Cameron Herold walks through his six books on scaling businesses and leadership. He started writing to charge $40,000 per speaking engagement. Double Double teaches how to double revenue in three years using systems from College Pro Painters, which hired 8,800 people annually.
You wrote several books. Can we just go through each book and give me the high-level summary?
Sure. I had no desire to ever be an author. I didn't start out— I was told by a speakers bureau that if I had a book, they could get me higher speaking fees. So now I get a $40,000 speaking fee for a 1-hour engagement. The books worked. The first book, Double Double, is how to double your revenue, your profit, and your free time in 3 years or less. So if you get 26% revenue growth 3 years in a row, that's a double in revenue. Yeah, that's Double Double. So it's all the systems on how to get more done with less people faster. It's a lot of the content that I learned at College Pro Painters, right? And how to scale that 8,800-person company every year. We had to hire 8,800 people every year. So how do you build that, that business from an entrepreneurial position? That was Double Double. Then I wrote Meetings Suck, and it was actually how to run proper meetings. It wasn't complaining about meetings, it was teaching people how to run them. So Meetings Suck is how to run not just an L10 meeting, but how do you run an annual planning meeting, quarterlies, How do you run financial reviews, business area reviews? How do you run one-on-one coaching? How do you run leadership team meetings? How do you run daily huddles? And then how do you get everybody who's coming to meetings to participate? How do you get people to actually opt out of meetings because their other work is too important? You don't need them there in the first place. That was the purpose for Meetings Suck, and it's for every employee to read, not just for the leader.
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.
Then I did a book called Free PR, and that was how we landed all the free press. And the Oprah episode was a 6-minute episode on Oprah. It was like a long— with all of our trucks and our guys. And I can imagine all your A1 Garage branding on Oprah for 6 minutes. It was crazy. But it's really not about the press you're getting. It's how do you leverage the press that you get? So Oprah really only helped us for about 3 or 4 days.. But being able to talk about being on Oprah for the last 22 years, being able to share the episode— I shared the episode clip at an MIT event 3 weeks ago— that's where you really get the leverage. So it's the digital trifecta of your earned media, your owned media, and your paid media. And I talk about how to leverage the press you're getting to really get the amplification.
I bought that book for 5 people in the company. And just one thing I wanted to add, can you just talk about PR doesn't fall under marketing, it falls under sales?
Yeah. Most marketing people, if they get a no, they run away and hide. While a salesperson hears no, they're like, I didn't explain myself properly, right? When a marketing person hears no, they get all nervous and they run away. So I treat PR as a sales function, and the product or service that you're selling is a story. And understanding that you're not really selling them and trying to get them to cover you. Every journalist wakes up this morning going, what am I going to cover today? What am I going to talk about today? Even for your podcast, the hardest thing for you and your podcast is finding a new interesting guest every week or two to interview. It's not doing the interviews, who am I going to interview? So if somebody shows up to you and goes, hey, I've got a great guest, you're like, oh my God, you made my life so simple. So we phone the journalists. We never email them. We never send press releases. And we go, do you have 2 minutes? I think I have a good story for you. And I phone them in the morning when I know they're trying to figure out what they're going to write about. In the afternoon, they're on deadline. They're busy. They're trying to wrap everything up. I never phone them in the afternoon. Next book was, I was actually at a Genius Network event. I was going to the bathroom. This other member of the Genius Network comes and grabs me and he goes, "Hey, you're Cameron Herold. Would you consider co-authoring a book with me?" And the guy was Hal Elrod. Hal had written "The Miracle Morning" and he asked me to co-author "The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs." So it was how to actually start our days, get our mindset right, get into the ability of focus. So I co-authored that with Hal, hugely successful. And that was just me leveraging his brand and him leveraging my brand. We did that about 5 or 6 years ago, I guess. And then I wrote a book called "Vivid Vision," which is crafting that 4 or 5-page vision document that describes what your company looks like, acts like, and feels like 3 years in the future. So everybody's on the same page as you. And then lastly, I just wrote a book called The Second in Command, which is all about unleashing the power of your COO.
