Why Life’s Struggles Make the Best Entrepreneurs

Every single person you meet today is struggling with something, whether it's their money, their relationship, their health, somebody in their family, their sexuality, the government. Like everybody is struggling with something, like really struggling, worried about it. It's all encompassing, it's preoccupying them. And if you actually care more about them as humans than you care about your business or your day to day, they'll go through brick walls to care for you and to care for your business and to care about yourself. It's just about being really cognizant of that. And then it's about enjoying the journey. Like, let's hold hands and have fun and enjoy the journey. Because again, we are only here for one ride. And it's a pretty damn good ride if we can enjoy it. I'm a kid from northern Ontario and Canada who's just waking up every day trying to figure this out, struggling with imposter syndrome, struggling with the fact that I don't know why we're doing this, because at the end of the day we all die and none of this matters. Trying to be a good dad and a good husband and a good friend and a good father and a good lover and enjoy the journey. I wrote something years ago about a concept called the Vivid Vision, right? Which is this four or five page description of what your company looks like, acts like and feels like in the future. And then three years ago I was like, huh, I wonder if I can describe me as Cameron. So this was towards the end of 2021 and I drafted Cameron Herald December 31, 2024. And it describes what Cameron Herald looked like, act like and felt like as a guy. December 31, 2024. So I've got nine months left. And it describes me as a husband, me as a father, me as a man, me as a dad, me as a brother, me as a lover, me as a just guy on this thing, orbiting through wherever we're orbiting through. And just like. And it describes fitness and friends and finance and sexuality and travel and everything and just wrote it all down. So I think that's how I would describe me is I. I wrote a five page description of me. And what I'm trying to do is make every sentence come true. I'm trying to figure out what are the things that I can do to make all of that stuff happen. And by sharing the description of me, by sharing who I am and who I'm becoming, I wrote it in the finished state as if it already existed. Everybody around me is conspiring to help me make that come True. You know, so one of the things that I did 11 months ago is I stopped drinking. It didn't intentionally decide to stop drinking, but I just realized that it wasn't serving me. I was using it as an escape, making bad decisions when I was on it. And I was proving to myself by doing one month off every year for six years and one week off every month that I didn't have a problem. What I ended up really proving was I had a lot of willpower to drive through probably having a problem. You know, I never had more than a bottle of wine in a day, but it was always a full bottle right down to the last tip, every single day for like, five years. I'm like, this is stupid. So I stopped doing that. And now I have friends around me that know that I don't drink. So they're choosing to ask me and say, hey, do you want to go for a drink? I want to go for dinner. It's like, do you want to go for a hike or play tennis or go golfing? We're doing activities that are more congruent with what I described. So my journey with this stuff probably started in an unhealthy way in my 20s, where I would drink or I would do magic mushrooms or I would smoke pot. And it was definitely a party, and it was definitely an escape. And there was nothing medicine about it. It was just, hey, let's get high, or, hey, let's go drink. You know, like, Everybody in the 70s smoked pot too. Then I pretty much stopped for, like, 15 years. I didn't really do anything. I was raising kids, really wasn't that into it. Wasn't even drinking that much, wasn't really doing it. And went to burning man in 2007, got kind of re exposed to some stuff, just again, very socially. And then all of a sudden, around 2012, 2013, 2014, it started to become something that was talked about at Mastermind events, at events for entrepreneurs. Psychedelics was being talked about as therapy or as ways to expand your consciousness. It started people were microdosing in the Bay Area. They were using either microdoses of LSD or microdoses of psilocybin as a way to focus, as a way to expand. Then we started to see the legalization of cannabis, legalization of thc. All of a sudden, it was becoming very common. And I happened to live, at the time in British Columbia, where we had cannabis shops everywhere it was legalized. I think Colorado and British Columbia were two of the first places to legalize it. So it became part of the everyday discussion. You know, my kids were 15 and 13 talking to me about cannabis. Not that they wanted to do it, but we had to talk about it because you drive down the street and see the stores. So it became a very common discussion. And then I was around some really big thought leaders. I've gone to the main five day TED conference for 11 years and I would go to the TED conference where the head of the Maps program was speaking. And I was in these small breakout groups with, I'm not going to name the names, but major CEOs and major venture capitalists and we were talking about using psychedelics and plant medicines like ayahuasca or psilocybin or cannabis as a ways to expand consciousness or ways to de stress or to actually get healthy. And then we started to see a lot of research around the treatment for PTSD and the treatment for anxiety and the treatment for depression. And I was like, okay, now we're getting somewhere. Because I liked using stuff like psilocybin or a microdose of LSD for focus and for work was interesting, but I thought it'd be interesting to do some work with a shaman or with doctors around the use of different medicines or psychedelics for the purpose of depression and for anxiety or for the, the not ptsd, but see what, what they were about and because they were becoming legalized. As an example in British Columbia, every drug has now been decriminalized. So you can actually have. And I don't. But you could walk around with an eight ball of cocaine and nobody can touch you, the police can't shut you because it's now legal or it's decriminalized. So I think we're coming to a stage now where the government will tax stuff, we're going to treat stuff, you'll be able to get drugs clean, which has allowed me to feel safe about trying some things because I can do it in a clean environment. So over the last couple of years I've done under doctor supervision and under doctors injections. I've done ketamine injections where I have ketamine injected in a doctor's office on a bed, anti gravity bed, weighted blanket, glasses and eye mask on listening to music. And I go through a full journey, but I go into it with a briefing with intentions and then I come out of it afterwards doing kind of debriefing and coaching and therapy around stuff. And it's been very powerful. I have a doctor's prescription for ketamine lozenges to be Able to do that on every couple week basis where I'll do those. I've done some stuff with shaman where we've done MDMA therapy. MDMA back in the 70s was prescribed to couples as the love drug to help reconnect. Probably one of the most beautiful experience I've ever had of doing those. But I'm not doing them in party settings. I'm not doing them like in a, you know, social settings. I'm doing them more with a doctor or a shaman as a way to expand and explore and going into it with intentions. But I think there's something that's pretty interesting around what's happening and what's really cool now is it's being talked about commonly. It used to be that no one ever talked about anything. Everyone kind of smoked pot privately. And again, I don't even smoke pot. I might do THC every three or four months. I have nothing against it. In British Columbia, it's like orange juice. If you're in Vancouver, there's probably for real, I think more people in more homes. I think it was $8 billion worth of cannabis produced in British Columbia last year. That's more than fishing, more than tourism, more than mining. That's a lot of cannabis being produced in one province. So I think there's a lot more stuff out there. And we realize that it's not necessarily as dangerous as we thought it was. And I think if we can get it off the streets so that it's clean, so that people can at least try stuff or use stuff under doctors or wish shaman or with friends socially, and we at least know it's safe because it's going to be used. If it's not safe, they're going to be using it too. I went through a school system era. Well, I guess kids are still going through it today when we're graded on every single test, every single quiz, every single exam. And for years the teachers would even call out the name and be like, cameron, C minus Cameron, 64%. And I would be so hopeful because I'd hear like, Dean, 88, Kelly 79, you know, 92. And I never got one like that. I never ever got one like that. And I try really hard and I would fail. And I'd try really hard and I'd fail. And I felt bad in front of the rest. Maybe there's some shame in it. Like I felt stupid around the other kids. I knew I was smart, but I felt like I was emotionally abused by a school system for 18 years, from kindergarten to the End of university. So I've realized all along that I'm not smart. And yet here I have these CEOs paying me to coach them. Like I coached the CEO of Sprint, Marcelo Claret. I coached his second in command, Damie Jones, for 18 months. He's got a $2.7 million salary and I'm coaching him. I have no business coaching him. I coached a monarchy in the Middle East. I coached the royal family of Qatar and their second command. They own the country. What am I doing coaching them? I'm paid to speak on stages in 29 countries. And every time I go on stage, I feel like, why am I here talking to this group of smart people? Because I know that at the end of the day, I'm this kid from northern Ontario and Canada who still woke up this morning and didn't love his body, like trying to get a better 1. I'm 58 years old and I'm still not loving who I see in the mirror. And I still know about my insecurities and I still know about my fears and I still know that I'm trying to figure stuff out and that I'm still struggling in ways in my business. So I feel like that imposter, right? I was talking this morning to a group in Ireland on the radio. I said I'm frustrated at all the entrepreneurs on social media who talk about all of the good stuff in our businesses. And the only time we ever vulnerable is when we're doing a share that we're leading into some funnel. We don't talk about how hard business really is. We don't talk about when it really sucks. We don't talk about the employee stealing or somebody we had to fire or the check that bounced or the marketing plan that didn't that fell apart and didn't work, or that cash flow got drained. We haven't paid ourselves a salary. We don't talk about any of that. And I feel like an imposter, you know, in some of those lights at times because I'm still just trying to figure this whole thing out too. And then I also feel at the end of the day, none of even matters because we're all going to die. There's definitely places for entrepreneurs to share with other entrepreneurs. Those are the mastermind communities. And there's places we can share with coaches, but there's only about 2% of entrepreneurs are even in a mastermind community. So the other 98% of entrepreneurs can't tell their spouse or they're worried because their spouse is terrified they can't tell their leadership team, they can't tell their board or their advisors. They can't tell their employees. So they live in this very scary world of truth, trying to keep a game face on the whole fake it till you make it and sharing all the good stuff on social media, because that's marketing. And that momentum will create momentum. It's a very scary place if you're not in a mastermind community or if you're not, you know, getting coaching because. And I think that's one of the reasons why the, the magnification of the bipolar. Most entrepreneurs are bipolar. On the spectrum for bipolar. Most entrepreneurs have add and it's living in that scary world that magnifies that stress and depression, which is sometimes why they turn to either more work or to drugs or alcohol or sex or some kind of an escape, because they don't have an outlet to talk about it in a safe space. So this is 1998. I was in an entrepreneur's organization forum and I told the group that I was engaged. And one of the guys in my forum said, why? I don't believe you're in love with her. I don't believe she's the person for you. And I looked at him and I said, don't ever call me on anything like that. You have no idea what's really going on. And I knew that he was right and I knew that I was full of when I said it. And two years later, on my, you know, the day of the wedding, I was terrified and I was writing my wedding vows and knew that I was making a mistake and, you know, locked and loaded and stayed for seven years, had an affair, tried to fool around to get some kind of connection with somebody after seven years, and then after 10 years, finally broke it off. But thankfully we have two amazing kids from it. I have a good relationship with my ex, but I knew. I knew when I asked her it was wrong and didn't have the. I was a different person back then than I am today. 25 years ago. I hadn't grown. I didn't have the confidence. I didn't know myself. But I remember that I didn't have the experience or the comfort or the sense of self to be able to be vulnerable enough to ask questions and to go and look at myself. And I got defensive. And it's interesting around. Around the ego and preservation. Dave Berg and I. Dave was my closest friend in Arizona. I met him about eight years ago when I first moved there. We both joined the Genius Network the same Week I got back into Strategic Coach because of Dave. Dave loaned me 300 grand to buy a home in Arcadia when I couldn't sell my other home in Arizona fast enough and I needed a bridge loan. He only met me six weeks before, loaned me 300 grand on a one page promissory note, zero interest. I paid him back within about six weeks. And then I got a tax bill for 425 grand that I didn't realize was coming because I'd grown one of my businesses so quickly, I'd forgotten that I was. I literally forgot I'd done a million dollars more in revenue than I had that year. And yeah, it was really bad. We were walking down Camelback and I was like, holy, what am I going to do to find 425 grand? And Dave helped me problem solve that. And then about three years ago, I got a call from Dave and he was crying on the phone. He got real vulnerable. And I realized the safe space that entrepreneurs and friends can have when they can truly kind of go there, right? And then this past summer, he and his wife, Janice and my wife, we were. Did a Porsche tour through Europe together and hung out, did five countries and a Porsche together. One of my bucket list items was to drive a Porsche on the Autobahn. So I got to go. For anybody who's not in the US 268 kilometers an hour on the Autobahn, that's 172 miles an hour. And it's legal. There's no speed limit. It was epic. But yeah, Dave and I have gotten super vulnerable with each other about business and personal. I want to do a shout out to Sims too. So Steve Sims is this kind of tatted up, piercings, shaved head, big guy. He looks like a biker. He looks like a Hell's angel club biker, hitman, just a rough. He's one of the softest, nicest, caring dads and humans I've ever met. It's unbelievable. And I didn't realize that until we were at an event called Thrive with Cole and Sims and I were chatting and he just like opened up and got vulnerable. I'm like, like, who are you? And then we went to prison together and spent a day in a Kern Valley prison with Jason Gaynord. We did that together about six years ago. And their second in command, Quan, was a member of the CO alliance, which is my mastermind that I run for second in commands. Go and do it. Steve and I did the first one together. And then Steve's been running it ever since, going ever since It's a very profound experience to go and spend a day with Level 4 State Penitentiary. These are the toughest of the toughest guys that have been in prison for 34 years. I'll tell you an experience I had. I was 52 at the time. So six years ago, I was talking to a guy who was 52. He went into prison when he was 18. He's been in prison for 34 years. He's getting out in six months. So he's now out of prison. He had never seen a blade of grass, a flower, or a tree for 34 years, and he was getting out of prison. So think about the world that has changed. Cell phones, like, everything, the whole world has changed. Like the Internet. Like everything's changed, right? Like every car is. Like everything he'll see when he gets out has completely changed. And no one in the United States will ever give this guy a job because he's a former convict in Canada. If you're out of prison, you're not allowed to discriminate. If you're in prison, don't hire them. If you're out of prison, you can't discriminate. Just like you can't on sex or color or race or anything else. If you're out of prison, you can't discriminate against the person. In the US this guy can never get a good job at a 7 11. So Defy Ventures and Hustle 2.0 are teaching prisoners how to run their own companies, because when they get out of prison, they better start their own business, because nobody else is going to give them a shot. This guy was talking to me about vulnerability, and I was sitting crying at one point, and he gave me a hug. I was getting a hug from a gang member, and he's like, whatever you've done and however hard you've been on your kids, the world's gonna be a lot harder on them than you've ever been as a dad. He said, anything you've done is gonna toughen them up to make sure they're ready for the world. Here I am getting consoled by this gang member. Prisoner, toughest of the tough. And. And it was a profound experience. I've been involved in masterminds for a long time, and one of my very, very first coaching clients was Yannick Silver. And Yannick had a group called Maverick. I had talked to Yannick over the years and said that I wanted to pull a group of entrepreneurs together and go to Antarctica. I said, because I'd been paid to speak on at that Point, I'd been paid to speak on five continents, and then I added Peru, the YPO chapter in Peru. So that was number six. So I was talking to Yannick, and I'd looked at boats and I looked at groups, and I was going to try to structure something, but I didn't feel I had the marketing chops to pull together a hundred entrepreneurs on a boat in Antarctica. Now it's becoming trendy. And Jannik came to me, like, four years ago, and he goes, hey, I'm pulling a group of entrepreneurs together to go to Antarctica. Do you want to go? I'm like, I'd love to go, but I want you to pay me to speak while I'm there, because that'll cross off number seven. He goes, I was going to pay you to speak anyway, so, yeah, I'll pay you to speak. So I'm like, okay, let's do it. So we went to Antarctica, and There was like 65 CEOs, and we got to have an unbelievable experience one day. We saw somewhere around 300 or 400,000 penguins. Incredible. It's like a river of penguins. Unbelievable. And, yeah, so they. I did a speaking event around growing your people and the fact that if CEOs stop just focusing on growing themselves, if they grow their people and grow their leaders, that's what will grow their company. So at the end of that, Janik handed me a check. And technically, I've now been paid to speak on every single continent. And what's cool for me is that I've been, you know, I have been able to speak now in 29 countries, too. I've got two more. I'm speaking in Ibiza. I guess I've technically already spoken in Spain, so I can't really say I've been. But then I'm speaking in Ireland in May, twice back to back, two days in a row, two different groups. So that'll be kind of cool to do that one, because I've got family in Ireland. One is that if they can have a very truly trusted counterpart, someone that they can lean on, someone that is kind of like. And I even did, as my book cover, the Yin and Yang logo. If they can have that yin to their Yang, that's really going to truly help them scale up their business. Second part of it is that we only start a company for one of three reasons. To have that accomplishment, to kind of put a flag or a stake in the ground and say that we accomplished it, to give us money and to give us free time. And at some point, you've got enough money and you've accomplished it. You're running your business, having that second command. Who can run the business for you and who can work on all the areas that you suck at or that drain you of energy, gives you a better life. So you can kind of start to rig all the rules in your own favor and delegate everything except genius. And I think once you do that, you know, once you do start delegating and growing people and really passing a lot off to a true second in command, whether it's a COO or BPOps or whatever, your company can really scale. And I had played the second command role a couple of times, got known for it, and then I started hosting a podcast called the Second in Command podcast where I've interviewed about 350 second commands. I recently interviewed RFK Jr. Second in Command, his campaign director, which was a fascinating interview. And then I've interviewed like the CEO of Shopify and Bumble and Cleveland Indians, lots of really cool brands. And then I have a mastermind community called the COO Alliance. So I have a large network of second in commands from 17 countries. So I've got a lot of IP around that space and just wanted to codify it and share it. But I think there's an opportunity for CEOs to really leverage that role. We had a very, very smart head of finance, but he was very quiet, he was very analytical, very amiable Indonesian guy who really knew finance. But Brian, the CEO and myself were very type A, very dominant. My disc profile, I'm a 98 I like, I'm literally running 1000 miles an hour, steamrolling anything in my way. So I'm a 74D98I and I'm a 9. Quick start on the Colby. So this very quiet, analytical, amiable head of finance would come to us and say, hey, are you sure we're not growing too quickly? I'm like, no, no, we got it. Hey, I'm worried about we got it. Like, it was always like, we got it. We're going, we got. And plus, you know, we've gone from 2 million to 106 million in six years. We doubled the revenue of the company six consecutive years in a row. We were profitable number two company in Canada to work for. Like, we got it, man. And then we didn't got it. At one point, we didn't got it because we had 5 million in cash and over a quarter we spent it, $2 million on an office renovation and an office move that we paid cash for because we thought we should. $800,000 in taxes, $600,000 in bonuses, $600,000 last year, we literally bled all that money out, went to a bank to get a credit line, and the bank said, we can't give you a credit line. We're like, why? We're profitable. Look at our growth. Look at all the press. They're like, yeah, you guys don't have any money. We're like, yeah, we just spent it all on these things. And like, well, if you had 5 million in cash, we would have loaned you 5 million. We're like, well, we didn't need 5 million because we had 5 million. They're like, you don't have to run a business. And we realized very quickly that we didn't understand how to run $100 million company. We knew how to get there, but we didn't necessarily know how to operate $100 million business. We had 3,000 employees system wide, up from 14 people when I started with them. What I learned was that if you're going to have someone in the room, if you're going to have someone on the team, our job is to listen to them. God gave us two ears and one mouth. We need to use them in that ratio. And if you're not willing to listen to the person, hire someone you're willing to listen to. So Brian and I had made big mistakes around the finances and the growth of the business because we weren't willing to listen to somebody who was quieter. We didn't give that person a voice. We should have tried to find a way to listen. Then we replaced him with the former head of finance for business objects, Crystal reports. She was an unbelievably strong head of finance, and she pulled the ripcord and pulled the fire alarm and made us listen. And we're like, whoa. We were getting cash flow reports from her on a daily basis. We were meeting about cash flow and budgeting twice a day for a period of about four weeks. Brian had to go borrow $420,000 from his mom to meet payroll. We had to fire 30 people over the course of two days. We had to call all of our vendors and say we weren't paying them for a quarter. Like, we literally had to turn this ship around. So it was a really painful, tough lesson around leadership and around people and around communication just so much. You can't tell people what to do anymore. You need to show them where you're going and help them do their role, help grow them, help remove obstacles, help them with communication. In the early Days in the first four years, maybe even the first five years, probably the first four, I knew what had to get done because I built other companies that were similar. I built companies in the franchising space. So I came in as the expert with the plan and told people what to do and we executed my plan. And at some point the business got big enough that they had plans and I should have flipped the org chart faster to be there to support them and coach them and align them. And that was a big lesson, was learning to lead people and grow people and align people and inspire people instead of telling the people what had to get done. And when I say that, I don't mean what's the point? In a forlorn, kind of sad, depressed way. Not at all. I'm just like, none of this really matters. Let's focus on what does matter because we all are going to die. So let's at least enjoy the journey, spend time with friends, tend to our hobbies. Let's build better lives, better cities, etc. Because at the end of the day, we all are going to die. That's what I mean by none of this matters. Maybe I'm being truly open and vulnerable with my wife about nervousness around some of our growth as a couple and where we're going and how we're going to get there as a couple. Like, life on the road is hard at times, right? We're together 24 7. We're every breakfast, every lunch, every dinner, working from home together every minute of every day. And at times, we're each other's only person. You know, we don't have friends or business people around, so just maybe some vulnerability around talking about that maybe isn't there. I'm protecting myself because I. I went through a very painful divorce seven years ago that, that I don't ever want to go through again. I don't want to ever chance not having her. I think we have a great opportunity and a great relationship and so many great things that anytime there's anything nervousness, I just get. I get nervous, I get shaken. I know it goes back to the childhood. I was listening to some stuff yesterday on polarity and listen to Aubrey Marcus talking about polarity and there's some stuff that happened to him, you know, in his teens. It was like every pretty girl that he loved shot him down. And I'm like, every pretty girl I ever loved shot me down. I don't want to get shot down. So there's a. There's that scared kid inside of me and Then when I also look at, you know, how much she loves me and how much, you know, great we have, I don't know why I feel that so not wanting to show up and be vulnerable and then be seen as not being masculine enough or, you know, being too much in my feminine when, you know, so there's a little bit of that. So I work with a coach on it. I work with the counselor. I've got two that I'm working with on it. One that we do actually ketamine assisted therapy related to relationships and clarity. And then one is like a marriage coach that we've worked with since the day we got married to help us. Biggest problem in life is my oldest son struggling with anxiety, depression, ocd. So just not knowing how as a parent to support him and help him and coach him and encourage him and love him is hard because I'm not. It's not my zone of genius. Right. That would be the hard one then business wise marketing and marketing just always is elusive. Like figuring out the best marketing budget and tactics and plan to grow the CEO alliance and to grow my invest in your leaders courses. What are the. It would be nice to have those dialed so that they're very predictable. You know, if we had that predictable because I had it back in the day at College pro Painters. We had it at 1-800-JUNK. We could very much help someone to plan. It was like plan your work and work your plan. I wish I had that more for my businesses today. And some of that's my own fault. Some of it's because I have the CEO alliance and my invest in your leaders course and the op spot, my six books and my coaching and my group coaching and my speaking. It's like, what the does Cameron do? I got all these things right. So maybe it's just more the amplification of my brand and then let stuff come into my funnel. I don't know. Travel. I've got more bucket list activities already scheduled in our calendar for the next three months than most people will have in a lifetime. And we've been crossing them off like coke addicts. Like Gene crossing them off. It's crazy. Like we don't do coke, but we just. Yeah, the ability to like we're literally just tearing the COVID off the ball of life. It's pretty fun to be able to see all the places we go and have all the experiences we have. And to do it with somebody that I love feels pretty incredible. I've been to 72 countries. I've been to 49 countries with my wife since she and I started dating six years ago. So 49 countries together, 72 countries. And I'm not. If I was actually trying to hit the country count, I would have been way over 100 by now. But I've been repeating a lot of the countries with her. I think when I met her, she'd only been to five. And she's at over 50 countries now. So I did a lot of repeats with her. She's got a really, really cool YouTube channel. It's called Ever Wander Travel, where she documents every single one of our countries that we go to with videos. And it's a. Yeah, just a really. She just released the one from Estonia, Denmark. She did an Antarctica one. She's got some really cool videos of all of our travels. She and I crafted a vivid vision for our relationship as a couple, is what our marriage would look like, how we would respond, how we would travel, how we would deal with fitness and friends and finance and sexuality and, you know, travel and experiences and psychedelics. Everything was in there. I guess I'll kind of tie it to the. None of this part matters is that at the end of the day, we have to remember that everyone that we encounter, whether it's an employee, a supplier, a customer, a friend, the guy on the street, the grocery store clerk, every single person you meet today is struggling with something. Whether it's their money, their. Their relationship, their health, somebody in their family, their sexuality, the government. Like, everybody is struggling with something, like really struggling, like worried about it. It's all encompassing. It's preoccupying them. And if you actually care more about them as humans than you care about your business or your day to day, they'll go through brick walls to care for you and to care for your business and to care about you. So it's just about being really cognizant of that. And then it's about enjoying the journey. Like, let's hold hands and have fun and enjoy the journey. Because again, we are only here for one ride, and it's a pretty damn good ride if we can enjoy it.