The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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…”
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: 1-800-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: 1-800-GOT-JUNK generates about $600 million in annual revenue
“So, one 800 got junk, the first baby in the family, so to speak, is about six hundred million in revenue.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK reached Oprah 14 months after setting the goal
“And 14 months later, we did. I was sitting there on stage in Chicago, thirty-five million viewers watching us all at the same time.”
Scudamore: Oprah appearance forced 1-800-GOT-JUNK to quadruple phone lines
“So with being on Oprah, it was phones ringing off the hook. We could quadrupled our number of phone lines. We had 70 phone lines at the time. We literally brought in family, friends, parents to sit down and answer phones.”
Scudamore uses his 2,000 parked junk trucks as guerrilla marketing billboards
“We park our trucks, all 2000 of them in high profile visible intersections for people to see.”
Scudamore: COO Eric Church scaled O2E brands from $100M to $700M
“Eric took the business from a hundred million to the combined family of the three brands doing seven hundred million.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK began with a $700 classifieds pickup truck
“And so I went out and bought a truck. I started a company called The Rubbish Boys. It was a week after I got that idea, went on to the classifieds, found a truck, 700 bucks, boom, off I went.”
Scudamore: 1-800-GOT-JUNK is fully sold out across 250 franchisees
“We have about 600 employees in the head office, about 250 franchise owners across Canada, the United States, and Australia, sold out with the one 800 got junk, still plenty of territory left, and wow, one day in shot shine.”
Scudamore has his assistant lock him out of email during vacations
“When I go away on vacation and I love to get out of my ADD and just recharge and have fun and not have to worry about the business. I get my assistant to change my passcode on my email and my social media. So again, I can't even get in. And that whole going da…”