Advice Line with Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

27:28So I decided to try and make my own. And after 30 plus iterations of testing on my own skin, which is super sensitive. And my family's and friend's skin, I finally got it to where I thought it was perfect after two years. And I launched it online last year. Wow, congratulations. Okay, and how did you and how are you doing so far? And in terms of sales? What have you sort of roughly have you have you broken$10 ,000 in sales? Yes, I'm a little bit below 20 ,000. Nice. Okay. But yeah, that'll kind of lead into my question that I have for you guys. Please tell us your question. So I'm having trouble determining who my customer is and like the messaging that I should have behind my ads.

28:11And I'm not sure if I should position it and mark it more as a travel product or try targeting people who really want to like customize their skincare routine and have an experience that they can tailor to their own needs every time. long way of asking is how do I make sure I'm targeting the right person? Yeah. All right, Brian Scudamore, jump into this, please. Yeah, I was looking at your website, Jake, and it's a beautiful website. What isn't jumping out for me, and I could see myself using the product, there's something interesting, like you said, about the texture of it and adding more or less water depending on the experience.

28:46But I'm having trouble figuring out what is the real benefit here. You talk about it being vegan, cruelty-free, good for the environment, for animals. And I'm trying to go, what is it really about this that makes it unique and special here? Other than it being a great skincare product on its own, it has all the trendy and effective ingredients in it. But I do think the main benefit is being able to customize it every time and make it like a wash just for you. Jake, as you probably know, I mean, we've done a lot of brands in the show that, you know, one for one and our social enterprises. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of consumers, they just don't care about that.

29:30I mean, we wish they would care more, but they don't. Right. They really want to know, what does this do for me? And if you go to the website, it's very clean. Your branding is really nice. It's like the kind of premium product you would find in like a hotel, you know, where you could buy it from the little mini bar. But it just says, you know, vegan, waterless, cruelty-free, sulfate-free. That's all great. But that can go down below. I mean, to me, I want to hear, you know, infinitely customizable for all skin types with, you know, I'm looking at the label here and I see green tea extract, rice powder, colloidal oatmeal, but it's tiny.

30:04You got to find that. To me, it's like that's what I want to see right at the get-go because that sets the tone for what you're about to potentially buy. Right. And then the story, working with your grandfather in this sort of same space and how you've grown up building your own product and why. I think having your story show up, it isn't just the brand look and feel, but you are the face of the clean face of this company. What is your story? and because I think people buy brands they connect to and buying into a brand is so much more than just the rice powder and the oatmeal. It's you. So is there a way to even tie your story and the name notion?

30:49You talk about the fact that your number one unique sort of selling point here is that it's a customizable product to whatever you want at any point in time. How do you tie those things together? I don't know the answers, of course, but food for thought. Okay. Thank you. Jake, who right now, I mean, who do you imagine using this? Is it everybody? Is it a certain age demographic? I mean, you look at brands like Drunk Elephant, which we've done on the show, and originally it was made for sort of women over 40, but TikTok has changed that. Now you see teenage girls are using it. Who do you imagine using this powder using notion well other than myself in my mind the target user is mainly women between probably like 20 and 35 uh and i've had you know some older people like 60 plus give me great feedback but also i have my friends that are all in their 20s using it as well but in my mind and how I envision marketing it, it's probably for women between 20 and 35.

31:58Brian, how would, because I think Jake has an opportunity here to answer his question by testing it out, right? Without knowing in advance who the target audience is, there might be ways to kind of test out the answer, right? To target different groups. I don't know. I mean, how would he do that? If it was me, I would pick some, they don't even have to be necessarily micro influencers, but people whose opinion would matter to you in enough of a diverse group of your targeted potential customers. I'd send them the product and say, could you do me a favor? Do me a video. You don't even have to share it if you don't want, but tell me all the things you love about this product and why.

32:43Tell me what stood out for you. Don't tell them the things that you're looking for. Right. But find out. Just ask them, would you use this? Did you like it? Why? See how they connect to the product. And then maybe you do another round and you get some micro-influencers to share these TikTok videos. I mean, I've got teenage daughters. I see what they do when they put on makeup and show the world, right? They do a fit check. They do a makeup check and they blast it out. if your product is something meaningful to a certain demographic who wants to then talk about it on social, that's where these things really go viral.

33:20Right. I think that there's maybe, by the way, we're hearing from everybody across the board, and Brian, you may even be facing this issue, which is that customer acquisition through social media has become much, much harder. There's just so much more noise out there. But I wonder whether you target travelers, people who travel frequently, who just don't want to have to take all their stuff out of their bag when it goes to the TSA line. And a lot of frequent travelers are TSA pre. So they got to get to their flight quickly. And if the lotion size is four ounces, then it's going to be another 10 minutes of a delay.

34:01And so to me, it might be interesting to see if you can try to target people who frequently travel. So forget about men, women, young, old, just see if that sort of clicks in some way. Yeah, no, I love that. I've definitely, every time I've been traveling now, I've taken a video of the product going through the TSA belt. There you go. And I'll have random comments from when I was doing those TikTok ads being like, no, this will make you get stopped. It'll get longer. I've been like, I've been around the country with this and I have never had one problem. And I've done an experiment where I've taken a traditional face cleanser and just like put it in to see what would happen.

34:48And of course it got thrown away. And I think your brand lends itself to having some fun with the word no that is in Notion. No TSA delays, no water, no problems. There could be something there. Yes, I love that. Thank you. I like that. That's cool. I like that idea. I mean, this is also the kind of product that you may want to consider. You know, look, you're in L.A. This is the media capital of the United States, right? New York, too. And you have an advantage of being in Los Angeles. There's celebrities. There's a lot of influential. It's a cultural capital. It's where trends start. I mean, to me, I could see you taking this to like the proper hotel in downtown L.A.

35:31or in Santa Monica or, you know, one of these really cool boutique hotels and seeing if they'd be willing to, you know, to carry it in the gift shop. Would you be willing to offer this in the rooms? Something like that, because that's also where we did an episode on Sunbomb, which you should take a listen to if you haven't heard it about a year ago. And, I mean, this is a version of what they did. They essentially started selling sunbomb in boutiques in Hawaii, right? Because the idea was, hey, if tourists go to Hawaii, they'll see the brand in the shops and they'll go back to wherever in the U.S.

36:11or oftentimes back to Asia. And they'll bring it with them. And that's actually how it started. And so it could be interesting to experiment with some of those boutique hotels. Yeah, because definitely the people that are passing through, especially that kind of hotel, because you also you're they're presumably travelers that need to go back. Yeah. So I think it would fit really well. So thank you. For sure. Brian, any last words of wisdom for Jake? I don't know about wisdom, but I'm just, I'm excited for you. I like your brand. I like your story. And I think that if you make some changes in how you tell your story and tap into your history, you know, something on your website, if you've got a photo of your grandfather doing anything in the cosmetic space, I mean, he's your grandfather.

37:02I don't know the age difference there, but this has to be an old photo that you can find and then recreate that photo with you today. You have instant credibility in the cosmetic space because it's a third generation family business. I think you've got a cool product and I think you've got a great business ahead of you. Thank you, Brian. Agreed. The brand is called Notion Skincare Jake. Good luck, man. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and advice. Thank you, Guy. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for calling in. Thank you. I'm really, I got to be honest with you, I'm terrible at regularly washing my face.

37:38I'm embarrassed to even say that on international podcast here. The world now knows. I'm looking at you differently here now. Well, I do. Of course, I take very good care of my teeth. And, you know, but just a face washing regimen, I'm just not very consistent. But I tell you what I do do. I use sunblock every day. You know, I'm about to turn 50, Brian. So I got to, you know, got to protect my skin from the sunspots. Always, always. All right. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with another caller. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to The Advice Line right here on How I Built This Lab.

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40:32Welcome back to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm taking calls with Brian Scudamore. So, Brian, why don't we bring on our next caller? Keep him coming. All right, let's bring in our last caller. Hello. Welcome to The Advice Line. You are on with Brian Scudamore. Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business. Hi there, Guy, Brian. My name is Theo Alex Dean, and I'm calling from Shingle Springs, California. I founded and operate Fox and Hen Fine Poultry Co., which is a live poultry sales company. I raise juvenile chickens and sell them to the backyard hobbyist market, which is basically people who want to raise chickens in their backyards.

41:12Wow. And where are Shingle Springs in California, by the way? It's about half an hour outside Sacramento. OK, so you're near the Central Valley. Yeah, we're kind of in the foothills. Which is the breadbasket of America. So you have a business that sells live chickens direct to anybody who wants them? Pretty much. Yeah. I raise them to a juvenile age because that's a big part of it. You know, most of the time when someone wants to go out and buy chickens, they have to go to the feed store and buy these little baby chicks that are really fragile and hard to raise. You don't know if they're male or female.

41:43And it's just kind of a complex process for someone who's new to chickens. Yeah. How do you, by the way, how do you ship the chicken? Can you just put it in like a FedEx box and just ship it, poke some holes in it? So that's kind of a big part of my business model. There are ways to ship chickens through like the USPS system. But I actually, I offered delivery. So I actually hand deliver. I drive to the customer's house. I offer free local delivery to kind of the Eldorado County area. And then I offer delivery pretty much everywhere from Reading to the Bay Area down to Modesto. I drive them myself to the customer.

42:18Okay, so right now it's got to be, it's a pretty local business. And what do most people do with the chickens? Are they for eggs or do they actually like slaughter them and roast a chicken? Most of my customers want them for eggs and for pets. You know, a lot of people who just kind of keep chickens as a hobby, they'll have, you know, six, maybe 10 birds in their backyard. They go out and they watch them because they're just very enjoyable to watch. And so I'm assuming that if somebody was like, yeah, I need like 10 chickens because I want to eat them. Would that be weird? Would you still sell them the chickens?

42:51I do still sell them. Mainly, it's just that there are certain kinds of chickens that are for eating and certain kinds of chickens that are for eggs. And most of the ones I sell are for eggs. And they tend to be a lot of what I specialize are in the rarer breeds. So it would kind of be a lot of money to spend on a chicken just to eat. All right. So you've got this chicken business. And tell us what question you brought for us today. So my big question kind of requires a little bit of context. Please. I launched I relaunched this business this year in 2024. I actually tried this business once before in 2021.

43:25And it was kind of a success and a disaster at the same time. What happened? So it was immediately very successful. And I was not prepared for that. I was 20 at the time. I had no experience running a small business. I had worked for a small business that did something similar. But I just thought, you know, I'm good at raising chickens and I can sell them. And I'd done sort of these small little test batches before. And I tried to launch full scale into this huge thing, you know, trying to sell hundreds and hundreds of chickens per month. And the problem was that it went so well. I was getting like 40, 50 phone calls a day.

44:00I was getting all these emails. I was trying to do all of it myself. And because I thought at the time, okay, I'm an entrepreneur. This is my business. I have to do it all by myself. And that was kind of my big mistake. And so my question is, I kind of did a soft launch this year. Next year in 2025, I want to go big. I want to try to do what I did before and I want to succeed at this time. And so how do I find that turning point where I go, okay, I need help. I need to hire people on. I need to outsource these tasks. How do I know when that is the right time for that? Perfect question for Brian Scudamore because you started your business by yourself with a truck.

44:40And then eventually the demand was so high, you had to hire some buddies. Theo, before we get to your question, just could you just give us a sense of roughly what, I mean, are you doing$10 ,000,$20 ,000,$30 ,000,$50 ,000 in revenue more a year? Right now I'm doing around$10 ,000 to$20 ,000 next year when I launch into a bigger scale. My goal is anywhere between 80 and 100 ,000. Nice. All right, Brian, thoughts? Yeah, Theo, nice to meet you. It's a great question. I think that as any business starts to grow in scale, you've got to look at how much revenue are you doing and how many hours are you putting in and do the math.

45:19If you're doing 100 ,000 in revenue and you're spending 100 hours running the business, you're probably spending more than that. But just for simple math, your time is worth a thousand bucks an hour. So then you look at all the things you're doing in the business that you could pay someone much less than that thousand dollars an hour to do and start delegating things so that you can free your time up for what's most valuable. The way I identify for me what's most valuable and always have is I look at what do I love to do and what am I good at? And there's often overlap there. Okay. And then the things I don't like to do and I'm not good at, I try and find other people to do.

46:02Because if they can do a better job than I can, there's better delivery drivers out there perhaps than you who might enjoy that more than you that frees your time up to do the raising of the chickens or whatever you might be doing. I think it's trying to determine where's the best use of your time dollar for dollar. Yeah. Okay. Wow. I love that. Thank you for that. I would also consider, you know, California, Brian, as you probably know, is a challenging place to do business, especially if you're a small business. Sure. For a variety of reasons. And I would consider, Theo, starting out working with somebody on a temporary contract.

46:45Okay. Just to see, A, if it's going to work out, B, if you can afford it. Because eventually, if you do hire that person, there are, you know, there's a pretty high minimum wage in California. Right. And there are other requirements as a small business owner with in terms of the, you know, the the unemployment insurance requirements. And so, you know, it's a it's a it's a pretty big commitment, even for a small business. But it could be you could really scale your help, scale your business. So, you know, you're looking at paying somebody, what, I think, 20 bucks an hour in California. I would start by bringing somebody in on a one-month contract and seeing how that goes and seeing whether you can afford it because if that person is really helping you fulfill more orders and deliver more orders, then ultimately you want the employee to generate enough revenue that more than pays their salary.

47:43Right, right. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Yeah, Guy makes a great point. I think that you can try before you buy, and you can test out an employee and see if they're really the right fit for you. Because let's face it, delegating is one thing and can save you a lot of time. But if you're delegating to the wrong person, all that does is cost you more time. Yep, yep. That makes a ton of sense. I wonder, and you can't really pay people on eggs anymore. You can pay them in cash. You can pay me on eggs. You know, by the way, I've got a bunch of friends who have chickens, and they're always like, what can we bring?

48:17Like when I invite people over for dinner, and I'm going to be honest. I don't like when people bring food to my house when I make dinner because if I'm making dinner, I want to serve you the food I'm making. I don't want a bunch of different – I don't want your, like, marshmallow, walnut, fruit salad. Like I don't want that. You know what I mean? So I will often say, just bring me eggs from your chickens. And it works out. I love that. Yeah, I get those blue eggs and the pink eggs, and they're delicious. That's a big part of what people love from me is I specialize in those rare breeds and a lot of them play.

48:47Those blue eggs, green eggs, the dark chocolate brown eggs. And people just go crazy for them because it's just such a pretty little arrangement up in the egg carton. And by the way, if anybody listening gets one of those eggs, don't use it in a cake or like just poach it. Just poach that egg or soft boil it. You got to eat the egg. Don't mix it into the batter. Yeah. Backyard eggs, they just they hit different. They hit different. Use that in your egg pasta or whatever. They're special. Wow. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? um well it's how brian it sounds like theo is on to something kind of similar to your start right there's this this it's one you know one person one business doing all the jobs and maybe it might be worthwhile bringing somebody else on to to grow it absolutely you're starting small and that's the best place to be you get to try new people and new things with the business and make some mistakes and fail and like you you've done before but then pivot and adapt and relaunch yeah no that was a big part of it for me was the failure because i i know that if i had just been successful out the gate i would have just been looking at a bigger failure down the road when i was farther you know even deeper in and so i was actually really grateful for that that first experience that went terribly because now i know what not to do yeah all right well the company is called fox and hen fine poultry company theo thanks so much for calling in thank you for having me thank you theo congrats all the best yeah it sounds like you have not eaten enough uh blue eggs there brian you know what i actually mentored someone for an hour he came in and wanted to talk about his business nothing to do with eggs but as a thank you he came in the next day and brought me a dozen eggs from his own farm and his hobby farm and there were blue eggs green eggs, different sizes.

50:44I was like, whoa, had no idea. No idea. And then you ate them and you were like, these are pretty good. Blue eggs don't come out as blue eggs when you crack them. I was, I thought - They don't come out blue. Yeah, they just come out, but sometimes really yellow, that like orangey yolk. Oh yeah, big time. Delicious. Very delicious. Some really interesting business ideas in the show today. Very much so. I did a season on Dragon's Den, which is the shark tank of Canada. Right. It was the original shark tank. It was like the inspiration for it. Yeah. And this is really interesting because this is a version of that where you're taking some businesses and learning about them on the fly and asking some questions and applying some advice.

51:29So thank you for having me. This was fun. Yeah. Just like a nicer, a little gentler version. Easier. Easier. Yeah. Yeah. I think we should, maybe we need to bring in a little music, some dramatic music. That could be fun. Could be. We can do like a special Dragon's Den homage episode. There we go. You could get a dragon and a shark together and see what happens. Brian, before I let you go, last question for you, which is, you know, now that you have got all of this experience, I know you do a lot of mentoring. What do you wish you knew when you were starting out that you think might have been helpful for you to know?

52:06Yeah, we talked about it a little bit with one of your guests with Theo. I think I wish I had known at a younger age how many times I would fail and how there was a gift in every one of those failures. So I think young entrepreneurs and old entrepreneurs, people beat themselves up over their mistakes. But if they're able to sort of open their heart and their mind to go, hold on, there's a gift here. There is something I'm going to learn that will lead me to a bigger, better place. It has been absolutely liberating from my journey as an entrepreneur over 35 years. That's the one thing I'd want to know.

52:45Nice. That's Brian Scudamore, founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, CEO of O2E Brands. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was absolutely great. And by the way, if you haven't heard Brian's original How I Built This episode, you've got to go check it out. It's so funny. It's so good. We'll put a link in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments from that interview. I was learning much more running a business on the streets versus studying in school. And I remember sitting down with my father, who's a liver transplant surgeon. But I remember having to sit down to him and just say, Dad, got some good news for you.

53:23And I presented it as good news because to me it was good news. And I thought if I could get him excited, he might agree with me. And I told him I was leaving school. He said, you're dropping out of school to become a junk man. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at GuyRoz.com. Each week, it's packed with tons of insights from entrepreneurs and my own observations and experiences interviewing some of the greatest entrepreneurs ever. And if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business, the issues or questions you'd like help with, and hopefully we can help you with them.

54:05And make sure to tell us how to reach you. You can send us a voice memo at hibtid.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. And we'll put all this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by Carla Estevez with music composed by Ramtina Ramblui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Neil Rauch. Our production staff also includes Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Chris Massini, Devin Schwartz, Catherine Seifer, Sam Paulson, JC Howard, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to The Advice Line on How I Built This Lab.

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