{"id":12371,"date":"2015-05-08T00:09:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T07:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=12371"},"modified":"2021-04-12T09:36:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T16:36:14","slug":"sharing-business-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/05\/08\/sharing-business-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharing business vision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Innovators Lunch speaker Brian Scudamore with Kate, left, and her mother, Wendy, who received supportive services from Jewish Family Service Agency in a time of need. (Adele Lewin Photography)<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2015 Innovators Lunch raised almost $296,000, with more expected. The total was boosted by speaker Brian Scudamore, founder and chief executive officer of 1-800-Got-Junk?, donating back his fee to the Jewish Family Service Agency.<\/p>\n

On April 29, 545 people came out to hear Scudamore speak at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver. They also watched a video featuring several people who had been helped by JFSA\u2019s programming and service provision, one of whom, Michael Narvey, addressed the crowd. The audience also heard from JFSA board chair Joel Steinberg, Beth Israel Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, day-of-event co-chairs Megan Laskin and Hillary Cooper and senior management consultant Richard Fruchter. Shay Keil of Keil Investment Group, which was a co-presenting sponsor with Austeville Properties, introduced Scudamore.<\/p>\n

Though Scudamore dropped out of high school and out of university, he said, \u201cI love to learn. I love asking questions, meeting people and learning why they are successful, what motivates them and drives them in life. It just happened to be that school did not work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, he became an entrepreneur, with a focus on vision, people and systems. He illustrated the importance of these three things in the story of how he became a businessman.<\/p>\n

In summer of 1989, he was one course short of high school. Knowing he wasn\u2019t going to complete that course, he talked his way into Langara College, one of the four colleges he would attend briefly. His vision at the time was to go to college and that\u2019s what he did. However, he had to find his own way financially, as his parents weren\u2019t going to fund his studies, given his history: \u201cI don\u2019t think it was a good ROI [return on investment],\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n

While waiting in the line of a McDonald\u2019s drive-through, Scudamore noticed that pickup truck in front of him had the hauler\u2019s phone number on the side. He thought, \u201cWhat a great idea. I had a thousand dollars in the bank, took 700 of it to go buy a pickup truck of my own.\u201d He spray-painted his number on the side and parked it in different locations around the neighborhood. \u201cMobile billboards got me business and, within two weeks, I had a business that was humming and making money.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experience of building something, his interactions with customers and having fun inspired him to consider business as a future. \u201cMy grandparents, my Jewish grandparents \u2026 ran a small Army Surplus store in a fairly impoverished area of San Francisco downtown. I used to go down every spring break, summer, Christmas holiday, Chanukah, go work at the store, and I loved it. I loved watching how they treated people. They were the only store on the street that wasn\u2019t robbed once a week. In fact, in their history, they were only robbed twice because I saw that they would give an ear to anyone who came in\u2026. They would never give money, but they would give love, attention and time of day to somebody. They developed a group of friends in the community and the word out on the street was that you just don\u2019t mess with the Lorbers, they\u2019re nice people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned that business wasn\u2019t just about ringing the cash register and making money. It\u2019s never been that for me, and thank goodness for the influence of my grandparents. For me, business is having fun, bringing people on board and building something special together.\u201d<\/p>\n

By 1991, he was at the University of British Columbia. Bored, he made a deal to sell his business, which fell through. This failure taught him \u201cthat the low moments precede the highs.\u201d And something good did happen. He grew the business and, in 1992, on the advice of his then girlfriend, he told his business story to the press. The result: a front-page article in the Province<\/em>. He described it as a \u201cfull-sized ad, for free\u2026. I\u2019m going to systematize this and start doing more.\u201d That day, he not only \u201cfelt like a rock star,\u201d but he got \u201c100 phone calls in 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1993, he finally sat down with his dad to tell him that he was dropping out of university. He incorporated his business, went from one to three trucks and was at about half-million dollars in revenue by 1994.<\/p>\n

He had 11 employees but nine of them weren\u2019t the right fit, he said, so he fired them all. He took full responsibility for not being a good leader, for hiring the wrong people. He apologized, and learned from the experience. Among the most important lessons: \u201cit\u2019s all about people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He spoke about The EMyth<\/em>, \u201cthe most incredible business book\u201d he\u2019s ever read, which recommends running your business like a franchise even if you don\u2019t plan to make it one. Franchises tend to be more successful, he explained, because they are based on systems of best practices that can be replicated. He followed that direction and, in 1997, hit a million dollars in revenue.<\/p>\n

He joined the (Young) Entrepreneur Organization. For him, \u201cit was a way to learn from others, other businesspeople, entrepreneurs that had been successful. I could understand what works and what didn\u2019t, and that filled my thirst for knowledge.\u201d He also actively sought out mentors and people on whom he could rely for advice.<\/p>\n

In 1998, he was \u201cbored\u201d and wanted more. He wrote a short list of possibilities, or goals, including \u201cbeing the FedEx of junk removal,\u201d being \u201con the Oprah Winfrey Show<\/em>\u201d \u2013 \u201cI envisioned a future that was so crazy, but I started to read it and I\u2019m, like, my craziness actually seems real to me. I could see the vision, the picture in my mind, and I latched on to it and I said I will<\/em> make this happen \u2013 not if, I hope to, want to, will try to, I will make this happen, and I crystal-balled the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time he wrote down this vision, he had almost 10 paycheques written to himself that he couldn\u2019t afford to cash, and there were employees who quit over his new direction. Nonetheless, he began to learn about how to franchise. He spoke to many people, he got over hurdle after hurdle, including having to find out who owned the phone number 1-800-Got-Junk and buying it once he did \u2013 from the Idaho department of transportation \u2013 as he\u2019d already designed the logo with the number. The first franchise was created in 1999 and it made $1 million in the first year, \u201cbecause we had the systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next several years, the focus was on franchising and also on systematizing the media aspect, which had proven so useful before. \u201cFortune<\/em> magazine did this three-page feature and we had 506 inquiries in the first week, and I\u2019ll say the first week was Thursday to Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n

He asked his employees what they could imagine with regard to growing the business, with the caveat that they would have to take responsibility for bringing the idea(s) to fruition. The company also works with employees to help them set and accomplish personal goals and, in 2004, 1-800-Got Junk? won British Columbia\u2019s best company to work for contest. They immediately set upon figuring out how they could win it again, not for the sake of winning, but to keep improving the business and the work environment.<\/p>\n

At $100 million in sales in 2006, the rollercoaster descended, he said. They dropped $40 million in revenue and he had to fire his best friend \u2013 \u201cthankfully he knows it was the right decision.\u201d They were both quick shooters and the business needed a more cautious partner. In the end, the entire leadership team was changed, dozens of people laid off, \u201cpartially because of mistakes we made, partially because of the recession. It was awful.\u201d Three and a half years of rebuilding, however, turned things around.<\/p>\n

Scudamore has learned to embrace mistakes, to learn from them, and he encourages his employees to do so, as well. \u201cIf you\u2019re not making mistakes, if you\u2019re not getting out of your comfort zone and taking risks in life, you\u2019re not living,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Once he found the right-hand person who best complemented his strengths and weaknesses, Eric Church, the business expanded into other companies, such as Wow 1 Day! Painting and You Move Me. He also expanded personally into other areas, such as becoming involved in Free the Children with his family, thanks to Lorne Segal. He \u201cdidn\u2019t have this sense of philanthropic community\u201d when he was a kid, but his daughters, now 10 and 7, believe they \u201ccan actually change the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cI believe that we all have a purpose to do something great in our lives and we\u2019ve all got to get to building something, a family, community, charitable organizations and business.\u2026 I think, again, it comes down to, \u2018It\u2019s all about people.\u2019 Can you inspire people, can you find the right people and treat them right?\u201d<\/p>\n

One thing Scudamore loves about community, \u201cis people helping other people.\u201d He concluded, \u201cI don\u2019t know if everybody knows their purpose and what they\u2019re doing. I often believe sometimes you need to be a little crazy to think you can change the world, but I think that we\u2019re all a little crazy, and I know that we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more on Scudamore, visit 1800gotjunk.com\/us_en\/about\/brian_scudamore<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Innovators Lunch speaker Brian Scudamore with Kate, left, and her mother, Wendy, who received supportive services from Jewish Family Service Agency in a time of need. (Adele Lewin Photography) The 2015 Innovators Lunch raised almost $296,000, with more expected. The total was boosted by speaker Brian Scudamore, founder and chief executive officer of 1-800-Got-Junk?, donating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2131,2130,3715,1026,1184],"class_list":["post-12371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-1-800-got-junk","tag-brian-scudamore","tag-innovators-lunch","tag-jewish-family-service-agency","tag-jfsa"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}