How to Recruit, Hire, Onboard and Grow an Awesome COO

Great.

Welcome to roundtable number two on recruiting, growing and training coo. If we could get everybody just to move kind of into the middle two sections here just for the building purposes. And we're going to get started in a second here, so just before we get going, we want to get a sense of why of all the five round panels that you chose this afternoon, make chose this one. And what are you looking to get out of the session so that that can inform what Cameron includes and what he shares this opportunity. So what are some challenges that you're dealing with that you'd really like him to focus on his presentation, on talking about?

Yeah.

My team is growing and I found that I get them started pretty quickly and then after a while they.

Don'T really know what they're supposed to.

Do and I don't really know what.

They'Re supposed to do anymore.

I need to have clear roles and responsibilities. We all are just kind of like, hey, we're in this together and we'll do what needs to be done. But roles, responsibilities, and me giving them better parameters to work within, to be more self starting. I feel like I'm trying to give them very long leashes and they're asking for very short leashes that I don't have time to micromanage. So that's basically it. So I've got an amazing team of talented people and I just am like.

Okay, go do it.

But they're like, but.

Who else?

I feel like I'm drowning in my business and, yeah, I feel like everything has to come from me. Everyone's replying back to me and I've.

Counted out the other day, there's like.

23 big projects going on. I was like, no wonder I'm so in focus. Feel like I'm bottlenecking.

Can I say it's more on the recruiting side, So I don't have yet.

So to clearly identify, what does that truly mean?

So I just hired my COO like.

A week ago, and I'm excited and.

Terrified at the same time.

And I would love for you to walk.

Wonderful. If I'm not writing it up, it's.

Already on my list. So I have. For the last five years, I've had what I see, what I feel like is a really wonderful COO that does an amazing job, but you just don't know what you don't know. And so it's just learning, like at the highest level, if you have a coo, what, what can they do for you effectively? Because I just see how far you can Take it.

Awesome. Okay.

So I have multiple companies in a dream world. I only want to deal with one guy. So there's one guy that I'm in grooming and training. I'll send you a bit soon, but I'm just wondering, where's the limitations? Am I going to need to just.

Believe it or not, your is called toilet. I'll get there. That makes no sense to you, but it will. I got it.

So we have a team of three. I've tried to get someone in this.

Operations world for a while.

I've heard conflicting advice. My zone of genius is intervention. Helping people, you know, you know, just change their life. The internal side and the details are just so taxing. But I've heard don't hire a COO.

Yet because you're not ready.

Promote someone internally, you look at a project manager.

So I'm trying to figure out like.

My aim in Dan's Wolverine turns into being my unique ability. And I just want someone to come in and kind of handle that. And I don't know if I need to hire somebody outside, if I need a project manager, if I need an executive assistant. We don't care.

We'll get there for sure.

I'm interested in how to preserve and actually enhance culture through growth.

Okay.

Cam, we're gonna go from about 125 employees to close to 300 in a matter of months after an acquisition. Now we're going to be looking for a COO to report into partners. Are we looking for a yes person or are we looking for somebody that is going to tell us what we need to be doing in the early days, and I'm talking within the first 365 days, let's say, of them being onboarded.

Okay.

All right, so we got a chock full agenda this afternoon, so please, let's show him lots of love. Join me in welcoming Cameron Harold.

Thanks very much. Funny, the last question was from Michelle Baldwin. Michelle's first day at 1-800-GOT junk was my last day. I was the chief operating officer at 1-800-got junk. And I took them from 14 employees to 3100 employees, system wide. In six years, we went from 2 million to 106 million. And on my last day, I think I was walking out of the office crying. And Michelle was walking in going like, why is this guy in tears? I'll walk you through that transition as well. I've been the chief operating officer three times for three different brands. So if you're familiar with College Pro Painters, I was really the second in command of that group and opened the west coast of the United States for them. I was also The COO for 1-800-Junk and I was the second in command for a private currency company that we sold 17 years ago. We had 30,000 companies using our currency instead of the US dollar. So we had Starbucks hotels and Avis, Rent a Car and Hard Rock Cafe. So we were really a pre version of Bitcoin 17 years ago when we sold that company. And I've been doing that. I recognize the job of the second in command is really to make the CEO iconic. The CEO's job is to be that beacon, that vision beacon. And the COO's job is to make you look good. And so one of the really most critical things you're looking for that most people miss on, you're looking for the tactical stuff of how do I hire and what do I get them to do. The most important thing is they have to make you look awesome.

So we're going to get into some.

Of that stuff as well. I actually started an organization called the COO Alliance. It's the only of its kind in the world for second commands. The reason I started it a year ago was there's an infinite number of groups for entrepreneurs. Ypo A Geo and Vistage, Genius Network and Mastermind Talks, Maverick. It goes on and on and on and on. Where you can go learn Cadre, where you can go learn with other entrepreneurs. But you're not the ones actually growing your companies. At some point there was nowhere for the second command to grow and learn. So we started a group that's only for them and this group would not be allowed in the room. It's called the COO alliance and it's the only network that's kind of in the world for second in command. Once a year we'll have an event where we'll invite the entrepreneurs to and at that event we'll have marriage counselors, personality profiles and people to work on the actual yin and yang relationship between the CDO and COO. So there's actually about six members that are here at Mastermind Talks. Their COOs are in the alliance as well. So there's an article that came out years ago by Harvard Business Review and it was called the Misunderstood Role of the coo. And it's really worthwhile for you to read. I actually give it to every member of the COO alliance the day that they join so that they even start to learn about themselves. But Harvard really identified that there's seven distinct types of chief Operating officers. Now I'll give you an example. In kind of my view of it, you can have a very outward facing coo, so someone who's kind of looking out at the market and the economy and kind of seeing what's happening, kind of being out of that strategy level. Or you can have a very inward facing coo, one who's really looking at inside the company and isn't worried about vision or where we're going. You can have someone who's very sales and marketing focused, someone who's very engineering and process focused, someone who's very operational, someone who's finance focused. So you have to really understand for you where are you going with your organization, what do you want to find to complement yourself? So really think of it like a marriage. Like you're looking for that partner to not complete you, but to complement you and then also to allow you to work on your unique abilities, but who can take all the shit off your plate that you're not good at. So you're not looking for someone who you necessarily are going to be the same as you're looking for someone who really complements you and kind of will further complete you. So the first place you're going to start is what we call the scorecard. So Brad and Jeff Smart wrote the book called Top Grade and the second book called who you really need to think about what are you hiring for? So in the first 12 months that you had your COO, could you make a list of the five big things that would have to get done? And if they got those done, you'd have been thrilled at your decision to hire them. So what would those five things be? And then when you're doing your interviewing and recruiting and looking to bring these people in, what you want to look for is have they done it before? You're not looking for people that have the theory, you're looking for people that have the actual experience. So as an example, when I built 1-800-JUNK for the first five years I was building it, I'd done virtually everything we were doing. So Brian, the founder, hadn't done it before, but I'd done it, so it was easy for me. Now if you look for someone that had the theory, like some MBA who studied it, that doesn't mean they've actually done it. Studying customer service and running customer service, very different, right? Someone who's actually hired and fired and managed and built teams is very different from someone who knows how to build teams. So if you're looking for someone to take a company from 2 million to 106 million. Why don't you see if you can find somebody who's done it a couple of times? In fact, when I left 1-800-got junk, it was time for me to go. Because they needed someone to take the company from 100 million to a billion. I'd never done that before. The person they brought in to replace me was the former president of Starbucks usa. She walked in and went, wow, what a cute little company. And I'm like, fuck, it's big. So think about what you need to get done and hire someone who's done it. Brian made a critical mistake on that one, though. I thought it was a perfect hire, but he hired someone who culturally didn't align with him. He fired her 12 months later, including the CFO on the same day, because they were conspiring to take over the company. You have to find someone who you trust on day one with your bank account, someone who you trust on day one with your kids, someone who you trust on day one with your public Persona, someone who you would literally get email access to. And that means if you're having an affair, they gotta know. Like, they have to know everything about you, everything good, everything bad. You have to be prepared to share that with them on day one. Otherwise, don't hire them. It's like your spouse, right? You just have to put that person in place. So you're looking first on what do they need to get done? Let's do questions after if we can. Unless it's like, so burning critical. Second thing you're looking for are the behavioral traits. So what do you need? How do you describe this person's kind of character? Behavioral traits, and what would maybe the five core behavior traits be? So Leadership goal orientation procedure. Think about exactly how you would describe them. One of the other big reasons why it was time for me to leave 1-800-got junk was Brian and I were both very ADD. We're both very bipolar. So the attention to detail was getting hard. When we have 3,000 employees and operating in 330 cities in four countries and 46 states, it's just freaking big. Thirteen operating companies, and I didn't have the attention to detail. Neither did he. And he finally needed a COO who could actually pay attention to the stuff that he wasn't good at. So, again, look for yourself and say, what are you hiring to compliment you and make sure that you're hiring for that or recruiting for that as well. Next thing is you really, really, really have to do your reference checks on this person, I want you to know the day that they start. You need to know everything about them, like everything. So there's not a single surprise afterwards. Brian's current COO, who's been with him for about five years now, is a guy that I've known for 30. We recruited a guy that I started a fraternity with in 1987. 30 years. So we knew so much about Eric to come into a company that I'd been gone from a few years before he even hired this person. But he'd done his reference checks, he'd done his background checks. He really knew who this person was. So make sure that you really spend time on that. I really need you to also ask yourself, is it really a COO that you're hiring? And I'm going to pick on you for a second. You have four employees. Do you know that 20 years ago to have a C level title in a company, you had to be a major fucking player in a major fucking company. Now you're giving up Chief Operating Officers to people with how many employees? Well, we need six. No, six people. And you have a C level title. So what happens is the higher your title is, you cause this title inflation with everybody. So now you're going to have somebody who's really a call center person. Okay, then don't ever call your coo. Don't even tell me you hired a coo. Say you hired an ops manager, because here's what happens. The optics change, the people's perception change, and all of a sudden it'll either credit you or discredit you. It causes title creep inside your company, and it causes salary inflation in your company. So the day I started at 1-800-got junk. Brian had six VPs, six people in the call center, and him. Finally, the VPs didn't need that many direct reports, but they all wanted $100,000 plus salaries. A true COO, if it's really a chief operating officer, is around 300,000 a year. If you're not prepared to pay that, don't give them that title. Go down to a VP of Operations title. From VP of Operations, go down to a Director of Operations or a general manager or an ops manager. Dave Asprey, one of my clients who I coach, owns Bulletproof Coffee, just hired a COO to run Bulletproof. I won't tell you his revenues, but they're big. But she was the former head of Amazon Prime. She's a great. She's a fucking total player. But she's a COO full on, right? He doesn't even live in the same city where his head office is. She's running his company with about close to 100 employees. Right? So be very careful that you don't over title. And this isn't just you. I see it all the time and it drives me crazy because what will happen is your employees are going to start looking around saying, well, I'm not getting paid when other people are getting paid. Well, you're not really a coo. And then what happens is all of a sudden your CFO who's really more of a controller now they want 250 grand a year because they're only worth 80. So really give out the titles commensurate with what you're actually willing to pay and what the job and the duties really are. Next thing is, who here has put up your hand? If you have an executive assistant, put up your hand. Put your hands up. Put your hand. If you do not have one, okay? Before you hire a coo, hire an executive assistant. If you don't have an executive assistant, you are one, okay? And I want you to hire. Here's what I want you to hire an executive assistant. Like you got the Star Wars Hub Mastin bastard. So I'm going to save you 250,000 this year. If you hire an EA for the next six to eight months, you won't have to pay a COO salary. You'll free up about 50% of your time. Get email off your plate. Get all this stuff worth less than $50 an hour off your plate. Start delegating all the stuff that is cheap or you don't like or you suck at off your plate. It'll save you about six to 12 months of actually hiring a COO. That's a huge amount of money to put in sales and marketing or in your pocket. So be very careful that you don't over hire too quickly. And the executive assistant role is going to be way more powerful than hiring a coo because you're going to need a DA at some point as well. Make sure that you're really clear on what the roles and goals are for each of you at this point. So it's kind of like my wife and I joke about pink jobs and blue jobs, but we don't really do the pink jobs and blue jobs. Like I'm really horrible around the house that anything to do with anything with our house. Like I don't understand plumbing and electrical and the contractors. So all the guy jobs except taking out the garbage she does, right? Like is she even Barbecues. I hate barbecue. But I'm good at making the money. And then she's good at the house stuff. But think about inside of your business. What are you really good at? And what do you get really energized from Dan Sullivan's unique ability idea? And then what do you suck at and what drains you? And make sure that you hire someone. If you're hiring a COO to get all this stuff off your plate that drains you or you're not good at, but that they love to do. Remember, there's people out there who actually love finance. I hate it. There's people out there who love it. I can't stand it. So hire somebody. If I was hiring a coo, they would have to love finance and love it and take some stuff off my plate that maybe I'm not great at. Like the detail stuff. You don't want someone who totally loves what you do. You want someone who thinks what you do is horrible. Like, I want a COO who hates speaking, who hates being the front person who can't stand being on stage. But they love the stuff that I don't like. So think about that as well. Next part is, what are the core goals for each of you, for you and for them over the next 12 months? And communicate those to your whole company. So all the employees are now really clear on what your responsibilities are and what their responsibilities are. And they can really see clearly on the org chart who actually reports to who, so you know what you're clear responsibilities are and who your dotted line responsibilities are. So then you get down to onboarding. So when you're hiring a coo, if you're hiring a really good person you've hired based on what you need them to do, because they've done it before, and you're hiring behavioral traits that they need and you've done all the reference checks, the reality is they're going to be really good at their job. So in the first 90 days that they join you, don't worry too much about them. Pretend that they're a big boulder that you're dropping into a pond. What happens when you drop a boulder into the pond? What's that? Splash. Splash after splash. Ripples. Right. The ripple effects after you hire a coo, your job is to watch from the ripple effects. They're a boulder. They will get to the bottom of the pond, and that's their job. They'll do it successfully. But all the ripple effects if you don't keep your eye on them are huge ripple effects with Customers with systems, with projects being started. Dave Asprey lost one of his key marketing people within a week of him hiring his coo, because the marketing person felt that he was threatened all of a sudden. So he failed. It was actually okay. We didn't want to keep him. But that's a quick ripple effect, right? Make sure that you're very, very close to what's happening with the rest of your company, with your customers, your suppliers, your finance people, your lawyers, your accountant, your banker. Because you just don't know what's happening with the ripple. Watch for good ripple effects and bad ripple effects. Then think about the onboarding. Really resist the urge in the first two to four weeks of letting the person do their job. Resist the urge of letting them do their job. So if I was hiring someone to come in to work in a restaurant bar group, anybody here from Toronto, by the way, there's a secret bar that you're not supposed to know about, but there's a password. He'll get it for you. It changes every day. But if you're going to hire somebody to go into that, I would want someone who's like, I want them working behind the bar, I want them waiting tables, I want them working in the kitchen, I want them working outside of the door. I don't want anybody to know they're a COO for the first two weeks. And I want them literally doing every freaking job in the company. I want them going through training, I want them handling food prep, I want them meeting with suppliers and unloading trucks. I want them to see and feel every aspect of the company before they're doing their CEO job, right? Because they gotta really get it. You want them around that whole culture. So at 1-800-got-JUNK, we had people ride in the trucks, go through franchise training, listening on phone calls with customers, listening on phone calls with suppliers, listening on phone calls with pr, stand on the street corner and weigh the traffic. We literally had them do every single thing we could have them think about for four weeks, and then they got to start the job. And that's critical if you do that, because then they'll really be integrated into happening. You need date nights very similar to a marriage where you need to have time in your calendar so as the CEO and the COO to actually spend time together. And most of the entrepreneurs are like, yeah, I don't need that. It's not for you, it's for them. They need it. They need to get up to speed, they need to build trust, they need to slow you down. A little bit. They need to listen to you and take the ideas out of your head and then put them somewhere safe for you. And then your job is not to start things anymore. It's to give them your ideas and trust that they'll put them into a system. And once a quarter, you can vote on which ideas get started, but they'll keep track of your ideas. You can't start anything. Once you hire a coo, everything has to go through them that goes into the plan. And it's very similar, like building a house. Let's say you were building a home and you're the homeowner. Now imagine the homeowner. If we were putting in the framing and doing the electrical and the plumbing. Imagine the homeowner coming in and installing the Wolf stove. You'd be like, what are you doing? I'm putting the stove in. Wait, wait six more weeks. Then I want to put the stove in. Let's put up the cabinets. We haven't put the drywall in yet. And Sheetrock and a little paint, if I like the cabinets. Entrepreneurs are all about the big shiny object stuff. And once you hire a coo, you need to start running stuff. They'll take care of your ideas, they'll start it the right way, but they'll protect you from yourself, and they'll actually start to scale the company up for you. I really highly recommend you use a search firm. I've got a couple of them if you want introductions that are very under the radar. One only does $400,000 plus roles, and I've got two that actually will do mid level to senior roles. But you really need to poach a coo. You don't put a job posting up on Craigslist and get the former head of Amazon prime to see it. She's not looking for a job. It's a search firm that reaches out and says, hey, I've got an interesting opportunity I think you might be interested in. Can we meet for coffee? The A players are never looking for jobs. They're certainly not going to hear about yours. And you have to post them. And you probably don't have the depth internally to do it. So you really want to engage a firm. It's really worthwhile. And then last thing is, this isn't a pitch for the CEO alliance, but it is get them involved in the COO alliance. It's the only network where they're actually going to be able to learn together and from each other and with each other. It's kind of like the community that we have here where we get to actually have that shared brain trust. Imagine that shared brain trust where you've got a couple hundred other chief operating officers and they get to meet every quarter with each other and from each other. Those are my thoughts on the basic stuff. We get into this and then we'll take some Q and A. So roles and responsibilities. I talked a little bit about that. The managing part is when you need everything to get into an operating plan. So your role as the entrepreneur and the CEO is really to talk about the vision, the vivid vision I covered in my first book, Double Double. But I also brought copies of if anybody was here last year. Remember when Hal Elrod and I talked about the fact we were launching a book together? This is the book, Alan, I talked about last year that just came out of the Miracle Morning Garage. So I've got about 30 copies here for you. Some over here. There's some over here if anybody wants them. In this, we talk about the vivid vision concept. Your job as the entrepreneur is to craft a four or five page document describing the future of your company and what it looks like. And then your team can figure out how to make that happen. By the way, there's a session after this. Jason Atkins is running on culture. When he heard about this concept three years ago, he left the session for Mastermind talks, took an entire day off, worked with the designer to write his vivid vision. Like he literally left Mastermind talks for a full day to do his vivid vision. He's gone from about 4 million to 50 million in three years. And it was in his vivid vision of edgy 50. So your job as the entrepreneur is to clarify your vision and where you're going, not to worry about how anymore. You actually don't have to be the one putting these systems in place. What you have to do is know that there's certain systems that you need and then require the COO to get them in place. But put them in place like you build a home. The foundational stuff first, then the walls, then the plumbing, and then out from there.

Cameron, we did Envision in January.

Yeah.

What I guess strategy or recommendations do. You have to keep that alive and.

Keep the team updated. Right. So yes, I covered it in both this book here in American Marketing for Entrepreneurs. Here's the basics of it. Your vivid vision is this four or five page document describing your company. Every quarter you want all your employees to read it. Every quarter you want all your suppliers to read it. Every quarter you want your customers to read it. You give it to potential employees. You read it before every strategy meeting. You read it before every planning meeting so you're constantly rereading it. And then every quarter. Highlight any of the sentences that have come true in green so you have a Word document version and highlight any of the ones that you're working on in yellow and you'll start seeing it quarter by quarter become more and more green. Every sentence is a finished date. Figure out one or two projects to make each sentence come true. It'll make sense once you know what a vivid vision is. So you need to take all of the plans and projects and put them into a plan like Basecamp or like Asana so that people can manage it so you have visibility to all the projects and you can see which projects are being pushed off or bumped down when you insert all your new cool ideas. So your ideas will be there, but don't start them until they're ready to be finished.