Greatest Hits #5 - The 1-800-GOT-JUNK Story

**Shaan Patel** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
But what is the HubSpot Podcast Network? That's right, it's a new thing by HubSpot. They started with our podcast, and now they're branching into more and more podcasts with experts in different business areas. So you might have a podcast about marketing, or sales, or operations, or customer service.
And we're going to go over through the different podcasts on this network. Some are more entertaining, some are more informational, some are a good mix of both. That's what we try to do here.
And HubSpot's goal here is to have on-demand mentors. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a startup, you're scaling up, you're going to be able to hear practical tips and inspirational stories by listening to the different podcasts on their network. Which by the way, I think this is a smart idea. Too many brands just try to sell you their thing. HubSpot, I love their approach here. They're like, let's put out great, valuable, free content and help more companies succeed. And the more companies that we help succeed, the more we'll eventually come back to us. Sort of like a good karma kind of thing. So listen, learn, and grow with HubSpot Podcast Network, hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

**Sam Parr** (1:02)
All right, everyone. So about a year and a half ago, Sean interviewed someone I love. His name is Brian. Brian started this company called 1-800-Got Junk.
And it's an interesting story because it's not really tech oriented. And it's something that you could probably start this weekend if you just want to go rent a pickup truck for 50 bucks. And I love these stories. I like these non-tech stories. And I like these kind of bootstrap stories that aren't Silicon Valley based. And that's what this is. So 1-800-Got Junk. If you live in America, you probably know what this company is. It's really simple. They come and they pick up your junk. But he's built this into this massive business. It does something like $300-400 million a year in sales. It's a huge company. And what I'm gonna do during this episode is I'm going to play it. So you're gonna hear the episode in about 30 seconds.
And I'm gonna pause the episode when I hear something interesting, when I hear something cool. And I'm gonna tell you my reaction.
A lot of people said that the past greatest hits episodes, so these are the episodes that we've already done in the past, but I'm replaying. They said that they wish that they would have a little bit more reaction as opposed to just me talking about it in the beginning and going away. So that's what we're gonna do.
I'm gonna hit play in a second.
And you're gonna hear the episode. You're gonna like it. You're gonna love it. At least I hope. Let me know, The Sam Parr on Twitter.
And let's start the show.

**Brian Scudamore** (2:43)
Together, this president and I had almost bankrupted 1-800-Got junk. We were down $40 million in revenue in one year. The financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008 didn't help.
There was no one in my business that thought I was sane, that thought I made a good decision. They didn't get it because people didn't really understand or see what I saw. And somehow I stuck with it. While it took eight years to get to a million dollars, we do a million dollars on any given day, like today.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:19)
My next guest, who found a basic service that wasn't being met, and now he's making hundreds of millions of dollars, that's right, hundreds of millions of dollars.

**Brian Scudamore** (3:26)
There I was on a boat with two very senior executives, offered 75 to 100 million dollars, is what they were talking. I said, you know, I wouldn't sell it for a billion.

**Shaan Patel** (3:41)
All right, we are talking to Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-Got Junk. If you're like me, you've seen the billboards for 1-800-Got Junk. It's one of the sort of the catchiest businesses that I've seen, and it's also a very simple business. Brian's a guy who, when he was 18 years old, he saw somebody else had a truck and said, you know, I'll haul away your junk.
And he was like, that's a business that I could do. And he went and rented a truck and started this business and has grown it from, you know, just him and one $700 truck, all the way to basically doing about a half a billion dollars in revenue this year. So he's been doing this business for 30 years and he's a pretty inspirational dude, but you'll hear that in the episode today. And so I'm excited to talk to Brian. We talk a little bit about how he got the business off the ground, his sort of knack for PR, you know, how he ended up on hoarders and Dr. Phil and Oprah and all these other different outlets and how he's used that to grow the business, as well as his philosophies around hiring and some of the mistakes he made. And it's been a long road over these 30 years. And so it's a very cool story. Here comes Brian Scudamore, the founder of 1-800-Got Junk.