198: Cameron Herold — Execution During a Crisis.

In the middle of uncertainty, change and chaos, the basics and routines still matter. Maybe more than ever. Great execution will get you through a period of stress and change. We talk with author, entrepreneur and founder of the COO Alliance, Cameron Herold on how to execute well in this time. Hi, I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the show.

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This episode is one in a series of five episodes on the five big moves that leaders need to make right now in order to navigate a major crisis like the one we are facing today. You'll find this series and 200 other episodes on leadership and scaling up at our website scalingcoach.com you'll also find downloads of all the tools we talk about and you can even get a free copy of the international best selling business book Scaling up right there@scalingcoach.com Listen in now as we talk to Cameron Herald. All right, I'm joined now by Cameron Herold. So Cameron is an all around badass in the world of coaching. He's an accomplished entrepreneur. He helped grow the well known one, 800, got junk that through a jillion dollars before he left and he's become a best selling author, international speaker. He's also a lovely human being, surprisingly enough. And he's currently in Scottsdale, right?

Yeah, I am. Hey, Bill. Hey.

So I just. Cameron is brilliant. He today heads and leads like your. It feels like your main thing, or at least a huge thing is he leads this organization for second in command, the COO alliance. So I wanted Cameron to come on and talk with us a little bit about execution in a crisis or a critical time.

Yeah, it's actually really interesting because we just had our February CO alliance event two weeks ago and I was talking to the group in the event I went personally into cash end of January, publicly, January 29, said I was going 30% into cash and I would be 50% in cash by February 28, which I did both. And then so we were talking at the CEO alliance event and I said, Look, I've just moved 50% in cash. You know, I've been talking to my coaching clients for the last 12 months telling them to get prepared for a downturn. I said we're kind of capitulating and strategy is really having discussions around the what ifs before you need to have them so that when the shit hits the fan, you know exactly what to do. You don't start panicking. And it was interesting because we were talking about it and then, you know, a week later, all of a sudden the shit hits the fan and Everybody in the world's all panicky and I'm like, execute, execute, execute. So, you know, I went deep today on eight other stocks I plan to buy in again in two more months. I bought more Bitcoin, I bought more Ethereum. And everybody's like, oh my God, sell. And I'm like, bring it in. I will buy some stuff up. And I think a big lesson for everybody right now. I just did three coaching calls, three 90 minute coaching calls with clients today, and all three of them, none of them were panicked because we've been talking about being prepared for this for the last 12 months. So I think a big lesson for everybody right now that won't really help them now, but it's to have time in your calendar every month to talk about strategic thinking, to talk about stuff at least 12 months out on the calendar so that when it happens, you're ready with a plan that you can execute on. Because to be reacting right now is very stressful. And it shows the team and your customers and even yourself that you weren't really prepared for this. And that's a shame.

Well, a certain amount of reaction is inevitable because we don't know how it shows up. Even if you have cash, you're like, wait, can I make that trip? Or there's a certain amount of that unknown right now that's going on.

Yeah. Now we're talking about is the medical issues as well.

Right.

So with COVID 19 or the coronavirus. Yeah, we're hitting. We're definitely having to react and to pivot and to be a little bit.

More community spread, family impacts. You might be thinking about loved ones and people with medical conditions and things like that as well. I did a similar cash move based on another market forecast over a year ago, and I went to 80% cash. And I'm feeling really good about it. And I told my wife, we talked a little bit about the guidelines of buying back in now, but it does give me a little bit of peace of mind about that nest egg.

Yeah. If we talk about how we're dealing now with some of the changes coming at us, I think some of it is recognizing that and this is all dependent on the size of company we are. Right. So if I'm speaking, let's say to the 50 employee to 500 employee size company, which is, that's kind of the zone that I tend to play in. I try to set a mindset and a kind of a way of doing business that's always a little bit entrepreneurial, that has a little bit of that bob and weave culture. So that when we have to bob, nobody gets freaked out. When we have to weave, nobody gets freaked out. It's just part of what we have to do, that we have to bob and weave at times. So when we are bobbing and weaving, people see that as kind of part of the cultural norm. So. So some of it is going back to the core plan always. Right. What are the core goals that you're focusing on for the year? So I had two big curve balls thrown at me today. Two of the big events I was speaking at this month, traffic and conversion, and then war room. War room was next month in April, but both of them just canceled. So I'm like, okay, both canceled. Back to my plan. My plan is focusing on growing the CEO alliance, focusing on growing my coaching clients. So I bob and weave around that a little bit, right? Yeah. But rather than freaking out about it, I still go back to what's my three year vivid vision that I'm driving towards? What are my core goals that I'm driving on this year? What can I be executing on? What can I stay within my control? And then I also really always go back to a mindset that there's no problem that exists that a check can't solve. Right. You can really buy your way out of any problem. So when people are getting nervous or we're having to bob and weave a little bit, I tend to go back to what will grow revenue, what will grow gross margin, and driving on those things. So today when everybody's getting nervous, I'm thinking about marketing and sales.

Well, so these are your north stars, and we're talking as a couple of folks with good circumstances. But we both have clients and members and partners and stuff who are at all ends of it either like got loads of business or you probably even have a couple that are right on the ropes and worried about surviving. So I think that the thing that would probably be useful is this is where does consistency and follow through matter in a time like this? Besides the bobbing, the flexible stuff, what do we want to hold on to? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, you definitely want to hold on to your core values. You definitely want to hold on to your core purpose. You definitely want to hold onto your bhag. You definitely want to hold on to your vivid vision. You want to hold on to your meeting rhythms. You want to hold on to some of the ways that you make decisions. You know, those things are all important. Right. You don't want to just throw their meeting rhythms out. You have to do that. You have to do your day to day. You've got to have your daily huddles. Like there's things that.

So that's a really good way pause there because people will go, I can't have a meeting right now because I've got this emergency. I'm like, what's the meeting is about?

Yeah, they need, they need the stability that we've got our shit together and we're not panicky. Right. So yeah, it's business.

No, we're having a meeting because you have that. So whatever the topic of the day is the topic of the meeting.

Right. And but we're going to, we're going to do it with a focus towards our goals, towards our plan, towards execution, towards removing obstacles. Right. And yeah, like, and that's kind of why I think I'm so common all this time is I always expect problems to happen. I mean, problems have been happening. Maybe I'm a little older. I'm 54. So I've been through the 2009, I was through the 2001. Hell, I remember the 1982 when interest rates at 18¾.

So you remember 89?

Yeah, like 87.

Yeah.

1991, I was like, screw it, I'm out of here. I just left, left North America, went traveling for a year in 1990. So I've been around enough of them now to kind of go, whatever, we're going to get through it. It's going to be fine. There's a panic. But when you go back to the plan and when you go back to the execution and when you go back to the meeting rhythms, it gives everybody confidence. Like my team isn't, isn't panicking at all because I'm not panicking. You know, we did our team meeting on Monday and everything was good. We did our midweek meeting today or yesterday and it was good. Chatting with people on Slack, everything seems to be fine. And you know, even when these two events canceled, I sent a note to my ea. I'm like, oh, two events canceled. Please leave the two days free so I can have some free time. Which is probably the last thing she expected me to say. But I'm like, hell, I'll just take two days off now.

Yeah, sometimes it's really great. Like go do some riding or navel gazing or something on those days.

Go ski or go go mountain biking or go play golf or go hike, go do yoga. Like sometimes, sometimes the best thing we can do in crisis is to disconnect and reconnect with ourselves, you know, and that's something that's important is showing up as that balanced leader as well. Right.

So we're going to keep our meetings, our huddles, our weekly meetings, things like that, even our quarterlies. But, but now we have people who might be afraid to travel, who can't make it, who are quarantined or self quarantining. How do we modify our habits and routines in this time?

Well, yeah, I mean you can obviously clearly leverage things like video conferencing and Slack. So you can leverage doing speaking over videos. You can meet with your clients and teams over videos. You can meet with your customers over video. I've been a big proponent of back when I used to use Skype, prior to Zoom, I was telling clients probably 2007 that you know, every interaction with a customer or remote employee should be done over video because you can build a relationship with them. So now it's a great excuse to hop on video calls with people and just connect with them. Right. But again, I think if we take a mindset back towards grow revenue and grow gross margin and we keep that as our North Star, as you call it, or our focus right now, it gives us a reason for waking up and focusing in the morning too, instead of all the panic. The other thing is, and I learned this from Tim Ferriss years ago when my TEDx talk came out 10 years ago, he said, don't read any of the comments, don't read the positive reviews, don't read the negative reviews because anybody leaving a review has too much free time on their hands. I kind of think a little bit of that with social media right now is it's a great time to disconnect from social media and turn it off so that you can stay focused on what really matters. And this may sound callous, but somebody said 1,000 people have died in Italy of the coronavirus. I don't know if that is the number, but let's say it's a thousand people are died or a thousand people have it, whatever it is. I'm like, okay, well there's 60, 60,799,000 who haven't. Like, let's have a little bit of context.

Yeah.

What, you know, we need a, like, you know, well, 3,000 people have died in China. Okay. But 1.8 billion have not.

Right.

And we need to have a little bit of perspective in all of this madness to just go, yes, it's serious, yes, it's important. But you know, there's just, there's always A crisis. And then I wrote a book called Free PR to teach people how to play with the press and how to leverage social media to put the press out on social media and drive traffic towards it. A lot of this hype is being pushed at us right now too. Yeah, right.

So that's awesome and clear. What about the goals and where and when they should change? You talk about keeping the behead, keeping the values, but it seems like some flexibility in the near term is maybe well advised. What are your thoughts on that?

I think it's potentially right in some cases. Like I did three calls with clients today and all three of them are doing quite well. They're all killing it. One of my clients is having his best month ever because he's in the nutritional space, so he's like selling supplements at his yin yang. So, yeah, I think in some cases goals have to change. In some cases, you may have to completely pivot. Like back in 2008 with the mortgage crisis, if you were in the mortgage business or the housing business, you needed to get into a different business. Right. But in other cases, I remember talking to a guy back when the mortgage crisis was happening and everyone was panicking and he was in the restaurant space. I said, maybe you just need to stop reading the newspaper and go tell people how great your food is for a week. And if you spend eight hours a day, five days a week telling people how amazing your food is to everybody who has offices nearby, you'll be really busy. So he's like, well, I got nothing else to do. I'll go do that. And sure enough, the Cactus Club is killing it. But I think there's a little bit of maybe I err towards driving on sales and driving on marketing before I will change the goals at any time.

Right?

And I learned this from a four year old kid. One day we were climbing Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale and he was climbing with his dad, who's an EO member, and we were getting close to the top of Camelback and this kid was struggling, man. He's four years old. And his dad, Josh, his dad Josh said, you know, do you want to quit? And his dad, he looked at his dad, he said, dad, the Cubs didn't quit. We can't either. And I'm like, what's that? He's four. He's four, but he's from Chicago. I'm like, hey, man, like, I think it's, it's too easy at times to change the goal instead of saying, let's dig deep.

Is there some Other way. Let's see.

Yeah, yeah. Like, what if we could hit it? Right. So what I like doing is I have a model called Overcoming Obstacles where I say to the team, okay, we're not going to change the goal. We're actually going to hit the goal by 5% bigger. Give me the 10 reasons why that is insane. 10 reasons why that can't happen. So we get all the reasons why it can't happen, and then we come up to reason number one, and we come up with two ways to counter it, and then we go to reason number two, and we come to it. So, yeah, before I change the goal, I try to go through brick walls to make sure we can hit it first. And then if and only if it's actually really impossible. Sure. Then maybe you change the goal. And one example could be, hey, you know, your business is, you know, you're running south by Southwest as a company and now you have to cancel it. Yeah, clearly you got to change the goal.

Right.

But I think that's very few and far between. I think for most companies, they're using it as an excuse.

Well, I had a client call me, among many this week and say, we have to stop our work. I'm in survival mode. I'm not in growth mode. I can't pay you anymore. I said, okay, first of all, no, you don't get to cancel me. And two, I'm happy to credit all my work with you. I'll work for free. I'll credit out the invoices, and if we get on the other side of it and you have a massive rebound, you can send me a nice check.

Yep.

But don't stress. And if something happens, then. Then we're good. And I'll do what I can for you, but we. I'll work with you more now.

And because you're coaching somebody when they need it the most. Right.

It's terrible, terrible, terrible. So. And I said, and don't call the rest of your suppliers and make that same request, stop that now. Instead, call them and say, this is not right. This is not fair. This is not anything but I need your services now or your goods or whatever, and I can't pay you, or I need a massive discount and start making unreasonable requests of people and. And ask for their support and promise your loyalty and enduring thing and tell them you intend to fight and survive. And. And a day later, I get a text from him, said, I just got 50% off all our rents.

Right.

That's like, right on, dude. That's what I'M talking about, right? Don't go down in.

When you watch any of these movies that have been done about the great sports teams that came back from losing or the woman who's running on the track and she falls and seven people pass her and then she beats everybody there is story after story. Or read the book Endurance, about Ernest Shackleton, for God's sakes, before you go.

Oh, that's a great one.

I would almost make any CEO that wants to change their goal, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. Lock yourself in a house for two days, read the book Endurance and then come back to me about your goals, you know?

You know, so I'd already read that book in years ago and in 2008, early 2009, when my business last, business on the ropes. I had a coach at the time and he's like, okay, he's like, so you get it, but it's not fresh. He said, go read this other book. What is the what? And this is a book about one of the Sudanese lost Boys. It's really, really well written. And all the crazy shit they went through, uh, you know, they're driven from their communities and killed and, you know, all that kind of stuff. Things burned and. And you read all this stuff and he's like, okay, what'd you get? I'm like, okay, my problems are minor by comparison. I have a business that's on the ropes, an economy that's on falter, but nobody's trying to shoot me or eat me.

Yeah, I think, I think that's what a lot of people need right now in this time of uncertainty, is a little bit of just calm the fuck down. Let's get some perspective. This is a first world problem. 99.9% of the people aren't sick. Doesn't take away from there's a problem. But let's calm down, let's get focused on our goals, let's reconnect with our team, let's cut some of our waste. Let's focus on sales and marketing. And if you get everybody focused on sales, you're gonna be fine for the 99% of us.

Well, and then there will be opportunities. I was talking to another company and I'm like, okay, your sector is gonna be. But if you could just survive this. And they did have a war chest. They had a little bit of fortress balance sheet. So when the rest of your industry craters, go think about who do you want to buy out? People will be grateful for you to buy them out. And there will be phenomenal Opportunities next. And you have the cash to do it.

Cash is king in a recessionary market. I think it was chapter 11 of my first book, Double Double. I talked about how to make money when it's slow. And it's just some very simple to execute, tools to go out and actually. But what happens is most people panic. And I learned this when I used to downhill race. I ski race to the very elite level. And when you fall, racing downhill, you're going at a roughly 70 to 75 miles an hour. When you fall, 65 to 75 miles an hour. So they teach you that when you fall, you ragdoll, you relax everything so that when you fall, there's nothing that's really super stiff, because if it's stiff, you break it. It's really counterintuitive to not like, try to brace yourself. But anyway, I used to break shit all the time because I would stiffen up. Yeah.

So here we are. We're getting through things. We're keeping our meeting rhythms in place. We're keeping our eyes on the main. On the core stuff. We're adapting a little bit where we have to, but now we're surrounded by people who are freaking out. How do we engage our people and deal with their stress and panic?

I think it's kind of the same thing, is getting everyone to have a sense of perspective, practicing a little bit of gratefulness. Right. What are we grateful for right now? What's going well right now? What are all the things around us that are going well? Like, I've got a great team, I've got great revenue, I've got good customers. We just had 86% net promoter score at this last event. There's so many good things going well, but when you forget to examine that, you kind of lose perspective. And it is a little bit of that, you know, oh my God, look how bad it is. But really, I don't know, like, it's really not actually that bad. Like, Even in the 2009 downturn, I. A lot of companies did well in that. That industry. I mean, my investments from 2009 were up 108%. Yeah. You know, so I think it is about having some perspective, giving people some calm, having people, you know, practice gratefulness, having people cheer each other on for the core values, like, and see how. And giving them a plan to focus on. They need. In wartime, leaders need to lead and followers need to follow, and they want to follow. They need to have the confidence in their leader to follow them.

Awesome stuff. I think that's probably the big points that we should cover with folks. Keep it focused and on the simple things. I really appreciate you coming on the show. If you want to know more about Cameron and his organization for second in command, cooalliance.com right it is.

Thanks Bill.

Thank you so much for coming on.

Be well.

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