Cameron Herold's friend and business partner Brian fired him over breakfast at the Vancouver Club, saying Cameron had scaled the company to $100 million but they needed a different COO to reach $1 billion. The betrayal broke their trust for four years until Brian's book credited Cameron's early work, beginning to repair the friendship.
Chapters
Brian and I, every week on the Thursday, would meet at 7 for he and I to get in sync before the leadership team would then meet. We got together at 7. We were meeting at the Vancouver Club and I ordered my traditional Eggs Benedict and Brian ordered a grapefruit. And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing ordering a grapefruit? You've never ordered grapefruit in your life. And he just looked at me and he started to cry. And I'm like, oh shit, I told your assistant last night you were going to fire me today. I go, what's up? And he goes, I'm sorry, it's over. You were the right guy to get us to $100 million, but you're not the guy to take us from $100 million to the billion. You're the entrepreneurial COO and I need more of the corporate COO. I was crying so hard that Brian made me take a taxi home and he drove my car home because I was dysfunctional. It took me at least 4 years to trust him after that. And it was because of the way that it was done. And we've talked publicly about this. When he wrote his book, his first book, Willing to Fail, I was like, I hope he just mentions me. He gave so much credit for the fact that he never could have even built it had I not been there. So I think it was hard for him knowing that he'd let his best friend go. For probably the right reasons, but the board really mismanaged it in the way to do it. So that's what started to rebuild our trust.
