How To Recruit A Second-In-Command | Roland Frasier (Podcast 327)

That most great employees, especially as you move into those leadership ranks, are never out looking for a job. Most great employees have a job, they're working for a pretty good company and you need to entice them away from wherever they're working. So the starting point with that is building out a scorecard and a job description for that role that is really strong and really polarizing. You want a job description that pushes 50% of the people away. They go, no way. I don't ever want to work for that company, which really magnetized and attracts the other 50 and in.

We're so happy and excited today to have a friend of mine I've known for a long time now, Cameron Herald, who is the founder and CEO of the CEO Alliance. So CEO as in Chief Operating Officer. And I think it's so wonderful to have him here because so many people ask me, how can I get my operators, the people that are running the business, to do the things that I need them to do and how can I separate myself from operations of the company And Cam.

Thanks, Roland. Appreciate it. You and your team and Deanna on your team have been really great at sending over referrals over the years and even people, not even referrals, but people that need some advice and resources around that second command and happy to always help any of your kind of tribe. So thank you for doing that.

You are very welcome. And a shameless plug for Cameron, which I get nothing for other than the joy of sharing great people with him. We have actually sent multiple coos to Cameron from our business as well as others, and nothing but good things to say about that. So if you guys need to train up your CEO or you are a CEO and you want to level up your skills, I highly recommend that you reach out to Cam and and we'll share how to get a hold of him at the end of the podcast. But right now, will you tell us a little bit about kind of what your background is and how you got into this COO alliance thing?

Yeah, well, it's funny that you're calling me Cam because the only people that ever called me Cam were my family and I was groomed as an entrepreneur. So my entire first half of my life I went by the name Cam, switched over later in life as to Cameron, so either one works. But it's funny, my family groomed us as entrepreneurs to this day, my brother, my sister and myself have all really been running our own companies for between 15, 25 years. I had my first operational company when I was 21 years old, actually 20 is when I started it, but I had 12 full time employees when I was 21 years old. Really kind of cut my teeth at running businesses at very young ages. And then got involved with a couple of different friends along the way. Three different friends and helped them build three different companies effectively as their second in command. Those stages. So built out a group called Gerber Auto Collision in the us that's the largest collision repair chain in the world. We built out a private currency company that we sold back in January of 2000. We all know what would happen with that market crash right afterwards. So we lost $64 million company got 3 million at the exit and then helped my best friend build out a company called 1-800-GOTJUNK. And I was the CEO of that company. Took them from 2 million to 106 million in six years. Left there 16 years ago. I've written six books. I've been paid to speak now to entrepreneurial audiences 27 countries on every single continent, including getting paid to speak in Antarctica. And then six years ago started off the CEO Alliance. And I also host a podcast called the Second Command podcast where we don't interview any entrepreneurs, we only interview our CEOs.

Well, so now you have a new book that's out too, right? You want to share a little bit about that and we can talk about kind of what that covers.

Yeah, it's interesting. The first four or five books that I wrote were really about building out my brand and sharing a lot of my content around general business, you know, areas of scaling up companies. I co authored a book with Hal Elrod called the Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs that went very well. But this last book that I wrote called the Second Command is really some IP and some content that really wasn't being shared. There were a couple of books that talked about very early stage companies, maybe hiring an integrator. But that kind of system and model usually breaks down at about the 50 employee mark. And I really wanted to talk about how to actually bring on a proper second in command, whether it's a COO or a VP of operation, typically of a 50 to 500 person company. So I walk through all the content of actually recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and then building that really strong yin and yang relationship with the CEO so the CEO can really leverage themselves, scale up the company.

Okay, so let's talk about that. We are in the process of, in a couple of the companies I'm in right now, involved with, we're bringing on people in in different C suite capacities. Sometimes it's through referrals. Sometimes it is through recruiting firms. Tell us a little bit about, like, if, if somebody's listening or watching this right now and they're like, I, I don't have somebody yet. I need to find somebody. What's the best way for them to go about doing that?

Yeah. So there's a couple parts to what you're on, what we're, we're talking about here. The first one is that most great employees, especially as you move into those leadership ranks, are never out looking for a job. Most great employees have a job. They're working for a pretty good company and you need to entice them away from wherever they're working. So the starting point with that is building out a scorecard and a job description for that role that is really strong and really polarizes. You want a job description that pushes 50% of the people away. They go, no way. I don't ever want to work for that company. Which really magnetizes and attracts the other 50% in. The other thing I like doing is getting a copywriter, somebody like you, but not quite as expensive, who can take that job posting and rewrite it like a sales letter so that it pops. Right. Every job posting is a sales letter and it really needs to attract and market people into your recruiting funnel. Next thing that I like to do is put a couple of hoops in place to make them jump through a couple of hoops so I can actually see if they really skilled. See if they really want the job. Have they read our company Vivid Vision? Do they really kind of vibrate at the same resonance as we do? And are they excited about what we're building? And then the last part is I use a recruiting firm because recruiting agencies really go out and help us poach the best people and entice them away. I've got one firm that I've introduced a bunch of your clients to as well over the last 11 years. And they exclusively focus on COO or second in command search now as well.

Can you care to share that resource for us?

Sure. It's called Y Scouts. They're on the board of Conscious Capitalism. They are. The CEO of Wise Scouts was the president of his YPO chapter, President Max, Max Hansen. There you go. See?

Yeah, yeah, we're actually. They are helping us right now with somebody. So that's. That's really funny. I didn't, I didn't know that. I didn't know that was you.

You were connected to that.

So that's.

Oh, I was thinking I was at his wedding years ago and he was at my, my prior wedding years ago as well. So, yeah, great guy, great company. But again, they've done. But that's my point is that really, really great firms, of course they're working with you. Right. You've been able to find the best people. And I think they are amongst the Invest in North America. Sure. In that search, in that niche.

What I like about the process that, because I've been involved actively in the process in, in the. One of the current searches we're doing right now with those guys is that they started out and this is something that I, I think is really, really helpful because a lot of times they'll say, you know, we'll give us a job description, you know, write the job description. But what these guys did, did a great job of was there were two questionnaires and one of them was really, really in depth into what are you looking for? Who will they report to? But then into some really cool things that I hadn't seen. Somebody asked before, they said, if you could have your dream person that you know, your dream CEO, who would that be? A name name. So like then, then I had to think about, well, who are some of the great operators that are out there, who would that be and what makes them great? And that was really, really cool. And then I think, I think the other questionnaire was like a DNA thing where it was really, really in depth into the company and the things we want them to do. I just, I just really thought that was a good process. Do you share that kind of stuff in your book or how, how in depth do we get in. In that?

I do. And it's interesting that what they're digging for in some of their research is they're looking for the cultural DNA of your company so they can find the cultural DNA of a second in command that matches that. Yeah. So the starting point in looking for a really great second in command is understanding yourself as the CEO and understanding your company and really understanding all of those idiosyncrasies. Almost like as if you were writing an operating manual to yourself. Right. As the CEO, you would then hand that operating manual out, says, who wants to help run me? And they go, oh yeah, you're a great fit. Because frankly, I was a great second in command for 1-800-got junk. But I would probably be a horrible second in command for your company because I don't have the right skill set or DNA match or I'm there for the wrong stage. Right. So it's all about understanding yourself and also the stage of the company you're at the current COO at 1,800-got junk. I took them from 2 million to 106 million their current state. They then dipped down to about 70 during the global financial crisis. The current COO who's taken them 70 million to 450 million in the last nine years. He would have been a horrible COO for the six years I was there. Yeah. Because he was the wrong match for the size of the company. Right. The season that he was in. So there's all these little idiosyncrasies you have to look for in finding that. Right. Sex man.

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