Advice Line with Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
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Hello, and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. And guy is this is the place where we helped try to solve your business chAllenges. Each week, i'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show, who will help me try to help you.

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And we'll put all this info in the podcast description. All right, let's get to IT. Joining me this week is brian, the founder of one eight hundred got junk and the C E, O of o to e brands. Brian, welcome back the show.

So stoked to be here. Thanks, guy.

It's awesome having you back. You were first on how I built this way back in twenty seventeen is such an awesome episode uh, and you told us the incredible story of how you started one two hundred got john. And of course, anyone listening, if you haven't heard that story, go back and check that out.

We will put a link to that episode podcast description. But basically you you are looking for a way to make extra cash to help pay college. This was in like nineteen eighty nine.

You were in vancouver. In canada you bought a pick up truck for like seven hundred box. And then you just start to hauling away people's trash to make money. And IT 是 a site。 Us, at first while you were in school.

IT was a site. Ul, a pay for school. And I ended up learning so much more about business by running a business verses studying in in school, that I made a tough decision with a year left in my degree to drop out, started holding junk full time. And here we are today, when they never got junk as the seven hundred million dollar business.

Absolutely incredible. You that franchise all across canada, the U. S.

Australia are you also have branched out. You you have a parent company called O T E brand. You s have ww day painting.

You got a cleaning service called jack shine. Um it's so cool. It's, by the way, I often refer back to that. We thought seven, her episode show.

You know, I often refer back IT to this episode yours, because people say, I even have a whole lot of start of cash. I say, go back and listen to brand. Scrub's episode started his brand with seven hundred dollars. And in the genus of of this idea was that one truck soon paid for itself and generate enough money for you to buy a second truck and then a hire friend to do the same thing.

Yeah, my business, and this is unheard of, was profitable in two weeks. How does that happen? right? You go and race, start up capital and start an APP in the year, years and years before you even have any real revenue. yeah. So it's been an unbelievable model in a very .

fortunate and really just started out with the muscle just hauling crap out of people's homes.

IT was an idea that was simple, and I think the simplicity of nobody has ever branded the space of jonker movil. Ah that's what we did first over advantage and we're in canada, U S, australia and continue to grow.

Well, right before we get to just to our colors today, have A A couple of questions for you.

Start by asking you, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, they struggle the question of a focus versus expansion, right? And you know whether to stay with that core product or and when to expand to others, at what point did you decide that IT was a good idea to you to branch out into painting and then house cleaning services? You know, rather than just think focused on on junk removal.

I think IT was a moment of serendipity. I was looking for another business and couldn't find one. My ego wanted another business, so we could just take over another space. But then serendipity had IT, where I got an estimate for my house to get painted.

And I had three quotes in the first two, you know, cigaret smokes, hang in their mouth, and they showed up late, and you felt like they were gone to move in to your house for a couple of weeks. And the third guy comes in and says, multon ceiling floors to ceiling moldings trim i'll have had done in a day that was their model, paint your whole home in a day without any compromised equality. And so I looked at that business and I said, i've done well franchise.

When I never got junk, I think I can help you. Have you looked at franchise, your business? And we ultimately bought this company, and we took the model, and we called IT wow, one day painting, because that's how I felt the moment I walked in the home.

And we start to franchise IT. Now it's it's on track. One day I will be bigger than one day. Hundred got junk simply because the painting space is even that much larger than junk model.

Yeah, so cool. You are still the public face of one hundred got junk. If you get the website, there's there's a video of you a right there on the home page. Do you do you think it's important as as a founder to be part of the story or the presentation of the brand?

I think there's a voice that a founder brings that no one else can. And so I was asked by roy Williams, who does our radio creative when he first created our radio campaigns. He said, brian knew need to be the voice on radio.

And so I don't know if I want you to be all about me and he said, that has to be you're the founder. You've got the mcDonald's drive through story and that's where the ads are going to start. And so I went with IT and no, looking back and and everyone buys into a founder story in a different ways in a hired gun.

Now, yeah, our founders need higher guns. I've got my error church, who is unbelievable at scale in our business as an implementation. But the founder has a sona and a commitment and passion for a business that's been there from day one. Yeah no question about brand.

It's so great to have you back and i'm sorry, I haven't seen you a couple years. I got to get back up to vancouver and I promise I will. Um but why don't we take a couple calls? Well, well, we're here together.

I would love that. okay. So let's get our first color on the line. Welcome to the how I built this advice line you're on with me and brain suitor. Please introduce yourself, tell us your name, where you're calling from and just a little tiny bit about your business.

Hi guy and bryan. Thank you so much. Um i'm calling from denver, colorado. I'm the cofounder of flower co F L O U W E R uh we are a food and lifestyle brand inspired by nature. We incorporate edible flowers into our products to bring unexpected beauty to the everyday, from crack .

to cockles.

a tree to rest.

Okay, welcome to the show. Thank you. So all right. So you you, the companies called flower, but IT spell, not fl, W, F, L, O, U, W, E R, like a emerging of flower and flower.

correct? Yes, our flagship product was a cracker. And so in lots of crackers, we have flower. F hello, you are. But our company is based around in reducing people to edible flowers and incorporating those in everyday products that just edible flowers give an interesting flavor and color and texture to a lot of things that we don't Normally add them to.

Yeah oh what a cool idea. Okay, so you you in colorado, your denver and um and when did you start doing this? I had that. I mean, it's a great idea where you in food, you doing food, that your business .

my business partner, I joined together in two thousand sixteen. We are initially doing secretary boards uh and incorporating edible flowers and whenever we could, we eat first with our eyes. So we wanted to make them as as beautiful as possible.

Um we couldn't find a cracker that we really light and so we started tinkering around the kitchen and develop this beautiful cracker. And whenever we would deliver them to our clients, they would just be wild and say, oh my god, are so amazing and beautiful. The taste is there, the look is there.

They're just they're fun to eat. They create an experiencing themselves. I love making a buzz at an event to where people are like, oh wo what's that so that's if we get .

serve what a cool idea. Okay um tell tell us what question you you brought for us today.

yes. So my question is uh essentially and strategy. So as we're moving into our next phase of growth, we recently acquired a um a coming effective rer that's going to allow us to produce a lot more than we have in the past.

So should we be focusing on our cracker line, creating more of like a brand block with the grocery space? Or should we be expanding into different categories? Um the problem is as as what we're finding because we have expanded into like the cocktail space in the past.

We're finding that a lot of our national distributors, they don't necessarily want to Carry all of the lines at once. We have some distributors that want to Carry all the grocery, that more cracker lines and then other distributors who want to Carry more of the gifts lines. So I guess my question is, is IT wise to be more diverse? Or is that just deleting our focus?

okay. interesting. Um a brand before we answer to this question, do you I think imagine you some questions for her .

yeah nice to meet you treasa. I um my big question is what percentage of your current revenue is in crackers.

So um that's a tRicky question, to be honest for this year um the cracker production in self was extremely expensive. IT was not cost effective.

You guys we are doing IT yourself in the kitchen, yes.

And it's not exactly cost effectives.

no.

Um hence are development of our other products that were a little less librarians. Our margins were much .

Better on A K just tels briefly about one or two what what are those process in the cocktails?

So we cubes which is essentially a sugar cube um with flower peddles in the sugar cube. So as IT dissolves and your drink, you get these beautiful flower peddles that float in your cocktail and also flavor your cocktail gently so perfect for a glass of persea. I pop a couple of lavender cocktail cues in a glass of procter and. thanks. okay.

So you guys were just expect to brance question you slow down on the cracker production because of IT was inefficient.

IT is inefficient and we were in the search of come manufactured. We thought we had one um ready to go and IT didn't quite work out. Um we now have settled on a coming infections rer that will make the crackers to our standards um you know where we could produce seventeen cases in a day.

They can produce one hundred and seventy cases in a day. So our labor costs is just like its night day ah um Frankly, we originated with three cracker flavors and we backed off those three flavors and all we went to one because of production limitations. So now that we have the opportunity, we could conceivably launched the other two flavors as we go. But i'm just wondering if IT doesn't make more sense to develop some of our other ideas that are not in the cracker space.

So when I hear you talk about your business, that takes me back into the early days of one eight hundred got junk. We were called the ruby sh boys, our phone number of seven, three, eight junk, and we could do a lot with the, we could do some small moves, we could deliver bead loads of top soil. We could use that truck to um you do deliveries and of course junk removal.

So we tried being all things to all people, and IT deluded us like crazy people that wanted junk removal, that wanted us to also, though, get go get some shovel and dig some ditches and do some landscaping. And IT got confusing to the customer. And I believe customers vote with their wallets.

They tell you what they value the most. And by far away, IT was junk removal. So we narrows our focus and said, we are going to be the world's largest junk removal company, and that's all we're going to do.

And we stopped doing everything else. When I look at your brand and you're trying to figure out, do you get into other products or not, IT sounds to me like you had crackers, which launched the company for you. But now you've run into some chAllenges, costs and so on and you're looking at other products.

My advice would be how do you test a bunch of different things lightly without a big investment to figure out what our customers voting for with their wallets? What do they like the most? And then how do you scale that part of the business?

That's a great. That's a great advice. We do have a broken motor store here in denver. Um and initially, that was our thought is that, that could be kind of our test market, you know have products that were testing and put him on the shelf and see which one's people are gravity towards.

And and can you give us a sense of what what you expect to do in in terms of sales here?

Yeah we are about a million dollars. Yep but um it's been a really rough year. I won't lie um with the command search.

Uh we let go of our bags. Staff, probably a little bit premature, ally, but um the writing was on the wall. We needed to we needed to scale. Um we couldn't continue doing what we were doing. So I kind of force system this to .

the retailers right now. I mean, the good ones are Carrying the crackers. They really want foods they want like crackers and and other kinds of foods because they would place IT all together on the shells, right? They're less interested in the cocktail sugars. And you know the i'm i'm seen here like finishing sugars and .

even candles, for example, right? exactly. So uh we sell a lot to like small gift shops and a lot of them Carry all of our products.

Um but when we go into the national al distribution space, there are a little bit more specialized. So we have you know lots of ideas that um speak to our company and our ethos. But um because we are a bootstrapped, we have to place our dollars in a strategic place so we can do all of IT at once.

Yeah I mean, I seems to me that you've really landed on something unique, right? I mean, press flowers and crackers is not something i've seen anywhere, you know tell me that seems like that's a really awesome opportunity, a great and complete the new product, a pretty exact category. Crack cooking, there's a lot of but there's nothing with flowers and that that looks as beautiful as these .

do yeah when I look at your box to resume looking online and your website, the box and the brand is incredible. What IT says and how IT looks is, is awesome to me. My got you're doing in a million in revenue.

When I look through the website of everything that you are offering and different products you want to diversify in the one that catches my eye, the most bay far is is the cracker. And it's how you got started at your story. IT is beautiful.

My wife loves making shirt tary plates and wow sh'd put these crackers on there in a heart beat. So that's where I would focus. And how do you build that out? You've been faced with some obstacles, cost wise to me. It's how do you solve those versus ignoring that problem and versifying into something else.

Yeah and I I do believe that the coming effect rer is going to solve those problems. So that's kind of why um i'm looking i'm we're always trying to look forward, right? So i'm trying to think, okay, hopefully we've solved that problem and I were trying to move on to the next thing.

But I I hear what you're saying. I think our crackers are beautiful. I think we've resisted being a cracker company. However, I think we do the best yeah .

on IT own IT, you're a cracker company yeah .

and do you have an opportunity to do like rosemary flavor and garlic flavoured crackers and or even just put a permission like there is so many, so many different things you could do with the flowers with that, you know, that beautiful look with different .

flavors and in a digital world is so easy. Now, with tiktok and instagram, to have people on a larger american wide scale blow this up for you in a great way, because there are so many food tiktok watching people make things in. Everyone's competing to look more beautiful with their shark tary bladder than anyone else.

Imagine having your brand on that. woodward. I mean, IT IT could be awesome.

yeah. Absolutely brain. We will definitely take your advice.

Thank you so much. A good luck. The brand called flower company. F L O U W E R. Good luck.

Thank you so much. Good in bray and have a great day.

Thank you. Thanks, babe. You mention that .

your wife likes to make sure good reboarded. And I love to make fruit plates, especially in the summer, right? So next time down you make you one. And Normally, do I have crackers there? But I mean, these are like standard crackers.

No, they are very beautiful. I kept getting stuck where i'm like, why is trees are looking to diversify when she's on to something? Yeah, sounds like he was trying to diversify because of problems and obstacles. No, no, no. Go all of those with your go packer.

Yeah and and you know, he could still, I like the idea of doing a flower peddle company and you could still do the cocktail sugars and all that stuff. But but to me, I think that there is just a really great opportunity with the crackers because nobody's doing any like this right now.

Grow where you're planted. That's where they got their start at worker.

We're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, another color, another question in another round of advice and guy a stick around you listening to the device line on how I built this lab.

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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab and guys. And my guess today is brian scooter more. He's the founder of the junk removal service. One eight hundred got junk. We say, brand, should we take another call?

Let's do IT all right.

cool. Let's bring our next color. Hello, welcome to the advice line you are on with brian score. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit of about your brand.

hey. Hi, brian. Thank you so much for having me on. hello. My name is jake press man and going from a los Angeles, california and the founder and CEO and everything else of notion skin care. Our hero product is a high quality powder face cleanser that's sustainable, trouble friendly and customized all to .

fit each users needs a powder .

face cleaner. Yes, exactly. So how IT works, as you had a dasa powder hand and you d .

amount water to desired turns into election.

So IT turned into a phone or a pace, depending on how much water you. So the more what do you do, the film year and a little be in, the less water you do, the more exfoliating it'll be like more intense wash you'll get just has some background. So most face cleansers, ers and personal care products on the market are up to eighty percent water and package and plastic and heavy ship is a powder that you can take with you anywhere. IT gets around the liquid restrictions so you can travel freely with IT and it's customizable.

And the idea is that you're centrally selling a concentrate, right? Because what you're saying is the most locations or eighty percent water, you're removing the water. So I guess you could argue you're actually getting more bank for your exactly, huh? Interesting is, hi, this is cool. How did you come up with this idea?

So I grew up watching my dad and grandfather work in the manufacturing side of the beauty industry and working other company during summer in high school and college. And I was actually originally using a powder exfoliate tor as my face walsh every day, which I now know that suppose to use and exfoliate as your client are multiple times a day. But when I discovered this, um I was looking for internatio.

But I really like that experience of using a powder and traditional face clears that really meet my expectation and a few other powder options on the market didn't really cut IT for me. Hello, I decided to try to make my own and after thirty plus orations of testing on my own skin, which is super sensitive, and my families at front skin, I finally got IT to wear. I thought I was perfect after two years, and I launched on my last year.

wow. congratulations. okay. And how did you how are you doing so far in terms of cells? What have you so roughly, have you have you broken ten thousand dollars in sales?

Yes, i'm a little bit below twenty thousand.

nice. Okay.

a little ad to my question that I for you guys.

please tell us, tell us your question.

So i'm haven't trouble determining who my customer is and like the messaging that I should have behind my ads. And i'm not sure if I should position IT and market more as a travel product or try tarring people who really want to like customized their skin kerosine and have an experiences that they can tailor to their own needs every time. Uh, long way of asking is, how do I make sure .

i'm targeting? Are you brians good more? Jump in to this, please.

Yeah, was looking at your website. Shake and its a beautiful website. What isn't jumping out for me and and I could see myself using the product.

There's something interesting, like you said, about the texture of IT and adding more, less water depending on the experience. But i'm having trouble figuring out what is the real benefit here. You talk about a being vegan, cruelty free, good for the environment, for animals. And i'm trying to go what what is IT really about this that makes you unique and special here.

other than that being a great can care product on its own? You know, IT has all the trend and effective ingredients and IT ah, but I do think the main benefit is being able to customize IT every time and make IT like a wash. Just real jack.

as you probably know. I mean, when we've done a lot of brand in the show that you know one for one and our social a enterprises and at the end of the day of the vast majority of consumers, they just don't care about that. I mean, we wish they were careful, but they don't.

They really wanted know what does this do for me? And if you go to the website is very clean. Your brand is really nice.

It's like the kind of premium product you would be find IT like A A hotel, you know, where you could buy IT from the little mini bus. But he just says, in a vegan, water is cruelty free, soft free. That's all great, but that can go down below.

I I mean to me, I want to hear infinitely customizable for all skin types with, you know, I can am looking at the label here and I see Green t extract rice powder colodia omeo. But it's tiny. He doesn't get to find that it's to meet. It's like that's what I want to see, right, to get go because that set the tones for what you're about to potentially buy.

right?

And then the story, working with your grandfather in this sort of the same space and how you've grown up build in your own product and why I think having your story show up IT isn't just the brand look and feel, but you are the face of the the clean face of this, of this company. What is your story? And because I think people buy brands they connect to and buying into a brand is so much more than just the rice powder and the oatmeal, it's you.

So is there a way to even tie your story and the name notion? You talk about the fact that your number one unique sort of selling point here is that it's a customizable product to whatever you want at any point in time. How do you tie those things together? I don't know the answers, of course, but food for thought.

Okay, thank you.

J, who right now, I mean, i'm who do you imagine using this is that is that everybody? Is that a certain age demographic? I mean, you look at brands like drunk elephant, which we've done on the show, originally was made for for sort of women over forty particular has changed that I use these teenage girls are using IT. Who do you imagine using this powder.

using notion other than myself? In my mind the target user is mainly women between probably like twenty thirty five ah. And i've had you know some older people like sixty plus give me great feedback, but also I have my friends that are all there twenty using IT as well. But in my mind and how I envision market IT is probably between four women, between twenty and thirty five brand.

How would I think jacares opportunity here to answer this question by testing IT out right, without knowing in advance who the target audience is, there might be ways to kind of test out the answer right to target different groups? I don't know. I mean, how how would he do that?

If IT was me, I would pick some. They don't even have to be necessarily micro o influencers, but people whose opinion would matter to you in enough of a diverse group of uh, your targeted uh, potential customers. I'd send them the product and say, could you do me a favor? Do me a video you don't even have to share IT if you don't want, but tell me all the things you love about this product and why.

Tell me what stood out for you. Don't tell them the things that you're looking for, but find out. Just ask them, what would you use this? Did you like IT? why? See they connect to the product and then maybe you do another round and you get some micro influencers to share these tiktok videos.

I mean, i've got teenage daughters. I see what they do, and they put on makeup and show the world, right? They do a fit check. They do a makeup check. And they blasted out, if your product is something meaningful to a certain demographic who wants to then talk about IT on social, that's where these things really go viral, right?

I think that there's maybe brightly working from everybody across a born brand. You may be be facing this issue, which is that customer cusic to social meeting become much, much harder. There is so much more noise out there.

But um there I wonder whether you target travellers, people who travel frequently, you know, who just who don't want to have to take all their stuff out of their bag when he goes to the T S. A line, you know and a lot of frequent travellers are tsa presso. They they're they got to get to their flight quickly.

And if the lotion sizes four ounces, then it's gonna another ten minutes of of a delay. And so to me IT IT might be interesting to see if you can try to target people who frequently travel. I'm so forget about men, women, Young, old. Just just see if IT that clicks in some way.

Yeah no, I love that. Um i've definitely every time i've been traveling now, i've taken a video of the product going through the T S, A.

T. There you go and .

i'll have random comments from what I was doing. Those take talk ads being like this will make you get stopped to look at long at me like I ve been around the country with this and I ve never had one problem. And i've done an experiment where i've taken a traditional face consort and just like put IT in to see what what happened. And of course, I got through away.

And I think your brand lends itself to having some fun with the word no. That is a notion. No T S A delays, no water, no problem. There could be something there.

Love that.

Thank you. I like that. That's cool. I like that idea. I mean, this is also up the kind of product that you may want to consider. You know, like you're an L A.

This is the media capital of the united states, right? New york two. And and you have an advantage being in los Angeles. There's celebrities as a lot of influential. It's it's a cultural capable for trans start.

I mean, to me, I could see you taking this select the proper hotel in downtown l layer sa Monica, one of these really cool beauty hotels, and seeing if they're be willing to you to Carry in the gift shop, what would you be willing to after this in the in the room, something like that because that's also where we didn't episode on sun bomb, which you should take a listen to if you haven't heard about a year ago. And I mean this is this is a version of what of what they did you know um they essentially started selling sn bomb in. A british and hawaii, right? Because of you know the idea was, hey, if if tourists go to hawaii, they'll see the brand in the in the shops and they'll go back to wherever in the U S.

Or often times back to asia. And there's they'll bring IT with them and that's actually how IT started. And so IT could be interesting to experiment with some of those boot e hotels.

Yeah because definitely the people that are passing through, especially that kind of hotel because you also you're they're presumably travellers that need to go back. yeah. So I think that would fit really well. So thank you for sure.

Brand, I need last words of wisdom for jake.

I don't know about wisdom, but i'm just i'm excited for you. I like your brand. I like your story. And I think that if you make some changes in how you tell your story and tap into your history, you know something on your website.

If you've got a photo of your grandfather doing anything in the cosmetic space, I mean, he, your grandfather, I don't know the age difference there, but this has to be an old photo that you can find and then recreate that photo with you today. You have instant credibility in the cosmetic space because it's a third generation family business. I think you've got a ool product and I think you've got a, uh, a great .

business ahead.

Thank you. Bryan agreed. The brand called notion can care, jack. Good luck, man.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and advice. Thank you guys. Thank you. brand.

Thank you. I'm really I gotto be honest. I'm terrible at at regularly washing my face. I barrasso, to that, a national international podcast here.

The world now knows I am looking at you differently here now.

Well, I do. Of course, i'd take very good care of my teeth and and know, but I base washing regiment, i'm just not very consistent. I tell, right, dude O, I use sunblock every day. You know, about to turn fifty, brian, so I got, I can know, gotto protect my .

skin from the sun spots.

All right, we're going to take another quick break, but will be right back with another stay with us and guy rose, and you're listening to these vice's right here on how I built this lab. You know, when you're shopping for like a new car or even a new bike, which I was shopping for recently, and you want to find one with all the right features or something that fits exactly what you need.

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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm guy, right? And today i'm taking calls with brian school to or so brian, why don't we bring on our next color? Keep in.

Bring in our last color. Hello, welcome to the advice line you are on with brand. Please tell us your name, where your calling from and little bit by your business.

Hi there, guy bryan. My name is theo alex in and i'm calling from single springs, california. I founded an Operate fox in hand fine poetry co, which is a live poetry sales company. I raised juvenile chickens and sell them to the backend hove's market, which is basically people who wants to raise chickens in their backyards.

wow. And where where single springs in california, by the way.

it's about half an our outside sacer.

okay. So you're near the central valley.

Yeah we're we're going in the foothills.

which is the the bread basket of america. So so you a business that sells live chickens direct to anybody who wants them pretty much yeah.

I raise them to a juvenile age because that's a big part of IT when someone wants to go and go to the feed store and buy these little baby chicks that are really fragile and hard to you don't know if they are male, female, and it's just kind of a complex process for someone who's knew the chicken s .

yeah how do you but how do you ship the chicken? Do you just put IT in like a fx box and just ship up, poke some holes in IT?

So that kind of a big part of my business model. Um I there are to ship chicken through like the U S P S system, but I actually um I offered delivery so I actually hand deliver. I drive to the customer's house, I offer free local delivery to kind of the elder out of county area and then I offer livery pretty everywhere from reading to the bay area down to modesta. I drive them myself to the customer.

okay. So right now it's got to be it's a pretty local business. And what do most people do with the chickens? Are they for eggs? Or do they actually like slaughter them and rose to chicken?

Most of my customers, them for eggs. Pets know a lot of people who just kind of keep chickens as a hobby. We'll have you know six, maybe ten birds and they're backyard. They go out and they watch them. And because they're just very enjoyable to watch.

And and so so sume, i'm assuming that that somebody was like, I would need like ten chickens because I want to eat them. Would that be weird? Would you still sell them? The chicken S.

I do still sell them mainly. It's just that I there are certain kinds of chickens that are for eating, eating, and certain kinds of chickens that are for eggs. And most of the ones I sell are for eggs, and they tend to be a lot of what I specialize are are in the rare breeds. So IT would kind to be a lot of money to spend on the chicken and just to eat.

So you get this chicken business and tell us what question you brought .

for us today. My big question kind of requires a little bit context, please. I watched I we launched this business this year in two thousand and twenty four. I actually tried this business once before in twenty twenty one, and IT was kind of a success in a disaster .

at the same time what what happened.

So I was immediately very successful and I was not prepared for that. I was twenty at the time. I had no experience running small business.

I had worked for a small business that did something similar. But I just thought, you know, i'm going to raising chickens and I can sell them. And i'd done sort of these small little test batches before.

And I tried to launch full scale into this huge thing, you know, trying to sell hundreds and hundreds of chickens per month. And the problem was that I was so well, I was getting like forty, fifty phone calls. The day I was getting all these emails.

I was trying to do all that myself. And because I thought at the time, okay, i'm an entrepreneur, is my business, I have to do IT all by myself. And that was kind of my big mistake.

And so my question is, I kind of did a soft launch this year, next year in twenty and twenty five, I want to go big. I want to try to do what I did before, and I want to succeeded at this time. And so how do I find that turning point where I go? Okay, I need help. I need to hire people on, I doubt, source this test. How do is perfect .

question for brand more. You started your business by yourself for the truck and then eventually the demand was so high you had to hire some buddies. Um so before we get to your question, just could you just give us a sense of roughly what what I mean? Are you doing ten, twenty, thirty, fifty thousand dollars revenue more a .

year right now? I'm doing around ten to twenty thousand next year when I launched into a bigger scale, my goal is anywhere between eight and one hundred thousand.

Alright, brian, that yeah, theo.

good. Nice to meet you. It's a great question. I I think that is there any business starts to grow in scale.

You've got a look at how much revenue are you doing and how many hours you put in, in and do the if you do, in one hundred thousand in revenue and you're spending in one hundred hours, do you running the business? You probably spending more than that. But just for simple math, your time is worth a thousand bucks an hour.

So then you look at all the things you're doing in the business that you could pay someone much less than that thousand dollars an hour to do and start delegating things said that you can free your time up for what's most valuable. Um the way I identify for me what's most valuable and always have is I I look at what do I love to do and what am I good at and there's often overlap there. okay. And then the things I don't like to do and i'm not good at, I try and find other people to do because if they can do a Better job than than I can, there's Better delivery drivers out there perhaps than you who might enjoy that more than you that freeze your time up to do the raising of the chickens or whatever you might be doing. Um I think it's trying to determine whether the best use of your time, dollar for dollar.

Yeah okay. Oh, I love that. Thank you.

For I would also sider california and is probably is a chAllenging place business, especially if your small business um for variety of reasons.

And I I would consider the starting out uh, working with somebody on a temporary contract OK just to see a, if it's gonna out, b, if you can afford IT because eventually, if you do hire that person, there are you know there's a pretty high minon wage in california and there are other requirements as a small business owner within terms of the unemployed ance requirements. And so you know it's it's it's a pretty big commitment even for small business. But I could be here, you can really scale your help, scale your business. You know you're looking at paying somebody what I think twenty box an hour in california. Um I would start by bring somebody in on a one month contract and seeing how that goes and seeing whether you can afford IT uh because if that person is really helping you, uh, fulfill more orders and deliver more orders than you, ultimately you want the employee to generate enough revenue to that, that more than pace their salary.

okay. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

Yeah, guy makes a great point. I think that you can try before you buy and you can test out an employee and see if they're really the right fit for you because let's face IT, delegating is one thing and can save you a lot of time. But if you're delegating to the wrong person, all that does this cost you more time?

That makes a sense.

I wondered. You can only pay people and eggs anymore cash. You pay me and eggs, you know, by the way, every i've got a bunch of friends of chickens.

And now is like, what can we bring? Like, I invite people for dinner, and I, I, i'm gonna honest. I don't like when people bring food to my house, when I make dinner, because if i'm making dinner, I want to serve you.

You the food are making. I don't want a bunch of different. I don't want you. You're like marsh mellow walnut fruit salad like I don't want that my entry omy.

So I I will often say just just bring the eggs from your chickens and IT works out. I love that. Yeah get those blue eggs and the pink eggs and are delicious.

That's that's a part of what people love for me as I specialize in those readers. And blue eggs, Green eggs, the dark and eggs and people just go crazy for them because it's just such a pretty little in .

our yeah but and by the way, if anybody listening gets one of those eggs, don't use IT in a cake or like just just poach IT just potch's that egor soft boiled, you can eat the egg. Don't mix IT into the Better you back your eggs.

They just they hit different, they hit different .

use that in your eg poster, whatever.

they're special wow, who would thought .

who would that?

Um what sound brand sounds like deal is on to something kind of similar to your start, right? Is this this is one one person, one business doing all the jobs and maybe IT might be worthwhile bring somebody else on the to grow IT? absolutely.

You're starting small and that's the best place to be. You get to try new people and new things with the business and makes some mistakes and fail and like you you've done before, but then put the and adapt.

And yeah, now that was a big part of that for me was the failure because I I know that if I had just been successful at the gate, I would have just been looking at a bigger failure down the road when I was furthered. You know, you can deeper in. And so I was actually really grateful for that, that first experience with terribly, because now I know what not to do.

Yeah, all right. Well, the companies called fox and had fine poetry company feel things.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you, theo. Congress.

all the best. Yeah, sounds like you have not eaten enough. Uh, blue eggs there. Brian.

you know what? I actually mentor someone for an hour. He came in and want to talk about his business and nothing to do with eggs, but as a thank you, he came in the next day and brought me a dozen eggs from his own farm man, his hobby farm man.

There were blue eggs, Green eggs, different sizes. I was like, wow. Had no idea.

No idea. And then and then you ate them and you were like, these are pretty good.

Blue eggs don't come out as blue eggs when you crack. I was.

they don't come out blue yeah they just come up, but sometimes really yellow that like or yoke, big time, delicious, very delicious. Um some really interesting business ideas in the show today.

very much so I I did the season on dragon stand, which is the I know the shark tank of canada.

IT was the original shark tank. IT was like the inspiration .

for IT yeah and and this is really interesting because this is a version of that where you're taking some businesses and learning about them on the fly and asking some questions and appliance and advice. So thank you for having me this .

this was fun yeah just like a nice or gender version.

Easier.

easier yeah yeah. I think we should maybe we need to bring in the little music and dramatic music. Could if you like a special dragon don .

marsh episode, they get a dragon and the shark together and see what happens um and before .

let you go uh last question for you which is you know now that you have got all of this experience and you do a lot of mentoring, um what do you wish you knew when you were starting out that you think might have been helpful for you to know .

yeah we talked about a little bit with one of your guest with theo. I think I wish I had known that Younger age, how many times I would fail and how there was a gift in every one of those failures. So I think Young entrepreneurs and and old entrepreneurs, people beat themselves up over their mistakes.

But if they are able to order to open their heart, their mind, to go, hold on, there's a gift here. There is something i'm going to learn that will lead me to a bigger, Better place. IT has been absolutely liberating from my journey as an entrepreneur thirty five years. That's the one thing i'd want to know.

nice. Let's brand into more. Founder of one eight hundred got unk city of o to e brands. Brian, thank you so much for john ing us.

Thank you. Absolutely great.

And by the way, if you haven't heard brian original high the episode, got to go check that out. It's so funny. It's so good. I will put a link in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview.

I was learning much more running a business on the streets, first of studying in school. And I remember sitting down with my father, who's a liver transplant surgeon. But I remember having to sit down to him and just say, dad got some good news for oria hand.

I presented IT as as good news, because to me, IT was good news, and I thought if I could get him excited, he might degree with me. And I told him I was leaving in school. He said, you're dropping school to become a junk man.

Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for IT for free at guy rose dot com. Each week is packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever.

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