In this keynote, Cameron Herold warns leaders about a recurring failure pattern he calls the "3x Revenue Trap," where companies stumble when trying to scale beyond three revenue doublings. He explains that mid‑level leaders typically can only handle two revenue doubles before lacking the skills and confidence for a third, making a strong second‑in‑command essential. Herold highlights the imminent disruption from AI, citing rapid adoption rates and recent layoffs, urging CEOs to prepare now. He shares personal scaling experiences—from growing 1‑800‑GOT‑JUNK from $2 M to $106 M, to building a digital currency company and leading franchise expansions—illustrating how mentorship, peer groups (EO, Scaling Up), and continuous personal development enabled his success. Throughout, he stresses the scarcity of time for CEOs, the need to invest in people, and offers a group coaching program for CEOs seeking guidance.
Chapters
Has anybody heard of Vern Harnish? Vern and I met 28 years ago, and about 2007, I was asked to speak at his conference in Atlanta. And I walked off the stage and this guy came up to me, Kevin Lawrence, and he said, "Oh my God, you're Cameron." And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "I thought you were a saying." I'm like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, everybody's been walking around here for 3 days saying, 'I need a Cameron.'" I thought it was like a flywheel or a bhag. I thought a Cameron was a thing, like a catalytic mechanism. Now I realize they were talking about you. I'm like, "All right, that's ridiculous." Who here feels like they have no time in their company to grow their people? Like to actually train people, mentor people, coach people, right? Because you're working too much in the day-to-day. So about half of you. How many of you feel like you're working on projects that you just don't like or that you suck at? Yeah, a lot of you. How many of you got the money but no time in your life? Like you just don't have time for your hobbies or yourself or your friends. Like you're constantly staying— half of you, about third. How many of you don't even know that you have the skills or you don't even know what skills are needed to train people? Not quite even sure what that one means. How many of you are worried about AI disrupting your business? You all should be. It's drastically going to change everything, completely obliterating everything that we know to be in business today. We have a different AI speaker come in every month to talk to all of our members just to show us what's happening. And the change is going to be happening is pretty, pretty incredible. You know that 14% of the labor force in South Korea right now are robots. 14% are robots. That's in the last 3 years. 30% of the mid-level code being written at Google today is being written by AI. 30% of the mid-level code. 3,000 people got laid off 2 weeks ago at Salesforce. So it's just starting, right? This wave is just starting. How many of you have a second in command? How many of you want to hire a second in command? How many of you have no idea what a second in command is? Do you know that most mid to senior level people can only stay in their role for 2 doubles of revenue. And by the time you try to get to the 3rd double, they don't have the skill set or the confidence to do their job. So here's what I mean by that. Let's say that you have the head of marketing and you're a $2 million company. When you get to $4 million, your head of marketing can probably do the job. When you get to $8 million, they can probably do the job, but they're probably not able to run it at a $16 million size. There's too many employees. The complexities are different. Too many freelancers. There's too much— the budget's too big. They just don't have that skill set. So unless you grow their skills, you're going to be putting them out of, out of a job. Those numbers tend to add up. Every time I talk to leaders of bigger companies, it tends to be 3 doubles or 1 triple. If you go from $3 million to $9 million, they can do it. But from $9 million to $27 million, they can't do it anymore. At 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, I took them from 14 employees to 3,100 employees in 6.5 years, from $2 million to $106 million in revenue in 6.5 years. So I got really well known for building it. But I'd also built 3 other companies prior to that that were quite big and quite fast as well. I was the 6th person on the leadership team to get replaced in the 6 years. Everyone else got replaced as we were growing. It took me the 6 years to get replaced because I'd already done bigger companies that when I kind of came in, I was way, way below my normal pay grade, but I was helping my best friend do it. So when we got to about $30 million, I was starting to be at my normal— that was where my skill set was. So to go from 30 to 60, I could do. 60 to 100 was starting to get tough, but I was the 6th of 6 to get replaced. Yes, I have a group coaching program for CEOs, and the beauty of my group coaching calls is you actually get to ask me questions on every call. You're not just listening to other CEOs. Drop me an email, cameron@cameronherold.com for more information. Has anybody heard of Verne Harnish? So Verne started Scaling Up, prior to that Gazelles. His first book was called The Rockefeller Habits. He wrote a book called Scaling Up. He was the founder of the Entrepreneurs Organization, which is now called EO. Vern and I met 28 years ago. I joined the Entrepreneurs Organization here in Vancouver, and about 2007 I was asked to speak at his conference in Atlanta, about a 600-person event. And I walked off the stage and this guy came up to me, Kevin Lawrence, and he said, oh my God, you're Cameron Herold. And I said, yeah. And he goes, I thought you were a saying. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, everybody's been walking around here for 3 days saying I need a Cameron. I thought it was like a flywheel or a BHAG. I thought a Cameron was a thing, like a catalytic mechanism. Now I realize they were talking about you. I'm like, all right. That's ridiculous. What they were saying was they realized that Brian at 1-800-GOT-JUNK had me as his second in command. Brian knew he didn't have the skills to scale this, but we were already best friends. We'd been in a forum group in EO for 4 years. He was the best man at my wedding, and then I joined him to help him and to scale up what I already knew how to scale. So everyone realized they needed a second in command, and I had become a saying. I played the second in command role 3 different times. That was the third time. The second time was I was the president of a private currency company. So we built out something similar to Bitcoin. We did it from '97 to 2000. We had 30,000 companies in the US and Canada using our digital currency instead of the US dollar. We built and sold the company for $64 million. We had 900 employees with Starwood Hotels, Avis Rent-A-Car, Budget Rent-A-Car, Hard Rock Cafe, Bose Stereo, all using our digital currency. And I was the second in command for that group. And then I'd been the second in command for a franchising group called Gerber Auto Collision. Boyd Autobody in Canada. We built Gerber up to the largest collision repair chain in the world. It's now a $2 billion revenue company. And then I opened the West Coast of the United States for a group called College Pro Painters, which we had to hire 800 franchisees every year and train them. And then in about 6 weeks, they had to hire 8,000 students to paint houses. And I was the second in command for the West Coast in that group. So I'd really been in this kind of COO role a number of different times. Our job as a leader is to grow people. If we were a duck, this is a weird analogy, but just run with me on this one. My dad, my grandfather owned a hunting resort, so I grew up around ducks. If you were a seagull or a duck and you're the CEO and you're one wing of the duck and you're working on your wing and you're going to grow your skills and your connections and your confidence, you're going in a fucking circle because the other wing is weak. You need to grow the skills and the confidence and the connection of your second in command so that you bird can fly straight. That's what we did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK. I had a mentor. I was in Strategic Coach. I was in the Entrepreneurs Organization. I was reading books. I was going to Birthing a Giant. I was growing, as was Brian. That's how we were able to scale this up.
