Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

$100 Million is the New $10 Million

10 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:21

In this short talk, Cameron Herold argues that the scale of business financial targets must be dramatically increased due to rapid market growth and a 30% decline in the purchasing power of the US and Canadian dollars over the past five years. He points out that a $1 trillion company emerged less than five years ago and now roughly twenty firms are valued at $3–$4 trillion, suggesting that what once qualified as a $1 million or $10 million revenue milestone should now be viewed as $10 million or $100 million respectively. He stresses that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity, but adds that both must be evaluated against current buying‑power realities. Consequently, entrepreneurs should reset their revenue and profit goals upward and avoid celebrating figures that were impressive a few years ago but have lost real‑world value.

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$100 million is the new $10 million and $10 million is the new $1 million. Remember that only less than 5 years ago we got our first $1 trillion company and now we have about 20 companies that are worth $3 or $4 trillion. And I remember when I was growing up, I was a little boy, maybe 40, 50 years ago, to be a billionaire was a big thing. And now Elon Musk will probably be the very first trillionaire in history when only the first company became a trillion-dollar company less than 5 years ago. So here's why this is important to understand in your business. And in your life. There's an old saying that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. The reality now, there's revenue, profit, but there's also the buying power of your money. In the last 5 years, the US and Canadian dollar have declined in purchasing power by 30%. So if you had $1 million last year, it takes you $1.3 or $1.4 million to buy the same thing, which means you need to be upping your revenue targets, upping your profit targets, and be thinking about your numbers very differently. If you used to focus on $1 million being a big thing, it's really now $10 million you need to focus on. If you need to focus on $10 or $20 million as being a big thing, you need to focus on $50 or $100 million as being a big thing. Don't celebrate old revenue numbers that used to be a big thing 5 years ago, 10 years ago, or 25 years ago, because the buying power of that revenue, the buying power of that profit, is very different from what it was when you thought that was a big goal and a big success story.