1800 got junk business plan
Receive a personalized report of exciting new franchise opportunities to your inbox each week. No spam , just good, helpful information for aspiring entrepreneurs. We do not SPAM you. We don't share our mailing list. Toggle navigation.
Hitting a ceiling on growth? Three tips from 1-800-GOT-JUNK
My heroes are all people who create new software, new hardware, which seems like a tough innovation. How did he do it?
Joining me today is Brian Scudamore. I invited him here to talk about how he built his business. Hey there, freedom fighters. My name is Andrew Warner. I am the founder of Mixergy. I mean, my heroes are all people who create new software, new hardware. I invited him here to talk about how he built his business and this is sponsored by Lead Pages which took my most successful page, the page that I use to collect email addresses which magically converts strangers into leads for me and turned it into a product that you can use.
So if you want to use the page that I use to collect email addresses, check out AndrewsWelcomeGate. You can use this URL to collect email addresses for your business. Andrew : So how big a business can you build collecting junk? What size revenues did you guys do last year?
How did we do last year? I looked at the Yelp reviews. And the sense of relief that their junk is gone is what gets people calling us years and years on end. Brian : I was contemplating my future. I was one course short of graduation. Finding a summer job was going to be difficult, and I thought, you know, what if I just got out and created my own job.
And there in front of me was this beat up, old pickup truck. I went out and bought within a week a truck of my own, called myself the Rubbish Boy, had a vision of building something out that would pay for college. It did that and then some.
It inspired me to drop out with actually one year left in my degree, and I had to sit down with my father who is a liver transplant surgeon and have that difficult conversation. Andrew : You were an entrepreneur growing up. I think I even have a photo of yourself way before you were 18 picking up junk. Why did you see a business back then even in garbage collection?
Brian : Well, I was four and a half years old and did that self-portrait, if you will. It was just a kid like many boys who liked machines and trucks. So I just drew myself a garbage truck. Maybe it was destiny. Some kids dream of being Superman.
Again, I love what I do. Brian : I knew it would be something that would pay for school for me. It would be a part-time job. So our early stage development, it was just to pay for college. And it did that. But then it led me to be bold enough to drop out of school.
Learning the hardships, all the different challenges that come with being an entrepreneur, going through that start-up phase on my own taught me so much more than college did. Andrew : You got your first clients by going door to door. Was it just cold knocking on doors and saying, hey, got any garbage, got any junk? Brian : Absolutely. Can we haul it away for you for a fee? And then started things started to grow, word of mouth.
We started to really use our trucks as mobile billboards. And the name, the phone number, the website, it all beckons that question of, got junk. Then give us a call. Andrew : That name is so memorable. Can I get you guys fries?
Now here you were a guy, I saw you look good. You still look good. So you must have been popular, I imagine. And suddenly, what if your friends saw you picking up junk and called you a garbage man? It was contagious. I told people I started my own business. I think they loved that idea. But people liked the fact that I went and took a risk and did this on my own. And many of my friends came to work with me over the years.
How do you build beyond that? Andrew : Sorry. It turns out we lost the connection for a moment. Brian :. So when you say, next steps, part of it was dropping out of school and committing full-time to this endeavor. Part of it was starting to take the money I was making in profits and invest it in more trucks, in more professional trucks, if you will. Andrew : How long did it take you to buy another truck?
Brian : Took me two years. And it really started to grow and build momentum from there. Andrew : And for the first two years, was it you knocking on doors still and still picking up, or was it starting to grow beyond you? Brian : It was essentially me knocking doors and recruiting friends to have as my Rubbish Boys employees, if you will. But , I learned the art of free press. I called up Vancouver Province, a local newspaper.
We ended up, surprisingly, the next day on the front cover. That if I really focused and set my mind to it and had a clear vision of how to build this, that anything was possible. Andrew : How did you know what to say to them to get featured? How did you know what to say? Brian : I kept it simple. What is it? Andrew : At what point did you hire someone to help you get more of that free press and go beyond yourself?
Brian : Probably So about eight years into the business we hit a million dollars in revenue. This was a brand that really had legs. It could build out in Vancouver and other markets. We were now in Seattle. We were in Calgary. We were in a whole bunch of different markets, Toronto. We wanted to build the brand nationally. Press was our avenue of getting out there and spreading the word. We used them to tell our story, and our team today we have a team of six people full-time pitching the rest.
Andrew : Do I have this right? Both those brands are also same model. Andrew : This franchise direction is what allowed you to grow without putting up a lot of money. Where did you come up with that idea? How did you decide this is the way forward for us? I love doing things with people. We have a big open floor. I get my energy from others, from people.
Andrew : One of the reasons why so many entrepreneurs open up franchises under you at GOT-JUNK and your other brands and early friends joined you is because you know how to paint a picture, how to put the vision of the future in their minds and get them to care passionately about it the way you do.
What do you do for it? You seem to have a process for doing it. What is that?
So you're interested in a GOT-JUNK? franchise – probably because you've been thinking about business ownership for a while. It's not about the fact it's a. Got-Junk was a runaway success, so much so that founder Brian Scudamore is a guy who likes to grow -- his business and his profile.
My heroes are all people who create new software, new hardware, which seems like a tough innovation. How did he do it? Joining me today is Brian Scudamore. I invited him here to talk about how he built his business.
When Brian Scudamore was 4, he drew a picture of a himself hauling away junk.
A good PR strategy can be critical to the success of your business. PR helps with the promotion of a business by communicating relevant information about its operations to the media. Above all, it creates a positive public image and establishes a relationship with targeted media outlets and audiences.
1-800-GOT-JUNK? LLC
The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures. This article was published more than 4 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current. This column is part of Globe Careers' Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about leadership and management. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam. At 19, I started a junk-removal business called The Rubbish Boys to pay my way through university.
How One Junk Removal Company Went From $0 to $250 Million Using PR
This story appears in the January issue of Entrepreneur. Scudamore is a guy who likes to grow -- his business and his profile, each of which seems to fuel the other. This is, perhaps, the ultimate franchisor dilemma. Franchising is an industry driven by expansion -- opening new units, and bringing new owners into your system. The longer, more interesting version: He learned to focus on people -- customers, employees, and, most of all, himself -- and figure out what they really needed. It had to become about more. So he bought a truck and started a company called Rubbish Boys. Armed with a great idea and a talent for guerrilla marketing, he renamed the company Got-Junk? Customers also helped, letting Scudamore place got-junk? His company grew quickly from there.
In , university student Brian Scudamore bought a used pickup truck and started a junk-removal service.
After 20 years of building my baby, the junk removal company I started as an year-old college kid with a single truck was nearly out of cash. It was How is this happening? How am I losing my business?
1-800-GOT-JUNK?
Knowing when it is time to take your business to the next level is one of the more difficult questions entrepreneurs face. Rushing the process could spell doom for your company, while not moving ahead at the right time can result in lost revenue. In the nearly three decades since, the business has grown to nearly locations in three countries. We recently spoke with Scudamore about the best ways to expand and scale your business, and how to find the right people to help you do it. Expanding is when your business starts to pick up speed; customers are flowing in, the flywheel is kicking into high gear, and you need to grow your team just to keep up. Scaling levels it up: It's about operational efficiency and creating replicable systems that can be applied on a massive scale. This is especially important in a franchise system like ours, with hundreds of decentralized businesses in three countries. When we started to scale, we were able to add franchises exponentially. We developed tried-and-true systems for everything: sales, operations, marketing, etc. They're easy to teach so we can just as quickly train 10 new franchise partners as we can train one. This process has been so successful that we've since applied it to three more brands.
To Make 1-800-Got-Junk A Success, Its Founder Had To Rethink Everything (Including Himself)
LLC bills itself as "North America's largest junk removal service" with more than franchised locations in the United States and Canada. The firm's blue, green, and white trucks pick up items that are too big for curbside garbage collection, but not large enough to merit a heavy-duty waste hauling service. The firm's clientele includes homeowners, property management companies, construction firms, and corporations. Born in San Francisco, Scudamore had moved with his parents to Vancouver at eight and had shown an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age, delivering papers at nine, washing cars for money at 11, and selling candy and snacks to his classmates at Scudamore's studies sometimes took a back seat to his side activities, and he dropped out of high school one class shy of graduation, though he managed to secure admission to a community college for the fall of He began to look for summer work to pay for his tuition, but the job market was tight, and he could not find employment.
