Brian Scudamore
Founder & CEO, O2E Brands. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Brian Scudamore is the founder and CEO of O2E Brands and 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, which he launched in 1989. He is an investor on Dragons' Den and author of business books including WTF?! (Willing to Fail).
3shows
5appearances
63statements
16resolved
11supported
1contradicted
69%fully supported
24said about them ↓ Everything Brian Scudamore said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Scudamore: Fired entire 11-person team at 1-800-GOT-JUNK over culture
“It was the day I fired my entire team. Now, literally, I didn't preserve one. There were 11 people in the company. I always say that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch, and I think I had nine out of 11 that were bad apples. Now, not bad human beings, but jus…”
Brian Scudamore fired his entire 11-person team at $500K in revenue
“Five years in, we were about a half a million in revenue, and I realized I wasn't having fun any longer. I was avoiding spending time with my employees, and I just, I had the wrong people, and I realized that one bad apple spoils a whole bunch, and I had nine …”
Scudamore: Scaling a business to $1 billion is easier than $1 million
“The easiest is a billion. The hardest is a million. From a million, it starts to get easier at ten million, easier at a hundred, and even easier yet at a billion. That blew my mind, but it actually has proven in my situation as we're two-thirds of the way to a…”
Scudamore: 1-on-1 mentor chats beat formal advisory boards
“I don't, I used to, I had a board of advisors, a lot of smart people, but I found that it was, I'm better getting one-on-one advice from a lot of different mentors. And I find that just reaching out to someone, getting a conversation one-on-one is more effecti…”
Scudamore: WOW 1 DAY PAINTING will surpass 1-800-GOT-JUNK?
“One day it will be bigger than one 800 got junk simply because the painting space is even that much larger than junk removal.”
Scudamore: Audiences connect to founders differently than hired executives
“Everyone buys into a founder story in a different way than a hired gun.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK's appearance on Ellen produced zero customer calls
“Now, by total contrast, the biggest show in the last year on daytime TV was Ellen, and it was crickets. It was absolute crickets.”
Scudamore: Brand pricing power more than offsets franchisee royalties
“They're gonna find that with one 800 got junk, they're gonna charge more. And that incremental value that you get being able to charge more is because of a premium brand that we've created that has huge credibility. So that incremental amount more than covers …”
Scudamore: The best local service companies are almost always the most expensive
“In services, it doesn't work that way. The biggest and the best in every market, let's call it HVAC or window washing, doesn't matter, is usually generally the most expensive or close to the most expensive, because it costs a lot of money to find great people.”
Scudamore: The business would have bankrupted without outside leadership
“I couldn't have done that. We would have lost the business. We would have bankrupted it.”
Scudamore: O2E Brands does $365M in revenue across four franchise brands
“We will finish this year at about three hundred and twelve million. We're almost done the year. We are as four combined brands, three hundred and sixty five million in revenue and on track to a billion.”
Brian Scudamore says multi-concept franchising failed as operators lost focus
“With you move me, we launched overnight with 25 franchise partners. They were all one 800 got junk franchise partners who were ready for more. Why it failed, more than half of them are now gone from you move me and still running one 800 got junk is you've got …”
Brian Scudamore targets unprofessionalized, fragmented home services for new franchise brands
“I find industries that are fragmented, mom and pop, that don't have professionalization yet, or, and haven't taken over the world and in home services in that space.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK Will Reach $1 Billion on Its Own
“We know that one 800 got junk on its own will get to a billion.”
Brian Scudamore predicts WOW 1 DAY PAINTING will eclipse 1-800-GOT-JUNK
“I know for sure. Wow. One day painting will one day be bigger than one, 800 got junk just because the market is bigger.”
Scudamore: Cross-selling during moves fails because customers are overwhelmed
“You're probably busy and stressed and focused just on the move. And you don't necessarily want to start to think about something else. And we find when we try and pitch customers on it, they're not ready. It's not like a Netflix, hey, people who watch this als…”
Brian Scudamore fired all 11 employees in 1994 to restart his company
“And so the time in 1994 or five years into the business, one of the stories in the book, I fired my entire company, 11 employees. One bad apple spoils a whole bunch. I had nine bad apples and I just said, I'm going to start again. Going from five trucks down t…”
Having two impulsive executives at the top fails scaling companies
“But what started to break was that you had two ADD fire ready aim types at the top of the company. That's you and Cameron. Yeah. And that just doesn't work. We started to make poor decisions together.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK? Revenue Plunged from $119M to $80M
“After 20 years of growth, we went from a hundred and nineteen million in revenue is what we'd hit at that peak at that time, and we dropped down to the eighties.”
1-800-GOT-JUNK? was 90 days from bankruptcy before laying off 52 employees
“We couldn't have been closer. I mean, I would have given us another 90 days if we'd continued down that path. We had overspent so drastically. On big bets that didn't pay off, and I had to hunker down. I had to lay off 52 people.”
Scudamore admits an IPO and VC funding would yield more personal wealth
“I probably would have made more money in the long term if I'd done a corporate model and an IPO and raised money.”
Scudamore: O2E Brands will always remain private and never IPO
“Still private. Absolutely. Always will be. What's motivating me is, is growth, not money. So I'm not looking to sell the company, take it public.”
Brian Scudamore runs his business exclusively on an iPhone without computers
“My iPhone is everything to me. I don't use a laptop. I don't use a desktop. That's my one device. I don't use an iPad.”
The other half of the tape: Brian Scudamore's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 9 episodes across the shows. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 11Guy Raz 11
Statements about Brian Scudamore, by other people (2)
Raz: 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and franchisees generated nearly $250M in 2016 revenue
“By the way, last year, the company and their franchise partners made close to a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue, hauling off people's junk.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 11
How I Built This 11
2026 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 4 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, O2E Brands | 2 | 28 | 57% 4/7 | full record on Top Founders → |
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder & CEO, O2E Brands | 2 | 21 | 80% 4/5 | full record on How I Built This → |
 FOUNDER'S JOURNALLEDGER | Founder & CEO, O2E Brands | 1 | 14 | 75% 3/4 | full record on Founder's Journal → |