I was a high school dropout. Growing up, most people didn’t think I’d amount to anything. I was a troublemaker and didn’t do well in school. In short, nobody would have picked me as likely to succeed.
In my new book, WTF?! (Willing to Fail), I share my story as an average guy starting a junk removal company, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and growing it into what it is today: A business generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and employing over 5,000 people.
Here are 10 lessons I’ve learned that have had the biggest impact on my success.
Image Credit: Brian Scudamore.
1. If you don’t like the path you’re on, be brave enough to backtrack.
Today, it’s good to be a disruptor. I disrupted the business of junk hauling with exceptional customer service and professionalism, turning it into a career I’m proud of.
But it wasn’t an easy thing to do.
While building my company, I occasionally took the wrong fork in the road. Rather than wishing I was on a different path, I chose to backtrack and take the other fork. If anyone has ever told you that you can’t go backward, don’t believe them. An essential part of learning through consequences is going back to where everything went wrong, then taking the other path.
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2. Failure is a temporary condition. So, too, is success.
Failure is tough for any of us to swallow, but it doesn’t last forever. After it’s over, failure becomes a lesson learned and wisdom gained — not the defining moment of our lives.
On my way to building a company that makes a million dollars a day, I experienced moments of triumph and felt fulfillment that I never could’ve imagined. But these moments have been punctuated by challenges, mistakes and failures.
Success doesn’t happen without failure, nor does success ward off future hardships. I try to safeguard our success by surrounding myself with passionate, hard-working people I can count on; people who want to build something bigger and better together.
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3. If you need help, look for a mentor, not a partner.
Why is it that entrepreneurs often decide they need a partner when they really need a mentor?
When you feel like you’re lost in the forest and need help getting to the next level in business, don’t look for a partner. Look for a person who has successfully passed through the woods you feel lost in and who knows the paths that lead out of darkness and into the sunshine.
I speak from experience, here. I sought out a partner early in my journey, Jack Prescott, but pretty quickly bought out his share of the company. What helped me far more was joining the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, where I met a number of mentors who helped guide me through the journey of building my company.
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4. Surround yourself with people who think and act like founders.
It sounds harsh to say it, but I ended up firing the first 11 employees I hired at my company. It wasn’t because they didn’t have the skills. It’s because they didn’t fit the culture I was trying to create.
This taught me the importance of hiring people who think like founders. One of those people was Jason Smith, who started out driving a truck and later created our company’s online booking and dispatch application. Along the way, Jason discovered that he had the entrepreneurial fire. He went on to start a tech company that he sold for millions of dollars.
Dave Lodewyk was another hire who fit that mold. He later created a company that makes ski clothing that’s sold all over North America. Jason and Dave were the beginning of what we called our “culture of founders.” You know you’ve created a culture of founders when everyone in your organization thinks and feels like an owner.
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5. If you want to make it happen, put it on the wall.
Tyler Wright was hired to handle PR for my company. Eventually, I entrusted Tyler with one of my biggest goals for the company: To get on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
I also put a huge decal on the wall that said, “Can you imagine being featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show?” I would often see Tyler staring at the decal, slowly nodding his head. I could almost hear Tyler’s mind whispering “We’re going to make that happen.”
Fourteen months after the decal went up, the company appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. If you want people to buy into a shared vision of the future, try putting it on the wall!
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6. A shared vision can turn rivals into allies.
I hired Paul Guy to help my business begin franchising. From the start, Paul and I were out of step with each other. He would often challenge my decisions and we disagreed on how to franchise the company.
It got so bad that I fired him… But he kept coming to work.
On the third day after letting him go, I had a moment of inspiration. Paul was leaving to visit Toronto, so I asked him: Do you want to stay up there and run this company’s first franchise?
Paul loved the idea, and just like that, two rivals became allies. The strong emotions we shared for each other were transformed by a shared vision for the future.
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7. Give the people on your team what they need to succeed.
After Paul arrived in Toronto to open the first franchise, he made a shocking discovery: Toronto hauled away people’s junk for free.
I was terrified when Paul called and told me the news. But terror was not what Paul needed from me in that moment. He needed me to have his back and talk him through next steps.
I said, “Get out there and start marketing. Trust that this is going to happen. We’re going to build this together.”
When a person needs riches and you give them riches, you enrich them. When a person needs courage and you give them courage, you encourage them.
Today, Paul collects thousands of loads a month in Toronto.
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8. If you want to stand out, stand together.
Since we started this company, the bread and butter of our marketing strategy was guerrilla marketing. But franchise partners started to complain, believing it couldn’t work in their cities.
Along with my franchise advisory council, I hatched a plan to prove that guerilla marketing could work anywhere. I ordered blue wigs and bowling shirts emblazoned with the company’s name, then set off for Las Vegas with nine other guys. Everywhere we went in Las Vegas, crowds followed, eager to know who the crazy guys in blue wigs were.
That trip taught me that one person wearing a bowling shirt and a curly blue wig is a nut. Ten people in bowling shirts and curly blue wigs are magic.
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9. Choose your heroes wisely. In the end, they define you.
Heroes are dangerous to have. The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.
Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. Our heroes embody all that we’re striving to be. We choose our heroes according to our hopes and dreams. And then we create ourselves in their own image.
One of my heroes was Mr. Dodds, my third grade teacher. Mr. Dodds made everyone feel accepted and went out of his way to involve students in things that would showcase their talents. In Mr. Dodds’ eyes, how you were and who you were was fine with him.
Today, my company accepts everyone just as they are, like Mr. Dodds.
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10. Want to be happy? Enjoy the riches you already have.
In 2007, Waste Management — then the biggest garbage collection company in the world — offered me between $75 and $100 million to buy my business.
I trusted my gut and said no.
Every morning, I wake up happy that I didn’t sell. If I had, I never would have seen the entrepreneurial fire lit in all the founders who worked in our company.
But, if my focus had been making money, I might have taken the deal.
If you want to be happy, stop worrying about getting rich and start appreciating all the riches you have in your life. For me, that was blue wigs, bowling shirts and the cross-country road trips that make my company a joyful place to work and build a career.
Brian Scudamore is the author of WTF?! (Willing to Fail): How Failure Can Be Your Key to Success, in which he provides additional details on his journey from high school dropout to CEO.
This article was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
Image Credit: DepositPhotos.com.
