The War on Mediocre Business

Scott Monday
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  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

Real lessons from real businesses for operators in the $2M to $20M range. Hosted by Scott Monday, serial entrepreneur and creator of The Monday Method. scottmonday.substack.com

Episodes

  1. What Happened to Toys R Us? The Business Mistake That Ended an Empire | The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 3

    May 26

    What Happened to Toys R Us? The Business Mistake That Ended an Empire | The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 3

    Toys R Us once sold one in five toys in the United States. Then it was completely gone. Here's what actually killed them, and why the same mistake is happening in businesses right now. In this episode of Whatever Happened To, Scott Monday unpacks the rise and fall of the world's largest toy retailer. From Charles Lazarus's category-killer strategy in 1957 to the leveraged buyout that buried Toys R Us in $400 million in annual interest payments, the collapse has a lesson that goes far beyond debt and Amazon. The real culprit: the messy middle. Trying to win on price, quality, and experience, and ending up winning at none of them. If you're running a business in the $2M to $20M range, this one hits close to home. 📬 The Scott Monday Newsletter — business stories and operator tools, every Saturday: https://scottmonday.substack.com 0:00 - The Memory Hook 0:47 - Quick Intro 1:03 - The Rise of Toys R Us 3:11 - The Crack and the Fall 6:18 - The Operator's Take: The Messy Middle 8:40 - What This Means for Your Business This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scottmonday.substack.com

    9 min
  2. I Lost Nearly $500K on My Third Business. Here Are the 4 Lessons. | The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 2

    Apr 27

    I Lost Nearly $500K on My Third Business. Here Are the 4 Lessons. | The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 2

    In January 2023, I launched my third business with a color-coded, detailed proforma. By the end of 2024, I had lost nearly half a million dollars. This is the TBS story — and the four lessons I learned the hard way. I'm Scott Monday. I run two businesses in California's Central Valley. Trinity Builder Solutions (TBS) was my attempt to move into the commercial stone market after years of running kitchen & bath CRATE. It was a new industry, a new model, and a fresh start at 43 years old. It did not go the way I planned. 0:00 — Lost nearly $500K on my third business 0:22 — Who I am and what TBS is 0:44 — The TBS story: January 2023 1:06 — First gut punch: key team member resigns mid-2023 1:46 — Proforma off by 2x + COVID/interest rate headwinds 2:09 — End of 2023: $289K revenue, $239K loss 2:38 — 2024: lost even more — the decision to keep going 3:00 — Mid-2025: a hard call on a key employee 3:19 — End of 2025: things start to turn 3:42 — Lesson 1: Forecasting a new business is mostly fiction 4:00 — Lesson 2: External forces will happen — pivot quickly 4:17 — Lesson 3: Starting over at 43 is nothing like starting at 28 4:41 — The hunger gap: dumber but driven vs. smarter but comfortable 5:03 — Lesson 4: Relationships matter in B2B just as much as B2C 5:22 — How we changed our approach in mid-2024 5:40 — Where TBS stands today 5:58 — My question for you + CTA TBS is not a success story yet. But it's not a cautionary tale either. I'd do all of it again. The 39 months of having my face rubbed into the ground made me a better leader and a better business owner. If you've ever built something on assumptions that turned out to be completely wrong — I want to hear your story in the comments. Subscribe for a new episode every two weeks. Real lessons from real businesses, no fluff. I write about this every week in The Scott Monday Newsletter: https://scottmonday.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scottmonday.substack.com

    7 min
  3. MySpace Didn't Die, It Sold Its Soul (And ChatGPT Might Be Next) The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 1

    Apr 20

    MySpace Didn't Die, It Sold Its Soul (And ChatGPT Might Be Next) The War on Mediocre Business Ep. 1

    MySpace had 100 million users and more web traffic than Google. Then they made one decision that started a five-year collapse — and a decade later, ChatGPT might be making the same mistake. In this episode of Whatever Happened To, I break down how MySpace went from the most visited site on the internet to a $35 million fire sale — in five years. The short answer: they stopped doing what made them great and started chasing ad revenue instead. I'm Scott Monday. I run two businesses in California's Central Valley and I'm morbidly curious about what makes businesses succeed and fail — especially the ones we all grew up with. 0:00 — MySpace had more traffic than Google 0:23 — What this series is about 0:39 — My personal connection to MySpace 1:19 — How MySpace was built (2003 to 2004) 2:17 — 25 million users and Rupert Murdoch's $580M buyout 3:02 — News Corp sees "eyeball inventory" 3:26 — The $900M Google ad deal 3:46 — Why it was a trap 4:25 — Facebook rises while MySpace falls 5:52 — The core lesson: optimized for the contract, not the customer 6:11 — Is ChatGPT making the same mistake? 7:50 — What this means for your business 9:25 — The question every business owner needs to ask 10:05 — Subscribe and final thought The lesson isn't just about MySpace. It's about the small decisions you and I make every day that slowly erode the thing our customers love. MySpace wasn't run by idiots. They were run by smart people who made a series of bad decisions — each one looking reasonable in isolation. Don't make the same trade. Subscribe for a new episode every two weeks. No fluff, no motivation talk — just real lessons from real businesses you actually remember. I write about this stuff every week in The Scott Monday Newsletter: https://scottmonday.substack.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit scottmonday.substack.com

    11 min
  • 3 Episodes

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Real lessons from real businesses for operators in the $2M to $20M range. Hosted by Scott Monday, serial entrepreneur and creator of The Monday Method. scottmonday.substack.com

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