Cameron Herold built his personal brand at 1-800-GOT-JUNK through speaking and media visibility. He argues pay should reflect role, responsibility, and company size, not just titles. He also covers non-monetary retention tools like vacation, equity, and profit-sharing as alternatives to handcuffing employees with compensation.
Questions this video answers
$306,000 (stated as '306,000')
18 months
1996
16 years ago
About $450,000
Chapters
What I cared about, what kept me there was my visibility and how could I build my brand around this company. So I did a lot of the speaking events for the company. I did a lot of the media interviews for the company. I was very forward, outward facing for the company. So that anytime anyone mentioned 1-800-got- junk, Cameron's name got mentioned. What's really interesting is, you know, what do I pay a CEO? Well, the real question is, what do I pay this person for the work that they're doing? Because you may have given them a title that's bigger than what their roles and responsibilities are, which is sad because we've had a lot of title inflation over the last 25 years. 25 years ago, to get a COO title, you had to be a major player at a major company. Like, in fact, to get a CMO title or a CFO title or a cio, you'd be a major player. I remember when my, my roommate in College got a VP title at a bank back in 1996. I was like, holy, you're a vice president. He goes, dude, we're all vice presidents. He goes, there's vice presidents, executive vice. Like, he goes, everybody's got a VP title because it's marketing. And that was when I first learned about title inflation. So what he recognized was, yeah, I have a title, but I'm not paid like a vice president. I don't even have the roles and responsibilities of a vice president. So the really, the question is for the roles and responsibilities they have, for the size of the organization that we are, for the level of strategy or strategic insight they bring into the business, for the level of autonomy I can give them, right? How little management I need to give them what they're responsible, like the KPIs, what am I willing to pay and what should the title be for that? That the next part of that is at a certain point, especially if we're an entrepreneurial organization and we own 100% of the cap table, there's also a little bit of like, how do we thank the people who got us here? How do we go back to the ones who got us to this level and have this insane amount of money that at times we can be making and reward them and thank them in a way that isn't needed. But at the end of the day, none of this matters and it's just what we're doing to make, you know, like, how do we kind of reward some people and what's too much? I think when you have a second in command or a COO who's getting paid 120, 150. They're not a COO, they're a director of operations. My comp at 1-800-GET junk when I left 16 years ago was 306,000. So I was a CEO of a real company making 30616 years ago. So that would probably be like 450 today. But you could have a CEO of a billion dollar company who's making 450,000 500,000. When I was coaching the second in command of Sprint, Jamie Jones, I coached him for 18 months. You know, the 82nd largest company. His kids base pay was 2.7 million a year. The other part is we get employees to a certain level where other people want to poach them and it becomes irresponsible of them to stay. So we also have to make sure that we're handcuffing them to something so that we don't lose them. Right? The handcuffing is not always money. Like let's say that this group of us were my God forbid they ever quit. People like my true handcuff these people to my company for five years, right? Because I'm fucked if they leave and I've got 200 employees. But this is my well, you know, Nick might want a more results only work environment. Tim might want more vacation. Jacob might want more responsibility. Martin White might want me to spin off a division and let him be CEO or CEO of it. Matt White might want more leadership training. Chad might want to work on his executive MBA while he's here. Ian might want more profit sharing. Melissa might want more equity. Brandon might want stock options or phantom stock because he knows we're going to build to an exit. You know, George may just want more free time. So there's all these things that we have to consider. When I was at 1-800-got junk. We had profit sharing. But I was think, I think the only person who understood that Brian had no desire to make profit. What he was trying to do was build this world class brand, this globally admired brand. We were trying to scale for growth. If we were trying to drive profitability, we would have actually pulled back a little bit of the marketing. We wouldn't have hired as many executives, we wouldn't have invested in all the training because then we would have had more profit. What I cared about, what kept me there was my visibility and how could I build my brand around this company. So I did a lot of the speaking events for the company, I did a lot of the media interviews. For the company. I was very forward, outward facing for the company. So that anytime anyone mentioned 1-800-got- junk, Cameron's name got mentioned. That was worth more to me than profit sharing. So stay ahead of the curve as a coo. This next video is packed with great leadership lessons for you. It'll really help you as you continue in your growth.
