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Their first round of funding for Zip2, they wanted to raise 600,000. Kimball called me that night after talking to the venture capital firm. He's like, what did you tell them? I'm like, did I screw up? He goes, no. They gave us 3 million bucks and we only asked for 600. And that was the start.

You got to be all in if you want to do something special. I feel like you have. There's other things in life that you need to make sure that you take care of. But I think being focused on accomplishing what it is that you're setting out to do is super powerful.

So many startup early stage entrepreneurs fail or disillusioned is that they think being an entrepreneur is about lying on the beach with your laptop, drinking your whatevers and going to the gym two times. Like, no, that's what happens after.

Good day and welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Bob Govreau. It is great to have you here today. I've got a very special guest here that I'm sure is going to give some incredible insights that will be transformational from for many entrepreneurs on their journey from scaling from maybe a solopreneur up to building a really successful business. As someone who's done it multiple times in his career, before we get started, I just wanna remind you that the Wealthy Entrepreneur Podcast is the place where we dissect the elements that contribute to entrepreneurial success, from mindset and leadership to profits and revenue. My special guest today is is Cameron Herald and if you haven't heard of Cameron before, he is a very, very well respected speaker internationally. He's an author, very successful entrepreneur and I want to maybe just give a brief intro of Cameron before he jumps in, but I know he's going to share his story today. He's going to share a bunch of his experiences in helping grow and scale entrepreneurial organizations as well as some of the coaching he's currently doing, the speaking he's currently doing, and some of the world class people that he has impacted and coached along the way. So Cameron Herald, he's the mastermind behind the exponential growth of hundreds of companies. As the founder of the COO alliance and the Invest in your leaders course. Cameron is a dynamic consultant who has coached some of the biggest names in business including Sprint Telecom and a monarchy in the Middle East. Known as the CEO Whisperer, Cameron has a reputation for guiding his clients to double their profits and revenue in just three years or less. He's also a top rated international speaker. As I mentioned, he's been paid to speak in 26 countries on seven continents, including Antarctica in 2022. He's also the top rated lecturer at EO and MIT's entrepreneurial master's program and a powerful and effective speaker at CEO and CEO leadership events worldwide. He's got a podcast called the Second in Command, a list of books that we're going to share with you. And I'm so thrilled that we have the wonderful, experienced and incredible Cameron Harold joining us today. Welcome to the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. All right guys, so I am so, so grateful and you guys are lucky that we're in the presence of Cameron Herald today. What a super successful person in the entrepreneurship space who really knows the insides and outs of of building a business, being an entrepreneur. And I'm super grateful for him to be here today. Cameron, welcome. And I would love for you to just start sharing, you know, how you got started and a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey.

Sure, sounds good. Yeah. I was, I grew up in Northern Ontario in Canada. I was groomed as an entrepreneur. My dad ran his own company and then both sets of grandparents were also entrepreneurs and ran their own businesses. So I really grew up in an environment where we were groomed to be leaders, we were groomed to be running our own businesses. And, and we were also told at a very young age that having a job was a bad idea because you were trading time for money. And about entrepreneurship was about having the free time to do what you wanted, when you wanted and wherever you wanted and then money would follow. So in kind of growing up that way, what a lot of people don't know is I actually started my own company when I was 20 years old. I had 12 full time employees when I was 20. I ran a business while I was in university for three years, graduated from university, had already paid off all my own school and bought a house the year that I graduated. And then I started working at the head office of a group called College Pro Painters which went on to become the largest residential house painting company in the world. I was in the top 30 people in that organization and every year we had to go out and recruit, hire and train 800 franchisees and then in one month train them to hire 8,000 students. So I got my real world MBA in terms of growing companies and by 1993 I'd already coached 120 entrepreneurs. So I'd been coaching businesses before business coaching really even started. In fact, Kimball Musk was a franchisee that I hired, trained and coached. That's Elon's younger brother and then Peter Rive, his Cousin who built SolarCity. I also hired him and trained him. So I was coaching entrepreneurs 30 years ago, built out college pro painters, opened up the west coast United States for them. Hired 220 people on my own in the first 12 months left there. And I was a co founder of a chain of auto body collision repair shops. We built that up to be the largest collision repair chain in the world. It's now called Gerber Auto Collision in the United States, Boyd Auto Body in Canada. It's about a $2 billion company publicly traded left there. And I was hired as the president of a private currency company. We built and sold that company to U.S. public business. That was kind of what bitcoin is doing. But we did it 26 years ago. We had 30,000 companies using our digital currency instead of the US dollar. So I did that and then I joined my best friend Brian as employee number 14 as he was changing over from the rubbish boys to call it 1, 800 got junk. And I became his COO and helped him scale that business. And we went from 2 million to 106 million in six years. So everyone talks about that 1-800-got junk story. But that was my fifth business. And then leaving there, I left there 18 years ago now, which is crazy. Since then I've been paid to speak on every continent. I've been paid to speak in Antarctica, 29 countries. I've been paid to do speaking events. I've written six books. I have my seventh coming out next month. And I'm a dad, father of two. And my wife and I sold everything four years ago to be nomads. So we've been traveling the world. That's a bit of a helicopter tour.

I love it. Well, you know what, it's interesting because I know I've definitely been connected in your universe and watching everything that's been happening over the last few years. So it's been fun to watch you travel and sort of give highlights along that journey as well. Because for a lot of people, they're looking for that freedom in their life to be able to operate a business, find a certain level of success, but to be able to go travel and live life on their own terms. So super inspiring. But I had no idea about the, you know, the foundation of all those businesses that you started. That's pretty incredible.

Yeah, most, most people talk about the one in kindergarten junk story. But what they don't realize is it takes a long time to get to the night before you're an Overnight success, right, Brian. Brian and I had been in an entrepreneur's organization forum group for five years where he watched me build two other companies. And then I was watching him build out the starting point of 1, 800, got junk. He was also my best man at my wedding before I started to work for him. So we had a bit of an unfair advantage there. But, yeah, that was the fifth company that I built. The others have also been very, very successful and grow into very large, large businesses.

Well, that's. That's incredible. And once again, I had no idea. And Elon Musk's brother, did you hire him in Canada?

Yeah. So Kimball. Kimball and Elon both went to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and Elon had moved down to California or so I was actually in Pennsylvania. And then I hired Kimball to be a franchisee in Toronto, Canada. His cousin Peter Rive was also a franchisee that I hired, trained them both. I taught them how to hire people, how to run time management, production, marketing, sales operations, paint houses, helped them build their own businesses. And then I coached them every day, every week over the course of the entire summer. And then Kimble moved down to California, and I was a reference for Kimball and Elon in their very first round of funding for Zip2. In fact, college Pro Painters is mentioned in Walter Isaacson's book about Elon Musk because they backed the business zip too, based on Kimball's operational experience. Elon had an idea, but they backed the business because Kimball had run a business. Elon hadn't done anything yet. So that was. Yeah, it was a reference for them. Their very first round of funding for Zip2. They wanted to raise 600,000. Kimball called me that night after talking to the venture capital firm. He's like, what did you tell them? I'm like, did I screw up? He goes, no, they gave us 3 million bucks and we only asked for 600. And that was the start. So, yeah, I've known them for a long time. I've met. I Knew Elon in 1995 well.

And even your foundation with College Pro Painters, as far as the coaching industry goes, I would say greater than any other organization. I've seen college pro people come out of there with the systemized knowledge of how to grow coach support because it's like this condensed seasonal business, right?

Yeah. We only had 17 weeks to run our company, so we couldn't screw up. So we became operationally world class at the end. Recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding and leadership development of people. And then probably world class around priority Management, time management, scheduling, and then pretty damn strong around sales, marketing and you know, and all the people side. But yeah, we, we became very, very strong. You know, imagine having to take 800 people and train them how to run a company in four months and then we would do $64 million in house painting in four months, and then we would close down and 60 people would go out and do it again. I was in the top 30 people hiring 8,800 people every year for four years. You become pretty darn strong at that stuff. And that's why I say to this day, College Pro was my real world mba.

Yeah, I know. I was just going to say, you know, the people that I see come out of College Pro are just a step ahead of everybody.

Right.

They just, they seem to understand the business world, whether it's even they've been one of the 8,000 people recruited and trained or whether they've been doing the recruitment. You just see the skill set that comes out of that organization. So you've left your footprint everywhere.

Thank you. Yeah. It's interesting, when we were back in 2003 when we were building one, 800 got junk. We were being interviewed by a guy named Justin Martin. He was one of the journalists for Fortune magazine. And Justin was really, really enamored about the whole College Pro experience and background because that was how I helped scale. Clearly, 1, 800 got junk. In fact, our biggest franchisee at 1, 800, got junk. I walked into the college pro painter's office in 98 and told him to quit working at College Pro and go join Brian. Might have been 99, but Paul Guy quit his job, went and worked for Brian and then became the first franchisee, opened up Toronto and now also owns Manhattan and all of Australia. So he's probably a $70 million company today, you know, making probably $20 million in EBITDA. So yeah, college Pro has left its fingerprints all over there. There's a whole bunch of very senior execs inside of College Pro or inside of Got Junk that are former College Pro people too.

Okay, that's. I. And I didn't necessarily know that connection. But yeah, every. Everywhere I go, it seems like leading business coaches, you know, successful sales trainers have all had their hands in College Pro at some point in time, which.

Is another good organization that trained a lot of people was Cutco, right? Vector Marketing and Cutco, there's some. Really. My co author of the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, Hal Elrod was out of Cutco. Brad Wymart was Cutco, John Rulin from diplogy was Cutco. I could name a whole bunch. Justin, Donald, John, Roman, all the former Cutco people. But they really learned about relationships, referral based sales and marketing. I think College Pro really taught the.

Whole gamut of running a company, systems, recruitment, leadership. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. So let's talk a little bit about 1, 800 got junk because I have heard, you know, I've talked to, I've heard Brian speak and share his side. I've heard you share your story and it's amazing. It's the same story. Go figure. But tell me maybe a little bit. I know you had built some businesses before, but what specifically were you challenged with in 1, 800 got junk out of the first couple years and getting it scaling well.

And what's really interesting around Brian and I, because we were best friends and we were scaling the company, him as CEO, me as coo. We have very true stories that are slightly different. But it's like if I asked your mom, how did you raise Bob? She'd have a very true story. If I asked her dad, he'd have a true. You know, it's like it's somewhere in between is the truth and neither one is lying. But they have a different lens on what really happened.

So in my case, my dad might be telling a little bit more of a fib than my mother.

I'll just put that usually. So my side of what we really did in the first month when I came into 1, 800 got junk, I identified the 10 core things that we needed to do to scale. And I gave Brian this laundry list of all the core impact high impact projects that needed to be done. He said, I don't know how to do them. I'm like, I do. I've done them before. All focus on those. You continue building the software and running finance. So I basically took over the operations of the business. Then I started to look at each area of the org chart. In fact, I remember Brian walking in one day and he's like, what are you doing? We can't hire all these people. I'm like, no, no. I'm just mapping out all the different roles and functions in the organization and I'm deciding how much percentage of my time I will spend on each role. Like how much, what percent will I spend on PR over the course of a week? How much time will I spend on marketing? How much time will I spend on sales ops? So I started to think about all the hats I had to play and how much time I wanted to allocate so that I wouldn't overinvest in a certain area and underinvest in others. Then I went out in about month one and I raised the prices across the company, including with all the franchisees. I raised the prices by 40%. No one was making money. Brian wasn't. The franchisees weren't. The guys in the trucks weren't. So by raising prices 40%, we started to position ourselves as the FedEx of junk removal or the Starbucks of junk removal. We could have the right branding, but everyone was able to at least make some money at it, and then we could hire the right people. Number two, as I said, I wanted to position ourselves as a little bit more than a business, a little bit less than a religion. I wanted to be in that zone of a cult, because culture is how we would attract more people into the organization, how we would create a better buzz. And then number three, we had no money for marketing. So I said, how can we actually drive to get free public relations, free press coverage about the brand, and then leverage that PR to scale? So those were the three real big flywheels that I pushed hard on over the course of the first two years.

And now, thinking that you guys were best friends, was there any challenge disassociating friendship and being business partners?

No. We were all in. We were. We were both monomaniacs and obsessed with building the brand. We were. It was our everything for both of us. I was a complete monomaniac. I remember going out for Valentine's Day one day and wearing the 1-800-got junk fleece jacket and being more worried about, could I put the jacket on the back of the chair in the restaurant so other people would see the logo. Then I was worried about sitting with my wife, who's now my ex wife, might be why. But we, yeah, we were very both maniacal. Monomaniacal about scaling the brand and building the brand. So everything we did together was about that. You know, whether we went for runs in the morning or hanging out at the tennis club or drinking and behaving badly, we were all in and. And obsessed.

That's one of our core values in our company for that exact reason. Right. It's, you gotta be all in if you want to do something special. I feel like you have to. Yes. You know, there's other things in life that you need to make sure that you take care of, but I think being focused on, you know, accomplishing what it is that you're setting out to do is super powerful. And you guys did that in A great way.

Well, it's why, it's why so many startup early stage entrepreneurs fail or disillusioned is they think being an entrepreneur is about lying on the beach with your laptop, drinking your whatevers and going to the gym two times. Like, no, that's what happens after. And so many people are not willing to put in the hard work that they get frustrated. They can't have this amazing life. We were grinding it out like we worked all the time, we were present all the time, we were game on all the time. And yes, we found ways to have a good life in between, but we were obsessed with, with building the brand. Our bhag, our big hairy, audacious goal was to build a globally admired brand, which meant everything we do, if you touched any area of the business, if you lifted up the hood, if you lifted up the sheets and looked under them, it was good. We actually won the number one call center in North America. We beat out all the call centers. We ranked as the number two company in Canada to work for. So we're a cultural phenom. Yeah, we were running tours. We had 30 to 35 business people coming to our office every Friday to go through a tour through the operations to see the back end, to see if it was true. We were on Oprah. We landed 5200 individual unique stories about our company in six years. So when you become this operationally obsessed business and culture obsessed business, that's what gets you to success. But I think so many entrepreneurs want that too soon.

Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, I made a post last week. Everyone always says, well, work smarter, not harder. But just imagine if you worked smart and hard early on as well and actually put in that effort because it does take an extreme level of commitment. Like, if you want to see this through, it's not easy. And I think a lot of people have this expectation of a lifestyle business, like you said, maybe too soon in their life to, to be able to create that right out of the gates. That's just not a reality. If you want to build something meaningful and powerful and successful, you can't do that sitting on a beach.

Correct. Now, I'll give you a couple of shortcuts to get to success faster or to get to a level that you can start enjoying some time faster. The first one is to say no more often than you say yes. It's about working on the critical few things versus the important many. Number two is to delegate faster and get the minimum wage work, the work that drains you of energy off your plate to a fractional or freelance people or an executive assistant so that you focus on the core things. And then number three is find the cheat sheets. Right? I was the dumb kid in school. I wasn't smart in university. Like every franchisee I hired's grades were better than mine were. But what I was able to do was find the shortcuts and the cheat sheets. So success leaves clues, right? Go find out what the best entrepreneurs are doing and just do what they're doing. It's the reason I launched my Invest in youn Leaders training. I have an online course called Invest in youn Leaders. It has the 12 core skills that I trained everyone in at College Pro that I trained everyone in at 1-800-got junk. It's those systems that I took from College Pro that allowed me to scale. It wasn't by trying to figure everything out. It's already been figured out. I just did what the smart people were already doing.

And I want to highlight that course because it might have been a year or so ago, we put some of our managers through that. And because, you know, it's not easy for people to see or to teach their managers how to be managers. Right. When you promote somebody, they don't necessarily have the skills to manage, but people just think, well, they've succeeded in their role, so they must just be able to become the superstar manager. And I looked, Cameron, for months to find a framework for a manager training program that I thought was appropriate to teach the skills that were necessary. And I actually came across yours. And I was like, this is it. I have not seen anything like this. We put our team through it and it was awesome. So thank you for that.

Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah, I think the Invest in your Leaders training matched with the EOS model. Right? Gino Wickman's entrepreneurial operating system. EOS is the systems that your company needs to get you to a level of success. And then invest in your leaders are the core skills that your leaders need to be able to grow people and run teams and run the business. Right. So it's those two things. And that was what College Pro is very, very good at. You know, when I was trained at 24 years old on situational leadership coaching, delegation, time management, interviewing, running successful meetings, classroom teaching, priority management time, like the stuff that I have to do every day as a leader and manager, and it astounds me that so many companies don't do that. We teach them about our business, we teach them about our software, we teach them about our industry. But we don't teach them how to actually lead others and lead themselves. And that, sadly, is why every new manager's answer to every problem tends to be hire more people, because they're really, really bad at getting results through the people that they have.

Yeah, I want to circle back to that in a minute, but want to jump back into your journey with 1-800-got-JUNK. So as it was a fast growing, like you guys took that baby fast.

Yeah, we were 2 million to 106 million in six years. We doubled the revenue every year six times in a row.

So. So tell me that, because I know there's a lot of people who that would. That would be what they aspire to do. Go from 2 million to 100 million is a pretty huge gap. What were some of those benchmarks that had different challenges along the way in that six years to get that huge accomplishment?

Okay, I'll talk, I'll answer. The kind of hurdles that we had or the struggles that we had. Second, but very first, the number one thing that we did to get from, you know, the 2 to 106 was we planned our work and worked our plan. So we decided what the goal was going to be. After the first year, we went from 2 to 6 million. We decided we wanted to get to 100 million five years later. And then we reverse engineered that and I put the plan in place to get us from 6 to 100 and we just executed against it. We got to 106. So when, when you put the plan in place and you execute against that plan and you're constantly. Instead of, instead of forecasting where you're going to be, decide where you want to be and figure out what you need to do to get there and eliminate everything else. So some of the hurdles along the way. Okay, when you go from 10 people to 30 people, because I joined as number 14, you're hiring your first management team. Most of them have never managed people before, or if they have, they don't really have the skills to really scale a company. So the first hurdle was teaching leadership and management skills to these people so they could do more. Number two was the ability to say no. Right. Because we really want people to be involved, to come in with their ideas. But there's an infinite number of ideas and there's a finite amount of people, time and energy to get that done. So the ability to say no in an artful way, to not hurt people and not take away their energy, or to say not now, or to show them that their idea was good, but there was another way that was easier or faster or shorter. That was a skill that we had to teach people. That's kind of in the 30 people. When you go from 30 to a hundred, you're starting to hire your outside leaders to come in and you're hiring experts that have built businesses before. But it creates political struggle struggles. Politics start coming into the organization. People, people that helped you get there now have to report to or get to report to somebody new. So it's an art on getting the current team to actually recruit and interview and hire their new boss. You go through the forming, storming, norming, performing model a bunch of times, and then it's making sure that you don't hire people that are so corporate that don't match you on the core values and culture. Yeah. In fact, when I left as COO, you know, I took the company to 3,000 employees, 330 cities, four countries. It was big. I was pulling my hair out. And a year later, Brian brought the former president of Starbucks USA in to replace me. And she looked around and said, what a cute little company now she was. She was infinitely skilled to get there, but she was too corporate, too bureaucratic, didn't believe in franchising, didn't believe in the entrepreneurial way. She ended up getting fired a year later because she was the wrong culture fit. Even though she had the right skills. You really learn that around that 100 to 300 zone that you have to hire the right culture fit and the proven skill set. You know, if I asked you right now, do you know how to win an Olympic medal?

I have to do something faster, stronger than everybody else.

Oh, wow. You know how to win an Olympic gold? Right. Do you know how to break a world record?

Yeah. Faster than somebody else? Yeah.

Yeah. Do you know how to do front crawl? Sure. Right. In swimming? Yeah. Now, have you broken world records? No. Have you won the gold medal? No. Have you competed in front crawl? No. Why would I hire someone that knows how to do it versus someone that has done it and competed? So what I tried to do at got junk was to hire people that had done it before, proven they'd done it before, and culturally, they vibrated like we vibrated. And that was the game changing. Difference where we struggled was we'd hire people who really we liked, hadn't done it. We took a bet on them. Maybe we didn't have enough money to invest in them. What I really learned through some of those struggles was, and I talked to a guy about this about a week ago, we were in Dubai I was speaking to 2,000 people at a big mindvalley event, talking to this guy who's 6 foot 8. I'm 6 4. So I'm talking to this big, huge dude, and I'm like, what was your sport in school? He goes, I played volleyball. Like, wow, do you still play? He goes, yeah, I played professional volleyball. I'm like, wow, okay, so you played beach volleyball, you and somebody else? He goes, yeah. I'm like, if I took you and your partner beach volleyball, and I had me and five of my friends, and I didn't even get to answer to finish the question. He goes, I would beat you all the time, every game, all the time. I'm like, okay, so two A players can destroy six C players. Let's say that you pay the A players $200,000 a year each. You got two times 200,000 is 400,000 payroll. Or I get six C players at 100,000 each. That's 600,000 in payroll. The two guys would destroy the six. Most companies hire more people at lower wages and try to get more what they end up adding complexity. That was a big lesson for us, was hire the true A players that have done it and culturally make, you know, line up for it. We almost really hurt the company one day where we hired a really good guy, very culturally strong. He was running our call center. Trying to take the call center from like 100 to. Or, sorry, from about 50 people to 150 people. And he needed to hire 30 people in six weeks because we were staffing up for summer. He was really struggling. And I said. And he was reporting to Brian at the time. And I said, brian, can I go chat with our head of the call center? He goes, sure. I said, I think he. I don't think he's done recruiting before. He goes, yeah, he was. He was running the call center at Business Objects. I'm like, something's off. So I went and asked him, and he goes, I said, when you had to hire people at Business Objects, what did you do? He said, I would call HR and say, I need six new bodies, and they would arrive the next day. I'm like, did you ever do any recruiting? Any interviewing, any hiring, any. No, I just took the people and I trained them. I'm like, so you have no idea what you're doing? He goes, I've never done this high culture. No skill at that specific thing. And then because the leader didn't have enough time to spend with him and didn't understand that area of the business, Brian we almost screwed the thing up. So I took the call center as an additional business area that summer and led that and helped restructure that. But that was an important lesson, was you hire people that have done what you need them to do and that you apply the proper layers of situational leadership and coaching and one on one coaching to help scale them. Right. Our job as a leader is to grow people.

So I have a question for you, but I want to share with you just a brief story of mine and then it's going to piggyback off this because you just talked about it. So I started my business in 2008, just myself, one other person. Up to this year we got it up to 110 people, professionals. We just made an acquisition. We're at 170ish people right now. So we've got a pretty large entrepreneurial CPA firm, the largest one actually in North America that focuses on working with entrepreneurs. Super great. And I heard you talk about this too, where you went from 2 million to 100 million and finding the right people who've been there, done that, but you didn't, you hadn't been there and done that and I hadn't done this before. So for people who are going, okay, how do we get ourselves into that? How do we do that?

Okay, but I had been there before. Let me explain. Yeah, so let me explain. College pro painters. At 20 years old, I was awarded a franchise to actually. So what had I done to be awarded a franchise? They looked for three things. They looked for leadership attainment and tenacity. Leadership was the ability to lead yourself or lead others. Well, by the time I was 20, I'd been the top cub, the top scout. I'd been on student council, I was on student government, I was on the athletic council, I coached a junior ski team, I had a newspaper route and I ran the pro shop at the golf club. Okay. I did a lot of leadership roles by the time I was 20. So I had leadership attainment. I was goal driven like there was no tomorrow. I played, I ran cross country, I ran track and field, I played on the high school volleyball team, I played on the tennis team, I competed at golf. I ski raced it for God, seven or eight years. So I was goal oriented all over the place by 20. And then tenacity, that dog like work ethic to get over, under, around any obstacle put in your path when you're racing and playing all these sports and you've got the work ethic. Right. I had my first business. I was seven. Like I did a Ted Talk or a TedX called Raising Kids to be Entrepreneurs. I had 14 different business ventures by the time I was 18. So what they were looking for was leadership attainment, tenacity check, check, check. They trained me on how to run a house painting business. Easy, right? They weren't looking for that. So yeah, I did have what they were looking for in those early days. And then because I became one of the top franchisees out of 380 franchisees that year, I was number two in Canada and about number eight in North America, they're like, wow, you're really fucking good at this. And I did it for three summers that showed that they could then move me into the general manager role, right? So they had that three year interview. So you can look for, you can hire people that are young and they've proven through what they do day to day that they have what you're looking for. You're not necessarily looking for someone who has done the actual physical work in your company, but that they've done the kind of layers that need to be done.

Now for the CEO or the founder who's going, okay, I want to take this from a 40 person company to a hundred person company. Is it surrounding yourself with the right people or is there a compliment of how do I as the CEO learn how to be the leader of that hundred million dollar company and how do I do that?

There's exactly, there's a couple. Like I was getting coached on being a good leader at 20, right? So hire a coach, right? Hire someone like me. Get into something like my group coaching or one on one coaching. Get some people to coach you so that you don't have to figure it out on your own. I hate the whole thing of like failure is good bullshit. I want somebody else to save me from failing by telling me, oh, you're going to fail. Oh shit, thank you. Like I don't need to fail to learn, right? I can learn from somebody else's failure. So get into some coaching and then get involved in some mastermind communities where you're around other entrepreneurs who will tell you their pain points, who will tell you the real shit. Because no one's on social media saying, oh, an employee stole from me or I almost went bankrupt or the bank wouldn't loan me money or I didn't have, right? So, so when you're in a mastermind community of other entrepreneurs, you learn that stuff. I've been in Strategic Coach for eight years, baby Bathwater five times. I'm going to My sixth five Mastermind Talks events, couple of Archangel Academy events, Entrepreneurs Organization for five years, Genius Network for eight years. Fuck. I've been in so many as an attendee, as a paying member. When you invest in your skills and your confidence in your community, that's what's going to get you there. Oh, the last part is I talk a lot about this now that often entrepreneurs will read a book. I'll read another book. I'll read another book. I call that just in case learning. You're reading a book just in case you can use that information at some point in the future. What I want you to do is take a look at your projects that you're working on for the next quarter, take a look at the projects you're working on for the next month, and read some books and listen to some podcasts related to what you are actually working on so that your learning becomes more just in time learning instead of just in case learning.

I love that. I love that. Okay, amazing. Let's move into after you left 101, 800 got junk. I don't know if it was immediate because it seems like you filled the gaps in your life with so many interesting things. So I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of information, but you did end up evolving and creating an organization called COO Alliance. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah. So the COO alliance is a global network of second in command. Some are the coo, some have the VP Ops title, some are General Manager. It doesn't really matter what their title is, as long as they're the second in command of the CEO. And we created a community for them to learn the skills to be a better COO, to gain the connections so they have other CEOs that they can learn from and to grow their confidence and, and shed that imposter syndrome that they all have. We also didn't realize that coos were as lonely as they are. They really feel caught in between the C level or the CEO and the rest of the team. So we created the global community for them. We've now have members from 17 countries. We have a two hour event online every month and then we just recently added an additional one hour AI expert call every month for the year. And we have two in person events a year. One that's held at MIT in Boston and one that's held in Vancouver, Canada. So that's the COO alliance. And then they have a closed private community on Circle where they can actually collaborate, ask questions, share information and resources. With each other. So it's really a mastermind community for them. It's not me so much teaching them as they are, learning from each other, with each other, and growing their confidence, connections, and competence. And I started that organization eight years ago. Yeah, it didn't start it right away. I started it because a few of the CEOs that I was coaching asked me if I could get some of their coos together to learn from each other. And I got 10 of them to come together in Scottsdale, Arizona. We spent three days together. They all paid seven grand to come for three days. And after three days, and all I did was have each of the 10 people presented something they were strong at. And then each of the 10 people presented a problem they were having, and the other people helped unstick the problem. And then at the end of three days, they all wanted to continue meeting. So that was the start of the CO Alliance.

That's amazing. And obviously, as a COO with great success and a CEO that's been involved in that too, what a great foundation for people to learn from someone who's been there and done that and the culture that's been created, I'm super grateful. My coo, Derek, is part of the COO alliance and he loves it. What a great community of people who are supportive of each other as well. That is amazing.

Yeah. A lot. A lot of our members find us because of my podcast. I have a podcast called the Second in Command podcast. We've interviewed 460 of the top COOs from around the world. Have we had Derek on the podcast yet?

You have not yet. And you should. He's a fantastic coo.

Okay, can we make that happen, please? Drop me a note. Get Derek on, because we've had. I've had. I've had the COO from Bumblebee, Shopify, Asana, ActiveCampaign, Kajabi, like, great brand. I've had some over in Europe, some in Saudi Arabia, some out of Dubai. I'd love to get Derek on as a guest for sure.

Absolutely. Yeah, we'll make that happen. I want to highlight for a minute, though, not only your entrepreneurial and COO success with pretty much everything you touch, seems to have some form of success with it. You've also written and given so much value to so many business communities around the world. A few books. The Second in Command, which is great. Meeting Suck, which is also a fantastic book. This is the one you referenced earlier. Free PR guys. If you're getting started and you're looking for a way to get access to resources without spending PR fees. Check that out. We've got Double, Double, which is another. Which is another fantastic book. And then my personal favorite, My personal favorite is Vivid Vision. So Cameron, you have definitely written a.

You're missing one. You're missing the miracle morning for entrepreneurs. We got to get you a copy of that one.

Yeah, well, I. And so I went back on your website today and I went, okay, I gotta just go through it. It had your top five listed. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna grab those from. My library is a little extensive. So I was looking for those five specific ones. But that's great. So tell me from your perspective, what is your favorite book that you've written and why?

Oh, gosh, I think it's probably the second in command only because it really is very strong. It's my ip. It's great ideas. There's not a lot of content out there at all about how to unleash the power of your coo. It truly is really, really good, world class content. Yes, Vivid Vision is absolutely changing companies globally. But it's just one part, right? It's one piece of the puzzle. I mean, Simon Sinek, who wrote the book Start with why, Simon used to be on our board of advisors. He used to sleep on my couch in Vancouver. So he was at my home one night for dinner back in 2004, I think it was four years or five years before he wrote the book Start with why. And he was asking me about my core purpose and he helped me identify that my core purpose was to help entrepreneurs make their visions come true. It's what I've done since 1989 when I started coaching franchisees, was helping entrepreneurs make their visions come true. So everything I do, my books, my podcast, my course, the CEO alliance, my coaching group coaching, it's all helping entrepreneurs make their visions come true. So kind of hard to say one book over the other, but.

But that's fair, I think. You know, all of them are powerful and I feel like they're not the same book. All of them have their own unique approach and insights that are given. So like your, your, I would say your collection is definitely hitting on different features of how to operate a business, how to find success, and maybe how to find the right people to support you along the way as well. Last question. I want to give you, Cameron, because I do feel like you've given so many great insights here and I'm super grateful to have you share your time with us. I know you're high in demand and busy and in the opposite side of the world right now. So I found out earlier. But if you were to give one piece of advice to an entrepreneur who was looking to go from a solopreneur to scaling their business, what would that piece of advice be?

It's that none of this actually matters. At the end of the day, we're all going to end up as a kebab. Right? We're going to end up as meat on a stick that we're supposed to enjoy the journey, have fun along the way and remember that this, for us and for our employees, is just what we're doing to make money. It should not be our entire reason for waking up every day. We should be spending time with our friends, our families, our hobbies, our loved ones, ourself. We should make sure that we're more working, we're really focused, and when we're not working, we really unplug and build a great life. But yeah, it's just to remember that, that this is not the most important thing for anyone. And as a leader, when you care more about your employees dreams and insecurities and their fears, you care more about them as people than anybody else does. They'll go through brick walls for you to build the company. Yeah, just have fun along the path because we're all just walking each other home.

I love that. Super powerful everybody, Cameron Herald. Check out his, his books for sure. I'm going to put all the links in here, but second in command podcast. Check that out. I'm a frequent listener as well. Always has some great insights, whether it's from himself or one of the guests who are leading businesses through transformations, challenges, and there's always great insights that are there. Cameron, where else can people find you?

Yeah, probably the easiest is go to Cameron Herald.com it's H E R O L D. So CameronHerald.com that has links to the book, my online course, SEO lines. It's all kind of laid out almost.

Like a link tree and with intention, I'm sure. Right. So guys, once again, we'll put all the links in here for Cameron. Cameron, thank you so much for your time and for your insights. They have been phenomenal, of course.

Thanks so much for having me, Bob. Appreciate it.

All right, guys, my name is Bob Gover. I'm the host of the Wealthy Entrepreneur podcast. We are here to empower entrepreneurs with the financial confidence to change the world. And if you found any of these insights valuable and you know somebody who you think would benefit from hearing from Cameron or any of the insights from here. Make sure you share this we're here to help support entrepreneurship globally in finding the right ideas and empowering that same confidence. Make sure you give us a follow. We release a podcast every single week. We have fantastic guests like Cameron Harold joining us. We're so excited to continue to bring you great content. I look forward to seeing you once again next week. Thank you everybody.