Cameron Herold Book 4: Episode 1109

Transcript

[0:00:35] HA: As the CEO, you may be used to making all the decisions but when it comes to scaling up and building the company of your dreams, you can’t do it alone. That’s where a COO comes in, someone who can help you build and grow the business you envisioned. My next guest is known for his work with 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, where he helped the company achieve significant increase in revenue, growing from two million to a hundred and six million just six years. As a mentor, coach and bestselling author, he has helped countless clients around the world achieving rapid growth and increase both their revenue and profit in a short period of time. Welcomed back to the Author Hour Podcast. I’m your host Hussein Al-Baiaty and my next guest is the CEO whisperer himself, Cameron Herold, here to talk about his newest book, The Second in Command: Unleash the Power of Your COO, let’s get into it. Welcome back everybody to the show, I’m super excited. Today, I got my man, Cameron Herold with me today, I’m a big fan, I got to say, thank you for your time today man, I appreciate you joining the show.

[0:01:46] CH: Hello Hussein, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[0:01:48] HA: Yeah, so this is your fourth book like you just said with Scribe but however, it’s your sixth overall. It’s like you like writing or something. I love it though because I‘ve gained so much knowledge from you. I have some funny stories about 1-800-GOT-JUNK? but we’ll get to that later. I really want to get our audience to know you a little bit but in doing so, I love kind of going back in time and getting people to talk about you know, their youth, where they grew up, the people that influenced them and kind of what got you into this entrepreneurship world into the place where you're at today.

[0:02:22] CH: So I need to cover that but I need to address one thing really quickly. No, I do not like writing books, I like having books written. That’s why I work with Scribe is they’ve made the process so simple for me but, and then we can talk about that later but no, the thought of sitting down and writing a book is really, really hard for me and you guys have made the process so simple. So thank you for that. Let’s go backwards. So I was groomed as an entrepreneur. When I was about seven years old, my dad was an entrepreneur, both sets of my grandparents on both sides of my family were entrepreneurs and I was groomed as were my brother and sister and I to all be entrepreneurs and for the last 25 years, my sister’s running her own business, my brother’s running his. For the last 15 years, run mine but I ran one, you know, even when II was in University, I was 21 years old, I had 12 full time employees in my own company. So I’ve really kind of had that entrepreneurial venture. In fact, I did a talk that was on the main TED website about raising kids as entrepreneurs. I think it was called, “Let’s Raise Kids to be Entrepreneurs. “ It’s had over a couple of million views. So I was groomed to be an entrepreneur, thought like an entrepreneur but got involved in an organization called College Pro Painters when I was in my early 20s and I was a franchisee and what’s really interesting about a franchisee is you are an entrepreneur inside of a system. So really, there is a system created for you and you get to execute it and in many ways, I was kind of like a COO. I had this system and I just had to make it work. I didn’t have to think of it and create it all on my own, I had to make it work and then I started to work full-time at the college pro head office in coaching franchisees. I coached a hundred and twenty entrepreneurs by the time I was 28 years old. One was Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, was a franchisee. I hired him, trained him and coached him for a year and then I also hired him and trained him and coached him for a year and then I also hired and trained and coached Peter Reeve, their cousin, who built Solar City. So both very kind of early stage entrepreneurial, you know, I was coaching before coaching was even a thing. I left there and I was partner in a chain of auto body collision repair shops. We built out a group of auto body shops to about 65 locations, took that company public. I left there and I was hired as the president of a private currency. So similar to what Bitcoin is doing, we did it 22 years ago and we had 30,000 companies buying and selling using our digital currency instead of the US dollar, sold that company but right as the stock market was about to crash, when the Nasdaq fell by 78%, we were selling right into that crash. So the 64-million-dollar valuation by the time we closed was worth about three million. So when you kind of lost everything, what do you do? You become a garbage man. So I joined my best friend Brian, he had been my best man at my wedding and I joined him to coach him and help him grow a small business. I was employee number 14. It was called, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and they had 12 franchises and really wanted to grow the business. I joined and became his chief operating officer and I took the company from 12 locations to 330, from two million to 106 million and from 14 employees to 3,100 employees n six and a half years, left there. It was about 16 years ago that I left there now and I started coaching CEOs of real companies all over the world. I’ve coached the CEO and the second in command at Sprint. I coached a monarchy in the Middle East. I coached a number of technology companies that have sold for well over a hundred million and then I started an organization about six years ago called The COO Alliance, which is the only network of its kind in the world for the second in command and considering you’re at Scribe, Zack Obront was the first COO at Scribe, was the founding member of The COO Alliance. JeVon McCormick came into one of our COO Alliance meetings because he was really the second in command to Zach and Tucker and then Britney, who is your COO was a COO Alliance member for years as well. So I’ve had three, three of your people have been in The COO Alliances members and then I started a podcast about four years ago called The Second in Command Podcast and I‘ve interviewed about 245 very top level COOs of companies of brands that we know the names of and then I’ve written six books, that’s about it. That’s me on the business.

[0:06:31] HA: That’s about it, yeah.

[0:06:34] CH: On the personal.

[0:06:35] HA: To say that you’ve been busy since seven years old is probably an understatement.

[0:06:39] CH: You know, my first business at seven years old as I did coat hanger arbitrage. So I collected coat hangers in the neighborhood and then I sold them to dry cleaners for two and a half cents a coat hanger because dry cleaners used to pay you a recycling fee for coat hangers. I remember phoning them all in and negotiating and I wanted three cents and they only wanted to pay me two cents and I said, “How about two and a half?” and the guy on the phone was like, “How old are you?” and I’m like, “I’m seven and I want more than two cents” and he goes, “Fine, I’ll give you two and a half cents.”

[0:07:09] HA: That is amazing. I love that. So who would you say really contributed to that mindset? I mean, was it your father, your mother, your aunt, your uncle, that really build some of these things? I mean, I know when your environment there’s a lot of people doing those kinds of things, you kind of absorb but who would you say the one that kind of really led that torch?

[0:07:29] CH: My dad for sure. My dad was very entrepreneurial, he had the idea of the week, you know, had a different business idea constantly and he for sure kind of inspired me. I think what my mom did really well was she didn’t cuddle me, right? Where so many parents today, when you know, Sally’s going to run a lemonade stand. “Oh, let’s buy at her stand and let’s stand there in the street and call people in.” My parents are like, “Fuck no, go do your lemonade stand,” and then they would sit inside the house and I’d come in and talk to them about what wasn’t going well and they’d coach me and I’d go back out and do it. So they stood back and let me fail, stood back and let me succeed, stood back and let me learn from experience and then they gave me ideas and coaching along the way and went back out and they also didn’t try to turn every little business venture into some big thing. You know, if it was a two-day business or a three-week business or a one-year business, that was okay. They didn’t try to turn it into something else but yeah, my dad was definitely the entrepreneurial side of things for sure.

[0:08:26] HA: Yeah, I love that because later on, you know, I talk about the emotions of connecting to these businesses, right? And especially as a franchisee, you learn that this is a process, a vehicle that you get to drive forward, right? And so I feel like at a young age, you were sort of observing and learning but not getting too emotionally attached to one thing or another and also learning to fail. Learning to fail forward, I think that’s huge and you're right. Like, you know, in today’s world, right? The helicopter mom and dad that they just try to do a little too much for that kid that could easily succeed without their inherent constant pushing and I really appreciate that you put that in there.

[0:09:02] CH: The child doesn’t learn enough if the parents aren’t letting them learn, right? If the parents are sitting there calling in the courage to come to the lemonade stand, the kid’s not learning how to do that. If the parents are negotiating with the neighbor, the kid’s not learning how to do that. The parents telling the neighbor, buy three, the kid’s not learning how to upsell. So because I was doing each, like I can tell you every business I ran, I can rattle off 16 different businesses by the time I was 18, I could tell you one or two very solid lessons that I learned from the experience of doing it that would have been removed had my parents been there and I think each of those lessons stay with me today in growing my people, right? When ‘m growing leaders inside of a company, I let them fail and then I talk to them afterwards and then I coach them and then I mentor them and I use situational leadership but if I’m always doing the work for them, “Oh, let me just do it for you” well, that doesn’t scale a company at all.

[0:09:57] HA: Right, that’s so powerful man, because you know, again, the idea of the interference, right? And what you can learn from failing at something, it’s so powerful but I really want to get into… your book was profound man. I mean, I’ve had the opportunity to kind of swim through it, I want to get through it this weekend but you know, this whole concept of the COO. Let’s be honest, there are probably 10 books a week we’re in on and for the leader, right? This is the first one that’s come across at least, my lap, about the COO, the person that genuinely takes charge of so many different elements of the business. What really inspired me — I know this has been your world — but what really inspired you to write this book specifically to COOs and how has that resonated with the work that you do?

[0:10:44] CH: Well, I guess there’s two sides to that. So the first part is, there just really isn’t enough content out there for the COO or for the CEO on how to hire and recruit and onboard and build the amazing relationship with their COO. So like you mentioned, there’s thousands of books written for the entrepreneur. So that was one, I really wanted to write a book for that niche because I’ve been the COO, I run the COO Alliance, I run the Second in Command Podcast. My entire world is the second in command, that was one. Secondly, I realized that if I could codify all these ideas and pull enough ideas from my COO Alliance members, pull ideas from the 245 Second in Command Podcast guest and I could their content together into a really great book, I could do them a service as well as giving them some kind of praise and some shoutouts, but also really kind of call the wisdom of the tribe and share that. So that was second and then I guess, third was clearly, it's going to become a marketing vehicle for the COO Alliance, right? The more people that learn about this concept and then say, “Wow, I should plug my COO into this network too.” There’s a hundred groups for entrepreneurs, right? Entrepreneurs can join YPO or Vistage or EO or the Genius Network or [inaudible0:11:56.7], [inaudible] Coach. All kinds of groups for entrepreneurs and there’s groups for marketers and engineers and lawyers but where do the COOs grow with each other? Where do they go to hang out with each other? So the book will be a marketing vehicle for that as well.

[0:12:10] HA: That’s so powerful. I love, you know, the clarity in your vision and what you write about and how you really get to fine tuning those things is so, it’s so exponential because right, this is your world, right? You want to build the basecamp for them, you want to build all these opportunities and resources for them and I think you’ve done that so beautifully and I love that you laid that out so well. So in your experience, what are the most big challenges that COOs face or maybe perhaps ones that you face during your work running those businesses and what would you say, like, the number one thing that your book tries to address as far as that challenge is concerned?

[0:12:48] CH: I think the big one is that there is no quick fix to find a COO. So I’ve had a lot of people in my business career ask me if I’d be the COO for their company. I’m like, “You don’t know anything about me, you don’t know anything about my real skills. You don’t know anything about the areas that I actually struggle in business. I don’t know anything about you. How could you possibly want me to be your COO yet?” They’re like, “Oh, well, you were a COO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?” “Yeah, but that company’s completely different” and it would almost be like saying, let’s say that I was a single guy. So I’m married, let’s say that I was single, I was looking for a wife and I was like, “Oh, you’ve been married before? Why don’t you be my wife?” Just because that person’s been a wife, doesn’t mean she’d be a good wife for me, right? So I think that’s what I really wanted to show entrepreneurs and CEOs is, how do you identify what you’re looking for? How do you identify what you're not looking for and how do you go and recruit that person to bring them into your business? Once you have them, how do you build that strong relationship, how do you build the trust? How do you build stronger communication with them so that you can build that really strong yin and yang relationship with that COO, right? And then at what point is the person the wrong fit, right? Because at some point, the organization may outgrow that person as well and you have to understand that natural transition to make as well and how to make that transition.

[0:14:12] HA: Yeah and so specifically for you, when did you decide, you know, because obviously, as COO, you don’t necessarily own the company, right? But you’re definitely helping it grow and thrive and all these things. However, opportunities may come up where you know, you may be recruited to be a COO somewhere else, like in this topic, right? How do you know as a COO that your time here, perhaps based on the conditions and all these things, is done and your kind of on to something else, more challenging perhaps or more unique? Where did you find that moment of like, “Okay, I think I’m ready to transition or go deeper into coaching?”

[0:14:50] CH: My story’s a little different. The way I found out that it was the right time to go is my best friend who is the CEO and founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? told me it was time to go. We had taken the company under my role as COO. I took them from two million to a 106 million and he sat me down and he said that, “You are the wrong guy to take us to the billion. You are the right guy to take us from two to a hundred but the wrong guy to go to a hundred to a billion.” I was like, “You’re right” and we both broke down crying and recognized it was time. I should have left the company six months to nine months before. I was too big at that point, you know, we had 3,100 employees. We had 330 locations, we were operating in four countries, we had 13 indoor related businesses. We had four countries that we are operating in, we had 240 people at the head office, I was running seven business areas. It was just big and that was too big for me. When they replaced me, they brought the former president of Starbucks US in as my replacement, she walked in and went, “What a cute little company” right? So I knew it was the wrong thing and I probably should have left six months earlier. The way you know it’s the wrong is if you’re not having fun, if your skill sets are being so challenged that you can’t scale. Typically, a C-level person can only go through two or three doubles in the size of the company before they probably can’t continue to run it. I did six. I doubled the size of the company six times in a row. So when you go from two million to four, from four to eight, from eight to 16, you’re probably at your peak now. It is probably a different style of organization at that point unless you can really continue to invest in your own skills and grow your own skillsets. I was fortunate that I have a lot of strong leadership skills and could scale it but I was the fifth of five leadership team members in a row to be replaced. So I was the last of the five, of the original five to get replaced on that six year path.

[0:16:44] HA: What a rapid growth. So I mean and it is so good to have that awareness as well. Like adopting that awareness to be like, “You know, I’m capped out of my skill level” you know, to go invest in myself, to go get that training, whatever it is. To join, obviously what you created, you know, a place where I can grow as a COO so I can eventually may perhaps grow into taking a company from a 100 million to a billion at some point. But that’s so powerful again to know what you are strong at, what you’re weak at and to perhaps look for something else to challenge yourself and so what happened after 1-800-GOT-JUNK? where did you go onto?

[0:17:20] CH: Well, it’s funny because Brian, the CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? is a two-time Scribe author as well. He wrote WTF?!, which is Willing to Fail and the BYOB, which is I think build your own business. So Brian, you know, everybody should read, WTF?!, willing to fail. Once I left 1-800-GOT-JUNK? I sat down and I did a series of journals and every day for about three months, I spent 20 minutes every morning and I just journaled. You know, I did mind maps and lifelines and lists and I still got the actual notebook that I did it all in, where I just tried to examine what did I love about business and what was I good at and what did I suck at and what did I hate? In fact, a lot of my lessons from that journaling became chapter 17 of my first book. It was called, Letters to my Younger Self, called, Double Double, and it was that journaling exercise that I realized there were a few areas of business that I really loved to do that I got energy from doing and I was really, really good at. That was coaching entrepreneurs, it was doing speaking events. It was doing media interviews and networking. Those were things that I was good at, I love doing, I got energy from and then there is a bunch of other stuff that I might have been really good at but I didn’t get energized from. So I tried to build a business that allowed me to only work in the areas of my unique ability and just not work on the other stuff. So you know for 15 years, I haven’t had any deliverables with any of my clients. I don’t do work for clients, I tell them what to do and then I let them go do it. You know, the COO Alliance, I’m not even there teaching them all. I’m just rounding them all up and letting them teach each other.

[0:18:56] HA: Man, that’s so powerful to kind of have that moment in time where you can really sit with yourself, you know, self-examine. I’ll tell you a funny story, so 1-800-GOT-JUNK? I’m in Portland, Oregon and I started a t-shirt printing company in college and that grew. We grew to about 16, 17 employees at one point, which was amazing. However, I had my girlfriend at the time, wife, yeah, one of her friends had like a franchisee and he needed some t-shirts, whatever. So I got to print some of those t-shirts at one point and I was super stoked because it was kind of a big account. We did it I think twice but you know what’s interesting is it’s moments like that where some companies like that, I mean, locally right? Really trust in your work, trust in your product, trust in what you’re doing. I too love the media, the getting out there and getting my print shop in front of different organizations to be of service. So I just love this connectivity but at the end of the day, that taught me a lot. You know, the printing world is huge and by the time I sold it in 2020, I learned so much. So I was kind of in that phase in 2021 and even 2022 where I was doing a lot of self-examining and doing that journaling like crazy, just trying to figure out what I loved about building that business, what are the things I don’t want to do again, you know? Which led me to coaching because I love teaching as well and so I love this path and this moment in time where you get to really solidify what you want to do next and I feel like sometimes people don’t give themselves enough time to really, you know, just kind of recycle, rekindle those fires if you will, to be able to go deeper. Can you share any examples of successful. Obviously, you talked about Brian but what other people that you’ve worked with that you really help promote their work in a way that challenges them as CEOs to make those hard decisions? Can you give an example of something where people didn’t really want to listen to you but at the end of the day, made the right decision?

[0:20:57] CH: Well, there’s a lot of those. I mean…

[0:20:59] HA: Oh, I’m sure there is.

[0:21:00] CH: You know, well, Kimbal Musk. I used to coach Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. I was a reference for Elon and Kimbal in their very first round of funding for Zip2 in January of 1995. So I have a lot of stories I can go back to. Let me do a huge one for you, sitting with the CEO of Sprint. You know, the 82nd largest company in the United States, just he and I sitting in his boardroom talking about one of his core C-level employees and Marcelo saying that he, you know, wanted to fire this guy but he couldn’t. I’m like, “Why not?” and he goes, “Well, he’s worked for us for 20 plus years and he’s got the C-level title” and blah-blah. I’m like, “Last time I checked, you’ve got a CEO title and you said this person is toxic and no one likes him and you don’t like his results and he’s too corporate and bureaucratic and he’s not entrepreneurial.” And Marcelo put a red X through his name and then Marcelo said, “You know, when are employees no longer going to be the problem?” I laughed, I said, “They’re always the problem because we care about people.” The more that you care about people, it’s always the hardest part of your business. I said, “You are running the 82nd largest company in the United States. If people are a problem for you, they’re always a problem, right?” And then I go to a small, you know, small businesses where I’ve coached someone who had to fire their mom or fire their best friend or you know, there is all kinds of things. The hardest part with business is there really is no manual for all of the stuff that we have to do. You know, the franchisee, the original first franchisee for Portland committed suicide. We got a phone call that Phil Martin had shot himself, what the fuck do you do with that, right? I remember getting the phone call and I turned to Brian and he was on the phone talking to somebody and he was crying, he was talking to Phil’s wife and I was talking to Phil’s GM. What do you do with that, right? So business is hard and I think that’s where if you have the right second in command, if you have that right COO, you’re not lonely. You are not in that role all by yourself. I think what Tucker and Zach had when they started Scribe originally Book in the Box, was they had that two in a box model to divide and conquer and really build this thing, right? Where Tucker was like the spokesperson and the vision and Zach was like operations and execution and then they brought Britney in as their COO and then they hired JeVon to come in as really the CEO like you need to have some of those key people otherwise it’s a really, really hard path as an entrepreneur.

[0:23:19] HA: Yes, you’re a 100% right. I mean, from 2008 or ’09 all the way until 2020, there was definitely some darkness and some loneliness. I mean, you just feel lonely. It is hard to talk to your peer, who you know, may have a great career at some job or whatever but the entrepreneurial spirit is strong, however it is consistently challenged, right? Because it is wrapped in human emotion. I think the biggest learning thing for me was having someone in charge, you know, in operations, a person and I think for me because I haven’t dealt, there was a lot of – you know, I went to a refugee camp, I grew up in America, so it was a lot of distrust and just things that I hadn’t worked through, so I didn’t know how to hire someone, which actually brings me to my next question. What qualities do you think a person at COO level or at least one or two qualities that you feel like you have to possess this quality or this skill to be able to operate at this kind of level especially when it comes to emotions and human, you know, human interactivity? I mean, that’s obviously the hardest thing, right? When you get to that level of leadership.

[0:24:27] CH: Let me give you that kind of an additional part of the Portland story, was the Portland franchise later became purchased by Laurie Baggio and Laurie was on our executive team at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and he ran the division to sell franchises. So the fact that he was now a franchisee and got to sell franchises and lead that division was really powerful for us because he really understood it and I think that was something that helps super charge the company was how much he and his team then understood it. The couple core things that you need to be a good COO, so any other C-level has to be good at their domain expertise. The head of marketing, the CMO has to be great at marketing. The CTO has to be great at technology. The CRO has to be great at sales and like the CFO has to be good at finance. The COO has to be good at interpersonal skills, has to be really good at leadership development, has to be really good at everything the CEO sucks at, which is tough, right? Because in some cases, if you have a CEO that is very, very strong at IT and engineering, the COO has to be good at everything else. If you’ve got a CEO that is very strong at sales and marketing, you’re going to have a COO that might have to be strong at technology, right? So it’s a real weird animal that you are trying to recruit for, it is the person who is so strong at what the CEO is weak at and a relationship that becomes kind of, I will show you the cover of the book, like the Yin and Yang. It is the real Yin and Yang relationship that you are looking for, right? That true, trusted partner and that’s what super charge is.

[0:26:00] HA: The balance to create but that brings a lot of self-awareness to the table, right? So it’s like, you know, having those meetings, sitting down with potential people that you are going to work with as a COO, you know, being aware of what you’re great at, what you bring to the table I feel like is an exponential thing that could really help both sides of the Yin and Yang. So I got to ask you man, what did you enjoy the most? I know you say you want to put the writing on someone else but what did you enjoy the most about writing this book specifically in relation to the other ones you have written?

[0:26:33] CH: I think I liked it because I really was passionate about the actual content like I really cared about COOs. I really cared about the actual content itself because I ran the COO Alliance, right? So I had this group of people who I was very passionately engaged in and that was the core for me, that was what made the difference versus the other books were all generally about business but there was no group that I was emotional invested in, right? I have run The Second in Command Podcast, and I’ve had 245 podcast guests that are all second in commands. You know, I’ve got 200 members of the COO Alliance from 17 countries. It’s become a little bit of my world, so I think the pulling the content together for them and to help them, I was much more connected to than something that is very general.

[0:27:22] HA: That’s so powerful, man. So when one of your readers picks up this book and I’m sure many will and begin to read through it and eventually put it down, what do you hope they feel when they put it down, when they wrap it up? What do you hope they feel and walk away with?

[0:27:37] CH: I hope they feel a sense of understanding what it was or what it is that they are looking for. I hope they have a sense of understanding that there is a path to get there. You know, you said something about giving them basecamp. Well, I’ve been to basecamp at Everest and I cheated. I took the helicopter and I landed at basecamp and had champagne breakfast. There is an actual walk to basecamp. There is an actual path and route to get to basecamp. There is an actual path to going out and finding and onboarding, you know, recruiting and onboarding and building a relationship with the strong COO and you can’t quick start over that path. You can’t just hire the first one that you encounter. You can’t just say, “Oh, you’ve been a COO, come be mine.” I try to give people the system to actually do that so that they can have that success.

[0:28:26] HA: That’s amazing. Cameron, you are certainly a rock star, my friend and it has been a pleasure and an honor to have met you today. I was seriously looking forward to it because I felt like I had way too many questions for you at once and I was like, “Wait a minute, this isn’t going to be a coaching session, this is an interview,” but I just want to say congratulations on your book. I think we all love those books that are so unique but also directly speaking to us and for those many people out there right now, the COOs of the world and even CEOs who know they need to help their second in command, you are certainly that go-to person for that work. The book is called, The Second in Command: Unleash the Power of Your COO. Besides checking out the book, where can people find you Cameron?

[0:29:15] CH: All six of my books are available on Amazon, Audible and iTunes. I actually did the audio recording for The Second in Command book, so it is in my voice as well and then they can also check out The COO Alliance, go to thecooalliance.com and then lastly, definitely take a look at the Invest in Your Leaders course. It’s investinyourleaders.com.

[0:29:32] HA: Beautiful. Thanks again Cameron, I really appreciate your time today. It was an absolute honor.

[0:29:38] CH: Thanks Hussein. I appreciate it, it was fun.

[0:29:41] HA: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can find, The Second in Command: Unleash the Power of Your COO, right now on Amazon. For more Author Hour episodes, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thanks for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.