Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The Secret to a Perfect CEO/COO Partnership

13 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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Cameron Herold says a great CEO/COO partnership needs complementary skills: the COO handles what the CEO won't or can't. Harley Finkelstein at Shopify is outward-facing and handles sales and marketing. Herold's replacement at 1-800-GOT-JUNK? was internal and methodical, suited to scaling from $100 million to $1 billion.

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The second in command has to be really good at the stuff you suck at and has to want to work on the stuff that you don't. And then neither of you get in each other's swim lanes. Do you guys know the name Harley Finkelstein? Harley's the COO at Shopify. He's a very outward-facing biz dev, sales, marketing, PR, COO, right? I've known Harley since they had 50 employees. I'm a very outward-facing COO, speaking on stages, talking to the press. But my current replacement at 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, who's been there for 13 years, never talks to the media, would never write a book, and never goes on stages. He would have been horrible in the first 6 years because he wasn't entrepreneurial and had never built a franchise company. But he was perfect to go from $100 million to $1 billion because he was corporate, strategic, methodical, precise.