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

How a COO Grew 14 Employees to 3,000

5 Dec 2024 · 1 min

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Cameron Herold joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK as COO and scaled it from 14 employees to 3,000 in six years, growing revenue from $2 million to $106 million. He describes the COO role as staying behind the scenes to make the CEO iconic, like Sheryl Sandberg did for Mark Zuckerberg.

Questions this video answers

14 employees.

3,000 employees.

From $2 million to $106 million.

Six years.

Sheryl Sandberg (COO to Mark Zuckerberg).

Chapters

And then I joined my best friend Brian in the junk removal space, and he had 14 employees. And I came in to teach him how to scale up what became 1-800-got junk. You know, we took that from 14 people to 3,000 people and from 2 million to 106 million in six years. So I don't think I left college wanting to be a second in command. I think I somehow just tripped into that where I had that operational skill set and happened to know a few different founders that could use it. Most CEOs definitely sit in the shadows. Often it's because we're not looking for the limelight, but often it's because our job is to make the founder, the CEO, iconic, right? If you think of probably the best known coo, or of one of the CEO of one of the biggest brands in history, it would have been Sheryl Sandberg, who is the COO to Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. She came in as the adult in the room when Mark was, I think, 23 years old and came in at about 15 years his senior to really be his second in command. But Sheryl didn't want to be in the limelight almost until she was leaving the organization.