in the office you put in a lot of thoughts like it's not just a typical office right you walk in the elevator it's got the core you've got the the morning huddle room you have one of the columns it shares your vision or some of the things you want to accomplish like why you do that like how that helps a great culture we as company leaders build stories yes our people are a part of those stories yes let's get out there and tell them and what a better way to tell them than put them up
on the walls integrate people in the stories because they'll say you know what's up with that sign it's all about people well it's a story back in 1994 when we laid off our team and this is when I learned that lesson I mean you've seen the office there's again it holds 600 people or two offices there are so many walls that are all decorated in stories yeah we have our painted picture wall yes we have our wall with our values and you have a particular wall it's almost like your vision like it's like can you
can you imagine right yeah we have a can you imagine wall which is a massive wall it started with a blank wall where we thought how do we Inspire others to dream big within the framework of our company so Cameron Harold who is my CEO he said Brian you're the vision guy he goes I can't Envision anything yeah so what do you mean you can't Envision he goes That's not how my brain works so I sat him down and I said imagine Envision that you could go if you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow
money wasn't an object where would you go and I don't remember his answer it was 20 years ago or whatever and he goes it was probably some tropical spot well who are you with he lists his girlfriend what are you drinking My Thai whatever it is what does it sound like what does it feel like why are you there what are you celebrating he gave me this picture that that's a vision it's a thousand words he gave me his vision and I said all you have to do is learn to do that with your business
now ironically he went out and wrote a book called The Division yeah so he figured it out which is great yes uh but vision is where everything starts Alice in Wonderland if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there can you imagine wall and painted picture started from uh eight years into the business I was at a million in Revenue and I was like I don't know how much I'm really having fun here I had entrepreneurs that I knew through the entrepreneur organization who were in sexier more glamorous businesses and Technology
we're calling junk right yeah exactly so I'm like what am I gonna do and I was in a bit of a doom Loop feeling depressed feeling down about I don't have the money I don't have the education all that kind of stuff so I sat on my parents dock at a summer Cottage that they had at Bowen Island an hour from here and I took out a sheet of paper one page double-sided and I said okay stop thinking of negative thoughts of I can't do this I shouldn't do this what about start thinking of possibility
so I started to feverishly write just what came to my mind and it started with we will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003. we will be the FedEx adjunct removal with clean shiny trucks friendly uniform drivers on-time service upfront rates will be on over all these things and I started listing all this stuff out and I took this double-sided painted picture sure and I looked at it and reread it and I'm like wow I can see this you can see this happening my language if I look back
at it not by Design but by fluke was not I hope to be in the top 30 metros I'm going to try to be it was we will be so I took this painted picture as a tool and I shared it with people in my company at the time a bigger company at a million dollars and I had about half the group divide into two not really but just in in principle over an idea of half the people said Brian you're smoking hope dope like good luck with whatever you're dreaming because it's not going to
happen and the other half said wow this is really exciting and compelling and I want to be a part of it those people stayed over the coming months and we don't know how we did it but we did we hit the top 30 metros even when we were able to put it on the wall we shared it and we read it constantly and we showed people if it's to be it's up to me we are going to own what's in that painted picture we don't know how it's going to happen but we're going to make
it happen people thought we were crazy right the the people that said you know what are you smoking I mean they didn't believe they weren't just trying to be funny they were kind of like how are you going to get an Oprah how are you going to get in top 30 metros you're only in one and uh and they were right but the people that believed had blind faith in I don't know how we're gonna do it but we're gonna have fun we're gonna do it trying yeah and and we did it and we continue
to set painted pictures and we've got painted pictures for five years out for every uh brand we have what are some divisions you had on the on that wall I remember one was in the you had the Starbucks cup yeah right that was one that was one of them uh Oprah's another one of them being on Oprah right yeah so the can you imagine well how it worked for us was it it was engaging other people yeah in the business yeah so it started with the story in this Cameron Harold could Envision once we helped
him see or I helped him see that he could Envision something he's like wow we need to put up on the wall Big Ideas that people want to see happen within the company so I started with the can you imagine being featured on Oprah because it was in the painted picture Cameron said can you imagine if Harvard Business School wrote about our business about a high school dropout College Dropout can you imagine if we were on Dr Phil can you imagine if we got our name on the side of a Starbucks cup across the world
we engage people so Andrea Baxter came to me a marketing manager and she said Brian Starbucks you might have noticed have these at the time these sayings on the side there were quotes from famous people including Oprah they were authors and actors and actresses and the whole bit yeah she goes we need a quote on the side and I said well how's that going to happen and she gave me her pitch and I'm like I don't know if I see it she's like Brian I see it and when she got excited about it and I
knew she saw it yes I reminded myself okay as a leader I need to encourage she sees it it doesn't matter that I don't yes I'm asking how can it be done we don't know but she sees it happening so uh she went out and pitched Starbucks got in touch with her head office and worked it for a few months and finally someone said yes and we ended up on 10 million cups on the the tall sized cup and as a high school dropout Starbucks was kind enough to help me write the quote yes but
it said something to the effect of you are what you can't let go of and it had my name founder and CEO of 1-800 got junk on the side and so all I cared about was that it said 1-800 it's like a free ad on these cops yes so every time someone would make a can you imagine happen we'd put a green check mark beside it which told everybody in the company we did that put something up there dream big get it up there boom yeah these are not small goals like being on Oprah it's
not a small goal totally and then we set even bigger ones you know we said we'd be on the Ellen DeGeneres show we actually tried for probably 15 years to make it happen yes and we didn't spend a ton of money trying or anything like that but we tried different pitches and angles and in her last season we didn't just make it happen once we did it twice yeah so and what I love is I had nothing to do with it oh the only thing I did was planted a seed it was my idea to
say can you imagine being on Ellen I mean Oprah was retiring and we needed another Big Show yes and uh this woman uh Nadine in her office during the pandemic one day she read the painted picture an old one that said we'd be on the Ellen Degeneres Show and it didn't happen she was like I'm gonna pick that back up and try and she pitched several times and again during the pandemic when she had a little more time at home to figure some of these things out the producer on the other end when she pitched
goes funny you just sent me an email I just had a 1-800 got junk truck leave my house they were amazing so these little ideas require teamwork yes they require time if our truck didn't do a great job of that producer's home yeah it wouldn't have gotten the conversation going where this woman Gina at Ellen's like oh my gosh maybe there's something here listen out there at least another yeah and that's why you know when I say it took eight years to get to a million in Revenue that feels very slow but I needed that
time I needed that time to figure out the business model to figure out my story to figure out what would work and what won't and start to build out this franchise model yes yes I'll have philosopher Brian first of all
