Garbage man
Brian Scudamore makes money where no one would ever think: from the things you throw away | 1–800-GOT-JUNK?: Brian Scudamore on How I Built This with Guy Raz
While at the college in his native Canada, Brian realized he was learning more on the street running his business than studying. Things happened outside the college’s walls, so he dropped out. He bought a 700 $ truck in 1989 and painted “The Rubbish Boy” on it and here he went. 8 years later he was doing one million dollars a year with this simple and useful business: you need to get rid of old stuff? Just give us a call.
The Wizard of franchising
Looks like Brian’s main skill has always been to think in perspective and ask for help. And be persistent.
He had the idea of collecting garbage while waiting in line at a McDonald’s restaurant: he saw a pickup truck advertising a junk removal service and maybe the place and the situation pushed him to put the two things together later. His strategic mind allowed him to understand that the only way to grow up his business was to franchise it. And he did it: today 1–800-GOT-JUNK is almost in every major city in the USA, Canada and Australia.
When his company went almost bankrupt during the financial crisis of 2008–09 he just asked for help because he didn’t trust anymore its own board. And he started looking for a new CEO and eventually found one who gave him the advice to simply be less brave and don’t have excessive goals: achieving results in small steps is sometimes more rewarding than being frustrated because you always miss your goals.
In these times when it looks like the only way to make money is creating strange business models, it’s somehow refreshing to see there’s still room for innovating very old ones like collecting garbage. In the end what Brian Scudamore is actually doing is developing an old business model into a much more modern one. Same old stuff, brand new way of managing it.
