as they would the real culture of, “This company cares about me and here’s how they’ve done that.”

This is important because an average employee spends so many hours in work and ultimately, happy employees make happy customers which make happy shareholders. If you don’t make sure that those people are happy and they feel excited about coming into work either because of the alignment, either because of the values or because they feel that the culture accepts them, who they are and what they bring to the table. There’s a different ball game if you focus on those things. I speak sometimes to CEOs of companies and they’ll say, “Culture is important to me.” I ask them, “Show me your calendar. How much time are you focusing on building the culture?”

Culture takes work to keep it alive and to build it.

I know something that we borrowed from you from the early days that you do that. It’s the huddles in the company. Share with us a little bit about what that does and what it accomplishes for your culture.

For us, a daily huddle meeting is similar to what someone might do where they bring their family together each and every day and they say, “Let’s sit down at 6:00 PM. Let’s have dinner together as a family. Let’s ask the kids how was school,” and the parents get to talk about how work was. It’s a similar thing to our huddle. It’s that daily tradition of sitting down together and saying, “How’s our day? What’s working? Where are we stuck? What are we excited about? What are we worried about?” The seven-minute stand-up huddle is an all-hands-on-deck entire company meeting. While it’s expensive because it’s 2% of our entire day, we can’t afford to not have a huddle. It brings us together. The cultural alignment, the energy and then the problem solving when things aren’t going well, we can pulse fast together.

[bctt tweet=”Never compromise on the quality of people that you bring into your organization.” username=””]

I love that you have that number, 2% of the entire day. Let me dive in a couple of questions as a business owner myself and as the readers will probably ask in general. Let’s say we are speaking to that small business owners now. I know you had that failure and willing to fail and then ultimately took that to the next level. “Let me stop. Let me say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Let me rethink my process and let’s start all over.” Those challenges continue to grow. As you’re growing the company, you still have challenges but on larger levels, on more important things. That small business owner that’s just running and doing it. What would you say is that first step for that person to do? If they do want to build a successful company and they maybe did not achieve success as we speak, what would you say is the duty of a business owner to do? What would be that first one or two steps they need to take?

The first thing is to start something. Get out there and start a business. For me, it was a $700 pick-up truck. For some, it’s starting to build a very small app that they want to accomplish something with or a little working prototype. For others, that might be starting a lawn care business. I don’t know what it is. It doesn’t matter but it starts something. All too often, people think of, “It’s all about the idea,” and they want to start the next Facebook or Instagram and that you’ve got to dream big. You’ve got to dream big, but starting something versus getting paralyzed by the idea, versus trying to catch lightning in a bottle and think, “I’m going to build $1 billion business here from the start.” Start with building $1 million business or $100,000 business.

Do something and then tweak it as you go. You’d asked me in the beginning, “Did I have the vision of building this to what it is with O2E brands?” Only three companies: Shack Shine, WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, and You Move Me. We’ve got great franchise brands. I didn’t see any of that at the beginning. I saw one truck as a way to pay for college, but it grew into this possibility of, “We can inspire others. We can change people’s lives.” That’s the thing I hear most often from franchise partners, “This has changed my life.” This business, this learning, this team, the money, whatever it is. These are the things that have changed people’s lives and made them happier, more successful and more fulfilled. They might not have even thought that a franchise organization was for them. Instead of coming up with the idea, they said, “Brian’s got a good idea. The company’s got a good idea. Let’s piggyback on that idea and build something bigger and better together.”

What would you say to a person that’s, let’s say in the business, has their business for a couple of years but they’re not moving the needle fast enough or in the right direction? They’re looking for that one piece of advice, as Michael Gerber says, “On the business versus in the business.” What would you say at which pivotal point in Willing To Fail that they could adapt and that they can do with their businesses to decide where they’re going?

You took the words out of my mouth. I was going to say they should read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. The E-Myth Revisited is that perfect book for someone that has a business. In fact, we order thousands of them and we give them out to people when they come to visit us at the junction, our head office because we believe so much in that book. That book teaches somebody how to scale a business to suit their life and how to scale a business to grow it beyond just a company of a few people and building a brand or building out that vision. That would be my number one piece of advice. If I was going to come up with something different, I’d probably say create a vision, take that one-page double-sided and decide, “What does the future of my business look like?” If I could only imagine pure possibility sitting somewhere, inspiring. For me, it was a dock at my parents’ cottage. Wherever you are coming up with that painted picture, imagine the future possibilities, put it down in writing and then share it with others. If anyone wants to see our painted picture, reach out to me on social media. Send me a note on Instagram, @BrianScudamore and say, “Painted picture please.” I’ll send them a copy of our painted picture and an article I wrote on how to create one. That’s what I would throw out there. It’s a big win for business owners.

This is so cool and thanks for sharing it. Speaking about Michael Gerber, we interviewed him on the show as well. He’s somebody that I admire and look up as well. Speaking about the branding topic, just because we run a branding agency as well. From the get-go, you took an industry that’s totally usually messy and dirty. It’s an industry that branding would be the least important thing for them. You said from the get-go, “I want to be the FedEx of junk removal,” which is all about that vision of a brand. How would you define branding in general and how much would you say branding has helped you to get where you are?

If I look at O2E brands and what my parent company stands for, it’s Ordinary to Exceptional. We are creating exceptional brands and exceptional customer experiences out of very ordinary mom and pop services like junk removal, painting and moving. To me, branding is creating trust. It’s creating a feeling. People gravitate towards brands. They use brands that they trust, admire and like. They make choices based on what they see out there in the world as they drive around or as they’re virtually driving around online. People buy brands. You say so much in a brand. People have moments to make a decision, yes or no, to either dive into your website or pick up the phone and call you when they see your brand. How does the brand make them feel? If I look at WOW 1 DAY PAINTING, our logo looks like a smiling blob of paint and people look at that and they find it cute. They find it cheery and happy and they gravitate towards the trust that that brand creates the quirkiness, the fun and they reach out. Brands make people feel a certain way. How does your brand make people feel?

It needs to be backed up by the process and the people behind it. It matches up with the brand because if you have a nice friendly brand and then the people showing up don’t match up, then you have a negative encounter.

The sustainability of a brand, you first create it. You’re right 100%. If you do not live up to the expectations that are created, if you think of Starbucks, I love my coffee and they’re one of the greatest brands in the world. When I order through the mobile app and I go in and they’ve got my coffee ready and they say, “Here you go, Brian.” They’ve got a big smiley friendly face behind them. They live up to my expectations and often exceed my expectations. That makes me want to go back each and every day. If they didn’t deliver on their promises, it doesn’t take long with social media and with the traditional word of mouth for that brand to fall apart and die.

Let’s end with a very important topic. Based on what you shared in your book and I’ve heard you speak at LTB conference and other events, let’s talk about the concept of work-life balance. Too many times, we hear from CEOs, they neglect one over the other. The average person thinks that that’s the way of building a company, which means neglecting personal life and your family. I remember at Let’s Talk Business Conference, you came with your daughter. You wanted to give her a good time for a week out of town. You mentioned at the interview, at that point, some boundaries you do with your technology and your phones and stuff. Share with me and share to the readers the importance of work-life balance. How can you conquer it in a way that when they need it, you get their attention and when you don’t, you’re able to separate the two?

[bctt tweet=”Branding is creating trust that makes people gravitate towards you.” username=””]

I find that entrepreneurs can have very addictive personalities. We want to always be on our phones or social media or email. I find that I need to create hacks or ways around that. When I go on vacation, when I am away from the business and want to be disconnected, I get my assistant to change my passcode on my email. It’s a simple hack that works for me because I will be away on vacation somewhere and I can’t get into my email because I don’t have the password. She’s changed it. I empower my people to run the business while I’m away. I give them trust. I don’t want to be constantly connected. I don’t want to be with my family and always be on my phone and have them say, “Dad, get off your phone.”

I get that some people need to do that, but I’ve worked hard to build a team. I’ve worked hard at having some boundaries so that on weekends, I can unplug. When I do go on vacation, I can unplug. I do the same thing with social media. I have my assistant put passcodes on things so that I can’t access them at certain times. In turn, what those controls do is they provide freedom for me. They provide a life where I don’t always need to be working on and thinking about business. Even though I might enjoy it, it’s healthy for me to disconnect.

This is powerful because when we hear this from a person like you that you’re able to do it, it also shows that you set your priorities straight and also it shows for other business owners that you don’t have to give up everything in order to run a company. If that’s the case, why are you building this company in the first place?

Michael Gerber talks about, “Build your business to serve your life,” not the other way around. Too many people feel chained down by their business. I had heard that expression from Michael Gerber years ago and I decided to build a business that would serve my life. I wanted to not be constrained by, “I’ve got to take this call and that call.” I wanted to set some boundaries. I’ve chosen an industry and I chose a way of doing business that would work to take care of me.

We see that you have your parent company and now you have multiple brands. This is something that a lot of business owners have challenges with in any industry they want to expand. There’s always that question, “Am I stretching myself too thin? Am I losing focus because I’m now building multiple divisions or company or services?” What’s the direction of a company that says, “At this point, you’re good. Now let’s see what else you could build out?” I’m guilty myself and entrepreneurs in general. We always look at the next shiny object and we started seeing maybe there’s another opportunity. You run successful companies across the board and you’ve figured some of those things out. Share with us a little bit on how you make those decisions.

It’s relatively simple. You want to take a lot longer time than what seems reasonable. It took me 22 years before I was ready, both my leadership, the systems and learning for us to start a second business, which was WOW 1 DAY PAINTING. Many people get out there as entrepreneurs and they start too soon. We try to expand from junk removal into the big roll-off disposal containers. We had a truck with 23 containers. We thought we could take on the world of garbage removal, not just junk removal and they are two different things. We failed miserably because I wasn’t ready to run two businesses at the same time. They seemed like they were related and similar enough, but they were different enough that they required different equipment, different types of people, and different marketing. I realized that you’ve got to wait to a point where you have the systems and processes to make it successful.

Your leadership has to be one that you can let go and give control to others and empower them to be successful. My last point is when you’re building a second business or a third business, understand why you want to do so. Is it more money? Often, sticking with one business and staying focused intensely will give you more money than diluting yourself and starting a second. Maybe it’s like me, I wanted to inspire more entrepreneurs in other industries and watch these new franchise owners to grow something bigger and better together than have it be just one brand with one choice. We were sold out of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? The easiest thing was to say, “Let’s go create another brand. Let’s get people that want to do window washing and gutter cleaning and give them the Shack Shine franchise.” It’s knowing why you want to expand into another business and making sure that fits both your skill set and the time you’ve got available.

Knowing why are you expanding and figuring out, “Is this the best answer to that question? Is it more money or is it a reason to expand?” That’s great. Thank you so much. Let’s close with a quick four as we call them. These are rapid questions. What’s a book that changed your life that you can recommend to our readers? Obviously, Willing to Fail, but somebody else’s book as well.

I’ve already talked about The E-Myth. My other one is Good to Great by Jim Collins.

What’s a piece of advice you got that you’ll never forget?

[bctt tweet=”Your leadership has to be one that you can let go and give control to others and empower them to be successful.” username=””]

Never ever compromise on the quality of people that you bring into your organization.

Anything you wish you could go back and do differently?

Absolutely nothing. I needed to make every failure and mistake I’ve ever made. That has made me who I am.

What’s still on your bucket list to achieve?

I love languages. I’m in the process of learning Italian. I already have a good command approach to French. I love languages. Becoming fluent in Italian would be something special for me. I love to cook. I love wine. I love the people. I love languages.

This has been an amazing interview. Thank you so much, Brian. Personally, I’ve been moved by Brian’s book, WTF?! (Willing to Fail),because as business owners, leaders, managers or whatever you want to call it, it’s important that we see ourselves in those moments and say, “What could I do to learn from it?” Move and progress out of that situation into higher success. Brian, thank you so much for the time on the interview.

Thanks, Meny. It’s always good to chat with you. Thanks for including me in your show.

It’s my pleasure.