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. I'm Guy Raz. This is the place where we help 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.

And if you're building something and you need advice, give us a call and you just might be the next guest on the show. Our number is 1-800-433-1298. Send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with.

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Joining me this week is Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and the CEO of O2E Brands. Brian, welcome back to the show. I am so stoked to be here. Thanks, Guy. It's awesome having you back. You were first on How I Built This way back in 2017. It was such an awesome episode.

And you told us the incredible story of how you started 1-800-GOT-JUNK. And of course, anyone listening, if you haven't heard that story, go back and check it out. We'll put a link to that episode in the podcast description. But basically, you were looking for a way to make extra cash to help pay for college. And this was in like 1989. You were in Vancouver in Canada. You bought a pickup truck for like 700 bucks.

And then you just started hauling away people's trash to make money. And it was just like a side hustle at first while you were in school. It was a side hustle to pay for school. And I ended up learning so much more about business by running a business versus studying in school that I made a tough decision with a year left in my degree to drop out. Started hauling junk full time. And here we are today. 1-800-GOT-JUNK is a $700 million business. It's...

Absolutely incredible. We've got franchises all across Canada, the U.S., Australia. You also have branched out. You have a parent company called O2E Brands. You guys have something called Wow One Day Painting. You've got a cleaning service called Shack Shine. It's so cool. By the way, I often refer back to that. We've had 700 episodes of the show. You know, I often refer back to this episode, to yours, because people say, you know, I don't have a whole lot of startup cash. Right.

I say go back and listen to Brian Scudamore's episode. He started his brand with $700. And the genius of this idea was that one truck soon paid for itself and generated enough money for you to buy a second truck and then hire a friend to do the same thing. Yeah, my business, and this is unheard of, was profitable in two weeks. Yeah.

How does that happen, right? You go and raise startup capital and start an app and then you're years and years before you even have any real revenue. Yeah. So it's been an unbelievable model and I've been very fortunate. And really just started out with some 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 this space of junk removal. Yeah. That's what we did. First mover advantage and we're in Canada, US, Australia and continue to grow.

All right. Well, Brian, before we get to just to our callers today, I have a couple of questions for you. I want to start by asking you, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, right? They struggle with the question of 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 know, to branch out into painting and then house cleaning services, you know, rather than just staying focused on, you know, 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 and the first two you know cigarette smokes hanging out of their mouth and they showed up late and you felt like they were going to move into your house for a couple of weeks yeah the third guy comes in and says molding ceiling floors to ceiling moldings trim i'll have it done in a day that was their model paint your whole home in a day without any compromise to quality

And so I looked at that business and I said, I've done well franchising 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I think I can help you. Have you looked at franchising your business? And we ultimately bought his 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 started to franchise it. And now it's on track. One day it will be bigger than 1-800-GOT-JUNK simply because the painting space is even that much larger than junk removal. Yeah, it's so cool. You are still the public face of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. If you go to the website, there's a video of you right there on the homepage. Do you think it's important 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 curated our radio campaigns, he said, Brian, you need to be the voice on radio. And I said, well, I don't know if I want it to be all about me. And he said, it has to be. You're the founder. You've got the McDonald's drive-thru story, and that's where the ads are going to start.

And so I went with it and no looking back. And everyone buys into a founder story in a different way than a hired gun. Now, us founders need higher guns. I've got my Eric Church, who is unbelievable at scaling our business as an implementer. But the founder has a persona and a commitment and passion for a business that

that's been there from day one. Yeah, no question about it. Brian, it's so great to have you back on. I'm sorry I haven't seen you in a couple of years. I got to get back up to Vancouver and I promise I will.

But why don't we take a couple calls while we're here together? I would love that. Okay, so let's get our first caller on the line. Welcome to the How I Built This advice line. You're on with me and Brian Scudamore. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and just a little tiny bit about your business. Hi, Guy and Brian. Thank you so much.

I'm calling from Denver, Colorado. I'm the co-founder of Flower Co. F-L-O-U-W-E-R. 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 crackers to cocktails. Nice. Oh, did you tell us your name? Maybe I missed that. Teresa. Teresa. Okay. Welcome to the show. Thank you. So, all right. So, the company is called Flower, but it's spelled not F-L-O-W-E-R. It's F-L-O-U-W-E-R, like a merging of flower and flower.

Correct. Yes. Our flagship product was a cracker. And so in lots of crackers, we have flour, F-L-O-U-R. But our company is based around introducing people to edible flours and incorporating those in everyday products that just... Edible flours give an interesting flavor and color and texture to a lot of things that we don't normally add them to. Yeah. Ooh, what a cool idea. Okay. So you...

You're in Colorado, you're Denver. And when did you start doing this? I mean, it's a great idea. Were you in food? Were you doing food? Was that your business? My business partner and I joined together in 2019. We were initially doing charcuterie boards.

and incorporating edible flowers and whatever we could. You know, we eat first with our eyes, so we wanted to make them as beautiful as possible. We couldn't find a cracker that we really liked, 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 wowed and say, Oh my gosh, these are so amazing and beautiful. The taste is there. The, the look is there. They're just, they're fun to eat. They create an experience in themselves. I love making a buzz at an event where people are like, Oh wow, what's that? So that's how we got started. What a cool idea. Okay. Um, tell, tell us, uh,

What question you brought for us today? Yeah. So my question is essentially in strategy. So as we're moving into our next phase of growth, we just recently acquired a co-manufacturer 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 within the grocery space or

Or should we be expanding into different categories? The problem is, is 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, the more cracker lines, and then other distributors who want to carry more of the gift lines.

So I guess my question is, is it wise to be more diverse or is that just diluting our focus? Okay, interesting. Brian, before we answer Teresa's question, I think imagine you have some questions for her. Yeah, nice to meet you, Teresa. My big question is what percentage of your current revenue is in crackers?

So that's a tricky question, to be honest. For this year, the cracker production in self-manufacturing was extremely expensive. It was not cost effective. You guys were doing it yourself in a kitchen? Yes. Yes.

And it's not exactly cost effective. No. Hence our development of our other products that were a little less laborious. Our margins were much better on. And can you just tell us briefly about one or two? What are those products in the cocktail space? What is it? What do you like syrups or what?

Sure. So we make cocktail cubes, which is essentially a flavored sugar cube with flower petals in the sugar cube. So as it dissolves in your drink, you get these beautiful flower petals that float in your cocktail and also flavor your cocktail gently. So perfect for a glass of Prosecco. I pop a couple of lavender cocktail cubes in a glass of Prosecco and it's

Chef's kiss. Nice. Okay. So you guys were, just back to Brian's question, you slowed down on the cracker production because it was inefficient? It's inefficient. And we were in the search of a co-manufacturer. We thought we had one ready to go and it didn't quite work out. We now have settled on a co-manufacturer that will make the crackers to our standards and

You know, where we could produce 17 cases in a day, they can produce 170 cases in a day. So our labor cost is just like it's night and day. Frankly, we originated with three cracker flavors and we backed off those three flavors and only went to one.

Because of production limitations. So now that we have the opportunity, we could conceivably launch 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, it takes me back into the early days of 1-800-GOT-JUNK. We were called the Rubbish Boys. Our phone number was 738-JUNK. And we could do a lot with a truck. We could do some small moves. We could deliver bedloads of topsoil. We could use that truck to 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 wanted us to also go get some shovels 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 and away, it was junk removal. So we narrowed 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 now,

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 are 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 great advice. We do have a brick-and-mortar store here in Denver. And initially, that was our thought, is that that could be kind of our test market. You know, have products that we're testing and put them on the shelf and see which ones people gravitate towards. And can you give us a sense of what you expect to do in terms of sales this year?

Yeah, we're about a million dollars. Great. That's awesome. Yep. But it's been a really rough year. I won't lie with the command search. Yeah, we let go of our baking staff probably a little bit prematurely. But the writing was on the wall, we needed to we needed to scale. We couldn't continue doing what we were doing. So it kind of forced us into this.

So the retailers right now, I mean, the ones that are carrying the crackers, they really just want foods. They want like crackers and other kinds of foods because they would place it all together on the shelves, right? They're less interested in the cocktail sugars and the, you know, the I'm seeing here like finishing sugars and even candles, for example. Right, exactly. So we sell a lot to like small gift shops and a lot of them carry all of our products.

But when we go into the national distribution space, they're a little bit more specialized. So we have, you know, lots of ideas that speak to our company and our ethos, but we

Because we are bootstrapped, we have to place our dollars in a strategic place. So we can't do all of it at once. Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that you've really landed on something unique, right? I mean, pressed flours and crackers is not something I've seen anywhere. You know, to me, it seems like that's a really...

Awesome opportunity to create a completely new product in a pretty saturated category, crackers, cookies. But there's nothing with flowers and something that looks as beautiful as these do. Yeah. When I look at your box, Teresa, I'm looking online and your website.

The box and the brand is incredible. What it says and how it looks is awesome. To me, my gut, you're doing a million in revenue. When I look through the website of everything that you're offering and different products you want to diversify in, the one that catches my eye the most by far is the cracker. And it's how you got started. It's your story. It is beautiful. My wife loves making charcuterie plates. And wow, she'd put these crackers on there in a heartbeat. 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 diversifying into something else? Yeah. And I do believe that the co-manufacturer is going to solve those problems. So that's kind of why I'm looking. We're always trying to look forward, right? So I'm trying to think, okay, hopefully we've solved that problem and now we're

trying to move on to the next thing. But 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 it best. Yeah, own it. Own it. You're a cracker company. Yeah. And you have an opportunity to do like rosemary flavored and garlic flavored crackers and even like a Parmesan. Like there's so many different things you could do with the flower, with that beautiful look with different flavors. And in a digital world, it's so easy now with TikTok and Instagram and

to have people on a larger American wide scale blow this up for you in a great way. Because there are so many food TikToks watching people make things and everyone's competing to look more beautiful with their charcuterie platter than anyone else. Imagine having your brand on that wood board. I mean, it could be awesome.

Yeah, absolutely, Brian. We'll definitely take your advice. Thank you so much. Teresa, good luck. The brand is called Flower Company, F-L-O-U-W-E-R. Good luck. Thank you so much, Guy and Brian. Have a great day. Thank you. Thanks, Teresa. Bye-bye.

You mentioned that your wife likes to make charcuterie boards, and I love to make crudités plates, especially in the summer, Brian. So next time you come down here, I'll make you one. Awesome. And normally I don't. I have crackers there. But I mean, these are like standout crackers. No, they are. They're beautiful. And that's where I kept getting stuck, where I'm like, why is Teresa looking to diversify when she's onto something? Yeah, it sounds like she was trying to diversify because of problems and obstacles. No, no, no, no. Go solve those with your co-packer.

Yeah. And, you know, she could still – I like the idea of doing a flower petal company, you know, and you could still do the cocktail sugars and all that stuff. But to me, I think that there's just a really great opportunity with the crackers because nobody's doing anything like this right now. Yeah. Grow where you're planted. That's where they got their start and it's working. Yeah.

We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz. Stick around. You're listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

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$45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Welcome back to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and my guest today is Brian Scudamore. He's the founder of the junk removal service 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

What do you say, Brian? Should we take another call? Let's do it. All right, cool. Let's bring in our next caller. Hello. Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Brian Scudamore. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your brand. Hi, Guy. Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for having me on. Hello. My name is Jake Pressman. I'm calling from Los Angeles, California.

I'm the founder and CEO and everything else of Notion Skin Care. Our hero product is a high quality powder face cleanser that's sustainable, travel friendly, and customizable to fit each user's needs. A powder face cleaner? Yes, exactly. So how it works is you add a dash of the powder into your hand and you add the amount of water you want to get your desired texture. You make like a paste or like a, I guess a

turns into a lotion. So it turns into a foam or a paste depending on how much water you use. So the more water you do, the foamier and gentler it'll be. And the less water you do, the more exfoliating it'll be and like more intense wash you'll get. Just as some background. So most face cleansers and personal care products on the market are up to 80% water and packaged in plastic and heavy to ship. Ours is a powder that you can take with you anywhere. It gets around the TSA liquid restriction so you can travel freely with it.

And it's customizable. And the idea is that you're essentially selling a concentrate, right? Because what you're saying is that most lotions are 80% water. You're removing the water. So I guess you could argue that you're actually getting more bang for your buck. Exactly.

Huh, interesting. 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 at their company during summers in high school and college. And I was actually originally using a powder exfoliator as my face wash every day, which I now know that you're not supposed to use an exfoliator as your cleanser multiple times a day. But when I discovered this...

I was looking for alternatives, but I really liked that experience of using a powder. And traditional face cleansers didn't really meet my expectations. And a few other powder options on the market didn't really cut it for me. So I decided to try and make my own. And after 30 plus iterations of testing on my own skin, which is super sensitive, and my family's and friends' skin, I finally got it to where I thought it was perfect after two years. And I launched it online last year.

Wow. Congratulations. Okay. And how did you – and how are you doing so far in terms of sales? What have you – sort of roughly, have you broken $10,000 in sales? Yes. I'm a little bit below $20,000. Nice. Okay. Yeah.

but yeah, that'll kind of lead into my question that I have for you guys. Please tell us, tell us your question. So I'm having 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 targeting people who really want to like customize their skincare routine and have an experience that they can tailor to their own needs every time. Uh,

long way of asking is how do I make sure I'm targeting the right person? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Brian Scudamore, jump into this, please. Yeah. I was looking at your website, Jake, and it's a beautiful website. What isn't jumping out for me and I, and I could see myself using the product. There's something interesting, like you said about the texture of it and adding more or less water depending on the experience, but I'm having trouble, uh,

figuring out what is the real benefit here. You talk about it being vegan, cruelty-free, good for the environment, for animals. And I'm trying to go, what is it really about this that makes it unique and special here? Other than it being a great skincare product on its own, you know, it has all the trendy and effective ingredients in it. But I do think the main benefit is being able to customize it every time and make it like a wash just for you.

Jake, as you probably know, I mean, we've done a lot of brands in the show that, you know, one for one and our social enterprises. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of consumers, they just don't care about that. I mean, we wish they would care more, but they don't. Right. They really want to know what does this do for me?

And if you go to the website, it's very clean. Your branding is really nice. It's like the kind of premium product you would find in like a hotel, you know, where you could buy it from the little mini bar. But it just says, you know, vegan, waterless, cruelty free, sulfate free. That's all great. But that can go down below. I

I mean, to me, I want to hear, you know, infinitely customizable for all skin types with, you know, I can I'm looking at the label here and I see green tea extract, rice powder, colloidal oatmeal, but it's tiny. You doesn't get to find that. To me, it's like that's what I want to see right at the get go, because that sets the tone for what you're about to potentially buy. Right. Yeah.

And then the story, working with your grandfather in this sort of same space and how you've grown up building 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 clean face 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 and

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.

Jake, who right now? I mean, who do you imagine using this? Is it is it everybody? Is it a certain age demographic? I mean, it's, you know, you look at brands like Drunk Elephant, which we've done on the show and originally was made for for sort of women over 40. But TikTok has changed that now you see teenage girls are using it now.

Who do you imagine using this powder, using Notion? Well, other than myself, in my mind, the target user is mainly women between probably like 20 and 35. And I've had, you know, some older people like 60 plus women.

Give me great feedback. But also I have my friends that are all in their 20s using it as well. But in my mind and how I envision marketing it, it's probably between for women between 20 and 35. Brian, how would I think Jake has an opportunity here to answer his 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 would he do that? If it was me, I would pick some. They don't even have to be necessarily micro influencers.

but people whose opinion would matter to you in enough of a diverse group of your targeted 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. Right. But find out. Just ask them, would you use this? Did you like it? Why? See how 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 when they put on makeup and show the world, right? They do a fit check. They do a makeup check and they blast it 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 – by the way, we're hearing from everybody across the board, and Brian, you may even be facing this issue, which is that customer acquisition through social media has just become much, much harder. There's just so much more noise out there. But I wonder whether –

You target travelers, people who travel frequently, you know, who just don't want to have to take all their stuff out of their bag when it goes to the TSA line, you know. And a lot of frequent travelers are TSA pre. So they're just – they got to get to their flight quickly. And if the lotion size is four ounces, then it's going to be another 10 minutes of a delay. And so to me, it might be interesting to see if you can try to target –

People who frequently travel. So forget about men, women, young, old. Just just see if that sort of clicks in some way.

Yeah, no, I love that. I've definitely every time I've been traveling now, I've taken a video of the product going through the TSA belt. There you go. And I'll have random comments from when I was doing those TikTok ads being like, no, this will make you get stopped. It'll get longer. I mean, like, I've been around the country with this.

And I have never had one problem. And I've done an experiment where I've taken a traditional face cleanser and just like put it in to see what would happen. And of course, it got thrown away. And I think your brand lends itself to having some fun with the word no, that is a notion. No TSA delays, no water, no problems. Like that. There could be something there. Yes, I love that. Thank you. I like that. That's cool. I like that idea.

I mean, this is also the kind of product that you may want to consider. You know, look, you're in L.A. This is the media capital of the United States. Right. New York, too. And you have an advantage for being in Los Angeles. There's celebrities. There's a lot of influential. It's a it's a it's a cultural capital where trends start.

I mean, to me, I could see you taking this to like the proper hotel in downtown L.A. or Santa Monica or, you know, one of these really cool boutique hotels and seeing if they'd be willing to.

You know, to carry it in the gift shop, would you be willing to offer this in the rooms? Something like that, because that's also where we did an episode on Sunbomb, which you should take a listen to if you haven't heard it about a year ago. And I mean, this is a version of what they did. You know, they essentially started selling Sunbomb in...

Right. Because, 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 US or oftentimes back to Asia and they'll they'll bring it with them. And that's actually how it started. And so it's.

It could be interesting to experiment with some of those boutique hotels. Yeah, because definitely the people that are passing through, especially that kind of hotel, because you also, they're presumably travelers that need to go back. Yeah. So I think it would fit really well. So thank you. For sure. Brian, any last words of wisdom for Jake? Yeah.

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's 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. Yeah.

in the cosmetic space because it's a third generation family business. I think you've got a cool product and I think you've got a great business ahead of you. Thank you, Brian. Agreed. The brand is called Notion Skincare. Jake, good luck, man. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and advice. Thank you, Guy. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for calling in. Thank you.

I'm really – I got to be honest with you. I'm terrible at regularly washing my face. I'm embarrassed to even say that on national – on international podcast here. The world now knows. I'm looking at you differently here now. I know.

Well, I do. Of course, I take very good care of my teeth. But just a face-washing regimen, I'm just not very consistent. But I tell you what I do do. I use sunblock every day. You know, I'm about to turn 50, Brian, so I've got to protect my skin from the sunspots. Always. Always. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

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Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz and today I'm taking calls with Brian Scudamore. So Brian, why don't we bring on our next caller? Keep them coming. All right, let's bring in our last caller. Hello, welcome to the advice line. You are on with Brian Scudamore. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from and a little bit about your business. Hi there, Guy, Brian. My name is Theo Alex Dean and I'm calling from Shingle Springs, California.

I founded and operate Fox and Hen Fine Poultry Co., which is a live poultry sales company. I raise juvenile chickens and sell them to the backyard hobbyist market, which is basically people who want to raise chickens in their backyards.

Wow. And where is Shingle Springs in California, by the way? It's about half an hour outside Sacramento. Okay. So you're near the Central Valley. Yeah, we're kind of in the foothills. Which is the breadbasket of America. So you have a business that sells live chickens direct to anybody who wants them.

Pretty much. Yeah, I raised them to a juvenile age because that's a big part of it. You know, most of the time when someone wants to go out and buy chickens, they have to go to the feed store and buy these little baby chicks that are really fragile and hard to raise. You don't know if they're male or female. And it's just kind of a complex process for someone who's new to chickens. Yeah. How do you, by the way, how do you ship the chicken? Do you just put it in like a FedEx box and just ship it, poke some holes in it? Yeah.

So that's kind of a big part of my business model. There are ways to ship chickens through like the USPS system, but I actually, I offer delivery. So I actually hand deliver. I drive to the customer's house. I offer free local delivery to kind of the El Dorado County area. And then I offer delivery pretty much everywhere from Reading to the Bay Area down to Modesto. 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,

Most people do with the chickens. Are they for eggs or do they actually like slaughter them and roast the chicken? Most of my customers want them for eggs and for pets. You know, a lot of people who just kind of keep chickens as a hobby, they'll have, you know, six, maybe 10 birds in their backyard. Right. They go out and they watch them and because they're just very enjoyable to watch. Yeah.

And so I'm assuming that if somebody was like, yeah, I need like 10 chickens because I want to eat them. Would that be weird? Would you still sell them the chickens? I do still sell them. Mainly it's just that there are certain kinds of chickens that are for 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 in the rarer breeds. So it would kind of be a lot of money to spend on a chicken just to eat.

All right. So you've got this chicken business and tell us what question you brought for us today. So my big question kind of requires a little bit of context. Please. I launched I relaunched this business this year in 2024. I actually tried this business once before in 2021 and it was kind of a success and a disaster at the same time. What happened? So.

So it was immediately very successful and I was not prepared for that. Um, I was 20 at the time. I had no experience running a small business. I had worked for a small business that did something similar. Um, but I just thought, you know, I'm good at 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. Um,

And the problem was that it went so well. I was getting like 40, 50 phone calls a day. I was getting all these emails. I was trying to do all of it myself. And because I thought at the time, okay, I'm an entrepreneur. This 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 2025, I want to go big. I want to try to do what I did before and I want to succeed 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 need to outsource these tasks. How do I know when that is the right time for that? Hmm.

Perfect question for Brian Scudamore because you started your business by yourself with a truck. And then eventually the demand was so high you had to hire some buddies. Theo, before we get to your question, could you just give us a sense of roughly what – I mean are you doing $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 in revenue more a year?

Right now I'm doing around 10 to 20,000. Next year when I launch into a bigger scale, my goal is anywhere between 80 and 100,000. Nice. All right, Brian, thoughts? Yeah, Theo, nice to meet you. It's a great question.

I think that as any business starts to grow and scale, you've got to look at how much revenue are you doing and how many hours are you putting in and do the math. If you're doing $100,000 in revenue and you're spending 100 hours running the business, you're probably spending more than that. But just for simple math, your time is worth $1,000 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 $1,000 an hour to do and start delegating things so that you can free your time up for what's most valuable.

The way I identify for me what's most valuable and always have is 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 I can...

There's better delivery drivers out there perhaps than you who might enjoy that more than you that frees your time up to do the raising of the chickens or whatever you might be doing. I think it's trying to determine where's the best use of your time dollar for dollar. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. I love that. Thank you for that. I would also consider California, Brian, as you probably know, is a challenging place to do business, especially if you're a small business for a variety of reasons. And I would consider Theo starting out...

working with somebody on a temporary contract. Okay. Just to see, A, if it's going to work out, B, if you can afford it, because eventually if you do hire that person, there are, you know, there's a pretty high minimum wage in California. Right. And there are other requirements as a small business owner with in terms of the, you know, the unemployment insurance requirements. And so,

It's a pretty big commitment, even for a small business, but it could really help scale your business. So you're looking at paying somebody, what, I think $20 an hour in California. I would start by bringing somebody in on a one-month contract and seeing how that goes and seeing whether you can afford it.

Because if that person is really helping you fulfill more orders and deliver more orders, then ultimately you want the employee to generate enough revenue that more than pays their salary. Right, right. 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 is cost you more time. Yep. Yep. That makes a ton of sense. I wonder, and you can't really pay people on eggs anymore. No.

You can pay me in cash. You can pay me in eggs. You know, by the way, I've got a bunch of friends who have chickens, and they're always like, what can we bring? Like when I invite people over for dinner. And I'm going to be 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 the food I'm making. I don't want a bunch of different – I don't want your, like, marshmallow, walnut, fruit salad. Like I don't want that. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So I will often say, just bring me eggs from your chickens. And it works out. I love that. Yeah, I get those blue eggs and the pink eggs and they're delicious. That's a big part of what people love for me is I specialize in those rare breeds and a lot of them play those blue eggs, green eggs, the dark chocolate brown eggs. And people just go crazy for them because it's just such a pretty little arrangement to open the egg carton.

And by the way, if anybody listening gets one of those eggs, don't use it in a cake or a – like just poach it. Just poach that egg or soft boil it. You got to eat the egg. Don't mix it into the batter. Backyard eggs, they just – they hit different. They hit different. Use that in your egg pasta or whatever. They're special. Wow. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? Yeah.

Well, Brian, it sounds like Theo is on to something kind of similar to your start, right? There's this one person, one business doing all the jobs, and maybe it might be worthwhile bringing somebody else on to start.

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 make some mistakes and fail like you've done before, but then pivot and adapt and relaunch.

Yeah, no, that was a big part of it for me was the failure because I know that if I had just been successful out the gate, I would have just been looking at a bigger failure down the road when I was farther, you know, even deeper in. And so I was actually really grateful for that first experience that went terribly because now I know what not to do. Yeah. All right. Well, the company is called Fox and Hen Fine Poultry Company. Theo, thanks so much for calling in. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Theo. Congrats. All the best.

Yeah, it sounds like you have not eaten enough blue eggs there, Brian. You know what? I actually mentored someone for an hour. He came in and wanted to talk about his business, 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 and his hobby farm. And there were blue eggs, green eggs, different sizes. I was like, whoa, had no idea.

No idea. 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 them. I thought- They don't come out blue. Yeah, they just come out. But sometimes really yellow, that like orangey yolk. Oh yeah, big time. Delicious.

Very delicious. Some really interesting business ideas in the show today. Very much so. I did the season on Dragon's Den, which is the shark tank of Canada. Right. It was the original shark tank. It was like the inspiration for it. Yeah. And this is really interesting because this is a...

Yeah. Just like a nicer, a little gentler version. Easier, easier.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we should, maybe we need to bring in a little music, some dramatic music. That could be fun. Could be. We could do like a special Dragon's Den homage episode. There we go. You could get the dragon and the shark together and see what happens.

Brian, before I let you go, last question for you, which is now that you have got all of this experience, I know you do a lot of mentoring. 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 it a little bit with one of your guests with Theo. I think I wish I had known at a 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 old entrepreneurs, people beat themselves up over their mistakes. But if they're able to sort of open their heart and 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 for my journey as an entrepreneur over 35 years. That's the one thing I'd want to know. Nice. That's Brian Scudamore, founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, CEO of O2E Brands. Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. It was absolutely great. And by the way, if you haven't heard Brian's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go check it out. It's so funny. It's so good. We'll 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 versus 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 you. And I presented it as good news because to me it was good news. And I thought if I could get him excited, he might agree with me. And I told him I was leaving school. He said, you're dropping out of 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 GuyRoz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and we'll see you next time.

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This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramtin Aramlui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neil Rauch. Our production staff also includes Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Devin Schwartz, Catherine Seifer, Sam Paulson, J.C. Howard, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

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