Cameron Herold breaks down four foundations of business growth: core values, core purpose, a 20-30 year BHAG, and a one-year plan. He used 1-800-GOT-JUNK to show how raising prices 50%, building a distinctive culture, and removing misaligned people accelerated the company's growth.
Questions this video answers
50% (raise prices by 50%).
About 150 employees at head office and about 200 franchisees.
A 20–30 year stretch (BHAG is a 20 or 30 year stretch).
1972 (Nike's BHAG in 1972 was to crush Adidas).
1997 (Google's BHAG was to organize the world's information).
Chapters
We wrote the vision, the vivid vision. Brian called it a painted picture. At the time, the idea was to polarize. So when you read it, 50% of the people was like, there's no way I would work there. Good, go work for government. But the other 50% of the people like, oh my gosh, I want in. Great. Come on and we'll interview you. The most important thing with the jigsaw puzzle is the picture on the front of the box, right? Imagine if I gave you a box with 5,000 pieces and they were all red. It would take you forever to build that puzzle. So the vivid vision is the picture on the front of the box. Culture starts with knowing that vision with all of your employees, your customers, your shareholders. Only recruiting employees that are excited about the vivid vision, pushing potential employees away that don't like the future of what you're building. That's where it starts. And then the four corners of your jigsaw puzzle, the four corners of your business are your core values, your bhag, your core purpose, and the one year plan to make your vivid vision come true. Three year plans are way too far out. Everything changes. The core values have to be so deeply ingrained in your organization that you're willing to fire people if they break them. You should only have a maximum of four or five core values. They should never be a single word. They should be a very short phrase that's easy to understand, that needs no explanation, no other bullet points. Core purpose. Simon Sinek, who popularized the whole start with why Simon was on our board of advisors four years before his first TED Talk. Simon helped me understand my core purpose, which is to help entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. Everything I do helps entrepreneurs. My CEO alliance, my second in command podcast, my books, it's all helping entrepreneurs make their dreams happen. If this was a government audience, I would have said no to be here because it's not following what my core purpose is. So you really have to know your core purpose as your second corner. The third is your bhag. Right? What's that? Jim Collins, Big, hairy, audacious goal. It's never measurable. It's not a million somethings or a billion, whatever is by definition. The BHAG is a 20 or 30 year stretch that aligns the organization that from the inside seems possible and from the outside seems impossible. So an example of a BHAG in 1972, Nike's BHAG was to crush Adidas. That was crazy. In the 50s, Boeing's behavior was to democratize air travel. Google's in 1997 was to organize the world's information. See, it's not a measurable march, but it's something you're always pushing towards. My bhag is to replace vision statements with vivid visions worldwide. It's like a 20 year, 30 year March. So that's your third corner and then the fourth is your plan or the one year plan to make it come true. Culture is when everything is really emerging from there. And then the sides of your jigsaw puzzle. The first side is when culture really hits the road. And that's your people systems and that's your recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, training and the leadership development of people and getting rid of the wrong people and having those really tight systems in your organization. Culture kind of comes out of that. The early, early days of 1-800-got junk. When I got there, Brian had a very clear vision of what he wanted the business to look like. The one thing he had was really, really strong vision. The second thing was he really gave a sh t about people, not their birthdays and when they're, you know, what their dog's name was. He actually freaking cared about them as a human. Like when they were struggling or what was happening at home. He spent an inordinate amount of time out for coffee and having lunch with people, giving a about them. And I noticed that, that those were probably the two kind of kernels of culture. When I came in, I said we had to do three things. The first was we had to raise our prices by 50% because no one was making money. He thought I was crazy, but I'm like, no one's, we're not making money. You're not making money. The guys in the trucks aren't making money. So we're raising our prices. 50% will be the FedEx or the Starbucks of junk removal. Secondly was we had to build something a little bit more than a business and a little bit less than a religion. We had to get in the zone of a cult so that we could attract people and attract customers and attract press. And the third flywheel was we were going to generate as much free publicity, free PR as we could because we had no marketing budget whatsoever. We wrote the vision, the vivid vision. Brian called it a painted picture. At the time, the idea was to polarize. So when you read it, 50% of the people was like, there's no way I would work there. Good, go work for government. But the other 50% of the people like, oh my gosh, I want in. Great, come on. And we'll interview you when you create a cult it's one person at a time. We would bring in these kind of cult like people with good energy regardless of if they were in it or marketing or a payroll clerk. They just had that special something and people wanted to be around that special something. And then one by one we pushed people out who didn't fit. Got rid of the toxic, we got rid of the cultural cancers. We got rid of the underperformers because government's always hiring anyway. They can go work there. We had every single employee when we were about 150 at our head office and about 200 franchisees had every single employee and all of our franchisees watch the Secret. We had our top franchisees watch the Secret a second time with us on a cruise. We brought John demartini and John Asaraf in to actually speak at our company. So so we, we understood quantum physics and quantum mechanics and how to stir the cult and we just kept stirring it.
