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

The Starbucks COO’s Secret for Success

8 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:22

In this segment, Cameron Herold recounts a mentorship experience with the Starbucks COO, Greg, who guided him through a transformative three‑and‑a‑half‑month sabbatical. Greg instructed Herold to read The Artist’s Way and to journal each morning for fifteen minutes. During the break, Herold avoided all work‑related communications and social interactions unless they were strictly non‑business. He used the time to journal intensively, creating lifelines, mind maps, and exhaustive lists of every company, venture, project, and business area he had led, documenting both successes and failures. He distilled 57 lessons, identified what he loved, hated, excelled at, and struggled with, and discovered that his true passions were coaching, networking, speaking, and helping entrepreneurs realize their visions. Armed with this clarity, he decided to redesign his professional life around these passions, focusing on activities he loved rather than merely those he was good at.

Chapters

I was being mentored by the COO at Starbucks. And one of the things Greg had me do when I left got junk. He had me read the book the Artist's Way, and he had me every morning wake up and just journal for 15 minutes a day. And I took from May 15 until August 31 off, I didn't check any emails for three and a half months, didn't reply to any phone messages. I didn't go for lunch or breakfast or dinner with anybody who was in business unless they promise to never talk about their company or business. Like, so I would go golfing with, like, a CEO, but we only talked about life. And so for three and a half months, I really ripped off the band aid and forced myself to decompress. That was a really healthy thing for me. So what I did in that period was I journaled. I did lifelines, I did mind maps, I made lists of every company that I'd ever run, every entrepreneurial venture I'd ever had, every project I'd ever led, every business area, what those business areas had done that reported into me all my failures, all my successes, all my lessons. I had about 57 lessons that I learned, and I came up with lists of things I loved and things I hated and things I sucked at and things I was great at. And what it kind of netted out at was I loved coaching, I loved networking, I loved speaking, I loved helping entrepreneurs make their visions come true. Everything else I'm either really good at or okay at, but I don't love. And so I just decided to design my world around that.