Cameron Herold founded the COO Alliance because second-in-command leaders were missing from CEO masterminds. The group now has 180 members across 17 countries and meets monthly to help CEOs and COOs communicate better. Herold compares their differences to "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" and says the Alliance teaches them to listen, speak, and argue constructively.
Chapters
I noticed that there were a lot of mastermind communities for the entrepreneur, right? We had YPO and EO and Vistage and the Genius Network and Baby Bathroom and GoBundance. There were tons of these events and groups for entrepreneurs. It's kind of like a guy showing up at a baby shower or a bachelorette party. We don't fit. We're not supposed to be there. When I was born, my grandfather died 2 years later. When I was born, he said, a name like Cameron Gardner Herold, that kid's going to be something someday. And I remember always hearing that from my parents, and it felt like a bit of a curse that I had to live up to. When I was 42 and I was leaving 1-800-GOT-JUNK!, you know, I had the home in Whistler, I was a member of the golf club, I, I had, you know, all the stuff that I would need. All of a sudden I went, wow, I'm already there. I kind of made it. So from that point forward, that was about 18 years ago, I felt like I was in bonus time. Everything else was just for fun or a bonus that was happening. That's when I really felt like I was successful. But I was making money at a very young age. You know, I bought a home the year that I graduated from university. I'd paid off all my university debt and I bought my first rental property at 22 years old. That's not a normal thing for somebody to do. So I was successful at a pretty young age. Back in 1986, my first year running the house painting business, I think I made $20,000 profit in 4 months. Yeah, that was 40 years ago. It was a lot of money for a university student to be making in 4 months. So I was pretty successful at a pretty young age. I noticed that there were a lot of mastermind communities for the entrepreneur, right? We had YPO and EO and Vistage and the Genius Network, Baby Bathroom and GoBundance. There were tons of these events and groups for entrepreneurs, and then there were groups for marketers and lawyers and engineers and for everything else. But there was no organization exclusively for that second in command. It's kind of like a guy showing up at a baby shower or a bachelorette party. We don't fit. We're not supposed to be there. So the CEO showing up at an entrepreneur event, yes, it's about business, but everybody else in the room is a different DNA. So I really wanted to start the organization for them, and I got a group of my clients and their CEOs together, and we put all of the CEOs in a room, and it really did quite well. So that was the starting point for the CEO Alliance. Now we have over 180 full-time members from 17 countries. We do a 2-hour event online every month via Zoom. We also have a 1-hour event online every month via Zoom with an AI expert coming in to speak. And then we do 2 in-person events every year where we get groups of these entrepreneurs or CEOs together to grow their skills, confidence, and connections. And it's not me teaching them. It's me facilitating the discussions, facilitating the learning so they can learn from each other and with each other to grow as leaders and to grow better companies. If you're the COO or second in command to the CEO of a company doing minimum $2 million in revenue, come check us out at cooalliance.com and welcome home. They don't think the same way. They don't communicate the same way. They don't approach the business or see issues the same way. They don't solve problems the same way. What we're working on is How can we help the COO and the CEO collaborate and communicate better? Again, very similar to Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. How do you teach a guy to listen to the women? How do you teach the women to speak more to the male? How do you get them to collaborate and set goals together and stay on the same page and have date night and have time away from the kids? How do you teach them to argue for the good of the relationship? Right. Are you arguing to be right or are you arguing to build a better relationship together? And it's those things that we work with all of our members of the COO Alliance on.
